When we say that we are evangelicals, one of the things we are proclaiming is that we believe in reformations. The first reformers in the Protestant Reformation were called evangelicals, and so we align ourselves with them. But the larger point is that we believe that this is how God intents to get this project done. And this project is the restoration of all things, the renewal of all things, the rebirth of the whole world, the whole universe, the new creation. But all reformation begins in the heart; all renewal, all rebirth begins when the Holy Spirit changes a slave of sin into a free man, when the Holy Spirit breathes on a man made of dust and lights him up, making him a man made of Spirit.
One of the great glories of the Protestant Reformation was the insistence on the centrality of freedom. Christ came proclaiming liberty to the captives, and that wasn’t just a Sunday School slogan. The point was that if Jesus set somebody free, they were really free. When Jesus proclaims forgiveness, it echoes into economies and politics and science and technology and medicine. This is because the gospel is the proclamation of the Kingdom, and the Kingdom of Jesus is reformation for the world.
We’re here celebrating a great reformation Jesus set off nearly 500 years ago, and we see around us all the signs that Jesus is getting ready to do it again, not the least of which is the fact that we see a dire need for it. As it turns out, the spark that set the blaze, went off in a little college town in Germany called Wittenburg, by a wicked smart monk with a really bad attitude. And so here we are, in a little college town in the middle of nowhere Idaho, at the door of the Church, gathered to hammer our theses, our praises, our prayers, our songs, our sin, our pain, our joy, our faith to the door, and there is no other door but Jesus.
So come, let us worship and bow down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker.
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