Reformation
Day (Observed)
October
27, 2019
Text: Rom. 3:19-28
“But
now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although
the law and the prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through
faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe” (Rom. 3:21-22; ESV). Justification, God’s divine verdict, His
binding declaration that the sinner is righteous, you are righteous, not
with a righteousness of your own, but with the very righteousness of Christ
alone, who is your only Savior from sin by virtue of His life, death and
resurrection; given freely, by grace alone, without any merit or worthiness in
you, apart from all works of the Law; received by faith alone, trust in Jesus
Christ, which is not your decision or doing, but God’s gift to you by His
Spirit in His Word and Sacraments; made known and certain by Scripture alone,
God’s written revelation of His saving will for you: This is the eternal truth
that drove the Reformation. And it’s not
just Lutheran, as though Luther did something new in preaching this. It is St. Paul. It is the Holy Spirit. It is God the Father, in the eternal Word
that is His Son, Jesus Christ. It is
good to have a Reformation Day, because this day is all about that.
In
2017 we celebrated what we called the 500th Anniversary of the
Lutheran Reformation. In some ways, the
date of October 31st, 1517, though it has long historical precedent,
is a rather arbitrary date for the start of the Reformation. That’s the day Luther posted the 95 Theses
against Indulgences on the Castle Church door in Wittenberg. Very important day, of course, and
indulgences were a grievous abuse of the Gospel, pieces of paper with the papal
seal selling the forgiveness of sins for money to fund the construction of St.
Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Buy this,
preached Tetzel and the other indulgence peddlers, and you can buy your own
immunity from the pains of Purgatory, or release the soul of someone you
love. Luther’s opposition to this was a
very important part of his evangelical development. But the dirty little secret is, he wasn’t yet
all that reformed. The Holy Spirit in
the Scriptures, particularly by the preaching of St. Paul, was working on it. But we really shouldn’t think of the Lutheran
Reformation as a singular event. It was
the unfolding of God’s gracious gift in restoring the pure Gospel to its proper
place in the Church’s preaching and practice over time, and for Luther, it was a
process of growth into his mature evangelical theology, the theology we call
Lutheran. Which is, again, simply the
theology of St. Paul and of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But
this is to say, the 500th Anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation
wasn’t just October 31st, 2017.
We’re still in it. Because each
successive year in the rest of our lifetimes will be the 500th
Anniversary of the important events and writings that mark this unfolding of
God’s grace.
By
1519, Dr. Luther was a little more Lutheran.
But not entirely. He was still a
monk, though he had been released from his Augustinian vows. He still seemed to think the papacy could be
salvaged. Perhaps most seriously, he
still granted that Purgatory might be a reality. He would later come to realize that not only
is Purgatory not in the Bible, the idea that one must spend thousands or even
millions of years burning off his sins in the afterlife is a direct assault on
the Gospel of Christ… that Christ has made full satisfaction for all sins by
His suffering and death for sinners on the cross. If our sins are forgiven freely, fully and
completely, for Christ’s sake, there is no room for our own satisfactions
(making up for sins) in this life or the next.
Such would be an insult to Christ and make His saving work useless. But that’s the Luther we have in 1519. Still growing. Still learning from the Scriptures. Being led by the Spirit ever deeper into the
life-giving Word of God.
This
year marks the 500th Anniversary of the Leipzig Debate, another
great milestone in Reformation history.
Roman apologist Johann Eck, one of Luther’s most important theological
opponents, had challenged Luther and his colleague, Andreas Karlstadt, to a
debate at the University of Leipzig over the new Wittenberg theology. Now, this was common procedure in those days,
competing universities squaring off, much like they do today on athletic
fields, only at this time, it was in the debate hall with star scholars going
head to head. The debate would last for
weeks. The whole town would be involved
in the festivities, like U of I Homecoming or the Apple Cup across the way. Judges were appointed to hear the debate and
declare a winner, though that was not necessarily the last word of the
argument. For Luther, though, there was
already talk that even more could be at stake.
It was common for his opponents to compare Luther with Jan Hus, who had
been burned at the stake 100 years before Luther (602 years ago this past July,
to be precise) for teaching things very similar to Luther about the papacy and
the nature of the Church. In other
words, Luther was already beginning to face the very real possibility of
confessing the Gospel unto death. And we
should be ready for that, too. We are
all called to take up our cross and follow Jesus. We are all called to be faithful unto death,
and so receive from Jesus the crown of life (Rev. 2:10).
Well,
to discuss everything covered in this weekslong debate would be tedious and
unnecessary. But this Reformation Day,
let me highlight a few points from Luther’s argument that touch our own life in
Christ in this moment.
First,
“Every man sins daily,” says Luther, “but he also repents daily according to
Christ’s teaching, ‘Repent’ [Matt. 4:17].”[1] In other words, there are no saints who don’t
sin, who don’t need repentance. There
are only Christians who repent of their sins and trust Christ’s forgiveness. And that, beloved, is your life in Christ,
your baptismal life, the daily drowning of the old Adam with all sins and evil
desires and the daily emerging and arising of the new man in Christ to live
before God in righteousness and purity (SC IV).
Second,
Luther says, because we are children of Adam and born in original sin, because
we are sinners, we sin even when doing good.
Our good works are as filthy rags, as Isaiah says (64:6). So there is no working your way out of
sin. You need mercy. You need grace. From outside of you. You need Christ and His Gospel. Even our good works, corrupted as they are by
our sinful nature, need to be forgiven or they will damn us, as much as any
other sin. And since that is the case
with even our good works, Luther reminds us, there is no sin so minor that it
can be forgiven apart from God’s mercy in Christ. But all sin is washed away and forgiven in
Holy Baptism. To deny this, Luther
preaches, “is equivalent to crushing Paul and Christ under foot.” What is at stake in the Leipzig Debate? Christ Himself. The very Gospel. The forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
That
is what the Church and the Ministry must be about. Luther attacks indulgences and satisfactions
(or penance) in Confession in one fell swoop when he writes, “Every priest
should absolve the penitent of sin and guilt.
He sins if he does not do so.”
That is to say, the point of Confession is not making up for sins by
doing penance or paying money. The point
is the Holy Absolution, the forgiveness of sins. The priest is duty-bound to forgive sins in
the Name of the Father, and of the Son +, and of the Holy Spirit. That’s the very reason Jesus gave the
ministry, and it is pastoral malpractice to fail to do so. This came to be the heart of the debate. If the Pope is a pastor, he shouldn’t be in
the business of placing the burden of atonement for sin on the backs of the
people, when Christ has already taken that burden and put it to death in His
body on the cross. As a pastor, the
Pope’s job is to preach that! Not
satisfactions. And certainly not
indulgences, profiteering on the forgiveness of sins. The merit of Christ is the treasure of the
Church, Luther says. The Pope and all
pastors are to give that treasure freely to sinners in preaching and the
blessed Sacraments.
And
that abuse led Luther to his most dangerous assertion in the debate. The idea that the Pope is the head of all
Christendom, that there is no true Church apart from him, that there is no salvation
apart from him, is an innovation, a new idea, and it is a grievous error. In other words, it’s not very catholic. Only in the last 400 years, Luther says 500
years ago, has this idea been maintained.
There are eleven hundred years of Church history before that that oppose
the idea, never mind the Council of Nicaea and other councils, and most
importantly the text of Holy Scripture.
There is the whole Church of the East, not under the Pope, in which many
faithful Christians may be found. The
Church’s source and identity is not bound up in the Pope, or for that matter,
the hierarchy in St. Louis (That’s my addition, by the way. Dr. Luther was blissfully unaware of Synod
politics). It is not to be found in any
priest or pastor or form of Church government.
It is Christ alone. He is the
Church’s head. He is the Bridegroom, and
the Church is His Bride. He is the
incarnate Word of the Father, the very Son of God. And He is our only Savior, the Crucified, who
is risen from the dead.
This
preaching would get Luther excommunicated and condemned as a criminal, but
we’ll celebrate that next year and in the years following. But understand this: This history of Luther
and the Reformation is your history, and the history of the Christian Church on
earth. The Gospel was coming to light in
a way that it hadn’t for many years. And
you are sitting here this morning in 2019 in Moscow, Idaho, as a direct
beneficiary of that gracious gift of God.
Pastor Luther, and Pastor Krenz, are simply repeating the sermon of
Pastor Paul: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and
are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by
faith… For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law”
(Rom. 3:23-25, 28). That preaching of
Luther and Paul (and by God’s grace, even Krenz), is simply the preaching of
Jesus Christ for you. Your sins are
forgiven, you are justified, because of Jesus Christ alone. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son
(+), and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment