The Pastor's Letter (February 1978)
Dear Friends,
There was something almost inevitable about those words that Martin Luther spoke as he stood arraigned before the power and authority of Papal Rome: "Unless I am convinced of error by the authority of Scripture, I cannot, and will not retract; however I stand, I can do no other ...." Something almost "inevitable," we say, because at that point in his Christian life Martin Luther was making more than an isolated statement relevant only to his own situation.
Luther was expressing a divine principle that must govern each believing soul in Christ if the "peace of God" is to be known and felt in the Christian walk. The principle involved is the inevitability of obedience to the Will of God when that will has been clearly revealed to us through the truth that the Lord has committed to us in His Word. We make the standard of salvation that the sinner must "believe" and "do" what the word of God directs and demands of him. Why should we then jettison this course once we have been "brought to Christ?" Luther had explored the word of God and had discovered that the sinner is justified by faith, and as long as the doctrines and dogmas of Rome denied that precious truth, then he had no alternative but to oppose himself to that system regardless of the cost that might have to be met. He could do "no other."
We get something of the same thing in the life of that man that the Bible calls, "Caleb the son of Jephunneh;" that one who "wholly followed the Lord." Together with Joshua, he had returned to the camp of the Israelites and, in opposition to the other ten spies that had gone out with them, he told the people that they could possess the land of Canaan that they had just spied out. He stands almost alone in the face of popular opinion, but the "trouble" was that God had spoken His word to Caleb concerning the conquest of the land of promise, and says he, "I only brought them word again of what was in mine heart." You see the "inevitable" flavour of those words? The Lord had spoken to Caleb, and now Caleb could do "no other" but repeat what the Lord had placed within his heart: "I brought them word again, as it was in mine heart." As Amos would have put it, "The Lord has spoken, who can but prophesy?" Or Paul - when he stood before his own country-men the Jews, having been "brought bound" to the city of Rome - "it is for the hope of Israel that I am bound with this chain." Blessed inevitability! And we are all to know something of this blessed inevitability in our Christian walk and profession.
The greatest thing that a believer can be, under Christ, is a servant to His word. In this, the believer emulates his Lord Who comes "in the volume of the book" of which it was written of Him, "delighting" to do the Father's will. Modernism would call this "Bibliolatry" - worship of the Bible. But we would say that apart from the Bible it is absolutely impossible to know Christ savingly or to do the will of His Father with intelligent obedience. Those who would want to minimise our servitude to the Word of God merely want to overthrow the demands of its truth for their own lives. But to the obedient child of God, by the enabling of God's performance of grace in his life, there is a delight in "doing the truth" - indeed, it is inevitable that it should be done. If the believer is to enjoy the peace of God in his soul, he ought to know that he can do "no other." This alone explains a Luther's stand against the might of Papal Rome. This alone sees that a Caleb will deliver the burden of his heart in the face of all opposition. This alone gives the ring of assurance to the prophet's message and shows that it is merely the "echo" of what the Lord Himself has uttered. This is the one thing that grants that perfect freedom of life and conscience though a man should be "bound" for the hope of the gospel.
We often hear people praying, "Where is the Lord God of Elijah! Where is the God of Luther, and Whitefield, and Knox" - and so on. We greatly appreciate that sentiment. But we must be careful that it is not an excuse for complacency. After all, the Lord God has not changed; and instead of praying, "Where is the Lord God of these saints of the past, " perhaps we ought to be praying, "Where are those kind of saints of the Lord God!"
The truth of God has "ever stood," as the hymn has it; but how easy it is for our attitudes towards that truth to change - almost imperceptibly at times. "Doing the truth" no longer seems to be the same blest inevitability in the general run of things. "Here I need not stand, I can do all other," seems to characterise an awful lot of thinking and conduct in our churches' lives today. The Lord make us faithful: make us faithful.