Well, let me invite you to turn in your Bibles or, for some of you, your iPhones, iPads. I guess you're still turning in your Bible if you use one of these things. But I want to encourage you to turn to the first chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans. and we're going to read some verses there from verse 16 for about another 8 or 9 verses or so. As you're turning there, we'd like to say just a couple of things by way of introduction. The first is to say on behalf of the ministers who have been here today, how deeply grateful we are for the way in which the church here has served us. Ministers are kind of used to turning up and speaking at things and not noticing that there has been an entire tribe of people who have made the situation possible and we want to express our thanks to you. I'm really glad some people are taking notes of what I'm saying there so that that can go into the minutes of the Kirk session here. And then the second thing to say is that this is pre-Knox this evening, I think. This is pre-Knox. Knox 500, the big thing, I think, the big thing is Steve Lawson actually, but Knox 500, the big thing is later in the year. So this is pre-Knox. And so what I want to try and do this evening is, yes, I'm going to ground what I say in this passage. But I want to reflect a little on what the Reformation was about in terms specifically of these verses we're just going to read. Because they were monumentally significant. Monumentally significant. And I hope within the time that's at my disposal this evening that we'll be able to see something of that. So Romans 1 verse 16, I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith as it is written the righteous shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse, for although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonouring of their bodies among themselves, because They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. Later on this evening, Steve Lawson is going to speak on the great themes of the Reformation and knowing that, I thought it might be encouraging to us if I spoke about the, capital T, capital H, capital E, the text of the Reformation. because this passage was hugely significant in the lives of the two most significant figures in the Continental Reformation, Martin Luther in Germany and John Calvin, a Frenchman who ministered all of his life in the great city of Geneva in Switzerland. Neither of them regarded Romans as their favourite letter in the New Testament. Luther undoubtedly regarded Galatians as his favourite letter. He renamed it after his wife, Katie. And Calvin, by all accounts, felt Ephesians was the most eloquent of Paul's letters, and at least in the oral tradition, it was his favourite letter of the Apostle Paul. That notwithstanding, it was through Romans, certainly in the case of Martin Luther, and I think almost certainly in the case of John Calvin, that they both came to understand the heart of the gospel. And this particular passage, in quite different ways, was significant in both of their lives. One of the things that I think we can learn from this, if I can just say this up front, is that the gospel is so big and human needs are so vast that people come to appreciate the gospel not normally in its entirety, but partially in the way in which the gospel comes to them, the way in which Christ comes to them, absolutely sufficient for their particular needs and for their particular sins. Isn't it one of the great statements of the New Testament that he is able to save to the uttermost all those who come to God through Christ. And the reason is, no matter what particular way in which my sin has shaped me, there is grace sufficient in Jesus Christ for that and for much more. And so in a sense it should never surprise us that different people are brought to Christ by different texts of scripture. That different people, when they describe what it was that seemed to catch them and draw them to Christ, will describe very different experiences. It may be, as C.H. Spurgeon said about a woman he regarded as one of the best members of that vast congregation of which he was minister, When he asked her how she'd become a Christian, she said, I saw the Lord Jesus and I thought to myself, I am not at all like the Lord Jesus and I want to be. No dramatic, months-long, bunion-like sense of conviction of sin, but a simple sense that she was created to be like Jesus. But as Paul says later on in Romans, she had fallen short of that glory and God had put it into her heart to desire to be like Jesus. And this is certainly true, I think, in the case of both Martin Luther and John Bunyan. The text that is the big text in the life of Martin Luther was Romans 1, 16 and 17. You may know Luther's story. He was born in 1483. He was brought up in a relatively working class family, a pious Roman Catholic family. He was caught as a young man in a storm He prayed to one of the saints and he vowed that if he could be saved in this situation because there was blood, his blood on the ground, then he would become a monk. And his life was spared and he became a monk. He became a rather fine monk. His contemporaries thought that he was a fairly good candidate for sainthood in the future. But Martin Luther became increasingly troubled by two things. One of the things he became troubled about lay outside of him, namely the condition of the church. The other thing that troubled him lay within him. He became a professor of theology, a Bible professor. He taught scripture. And as he taught scripture, there was an expression in scripture that gripped him and deeply troubled him. It was the description of God as the God of righteousness. He read Romans 1, 16 and 17. In the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed. And he says that he actually began to hate Paul because of that expression. Why? because he knew he could never attain to the righteousness of God. All very well to speak about the righteousness of God being revealed, but Luther was conscious that the more he strived for that righteousness, the further short he felt he fell of it. I think it helps us a great deal to understand the framework in which Martin Luther had been reared as a late medieval Roman Catholic. Sometimes Protestant people say, rather naively, that the Roman Catholic Church taught and teaches that salvation is by works, and the Protestant church teaches that salvation is by grace. If you read the literature of the late medieval church, the time of Martin Luther, you pretty immediately realise that that literature is obsessed with grace. The great question of Martin Luther's church world was the question of how God gives you grace. And the way in which the Roman Catholic Church in Luther's day taught, if I can put it this way, the way you are saved was this. That in your baptism, God gives you a gift of grace. And throughout the whole course of your life, by means of your response to God's grace, you grow in righteousness. Yes, you slip back, but if you slip back, there is grace for those who slip back. There are ways to repent. There is penance. There are sacraments in the church to help you. But over an extended period of time, the teaching was, what God does is He gives you more grace as you respond to His grace. And as you respond to His grace, He gives you more grace. Grace was thought of, even spoken of, as though it were a substance that was infused into people's souls. Actually, it's surprising, almost alarming, How many Protestants speak that way too? And speak about grace as though it were a thing, as though it were a substance. I got grace. Not having an appreciation that when the Bible speaks about grace, it always means the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. It means Christ. But as this process continued, as you responded to the sacraments as God wrought His grace into you and you grew in holiness, the goal was that a time would come when your faith would be so suffused with love for God that God's grace would have worked righteousness into your life. And because God had worked righteousness into your life, it was righteous of God to justify you. This is where the expression, heaven helps those who help themselves, actually comes from. And this is the reason why, in the theology of those days, and technically still in the theology of the Roman Church today, to believe that you have assurance of salvation, is a piece of arrogance. Why? Because it follows that who of us is in the position where we would say, grace has wrought in me to such an extent that God can justify me on the basis of the righteousness that he has worked within me. So it wasn't that they didn't believe in the righteousness of God, It wasn't from one point of view that they denied that justification was by grace. They insisted that justification was by grace. But it was by grace on the basis of the righteousness that had been worked into you. You were justified because you were justifiable. And Luther's problem was very simple. How can I ever be sure that grace has done enough in my life produced this perfect faith, this overflowing love for God, in which my whole being is given over to him, and on that basis he can say, I justify you because you are justifiable, because I have wrought righteousness in you. How could anyone ever get to that point? And the more he strove for it, the more he used the sacraments. Of course, the further short he felt he came until he does actually come to the point where he says, I hated this expression of the Apostle Paul. I detested this expression because it condemned me. Because nobody could ever get there. Actually, you know, when I was a young boy and a very young Christian in Presbyterianism, it was regarded as arrogance to think that you were saved, that you could have the assurance of salvation. How could you possibly have it at your age? How could you ever have it? And so sometimes if people were asked, were you saved? They would say, I hope so. Are you going to heaven? I hope so. It's just a very antithesis of what you find in the New Testament, isn't it? Do you find any believer in the New Testament when asked the question, are you going to heaven? Who says, well, I'm not sure, but I hope so. I hope I've done enough. Indeed, one of the most striking statements in all Roman Catholic theology was made by one of the major Roman Catholic theologians of the 16th and 17th century. a man by the name of Robert Bellarmine. He was a cardinal in the church and a doctor, one of the official doctors of the Roman Catholic Church. Bellarmine writes, hidden away in an old Latin book, these words, The greatest of all Protestant heresies is the assurance of salvation. Now, if I'd been finishing the sentence, I might have said, if Bellarmine, the Roman Catholic Cardinal, I might have said, the grace of all Protestant heresies is justification by faith alone. But no, and you see the point, of course it's the greatest of all Protestant heresies. Because this way of salvation can never bring that glorious deliverance that the New Testament Gospel brings right from the beginning of the Christian life. And then it was as though God switched on the light in Martin Luther's brain and in his soul. And he looked at this text You remember the little optical illusion, you look at it one way and it's a beautiful girl and you look at it another way and it's an old haggardly witch. And do you know, has anyone ever said to you, I have never seen the beautiful woman? Maybe you've never seen the beautiful woman. Now I don't want to be diverted to tell those of you who have never seen the beautiful woman what you need to do in order to see the beautiful woman. But it's the same picture. And then there's just a flick of the switch. Oh, there she is. Sometimes it's like that when people are converted, isn't it? Oh, how could I have been so blind? And that was how it was for Paul. That was how it was for Martin Luther. And he saw this text in a new light. This is not the righteousness that God is looking for at the end of my life as the result of the work of His grace in me. O blessed be His name! This is the righteousness of God which God gives to me as a free gift at the beginning of my Christian life as I come with the empty hands of faith. He gives me this righteousness in my justification. And so it's not something that I'm striving for for the rest of my life. It's something that the rest of my life is actually grounded in. And the marvelous thing that Martin Luther understood as he read again through Paul's letter to the Romans was this, that what that meant is God has brought forward from the last day into the present day his pronouncing of me righteous in his sight." And Luther immediately saw what that meant. I like to put it like this because I think this is how the reformers understood it. He understood that he, from the moment he was born again, he speaks about when he understood this as I was born again and it was as though the gates of paradise were flung open before me. because he understood that from the moment of his faith in Jesus Christ, he was not only finally justified, he was irreversibly justified. And then this, he was as justified before the judgment seat of God as Jesus himself. Now that third emphasis is what we need to get, isn't it? Do you understand the magnitude of this justification? That you can stand tonight, bold-eye approach the eternal throne and claim the crown through Christ my own. Why? Because if you are in Christ, trusting in Christ, you are actually as righteous before God as Jesus himself is. My friends, to deny that would be to deny the gospel. Any less righteousness will not enable you to stand before the throne of Christ. And you see the reality is this, and this was the big difference that just transformed Luther. What he had been taught was that he would be justified on the basis of his righteousness. and he knew that could never be perfect. And now he understood that he was as righteous before God as Jesus Christ is righteous, because the only righteousness he had was Jesus Christ's righteousness. And it just transformed his life. One of the things that marked his life was this exuberant joy, this glorious sense of freedom, this vast courage to take on the might, and it was a political and a civil might as well as just a kind of religious power. And he felt he was able to take it on single-handedly. because he knew where he stood before the judgment seat of God. Actually, in some ways it's the single biggest difference between the Christian and the non-Christian. The non-Christian lives his or her life forwards to the future. The Christian lives his or her life backwards from the future. We've already seen the future. We've already seen the final verdict and all fear is gone because we are as righteous in God's sight and therefore we are permanently righteous. We could no more lose our justification than Christ could lose his righteousness. Because the righteousness that is ours is not the righteousness that is wrought within, but the righteousness that lies outside. So Luther said, in this sense, the gospel is entirely outside of us. How much we keep that mess, that transforms life, doesn't it? Some of us are so inward. Some of us can get so caught up in, how am I doing spiritually? And that's all very well. but it's not all very well if we dislocate it from the ground on which we stand, that we are justified in Christ with the justification that God gives to us in Christ and therefore we are as permanently and as irreversibly and as fully righteous in the sight of God as Jesus himself is. So, in a sense, What we could say about Martin Luther was that he was fearful of this God of justice, and he discovered that the Bible God of righteousness is a God of unmitigated, saving, sheer grace. Now interestingly, I think, and this is not entirely a personal view, but it certainly is a personal view, that John Calvin was greatly influenced also by this section in Romans, but not so much by the same verses that influenced Martin Luther. Martin Luther was a medieval monk on his way in this process for grace to work enough righteousness in him for God to justify him. And he was never going to get there. John Calvin, who was a young lad when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg. Martin Luther was never a monk. John Calvin was never a monk. Actually he was set apart for the priesthood by his father. And then later on, when his father realised there was more money in law than there was in ministry, he changed and he became a law student in more than one of the great universities of Europe. He was a genius. You know, I think if I were to take a guess, I think he had a much higher IQ than Martin Luther. And he was recognised as a genius. When his professors went away they said to Calvin, you teach the classes, and he was perfectly competent to do that. He was a scholar. When he was in his very early twenties, he published his first work. It was a commentary on a book by Seneca, the Roman author, entitled De Clementia, on mercy. It was a book about essentially how princes and kings should demonstrate mercy. And what he did there was to go through the Latin text and explain the words. He wrote this book and his great desire was to become really famous. as an author and to become a great scholar. And if you've ever seen portraits, pictures of Calvin, there's one of them that looks as though he's maybe in his early twenties when it's painted and he's got his white gloves and he's looking very scholarly and kind of self-assured. And that's where he was. His passion, and he shared this, with many young men in Europe at the time. Some of them who were very close friends and numbers of them who were marvelously gripped by the gospel. But what he wanted to be was a scholar. The reason he got hold of and read the Greek New Testament was because that was what scholars did. You know you read Virgil and you read Homer And you read. The great thing was to be able to go back to these original texts and to read them for yourself. Absolutely marvellous. This was the highway to scholarship. This was the way to knowledge. And so whereas Luther was, as it were, brought to birth from a womb where the big question was, how am I going to be justified before God? Calvin emerged from a womb in which the great question was, what's the most important things that we need to know and understand? And as he went along this course, it becomes fairly clear, I think, in his writings that he became a bit of an Ecclesiastes figure. You know, the sense in Ecclesiastes of the the passionate pursuit of goals, and then you discover it's a kind of chasing after the wind. And just as for Luther, pursuing his own righteousness was chasing after the wind, so for Calvin the notion that one would find purpose in life and satisfaction in life, and life would become what it was meant to be. the answer to that pursuit was found in knowledge. Actually one of the ways in which I think God dealt with him was this first book of his which he thought, you know, I mean when you write your first book you think, you know, you are on the way to fame and fortune. And he hardly sold any copies. And it must have really dented his pride. And God was working in him. And what Paul says here in Romans chapter 1 about the way in which man was made to know God, but because of his sin, now suppresses and represses the knowledge of God. That is to say, man seeks to keep God out of his ambitions, and man seeks to keep God out of his lifestyle. and doesn't realise, this is what Calvin began to see, doesn't realise that the fact that we pursue knowledge and we find no satisfaction The fact that we give ourselves over to unnatural and sinful lifestyles and thunderbolts don't come down upon us from heaven deludes us into thinking that we're safe, when actually these are evidences of the creeping judgment of God upon our lives. Do you see that today, don't you? We are awash with the flaunting of the law of God and the supreme egotism of saying, we are flaunting what you Christians say is the law of God and there is no judgement. And Paul is saying, don't you see, that is the judgment, that you are flaunting my law. That is the judgment, that you've been handed over to your own desires and instead of finding satisfaction. I'm a child of the 60s, the great anthem of the Stones returns to my memory again and again and again. I can't get no satisfaction. Do you know Rolling Stone, the magazine? No, you don't know this. This is probably not known. You've better things to do than read Rolling Stone, the magazine. Assessed, I Can't Get No Satisfaction as the second most significant pop song of all time. It was prophetic, wasn't it? And that's what Calvin found. People find it in a thousand different ways. But when Calvin's eyes were opened to what Paul was saying here, then it dawned on him. We've been made as the image of God. We're made for the knowledge of God. We're made to reflect His glory. We're made in order that every breath we breathe, every act we engage in, every goal we have is for His glory. And what has happened so tragically, as he goes on to say in 3 is at 23, the tragedy of my life is that I have sinned and fallen short of that glory. It's not just I've sinned and broken the law. Yes, I have. But the tragedy is I've sinned and fallen short of the glory, the satisfaction for which I was created. Man's chief end to glorify God. and to enjoy Him forever, so that if I'm not glorifying God, there is no way I can have the lasting full satisfaction and joy for which I was created. And so through these same verses Calvin came to understand that actually he had never been created in order to be a great scholar, although in some senses he was one, not to find the purpose of his life there. That wasn't the knowledge for which he had been made. And he discovered, as Knox later on would discover from John 17, that eternal life was to know God and Jesus Christ, whom the Father had sent. And it reversed things in his life. You notice that Paul speaks in verse 23 about the way we've exchanged the glory of the immortal God for created things, and how we've exchanged the truth about God for the lie. What's that lie? That lie essentially was, right from Genesis 3, that God doesn't really want the best for you. He wants the best for himself, not for you. And man exchanges the truth about God, who, because he wants the best for himself, wants the best for his creatures, supremely for men and women. exchanged that truth for the lie. Men and women, young people that you and I rub shoulders with day by day, they've exchanged the truth about God for the lie, haven't they? They're utterly terrified to give themselves to God for one simple reason. They know it will spoil their lives, don't they? Even those who say, but you know, Yes, I believe in God. I believe he's a God of love. You don't believe he's a God of love at all. Why are you running away from him if you believe he's a God of love? You've exchanged the truth about God for the lie. Calvin had done the same thing. And then the great reversal took place and he exchanged the lie about God for the truth, to find endless satisfaction now in knowing and serving God. Remember how Jeremiah put it, Let not the strong man boast in his strength, or the rich man boast in his riches, or the wise man boast in his wisdom, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he knows me, that I am the Lord. And when we stand back from both of these men, we do, I think, learn a wonderful lesson. We learn a great lesson about evangelism, actually. Every person to whom we speak the gospel is a sinner, but sin takes a particular personal shape in their lives. And our task is not to get theoretical sinners to Christ, but to show real sinners, whose real sin has their personal shape, how that real sin finds, in Luther's case, justification, in Calvin's case, the satisfaction of real knowledge. In someone else's case, the glorious deliverance from a deep sense of bondage and sin. In someone else's case, the sheer unmitigated satisfaction of knowing Christ when you felt the world was empty and futile. A thousand different ways in which sin manifests itself and a thousand different avenues in which men and women and young people are brought to one and the same Christ because he is all sufficient for all of the needs of all of those who come to them and seek him out as their saviour. Very different personalities, very different ministries, but together It would be interesting to sometime around 1564 to have been able to take a little visit to heaven and see Peter introducing these two men to one another. Martin, come over here, there's somebody I want to meet. Oh, they never met in this world. Oh, so you're John Calvin. Martin. Isn't it glorious to be justified by grace through faith? Ah yes, John, but it's also wonderful to know that this is eternal life, to know God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. Well, the ice cream van is playing and I'm sure in Knox Church that's always a sign that the message is over. So let's pray together. Heavenly Father, thank you for your grace to us in Jesus Christ. We thank you for the many different ways along which you bring us to Christ, but we thank you that there is only one Christ, but that this one Christ is sufficient for every single one of us. We praise you for his adequacy and we thank you that we have the stories of men whom you have used in the past to encourage us to understand afresh the riches of your grace and to rejoice in the knowledge that these are also members of the family that Jesus Christ redeemed with his precious blood. So continue to bless us and encourage us, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.