Reformation
Jn
8:31-36
10/25/26
Hans Luther was a self-made man, and
a successful businessman. He had come from poverty and the early years in
raising his family were times of great difficulties. But Hans had applied
himself in the copper industry that existed in the area of Germany where he
lived. He had risen to the class of a smelter master. By 1501 Hans was now a
person who was considered wealthy.
This wealthy status was demonstrated
by the fact that he was able to send his son Martin to the University of
Erfurt. Martin preceded though the
standard course of study. In his work at the university it was apparent that he
was a bright and gifted student.
Hans was very pleased when in 1505
Martin began study that would lead to a law degree. Martin was going to become
a lawyer, and Hans needed a lawyer to help him in his business. His son was
going to be a tremendous asset in the venture that would lead to ever
increasing wealth for himself and Martin. In the eager expectation of this,
Hans purchased for his son the very expensive copy of the Corpus Juris Civilis
– a collection of civil law texts that he would use in his studies. Everything
was working out perfectly.
However, things were not perfect. In
fact, they were about to reach a crisis point. Luther was plagued by concerns
about his sin and the judgment of God. He feared Christ as judge. He was
ravaged by what he called Anfechtungen – the struggles and sorrows
caused by spiritual concerns. In the Erfurt library he had his first real
access to a Bible he could read. He looked back and said, “When I was a young
master at Erfurt, I continually wandered about sadly because of the Anfechtung
of sorrows, so I devoted myself to much reading of the Bible.” But the reading
did not help. It did not bring him peace because he did not see how he could
find a merciful God.
On July 2, 1505 Luther was returning
to the university from his hometown of Mansfeld. As he approached Erfurt there
was a thunderstorm and a bolt of lightening struck nearby. Frightened, Luther
called out, “Help me, St. Anne. I will become a monk.” It’s not as if this was
the first time Luther had contemplated becoming a monk. Instead, it was the
culmination of the Anfechtungen that Luther had been experiencing.
Luther entered the Order of
Augustinian Hermits in Erfurt. His decision to become a monk tells us all we
need to know about how Christianity in Europe worked at the beginning of the
sixteenth century. Luther entered the monastery in order to be saved. He wrote,
“I took the vow for the sake of my salvation.” He had been taught that in the
life of prayer and fasting he could win God’s favor. He said of that time: “Oh,
if I were to enter a monastery (I thought) and serve God in cowl and tonsure,
he will reward and welcome me.”
We can never forget that medieval
Christianity was based on God’s grace. This was the presupposition of it all.
It was based on faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This stood
at the heart of it. How could it be otherwise if what you were doing found its
basis in the Bible?
But this grace and faith in Christ
was really just the starting point. It was what God had put in place to
make things possible. In order to be saved – in order to be “justified” as the
medieval church understood it – faith had to be formed by love. Faith had to work
with God’s grace because only in this way could a person be saved. The
search for the assurance of salvation could only be answered by continuing to
do things.
Nowhere was this more obvious than
the practice of penance. The medieval church distinguished between the guilt of
sin and its punishment. A Christian was to confess his or her sins. The
priest’s absolution forgave the guilt of sin. But it did not forgive the
penalty for sin – the debt a person owed to God for offending him by sin.
This penalty was addressed through
penance that the priest assigned. But here was the problem. The absolution was
negated and the whole process itself became a mortal sin if a person didn’t do
the assigned penance. So priests would assign something very small, like saying
some Our Fathers, to make sure it was done. Yet this didn’t cover the total
penance owed – not even close. The penalty that had not been addressed before
death still existed. It had to be paid through purification in purgatory.
People found themselves facing thousands upon thousands of years in the
suffering of purgatory’s fires before they could enter heaven.
The answer, then, was to do as much
as you could to pay off this penance during your lifetime. Christians fasted,
and went on pilgrimages, and paid for Masses to be said. They bought
indulgences that promised to take care of these penalties. And if you were
really serious about your salvation – you did what Martin Luther did. You
became a monk or a nun.
In the monastery, Luther threw
himself into this practice of medieval Christianity. But it didn’t help. It did
not provide comfort and assurance of salvation. It couldn’t because for all the
talk about grace and faith, it was really based on works. It was based on the
Law and what we must do.
The attempt to approach God on the basis of what we do can never work. And the Lord Jesus tells us why in our Gospel lesson today. Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
The Jews were offended. They said,
“We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it
that you say, ‘You will become free’?” Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I
say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not
remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you
free, you will be free indeed.”
Christ described sin as slavery. He
did because sin is something that grips us from the moment of our
conception. Jesus told Nicodemus, “That
which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is
spirit.” The flesh, sinful fallen nature, brings forth more sinful fallen
nature. No parent has ever had to sit down their small child and say, “Today I
am going to teach you how to be angry, … or to lie, … or to be jealous.” It’s
just there and the more they have abilities the more it comes out.
We are gripped by sin. Even when we
have been born again of water and the Spirit in baptism, the remnants of this
fallenness remain as what we call the old Adam. That’s why Paul told the
Galatians, “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the
desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each
other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”
This sinfulness is the reason that
if you try to stand in relation to God on the basis of what you do, you will
fail. Does the law – the way of doing – offer the way of life with God?
Absolutely. As Paul told the Romans, “So the law is holy, and the commandment
is holy and righteous and good.” It describes the way Adam and Eve naturally
lived before the Fall.
The problem is not the law. Instead,
we are the problem. We are sinners in thought, word and deed. We sin by
what we do and what we fail to do. And so the law becomes something that
convicts us of sin. It constantly says you are not holy. You are not good
enough. And this is true. We aren’t.
People understand the way of the law
– the way of doing. You must do something, to get something. If you work, you
are owed payment. There is no such thing as a free lunch. That’s why every other religion in the world
is the religion of the law. That’s why when Christianity fails to be true to
God’s Word, it too takes on this form like it did in the medieval period.
I mentioned earlier that during his
studies at Erfurt, Martin Luther had demonstrated that he was a very bright
guy. I also mentioned that when he entered the monastery he entered an
Augustinian order. There were a lot of different kinds of monastic orders
Luther could have joined. But he just happened to join an order that had a long
history of study and scholarship.
The Augustinians recognized that
Luther was spiritually sensitive and troubled. But they also saw that he had a
brilliant mind and so they sent him to do the one thing they thought could help
him – they sent him to study Scripture in advanced academic studies. They sent
him to get his doctorate. And then they sent him to teach Scripture at a
relatively new university in Wittenberg, Germany.
There Luther studied and lectured on
the Bible. He abided in God’s Word. As
he did, the Gospel came into focus. He began to realize that God doesn’t demand
that we do something to be saved, because as sinners we are completely
incapable of accomplishing this. Instead the Gospel is the good news of what
God has done for us in Christ. It is a gift that God gives purely on the basis
of his grace – his undeserved loving favor.
We hear the Gospel in our text today
as Jesus says, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” If the
Son frees you by his death and resurrection, then you are free. Full stop. As
Jesus told Nicodemus, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so
must the Son of Man be lifted up,
that
whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Later in that same chapter we
read, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.”
In particular it was in the letters
of Paul that Luther encountered the language which showed how wrong the
medieval church had gotten things. In our epistle lesson from Romans the
apostle says, “For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short
of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the
redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
whom
God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.”
Salvation is a matter of grace. This
is not, as medieval theology believed, some kind of supernatural substance with
which God zaps us so that we can now do our part in the process of salvation.
Instead in biblical theology it is God’s undeserved loving favor toward us –
his desire to give us what we don’t deserve. As Paul adds, this salvation is a
gift.
The gift is justification – it is
the fact that we already know the verdict of the Last Day when we will appear
before the judgment seat of God. We know now that the verdict will we
“not guilty” – that we are righteous before God. Later in Romans, Paul says
about our present status: “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
And all of this is received through
faith. It is received through belief and trust in Christ. And remember, for
Paul – and therefore for Luther – this faith is the opposite of doing.
Paul says, “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but
as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies
the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.”
Justified by grace, through faith,
on account of Christ. That is the biblical truth of the Reformation. That is
how things work when they run in the way of the Gospel instead of the law. And
when they do, we have assurance that we are forgiven and saved.
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