In 1554, Queen Mary I arrested Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, two men at the forefront of the English Reformation. As they were being tied at the stake to be burnt to death, Latimer looked over to Ridley and said, “Be of good cheer master Ridley, play the man, we shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England, as I trust it shall never be put out.” 

Today is Reformation Day. It's a day the Church thanks God for Christians like Latimer and Ridley. However, there are countless others whom we will never know, who risked everything –many their lives (some their eyesight) and families– to translate, copy, distribute, and preach the unfiltered and uncontaminated Word of God. Yes, this Reformation Day, glance over (or down) at your Bible. A book bound with thread and glue and filled with ink, but bound and glued together by the providential power of God worked out through the lives of courageous believers. Your Bible, translated straight from the original languages (which is a product of the Reformation) is stained by the blood, tears, and sweat of many courageous brothers and sisters in Christ. 

Something else we see in the tapestry of the history of the Reformation that we should meditate upon today. The most important fact of the Reformation for us to fix our eyes on with wonder and awe: the hand of God. 

Prior to the sixteenth century, the inspired Word seemed to have been buried, hidden, and twisted so much that one might think Christianity to be gone with the sixteenth century wind, if it blew ever so slightly . . . But then there was God. His promises sewn into the tapestry of history past through eternity. Promises like “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Matt. 24:35), or “. . . I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (16:18). At the heart of the Reformation we are reminded of the faithfulness, the wisdom, and, oh, the sheer sovereignty of God. 

In a similar vein, this Reformation Day we should remember the absolute power of God’s Word. Yes, your Bible, translated to English from the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, is stained by the courage and vigor of those brothers and sisters in Christ of the earlier centuries. However, it also glows (if you will) of the power of God. The Reformers experienced this in their own lives. They saw God moving powerfully as they held it out to a starving Church who then finally held, heard, and understood the Bible many for the very first time in their lives. Luther once wrote:

“I simply taught, preached, wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing . . . the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that never a prince or emperor did such damage to it. I did nothing. The Word did it all” [1]

The Word did it all. That’s all we will ever need, the Word. And thanks be to God for that.

May God bless the reading, meditating upon, cherishing, protecting, sharing, teaching, and preaching of the Bible, nothing less . . . and nothing more. Soli Deo Gloria.

-Happy Reformation Day

Endnotes:

[1] Gordon Rupp, Luther’s Progress to the Diet of Worms (New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1964), 99.