A must watch video on one of the most important events in post-
biblical Christian history. (Our second most popular video on YouTube.)
Direct link to video: http://youtu.be/WDr66ITavlI
Martin Luther and the essential topic of the Priesthood of all Believers.
Filmed on location in Eisenach, Germany.
Direct link to video: http://youtu.be/05_lc7EtsfM
On November 1st, All Saints Day, in 1517, there
would be a special indulgence issued by the church. An unknown Catholic monk
named Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the castle church door in
Wittenberg, Germany, the evening before confronting this and other abusive
church practices. Indulgences were literally the selling of forgiveness—the
church actually offered papers for the remittance of sins for payment
rendered.
The indulgence of All Saints Day in Wittenberg was
especially odious as the church had accumulated numerous relics. Claims of pieces it said to have
amongst its collection would make even the most unskeptical person blush with embarrassment
over the unbelievable things the church offered as part of the relic practice:
a thorn that pierced Jesus’ brow, a tooth of St Jerome, four pieces of
Augustine’s body, four hairs of the Virgin Mary, a piece of Jesus’ swaddling
clothes and a piece of straw from his crib, a hair of Jesus’ beard, and a twig
from Moses’ burning bush. Those
who made the stipulated contribution on the designated Day of All Saints and
viewed the relics could receive for themselves or their dead relatives
1,902,202 years and 270 days off their own or their dead relatives’ time in
purgatory(1) (a place invented by the Medieval church located between heaven and
hell where one must still suffer for hundreds of thousands to millions of years
to pay off sins).
Johann Tetzel who was hawking indulgences for the pope made
a dramatic plea: “ Listen to the voices of your dead relatives beseeching you
saying, ‘Pity us, pity us. We are in dire torment from which you can redeem us
for a pittance.’ Hear your departed father or mother say, ‘We bore you,
nourished you…are you so cruel that you are not willing for so little to set us
free? Will you let us lie here in
these flames?’” A master salesman,
Teztel got many buyers of indulgences, which pushed Luther to a response. The hideous indulgence traffic had
started with the equally hideous crusades and it was time to say something.
While he was only putting up the Theses as a subject for
debate with other theologians, his words ended up lighting a spark that
exploded into the Protestant Reformation.
A group of students took hold of the Theses and reprinted them and began
to distribute them all over the region in different universities and towns, and
the furor over his confrontation of such unbiblical practices morphed into an
international conflagration. The German population, when reading Luther’s,
words responded with a boisterous, “Ja wohl!”
Sometime prior to this, Luther had been struggling trying to find peace with God. Even though he had followed all of the
rituals prescribed by the church, including long hours fasting, hours and hours
confessing sins, doing penance over and over, even using indulgences, he felt
further away from God after doing these rituals than when he first entered the
monastery.
He was sent away from the monastery to study the Bible, just
to get him out of the priests’ hair with his endless confessions. In fact, his
superior, frustrated with him, had told him he should go out and commit some
real sins before coming back to confess. As he began to study the Bible he
found out that its teaching was radically different than what he was being
taught in the church system; the priests didn’t study or read the Bible so they
wouldn’t have been aware of the differences since they just followed the order
of church-prescribed rituals.
As Luther mulled over Paul’s teaching in the New Testament,
especially in Romans and Galatians, he began to see that Christ had already
paid for his sins. He states he
began to understand what Christ had done and how He justifies us through faith
in the work He did for us on the cross. Luther says that he was “born again”
when the Holy Spirit opened his eyes. He thus began to preach on Paul’s teachings in his
epistles, but instead of being heard, the powers that be in the Catholic
hierarchy attacked and persecuted him instead.
Luther was naturally a low key and soft-spoken man, but as
he was persecuted he took his stand upon God and His Word and a lion seemed to
come forth from within as he stood up for the truth.
Along with the important foundation of “justification bygrace through faith”, which became an established
principle of the Reformation, another of the important principles that Luther
saw in the New Testament was “the priesthood of all believers.”
Luther saw the teaching that all believers are priests clearly
in New Testament Scripture: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a
holy nation.” (1 Pet. 2:9) However, the Catholic system had fabricated an idea,
foreign to the New Testament, that priests stood above regular “lay” people,
both spiritually and authoritatively, and thus were superior. Titles for example like “Mother
Superior” for the headmistress of a convent are not mere niceties but actual
acknowledgements that this person is superior and others are less than that
person. In fact, the pope is a
semi-god in the Catholic system and an intermediary between God and man, which
then follows the Catholic teaching that one must be part of the Catholic church
to be saved, since the pope must mediate between God and man for a person to be
saved. This, of course, all goes
completely against what Jesus taught:
But you must not be called
'Teacher,' because you have only one Teacher, and you are all brothers and
sisters together. And don't call any person [in the church] 'Father,' because
you have one Father, who is in heaven. And you should not be called 'Master,'
because you have only one Master, the Christ. The only ‘superior’ among you is the one who serves the others. For
every man who promotes himself will be humbled, and every man who learns to be
humble will find promotion. Matt 23: 8-12
I am the way, and the truth, and
the life, no one comes to the father except through me. John 14:6
Martin Luther and his English contemporary William Tyndale
both worked to get the Scriptures into the vernacular language of their
people. Since the Bible was only
allowed in Latin and not to be possessed by common people according to Canon
church law, the church was able to control people’s spiritual understanding. These reformers’ proclamation that they
would make the common ploughboy more knowledgeable of the Scriptures than the
priests in the Catholic system was not a pipe dream. All they had to do was get the Scriptures into the hands of
the people in a language they could understand, and this did indeed happen
since the priest didn’t read or usually have any knowledge of what the New
Testament taught. The reformers
sought to liberate the people to understand the finished work of Christ and
that in Christ there is a priesthood of all believers.
William Tyndale was an Englishman who was friend’s with
Martin Luther and was greatly influenced by Luther’s translation of the Bible
into German and sought to do the same for the English. The two would meet at the White Horse
Inn to share a pint and discuss theology.
Both worked in spite of severe persecution and attack on
translations of the Bible into the common tongues of their people. When Tyndale had translated the New
Testament into English he had pocket-sized New Testaments smuggled into England
from Belgium, which became hugely popular throughout the island nation. Tyndale
had to flee England to try and survive severe persecution launched against him
for his reformed ideas.
Luther had done his translation while evading arrest and
burning at the stake and hiding in the Wartburg castle; there he translated the
Bible into the common German tongue. While Luther survived his ordeal, Tyndale however, was
hunted down and strangled by the religious authorities and then burned at the
stake. He gave his life for
seeking to translate the Bible into the contemporary language of his day; they
would have done the same to Luther had he not been hidden by his elector at the
Wartburg.
Tyndale’s legacy lives on today. Many, however, are not
aware of the fact that, according to scholar David Daniel, about 90% of the
King James New Testament was the work of William Tyndale. His influence on the English language
is probably larger than any other single person as well and goes beyond even
people like Shakespeare, as he coined phrases still in wide usage to this day
in the English speaking world like: “salt of the earth,” “scapegoat,” “apple of
my eye,” etc.
Luther’s and Tyndale’s idea was simple yet revolutionary,
and subsequently opposed vehemently by the church. Tyndale was in fact murdered
by that institution for seeking to reach the common man with the Gospel: Luther
and Tyndale both wanted and worked to get the New Testament Scriptures into the
hands of the common people in their own language, believing that this would
result in the individuals’ understanding easily opening up to the finished work
of Christ on the cross for them. They would likewise understand that they have
been made a new nation of priests and kings forever in the kingdom of God, a
kingdom where Christ alone rules and reigns in love and His subjects are lifted
up by humbling themselves and not by exalting themselves over others. The
greatest in the kingdom of God is one who serves others, not lords it over
others. They wanted to shine the
light of Christ rather than keeping the people in the dark like the church
system had sought to do.
Thus, the believer in Christ is made new and forgiven by
virtue of what Christ has done for him; Christ’s blood has washed and cleansed
him and clothed him in righteousness.
That glorious blood has also made the simple believer of the crucified
Christ a priest in the risen Son’s glorious kingdom forever—Hallelujah.
Let’s remember the price paid by Christ for our sins and the
price paid by His followers who went before us so we can have His liberating
word!!!
Footnotes:
(1)--Here I Stand by Roland Bainton--an excellent in-depth biography on Martin Luther.
Footnotes:
(1)--Here I Stand by Roland Bainton--an excellent in-depth biography on Martin Luther.
