The Reformation's
Restoration of Communion with God
Rev. Thomas C. Miersma
In the modern age in which we live it
is perhaps difficult to understand the wonder of that direct access we
have to God through Jesus Christ, which was brought again to light by
the Reformation. We live in an age where the opposite tendency; to
humanize God, to bring Him down to our level, so pervades the church
that the remoteness of God and of Christ which dominated the church at
the time of the Reformation is almost wholly foreign to our thinking.
The church at the time of the Reformation had utterly forsaken the
riches of the New Testament in the cross of Christ. It had returned
under the yoke of bondage to Mt. Sinai which trembled and quaked with
the holy presence of God. But Israel stood at Mt. Sinai as a redeemed
people, borne on eagle's wings by grace. It was by grace that the law
was added to the promise. Not so in the medieval Romish church. God was
a God of holy, righteous wrath against sin, whose grace was afar off.
In our age the Lord Jesus Christ has been falsely reduced to a mere man,
neither righteous man nor divine. In the medieval church His humanity
was almost lost, and His divinity was stressed at the expense of His
manhood. Still the Mediator, He was remote, the One who in awesome
majesty would judge the quick and the dead, the One before whom all
sinners trembled in fear of His coming judgment. Christ could be
approached only by co-mediators, by prayers to Mary, "our
lady," the saints, and angels, who were nearer to man than was
Christ in His exalted glory. It is not without reason that our
Confession of Faith says in Article 26, "But this mediator, whom
the Father has appointed between him and us, ought in no wise to
affright us by his majesty, or cause us to seek another according to our
fancy." The church walked in fear. The people stood afar off.
God could be approached only by way of the sacraments, a system of
sacraments centring in the sacrifices of the Mass, by penances imposed
by the priest in the confessional and by the mediation of an earthly
priesthood. One entered the church by the sacrament of baptism as a
washing away of original sin by the water. The sacrament of baptism was
not administered for the edification of the church, but as a
superstitious ritual in a separated rite, children being presented by
godparents, baptized with water, and anointed with the sign of the cross
by chrism, a holy anointing oil like that of the Old Testament, mixed
with the spit of the priest. At age twelve they were confirmed (the
sacrament of confession of faith), usually with a minimal knowledge of
the Christian faith.
Spiritual life centred in the Mass, a dramatic re-enactment of the
cross, culminating in the sacrifice of Christ afresh in an unbloody
manner at the altar, by which bread was magically changed into the
literal body of Christ. The altar, as in the Old Testament; was the one
place where God had fellowship with man in Christ. It was the one place
that Jesus' human nature was manifested as the mediator, but now in a
piece of bread to be worshiped. The medieval church was not a place for
the gathering of the people of God, the body of Christ, for fellowship
with God by His Word in Christ. It was a temple whose sweeping arches
and pillars reaching to the high vault above spoke of the majesty of
God. Its windows of multi-coloured glass surrounded the people with
saints, floating as it were in the vault of heaven. Myriads of carved
and painted statutes of saints were clustered in the vaults, adding to
the holy presence. Carved angels in a canopy hovered over the altar.
Candles flickered in the holy sanctuary, and incense smouldered as the
people stood as far off as Israel in the outer court.
The choir of priests and monks, like the levitical choirs, stood between
the people and the altar, chanting the psalms and hymns of the church in
a language the people understood not. The priests and bishops were
clothed in holy vestments like the priests of the Old Testament, put on
with prayers for each piece, with the kissing of garments and many
genuflections. They wore garments which dated from the clothes worn in
the Roman emperors' courts centuries before.
The priests entered the church and ascended to the altar with all the
pageantry of a parade, a solemn assembly, there to perform
incomprehensible rites, bowing and bending. The people, observers,
responded to the liturgy by crossing themselves, uttering stock
refrains, bowing themselves. The people held their sacramentals, little
sacraments, counting the beads of the rosary, reciting in vain
repetition as the heathen the Lord's Prayer and their "Hail Marys."
They would depart perhaps with a little statue of a saint for their
comfort, like the Ephesians before them with their silver images of the
goddess Diana, or a medallion or a bottle of holy water. The people
watched until the mystery took place. Bells were rung in the hands of
the priests to drive out the ever-present demons. Then the priest
elevated the bread of communion, the host, and said the magic words,
"In hoc corpus meus est," "This is my body" - or
"hocus pocus," as it sounded to the people. There Jesus was
beheld, the sacrifice for sin made anew. The people worshiped the piece
of bread.
On special days, in their superstition, they roamed from church to
church in the big cities in hurrying multitudes, hoping to see the magic
again and again. To eat of the sacrament was for one moment to have
communion with Christ and receive grace by the bread.
Again and again that sacrifice of the Mass had to be offered for the
living and for the dead, for without it there was no forgiveness of
sins. The Roman sacramental system held the people in spiritual bondage
all their life. Even at the hour of death there was the sacrament of
extreme unction, the anointing again with holy oil. The church was held
in a yoke of bondage and superstition in life and death.
From that bondage the Reformation of the church and return to the truth
of God's Word wrought a true liberation. Christ was restored as the true
mediator between God (who ought not to "affright us by His
majesty") and men. The truth that we are reconciled to the holy God
by the one sacrifice of Christ once offered upon the cross was restored.
The Reformation gave us again the truth that we have access to God
through Jesus Christ, our high priest, and no longer have need for an
earthly priesthood. The truth that we are to come boldly to the throne
of grace through Christ our Saviour in prayer, was restored. The truth
was again brought to light that we have a merciful and faithful high
priest who can be touched with the feelings of our infirmities, who
understands our needs and will not turn us away. True spiritual
fellowship with God was restored, while outward rites and ceremonies,
the inventions of men, as barriers between Christ and His people, fell
away. The Mass was seen for what it was a denial of Christ's atoning
death, an accursed idolatry and superstition (Heidelberg Catechism Q/A
80). The sacraments were reduced to their proper number of two, baptism
and the Lord's Supper, and to their spiritual function as visible signs
and seals for the confirmation and strengthening of our faith. The
sacraments were stripped of man-made additions and restored to their
purity as signs and seals of the covenant. The worship of the church in
fellowship with God likewise was restored to its pure form, centring in
the Word of God and the preaching of His Word.
The Reformation restored to the life and worship of the church true
spiritual fellowship and communion with God. The Romish sacramental
system and its accompanying worship had taken from us that communion.
The worship of God had become an outward religion of form, separating
God and His people. The Romish sacramental system of worship is a
multimedia artistic event of sight, sound, and colour, or pageantry and
drama. Grace itself is outwardly administered in the bread to be eaten
with the mouth, and worshiped as God.
The Romish system is a corrupt unity. We must see it as a whole if we
are to understand the writings and language of the reformers when they
speak of "books for the laity" and of the Mass as "an
accursed idolatry," lest we take their writings out of their proper
historical context or treat the issues involved piecemeal. Their concern
for purity of worship was not a concern over church decoration but with
a whole ceremonial system of corrupt worship, corruption of the
sacraments and the whole life of the church, all of which robbed the
child of God of forgiveness and fellowship with God through Jesus Christ
by substituting external form and superstition. Their concern was to
restore true communion with, God through Jesus Christ.
It points us too to the present folly of much of Protestantism which can
no longer see any difference with Rome, for Rome has not changed. A
folly too as the sacraments are again corrupted by human invention,
attended by the corruption of worship. The worship of Protestantism is
again turning to ritual, to pageantry, in liturgical drama, dance, and
ceremony. Inventing its own books for the laity to replace the preaching
of the Word with films, plays, pseudo-Christian rock concerts. So that
again the people of God sit afar off as observers to be entertained and
not as worshipers.
This article was originally published in the Standard
Bearer, Volume 69, Issue
2.
Rev. Miersma is missionary pastor of Covenant
of Grace Fellowship in Spokane, Washington.
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