Reformation Day

Yesterday was Reformation Day on the calendar. It was  the anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses (also called 'Disputation of the Power of Indulgences) on the door of All Saints' Church in Wittenberg, Germany in 1517.  The indulgences were certificates that a person could purchase to reduce penalties for sin for himself or someone else that was already in purgatory. Purgatory  and indulgences are never mentioned in the Word of God. In fact, Luther saw how both ideas contradicted what he read in the Bible.

Martin Luther discovered the reality of the scriptures and he saw how far religion had swerved off the plain path of the grace of God. It is easy to see why. We live in a world that pushes so hard that it is quicker and easier to trust what is said by pulpiteers (not that pulpiteers are necessarily wrong)  than what God says about himself and his son Jesus Christ. So many people are afraid of God and have not realized how much he has shown throughout the Bible that he loves to be believed. We need not be afraid to go to God ourselves. .Jesus Christ is the way to that kind of righteousness.

Luther had problems with the word "righteousness" until he saw the reality of the phrase "the just shall live by faith'. When it registered in his brain what that truly meant, righteousness became a lovely word to him.  With 'rightousness' came  the dynamic duo: grace and peace.

3 Grace be to you and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, 4 Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father: 5 To whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. Galatians 1:3-5

In his commentary on Galatians 1:3, he said: "Grace released sin, and peace maketh the conscience quiet.  The two fiends that torment us, are sin and conscience.  But Christ hath vanquished both these monsters, and trodden them underfoot, both in this world, and that which is to come." 

When you read through record after record in the Old Testament, book after book, this is so visible.  In the New Testament, grace and peace start almost every epistle and certainly the life of Jesus Christ in the gospels oozes both.

Reformation is an ongoing event, not just something that happened almost 500 years ago. Peeling off the false doctrines that sneak their way into religion is not easy intellectually sometimes, but believing God to show you is relatively easy once sin and condemnation are removed. Jesus Christ paved the way for this to happen.