We were just ministering out in the High Desert area where we
experienced an outpouring of the Spirit, the Lord touching even eight- to twelve-year-old kids with His presence, while tears streamed down their
faces. It is such a demonstration
of God’s unearned and unmerited grace available to all of us, when you see the
Holy Spirit minister the love and power of God upon even little children such
as these.
As we come upon another October 31st (Reformation Day), we look back and
remember the grace that Martin Luther experienced and the stand of faith he
took for the truth:
Martin Luther’s Conversion: Born
Again Into Amazing Grace
We often hear of powerful revivals of the past like “The Great Awakening," “Cane Ridge,” or “The Finney Revivals” and
how awesomely God moved. Something
largely forgotten though, is the foundation that needed to be laid early on
before these moves of God could take place. They did not come about in a vacuum, and it was not the
endless fasting or prayer of some super holy dude in a cave somewhere that
brought them about either. The foundation was laid through that little event
called “The Reformation” which became
the platform from which these moves of God sprung forth:
It is important to understand the connections since those
that were used in the later revivals had foundations which can be directly
linked back to the Reformation!
How one of the main figures of the Reformation, Martin
Luther, came to saving faith in Christ, is a story that needs to be understood,
if one wants to understand how God used the later revivalists:
Having spent an inordinate amount of time as a Catholic monk
repeatedly performing every ritual stipulated by the church, Martin Luther
still found no peace before the Almighty.
Having understood he was a sinner, he faced the following dilemma: How much sin needs to be confessed, or
how much fasting performed, or how many Hail Mary’s recited, or prescribed
ritualistic prayers repeated? If
we are sinners, can we ever really do enough works to pay for our own
sins? And if that be the case, how
much is enough? There is always a
sin one may forget to confess or a prayer that one might have recited incorrectly—if
one really needs to say required prayers as the Church dictated—and on and on!
God’s providence saw Luther forced into the Scriptures to
face his dilemma. He was doing so
much confessing that his superior in the monastery, Staupitz, sent him away to
study the Scriptures. In fact,
frustrated with Luther, Staupitz said to him in jest: “Go out and commit some
real sins and then come back when you have something actually to confess!”
Luther was very earnestly trying to find salvation while
most monks grew weary with endless rituals. They would actually mock while performing the so-called
sacraments. In fact, while in Rome, Luther was taken aback at the brazen
attitude of the priests who ridiculed out loud: “Bread you are and bread you
shall remain!” mocking the very idea of the strongly held Catholic tenet of
transubstantiation while they yet performed it. The loose morals of the priests
in Rome who had harems of both boys and girls also shocked him as he saw
debauchery everywhere including amongst the clergy.
Having been sent away by his superiors to rid the monastery
of this troubled soul, Luther was forced into the Bible, a Bible that was only
in Latin back then.
Lest one thinks this was a normal turn of events it must be
understood: Reading the Bible wasn’t the order of the day at that time because
the church since the 1200’s had forbidden the laity to read the Bible. Only
church clergy, i.e. priests, cardinals, bishops, were allowed to read it and
they could do so only in Latin.
Most, however, weren’t familiar with Latin, except the smattering of
highly educated.
Unlike most people, Martin Luther could actually read Latin,
and do so quite well since he was
a former law student who had dropped out of law school in order to join the
monastery.
So, forced into the Scriptures, Luther there sought to find
an answer to his dilemma:
If God be just and holy and I be a sinner then how much good
works can actually ever be enough?
There is always something I fall short in and always a sin I overlook in
confession… The way of the Church if truly followed was obvious: Man relying upon
his own works or confession or rituals or sacraments could never really satisfy
the justice of God and assuredly receive salvation; relying on one’s own works
was an empty hope set to fail in the end.
Also ordered to love God as a tenet of Catholicism, Luther
says: “I hated him instead since the justice of God means we are surely
condemned. Although I was an impeccable monk I still stood before God as a
sinner troubled in conscience and had no confidence that my merit would assuage
him. Therefore I did not love a
just God…but hated him and murmured against him.”
This was until the light broke. Luther pondered and
meditated over Paul’s letters in the New Testament until he saw the
connection: The justice of God
brought forth by Christ in the New Covenant is that justice by where which
Christ on the Cross took on our sins and satisfied God’s justice, paying for
our sins once for all. He did the work of salvation for us we couldn’t do for
ourselves: On the cross, wrath and
mercy were fused, and God Himself in the person of Christ paid for our sin,
taking on the punishment for sin upon Himself. The One who knew no sin, nor had committed any, actually
became sin (2 Cor. 5:21) when he went to the cross and paid the price for us
that we might become children of God.
In his own words he explains how the light of revelation
broke over him: “Night and day I pondered Paul’s letter to the Romans… Then I
grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace
and sheer mercy God justifies us by
faith. Thereupon I felt myself to
be reborn and to have gone
through open doors to paradise.
The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning and whereas before the
justice of God filled me with hate it now became so inexpressibly sweet in
greater love. This passage of Paul
[Rom. 1:17] became a gate to heaven…”
“If you have a true faith in Christ as your savior, then at
once [you should understand] that you have a gracious God. For faith leads you in and opens up
God’s heart and will that you should see pure grace and overflowing love…to
behold God in faith you should look upon his fatherly friendly heart in which
there is no ungraciousness…”
In the New Covenant instituted in Christ we are no longer
under judgment or wrath or condemnation of any kind, yet there are those
believers that still live under those things and the accompanying guilt and
shame that come with it. They live as though they are still under the Old
Covenant and thus feel the force and sting of the law. Christ, however, has fulfilled the law for us at the
cross and brought us into a relationship of grace and love in Him, and the
price has been paid once for all on the cross by Jesus.
He wiped out the written Law with its rules. The Law was
against us. It opposed us. He took it away and nailed it to the cross.
Colossians 2:14
“Where sin abounded grace abounded all the more.” Romans
5:20
Grace is a greater force than sin, and thus overcomes it
when a person will but put their faith in the one who went to the cross and
fulfilled the law and the prophets and paid the price once for all for us. Grace overcomes sin and vanquished it
through the cross, not through human effort but through the sacrifice made by
Christ where the grace of God flows to us. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not
overcome it; the light overcomes the darkness!
Luther’s subsequent writings, preaching, and outspoken
efforts on the grace of God carried the message throughout Europe and the
world, and indeed it was the Reformation and at times Luther’s actual message
itself, derived from Paul’s words in Scripture, that set many revivalists
aflame:
*John Wesley was converted when his brother dragged him to
church one evening. The message
had Luther’s preface to his commentary on Romans being read. It was during this message from
Luther’s commentary that Wesley was converted. The Spirit of God warmed his heart setting him aflame to
preach the Gospel all over the British Isles and bringing forth revival!
*The Hernhut Revival which birthed the first Protestant
missions movement came about when a group of Lutherans and Moravians
(spiritual descendants of Reformer John Hus, from Bohemia—modern day Czech
Republic—whose teaching mirrored Luther’s) experienced an outpouring in
Hernhutt, Germany.
*Revivalist George Whitfield, prince of preachers from The
Great Awakening, was converted when he was given a reformer’s book that
told him fasting and praying didn’t save him. He became so angry that he was ready to throw the book in
the fire, until he searched the Scriptures and found the grace that sets
captives free. “What a burden was lifted off my shoulders,” he cried as he
brought forth revival fires!
*Jonathan Edwards experienced the flames that would fan into
revival when he saw that the Early American colonies must get back to the
Gospel: “During a message on Salvation by grace through faith there came a
great acceleration of the Spirit.”
This would later explode into full revival when Whitfield poured
gasoline on those flames by preaching on “The Righteousness that is by Faith!”
*Charles Finney experienced a radical conversion and baptism
in the Holy Spirit. He says: “It was shown me that justification by faith
through grace is a present experience to be received and known now.”
*Amazing grace continued to sweep up many a poor and
unexpected soul into the loving arms of a merciful God for those that would
turn to Him in repentance and faith, including an old slave trader by the name
of John Newton who turned to Christ and found mercy for his hideous deeds,
later penning the very words to the song “Amazing Grace” that have been
some of the most famous in all of history.
We’ve been blessed to walk the very streets in Germany in
the towns of Wittenberg and Eisenach and Eisleben and Worms, and to feel the
cold damp sting of a winter’s frost in the Wartburg Castle, the very places
where some of the pivotal events of the Reformation took place. We have peeked
into, and even felt ourselves, something of an understanding of the price paid
for preaching the Gospel when every force seems mounted against you, and our
earnest desire is that you also should understand this Amazing Grace given in
Christ the Savior who paid it all for us.
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