Reformation Sunday
Beloved. Today, as we remember the 502nd anniversary of Luther posting the 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church setting off the events of the Reformation, we are filled with various thoughts. Of course, there is great joy that the Lord, in grace, again brought the truth of His holy word to light; there is also great sorrow that God’s word had been so greatly despised and rejected to have come into that state to begin with. There is great marveling at the way God brought all this about—setting the stage and preparing and raising up His servant Martin Luther. There is great thanksgiving that Christ is faithful to His promise and is today still guiding and protecting His Church. Reformation Sunday is not a day for triumphalism but a time for simple, humble gratitude that God in grace has blessed us—us poor sinners—to have in our midst His pure word and Sacrament.
The wonderful thing to remember is that the Reformation is God’s work, not man’s. It points us back again to our holy, gracious Triune God and His work to save us sinners from our sins and damnation. With David in the psalm, we confess of the Lord [86.10]: For You are great and do wondrous things; for you alone are God; and with Solomon [72.18]: Blessed be the Lord…who alone does wondrous things.
What makes the Reformation great is not that there are today millions of people throughout the world claiming to be heirs of the Reformation, following the footsteps of Martin Luther—after all there are large numbers of people following the likes of Mohammed and Joseph Smith; might does not make right—but what makes the Reformation great, is that it is a gracious work of God in which He anew proclaimed Christ and clearly and freely offers sinners the fruit and blessing of His saving work. In other words, in the Reformation, Jesus and His saving work for us sinners was made front and center.
Precisely this main doctrine of the holy Christian faith—that we are saved by God’s grace through faith in Christ— is the one that the devil is always aiming to destroy, both in the Church and in people’s hearts; and this Spirit-worked faith/ confidence/ trust in Christ and His work is precisely what makes us Christians.
With the Reformation, our good and gracious Lord was working mightily to protect His Church and preserve this main teaching. The Reformation is the crystal clear object lesson of His guardian care for the Church. This means that we, too, can be certain that He will work mightily to keep us in the one true saving faith. Or, in other words, in the words of St. Paul in our text: that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it. It would not be a Reformation Sunday sermon without a few words on good works; but today we hear of the good work of God.
Paul begins our text with thanksgiving to God for beginning the good work, His gracious work in bringing these people of Philippi, the first European converts on European soil, to faith: I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now. Paul recognizes that our gracious Triune God is the sole and whole cause of all goodness in all saints/ Christians—He brought them to faith; He brought them into fellowship in the Gospel. And that’s the good work God began in them; He brought them into fellowship in the gospel by Paul’s preaching of the word—that word of Christ crucified for our sins and risen as conqueror of our spiritual enemies of sin, death, devil and hell.
It is a good work because by being in the fellowship in the gospel, our hearts and minds are filled with its blessings. We always have that glorious peace of the forgiveness of sins. We are certain that no matter what, in Christ, God is our dear loving heavenly Father who is working all things for our spiritual and eternal good. We are filled with the blessing that heaven is open to us where a glorious eternity awaits us. All of our Lord’s dear Christians share in and enjoy the same grace, just as Paul writes in our text: you all are partakers with me of grace. We all need the grace of God! And being in fellowship in the Gospel, we enjoy the same grace that each of our Lord’s Christians does! What joy and blessedness fills our hearts. What a good work God began in us! He brought us to faith and into fellowship in the Gospel, filling our hearts and minds with its blessings.
The glorious thing about the word of God is that it doesn’t merely announce/ proclaim to us Jesus and His saving work; instead, Christ comes to us in His holy word and the Holy Spirit creates faith in our hearts to welcome and receive Him and He dwells within us. Jesus tells His disciples [Jn 8.23]: If anyone loves Me [and this is only by the work of the Holy Spirit], he will keep my word; any My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. So, in fact, not only does Christ dwell in the hearts of His dear Christians, but the whole Triune God does.
Through the Gospel, all our Lord’s dear Christians are brought together in the most intimate spiritual fellowship with Him and with each other. How beautifully this finds its expression in the Holy Supper where all those confessing the same faith—fellowship with each other—come together and are fed the same body and blood of Christ—fellowship with Christ! This intimate oneness is a foundation of the Church’s practice of closed communion.
So that we remember the great blessing of this good work and give our gracious Lord—like Paul does in our text—all praise and thanksgiving for it, let us remember: He who has begun a good work in you… Notice, God is the one doing the work. He has begun the work; we don’t/ we can’t bring ourselves into the fellowship in the Gospel and into receiving its gifts and blessings. That’s because we are born into this world as sinners, enemies of God, slaves to sin and devil; we are born spiritually dead, with no true spiritual life in us. But God, in grace, by His holy word and Sacraments—like He did with the Philippians through St. Paul—comes and begins this good work in us—bringing us to faith in Christ, bringing us into fellowship in the Gospel, and giving us Christ with all His gifts and blessings.
- Perhaps some will say: “OK, by this good work of God, we are brought/ given new spiritual life; by God’s good work I am brought to faith but now the rest is up to me.” Carried to its logical conclusion, it means “I am somehow responsible—even if it’s only a small bit—for my salvation; it is not all a free gift of God.” Our text: He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Notice, Paul clearly teaches that God both begins this good work—true spiritual life and faith, fellowship in the Gospel—and He will complete it, not we ourselves.
It’s not as if Paul had a slip of the pen when he wrote this. Instead, he writes later on in our text: And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ. The point? By Paul praying to the Lord to increase their love, faith, knowledge and discernment/ that we pray for these things for ourselves means that they are gifts from the Lord; it means that we can’t get them by our own natural power and abilities. In us, God has to finish what He started. When we understand that, we, then, like St. Paul overflow with praise and thanksgiving to God who delivered us from the ignorance and captivity of sin and death and gave us spiritual life and the forgiveness of sin.
The fact that God both begins and completes the good work contains a glorious promise and comfort. It means that in spite of ourselves, despite all our weakness, God will preserve us in the faith and in the end save us. In other words, because God began the good work, we can be certain of our salvation. It is in His hands, not ours. His hands are certain, ours are far from certain.
In His Word and Sacrament, God has given us His Holy Spirit. The very fact that we are Christians, trusting in Jesus and His work for forgiveness of sin and eternal life, means that we have the Holy Spirit. By the work of the Holy Spirit we continue in lives of true repentance and faith. The Holy Spirit, in the law, shows and convinces us of our sin, leads us to sorrow over them; then He leads us to the Gospel—to Jesus and His saving work. The Holy Spirit is mightily at work in the word of God to strengthen our faith. Left to ourselves and our own devices, we would all certainly reject faith, Christ, the gifts and blessings He won for us on the cross; but we are not left to ourselves. Go back and think of your baptism—that’s the firm, concrete time you can point to and say: At that time and at that place I was brought into the holy family of God, my sins were washed away, and I was given the Holy Spirit. There God began His good work in me. It is not up to us and our own devices to stay in the faith—because we couldn’t! What a glorious promise—because our salvation is in God’s hands it is certain and sure. He has given us His Holy Spirit. He gives us His holy word and Sacraments through which the Spirit comes to us and works on us, creating, strengthening and preserving our faith.
Let us also be warned here. Our old sinful self will say to us: Since you have God’s promise that He brought you to faith, He will also keep you in the faith, you don’t have to worry about anything so live anyway you want, skip church, skip the word. Do you see how diabolical such thinking is? There is a grain of truth there: God began the good work in us and He will complete it; but only when we hold on to the work that God began can God complete it. If we turn away and reject that good work, God’s gift and Spirit, how can He complete it? We cannot bring ourselves to faith, nor can we keep ourselves in the faith—but we can turn away from and reject the good work; we can extinguish the faith; we can expel the Holy Spirit from our hearts and lives by neglect of the word and Sacrament; by grieving Him and not following His leading and promptings but following our old sinful nature a living a life of willful sin.
How vital it is, then, that we hold on to the work that God has begun in us. Let us recognize what a true gift and blessing it is—something we cannot do on our own—and what great blessing it brings us: forgiveness of sin and eternal life. Not only will our hearts overflow in praise of God and His grace; not only will we truly treasure it for the treasure that it is; but we will then strive all the more to live a life in thanksgiving and accord with it; our prayer will be that of St. Paul in our text: And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
We daily strive to grow in the faith and in understanding. Our understanding grows as we daily taste the sweetness of divine grace as we recognize and confess our sins and receive absolution. As our understanding of our Lord’s grace and mercy grows, so does our love of the Lord and our desire to know more of Him and His will. In love, led and empowered by the Holy Spirit, we reject what is contrary to the Lord, accept and strive to do what is pleasing to Him and when we fail, we run to His grace to us in Christ cling to Him and His forgiveness. With greater holiness of life, with all our sin where we here fail, forgiven and covered with the righteousness of Christ, we are found pure and blameless come the Last Day. This! This! Is all God’s work from start to finish. He began the good work in us and He will complete it. Our salvation is all God’s work from start to finish! What great cause for rejoicing! INJ