Sunday School at 9 am | worship at 10 am

Semper Reformanda

Semper Fidelis or the shorted version, Semper Fi, is the motto of United States Marine Corps.  It is a Latin phrase that means "always faithful" or "always loyal."   While just about all of us are familiar with that phrase, a relative few of us are familiar with the phrase, Semper Reformanda, which means “always reforming.” For the Marine, Semper Fi is shorthand for a lifestyle and a set of commitments. For the Christian, Semper Reformanda is a reminder that the church always needs to be reforming.  We should never think we have “arrived;” that is, we should never think that we have come to the point where we no longer need to examine our theology, our worship, or our lifestyle to make sure they conform to Scripture. 

 

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther famously nailed his 95 theses to the Wittenburg door and ignited the Protestant Reformation.  The Reformers were guided by the conviction that the church of their day had drifted away from the essential, original teachings of Christianity, especially in regard to what it was teaching about
salvation—how people can be forgiven of sin through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and receive
eternal life with God.  The Reformers did not abandon all that the church had taught in previous centuries and start to rebuild her from the ground up. Instead, they
subjected the church’s teaching to the scrutiny of
Scripture and abandoned those parts that failed to
measure up to Scripture’s teaching, sharpened those parts that lacked scriptural precision, and maintained those parts that were faithful to the Bible. 

 

As we commemorate the Reformation this Sunday, we will see two major themes intersect—the theme of the transformational church and the theme of reform.  The result of these two intersecting themes tells us that we should always be reforming so that we can be
transforming. How does that happen?  The church is
always reforming when Scripture is the final authoritative source for the church’s life and doctrine.

 

 

 

 

Everything the church says or does has to be consistent with God’s Word and must be regulated by God’s Word. One implication of this is that whatever the church says and does because of inferences drawn from Scripture must be scrutinized very carefully in light of Scripture. When this happens, there is always potential for belief change, and therefore life change. 

 

We see this happening in the seventeenth chapter of Acts.  Here we read that the Jews in Berea “received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (v. 11).  That is what “always
reforming” means—always returning to Scripture to
examine the church’s testimony in the light of what
Scripture teaches.

 

God has spoken, His Word is truth, and it is the church’s responsibility to regulate her speech in light of God’s speech. That is what continual reformation is. The true meaning of the phrase is that we are constantly called back to Scripture as the final authoritative basis upon which to build our theology and our practice.Ÿ