Today is Reformation Day. As Protestants it is good for us to reflect on the significance of this day. Reformation Day is celebrated on October 31st or the last weekend in October in remembrance of the Reformation.
In 1517 Martin Luther posted a proposal at the doors of a church in Wittenberg, Germany to debate the doctrine and practice of indulgences. This was not an act of defiance or provocation as is sometimes thought. Since the Castle Church faced Wittenberg's main thoroughfare, the church door functioned as a public bulletin board, and was therefore the logical place for posting important notices. Also, the theses were written in Latin, the language of the church, and not in the vernacular. Nonetheless, the event created a controversy between Luther and those allied with the Pope over a variety of doctrines and practices.
While it had profound and lasting impacts on the political, economic, social, literary, and artistic aspects of modern society, the Reformation was at its heart a religious movement. The Reformation was the great rediscovery of the good news of salvation by grace through faith for Christ's sake. For centuries, the Roman Catholic Church had been plagued by false doctrines, superstition, ignorance, and corruption. Since most ordinary Christians were illiterate and had little knowledge of the Bible, they relied on their clergy for religious instruction and guidance. Tragically however, monks, priests, bishops, and even the popes in Rome taught unbiblical doctrines. (Source: Monergism.com)
These false doctrines and practices included:
**Who could interpret scripture and who controlled that interpretation?
**A false system of merits centered on indulgences
**The church taking on itself Christ’s role as mediator between God and man
**Deep seated corruption in the church
**Deep seated corruption in the church
**A chasm between Biblical teaching on salvation by grace through faith and the church’s teaching of salvation through good works.
Following is Luther’s testimony in his own words.
Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God, and said, "As if, indeed, it is not enough, that miserable sinners, eternally lost through original sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the Decalogue, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel threatening us with his righteousness and wrath!" Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience. Nevertheless, I beat importunately upon Paul at that place, most ardently desiring to know what St. Paul wanted.
At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, "In it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, 'He who through faith is righteous shall live.'" There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, "He who through faith is righteous shall live." Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. There a totally other face of the entire Scripture showed itself to me. Thereupon I ran through the Scripture from memory. I also fount in other terms an analogy, as, the work of God, that is what God does in us, the power of God, with which he makes us wise, the strength of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God.
And I extolled my sweetest word with a love as great as the hatred with which I had before hated the word "righteousness of God." Thus that place in Paul was for me truly the gate to paradise. (Source: Here I Stand)
Three years later, in 1520, the pope issued a bull decree, calling Luther’s teaching poisonous. He demanded that Luther recant in 60 days or be excommunicated. Instead of acquiescing this request, Luther publicly burned the pope’s bull decree.
Luther would have normally been executed for his actions; however, Friedrich the Wise demanded a hearing before a German court. In 1521, Luther was summoned to the town of Worms to appear before Charles V, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. Luther was commanded to recant of all his teachings against the Roman Church. Luther requested one day to think through his position. After one night of prayer and pleading with God, Luther returned to the Diet of Worms and declared the following:
This should grieve all Christians, Protestant and Roman Catholic alike. We can never be self-righteousness where the church has failed. And like it or not the Roman Catholic Church was The Church for centuries. Christ's prayer for His followers today has not yet been answered if all His followers are to "be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you (God) sent me (Jesus) and have loved them even as you have loved me." John 17:20-23
ReplyDeletePerhaps we should be praying and working toward repentance, reconciliation, and restoration rather than commemorating a divorce no matter how justifiable.
Biblical unity, the kind of unity Jesus prayed for, is a reality only when it is unified around Biblical truth. Unity based on anything else is as fickled and frail as those who share it. This "unity" is simply shared deception.
ReplyDeleteThe "unity" Christ prayed for, and the unity the gospel accomplishes, is best described in Ephesians 2: 8-16: For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.
This is gospel unity – which Christ came into the world to accomplish on the cross what broken sinful people could never accomplish through our religion and works - the righteousness that is by grace alone through faith alone. This truth freed Luther's soul from his own sin and the bondage of the works-based religion of the church.
There is no “divorce” where there has never been a marriage. I am not justified in God’s sight because my good works and Christ’s atoning work on the cross are “married”. On the other hand, the “divorce” between “the works of the law” by which “no human being will be justified in His sight” and “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe” is always worth remembering and celebrating!
John wrote: “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.” (3 John 4) We can and should rejoice that Luther’s courage and faith led him to stand up for the gospel truth, and that because of this many who had previously been unable to do so could now walk in the truth.