Over the last several posts, we’ve been looking at the “Five Solas” of the Reformation, and seen how they safeguard the church’s confession that Jesus Christ is Lord, and the Savior of sinners. Denying these principles will lead us away from this bedrock truth. The capstone of these ideals is summed up in the three words, “Soli Deo Gloria” (glory to God alone).
Our salvation is accomplished entirely by God (sola gratia, sola fide, solus Christus), and can be learned about only from God (sola Scriptura). As a result, all credit must be given to God. We cannot pat ourselves on the back, or look down upon others. Instead, we should be moved to awe by the greatness of God’s mercy, and respond with adoration to him. As the second question of the Heidelberg Catechism puts it, there are three things we must know in order to live and die happily in the comfort of Jesus Christ. First, the greatness of our sin and misery. Second, how we are redeemed from all our sins and misery. And third, how we are to be thankful to God for such redemption. The Christian life is one of grateful response to what God has already done through Christ.
As Michael Horton points out:
Many historians look back to the Reformation and wonder at its far-reaching influences in transforming culture. The work ethic, public education, civic and economic betterment, a revival of music, the arts, and a sense of all life being related somehow to God and his glory: These effects cause historians to observe with a sense of irony how a theology of sin and grace, the sovereignty of God over the helplessness of human beings, and an emphasis on salvation by grace apart from works, could be the catalyst for such energetic moral transformation. The reformers did not set out to launch a political or moral campaign, but they proved that when we put the Gospel first and give voice to the Word, the effects inevitably follow.
How can we expect the world to take God and his glory seriously if the church does not? The Reformation slogan Soli Deo Gloria was carved into the organ at Bach’s church in Leipzig and the composer signed his works with its initials. It’s inscribed over taverns and music halls in old sections of Heidelberg and Amsterdam, a lasting tribute to a time when the fragrance of God’s goodness seemed to fill the air. It was not a golden age, but it was an amazing recovery of God-centered faith and practice. Columbia University professor Eugene Rice offers a fitting conclusion:
All the more, the Reformation’s views of God and humanity measure the gulf between the secular imagination of the twentieth century and the sixteenth century’s intoxication with the majesty of God. We can exercise only historical sympathy to try to understand how it was that the most brilliant intelligences of an entire epoch found a total, a supreme liberty in abandoning human weakness to the omnipotence of God.
It is not about us. It has never been about us. And until we recognize that we are not the center of the universe, we are doomed to futility and frustration. Whether because things aren’t going our way (the wrong politicians got elected, traffic is getting in the way of my agenda, the people around me just don’t understand), or because we aren’t becoming the people we think we should. But when God, by grace, opens our eyes to see reality, we are freed from these and all other burdens, even as we are transformed in the wake.
Posted by: Gene Schlesinger

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