Luther and the Reformation

Looking back at Martin Luther and the Reformation from where we are is a little like looking through a telescope. What you see depends on which end you look into. The miles and centuries between us may push people and places in history still farther into the distance. Or, by a sort of reverse perspective, they may be enlarged to look like giants. Martin Luther was this kind of man, this kind of giant. His influence is still felt in the twentieth-century church and the world. We really ought to know who he was and what he did.

Actually Luther began his life as a son of his times. He was born of German peasant parents on November 10, 1483. Though his father later prospered as a coal miner and mine owner, Martin's early life was marked by the frugal living, hard work and simple joys of those days. And, like many boys, he was a real disappointment to his father for a while. Instead of studying law to become a wealthy and powerful man, young Martin left the university to become a monk and priest.

But this was not the act of a rebellious upstart or a wild-eyed revolutionary. It was rather the deliberate decision of a desperate young man searching for ease with God.

At this point in his life Martin Luther's only ambition was to be rid of his sin. When a serious accident threatened his life he became terrified at the thought of dying and meeting God as his Judge. And so, much to the surprise of his close friends, he announced at the close of a small party that he was leaving the University of Erfurt. On July 17, 1505, he turned away from his friends, family and future to become a monk in the Augustinian cloister in Erfurt, Germany.

Journey into Fear

The search for hope and peace was neither short nor simple. It turned out to be a journey into fear. When Luther tried to set things right with God by the works of his hands, he knew that the thoughts of his heart must still anger God. When he tried to comfort himself with the words of his spiritual advisers, he felt guilty about ignoring the Word of God. His searching led him to new questions and new doubts rather than to the answers he was seeking.

This searching also led the serious young priest to the Holy Scriptures. Fortunately he was able to combine his private studies with his professional job. At the time when Elector Frederick of Saxony decided to open a new university at Wittenberg, Luther was chosen to become one of the professors because of his scholarly interests to this problem -- when he found God's answer to his problem.

Way to Faith

It was while he was preparing his lectures on the Psalms and on the Epistle to the Romans in particular that Luther began to grasp what God was saying in the Bible. Until that time he had understood the term "righteousness of God" to mean only God's holiness and justice. When God condemned those who did not meet His standards of perfection, Luther knew that God was only showing His righteousness. He was ready to give up all hope when he read in Romans 1:16 and 17 that the Gospel also reveals the righteousness of God, as he thought, by holding up the perfect Son of God as the example for all men to follow. But, Luther discovered, this is not what God was saying in this passage. Christ did not come just to set an example. Christ, who knew no sin, was make to be sin for sinners, that is, to take their sin on Himself. Christ was trading places with sinners. Christ was giving them His own perfect record in exchange. In the Gospel, Luther began to realize, God presents his righteousness to those who believe. Anyone who takes God at His Word, like a blind man grasps a rope at the word of a fireman, is taking hold of God's power of salvation to make it his own. Except for a number of events in history, Luther's discovery might not have hit the headlines as it did. John Tetzel triggered the chain of events when he came near Wittenberg to sell indulgences. Members of the congregation where Luther was preaching also bought these indulgences. Because so many of them believed that in buying indulgences they were actually buying forgiveness of their sins -- past, present, and future -- Luther wrote up a set of propositions for debate on the question of forgiveness. On the eve of All Saints' Day he nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, to invite people to join in the proposed debate. That day, October 31, 1517, marks the opening of the Reformation.

Four Centuries Later

The final chapter in the history of the Reformation has not yet been written. Not only is it being written in our time, we are helping to write it. This does not mean that it is our job to start a new church for our times. As redeem may mean to buy back the watch you owned before, and renew may mean to make your draperies like they were when new, so Reformation means to restore the church to what God intended it to be. It's important that the church stay the way God made it. Our eternal salvation depends on it. Men rode donkeys in Christ's time. In the Middle Ages they rode in wagons. Now we travel in jet planes. But men are unchanged.. Whether they use bows and arrows or hydrogen bombs, men demonstrate by their hatred that they are helplessly enslaved in sin. And God, we must remember, hates adultery in our time as much as David's adultery. In God's sight we who love ourselves above everything else are idolaters as much as the heathen who worship before statues of gold and silver.

As time goes on we should realize one thing more clearly: we haven't learned how to make people better. With our medicine we make people healthier and help them live longer. With our science we give them more power and gadgets for comfort. Be we have devised no way for men to make peace with God, no way to save them from self-destruction through their sin.

The Reformation reminds us that by the grace of God we don't have to earn salvation. We need only to take it. Christ has already done everything for us -- that is, except to spread the good news. This is the job Christ has given His disciples. This is the job of Christ's church. It's a privilege greater than announcing a safe vaccine for polio or a cure for cancer. As long as people are sick unto death with sin, the church must remember to go out with the right medicine: God's mercy in Christ.

Lutheranism Today

This is exactly what the Lutheran Church is doing. Today the Lutheran Church has more than 70 million members. The growth of the Lutheran Church is not due to the fact that Lutherans follow Martin Luther, but that God is blessing the preaching of the Law and Gospel through Lutherans churches. Much as Lutherans honor Martin Luther for restoring the precious Gospel of Christ to its proper place in the church, even more they glorify God for giving Christ and the Gospel to the world in the first place.

Ever since Luther's time, Lutheran Christians have been sharing God's mercy with others. From Germany the evangelical (Gospel) church spread through much of northern Europe: Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland. Lutherans from these countries have come to the United States. From everywhere Lutherans have helped to bring the Gospel to every continent of the globe. And as they have gone, they have taken medicine, food, clothing and school books with them. These things are proof of the love Christ was speaking about when He said "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." (James 1:27)

When St. Paul noted the blessings he had received through faith in Christ, he could only write: "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth" (Romans 1:16). God keeps His promises. No one whose hope is in Christ shall be ashamed. God proved this to Martin Luther. The Lutheran is full of people who know this to be true. And because they know it. they want to share Him and His Gospel with others