In Mark 10:18, when someone called Jesus “Good teacher” Jesus responded with “no one is good but God alone”. What Jesus was getting at is the holiness of God, which far exceeds man’s ability to approach. Because in order to even fulfill the law, you must love God and neighbor, continually, with all the right and perfect intentions of the heart and mind, with all your strength (Mk 12:30-31). Something Jesus did, and we see the great strain of doing so when the night before his death, when he asked three times if the cup of the wrath of our sins be taken from him, but also proclaimed “still not my will but your will be done” (Mk 14:32-42). If we want to talk about after the fall man eating by the sweat of his brow, there we are told that Jesus sweat as drops of blood. To the point that He had to be at the same time entirely God to begin to bear this great burden as also entirely man.
The Reformation was a recovery that is at the heart of the gospel, this great work of Christ, where God, outside of us, in love, works in history to redeem, save, bless, and adopt as family forever sinners like us. This good news message that God uses to save us in Christ was at one point heralded in Reformed churches across Europe and in America. However, after the Great Awakening, and revivalism movements in America a theological shift began to occur that is described here:
“While in Calvin and Luther all the emphasis fell on the redemptive event that took place with Christ’s death and resurrection, later under the influence of pietism, mysticism and moralism, the emphasis shifted to the individual appropriation of the salvation given in Christ and to its mystical and moral effect in the life of the believer.
Accordingly, in the history of the interpretation of the epistles of Paul the center of gravity shifted more and more from the forensic to the pneumatic and ethical aspects of his preaching, and there arose an entirely different conception of the structures that lay at the foundation of Paul’s preaching.” -Herman Ridderbos 1909-2007 (Paul: An Outline of His Theology)
Or to state it a bit differently the Lutheran theologian, professor, and pastor Dr. Rod Rosenbladt points out the effects of Lutheran Pietism absorbed by American fundamentalists saying:
“Instead of the Reformation emphasis on Christ outside of us, dying for us, and on the justification of sinners by grace, the emphasis shifted to the individuals experience of conversion and to the victorious life of the true Christian day by day.”
What both of these statements are getting at is we’ve moved on from the Reformation. Protestantism, at least in its broadest expression has become more “we-and-what-we-do” centric than “Christ” and His saving work for us centric.
In many Protestant churches in our day the scriptures are interpreted chiefly from the standpoint of me and you using our freewill to make right decisions. So, while Jesus dying on the cross to save a sinner like me might be mentioned, the lens is not chiefly from the standpoint of God outside of me saving me, but my internal appropriation of it, it’s effects in me, and the scope of duties I have as a “Jesus follower”.
So, preaching with this focus includes a lot of self-improvement so that functionally the overarching message is more one of good advice, not good news. The net-effect is either self-righteousness, or if you’re not good at self-deception this to-do-list-Christianity produces an “I’m never good enough” feeling, because there’s been no real convincing and glorious gospel of God outside of us saving us, because the gospel is diminished and relegated to brief mentions and platitudes that aren’t very convincing to the heart of those sensitive to their own shortcomings.
If this sounds familiar, it was Luther’s problem, the strong conscience, the internal lawyer that says, “That’s not good enough”, or “I’m still such a failure”, only a complete and convincing gospel preached can silence this lawyer, and the context must be a real and serious appraisal of the law.
Hard law, with the standard of the law given by a Holy and just God that requires perfection in heart, mind, and deed, where the law is not just breakable but must be fulfilled positively with a righteousness greater than that of the Pharisees. In short, “you must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”. Thanks be to God that Jesus who proclaimed this in Matthew 5:48 also proclaimed His own mission work to save us in Matthew 5:17.
You see at the right time God sent forth His one and only son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons (Gal 4:4-5) , because you see none of us in and of ourselves are ever are good, no one is righteous, no not one!
Therefore, the Christian pastor to faithfully fulfill the calling of a Christian pastor he must preach a Christian sermon. As has been pointed out, a Christian sermon is distinct from what you’d hear in a Synagogue, or a Mosque. If the sermon (with a word or sentence or two changed here and there) could be preached in a Synagogue, it’s not a Christian sermon. The Christian must have the law in all its weight proclaimed, and then the gospel in its freeing glory also made very clear in all its beauty, the white letters of the good news on the black background of our condition apart from it. Then it sets the mind and heart free to love and will for the glory of God, from the heart. Someone importantly once said that he who has been forgiven little loves little, but he who has been forgiven much loves much. This is so true. If we wish to love much, we must see that we have been given much, and this is the central job of the Christian pastor, to faithfully divide the word of God and proclaim the law and the gospel in such a way as it becomes clear how great the saving work of Christ was and is for us, proclaimed from all the scriptures. Then instructions for how to live are no burden, but they are made light, even a joy.
To answer the question of “Have we moved on from the Reformation?” is to simply ask, “have we moved on from the centrality of Christ, and His gospel?”. If God’s saving work is always the footnote of the Christian sermon, then that tells us something else is central, and that we and what we do and don’t do has become the narrative. In that narrative we have made ourselves the main characters in God’s redemptive story in our lives. I would suggest that this is actually common to man, it’s human nature to make everything about us and what we do and don’t do. However, it’s to be rejected. We should reject all notions of this in our churches, and seek to return to Christ centered Christianity. In places where that repentance and reformation needs to happen it will take courage, and encouragement, and men willing to stand on the principles and doctrines recovered in the Protestant Reformation.