MARTIN LUTHER: HERO-SINNER

On this day Protestant Christians celebrate a landmark day in history, Martin Luther’s posting of the 95 Theses on the castle church door in Wittenberg, Saxony Germany. I will give you shocking news; neither the date or the man who posted the theses is as important as we might have thought. As for the date, October 31, is important insofar as it was the little spark that set off smoldering fire that was just waiting to happen. The resurgence of the arts, the development of science, the rebirth of human thinking, the decline of feudalism, the intellectual movement known as the renaissance, the many burning embers of discontent and reform already extant in the Medieval Roman Church, the technological breakthrough of the printing press and the deep and burning anger of the German people against the religious leaders in Rome, all played a part in lighting the fire that burst into flames on that fateful day in 1517, the eve of All Saints Day. Many important Reformation dates precede Oct 31, 1517, and many follow it; the absence of any of them would have ground this movement to a halt. What if Luther did not have a sympathetic governor who protected him from death in April 1521, a man known as Frederick the Wise? What if the Roman Church had made some minor alterations in response to Luther’s complaints? Might this not have pre-empted the entire movement? What if God had not saved many professors, theologians and political leaders who served to aid and abet Luther in his fledgling cause? Luther would have been easily overcome and silenced. The ‘what ifs’ are many. As in all movements in history, God ordained a precise line of providence in order to accomplish His purposes. In that sense one date is no more important than any other day. But for convenience, Oct 31, 1517, has been chosen as the marquee date that represents the entire movement. Celebrations must have a specific address. That is simply the way things work.

Equally so, it would be misguided to say that the Reformation is about Martin Luther specifically. No doubt he was the lodestone who attracted all the attention and the spoke in the wheel around which all other events pointed. But Luther could have never instigated the Reformation alone nor would he have wanted to. His shoulders were broad, but not nearly broad enough to carry the weight of entire movement that gobbled up and changed the face of half of Europe. In fact, just as God had used Jacob, and Samson and David, very marred creatures, so God would use a very marred creature in this movement. The choice of Martin Luther to lead this movement smells like a cosmic joke. The man was brash and routinely used demeaning, even foul, language. To Erasmus he wrote, “Your book, by comparison, struck me as so worthless and poor that my heart went out to you for having defiled your lovely, brilliant flow of language with such vile stuff. (It) is like using gold or silver dishes to carry garden rubbish or dung.” Luther could be rude, imperious, bull headed, and arrogant. He favored the princes during the peasants revolt which led to a brutal slaughter of the poor. He did not care for Jews and wrote a tract against them later in his life. And his reforms were incomplete and sometimes confusing, as Luther refused to touch many of the existing Roman Doctrines (like the presence of Christ in the communion elements) because he always had a sliver of Rome in his genetic makeup. Lastly Luther provides fodder to the psychiatric community which has often branded him as being mentally ill, bi-polar, or delusional. Once he threw an inkwell at the devil. This causes many experts to doubt his sanity. To say that God chose a weak vessel to accomplish so mighty a feat as the Reformation is an understatement. All of this is not to deny that Luther had traits suited to his role as the sparkplug of the Reformation. He was highly intelligent, a lucid and fast writer, a motivator of men (especially young men), highly conscientious, and exceedingly courageous. As with most of God’s instruments, Luther had an interesting combination of assets and liabilities.

So why did the Reformation succeed? There can be no question about this answer. As weak as Luther may have been as a man, infinitely stronger was the truth he professed. Make no mistake about it, the Reformation was a movement of truth, a theological movement if you will. Over time Luther uncovered the truth of the gospel that had long been buried under the rubble of Medieval prelacy, tradition, and corruption. So what truths did Luther discover that set the Reformation aflame? We have culled four things that lay at the heart of the Reformation doctrine, things that we must believe today if we shall again witness God’s blessing. First, Luther somewhere between 1517 and 1519, while racking his brain on the concept of God’s righteousness especially from Romans 1:17, discovered the truth that God’s righteousness was not only God’s perfect nature that must punish sin, but it was also a righteousness that was communicated through the gospel. He said, “At last, by the mercy of God, meditating both day and night, I gave heed to the context of these words, namely, in it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live’ (Hab 2:4). Then I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by the 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 a merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.”’ God was right in His nature, but he was also right in His communication of the gospel. Luther discovered that in the gospel that God gives, the perfect righteousness of His Son to His creatures, which Luther described as an ‘imputed righteousness.’ This discovery changed the entire game of the Reformation. Luther had discovered a God who did not want to judge Him, but love Him. And this is exactly what the Medieval world needed to hear - and they did. Second, in his reading of the Scriptures, Luther became firmly convinced that the Bible was the sole source of authority in the life of the Christian. At the time of this discovery, the Catholic Church rested on a plethora of authorities, the Bible, church councils, church tradition, church councils, canon law, and the Pope. Often they contradicted one another and Luther saw this. The Bible itself gave witness to itself that it was pure, and pristine, without error and could always be trusted. When standing before the Emperor at Worms in 1521, Luther was known to say, “I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God.” This idea that the Bible alone was the rule of the Christian’s life was a revolutionary concept in the 16th century. The effect of this truth, as we shall see momentarily, set men free. It completely changed the way the medieval man viewed life and it was at the heart and soul of all that Luther taught. This is while one of the battle cries of the Reformation is Sola Scriptura. Thirdly, Luther taught a theological construct he labelled the ‘theology of the cross.’ Up to this point the theology that permeated the church through the teachings of the Schoolmen, was experiential or rational, but always man-centered. This he called the theology of glory. Luther’s point, one that can be seen throughout his pamphlets and sermons, is that God has revealed himself to mankind through weakness, that is through Jesus Christ on the cross. We learn God not by power within, or by intellectual discernment, or feelings, or spiritual gifts, but through meditating on the God who humbled Himself and became ‘obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.’ God comes to us in a whisper, not in flamboyance and power. God came through a meek and mild man born in a dirty animal stable in a nowhere place in Galilee. God came to us hungering and thirsting and growing weary. This was the opposite of the God the Medieval church depicted. And Luther saw that this theology of glory was causing men to look for God in all the wrong places. Preach the cross, Luther would say, preach nothing but the cross. There alone will you find God. Lastly, Luther uncovered the truth of Christian liberty. Not the Christian liberty found in systematic textbooks or in 1 Corinthians chapters 8-10. But the liberty of that comes from the gospel whereby sinners shackled by the law and tradition and hierarchy are now free to live the life God calls them to. This conviction led Luther to write what is perhaps his greatest tract, On the Freedom of the Christian. One of the great products of the Reformation was to affirm that all callings in life were equally valid. God has called His children to different functions within the body and all hold equal value. Luther was wont to say that the housewife was as important as the prince and the tinker as cherished by God as the clergyman. This thinking has permeated western culture for 500 years and has been a major contributor to the formation of democratic societies and the overall health and prosperity of many nations that rest on this conviction. The Protestant work ethic, for example, is a child of Christian Liberty, asserting that all callings are legitimate and must be pursued with industry to the glory of God.

We celebrate the life of Martin Luther. But more than that, we celebrate a God who five hundred and five years ago unleashed His truth on an unsuspecting world and which has since then brought great blessing to the human race. May these great truths find a revival in our day so that the church of God may again experience God’s power.