Why Do We Celebrate the Protestant Reformation?
00:00:00.000 | In matters of faith, I think that neither council nor pope nor any man has power over my conscience.
00:00:08.000 | And where they disagree with scripture, I deny pope and council and all.
00:00:15.000 | A simple layman armed with scripture is greater than the mightiest pope without it.
00:00:20.000 | Heresy, Dr. Luther, heresy!
00:00:23.000 | So be it. It is still the truth.
00:00:26.000 | Another classic movie clip from Martin Luther, the 1953 version starring Niall McGuinness as Luther.
00:00:33.000 | And today is Reformation Day, October 31st, 2016.
00:00:36.000 | It's the 499th anniversary of Luther writing out his 95 theses and sending them to the Archbishop.
00:00:42.000 | And that means, of course, that next year marks the 500th anniversary of the letter that ignited the Protestant Reformation.
00:00:49.000 | And there will be a lot of celebrating.
00:00:51.000 | There will be a lot of debate as well about what exactly we're celebrating.
00:00:55.000 | Is it justification by faith alone?
00:00:57.000 | Is it the Bible made freely available in the language of the people?
00:01:01.000 | Is it the end of indulgences?
00:01:03.000 | Is it the rejection of papal authority or rejecting the priest class?
00:01:07.000 | Pastor John, when you think of celebrating the enduring legacy of the Protestant Reformation,
00:01:13.000 | what are you celebrating primarily?
00:01:16.000 | Let me fudge on the word "primarily."
00:01:19.000 | I'd like to replace it with five other words, but I couldn't think of five other words.
00:01:26.000 | But I did think of five other questions.
00:01:28.000 | I just couldn't think of words to go with them.
00:01:30.000 | I thought of two, but I gave up on five words.
00:01:33.000 | So I'm going to replace your question with five, but I will, at the end, I think, answer exactly what you're asking.
00:01:40.000 | So here we go.
00:01:41.000 | First, what am I celebrating ultimately?
00:01:45.000 | That is, what's at the top as the goal of all things when I celebrate the Reformation?
00:01:51.000 | And the answer is the glory of Jesus Christ.
00:01:54.000 | In Calvin's response to the Roman Catholic Sadulei, he said, "You touch upon justification by faith,
00:02:03.000 | the first and keenest subject of controversy between us.
00:02:08.000 | Wherever the knowledge of it is taken away, the glory of Christ is extinguished."
00:02:16.000 | I think the same point could be made on issue after issue in the disputes of the Reformation.
00:02:25.000 | So ultimately, we celebrate the exaltation of the glory of Christ.
00:02:32.000 | Second, what am I celebrating most foundationally?
00:02:37.000 | So the first one was most ultimately.
00:02:39.000 | Second, most foundationally, that is, what's at the bottom as the ground of all things when I celebrate the Reformation?
00:02:47.000 | And the answer is the free and sovereign grace of God.
00:02:52.000 | When Martin Luther came to the end of his life, he regarded his book, The Bondage of the Wheel, as his most important work.
00:02:59.000 | And the reason is because he regarded the issue of human autonomy versus sovereign grace as the key underlying issue of the Reformation.
00:03:09.000 | He said, "I condemn and reject as nothing but error all doctrines which exalt our free will
00:03:19.000 | as being directly opposed to this mediation and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
00:03:27.000 | For since, apart from Christ, sin and death are our masters and the devil is our God and prince,
00:03:36.000 | there can be no strength or power, no wit or wisdom by which we can fit or fashion ourselves for righteousness and life."
00:03:46.000 | Which means that as long as someone insists on ultimate human self-determination,
00:03:55.000 | they fail to grasp the depth of our need and they obscure the greatness of the free and sovereign grace of God,
00:04:06.000 | which alone can give life and faith.
00:04:10.000 | So I'm going to celebrate that as bottom. That's the bottom.
00:04:14.000 | Third, between the glory of Christ at the top and the free and sovereign grace of God at the bottom,
00:04:22.000 | what am I celebrating in between as the greatest achievement of God flowing from grace leading to glory?
00:04:33.000 | And the answer is the decisive achievement of the cross of Christ in providing peace with God for guilty sinners.
00:04:44.000 | Four times, four times in the book of Hebrews, the author underlines and emphasizes the work of Christ in the forgiveness of sins as once for all.
00:04:58.000 | I love this phrase and the way he uses it.
00:05:01.000 | Hebrews 7, 27, 9, 12, 9, 26, 10, 10.
00:05:06.000 | He has—this is the first one—7, 27.
00:05:09.000 | He has no need, Christ does, like those high priests to offer sacrifices daily,
00:05:17.000 | first for his own sins, then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.
00:05:26.000 | I will be celebrating that the finished and complete work of Christ in providing imputed punishment for our sins
00:05:37.000 | and imputed perfection for our righteousness was once for all
00:05:44.000 | and cannot be reenacted in the Roman Catholic Mass so as to become a necessary point of transfer
00:05:52.000 | of that decisive grace purchased once for all for us and given to us through faith in Christ alone.
00:06:00.000 | Fourth question.
00:06:01.000 | Between the glory of Christ at the top and the free and sovereign grace of God at the bottom,
00:06:07.000 | what am I celebrating in between as the decisive means of my enjoyment of peace with God that Christ achieved?
00:06:20.000 | Answer. The inspired Word of God in Scripture read and known by every Christian.
00:06:28.000 | The Church of the Middle Ages cut people off from the Word of God.
00:06:34.000 | They had done so intentionally.
00:06:37.000 | It was a capital crime in the 1400s in Britain to translate the Scriptures into English so people could read it.
00:06:45.000 | They burned people alive for reading fragments of the English Bible, even children.
00:06:52.000 | They believed that God did not offer his fellowship to be enjoyed through a personal encounter with him in his Word,
00:07:03.000 | but rather through the ministry of priests and sacraments.
00:07:06.000 | This was evil, and the chasm created between Scripture and the people of God has not been closed to this very day.
00:07:21.000 | I've mentioned before in this podcast just last summer's experience in Europe where a nun was converted at 80 years old
00:07:30.000 | and had never read the Gospel of John. So a Roman Catholic professional religious woman never had read the Gospel of John.
00:07:38.000 | That is symptomatic of a deep evil in cutting people off historically and today doing things that subtly discourage the personal encounter with God through Christ in his Word.
00:07:55.000 | So I will be celebrating the personal preciousness and access to the Word of God for my daily means of enjoying personal fellowship with my Father in Heaven.
00:08:08.000 | And the last question, what great Reformation truth will I be celebrating concerning how I experience the living Christ through his Word?
00:08:22.000 | Answer, I will be celebrating the truth that faith acted directly on Christ through his Word, not mediated by priestly sacraments,
00:08:34.000 | is the decisive primary way I enjoy what Christ purchased and what the Word makes possible.
00:08:44.000 | Here's what I read this morning, Tony, in my devotions that made my heart sing.
00:08:51.000 | I was reading in Ephesians 3 in that unspeakably great prayer where Paul says,
00:08:58.000 | "I pray according to the riches of his glory that he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner man so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith."
00:09:15.000 | That's amazing. Christ dwells. Now this is a prayer for Christians. This is not a prayer for conversion.
00:09:23.000 | We think, "Oh, that means Christ knocks on the door and comes in." That's not. He's in. He's in.
00:09:29.000 | We are Christians. He's praying for saints in Ephesus that Christ would dwell, that is, consciously, alive, present, at home, experienced.
00:09:41.000 | How? Through faith, so that Christ may dwell in your heart through faith.
00:09:50.000 | He's praying for Christians who already have Christ. This is a prayer for real, authentic experience of the living Christ.
00:10:00.000 | So when I embrace the crucified and risen Christ as my supreme treasure, alive, present, at home, in me,
00:10:11.000 | that very faith, that embrace, that faith is the sufficient instrument for the enjoyment of his fellowship.
00:10:23.000 | That will be my primary daily celebration.
00:10:28.000 | Outstanding. This is very much worth celebrating. Thank you, Pastor John.
00:10:32.000 | There's a lot to look forward to in 2017, and this Reformation Day is just a little taste of the celebration to come next year.
00:10:39.000 | For more details about this podcast, to catch up on the episodes we've released, or to subscribe to our audio feed
00:10:44.000 | to stay on top of the new episodes that we release, and even to send us a question of your own,
00:10:48.000 | go to our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:10:53.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll return on Wednesday to talk about something very central to Christian hedonism.
00:10:58.000 | We'll see you then.
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