Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 700 ｜ Why Reformation Day Matters

00:00:00.000 Today is a Reformation Day. What does this day mean and why does it matter to believers? This

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

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00:00:38.920 stuff. We'll link it in the description of this episode. Also, make sure that you get our new

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:12:03.140 believe in this kind of in-between place, this limbo between heaven and hell, but Catholics believed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:31:33.540 reformers in general, we would not, I don't think this is an exaggeration, we would not have Western

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

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

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

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.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - October 31, 2022

Ep 700 ｜ Why Reformation Day Matters

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