Oaks of Righteousness

There are three acorns who have grown into massive oak trees in the Lord’s grove. God has used them to shelter us down through the centuries. You will all know the last one, though only some of you will know the first two. I’ll hazard a guess and say that hardly any of you have heard of the middle one, let alone know much about that acorn. Let us proceed in chronological order.

John Wyclif is our first acorn, born during the Middle Ages, in 1330, roughly 400 years after various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had become a united England. Wyclif was a professor at the University of Oxford, and a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. While Wyclif is generally known for translating the New Testament into English, so that the laity might read it, it is not so well known that his translation derived from Jerome’s Latin New Testament, not from the original Greek, which was not readily available, if many in the church of the time even knew it was initially written in Greek. Though translating from the Latin to English, it was Wyclif’s Latin theological works that impacted the thinking of Jan Hus, born roughly two generations after Wyclif.

Wyclif was hounded by the church, every bit as much as he badgered the church. British obscurity allowed him to dodge martyrdom, and so, Wyclif died of a stroke while saying Mass. 31 years later, his bones were later exhumed and burned at the stake along with his admirer, Jan Hus. Both were reformers of the church and believed that the Holy Bible is the only reliable guide to the truth about God. They demanded that Scripture be the authority in the church rather than popes and councils. Note that this high view of sola Scriptura, or “Scripture alone,” was tantamount to heresy in the church of the Middle Ages. That is the same thing, essentially, that got Luther in hot water with pope and king. Luther was born about 110 years after Hus, and 150 years after Wyclif. Both Wyclif and Hus are thought of as pre-reformers, Wyclif even being referred to as the Morning Star of the Reformation. And so, they had their influences on Luther, if largely as regards to sola Scriptura.

Those two men, especially, but countless others too, set the stage for Luther to ignite the so-called Lutheran Reformation, and considered by some as a Protestant Reformation, Protestant because it protested wrongs and abuses in the church. It might be said that Wyclif and Hus wanted more wholesale change in the church, while Luther called for some specific reforms based on general theological ideas. For all three, the authority of Scripture was a dominant thought. For Luther, this idea enjoined a gift long forgotten in the pews and pulpits of the church, let alone in its councils. Another sola arose in Luther’s thoughts: sola fides, or faith alone.

That doctrine, finally, is what would bring reform to the church. We are saved and made right with God, not because of our religious deeds and good works, but because we have faith in God’s promise to save us through faith in his grace through Christ alone.[1] These three acorns who became great oaks of righteousness in the church, planted the seed of continued reformation, the tradition that the church must always be reforming—or be reformed. But Luther brought us back to faith, the sheltering leaves of the mighty oaks, without whose sola fides, faith alone, the limbs of those oaks would be perennially bare, and we be exposed to the scorching elements of sin, death, and the devil.

Let us pray… Amen.

Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.

To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen

Isaiah tells us that the Spirit of the Lord is upon his servant so that he would bring good news to the poor.[2] Now when we read this verse, too often we think like the culture, having an image of some guy on a street corner with a sign that reads, “Homeless. Help.” The prophet has another image, the same one as Jesus gives us in the Beatitudes where he says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”[3] What is it that makes this kind of “poor” person so primary to the Lord’s mission? What is this news that is so good for the poor, for the poor in spirit? We must find out, for sometimes we are all poor in spirit, and so stand in need of the blessing that Jesus promises.

Let us first be clear; Jesus is not speaking of those who have little money, though the penniless may also be poor in spirit. Jesus is not saying that it is the impoverished people who are blessed, any more than you would. But he is saying that those who admit they are spiritually needy—even bankrupt—are blessed. For it is those who admit their greatest need, that they cannot fix their spirits and therefore, need God to do it for them, who will be given the kingdom of God. The kingdom may only be enjoyed through faith in Christ Jesus, something that only the poor in spirit may appreciate. This is the good news that the prophet says the Lord’s Anointed, the Christ, would preach. And through his Spiritus gladius, the Word of God in the hands of the Holy Spirit, his good news is still proclaimed.

Let us be clear what this good news is. Strictly speaking, the good news of Christ is that he clothes us with the garments of salvation; he covers us with the robes of righteousness.[4] It is not our religious devotion, our good works, or acts of contrition that cause us to inherit the kingdom. It is the Lord God who generates our righteousness.[5] That’s the good news; you do not have to do it—in fact, you can’t do it. You aren’t righteous, and you never can be in your own power. If you’ll just admit that poverty of spirit, and trust God, he will give you his righteousness, his kingdom. What a blessing! Luther calls this the imputation of righteousness. That is a financial term that simply means you have been given great value in the kingdom because of Christ. For Christ’s sake, not because of anything you are or that you do, you are imputed through God’s grace the value of his Son. The kingdom is yours.

Now you will be tempted often to not believe this can be true. You were taught and you now teach, nothing is free in life. And that is true; it cost Jesus plenty, and now he gives it all to you. You may believe it. “He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.”[6]

This is the straight path[7] that John prepared for us to travel directly to Jesus. Repent! Admit how poor you are, how spiritually destitute you are without Christ’s righteousness. This is that sheltering grove of great oaks that is our Reformation heritage. Take comfort and cover in the shade of its slogan: sola fides. Faith alone is the answer because Christ is the way, the truth, the life.[8]

But be forewarned; this is not a popular message. Popes haven’t liked it, but neither have a lot of bishops, nor way too many pastors. Then there’s the rest of the church. It’s not a popular message because it makes us admit we’re not all that, not those great saints whom we want people to think we are. Faith alone is not a popular message because it has all of us admit that we are poor in spirit, and in need of Christ.

So, because of their unpopular and common messages, Wyclif was pronounced a heretic; Hus was too and was burned at the stake; and Luther was as well, then condemned to death at anyone’s hand. All these acorns cast out onto the earth, killed, and condemned because they believed in the Word of God, trusting in God’s promises with determined and confident faith. But that’s a good place for acorns. There, thrown to the ground—whether dead of natural causes, burned, or relegated to a backwater German town—you would think their message would die with them.

It was so for Wyclif’s itinerant preachers too, whose “favourite place for their services was under the old oak-trees which from the remotest times have been characteristic of the peaceful village greens of Old England, some of these old oak monarchs still surviving, though much decayed, and called to this day ‘Gospel Oaks.’”[9]

The man may die, but Christ’s message survives them. May the same Christ, the who is returning for his followers, those who have faith in him alone so that they too may be called oaks of righteousness, find you ready for his appearing.

[1] Ephesians 2:8-9

[2] Isaiah 61:1

[3] Matthew 5:3

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Is 61:10.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Is 61:11.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Th 5:24.

[7] John 1:23

[8] John 14:6

[9] John Charles Carrick. Wycliffe and the Lollards. (New York: Scribner’s, 1908), 133.