Happy Reformation Day!
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| Photo reflections back from the 500-year Anniversary of the Reformation where a quarter million people flooded the little town of Wittenberg in Germany! |
October 31st is the 505th year anniversary of the Reformation, and it was also just the 500th year anniversary of Martin Luther’s translation of the New Testament into the German language.
A Little Background
We may take the easy access we have to the Bible today a little too much for granted. After all, we can just open an app on our phone, and we can have the Bible right there at our fingertips.
However, it was not always so easy for the common person to access the Bible. In fact, the Bible had become shuttered from access during the Medieval Period. The Catholic Church forbade the laity to even own or possess the Bible at the Synod of Toulouse in 1229, on the pain of torture and death, which many indeed ultimately endured. Vernacular translations were also opposed and only the Latin Vulgate was permitted for the Scriptures.
Since Latin was already a dead language, it was another barrier used to prohibit access to the Scriptures. As Oxford scholar David Daniell puts it, “It might as well have been in Chinese for all the good it did being kept in Latin! Very, very, few people could read Latin!”
Instead of the Scriptures “The Little Hours of Mary” were proffered which promoted the cult of Mary worship, church rituals, and generated money through stipulated donations.
Enter Martin Luther
Martin Luther had endured a long and difficult spiritual journey after entering the monastery in 1505. In fact, he felt further from God after going down the path of the prescribed rituals of the religious system than when he had first become a monk.
In all earnestness, Luther had sought to follow all the prescribed rituals dictated by the religious system and constantly confessed his sins as required. For, according to Catholic teaching, each and every sin must be confessed to be forgiven. Luther kept remembering things he’d done even as a small boy, and he came and confessed so much—once spending 17 hours at the confessional—his superior finally blew up at him saying: “Why don’t you go out and commit some real sins and come back when you actually have something to confess!”
He was finally sent away from the monastery—as a way to offer him some distraction and get him out of their hair—and was thus directed to go into study of the Bible as a form of diversion.
It should not be assumed that this was normal activity during this time. Reading the Bible was not practiced, neither by those in the priesthood nor the laity. As mentioned previously, the Catholic Church had banned the laity from even owning or in any way having possession of a Bible at the Synod of Toulouse in 1229. Reading the Bible was reserved exclusively for those elite few who were considered theologians established in the hierarchy of the church. Only they were allowed to read and interpret it and had to stay in line with the papacy.
Luther was sent to study the Bible merely as a diversion; he had been a law student formerly so he was able to read Latin.
While reading the New Testament himself, Luther came upon passage after passage that declared that simple faith in Jesus Christ was all that was necessary for salvation. This was a complete contrast to what he experienced as a monk.
As a Catholic monk, he had grown exhausted and alienated from the heavenly kingdom he had sought. The heavy weight of constant rituals foisted upon him in the monastery did not draw him into relationship with the Almighty but instead created animosity in his heart and the peace with God that he so earnestly sought was nowhere in sight.
Here, however, in the very pages of the New Testament, he was finding something completely different from the teachings of the religious system:
There was no requirement to confess all your sins to a priest. Rather the New Testament declared “There is one God and one mediator between God and man… Christ Jesus” 1Tim. 2:5
Nor did salvation require good works like the Catholic Church commanded, which included: giving donations to the church, venerating relics, confessing to a priest, praying to saints, vigils, holy water… and on and on!
Rather the Word declared:
“For it is by grace you are saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.” Eph.2:8-9
“Then they asked [Jesus] ‘What must we do to do the works God requires?’ Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.’” John 6:28-29
The religious system Luther encountered had required rituals and works for salvation as well as to lessen one’s time in purgatory. These things they required however were not found in the teaching of the New Testament. “Purgatory” itself was just another pure invention of Catholicism not found anywhere in Scripture.
Simple faith drew Luther into a living and saving relationship with the Savior Jesus Christ.
Luther wrestled with the Apostle Paul’s teaching in Romans about being justified by grace through faith night and day. He finally understood that Christ had paid the price on the cross, for our sins, once for all, and all that is required is to believe upon Jesus!
When he finally understood this the Holy Spirit came upon him, and his guilt and sin were lifted off his back! He says he was "born again" as he understood that his sin was washed away by simply believing in Jesus Christ!
After being set free and experiencing the liberty of God’s grace, Luther was of no mind to return to the dead rituals of the religious system.
Luther Nails the 95 Theses
He in time drew up some statements or "Theses" to engage some of the church theologians on the wayward path the church had taken. It bears mentioning that Luther did not challenge other doctrines that were still orthodox within Catholicism, and there were still many orthodox foundations. Luther only wanted to challenge where they drifted from the Scriptures especially in regards to salvation.
However, the Ninety-Five Theses he drew up to challenge the errors the church had embraced, set off a spark that soon fanned into an international flame.
After Luther had nailed his Theses to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517, some students took them and copied and widely distributed them, using the recently invented Gutenberg printing press to reproduce them.
A perfect storm soon erupted fueled forth by the truth based on the Living Word of God and the distribution of this document through new technology. Before he knew what was happening, the Reformation had been ignited and Luther was in the middle of a conflagration.
To paraphrase Didier Erasmus, the famous theologian from Rotterdam, this confrontation Luther sparked posed a threat to: The religious establishment’s money-making system as well as the dictatorial nature and infallibility of the papacy.
When the Pope got wind of the issue, he said he would “have this drunken German burned at the stake within two weeks!” Although many attempts were made to shut down the emerging Reformation, it continued to roll forward.
The Leipzig Debate
A debate was proffered which many in the hierarchy believed would slap Luther down. They figured the renowned Catholic theologian Johann Eck would quickly shut down this simple monk Martin Luther quite handily.
However, Luther rose to the occasion at the Leipzig debate, and was equal match for Eck in his knowledge of Scripture and understanding of Christian history. Luther showed that the church had itself strayed and had contradicted its own earlier councils and teachings during its slide away from the truth in the Medieval Era.
Eck in response accused Luther of being a Wycliffite and a Hussite. Many had attempted to bring reform before Luther’s era, figures such as John Wycliffe in England, and Jan Hus in Bohemia (modern-day Czech Republic), as well as others like early reformer Peter Waldo in France and the Waldensians, who sought to distribute Bibles and pray for the sick.
The Catholic Church had come out against these earlier reformers and continued to persecute those who attempted reform and translation of the Bible. William Tyndale was a contemporary and friend of Luther’s who was arrested and executed for his faith and work in translating and distributing the Bible in the common English language.
Luther declared that he himself was indeed a “Wycliffite and a Hussite” throwing caution to the wind! Luther, normally a mild-mannered person, boldly threw himself in with these earlier reformers, even though the followers of Hus and Wycliff had been ordered to be executed by the Pope, this was thus quite a daring thing to say. The Leipzig debate pretty much backfired and Luther’s popularity only seemed to grow.
The Diet of Worms
A Diet—a type of trial—was then set up in hopes of quelling the Reformation. Luther would have to answer before the Holy Roman Emperor—the most powerful and important man in the Western world at that time—Luther, a mere peon in contrast, sweated profusely as he was cross-examined in his presence.
He was originally told he would be able to explain and defend his writings and teachings. However, after he arrived in the town of Worms, Germany for the Diet, he found he had been lied to and was only given the opportunity to recant or face the consequences.
Before the council, while being questioned and cross-examined, Luther was being pressed hard to recant, but in response he finally retorted: “I cannot and will not recant, my conscience is captive to the Word of God, to go against conscience and the Word, is neither right nor safe, I can do no other, here I stand, so help me God.”
Luther threw up his hands into the air in the gesture of a knight and marched out to the applause of the Germans and the hissing sneers of the Spaniards—some of which were dyed-in-the-wool fanatics and enforcers of the Inquisition, torturing dissenters of Catholic strictures.
Frederick the Wise, the Elector Prince of Luther’s German region of Saxony, who was on the council judging Luther, saw that he was merely returning to the true roots of the Christian faith and declined to condemn Luther, as did some others in the Diet, but a rump of the Diet still voted to condemn him as a heretic.
During the night, however, the Bundeschuh—the sign of the peasants’ revolt—was placarded on the wall of the building where the Diet was taking place. This was a serious threat from the people that if Luther was arrested there in Worms, there would be rioting by the people. This sent the Diet into a panic. To appease the peasants—to whom Luther was becoming a hero—he was allowed to return home to Wittenberg and would be remanded into custody later to face the consequences of being condemned as a notorious heretic.
Frederick the Wise knew fanatics and assassins would be waiting for an opportunity to murder Luther on his return home, so he arranged for some of his own knights to hold up and kidnap Luther shortly after he embarked on his return home, so as to secretly take hold of him and hide and protect him.
The knights grabbed him shortly after he left the town of Worms, and with much yelling and cussing—purposely making a loud ruckus—they then had different knights ride off in different directions, while having Luther hidden and taken away to an old, abandoned castle, making sure no one followed after them.
Luther Translates the New Testament at the Wartburg
For ten months Luther was hidden away, holed up in the abandoned Wartburg Castle in Eisenach, Germany, where he testifies to experiencing some heavy and serious spiritual warfare. He says the attacks of men, including other priests and the pope railing against him and everything else he had endured, paled in comparison to the onslaught of Satan’s attacks on him while alone in the Wartburg. Isolated and without other things to distract his attention, Luther took on the great task of translating the New Testament into the common German tongue and completed his translation while he was there at the Wartburg.
Luther wanted others to see the clear teaching of the New Testament for themselves and see that: The Scriptures teach that Jesus Christ alone is the Savior! That Jesus Christ alone is the one Mediator between God and man. That one only need come to Christ in faith for salvation. These simple declarations became foundations of the Reformation and led to later revivals.
His publication of the New Testament spread a return of the true roots of the Christian faith throughout Germany and Europe and fanned the flames of the Reformation and spawned numerous revivals later.
Jan Hus’s Prophecy Fulfilled
After the Diet of Worms in 1521, with Luther still at the Wartburg and his popularity seeming to only increase, the time passed and the possibility of safely arresting him was even less viable and was eventually abandoned, thus fulfilling the prophecy of Jan Hus, the Bohemian reformer, from a century before.
Hus had attempted during his time to reform the wayward religious system of his day, and as he was about to be executed and burned at the stake for seeking to bring these reforms, he spoke out and prophesied:
“Today you burn me a goose (Hus’s name in Czech meant goose) but in 100 years another [reformer] shall rise, he shall be a swan, him you will not be able to burn nor boil!”
Hus was martyred in 1415. It was one hundred years later in the year 1515 when Martin Luther began to study Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, which led to his conversion. This encounter with God and His grace during Luther’s born-again experience set off the chain of events which fomented into the Reformation.
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| Luther pictured with a swan |
The Holy Spirit had opened Luther’s eyes to the salvation which is given freely through faith in Christ and the justification given by His grace. Try as they might they were not able to kill this swan. In his later years, Luther often had himself pictured in paintings with a swan next to his side, showing that God had fulfilled Hus’s prophecy through him!
These are some videos we’ve produced are helpful to learn a bit more about Martin Luther:
Martin Luther and the Reformation
Martin Luther: Born Again into Amazing Grace
The Priesthood of All Believers
Luther quotes on the need to be filled with the Holy Spirit (short video with notable quotes)
The Reformation Spreads: Playlist of Reform Spreading into other Areas.
YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/graceworldmission
