O, the power of a prefix; the change that two or three small letters can effect on a word. For example, consider the word “cover” and the chasm of meaning that exists between the word “discover” and the word “recover.” Same root word, different prefixes, and a universe of meaning between them.
The proto-reformers like Wycliffe and Hus and reformers like Luther and Calvin all considered themselves to be “re-coverers” not “dis-coverers” of God’s truth. They were all alike convinced that they had simply recovered truths that God, in His Word, had taught all along.
The Reformers knew that very often the best way forward is the way back, and therefore gave themselves to the study of Scripture in order to determine where, when and how the Church had departed from what God had clearly revealed. And once those errors were discerned and a faithful way forward identified, the Reformers called upon God’s people to, as Jeremiah might have put it:
"Stand in the way and search out the ancient paths, and to walk in them, for in them, you will find rest for your souls."Indeed…As you meditate upon the Five Solas of the Reformation, do not, I repeat do not, receive them as some sort of dry, academic, scholarly, Bible-nerd exercise. Savor them the way your brothers and sisters in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would have surely savored them: As glorious descriptions of the freeness and fullness of God’s grace; as truths that bring rest to troubled and weary souls.
Or, as we say here at King’s Cross Church: Old Paths…New Life.
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