Martin Luther: Rediscovering the Gospel of Grace

So why remember Martin Luther, this extraordinary man, an Augustinian monk of relative obscurity? This man, brilliant, a lawyer, a scholar with a massive ego, coarse, hugely industrious. But why remember him five hundred years later? Or Calvin, who was a generation ahead of Luther? Luther would've been a father figure to John Calvin. One of the curious things of the Reformation is that Luther did not speak French, and Calvin did not speak German. [00:00:17]

He rediscovered it and rediscovered it in such a dramatic and personal way, almost reflecting the very way the Apostle Paul had discovered the gospel in that so-called breakthrough experience, the so-called tower experience, the cloister experience, discovering that the righteousness of God that God demands of us and that he had tried so very hard to discover in himself, that righteousness of God which was a thoroughly intimidating doctrine, was a righteousness that God provides through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. [00:01:46]

A passive righteousness, as he first called it, a righteousness that is all together outside of ourselves, extra nos. And there, just in that insight alone, he had rediscovered the gospel and brought it back to us again. Why remember Luther? And let me try and answer this question along two lines of thought. First, the message and secondly, the method, the message and the method. The message, first of all. [00:02:40]

Sola fide, by faith alone, apart from the works of the law, apart from any obedience or contribution on our part, apart from the sacramental treadmill of medieval religion, through faith as an instrument, empty hands grasping hold of the grace of God offered to us in the gospel. And of God, therefore, and none of us. Sola gratia, by grace alone. For, as Luther discovered, the more he tried to acquire the righteousness of God, to perform the righteousness of God, the more sinful he became in his own estimation. [00:03:59]

God is a God of grace and mercy offered to us in Christ and in Jesus Christ alone, apart from the contributions of the Virgin Mary, apart from the contributions of saints past and present, apart from the contribution of the prayers of those who have gone into purgatory or wherever. Solus Christus, in Christ and in Christ alone. And all of it on the bedrock of Scripture as Luther, as we heard earlier, forced by Eck to pronounce that declaration, "Here I stand, I can do no other. So help me God!" [00:05:15]

Because our conscience is not safe unless it is rooted and founded upon that which God says. And where does God say it? In Scripture, in the Bible alone and nowhere else. And to the glory of God alone, soli Deo gloria. We remember Luther for the five solas. We remember Luther for little Latin phrases that open up a world of theology, extra nos, outside of us. And how that simple phrase helps us on a day-to-day basis. [00:06:22]

Simul justus et peccator, at the same time justified and a sinner, that at the same time we are justified, but we sin still. And the method. How did Luther promulgate the gospel? And he did it in two ways, two principal ways. One, publishing. Luther published over six hundred titles. Some of them were just pamphlets, and some of them were lectures that he gave, but there are extant some six hundred pieces from Martin Luther. [00:07:39]

Erasmus said after reading only a few pages of The Bondage of the Will that he hated this book because Luther saw that at the heart of the gospel was the absolute necessity to take no glory for ourselves. And if our wills are free, if there is one residual free molecule in our will, then we get the glory. He understood that our salvation is not entirely of the Lord. It is also partly cooperative with grace on our part, and we therefore take some of the glory. [00:09:10]

Think of the German Bible. Why remember Luther? Perhaps the German Bible, the importance of a Bible in our hands. We forget we have Bibles everywhere. I have dozens of Bibles, Bibles in the office, Bibles in the car, truck, Bibles on my phone, on my iPad. But in the sixteenth century it was still a relatively new idea, the thought of a Bible translated into your native language and that you could read it apart from priests and the church interpreting that Scripture for you, that you could read it for yourselves. [00:10:15]

The Freedom of a Christian Man, a book that Luther wrote in the 1520s, in which he said every believer, every Christian is free from all law and subject to none. And every Christian is bound to all of God's law and obliged to keep it. And it's the beginning of a discussion that Paul has in Galatians and in Romans and that Luther had in the Reformation and that we have today between law and gospel, how the gospel justifies us and sets us free from obedience to law and yet brings us into union with Christ that obligates us to keep that law. [00:11:21]

He loved this epistle because at the very heart of Galatians is the gospel, the gospel of free and sovereign grace that had saved him and that Luther believed we need to preach to ourselves every single day. The method: publishing, writing books, tracts, and preaching. He preached over four thousand sermons that we know about, although he was never technically a pastor. Two thousand three hundred of those sermons still survive. [00:13:15]

The day before he died, he wrote his confession of faith, his assurance of faith, made a statement that he was fully assured of forgiveness of sins and of peace with God, and that he would go to heaven when he died. It was important that he do that. In the medieval world, you needed the absolution of a priest and Roman Catholicism had criticized Protestantism for the doctrine of assurance. So, it was important for him to do that before he died, to tell the world that this gospel had given him assurance. [00:15:33]