Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - October 31, 2022


Ep 700 | Why Reformation Day Matters


Episode Stats


Length

49 minutes

Words per minute

154.33247

Word count

7,657

Sentence count

438

Harmful content

Hate speech

21

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Today is a Reformation day. What does this day mean and why does it matter to believers? This is going to be a very edifying and hopefully informative episode for all of you Christian, relatable listeners!

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Today is a Reformation Day. What does this day mean and why does it matter to believers? This 0.66
00:00:07.340 is going to be a very edifying and hopefully informative episode for all of you Christian
00:00:13.620 relatable listeners. Also, before we get into it, I do just want to give a shout out. Make sure that
00:00:19.800 you go watch our DNC ad video. The third one that we have put out is perfect right before the
00:00:26.740 midterms to tell you all the reasons why you should totally, definitely, absolutely, 100%
00:00:32.420 be voting Democrat in the midterms. Share that with your friends. It's on YouTube. All that good
00:00:38.920 stuff. We'll link it in the description of this episode. Also, make sure that you get our new
00:00:44.020 voting sticker. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see that my laptop is a little chaotic. It's
00:00:49.780 between the awkward stage of like too many stickers and not enough stickers. We've got our new
00:00:56.220 rip row tombstone sticker, which is super cute. And then we've got our voting sticker, politics
00:01:02.880 matter because policy matters because people matter. One of our most popular taglines. Share that
00:01:09.180 with your friends. They're five bucks. All of these stickers are available on our merch store. We'll also
00:01:15.000 link that in the description on YouTube and on the listening end. All right, that's all we got for the
00:01:21.940 introduction. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to
00:01:25.720 GoodRanchers.com slash Allie. That's GoodRanchers.com slash Allie.
00:01:37.760 All right. Happy October 31st, All Saints Day, Halloween, Reformation Day. There's so much that 0.99
00:01:45.760 we could talk about today, especially news-wise with midterms coming up with everything that
00:01:50.980 happened over the past few days. Paul Pelosi, what? That's definitely a Halloween tale. But
00:01:56.700 instead, I wanted to do something different. I wanted to dedicate today's episode to what today
00:02:02.840 symbolizes primarily for Christians, more specifically for Protestants, and that is Reformation Day. So I'm
00:02:10.880 dedicating today's episode to the Reformation, what it means, why it's something to celebrate,
00:02:16.180 and why it matters to Christians today. This is obviously going to be a very condensed version
00:02:22.080 of what the Reformation means. I could do an entire series on that, and I could bring lots of people on
00:02:28.060 who have been studying this for years and years and years. And that would be really interesting.
00:02:33.020 It's really hard to boil everything down into a 30-minute to a 45-minute episode. So I'm just going to do
00:02:40.040 kind of the highlights. There are a lot of you who know what Reformation Day is. There are a lot of you
00:02:44.840 who don't. There are a lot of you Catholics out there who have been taught some things about
00:02:49.080 Reformation Day or about Martin Luther that are overwhelmingly negative. I invite you to stick 1.00
00:02:54.400 around for this very Protestant podcast episode. Your mind might not change, but you will probably
00:03:00.880 learn something that you didn't before. I just want to say quickly before we get into it,
00:03:06.020 I'm not highlighting Reformation Day today because I am trying to avoid Halloween. Those of you who 1.00
00:03:13.560 listened last week know I did an episode on the real origins of Halloween with the guys from Cultish
00:03:20.000 who are awesome. The origins are Christian. They're not pagan. I also did an episode a couple years ago
00:03:26.440 with my mom about using Halloween as an opportunity to share the gospel with our neighbors. So that's
00:03:35.480 my stance on Halloween in general. I know there are a lot of people who disagree and I am not against
00:03:40.840 those who simply want to celebrate fall and harvest without any semblance at all of Halloween. I think
00:03:47.200 that's perfectly fine. But in my opinion, so is dressing up in fun, lighthearted costumes, enjoying candy,
00:03:55.040 fellowshipping with friends. As long as there is not a celebration of fear and death and gore,
00:04:01.960 which simply are not Philippians for lovely or praiseworthy. There is, I believe, Christian liberty
00:04:09.440 in that area. Bottom line on that, and this is where we stand, every day is the Lord's. Psalm 24.1,
00:04:16.500 the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein. There is no
00:04:23.260 day that belongs to Satan. He doesn't have that power. The darkness does not have the power or the
00:04:28.340 authority to claim a day. It doesn't have ownership over candy or fun or costumes. October 31st, like
00:04:34.940 every other day, can be used for good or for evil. And that may look different for every Christian. But
00:04:42.120 whether you or your family participate in any of these Halloween festivities, one thing that I would
00:04:50.440 encourage all Christians to do is to honor this day as Reformation Day. Martin Luther nailed his 95
00:04:57.500 theses on the door of a church at Wittenberg in 1517. And that is what marks Reformation Day.
00:05:06.500 Now, this is not something that I celebrated growing up. I don't even remember learning about it. It
00:05:12.800 wasn't even something that I remember hearing about in school. I mean, I'm sure that I did. I went to a
00:05:18.780 Christian school, kindergarten through 12th grade. I mean, I was raised Southern Baptist, so obviously we were
00:05:25.280 Protestant. But I honestly don't remember learning about this in Sunday school or in regular school
00:05:31.520 or from my parents. Maybe I did, but I just don't recall that. It really wasn't until I started
00:05:37.420 studying theology for myself in college, maybe later high school, but really in college and after college
00:05:44.620 that I read about the history of Christianity and the birth of Protestantism and realized how relevant
00:05:51.520 this history is to the core tenets of our faith. I do think today Christians, and it's probably pretty
00:05:57.380 unique historically, are disconnected from the history of our beliefs, the history of apologetics
00:06:06.240 and theology and biblical translation and interpretation and the stories of the martyrs and the church
00:06:13.200 fathers. And I think that we really miss something when we don't know those things. I think that it can lead
00:06:19.140 to one, thinking that our doubts and our questions are unique, that no one has ever asked the questions
00:06:25.240 about God or the Bible that we are, and so thinking that we have unanswerable questions that lead us down
00:06:31.100 a path of unhealthy deconstruction. I also think that we lack strength of faith and we lack perseverance
00:06:41.780 when we think the obstacles that we are facing, whether it comes to persecution or exclusion
00:06:48.280 here today, are bigger than Christians have ever faced throughout history. And so we think there's 0.99
00:06:54.860 no way that we can possibly, that we can possibly face the powers that be today, that the evil is
00:07:02.380 darker than it's ever been, it's stronger than it's ever been, and we just can't outlast them. We just
00:07:08.800 can't stand firm in our faith. We have to continue to compromise a little so the culture doesn't 0.57
00:07:14.460 attack us or destroy us. But if you look back throughout history, we actually see that the church
00:07:20.380 has gone through much more difficult times, much greater trials, much more hostile forces than even we,
00:07:28.880 at least in the West, are today. So it strengthens our faith. It strengthens our resolve to know
00:07:38.400 the history of the church, the history of Christianity, to study the church fathers who went to great
00:07:45.580 lengths to answer many of the questions that we still find ourselves asking about the reliability
00:07:53.980 of scripture, about the person of Christ, about the resurrection today. So I realized really over the
00:08:01.280 past few years how important it is for me to understand where our faith comes from, why we believe
00:08:07.560 what we believe. And I find great comfort and great relief in knowing that people much smarter than me,
00:08:16.020 who lived many years ago, asked many of the same questions, had many of the same doubts that I do
00:08:21.760 today, and studied scripture to help Christians today answer a lot of those questions and resolve
00:08:29.900 a lot of those doubts. And so I just kind of want to start us off on that connecting bridge today,
00:08:38.360 taking us back to the origin of Protestantism and why we believe what we believe about the gospel.
00:08:47.060 You will be encouraged because it is a story of the goodness and the steadfastness and the power
00:08:53.540 and the sovereignty of God, the perseverance of his saints, and simply God's love and his mercy for
00:09:04.240 his people yesterday, today, and forever. Now, as I already mentioned, if you are a Catholic listener
00:09:10.500 and you have been told, like most good Catholics have, that Martin Luther was nothing but a wicked
00:09:16.400 heretic, and that the Reformation represents a lamentable division within the church, I do
00:09:22.960 encourage you to stick around for this episode. As I said, your mind might not change. You might not
00:09:29.060 become Protestant, although I've met many of you out there who, you were Catholic, you started listening
00:09:34.300 to this podcast by the grace of God. You did become Protestant, if you will. But even if that doesn't
00:09:43.780 happen for you, that's not necessarily my goal, you may learn something that you did not learn growing
00:09:49.000 up going to Mass or in Catholic school. So Martin Luther was a German Catholic monk and a biblical studies
00:10:07.320 professor at the University of Wittenberg. He was incredibly learned in the Bible and in Catholic
00:10:13.460 doctrine. And it was through his study of scripture and of theologians like Augustine that Luther,
00:10:20.200 like other European Christian scholars at the time, began to question the authority of the Catholic
00:10:26.600 Church in many of its practices. The more he compared the Catholic Church to the Bible, the more distressed
00:10:33.860 Luther became as he realized that much of the church in word and in deed was not in alignment with God's
00:10:40.580 word. It had wandered from its calling and purpose, replacing the commands of scripture with the
00:10:46.480 traditions and the rules of man, much like the Jewish Pharisees had done in Jesus's time. So Luther had 0.80
00:10:54.020 several complaints. He had 95 to be exact, and he reportedly posted this list called the 95 theses to
00:11:01.540 the door of the church at the University of Wittenberg, where he was a professor. It was common for
00:11:07.700 announcements and advertisements to be nailed to the door, but it can't be conclusively established
00:11:13.740 whether he actually nailed this written list of theses to the door or if that's just folklore. But
00:11:20.200 what we do know is that he at some point posted it at the door, and on October 31st, All Saints Day,
00:11:27.880 he sent these 95 reprimands to the Archbishop Albert of Mainz. One of Luther's chief concerns in these 95
00:11:39.260 theses was the church's selling of indulgences. So this was money that the church received from its
00:11:50.000 congregants that church leaders promised would pay for their sins and would limit the amount of time
00:11:57.800 that their loved ones would spend in purgatory. Purgatory is a Catholic belief. Protestants don't 0.65
00:12:03.140 believe in this kind of in-between place, this limbo between heaven and hell, but Catholics believed 0.87
00:12:10.640 that. And so people would pay money to the Catholic church thinking that the souls of those that they
00:12:17.900 loved, that their family and friends could possibly spring out of purgatory into heaven if they paid
00:12:23.760 enough money. This money, however, was often spent to fund lavish lifestyles of church leadership,
00:12:29.260 to fund wars, to commission art and architecture. And Luther was rightly concerned about this. He was
00:12:35.520 concerned mostly about the hearts of the lay people in the Catholic church, that there was a false sense
00:12:43.180 of assurance that Catholics would feel by giving money to the church when that's not what the Bible 0.77
00:12:48.940 outlines as the means of salvation. Luther also saw serious problems with the papacy. He wasn't actually
00:12:57.080 anti-pope, but he was against what he saw as a movement of the papacy towards embracing man-made
00:13:05.080 doctrines like the practice of indulgences rather than scripture. So here are a couple examples of what
00:13:11.540 Luther said in his 95 theses about indulgences and the pope. So this is number 32.
00:13:17.140 On the way to eternal damnation are they and their teachers who believe that they are sure of their
00:13:23.800 salvation through indulgences. Number 33. Beware well of those who say the pope's pardons are that
00:13:31.100 inestimable gift of God by which man is reconciled to God. So apparently people believed that the pope had
00:13:40.580 some kind of authority then to pardon people in a way that would ensure a pardoning by God, that that
00:13:51.680 was the reconciliation between God and man, the pope. That would be a usurping of the authority that is
00:13:58.840 only found in Christ as we read in scripture. His theses were translated and distributed throughout
00:14:07.580 Europe after October 31st in 1517. And this is seen as the start of a revolution against the
00:14:14.240 Catholic Church as the start of what we refer to as the Protestant Reformation. And we don't have time 0.97
00:14:20.040 to get into all of the historical context. It wasn't just Martin Luther nailing this to the door or
00:14:26.420 sending this to the Archbishop of Maine that started this kind of rebellion against the Catholic Church
00:14:33.380 and kind of the breaking apart of the stronghold that the Catholic Church had on Europe. There
00:14:38.360 were a lot of geopolitical things going on, a lot of theological things going on that were trying to
00:14:48.100 break this grip that the Catholic Church had on this part of the world. There were many Christians
00:14:55.960 protesting against the unbiblical authority and practices of the Catholic Church and seeking to
00:15:03.220 reform the church in alignment with God's word. And so Protestant Reformation, there were Christians
00:15:11.140 protesting the corrupt practices of the Catholic Church and seeking to reform the church in alignment
00:15:18.660 with God's word. But Luther, and even though he knew that there could be dire consequences for doing
00:15:26.660 this, he never actually intended to start a revolution or even a widespread reformation. His 95 Theses was
00:15:35.060 not his declaration of separation from the Catholic Church. I think a lot of people think that. He wasn't
00:15:40.700 saying, hey, I'm no longer a Catholic. I can't be a part of this. He retained a lot of Catholic beliefs
00:15:46.100 throughout his life. For example, he still believed that the Eucharist was, you know, he believed in
00:15:53.300 transubstantiation that the bread and the wine were the real body and the real blood of Christ.
00:16:00.500 Protestants really, I think all denominations, if not almost, maybe almost all denominations believe
00:16:07.960 that it is a symbol and that it's important to take communion, but we don't actually believe that it
00:16:14.340 is the real body and the real blood of Christ. Martin Luther did. So he wasn't separating himself
00:16:19.880 from the Catholic Church at this point. His goal was not to demolish it or replace it or even to
00:16:26.480 remove the Pope. His intention back in 1517 was to call out the misuse of power by the church that
00:16:33.480 exploited poor lay people who could not understand Latin in which the Catholic Church taught and did
00:16:38.700 not have a Bible in their native language. And therefore, they did not know the Bible and were at
00:16:43.260 the mercy of church leaders who told them that their salvation depended on obedience to rules that
00:16:47.940 were not founded in the Bible. That was his chief concern at the time that he nailed the 95 theses.
00:16:55.400 And this really is what was happening in the Catholic Church is a remarkable parallel to the Pharisees in 0.58
00:17:00.300 Jesus's day, whom Jesus rebuked as whitewashed tombs who looked good on the outside, but were dead on
00:17:05.540 the inside. They were placing unbearable burdens on the people in the name of faux righteousness that
00:17:11.400 really had nothing to do with obeying God's law, but just had to do with this kind of facade of
00:17:17.860 holiness that they knew the common people could not actually reach. That is basically what was
00:17:23.540 happening at the time of the start of the Reformation in the Catholic Church. So Luther wanted the Catholic 0.91
00:17:29.120 Church to be reformed in some big ways. Yes, but his theses were not originally meant to be
00:17:35.560 revolutionary, his truly revolutionary ideas that really created the division, the chasm between
00:17:43.160 him and the Catholic Church and consequently Protestants and Catholics. These ideas came a
00:17:49.840 little later in his writings, the main being that justification is by faith alone. We are justified
00:17:57.640 as sinners before God, not by good works, not by our faith plus works or faith plus any adherence to
00:18:06.300 the rules and traditions of the Catholic Church, but by faith in Christ alone. That faith is given to us
00:18:12.360 by the grace of God. That was the revolutionary idea. The other main revolutionary idea was that
00:18:18.860 scripture possesses supreme authority as the word of God over church leaders, not the other way around.
00:18:25.640 So these beliefs, which Luther started writing about and disseminating, these were in direct and
00:18:33.860 fundamental opposition to the teachings of the Catholic Church and still to this day, the main
00:18:39.440 distinctions between Catholics and Protestants, and we'll get to more on that in just a second.
00:18:45.300 In 1520, Pope Leo X issued something called a papal bull against Martin Luther, judging Luther as a
00:18:52.420 heretic. As a consequence of that, Emperor Charles V called the infamous Deet of Worms, which was a court 0.97
00:19:00.720 assembled before which Luther was asked to appear and recant his heretical beliefs. When asked by
00:19:09.120 Johan Eck, who represented the emperor, if he would recant, Luther said this,
00:19:15.560 Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the scriptures or by clear reason, for I do not trust
00:19:22.520 either in the Pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and
00:19:27.380 contradicted themselves, I am bound by the scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the
00:19:33.700 word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything since it is neither safe nor right to go against
00:19:42.540 conscience. May God help me. Amen. Yes and amen. You've probably heard a similar quote from Martin
00:19:51.080 Luther, truth at all costs, peace if possible. Peace if possible, truth at all costs. That is
00:19:59.860 probably the defining, one of the defining quotes for how Luther lived his life.
00:20:12.540 And here is Charles Spurgeon, the great British theologian of the 19th century on Martin Luther
00:20:24.380 and his testimony before the Deet of Worms. He says this,
00:20:28.000 There is Martin Luther standing up in the midst of the Deet of Worms. There are the kings and the
00:20:33.260 princes and there are the bloodhounds of Rome with their tongues thirsting for his blood. There is Martin
00:20:38.680 rising in the morning as comfortable as possible and he goes to the Deet and delivers himself of
00:20:44.320 the truth, solemnly declares that the things which he has spoken are the things which he believes
00:20:49.420 and God helping him, he will stand by them till the last. There is his life in his hands. They have
00:20:56.200 him entirely in their power. The smell of John Huss's corpse has not yet passed away. That was another
00:21:04.900 early reformer who was martyred. And he recollects that princes before this have violated their
00:21:11.880 words. But there he stands, calm and quiet. He fears no man, for he has not to fear the peace of God,
00:21:19.240 which passeth all understanding, keeps his heart and mind through Jesus Christ. After that, the Deet of
00:21:27.020 Worms issued the Edict of Worms, declaring Luther a heretic and banning the reading of Luther's
00:21:34.600 writings. It was understood that Luther was excommunicated and he would probably be executed,
00:21:40.960 but he ended up being taken away, being hidden away by Prince Frederick III of Saxony. And it was
00:21:47.800 in hiding that he continued his writings and began translating the Bible into German. This was the full
00:21:53.680 translation of the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek into German rather than the Latin Vulgate
00:21:59.780 version. This meant that the common person, the lay person, not just the monks and the priests and
00:22:06.020 the Pope and the clergy who had been educated in reading the Latin Vulgate, but everyone who could
00:22:11.280 read in Germany could read the word of God for themselves. And not just that, could know God
00:22:18.060 themselves, could confess sins to God themselves, could be saved by God themselves. It didn't require
00:22:23.640 the mediation of a priest or the approval of the Pope or the rendering of money or the following of any
00:22:29.780 biblical rules or traditions, but only faith given to them by the grace of God. And the translation
00:22:37.200 didn't stop in Germany. The Holy Spirit lit the spark and fanned the flame of the gospel, the true gospel
00:22:45.040 throughout the continent, so that every person who could read, could read passages like Ephesians 2,
00:22:51.320 8 through 10. For by grace, you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing.
00:23:00.320 It is the gift of God, not a result of works. It's so clear. So that no one may boast. For we are his
00:23:08.520 workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in
00:23:16.600 them. So here we read that good works, the good works that we do as Christians are a product
00:23:22.460 of our salvation, as James 2 tells us, not a prerequisite for salvation. And here's what Martin
00:23:30.080 Luther writes about his revelation of this revolutionary concept that our salvation cannot in any way be
00:23:40.460 earned, but rather is a gift given to us by grace through faith. He says this,
00:23:46.320 my situation was that although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience,
00:23:52.160 and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Then I grasped that the justice of God
00:23:58.440 is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy, God justifies us through faith.
00:24:04.920 Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole
00:24:11.960 of scripture took on a new meaning. And whereas before the justice of God had filled me with hate,
00:24:18.320 now it became to me an expressively sweet and greater love. This passage of Paul became to me
00:24:24.560 a gate of heaven. If you have a true faith that Christ is your savior, then at once you have a gracious
00:24:30.720 God. For faith leads you in and opens up God's heart and will that you should see pure grace
00:24:37.840 and overflowing love. This it is to behold God in faith, that you should look upon his fatherly,
00:24:45.200 friendly heart in which there is no anger nor ungraciousness. He who sees God as angry does not
00:24:52.380 see him rightly, but looks only on a curtain as if a dark cloud had been drawn across his face.
00:24:58.680 So Martin Luther was troubled that as pious as he was, he would never be enough for God. If God is
00:25:07.040 perfect and just, how can we ever pay penance, enough penance to be made right in his eyes?
00:25:14.540 How can we do enough good works, confess our sins enough, go to mass enough, pay enough indulgences
00:25:20.140 to earn the eternal approval of a perfectly holy God? Luther realized that it's not possible. He realized
00:25:27.160 that we are actually justified before God and made acceptable to him by Christ and Christ alone,
00:25:33.120 that it is only through faith and this good news, a faith given to us by the grace of God that we are
00:25:40.540 saved. Christ gives us his righteousness. It is Christ's righteousness that makes us acceptable to God,
00:25:48.960 not our own. Romans 3, 22 through 26. For there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short
00:26:00.540 of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift. Through the redemption that is in Christ
00:26:09.660 Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show
00:26:17.500 God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. It was to show his
00:26:24.180 righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith
00:26:34.580 in Jesus. So of course, this does not mean that we go and live as we would like to live. Do we keep
00:26:41.460 sinning that grace may abound by no means? That's Romans 6. It means that our good works, which we do
00:26:49.540 because of our salvation, because of our faith, do not save us. Again, they are a product of our faith, a product
00:26:56.220 of our love for God. We don't do it because we're scared that he's going to punish us. We don't do it because
00:27:01.220 we're scared that if we do one more bad thing, we are going to be placed into hell or we're going to miss
00:27:06.340 heaven or we're going to be sent to purgatory. We do good works. We obey God because we love him,
00:27:12.040 because we love his law, because we have been given faith in Christ by the grace of God. Our good works
00:27:18.800 do not earn our salvation. They are a product of our salvation. This was the revolutionary idea that
00:27:25.260 really fanned the flame of the gospel of Christianity, the true gospel, real Christianity throughout Europe.
00:27:34.340 And I realize that many Catholics still hate Martin Luther. They still see him as the guy
00:27:41.220 who ruined everything. And they say, how can Protestants possibly celebrate the Protestant 0.94
00:27:47.380 Reformation? You've got so many denominations now. You're so fractured. And to that, I say,
00:27:54.200 yes, there is fracturing. There is disagreement. There aren't as many denominations as Catholics say
00:28:00.100 that they are. There's not like 36,000. That number is taken from faulty data. There are
00:28:07.420 denominations, though, and there are disagreements within these denominations. But what I would say
00:28:12.560 is that disagreement is always the result of freedom. I mean, that is true in the United States
00:28:17.940 as well. In the United States, we don't live under a tyrant or we're not supposed to. We have freedom
00:28:22.800 of speech. We have freedom of religion. That means that there is speech out there that we don't like
00:28:28.040 and that we don't agree with. That means that there are religions being practiced that we don't agree
00:28:32.640 with. But just as the founders of this country knew, disagreement and freedom is better than
00:28:38.880 unity and tyranny. And at the time of the Reformation, the Catholic leadership had, in fact,
00:28:43.720 become tyrannical. And it's also important to note that while Protestant denominations do disagree,
00:28:50.040 it is mostly, mostly on secondary and tertiary issues, not on what it means to be a Christian
00:28:57.260 or on salvation issues. There might be differences about baptism and about different traditions,
00:29:05.820 but we all are united, supposed to be united by the belief that salvation is by grace through faith.
00:29:14.240 So there are more consequences of the Protestant Reformation, wonderful consequences. And that was 1.00
00:29:21.220 the prominence of many other theologians that were contemporary to Martin Luther.
00:29:26.560 John Calvin was a French theologian and one of Luther's contemporaries. And his book,
00:29:32.680 Institutes of the Christian Religion, was probably one of the most influential
00:29:36.780 products of the Protestant Reformation. And here's a quote that is incredibly relevant today
00:29:43.800 from this book. The surest source of destruction to men is to obey themselves. Wow, that has always
00:29:52.600 been true, still true today, exchanging the God of Scripture for the God of self. And there are many
00:29:58.320 such quotes from John Calvin that are relevant today. I really recommend Little Book on the Christian
00:30:03.260 Life. It is exactly what it sounds like. It's a tiny little book about Christian theology and really
00:30:08.080 the basics of the Christian life, completely countercultural today, but also counter to a lot of
00:30:13.780 what we learn in pseudo-Christian circles and spheres and in Bible studies that constantly tell us to focus on
00:30:22.860 ourselves and to focus on how we feel about ourselves rather than putting our eyes on Christ and making
00:30:27.780 ourselves less. Calvin was probably the theologian with the most influence on Western civilization and the
00:30:36.520 modern world. I know that a lot of people demonize Calvinism and I understand there's cage stage
00:30:42.760 Calvinism and Calvinists can be really intense about things and maybe at times legalistic about things,
00:30:51.560 but whether you like it or not, the form of Christianity that set the foundation for everything good when it
00:31:00.340 comes to human rights and flourishing in the West and the United States is very likely a result of Calvinism.
00:31:08.420 Not exclusively, but in large part simply because his organization of the Bible, of biblical interpretation
00:31:16.420 and theology was so widespread and so influential that it ended up permeating almost like every part of Western
00:31:25.340 society and civilization and civilization and still dies in many ways. Without Calvin, without the Protestant 0.99
00:31:33.540 reformers in general, we would not, I don't think this is an exaggeration, we would not have Western 1.00
00:31:39.520 civilization. The British Empire wouldn't have been at least what it was. America probably would have never been
00:31:47.000 founded or at least it would not have become what it became. Protestantism's rebellion against what it saw as the
00:31:54.460 tyranny of the Catholic Church created an individualism and I believe in a healthy way, an individualism and
00:32:03.340 fostered a yearning for freedom that then lay the foundation of the United States. And while not all founders had
00:32:10.800 solid theology, they were inevitably shaped by the Protestant theology and very likely the Calvinist theology and
00:32:17.280 instincts that had become to dominate, had come to dominate so much of Europe and so much of England
00:32:25.140 specifically. Protestants have a very long history of rebellion against tyrants, both in the church and in the
00:32:32.840 state. You guys ask me all the time about this sign over here, if we can show it. Resistance to tyranny is
00:32:40.020 obedience to God. And that is, that's ascribed to a lot of different people. That quote, I believe that
00:32:46.960 it is by John Knox though. He is the Scottish reformer who was a resistor to tyranny. And a lot of you ask me
00:32:55.140 where I got that sign. We did not get it anywhere. It was made here in-house. But it's probably something
00:33:01.960 like it is probably for sale somewhere. Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God. That is a Protestant phrase
00:33:08.920 if you have ever heard it. Now coming from Calvinism and just the Reformation in general are five basic
00:33:27.740 tenets of Protestantism or what a lot of people refer to as reformed Protestantism. And that is the five
00:33:36.200 solas or the five alones. So the five solas go all the way back to the Reformation. And they really
00:33:43.940 have been the building blocks of Protestant theology and apologetics for centuries. So these five alones
00:33:53.300 or five solas are one sola gratia, and that is by grace alone. This is one of the most radical ideas
00:34:00.140 of Christianity that your salvation and that your acceptance to God is a gift that is given to us
00:34:09.560 by His grace. It is not something that we can earn. Lots of religions can tell you how to climb the
00:34:17.160 proverbial mountain to get up to God. All the things that you have to do to make yourself acceptable,
00:34:24.120 to clean yourself up so you can climb the mountain to get to Him and to hope that you will be taken in.
00:34:29.440 Christianity is radically different. Christianity says that God came down the mountain and saved you
00:34:35.820 when you could not save yourself. The radical part of Christianity is seen in Ephesians 2. We've already
00:34:41.700 read verse 8 through 10. But the first part of Ephesians 2 that describes the state of sinners, dead in the
00:34:48.480 trespasses and sins in which we once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the
00:34:54.000 power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, that is who we are apart
00:34:59.840 from Christ, dead in our sin. If you are dead, that means you cannot save yourself. You're not on life
00:35:08.340 support. You can't muster up enough effort in order to save yourself or to make yourself acceptable to God.
00:35:16.840 You are dead. And we are only made alive by the power and the grace of God through faith in Christ.
00:35:25.520 And so that is one tenet of Protestantism, that we are saved by grace alone. John 3.18 says,
00:35:33.300 whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has
00:35:38.420 not believed in the name of the only Son of God. This tenet by grace alone holds that we cannot
00:35:47.900 save ourselves. Romans 3.10 through 11 says, none is righteous, no, not one. No one understands,
00:35:55.600 no one seeks for God. Isaiah 64.6, we have all become like one who is unclean and all our righteous
00:36:01.740 deeds are like a polluted garment or like a filthy rag. We cannot save ourselves. No matter how many
00:36:09.880 good deeds we do, no matter how much effort we put in, no matter how many times we confess our sins,
00:36:14.960 no matter how perfect our attendance is when it comes to church or mass or whatever, it will never
00:36:20.140 be enough to save ourselves. We are in desperate need of God's grace for our salvation and sanctification.
00:36:26.100 Number two, sola fide or through faith alone. So by grace alone, through faith alone. And Martin Luther
00:36:34.060 called this justification by grace through faith, the doctrine by which the church stands or falls.
00:36:40.200 That is how crucial this is to Christian theology. And so this is obviously very closely tied with through
00:36:48.700 grace alone. It is by grace through faith. As we read in Ephesians 2.8 through 10,
00:36:55.620 Galatians 2.16 says, yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through
00:37:02.020 faith in Jesus Christ. So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in
00:37:09.900 Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law, no one will be justified. Romans 5.1.
00:37:18.420 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
00:37:26.580 Christ. And as we mentioned a little bit earlier, that passage in James 2 that says,
00:37:31.600 that says faith without works is dead. What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith,
00:37:37.460 but does not have works? Can that faith save him? That does not mean that we are justified
00:37:42.880 by our works, that we are saved by our works, but that faith that is not accompanied by obedience to
00:37:50.240 God was never real faith in the first place. Real saving faith that comes as a gift of a gracious God
00:37:57.500 will always be accompanied by good works and obedience to God. That doesn't mean that we do not
00:38:03.620 sin. Of course we do, but it is an earnest seeking after the things of God. And then number three,
00:38:13.200 in Christ alone. So by grace, through faith, in Christ alone. Now here is where Catholics and
00:38:20.260 Protestants do essentially agree that there is no salvation found in any other God or any other entity
00:38:29.100 except in Christ. Isaiah 43, 11. I, I am the Lord and besides me, there is no Savior. We see this,
00:38:38.920 of course, reiterated throughout scripture. The first five verses of John speak to this,
00:38:46.200 and this is also a key difference. This passage right here is a key difference between what I would
00:38:52.780 call Mormon theology and then this biblical theology. In the beginning was the word, and the word
00:38:59.100 was with God and the word was God. So Jesus is God, not just a son of God, but Jesus is God,
00:39:06.120 the Bible says. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was
00:39:11.600 not anything made that was made. In him was life and the life was the light of men. The light shines
00:39:17.700 in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. And verse 14 tells us, and the word became flesh
00:39:23.800 and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory. Glory is the only son from the father, full of grace
00:39:28.920 grace and truth. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. So that word, that only means of salvation
00:39:35.900 is Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 5, 21. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him
00:39:45.040 we might become the righteousness of God. So solus Christus in Christ alone means our righteousness
00:39:52.620 comes from Christ. It is not earned. It is not developed on our own. It is imputed to us by Christ
00:40:01.080 and his perfect righteousness. 1 Corinthians 1, 30 says this, and because of him, you are in Christ Jesus
00:40:06.900 who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption so that as it is
00:40:12.760 written, let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. That is glorious. Number four, solo scriptura,
00:40:19.180 scripture alone. This is a controversial one. Catholics do not believe in solo scriptura.
00:40:24.800 This is a very vibrant debate. Martin Luther summed it up this way. The difference between us and the 0.98
00:40:30.620 papists is that they do not think that the church can be the pillar of the truth unless she presides
00:40:36.400 over the word of God. We, on the other hand, assert that it is because she reverently subjects herself
00:40:41.800 to the word of God that the truth is preserved by her and passed on to others by her hands. So he did not
00:40:48.360 think that the church did not have authority or does not have a role to play here, but rather that the
00:40:53.560 church should be subjected in everything to the direction of scripture, not the other way around.
00:41:00.240 It's often misunderstood that Protestants, that we don't believe in tradition or we don't believe in
00:41:06.760 teachings or we don't believe in wisdom that comes from theologians. Of course, that's not true.
00:41:13.520 What we believe is that all things, all theology, all opinions, when it comes to anything having to do
00:41:21.760 anything within the purview of the Bible, which I guess you could say is everything, is subject to
00:41:30.140 Christ's word, is subject to the Bible. We don't add to it and we don't take away from it, or at least
00:41:36.940 that is our aim. We take 2 Timothy 2.15 very seriously. Do your best to present yourself to God as one
00:41:43.960 approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. Again, that does not
00:41:51.860 mean that we don't have serious disagreements as Protestants, but we do all believe that at the end of
00:41:58.120 the day, one of us is wrong. One of us or all of us is wrong and that scripture is always right. That is, at the end of
00:42:05.460 the day, what we believe about Sola Scriptura. Here's what Martin Luther also said about this.
00:42:11.480 I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote
00:42:17.580 God's word. Otherwise, I did nothing. And while I slapped the word so greatly weakened to the papacy
00:42:23.000 that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it, I did nothing. The word did everything.
00:42:30.540 That's pretty amazing. And then, of course, 2 Timothy 3.16-17, all scripture is breathed out by
00:42:39.420 God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
00:42:43.860 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
00:42:48.820 And then number five, the last sola, the last alone, soli deo gloria, to the glory of God alone.
00:43:07.760 And this is the point. This is why Martin Luther said what he said, wrote what he wrote. This is why
00:43:14.020 the theologians reformed the church the way they did. This was the point of the Protestant Reformation.
00:43:20.900 Not that it was a perfect movement. Not that Martin Luther was a perfect person. We didn't even have
00:43:25.800 time to get into some of the writings about the Jewish people that he published that are obviously
00:43:35.080 very offensive for a variety of reasons. Just like a lot of people, he was a fallible person who said
00:43:41.580 things that we would not say today or would not agree with today. And yet, if you look at the
00:43:46.960 Protestant Reformation as a whole, not just the impact that it had on Western civilization,
00:43:52.420 human flourishing, and freedom, and academia, and the abandonment of these Protestant principles
00:43:58.680 is what has led us to many of the dark places that we're in today. But this was the point of the
00:44:08.440 reformation. This was the point of the revolution, the glory of God. This is the answer to all of it.
00:44:16.660 Why not only did the reformation happen, but why essentially, by grace, did God send his son to
00:44:25.020 die for us? Why did he grant us the gift of faith that we might believe in him to be saved? Why did God
00:44:30.220 offer us redemption and reconciliation and forgiveness and eternal life for his glory? Why does he choose to
00:44:38.340 reveal himself, his plan of salvation, and his will in the written word? Why does he want this message
00:44:43.360 to be shared to the ends of the earth? Why does he give us the gospel? For his glory. Yes, he loves us.
00:44:51.440 Yes, because he longs to save us. Yes, because he wants to take care of us. But all of these things,
00:44:56.480 his love, his salvation, his care, his provision, his protection, it is all for his glory that he
00:45:02.480 might be glorified, that he might be made known. God is for himself. God is about himself. As Jesus
00:45:11.980 says in John 15, 5, apart from me, you can do nothing. Apart from Christ, we are dead in our sin.
00:45:18.920 We are depraved. We are lost. We are unrighteous. But God, being rich in mercy because of the great
00:45:24.500 love with which he loved us, made us alive together in Christ. By grace, you have been saved.
00:45:30.620 Ephesians 2. He is the only being in the entire cosmic and earthly universe who deserves to be
00:45:36.320 worshiped, who deserves to be glorified. That is why we Christians find satisfaction and fulfillment
00:45:41.860 and joy when we worship him rather than worship ourselves or our anger or jealousy or envy. It is
00:45:49.880 for his glory that the Christian heart longs. We all long to worship something or someone, and everyone
00:45:56.060 does worship something or someone, you worship yourself, you worship your boyfriend, you worship
00:46:00.600 your job, your body, your kids, whatever it is. And what we find every time we direct our worship towards
00:46:08.080 any of these things is that we end up disappointed. We end up deflated. We end up dejected. We end up
00:46:14.520 destroyed. The objects of our worship fail us. They turn their back on us. They end up not being able to
00:46:20.420 deliver on their promises or meet our expectations. They may betray us, leave us, or lie to us.
00:46:25.420 Ultimately, they break our hearts because they are not worthy of worship. They are not worthy of being
00:46:31.800 glorified. God alone is. That is what all of this is about. It's for God's glory. That is the heartbeat
00:46:42.100 of the Christian. And that is why I am thankful for the Protestant Reformation because of how it glorified 0.99
00:46:48.480 God because of how it allowed the Bible into the hands and the hearts of the common person, of the believer
00:46:56.460 for how it changed the course of history forever, not because of the efforts of men, but because of the
00:47:02.620 power of the Holy Spirit and the goodness and the power of the gospel that through the obedience of Martin
00:47:09.700 Luther and other reformers was unleashed onto the world. So praise God for that. I know a lot of times,
00:47:17.600 especially depending on your view of the end times, you see history as just getting worse and worse and worse
00:47:24.540 and darker and darker, really going further and further into the depths of hell. But really, if you look
00:47:30.860 throughout history, God, by his grace, through the simple obedience of believers, has allowed for the salvation
00:47:41.200 of countless souls. There have been different parts of history that have been darker than others, that have been
00:47:48.520 more chaotic than others, that have been more tyrannical than others. And yet the word of God, the power of the
00:47:55.620 Holy Spirit persists. Really, if we look throughout history, what we see is that God will do what he wills. And by his
00:48:04.200 patience and by his grace, he uses the obedience of Christians to glorify himself and bring people to
00:48:11.800 himself. So I don't know the direction the world is headed in right now. I mean, it's fairly obvious that
00:48:17.580 things are only getting more chaotic and disorderly and farther from God, certainly in our society. And yet,
00:48:24.200 I do not count out God's ability, God's willingness to have another reformation or another reawakening or
00:48:37.740 another historical stage where he is bringing more hearts than ever to him. So our answer to that,
00:48:51.900 or our role in that, our participation is simply to do the next right thing for his glory, to simply
00:49:00.160 continue living out this gospel, not knowing when or where or how God will use the seemingly small
00:49:07.920 obedience of a Christian to start a movement that can once again change the course of history for his 0.98
00:49:15.760 glory. So happy Reformation Day, my fellow Protestants. I'm thankful for the church. I'm thankful for the
00:49:25.000 true church that is defined by faith in Christ by grace from God. All right, that's all we have time for
00:49:34.960 today. We will be back here tomorrow.