Humility and Grace: Lessons from Luther's Reformation

"When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said repent he intended that the entire life of believers should be of repentance now the importance here and don't miss it is that he starts off with the biblical text the very first thesis Luther's headed in the right direction he's knocking on the right door and he's going down the right path he's quoting for Matthew 4:17 from that time Jesus began to preach now when I read something like that I don't know about you but my first thought is what's he preaching I really want to know and so Matthew tells us saying here's his sermon and a nutshell he had one main point repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand this is where Luther begins and he begins with that word repent." [00:05:06]

"Therefore those preachers of indulgences are in error who say that by the Pope's indulgences a man is freed from every penalty and is saved these preachers of indulgences are going too far ultimately indulgences belong to God they don't belong to the Pope and so the preachers are an error and number 27 he'll say they preach man-made doctrines who say that so soon as the coin jingles there it is clinked in the German into the money box the soul flies sprint out of purgatory it is certain that when the coin jingles into the money box greed and avarice can be increased but the result of the intercession of the church is in the power of God alone." [00:17:17]

"Luther is challenging the presumption of the medieval Roman Catholic Church it's challenging the presumption of the Pope the presumption of the Church's practice of her sacraments it's the presumption that simply by doing it we will get the result it's the presumption that simply by asserting it it will be and not recognizing that there are two missing ingredients he's going to come to say this in a sermon he preaches right over there at st. Mary's Church on Palm Sunday in 1518 called two kinds of righteousness and that presumption is the lack of faith that the sacraments are simply performed and there's no discussion of faith." [00:18:19]

"The true treasures of the church are not simply known or taught among the people of God because the church has abdicated its place and the Bible is absent and when the Bible is absent gospel is absent this not a sad thing the true treasures of the church they're not sufficiently named and they're not known among the people this is what is troubling Luther this is what is troubling him in terms of his role as a pastor and his role as a theologian but something's missing here and it's not just something it's the thing and it's missing a church believed that sins were in the quantity remember at baptism the original the stain of original sin is removed so at the sacrament of baptism that's undoing Adams original sin so now the issue in life is sins plural and if the issue is sins in the plural then when you get to grace it's not a quantitative thing it's a qualitative thing it becomes grace is and now we have the whole penitential system you need more Grace's than you have sins you need more merits than you have demerits but you have a lot of demerits any of very few Grace's because you're you know common ordinary people but every once in a while there comes along someone who has more Grace's than they need and they become Saints and their Grace's are not wasted they're accumulated and they go into a Treasury in heaven and at the top of that chain of saints there's Jesus's mother Mary full of grace which is understood as a quantity in this understand as a biblical expression but it's totally misunderstood and therefore abused and she is more grace than she needs and all of these Grace's are up in a treasure chest somewhere in heaven literally and guess who has the keys if you've ever seen the papal symbol it always has the crossed keys and the keys are the entrance to that treasure chest in the entrance to the kingdom of heaven itself so if you want to get to heaven you have to go through the church and you have to go through her system and that's the treasure that's the teaching of the church you know what Luther says number 62 the true treasure of the church is the most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God now this sounds like Luther's right there doesn't it sounds about as over the plate as you can get I don't think he's still quite there still not talking about imputation he's still not talking about justification he's still holding on to some of the trappings of the church he's going to get there very quickly and the next year he's going to get there but you see what he's doing he's going down the right path he's reading the Word of God and he's finding within the word of God the words of eternal life the gospel and he's seeing the exact opposite and the other path and in the other path is the traditions of men and they do not lead to life they lead to a path of death it was true of the first century Pharisees they trusted in themselves for righteousness it was true of the 16th century Roman Catholic Church that was trusting in itself and in its own righteousness and by God's mercy as Luther would say five hundred years ago God used a monk and his mallet to walk out of the Augustinian cloister and down a cobblestone street to the church doors of the Schloss gurkha and post the ninety-five theses and begin to return the church back to scripture to replace that absence with the presence of the Word of God and to make it central to the practice of the church and as that word of God was restored to the Church of the light of the gospel broke forth into the darkness and once again people were taught and they were taught the truth and they were taught the truth that leads to eternal life the end of the 95 theses Luther's going to say away with the false prophets quoting Jeremiah who say peace peace and there is no peace it's a false gospel empty promise instead listen to the Prophet who says cross cross and there is no cross this is beautiful there's no cross for us see because Christ did it he bore the penalty of our sin he bore the cross as Luther was going to say in that Palm Sunday sermon in 1518 the righteousness of Christ swallows up our sin and it no longer exists because we are found in him and we are found in Christ alone." [00:21:04]

"May we be humbled but more importantly maybe we may we be driven to God's Word and may we join not with the Pharisee who trusts in our own righteousness who trusts in how we have it all buttoned up and have it together but may we be found side-by-side with the tax collector I mean we to have a bowed head and maybe say lord have mercy and there will meet a merciful God in Christ our Savior let's pray our Father and our God were grateful for this Reverend Father Martin Luther this lecture on sacred theology we're grateful for his boldness and his courage were grateful for his mind and his ability to reflect we're grateful that you used him and that you were merciful to him as we think back of the 500 years may we also look ahead I mean we have that same clarity and that same boldness as we preach that same gospel we pray these things in Christ's name Amen." [00:27:39]