“Here I Stand, I Can Do No Other:” Celebrating Reformation Day

thorns compose ^ | October 30, 2009

[Gamecock]

He had the very best money could by.  With his high education, his father had hoped that he could advance to a position of wealth and prestige.  Yet before even turning 22, this young man’s life was changed forever.  The story, as it is often told, is of this young man trapped outside during an electrical storm – an experience he would later compare to Saul’s Damascus conversion.  It was there, hugging the ground, believing himself near death, that he struck his bargain with God.  Should he survive the storm, he would live his life in the Lord’s service.  And so on July 17, 1505 Martin Luther entered into a monastery. 

What significance does this young man’s life have for each of us?  Was his choice worth the life he walked away from, or the shame of parental disapproval over throwing away the promise of career for a merely religious vocation?  To understand these questions, we must sift the sands of history to uncover the joy and beauty known as the reformation. 

SETTING THE STAGE

In the late 15^th century the Catholic Church had seen better days.  Enshrouded in corruption, the church offered a ritualistic system by which one could supposedly build one’s “treasury of merit,” earning God’s favor through religious ceremony. 

Yet this same church had become corrupted by its own power.  Clergy were known to bribe their way to higher positions.  Of particular offense was the sale of “indulgences,” money paid for the remittance of sin, which the church boldly promised would make the buyer “cleaner than Adam before the fall.”  Indulgences were arrogantly equated with the cross of Christ in their efficacy.  The masses were deluded into believing indulgences could remit the sins of deceased loved ones, exploitation immortalized in the slogan, “When a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.”  Meanwhile the money was being funneled into the task of completing St. Peter’s Basilica under Pope Leo X, ironically making the majesty of this structure built on the shameful corruption and decadence of a church that had long parted from her first love. 

A GLORIOUS REDISCOVERY

And it was in this context that we find a troubled monk by the name of Martin Luther, a man whose conscience was in constant torment from his own beliefs.  For Luther, God was a God of justice, and Luther was tormented by fears over unconfessed sin, and living up to God’s standard of righteousness. 

Yet it was while he was lecturing on the Book of Romans that his life and thinking began to be shaped by the sharp edge of scripture, and in the pages of the text Luther found a message that lifted the scales from his vision to reveal the truth of God’s grace. 

Luther had discovered that justice was not about earning God’s favor, but receiving God’s mercy purchased through the redemptive work of His Son.  Luther commented,

“I felt that I had been born anew and that the gates of heaven had been opened.  The whole of scripture gained a new meaning.  And from that point on the phrase ‘the justice of God’ no longer filled me with hatred, but rather became unspeakably sweet by virtue of a great love.”

The start of the reformation came not from protest against corruption, but it was, in the words of Alister McGrath, nothing less than “the glorious rediscovery of the gospel.”

THE WITTENBURG DOOR

It was only 12 years after he had entered the monastery.  And yet on the day of October 31, 1517 Martin Luther went to the door of the Wittenburg Cathedral to nail his “95 theses,” words that would change history forever.  Originally written in Latin, the language of the educated elite (and the clergy), the document was soon translated into the common language of Germany and disseminated among the people.  Luther’s revolution had begun. 

“SO HELP ME GOD”

Luther’s defiance was based entirely on his conviction that scripture alone was the word of God – not the countless other historians and theologians upon which the Catholic Church so much of its thinking. 

Luther held fast to this ancient text, even when brought before a council known as the Diet of Worms where his fate and career within the church would be decided.  Presented with a small sample of the literature he had been circulating, he was offered the chance to recant – to take back the words that he had so boldly been speaking. 

The accusation was this: how could Luther dare contradict the church?  Luther countered by observing that throughout history, theologians and writers within the church have contradicted one another – the church has hardly spoken from a singular voice.  And with words now etched in the pages of history texts, he boldly spoke these words:

“Unless I can be instructed and convinced with evidence from the Holy Scriptures or with open, clear and distinct grounds and reasoning—and my conscience is captive to the Word of. God—then I cannot and will not recant, because it is neither safe nor wise to act against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other.  So help me God.”

LUTHER’S LEGACY

Luther was banned from the church that day through the Edict of Worms.  Yet his legacy reaches far.  Through him, the Bible was placed into the hands of the average person, and the gospel of grace was liberated from the corrupt clutches of church authority.  Few owned a Bible, despite the recent invention of the printing press, and even if they had the Latin text was indecipherable to the common person.

It was Luther who said:

“If you could rightly consider the incomparable price, you would hold as accursed all those ceremonies and merits…and throw them all down to hell. For it is a horrible blasphemy to imagine that there is any work that could pacify God since there is nothing which is able to pacify Him but his inestimable price: the blood of the Son of God, one drop of which is more precious than the whole world.”

And so we celebrate this truth – separating ourselves from the ostensible moralism that so often distorts our view of God’s grace, and clinging fast to the truths found in the pages of His text.  And yet one can’t help but question our easy familiarity with these same pages, having forgotten the long journey of love taken by men like Luther.  Instead we must thoughtfully reflect on these facts, conscious of the eternal signifiance of the words given to us.   We must take every measure not to slide backwards into the inconquerable mountain of religion, and to live within the grand scope of God’s amazing gift of grace and freedom. 

It was Luther who is so largely responsible for the shape of the gospel as we now know it – a treasure gleaned from a man who had walked away from his parents’ dreams of material prosperity, a man banished by the church, and a man who became the father of Protestantism and the countless men and women who have labored faithfully for the sake of the gospel. 

And so I dedicate this post to all the faithful who have followed after Luther, abandoning lives of affluence and influence to instead pursue this pearl of inestimable value, and to those who have left so willingly lost these temporary things to gain an eternal inheritance. 

Happy reformation day. 

[Tennessee Nana]

TULIP

[MamaB]

Thank you.

[Dutchboy88]

Interesting that God has allowed so few to see that in the Scriptures...they love their “free will”.

[Another Post-American]

Happy Reformation Day!

(As a child growing up in a Lutheran church, I found the phrase “Diet of Worms” one of the more memorable terms of church history. :-)

[rockrr]

“Hier standt ich. Ich kann nicht anders” - the tagline I use on another site.

[fishtank]

The only way to continue being Protestant ...

is to continue rejecting Rome.

Amen.

Too bad linguini people like Chuck Colson and JI Packer drank the Tiber KoolAid with their “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” fiasco a few years ago...

[delchiante]

Quote-the only way to continue being Protestant ...
is to continue rejecting Rome.

Says the protestant world that uses a Roman calendar, named after a Pope, to set its work and worship- that wasn’t around when the reformation began..

Amazing what those first reformers would call the Gregorian calendar if it was in business back then- ‘antichrist’ calendar..

Not sure protestants want to be too protestant from Rome,though They may not recognize the Lamb that unfolds without rome’s calendar or catechism..

Protestants don’t need pastor efforts to ecumenism to be united with Rome- they do it voluntarily with December 25 and good Friday and Easter sunday, a jesus, according to Rome- not according to scripture..

Amazingly prophetic

[DesertRhino]

Using the calendar doesn’t make one catholic. And reunion can happen anytime Rome will embrace protestants.

Rome is like a creepy ex that always thinks about getting back together. We have moved on in life and never think about you.

[delchiante]

Using Rome’s calendar makes one accept Rome’s premise..

Jews do. Muslims do. Protestants do..

They don’t just counterfeit the Father’s Calendar- Rome has counterfeited the Father’s Son. Made in the image of Rome..

And Paul warned about another Jesus and another gospel-

And Rome has both..

And billions don’t see it because they accept Rome as having some authority. They do not unless one allows them..

And the world is conformed to Rome..

Be not conformed to the world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind..

What a difference it is when one doesn’t accept anything Rome sells as Truth..

True freedom. Something people who call today Friday and tomorrow Saturday and the next day Sunday don’t even realize..

They think they are free from Rome . nope.

That is the subtlety of the enemy.

Rome is as powerful a power and principality as it has ever been. Just not by the tip of a sword anymore..

[Wyrd bið ful aræd]

"Rome is like a creepy ex that always thinks about getting back together. We have moved on in life and never think about you."

Said on a Protestant thread that is trashing Catholicism and celebrating the breakup.

[DesertRhino]

Just answering one of the weird notes Rome left on our windshield again :)

[Lee N. Field]

Froliche Reformationstag, y'all. Five (count 'em) Solas!

To celebrate we watched the first half of the 1953 Luther flick, in glorious black and white.