Remember the surprising story surrounding the death and burial of Elisha? He was the great prophet of Israel who possessed a double portion of the spirit of Elijah’s predecessor. Elisha had directly opposed the wickedness and false worship of his day, but he was now dead. When some Israelites were in the process of burying another man, and the funeral was interrupted by an attack of their neighboring enemies, the pall bearers quickly tossed the dead man into the still-open tomb of Elisha. The Scriptures say that when this dead man “touched the bones of Elisha he revived and stood on his feet” (see 2 Kings 13:20-21).

Why should Christians in the 21st Century be concerned about Latin phrases such as Soli Deo Gloria derived by the 16th Century church of the Reformation? Even if we understand that this phrase means “Glory to God Alone” or think it sounds catchy, what is its true importance to the contemporary church?

The above story points to the answer. We in the modern church need to “touch the bones” of godly ones in whom the Spirit of God clearly manifested Himself, by studying their lives, reading their works, and being led into the Scriptures. When this leads us to come in contact with the same God they knew, we can be meet the issues that confront the church today. Perhaps more than ever, the Protestant church needs these battle cries of the Reformation.

Soli Deo Gloria captures the essence of what God tells us in Scripture and should be pursued by saints of every age.

The consistent heart orientation of the faithful as seen in Scripture is that God alone is worthy of worship and total service whether demonstrated in the thundering voice of the prophet to God’s people,

I am the Lord, that is My name; I will not give my glory to another, nor my praise to graven images (Isa. 42:8);

the exalted language of the psalmist in worship,

Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Your name give glory because of Your lovingkindness, because of your truth (Ps. 115:1);

or the practical commands of the apostle to the church,

Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31),

The word “glory” in the Hebrew refers to weightiness and involves the idea of the impression someone of great significance makes on us when we find ourselves in that person’s presence. In the Greek language the word’s root is “to think,” meaning that glorifying another is to think greatly of his reputation. Our hearts by faith dwell on the heavenly majesty of the triune God, the holiness He alone possesses, the authority by which He rules over the heavens and earth. We are so awed with the weighty significance of our God that we join in with the angelic beings and declare, “Glory to God in the highest!”

This declaration of the angels at Christ’s nativity hints at what Soli Deo Gloria is to mean for the believer. We see expressed most clearly what this truth should mean to us in the simple yet impassioned prayer of our Savior before the cross, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You” (John 17:1).

Pastor Edward Donnelly, in a preaching series entitled Paradoxes in the Gospel of John, reminds us that in the most unlikely place—the brutal punishment of Christ at the cross—we behold both the most wondrous display of God’s glory and Christ’s devotion to that glory. When the fullness of the Lord’s coming to earth and offering Himself as a sacrifice for unworthy sinners is deeply impressed upon one’s soul, in other words when Jesus is believed upon in His true status as Lord and Savior, then the Son is glorified by the Father and the Father by the Son.

The modern church has lost its love in exalting Jesus openly as the only Redeemer of men. Do you recall the horror of watching the 9/11 terrorist attacks unfold and the profound sorrow you felt for those who lost loved ones in this tragedy? Three days later, the leaders of our nation and influential churches gathered in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., for a national prayer service to offer comfort to the nation. Yet what unfolded? The first prayer offered by a bishop started with these words, “O God, the father of Abraham, Mohammed, and the Lord Jesus Christ…” The Koran was read by an Islamic cleric with approval by Christian leaders.

One of the most astonishing moments came when our president, a professing Christian, read this beautiful Scripture from Romans 8 at the end of the service: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God” (vv. 38-39). He emphasized the last phrase to the nation, “Nothing shall separate us from the love of God.” The only problem is that he stopped reading in midsentence. That last clause actually reads “nothing shall separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Perhaps other gods are willing to share their glory, but God the Father is not willing that any other but His Son be exalted. We are right to be horrified over what ignorant Muslim hijackers destroyed. Innocent civilians died, and we mourned. Yet what is our response when church officials and professing Christians in leadership deliberately deny the uniqueness of the name of His Son and the great salvation that is found only in that name (Acts 4:12)? When the truly innocent One whom God Himself appointed as our Savior to die for His people is demeaned, do we weep and tremble because we know that “He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him” (John 5:23)?

This multicultural, polytheistic religion that denies the honoring of Christ in the public arena has become the reigning civil religion of our day. In my own state of Indiana, a federal judge recently ruled that prayers offered in the name of Christ were forbidden in the state house, but he did not forbid prayers in the names of other gods. To the date of this writing, not a single person has dared to violate this order. These are visible examples that reflect the force of culture on the church to privatize and relativize its faith in Jesus. In workplaces, schools, government facilities and even churches, tolerating other gods is in vogue; expressing the “only” of the solas is not.

This cannot be, then, the Soli Deo Gloria faith of our fathers in the Lord. Martin Luther would not be silenced before bishops and rulers when asked to recant his faith at the Diet of Worms in 1521. John Calvin may have fled from France to avoid being put to death, but it did not stop him from addressing the King of France in the lengthy preface to his Institutes. Calvin called on him to put an end to the persecution because “ungodly men have so far prevailed that Christ’s truth, even if it is not driven away, scattered and destroyed, still lies hidden, buried and inglorious.”

When young Margaret Wilson saw her older friend Margaret MacLachlan staked by the king’s troops so she would slowly struggle underneath the tidal waters of the river Blednoch in Wigtown, Scotland, she was asked by her tormentors what she thought. “I see Christ wrestling there,” she replied. When pressed further to deny her allegiance to Christ and save her life from drowning, before her persecutors and citizens of Wigtown she instead quoted the last part of Romans 8. Not only did she declare nothing “will separate us from the love of God” but she included and found comfort in the words “which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

O that we would touch bones like these and be revived in our day! In recent months the Lord has thrust me, against my desires, into places and situations where I naturally would avoid treading. I would offer to you three challenges from these experiences that God has given me that involve a Christ-filled glory.

Many readers of the Witness have prayed for our congregation, as the neighboring library was considering taking our church building by eminent domain. During the laborious, time-consuming efforts we made to convince the library and community officials otherwise, I often complained about how this situation was taking time away from my work as a pastor. Yet toward the end I began to realize it was actually helping me to fulfill my work more faithfully.

Two of the library officials, who attend liberal churches, came to our session meeting one night. For two hours we were able to speak of Christ’s work here, to pray for them, and at the end they asked the nine men we had there to sing a psalm in the sanctuary to hear our acoustics. We stood before them and sang to them, “I was glad to hear them saying, ‘To the Lord’s house let us go’” (Ps. 122:1, The Book of Psalms for Singing).

At several of their public meetings, I had to address the library board and spoke to them of the command to love our neighbors knowing that one day Christ will judge us based on how we have treated them. As we have now had the board rule in our favor, and are inviting the members to a community- wide celebratory psalm sing, I have realized how these events have been in answer to our prayers. Though we had something else in mind when we asked for open doors to minister in the downtown area, the Lord has orchestrated these events so that His Son might be glorified in public places we never would have considered. The Book of Acts is filled not only with stories of the strategic missionary trips of Paul; almost the same amount of material is devoted to his unplanned arrests, trials, and imprisonments before religious leaders and civil authorities. The challenge He has given to me that I relay to you is this one: Just how earnest are you when you pray that God alone would be glorified?

Over this last year, in attending to my mother who has gone through a difficult remarriage and divorce, I have spent a great deal of time in many different psychiatric wards. I know of going to prisons and of visiting the sick in the name of Christ, but psychiatric wings were not on my list of places I had considered ministering. In many of these facilities the staff does not act openly hostile to the Christian faith but rather minimizes it, acknowledging religious experiences but mingling them with a soul-deadening combination of prescription drugs and human philosophies. I have found that I have to be prepared when I enter these places. Psychiatrists smile amusedly about patients reading their Bible but are adamant about the need for psychotherapy. Patients have come to me seeking counsel when they find out I am a pastor.

I share this with you because I have come to realize that the hospitals eventually release these people and many of them start attending church! People coming to our churches come believing Oprah and Dr. Phil have better news than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They need to know of the living Christ who touches souls and raises up those who are bowed down. The second challenge is, then: Just how equipped are you to glorify God alone when you share Christ?

Perhaps it is the final experience where I have had Christ’s presence most revealed in a situation involving one of our members. Formerly a true hobo who even lived in railroad cars, Bill came to Christ and into our church as an older man through our ministry at the Rescue Mission. Bill’s diabetes began attacking his feet and legs, and over the past two years one foot and then the other died and the bottom portions of his legs have been amputated. With Bill having no true family ties, I have witnessed our deacons be sure he has food, shelter, and medical care; watched the men four at a time bring him up the stairs of the church in his wheelchair; seen the church clean his apartment and even change bandages on decaying legs. In the fellowship of this suffering, Christ has been glorified among us, and the Father through his Son. The final challenge, then, is this: Just how willing are you to glorify God by serving the least?

The Reformers saw this last sola as the sum expression of all the others. One of the leaders of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, the late Dr. James Boice of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, helped formulate The Cambridge Declaration in 1996 (this series on the solas in the Reformed Presbyterian Witness is featuring excerpts of this). This declaration points out many of the ills affecting the modern church and cries out for the church to return to the truths embodied in the solas.

Dr. Boice preached for our congregation on Aug. 4, 1996, and his topic was none other than this fifth sola based on Romans 11:36, “To Him be the glory forever.” In that rich, bass voice, Dr. Boice declared that when the Reformers saw that knowing Christ alone is by faith alone through grace alone as revealed in the Scriptures alone, they could only exclaim, “Glory to God alone!” May God put their fire in our bones so that we may both believe and live Soli Deo Gloria.