Christ Alone: The Heart of the Reformation

Luther and Calvin and the other Reformers would draw our attentions and our gazes to Christ alone. They would tell us to fix our attentions on the gospel of Jesus Christ. They would say it is right to see what God has done. It is appropriate to celebrate what the Spirit has done. But they would be the first to say that they themselves were not by any means the heroes of the Reformation but that God was the hero of the Reformation, that the Word of God was the hero of the Reformation, that the Spirit of God was the hero of the Reformation. [00:40:33]

Paul says, "I'm not ashamed of the gospel," though the world thinks it's foolish, though they ridiculed him and laughed at him on Mars Hill. Paul says, "I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes," to everyone who calls in the name of the Lord, to whosoever believes. It's to everyone, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. But Paul said that the gospel is the power of God, and we can't miss that. [11:52:93]

Luther realized that the only way he could be delivered, the only way he could be rescued in his sin, the only way that he could be redeemed from this torment of his soul, the only way he could really find assurance was to be rescued, and he had to be rescued by none other than the righteousness of God. And so in coming to Romans 1, in reading about the gospel of God and hearing the gospel of God explained, as Luther not only read through Romans but studied Romans and studied Romans in the original language, not just the Latin. [06:57:99]

The gospel is that victorious message of all that our Triune God has done in and through the life and the ministry and the perfect law-keeping and fulfilling all the righteous demands of the law of God, in the atoning and sacrificial and substitutionary death of Jesus Christ, His resurrection and all His life and ministry even now. It's what God has accomplished through Christ and all by the power of the Spirit. This story is news and it's good news. But you see, in preaching that good news we also have to preach the bad news. [08:46:32]

And so, as God leads us to faith, as He leads us to repentance, as Paul points out in Romans 2:4, even as Luther understood that it's repentance from beginning to end, as he stated in his first thesis of his ninety-five, "When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, called us to repentance, He willed that the entire life of a believer be one of repentance." That we don't just look back upon a time when we were first justified, when we first got saved, and say, "I repented then." [14:19:39]

Luther saw this, and it was at that moment by his own testimony, by his own account that he believed he was born again by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit came rushing in and regenerated his dead, stony heart, and Luther said, "It's as if the gates of heaven were flung open wide to me." He realized it couldn't be his own righteousness. It had to be the righteousness of Christ. As we celebrate the Reformation rightly, as we remember what God did through Luther, as we remember what God did through Calvin and the other Reformers. [16:13:30]

And that means, dearly beloved, that we would be a people who are proclaiming the gospel, living the gospel in our own hearts, as we are repenting of our sins and trusting Jesus Christ, as we live in light of the gospel. That means we're going to live a life of freedom, a life of grace, a life of love. That we, as God's people, would be known by a people of love. And that doesn't mean putting aside the truth; it means contending for the truth. [17:08:13]

And in contending for the truth, we would also be a people that would be always striving eagerly for the bond of peace in the church of Jesus Christ, that we would be a people who are defined and known by the world as loving people, speaking the truth in love and speaking the gospel of grace of the Lord Jesus Christ until Christ returns. That we would be a people, when they see us they don't see us pointing at ourselves, they don't see us as a people trying to gain glory for ourselves. [17:41:96]

Paul says this is God's gospel. It's not fundamentally Paul's gospel. It didn't belong to him. It was the gospel that Paul preached, but this was the gospel of God that Paul expounds throughout the epistle to the Romans and it, in one sense, is that which is expounded by God Himself throughout all of sacred Scripture. And so in verse 16 we read these two verses that ignited Luther and set the world on fire. [02:26:35]

Luther became a devout man, who was so seeking to end the torments of his soul that he might gain some measure of assurance that he might know God and that he might be able to rest in God and have true peace in God. But he didn't find it. In all his duties and all his obediences, he didn't find that peace. He didn't attain that peace and that hope and that freedom that he so desperately wanted that tormented his soul night and day. [04:21:30]

And Paul, pulling from Habakkuk 2:4, says "The righteous live by faith." The just shall live by faith, from beginning to end, from first to last, from faith to faith. We don't start by faith and then end up trying to earn heaven or earn the righteousness of God by works. It's God who begins a good work in us, and it is He who is faithful to fulfill it in us. [13:48:60]

It's through the proclamation of good news of all that God has done, that our God reigns, that He gets all the glory, that He is sovereign, that He is gracious and that He is not only the creation of our own souls, He is the author of that which saves our souls. "I'm not ashamed of the gospel," Paul says, "for it is the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes." [12:54:80]