Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law?¹

With these words, Queen Elizabeth II was entrusted with the responsibility for preserving the Church and the Gospel within the boundaries of her domain. But what do those words mean – “the Protestant Reformed Religion”?

We looked at what it means to be a protestant last week, and religion seems fairly straightforward, but what does it mean to be reformed?

No, it’s not like being a “reformed prisoner” or a “reformed alcoholic”.

Instead, the word ‘reformed’ in this context has to do with being an heir of the teachings of John Calvin.

John Calvin

When Gerard Calvin and his wife Jeanne became parents of a little boy in northern France in 1509, they could not have known that he was destined to become one of the truly great men of all time. They named him Jean. We know him as John Calvin.

Upon reaching his teenage years, Calvin began formal studies towards becoming a Roman Catholic priest. He studied theology at Paris from 1523 to 1528, and did quite well. But he became increasingly disillusioned with the corrupt Catholicism of the day, and decided to study law instead.
But his heart was still restless, until at last it found its rest in God through true conversion in 1533. He left Roman Catholicism forever. But these were dangerous days for those who left Rome. Heavy persecution dogged the French Protestants, and Calvin himself was imprisoned for a short time from 1534 to 1535. So he decided to leave France.

His goal was to move to Basel, Switzerland, and take up a quiet and secluded life of study and writing. It was never to be. Passing through Geneva, he met the leader of the Swiss French Reformation, Guillaume Farel, who was immediately so impressed with young Calvin that he threatened him with God’s punishment if he did not stay in Geneva to preach and teach. Calvin stayed.

In 1536 Calvin published the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion. It was immediately hailed throughout Europe as the finest systematic theology by a Protestant Reformer. It was to be his literary masterpiece and he later edited and expanded it several times through his lifetime.

One of Calvin’s main goals was a truly godly society. He viewed the Church and State on equal levels – separate in some areas, related in others. Before Calvin, Geneva was notorious throughout Europe for its sinfulness; after Calvin, it became one of the godliest cities the world has ever known. Calvin’s theology of the godly society gave rise to the modern ideas of the democratic republic, the Free Enterprise economic system popularly called Capitalism, and the Protestant Work Ethic. They were put into practice in Geneva. The plan worked.

Yet, whilst he accomplished great advances in the relationship between the Church and the State, his most abiding teachings were in the area of grace.

By grace alone

Last week, we learned that justification is the source of peace with God and, ultimately, salvation. This justification comes by faith (and only faith) in Christ (and only Christ). But the question Calvin asked was: where does that faith come from? Does it originate with us or with God? The church of Calvin’s day held that God has made it possible for us to come to him, but that faith is an act of our will by which we accept and appropriate his work. In other words, God’s grace plus our faith leads to salvation.

Calvin challenged this. Like Luther before him, he chose to search in the scriptures for the answers to questions like this, rather than relying upon the traditions handed down to him by the church. And when he did, he found passages like these:

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. (Rom 5:6)
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. (Eph 2:1–2)

Consider the words that the apostle uses to describe men and women before God acts to save them: powerless and dead. If I told you that a dead man must do something to bring himself back to life, you would rightly laugh at me – it is not the nature of dead men to do anything! Paul does not paint a very complimentary picture of us prior to our salvation. He continues in Ephesians 2:8:
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast.’ (Eph 2:8–9)

Faith is not from us – it is the gift of God. The very thing by which we can enter into the salvation that he has brought about through Christ – faith – is itself a gift of God. We tend to recoil against the idea that everything is from God, and nothing from us, chiefly because that is the way we are taught and trained to behave. Becoming responsible for yourself is an important part of growing up, and no adult likes to be entirely reliant upon someone else for help. We want to be the ones in control, even if only in some small way.

If you’ve ever spent any time around hospitals, visiting someone you care for, you will know what I am talking about. Most of us – whether we are relative or friend – feel utterly helpless the minute we walk into a hospital. All of a sudden we go from being self-reliant to being utterly dependent upon the doctors and nurses who are providing the necessary care. And so we rush to do whatever small things we can to help: turning down the bed, pushing the wheelchair, sneaking in junk food, decorating the room, and so on.

We think the same way when it comes to our salvation. We want to think of ourselves as grown up, as self-reliant, as at least minor contributors to our ultimate fate. And so we tell ourselves that we have exercised ‘free will’ in coming to Christ. He invited us and we came. He might have done 95% of the work, but that remaining 5%, that was me. Look at me, I’m a grown up!

But God doesn’t call us to be grown ups! Instead, he calls us to receive the kingdom, to accept our salvation, like children. ‘I tell you the truth,’ he says, ‘anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it’ (Mark 10:14).

Let me tell you a little about ‘free will’. Imagine that I have two balloons: one is filled with air, the other with helium. (If you’re under the age of 20, ‘imagination’ is kind of like green screen animation, only much better!) Whilst I hold on to them, neither balloon is ‘free’. But once I release them, they are indeed free – free to act according to their nature. Though they may be temporarily affected by external forces such as the wind, overall one will float up, the other down.

The unregenerate human will is like the balloon filled with air: when left to its own devices, it will over time sink into sin. As Paul puts it, ‘All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts’ (Eph 2:3). Whilst there may be brief periods when a wind will pick it up and carry it along and up, it is destined to end up on the ground. Nothing save a transformation of nature – replacing the air with helium for example – will change that. And that kind of transformation is a thing that we cannot achieve by ourselves; it requires the gracious act of God. It requires that we who are dead be made alive! Fortunately, God has done just this:

‘Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved.’ (Eph 2:3–5)

Calvin himself wrote:

Ought we not then to be silent about free-will, and good intentions, and fancied preparations, and merits, and satisfactions? There is none of these which does not claim a share of praise in the salvation of men… When, on the part of man, the act of receiving salvation is made to consist in faith alone, all other means, on which men are accustomed to rely, are discarded. Faith, then, brings a man empty to God, that he may be filled with the blessings of Christ. And so he adds, not of yourselves; that claiming nothing for themselves, they may acknowledge God alone as the author of their salvation.²

As we know, faith is necessary for salvation, and this faith comes only by the gift of God – which we call grace. It is grace, and grace alone that brings about salvation. And, according to both Paul and Calvin, this is necessary otherwise God will not receive all the glory.

To God’s glory alone

Glory is an attribute of a person or thing that merits praise, honour, appreciation and respect. So, the glory of a day might be its blue sky, or the glory of a song might be the mad guitar solo in the middle of it. But the word is also used to denote the praise, honour, appreciation and respect that is given. So we can give glory to something that is glorious.

In God’s case, we rightly say he is glorious in every way. In fact, everything that God does or creates is intended by him to bring glory to himself. He is jealous of his glory, saying ‘I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols’ (Isa 42:8).³ And since he is the creator of all, and sovereign over all, this means that everything is supposed to bring glory to God alone… including us.

Former generations of Christians, before they could be baptised, would have to memorise a long series of questions and answers, known as a catechism. They would then be asked these questions, and give the answers, at their baptism, as a sign that they knew what they were ‘getting themselves into’. One of the most famous of these catechisms starts out with this question: ‘What is the chief end [or purpose] of man?’ to which the response is ‘Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever’.⁴ The prayer our Lord taught us to pray begins: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name’ (Matt 6:9) – this is a prayer of glorification. Our primary responsibility as men and women is to give glory to God – and only God. But how do we do this? Let me give you three ways.

The first and most important thing we need to do to give glory to God is to acknowledge that he is sovereign over everyone and everything. Everything we have comes to us as a gift from God. Everything that we achieve, we do so by God’s grace. In particular, as we have already seen, he is responsible for our salvation; 100% God, 0% us. When we claim responsibility for our salvation, when we pretend that it is our faith that has brought us to him, we are claiming some portion of the glory that is God’s alone. So, give thanks for the things that God has given you, and acknowledge that they are gifts from him.

Another way we give glory to God is by making requests. Imagine you are paralysed, but you have a strong friend who helps you and looks after you. Someone else comes to visit. How can you glorify your friend? You would make requests. “Your visitor would learn from your requests that you are helpless and that your friend is strong and kind. You glorify your friend by needing him and asking him for help and counting on him.”⁵

When we ask God to provide, and then trust him to do so, we bring him glory. When we acknowledge his grace to us before others, we encourage them also to give glory to God. On the other hand, when we try to do things ourselves, and particularly when we try to do things that only God can do, we are taking away from the glory that we owe to God.

In John Calvin’s day, Christians used to present their prayer requests, not to God, but to the ‘saints’. These were dead Christians who, it was believed, could intercede with God on behalf of the one praying. Calvin rejected this idea, because it dishonoured Christ, and obscured the glory of his the cross, by which Christ himself became the mediator between us and God.⁶ Jesus, as we learned last week, is the only mediator required, and trying to put anyone or anything in his place is to detract from the glory of God.

The third way in which we give glory to God is in our worship. As Mark McCrindle put it last Sunday morning, we drink deeply upon the ‘spring of the water of life’ (Rev 21:6), and when we do we give an ‘ahhh’ of satisfaction – and this ‘ahhh’ is worship.

John Piper takes it a step further, when he writes:

[W]orship is a way of gladly reflecting back to God the radiance of His worth… If we do not gladly reflect God’s glory in worship, we will nevertheless reflect the glory of His justice in our own condemnation… But this unwilling reflection of God’s worth is not worship.⁷

One way or another, all people and all things will give glory to God. The question is, will it be by their worship… or their judgment?

All glory is due to God alone, since salvation is accomplished solely through his will and action—not only the gift of the all-sufficient atonement of Jesus on the cross but also the gift of faith in that atonement, created in the heart of the believer by the Holy Spirit. The reformers believed that human beings—even saints canonised by the Roman Catholic Church, the popes, and the church hierarchy—are not worthy of the glory that was accorded them.

Conclusion

It is somewhat ironic that Queen Elizabeth should have been charged with upholding the ‘Protestant Reformed Religion’, for it is that very Reformed religion that proclaims that it is God alone who can do this. To be a reformed Christian means to proclaim that God alone is sovereign over all, that he is the provider of all grace and so the only one to whom glory is due.

That is why I am a reformed Christian… and why I hope you will be too.

Bibliography

Calvin, Jean. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles. Edited by John T. McNeil. 2 vols. Louisville: John Knox Press, 2006.
Calvin, John. Calvin’s Commentaries. Translated by Rev. William Pringle. 22 vols. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2005.
Piper, John. Desiring God : Meditations of a Christian Hedonist. Updated [i.e. 3rd] ed. Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 2004.
Schaff, Philip. The Creeds of Christendom. 6th ed. 3 vols: Baker Books, 2007.

Endnotes

1. Archbishop of Canterbury to Queen Elizabeth II at her coronation, 1953.
2. John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries, trans. Rev. William Pringle, 22 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2005), XXI: 227.
3. cf. Isa 48:11.
4. Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, 6th ed., 3 vols. (Baker Books, 2007), III:676.
5. John Piper, Desiring God : Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, Updated [i.e. 3rd] ed. (Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 2004), 160-1.
6. Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeil, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols. (Louisville: John Knox Press, 2006), III.xx.21.
7. Piper, Desiring God, 84.