October 25, 2009 – Reformation Sunday
Rev. Jeffrey L. Phillips, pastor
1 Peter 1:1-2, 10-16
Reformation Sunday – Calvin’s 500th birthday
Importance to churches like ours
His life – classically educated, wrote the Institutes at age 25
His thought (using today’s reading)
God’s sovereignty
“To [you] who have been chosen and destined by God.”
God is in charge of everything (comfort in this)
God chooses us; we don’t choose God. W don’t choose anything.
The church is chosen in love by God to be saved.
1 Peter 2:10 - You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you might proclaim the mighty acts of the one who called you out of darkness into marvelous light.
We don’t know why God chose us. God is beyond our full understanding.
God has chosen to reveal all we need to know about God through the Word Jesus Christ as revealed in scripture.
What God has revealed to us is so wonderful, however, that we have seen more than what the angels have, according to 1 Peter – “things into which angels long to look.”
The sovereign God of the universe has chosen to be in relationship with us. Wow! Not because we are so wonderful, but because God is so wonderful.
God chooses some, but not others. This happens before we were created – “predestination.”
Rather uncomfortable notions for liberal Christians, who want to believe that all are saved and that we decide to be saved.
Jewish concept of election: a blessing, but also a responsibility
Salvation
“You have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled by his blood.”
How does salvation work, according to Calvin (especially if we have been chosen by God to be saved)?
You simply know it – a kind of confidence in our hearts.
Salvation is lived out in a life of obedience.
How do we come to have this assurance of salvation?
Through self-knowledge, which reveals how distorted we are. We are always deceiving ourselves about our goodness, wanting to think we can take care of ourselves rather than cast ourselves upon God who alone can take care of us.
Calvin would wholeheartedly support therapy and support groups.
“Total depravity”: only when we truly realize our “worthlessness” do we realize that only God can save.
God has saved those whom God chooses through Christ’s work on the cross.
Grace
“May grace and peace be yours in abundance.”
Grace: God’s free gift, undeserved and unearned.
Example of grace from confirmation class.
“Irresistible grace.” God’s love for the elect is like the genuine love of a parent for her child – the child cannot resist it.
Those who are destined for salvation will eventually realize it, for God will get through to them. God cannot fail to awaken those who are saved (“spiritual regeneration”).
You aren’t a Christian because you say you are, but because God has chosen to make you one and has moved you in your heart to respond to this love by faith and good works.
For Calvin, faith itself, then, is a gift – a grace.
Faith: the God-given ability to perceive God’s goodness and love for you in what Jesus did on the cross.
And God’s salvation is forever. It cannot be lost – even by our doubts and mistakes.
This focus on the inward life of the believer makes Calvin a true Protestant.
He wasn’t concerned about the outward trappings of religion. He wanted to strip away the unbiblical aspects of worship and church life, believing they detracted from what really mattered – the inward person’s faith in God’s love.
Don’t have to believe everything Calvin believed to be a good Christian. But he does bear witness to some powerful affirmations about the nature of God and the relationship between God and believers today.
Read together Calvin’s hymn
The next hymn, not written by Calvin, also expresses his thoughts well: the sinner’s realization that he or she is only redeemed from sin by the blood of Christ – and that this is God’s loving act, not the act of the sinner, who approaches God’s throne of grace “just as I am, without one plea.”
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