Cesar Malan

Today’s story is about a pastor who gets booted from his church for preaching grace. Unitarianism had taken hold of churches in Geneva, Switzerland in the early 1800’s. Cesar Malan (1787-1864) said of its pervasive influence, “During my four years of studying theology, I never heard a single word which led me to a belief in Jesus’ divinity.” Cesar was a stranger to Biblical teaching on salvation by grace early in his ministry. He thought believers had to earn favor with God. One pastor, who remained true to Jesus’ divinity, said to him, “It appears that you do not know that to convert others, you must be converted yourself.” One evening, the words of Romans 5 that we are justified by God’s grace through Jesus Christ, found its way into Cesar’s heart. When he read the next day in Ephesians 2, “It is by grace we are saved,” he opened his life to Christ and burned his old sermons.
He announced his new-found faith in an 1818 sermon, “Justification by Faith Alone.” The congregation became visibly agitated with his forthright message. He said in his sermon, “If, at this moment, a mysterious hand which once, in Babylon, wrote silently the devil-doom of a vicious king, should come out and write on that wall the story of your life, if the lines truly showed everything you had ever done and thought, which of you could dare to lift your eyes?” The congregation voiced their displeasure, heckled him afterward and barred him from the pulpit. Local clergy passed an ordinance prohibiting sermons on original sin, grace and the divine and human natures of Christ. Seriously? Cesar started a church from scratch, constructed a chapel in his garden and brought back hymn-singing after a century of silence, writing most of the music and lyrics himself. His prayer at the chapel dedication, reminds us to express thanksgiving, even under trying circumstances: