Reformation Sunday – Revelation 14:6-7
“Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth – to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people…”
This verse from the Book of Revelation – chapter 14, verse 6 – was interpreted in the earlier generations of Lutheran history to be a reference to Martin Luther, and to the reforming work that was accomplished through him in the sixteenth century. When we remember that the word “angel” means “messenger,” and does not necessarily refer to a heavenly spiritual creature, I suppose we can understand why those who valued Luther’s work so highly might draw this conclusion.
But today I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about the identity of the “angel” in this text. Instead I want to consider with you the identity of the “everlasting gospel” that this angel proclaims – and indeed that all true angels or messengers of God proclaim.
That is, after all, what the Lutheran Reformation was all about. Most fundamentally, the Reformation of the sixteenth century wasn’t about Luther, or about any other human or heavenly angel. It was about the everlasting gospel.
The everlasting gospel is the living and universal message of a loving heavenly Father, who sends his Son into the world to save that world from sin, death, and the devil.
The everlasting gospel is the powerful and personal message of a divine-human Savior who brings his forgiveness to poor, lost sinners; and who, by his Spirit, bestows upon them the faith by which they receive and enjoy all the blessings of salvation, and reconciliation with God, that Jesus accomplished by his death and resurrection.
The Bible calls this the “everlasting” gospel because it never changes. From the timeless past, God had planned it out, and into a timeless future, its blessings for all who are touched and transformed by it will never fade.
Even when human beings, at different times in church history, have not fully understood or appreciated this gospel, this was always the gospel that God was offering to the world, in the Scriptures and in the sacraments. And even when various heretics, through the centuries, twisted and distorted the message of this gospel, and changed it into a different kind of message, the genuine gospel always survived, and emerged again with its full saving force, to bring God’s grace to a new generation.
The Lutheran Reformers were very much aware of the fact that the only gospel they had the right to proclaim, and to use as the basis for correcting errors that had crept into the church in their day, was this one, unchanging, everlasting gospel.
They knew that they would be inviting upon themselves the judgment of Almighty God if they presumed to invent something new to proclaim to his people or if they set forth a message that differed from the message that the apostles had preached to the world in God’s name.
In Luther’s Smalcald Articles, in the Book of Concord, we see a clear summary – drawn directly from Scripture – of what he and all the Lutheran Reformers stood for in this respect:
“The first and chief article is this: Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for our sins and was raised again for our justification. He alone is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and God has laid upon Him the iniquities of us all. All have sinned, and are justified freely, without their own works or merits, by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, in His blood.”
“This is necessary to believe. This cannot be otherwise acquired or grasped by any work, law, or merit. Therefore, it is clear and certain that this faith alone justifies us. As St. Paul says: For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. That He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”
“Nothing of this article can be yielded or surrendered, even though heaven and earth and everything else falls, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. And with His stripes we are healed.”
This everlasting gospel, which had been hidden and distorted by a corrupt ecclesiastical hierarchy at the time of the Reformation, is under attack also today: likewise from religious leaders who should know better.
For example, this gospel, and God’s Word generally, are being attacked whenever a minister or religion professor claims that much of what the Bible teaches is out of date, and reflects the superstitions and ignorance of ancient times, so that it is not relevant to us and to the more enlightened age in which we live.
We are all familiar with recent examples of this sort of arrogant attitude regarding things like the special creation of humanity, the special value of human life, and the divine design of human sexuality and human existence as male and female.
And Jesus is also diminished as a mostly legendary figure who may have been inspired by God, but who was not God himself. He may have preached an uplifting message, but his body stayed in the ground after he died.
We, of course, are members of a more “conservative” church body and do not endorse or approve of these grievous errors. But we cannot let ourselves off the hook too easily.
There are plenty of ways in which we also may have departed to some degree from what the Scriptures teach, and may have succumbed to the temptation to ignore those parts of God’s Word that do not align with beliefs and values that we have absorbed from the fallen and confused world that surrounds us.
It’s not easy to paddle against the current. It’s easier to “go with the flow” of the contemporary fads of society. And so that’s what we often do, sometimes without fully realizing that this is what we are doing.
The eternal good news of forgiveness through the death and resurrection of God’s Son is good news only to those who admit their sin and their need for this forgiveness. But it is often too easy for us to redefine sin, and thereby to redefine our need for the everlasting gospel.
Sometimes the only sins we are willing to admit are sins – to be avoided – are the sins that we perceive ourselves already to be avoiding. Otherwise, we tend to find ways to rationalize and justify the improper actions and attitudes that we are no longer trying to avoid.
In his First Epistle to the Corinthians, where St. Paul warns against several sins that we likely do usually try to avoid, he also warns against other sins that we may not try to avoid as we should. Writing by divine inspiration, Paul asks:
“Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.”
In his Second Epistle to Timothy, St. Paul also warns that
“In the last days, perilous times will come. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power.”
Maybe it’s not just “liberal” Christians in liberal denominations who have compromised with the world. Maybe we, too – if we are honest – must admit that, deep down, we are willing to agree only with some of what the Bible prohibits and requires, while ignoring the rest.
And regarding that everlasting gospel, how deeply persuaded are you that Jesus really accomplished and endured what his apostles declared to the world that he accomplished and endured? How deeply persuaded are you that Jesus rose bodily, as victor over death and the grave, on the third day?
And how deeply persuaded are you that God has instituted specific means of grace – including sacraments that are filled with the power of his Word to forgive and to save – that we cannot abandon, without thereby abandoning God himself, according to where he promises to make his saving grace accessible to us?
Again, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul writes soberly and seriously:
“Brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you – unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures…”
Paul then goes on to say:
“If Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. … And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!”
Turning the Christian faith into little more than an ever-developing philosophy of life, an ever-evolving moral code, or a mere matter of emotion and sentiment, is not an option that is open to us, if we, on this Reformation Sunday, wish to acknowledge and honor the everlasting gospel.
The everlasting gospel cannot be fully embraced, in a completely honest and consistent way, until and unless God works yet another “reformation” in us, and in our hearts and minds.
To the extent that we have tried to reform this gospel, and to make it compatible with our lowered expectations of God and of ourselves, then to that extent we need to be reformed. Our way of thinking must be cleansed and purged, and be restored to what it used to be, and what it was always supposed to be, according to God’s Word.
Reconciliation with God, and justification and forgiveness before God, are received by those who do receive them, through repentance for sin, as God’s Word defines sin; and through faith in the gospel, as God’s Word defines the gospel.
Immediately following the first list of sins and sinners that I quoted from St. Paul a few minutes ago, the apostle says this:
“And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.”
From God’s perspective, his ancient ways of enlightening those who are in the dark, of seeking and finding those who are lost, and of breathing life into those who are spiritually dead, are still his ways of doing these things – these wonderful things – today. This has always been so, regardless of what misguided people in the past may have thought; and this remains so now, regardless of what misguided people today may think.
The everlasting gospel that God has always wanted people to believe is the everlasting gospel that God wants you to believe: not a made-up gospel that is customized to fit the desires and expectations of our time, but the one unchanged and unchangeable gospel that fits the true needs of all people in all times.
Dear friends, Repent of your sins. Repent of all those sins-in thought, word, and deed-that your conscience is bringing to your mind in this very moment. And, believe the gospel.
Believe the unchanging and unchangeable gospel that comes from a God whose love for you in his Son has never changed, and never will change; and whose grace toward you in that Son will never fail. For the sake of that Son, and all that he has done for you, God forgives all your sins.
Remember, too, that this eternal gospel is a powerful gospel and a personal gospel. It is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes.
Through the gospel itself, the Spirit of Christ gives you the faith by which you are able to know with utter confidence that what Christ did for all, he did for you; and by which you are able to be certain beyond any doubt that what God says is true for all, is true for you.
“Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth – to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people…”
This everlasting gospel is the same gospel that God has always offered to the world, as far back as we can recall. And it is the same gospel that God will always offer to the world, as far into the future as we can imagine.
But when we speak of this everlasting gospel, we are speaking also of a gospel that reaches out in all directions: not just backward and forward, but out to all nations, to all cultures, and to people in every conceivable life circumstance.
The Reformation of the sixteenth century was inaugurated in Germany and was triggered at first by the pastoral protests of a German theology professor and Augustinian friar. But the Reformation was not just for the benefit of Germany, or for people of German extraction.
The everlasting gospel – which is what the Reformation was all about – is a gospel that God wants everyone to hear and believe. And in the midst of the upheavals and trials that people in many lands face, this gospel, in all of its supernatural power, can and will give to all of God’s people everywhere the assurance of his everlasting love for them in Christ.
This, my friends, is the legacy that has been entrusted to us as Lutherans. An unchanging and unchangeable gospel has been passed down to us, for the sake of our own salvation.
God wants you and me to be honest about our sins, and about our need for what this gospel offers. And God also wants you and me to believe the promises that God makes to us in this gospel – promises of forgiveness, life, and salvation – and by faith to live in those promises.
This gospel – this everlasting gospel – is not for us to modify, or modernize, or revise, according to the dictates of the contemporary world, or according to the desires of our flesh. It is a gift from God, to be received and believed as it is, intact and pure, precisely as it flows out for us from the cross and empty tomb of our Savior.
And this gospel – this everlasting gospel – is not only for us. It is for all men – for all nations, tribes, and people. It is for everyone we know. And it is for everyone we don’t yet know, in all corners of the world.
It is a gospel that brings an eternal hope to those who are trapped in a maze of deception and discouragement.
It is a gospel that brings deliverance and liberation to those who are slaves of their sinful flesh and captive to their fears.
It is a gospel that brings peace to those with deeply troubled consciences, and that lifts the burden of guilt from those who are crushed by regret and remorse.
Maybe the angel who has the everlasting gospel to preach, in the Book of Revelation, is indeed Martin Luther. In his ministry, he certainly did preach the everlasting gospel, even as he also believed it for his own salvation.
Or maybe, in another sense, what the Book of Revelation says about the angel who has the everlasting gospel to preach can be applied to all faithful Christian teachers who, throughout history, have testified to the unchanging reality of Christ and of Christ’s kingdom, and who still do so.
Or maybe, in yet another sense, what the Book of Revelation says about the angel who has the everlasting gospel to preach can be applied to you. You have that gospel for yourself, and for everyone else who can hear about their Savior through your testimony.
“Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth – to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people…” Amen.