Twenty–three years ago, the late R. B. Kuiper wrote a significant book entitled As to Being Reformed. Obviously, I am indebted to him for the first part of the title above these lines. If the need for calling attention to our Reformed heritage was urgent in R. B.’s day, today that urgency has become nothing less than acute.

The CRC is by no means alone in claiming by its name to be Reformed. To mention but a few, there are the Reformed Church in America, Protestant Reformed, American Reformed, Netherlands Reformed, Hungarian Reformed. Now just what is that being Reformed all about? Unless we are serious about really being Reformed, it’s high time that we become honest and change our name.

The subject is apropos for this month because October is when we commemorate the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. Hallowe’en with its hobgoblins and tomfoolery is a great occasion for our youngsters whereas Reformation Day meetings, with precious few exceptions, have somewhere been dropped along the way. To call ourselves sons and daughters of the Protestant Reformation is a sham if we and our children no longer become even the least bit excited about the great works God used Calvin, Luther, and others to achieve.

Nothing but a name – During this writer’s pastorate at Lansing, Illinois, an amusing incident occurred when one year we were hosting an annual convention of the Federation of Reformed Young Women’s Societies headed by the late Miss Johanna Timmer as president. How we chuckled to learn that a Chicago newspaper reporter had appeared on the scene and innocently inquired whether all these hundreds of girls were from some Reform School. You may be sure if Miss Timmer had been asked, the reporter would have been set straight in short order and in no uncertain terms. How many of the young lady conventioneers would have been able to explain the Reformed part of their name is any body’s guess. Maybe a friend of mine is correct when he says of our CRC people that no others have been taught so much and have learned so little.

Maybe that newspaper reporter’s ignorance about the meaning of Reformed was a reflection, not so much on him, but rather on us who had communicated to him so poorly or possibly not at all. And certainly that was nothing to chuckle about.

A far greater tragedy would be that we who so readily call ourselves Reformed may only know that name as a tag for identification without being able to speak knowingly and clearly about our heritage of faith to which this name refers.

What is there about the truly Reformed person that makes him tick? Unless we know this, our Reformed clock will be stock-still and we will be unable to tell our generation what time it is in the great ongoing program of our Lord and King. Unless we who call ourselves Reformed care and are courageous enough to really be ourselves, we will have no contribution to make to our world and generation for which everything has gone awry. If we really mean what we say and say what we mean, this challenge will not fall on deaf ears:

“Be yourself, said someone, But he could not, for he was no one.”

When those renegade sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, presumed to carry the ark of the covenant of Jehovah into battle with the Philistines the outcome for Israel was infamy and disaster. Even so today, shame and defeat will be the lot of those who call themselves Reformed if in reality their profession is nothing more than “sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal.”

The gist of it – As to being Reformed—briefly and precisely, what does it mean? Someone conversant with the German might ask, what is this ding an sick (thing in itself)?

The answer, I venture to suggest, is that the truly Reformed person is one for whom all of faith and life must be totally theocentric or God-centered.

Like a brilliant diamond, the Reformed faith is resplendent with many facets of truth that become increasingly precious to those who have learned to know and love and live it. In the last analysis, Paul’s doxology in Romans 11:36 is the epitome of it all: “For of him, and through him, and unto him, are all things. To him be the glory for ever. Amen.”

As someone once observed about another, it may indeed be said of that great Reformer, John Calvin, that he was “a God-intoxicated man.” The motto on Calvin’s seal was, “My heart I offer to Thee, Lord . . . promptly and sincerely.”

Well-known as a student of Calvin, Dounmergue wrote of him: “Reassured. justified, the Reformer of Geneva may lay himself into an unknown grave which no stone will ever reveal to the eye of man. For brightly shines the only epitaph which he might have desired, the humble, triumphant epitaph: ‘SOLI DEO GLORIA.’”

Coram Deo was the secret of John Calvin’s genius both as a theologian and as an ethicist, as a teacher of truth versus the lie and of good versus evil. Always giving God the preeminence was for Calvin the governing principle for all of life, the lodestar by which he charted his course, and always the point of reference for him, so that Beza could say of Calvin: “It has pleased God to show us in the life of a single man of our time how to live and how to die.”

The Bible is usually thought to–be a Christ-centered book. But, because Christ is God, and also due to further consideration, the Bible may better be said to be a God-centered book. At the very outset the Bible tells us, “In the beginning God . . .” And in Revelation 22, before the canon is closed, we are told, “Worship God.’”

We learn from the Bible that it is the Word of God, that man was created by God, he fell into sin by disobeying the commandment of God, light pierced the darkness of his condemnation when he received the mother–promise or evangelium from God. the Christ of God came to restore man to God, and man has been redeemed, not first of all for his own sake, but rather that he may live forever for the glory of God.

The angels, in their song at Christ’s birth, had their theology in the proper perspective and taught us to do likewise when at Bethlehem they began with, “Glory to God in the highest!” Their dominant motif was Gloria in excelsis Deo! In its origin, implementation, and purpose, redemption is not man-centered by God-centered. And therefore anyone who is truly Reformed will fit into, or be fitted into, this glorious scheme by putting first things first and. recognizing and adoring his Lord as the Alpha and the Omega, as the First and the Last. His whole life is a prostration before Him as he exclaims, “My God, how wonderful Thou art!”

What we are witnessing and also caught up in today is an age-old battle, the intensity of which the world may never have known before. It may be called the battle of the isms. The issue at stake is always the same: What governing principle or point of reference are we to adopt and also promote as the be-all and the end-all of life? The battle is long and fierce; and for all, without exception, the outcome will determine our life’s course and also our eternal destiny.

Contemporary Communism has its answer: a totalitarian state is its be-all and end-all for all of life. Communism is actually a false religion.

Traditional Roman Catholicism (it is difficult to assess the extent to which Modern Catholicism has actually changed the church) regarded the Church as its governing point of reference. Wrong as he was at times, Barth was not wrong when he once observed that the difference between us Protestants and Roman Catholics is that little word and. They want faith and works, the Bible and tradition, Jesus Christ and Mary—and that is a difference that really runs deep.

Secularism – a foe far more subtle, seductive, and destructive than either of those above—adopts this world or age as the measure of all things and makes conformity to it to be its pursuit by day and by night. The extent of the toll taken by the secularizing influence of television, also among us who call ourselves Reformed, is something we have not yet begun to measure, a widespread spiritual damage too fearful to contemplate. Whereas the heresy of Roman Catholicism may have been enemy number one for Protestants once upon a time, as a threat to our survival, it surely takes a back seat compared to the forces of secularism that mesmerize young and old today unto their eternal ruin.

There are also other isms that continue to claim their hapless victims. For Humanism man is the measure of all things. The governing principle for today’s prevailing Hedonism is the love of pleasure. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Materialism has committed itself to the acquisition and enjoyment of earthly possessions as its lifelong point of reference –things that are here today and gone tomorrow.

Drawn up in battle array, on the side of Satan, are all those who march to a different drumbeat than those who are energized and motivated by their deep conviction that the only life worth living is the life in and for their Lord of whom, through whom, and unto whom are all things.

“To him be the glory for ever. Amen.” To be sure, this is the genius of true Christianity, and that is what it means to be truly Reformed.

The Reformed hallmark – Here then is the test to know what is truly Reformed in faith and in life. Is it God–centered? Does it ring true Coram Deo (before the face of the Lord)? Is it in keeping with Paul’s sublime utterance or doxology in Romans 11:36: “For of him, and through him, and unto him, are all things. To him be the glory for ever. Amen.”

This is the test for both Reformed orthodoxy and for Reformed orthopraxy, sound doctrine and proper practice.

Our doctrine is orthodox or sound only when it revolves about God even as our earth and the other heavenly bodies revolve about the sun. Holding to the Ptolemaic view of the universe with the earth at the center, man’s conception was badly out of line until the Polish astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus, a contemporary of John Calvin, came along and set it straight.

What Copernicus did for astronomy in his day by teaching men that the sun is the true center of our solar system, John Calvin did for theology or Christian doctrine in making God the center, the measure, and the supreme determinant of it all.

R eformed orthodoxy professes and propagates the doctrine of sovereign predestination without yielding to those who are determined to discard reprobation as some among us are now attempting to do. Basically, the question is whether or not we are willing to let God be God.

In Reformed orthodoxy the Bible is accorded its rightful place as the Word of God. To be sure, God did use fallible and errant authors to write His infallible and inerrant Word. However, when we allow the new hermeneutic to make plain and straightforward statements of Scripture time-conditioned and no longer valid for us today, then God is no longer allowed to be God.

To quote Calvin: “Hence the Scriptures obtain full authority among believers only when men regard them as having sprung from heaven, as if there the living words of God were heard.”

In an outstanding article in the April ‘79 Calvin Theological Journal on “The Uniqueness of Reformed Theology,” Dr. Fred Klooster holds that its governing principle is always sola, tota Scriptura (the Bible only and the whole Bible).

Because Reformed orthodoxy is God-centered, it cannot for a moment countenance the soul-destroying theory of evolution as it seeks to usurp the place of the Scriptural doctrine of divine creation. Arminianism, Liberalism, Humanism, Scientism, Communism and the other unscriptural isms must be rejected because they all shift the center of gravity from God to something or someone else that is not God. The hallmark or touchstone for Reformed orthodoxy is that it must always begin and end with God at the center.

It is of the utmost importance to add that Reformed orthopraxy must always accompany Reformed orthodoxy like the two sides of one and the same coin. Doctrine without life is an empty show and a sham.

That the demons are orthodox in their theology is obvious from James 1:19: “Thou believest that God is one; thou doest well; the demons also believe and shudder.” And the demons are orthodox also in their Christology. We find in Luke 4:41: “And demons also came out from many, crying out, and saying, Thou art the Son of God. And rebuking them, he suffered them not to speak, because they knew that he was the Christ.” But, notwithstanding all their orthodoxy, the demons are for ever damned.

Orthopraxy, or godly conduct, is essential because “faith without works is dead.” As long as we keep God and His Word clearly in focus, our many vexing questions about right and wrong do not go begging for an answer. However simplistic and naive this may appear to some sophisticated ones among us, the solution to all our ethical problems is basically still the same as ever—God-centered living. Joseph taught us that when he refused to be seduced by Potiphar’s adulterous wife by saying: “How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” Our sinless Savior taught the secret or orthopraxy in holding on for dear life to His God and His Word when He rebuffed Satan with His “It is written.”

Today’s staggering divorce rate, broken marriages, obsession with unbridled sex, abortion, homosexuality, alcohol addiction, and allowing the devil to dupe us into thinking that all this is the life—those who are marked by Reformed orthopraxy may remain true and be “more than conquerors” even over all this by always living “near unto God,” and by having only one purpose in life: “Soli Deo gloria!”