The Reformation's Restoration of Communion with God
Rev. Thomas C. Miersma
In the modern age in which we live it is perhaps difficult to understand the wonder of that direct access we have to God through Jesus Christ, which was brought again to light by the Reformation. We live in an age where the opposite tendency; to humanize God, to bring Him down to our level, so pervades the church that the remoteness of God and of Christ which dominated the church at the time of the Reformation is almost wholly foreign to our thinking. The church at the time of the Reformation had utterly forsaken the riches of the New Testament in the cross of Christ. It had returned under the yoke of bondage to Mt. Sinai which trembled and quaked with the holy presence of God. But Israel stood at Mt. Sinai as a redeemed people, borne on eagle's wings by grace. It was by grace that the law was added to the promise. Not so in the medieval Romish church. God was a God of holy, righteous wrath against sin, whose grace was afar off.
In our age the Lord Jesus Christ has been falsely reduced to a mere man, neither righteous man nor divine. In the medieval church His humanity was almost lost, and His divinity was stressed at the expense of His manhood. Still the Mediator, He was remote, the One who in awesome majesty would judge the quick and the dead, the One before whom all sinners trembled in fear of His coming judgment. Christ could be approached only by co-mediators, by prayers to Mary, "our lady," the saints, and angels, who were nearer to man than was Christ in His exalted glory. It is not without reason that our Confession of Faith says in Article 26, "But this mediator, whom the Father has appointed between him and us, ought in no wise to affright us by his majesty, or cause us to seek another according to our fancy." The church walked in fear. The people stood afar off.
God could be approached only by way of the sacraments, a system of sacraments centring in the sacrifices of the Mass, by penances imposed by the priest in the confessional and by the mediation of an earthly priesthood. One entered the church by the sacrament of baptism as a washing away of original sin by the water. The sacrament of baptism was not administered for the edification of the church, but as a superstitious ritual in a separated rite, children being presented by godparents, baptized with water, and anointed with the sign of the cross by chrism, a holy anointing oil like that of the Old Testament, mixed with the spit of the priest. At age twelve they were confirmed (the sacrament of confession of faith), usually with a minimal knowledge of the Christian faith.
Spiritual life centred in the Mass, a dramatic re-enactment of the cross, culminating in the sacrifice of Christ afresh in an unbloody manner at the altar, by which bread was magically changed into the literal body of Christ. The altar, as in the Old Testament; was the one place where God had fellowship with man in Christ. It was the one place that Jesus' human nature was manifested as the mediator, but now in a piece of bread to be worshiped. The medieval church was not a place for the gathering of the people of God, the body of Christ, for fellowship with God by His Word in Christ. It was a temple whose sweeping arches and pillars reaching to the high vault above spoke of the majesty of God. Its windows of multi-coloured glass surrounded the people with saints, floating as it were in the vault of heaven. Myriads of carved and painted statutes of saints were clustered in the vaults, adding to the holy presence. Carved angels in a canopy hovered over the altar. Candles flickered in the holy sanctuary, and incense smouldered as the people stood as far off as Israel in the outer court.
The choir of priests and monks, like the Levitical choirs, stood between the people and the altar, chanting the psalms and hymns of the church in a language the people understood not. The priests and bishops were clothed in holy vestments like the priests of the Old Testament, put on with prayers for each piece, with the kissing of garments and many genuflections. They wore garments which dated from the clothes worn in the Roman emperors' courts centuries before.
The priests entered the church and ascended to the altar with all the pageantry of a parade, a solemn assembly, there to perform incomprehensible rites, bowing and bending. The people, observers, responded to the liturgy by crossing themselves, uttering stock refrains, bowing themselves. The people held their sacramentals, little sacraments, counting the beads of the rosary, reciting in vain repetition as the heathen the Lord's Prayer and their "Hail Marys." They would depart perhaps with a little statue of a saint for their comfort, like the Ephesians before them with their silver images of the goddess Diana, or a medallion or a bottle of holy water. The people watched until the mystery took place. Bells were rung in the hands of the priests to drive out the ever-present demons. Then the priest elevated the bread of communion, the host, and said the magic words, "In hoc corpus meus est," "This is my body" - or "hocus pocus," as it sounded to the people. There Jesus was beheld, the sacrifice for sin made anew. The people worshiped the piece of bread.
On special days, in their superstition, they roamed from church to church in the big cities in hurrying multitudes, hoping to see the magic again and again. To eat of the sacrament was for one moment to have communion with Christ and receive grace by the bread.
Again and again that sacrifice of the Mass had to be offered for the living and for the dead, for without it there was no forgiveness of sins. The Roman sacramental system held the people in spiritual bondage all their life. Even at the hour of death there was the sacrament of extreme unction, the anointing again with holy oil. The church was held in a yoke of bondage and superstition in life and death.
From that bondage the Reformation of the church and return to the truth of God's Word wrought a true liberation. Christ was restored as the true mediator between God (who ought not to "affright us by His majesty") and men. The truth that we are reconciled to the holy God by the one sacrifice of Christ once offered upon the cross was restored. The Reformation gave us again the truth that we have access to God through Jesus Christ, our high priest, and no longer have need for an earthly priesthood. The truth that we are to come boldly to the throne of grace through Christ our Saviour in prayer, was restored. The truth was again brought to light that we have a merciful and faithful high priest who can be touched with the feelings of our infirmities, who understands our needs and will not turn us away. True spiritual fellowship with God was restored, while outward rites and ceremonies, the inventions of men, as barriers between Christ and His people, fell away. The Mass was seen for what it was a denial of Christ's atoning death, an accursed idolatry and superstition (Heidelberg Catechism Q. & A. 80). The sacraments were reduced to their proper number of two, baptism and the Lord's Supper, and to their spiritual function as visible signs and seals for the confirmation and strengthening of our faith. The sacraments were stripped of man-made additions and restored to their purity as signs and seals of the covenant. The worship of the church in fellowship with God likewise was restored to its pure form, centring in the Word of God and the preaching of His Word.
The Reformation restored to the life and worship of the church true spiritual fellowship and communion with God. The Romish sacramental system and its accompanying worship had taken from us that communion. The worship of God had become an outward religion of form, separating God and His people. The Romish sacramental system of worship is a multimedia artistic event of sight, sound, and colour, or pageantry and drama. Grace itself is outwardly administered in the bread to be eaten with the mouth, and worshiped as God.
The Romish system is a corrupt unity. We must see it as a whole if we are to understand the writings and language of the reformers when they speak of "books for the laity" and of the Mass as "an accursed idolatry," lest we take their writings out of their proper historical context or treat the issues involved piecemeal. Their concern for purity of worship was not a concern over church decoration but with a whole ceremonial system of corrupt worship, corruption of the sacraments and the whole life of the church, all of which robbed the child of God of forgiveness and fellowship with God through Jesus Christ by substituting external form and superstition. Their concern was to restore true communion with, God through Jesus Christ.
It points us too to the present folly of much of Protestantism which can no longer see any difference with Rome, for Rome has not changed. A folly too as the sacraments are again corrupted by human invention, attended by the corruption of worship. The worship of Protestantism is again turning to ritual, to pageantry, in liturgical drama, dance, and ceremony. Inventing its own books for the laity to replace the preaching of the Word with films, plays, pseudo-Christian rock concerts. So that again the people of God sit afar off as observers to be entertained and not as worshipers.
This article was originally published in the Standard Bearer, Volume 69, Issue 2.
Rev. Miersma is pastor of Immanuel Protestant Reformed Church in Lacombe, Alberta, Canada.