Evangelicalism in the twenty-first century confronts a choice. Will we find the courage to be confessionally Protestant? Or will the movement continue to drift into an ever-evolving, amorphous, experience-based form of piety that is untethered from historic orthodoxy and the catholic faith? The former tendency grows increasingly rare; the latter predominates today.
The Evangelical movement began in the 1730’s in England as a movement of revival seeking to renew a Protestantism vitiated by dead orthodoxy. Over the past 300 years, however, the movement has become more and more diverse and less and less confessionally Protestant.

The Protestant Reformation was a movement of reform in the Western church that, unfortunately, resulted in a schism between Rome and a number of churches including the Reformed churches, the Lutheran churches and the Church of England. The schism happened because the reformers insisted on reform and Rome insisted on submission. It is important to understand clearly what the Reformation was about and what it was not about.
First, what was the Reformation not about?
The Protestant reformers never challenged the consensus that unites both Eastern and Western Christianity symbolized by the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381, with its clarifying codicil adopted at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. God is one substance (ousia) and three persons (hypostases), Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is one in will and power and the persons are equal in glory and majesty, distinguished only by their eternal relations of origin. The Son is one person in two natures, fully human, and fully divine. The Athanasian Creed, which probably was composed in the century after Augustine’s death, sums up the Trinitarian and Christological dogmas that unite the Church in a common confession.
Since the Nicene Creed was an expansion of the Apostles’ Creed, the latter of which goes back to the second century as a baptismal creed, we have a five-century long development of creedal orthodoxy that all Christians believe expresses the true teaching of Holy Scripture. The Protestant reformers and their successors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries never dreamed of being anything other than catholic Christians in confessing this orthodox tradition. The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, the Augsburg Confession, the Westminster Confession, the Second London Confession, and other Protestant confessions of faith affirm the orthodoxy of the Athanasian Creed as basic Christian doctrine.
The Reformation also was not a dispute about the mighty acts of God in salvation history, which both Rome and the Protestants affirmed without qualification. The Bible records and interprets the mighty acts of God in history by which salvation comes to the world. Genesis 1-11 is a prologue that deals with world history up to the time of Abraham. It sets the stage by clarifying that the world was created good but fell into sin because of Adam’s disobedience. Genesis 12 begins the story of Israel, which is God’s redemptive plan to redeem Adam’s fallen race and ultimately to redeem the fallen creation through the covenant of grace.
The Exodus was one of the greatest acts of God in history, but far from the only one. The entire Old Testament witnesses to the history of the covenant of grace with Israel. The Old Testament is essentially unfinished and points forward to the climactic act of God in history that we know as the Incarnation. The virgin birth, sinless life, atoning death, bodily resurrection and ascension, and future return of Christ is the center of history, the fulfillment of the hopes of the Old Testament, and the means by which salvation comes to the world.
The Reformation, then, was not a disagreement regarding the Trinitarian and Christological heritage of the universal church and it was not a disagreement regarding the mighty acts of God in salvation history symbolized in the creeds. Rome and Protestantism were on the same page on these issues.
So, what was the Reformation about?
According to Luther, Calvin, Cranmer and the other reformers, the Roman Catholic Church needed to be reformed because of many errors concerning how the benefits of salvation accomplished by God’s mighty acts in history culminating in Christ get applied to the believer. This caused debates in areas such as soteriology, sacraments, and ecclesiology. Purgatory, the mass, the role of Mary, the papacy, and justification by grace alone through faith alone were important issues. Since the authority of the Church was used to stifle criticism from the Protestants, the issue of the relationship between the magisterium and Scripture became a major point of contention.
The authority of Scripture over ecclesial authority was affirmed by the Protestants and appeals to tradition were treated with respect but not allowed to override Scripture. The reformers appealed to the authority of Scripture, not with the intention of undermining the creeds, but with the intention of correcting more recent teachings on matters that go well beyond the creeds.
But we should be clear, neither side was debating the Trinity or Christology at this point and neither side was denying miracles or the bodily resurrection of Christ. Protestants never rejected the Apostles’, Nicene, or Athanasian Creeds or the Definition of Chalcedon. All the Reformed confessions were written by theologians who accepted the Trinitarian and Christological orthodoxy of the first few centuries as the true meaning of the Bible.
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What the ant teaches us is that diligence and productivity are fit for a wise and flourishing life. Man was made to work and to work hard. Adam, even before his fall, was created and called by God to work, to tend to and “keep the Garden” (Genesis 2:15). 

Solomon, in wanting his son to pursue and know wisdom, instructs him to “consider the ant” (Proverbs 6:6). The command is to observe and learn the ways of this small but impressive creature. What impressive wisdom does the ant teach us? Diligent. Hard. work. In short, the ant is productive. And this is one essential feature to wise living. “Go to the ant, O Sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise” (Proverbs 6:6). In considering and watching the work-ethic of the ant, the man who is a sluggard can learn and grow in wisdom; he has a model on which to follow. This is natural theology at its best!
As John Kitchen writes in his excellent commentary on Proverbs, “such reflection will yield a new work ethic which prioritizes self-motivation, industry, diligence and planning. Embracing such a work will cause one to ‘be wise.’ Wisdom is not some esoteric, other-worldly rhetoric. Wisdom is practical success in the real world. Hard work lies in its path.”[1]
What wisdom can we learn from the ant on being diligent and productive? Well first, the ant is self-motivated. She does not need a manager or boss or task-master to get her to work, she is able to do the work of her own accord. As verse 7 and 8 tells us, “without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer.” Here is a creature who gets to the work without being told to; the ant is disciplined and self-controlled.
Ryan McGraw, in his helpful little booklet How Should I Manage Time writes, “We can redeem the time only if we enjoy the work that God has given us to do each day. Ecclesiastes 3:22 says, ‘Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his own work; for that is his portion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?’ Enjoying our work is a gift from God… We must learn to enjoy our work even when our work is not enjoyable”[2] There is wisdom in learning to enjoy our work. Perhaps that begins with asking God to help you do that and fervently praying to make you more like the ant in being self-motivated. Ask God to help you work hard. Is this not something of what Moses requested when he prayed to “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands” (Psalm 90:17)?
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The confession of sin culminates in the acknowledgment of our condition. Due to our rebellion from God our Creator there is no health in us… we are miserable offenders. Brought lower still to our fallen, creaturely, and God-dependent state, the remedy of the gospel as declared in Christ Jesus is set forth! The minister then declares that through faith in Christ sins are forgiven: God pardoneth and absolveth all them that truly repent, and unfeignedly believe his holy Gospel! The power to forgive sins is in the gospel.

“What is man?”, the palmist asks. In this life I doubt we come to the full answer. John Calvin pointed in the right direction when he wrote that in order to get an idea of ‘us’ we need to start with God. For the truth of the matter is – “it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves”  [Psalm 100].

Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other. For, in the first place, no man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone. – Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin, Book 1.1

If self-knowledge begins with God, then apart from God any view of ourselves is distorted. The high regard we hold ourselves in since the Fall not only muddies a right understanding but is at the core of what ails us as sinners.  
I recently reread C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength. I picked it up again because the theme revolving around the N.I.C.E. reminded me of the still ongoing CDC involvement in the Covid 19 pandemic mandates. But I digress. What is relevant to this post is a small excerpt:
“There,” he said, “a very simple adjustment. Humans want crumbs removed; mice are anxious to remove them…”
“How huge we must seem to them,” said Jane.
This inconsequent remark had a very curious cause. Hugeness was what she was thinking of and for one moment it had seemed she was thinking of her own hugeness in comparison with the mice. But almost at once this identification collapsed. She was really thinking simply of hugeness. Or rather, she was not thinking of it. She was, in some strange fashion, experiencing it. Something intolerably big, something from Brobdingnag was pressing on her, was approaching, was almost in the room. She felt herself shrinking, suffocated, emptied of all power and virtue. She darted a glance at the Director which was really a cry for help, and that glance, in some inexplicable way, revealed him as being, like herself, a very small object. The whole room was a tiny place, a mouse’s hole, and it seemed to her to be tilted aslant — as though the insupportable mass and splendour of this formless hugeness, in approaching, had knocked it askew. She heard the Director’s voice.
“Quick,” he said gently, “you must leave me now. This is no place for us small ones, but I am inured. Go! – That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis. Chapter 8 The Pendragon
The presence of God was pressing upon Jane which necessitated a shrinking or humbling experience, a reorientation. Her inflated sense of self rapidly shrank to that of a mouse. She was uncomfortably thrown off balance as the Divine hugeness descended into that room. Jane, a sinner, was experiencing the beginning of self-knowledge which only comes when one encounters God. She was descending. John Calvin wrote:
… the inference to be drawn is that men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance, until they have contrasted themselves with the majesty of God. (Calvin, Book 1.1)
To come into the presence of our Creator shatters any illusion of creaturely independence and self-sufficiency. We are not our own and are undone before him. Apart from him we have no existence (Col 1:16-17). It is God who created us, as Genesis 1 teaches, and not we ourselves. The Christian life is one of being brought low to a restored (saved) position with God who is the only point of reference for all of creation.
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