It
was October 31, 1517 when Martin Luther, as tradition has
it, nailed his famous 95 theses on the Wittenberg church
door, inviting a disputation on the matter under his chairmanship.
Although the disputation never took place, he had unknowingly
launched the Reformation with this act.
The Church’s sale of indulgences had been a means
to raise funds by offering spiritual merits in exchange
for money. It proved to be a tremendously lucrative source
in the business of soul saving, strengthened by the teaching
that the dead had to expiate their sins in the flames of
purgatory before passing to paradise. “As soon as
the money in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory’s
fire springs.” After all, alms-giving was a good work.
It was a splendid bargain for the buyer and the seller.
Little wonder that some of Luther’s parishioners acquired
indulgences when their sale was offered in a nearby town.
That’s when the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master
of Arts and Sacred Theology, and Lecturer in Ordinary, took
action “out of love for the faith and the desire to
bring it to light…” He was troubled by such
practices and questioned their validity. His answer, as
we know, was: sola scriptura, sola gratia, sola fide
— only Scripture, only grace, only faith.
Luther firmly believed in and relied upon the Bible as
the source of truth. In his study of the epistles of the
Apostle Paul he had come across verses which had given him
the understanding that only through faith in Christ’s
redeeming passion does the Christian receive salvation.
Luther’s perception of the gospel was this: Christianity
consists entirely in the belief in Christ; the substance
of Christ’s teaching is unimportant. Or in his own
words, “The Gospel does not teach us what we must
do or leave undone, but says: God has done this for you,
has made His Son flesh for you, has had Him gone to death
for you.”
All good works, from mere monastic exercises to the most
fruitful self-sacrifice, are of no account before God and
have no effect and value in His sight. All we can do is
to throw ourselves on Christ’s mercy and believe in
Him, to act and suffer in faith. By “good works”
Luther meant especially those forms of ritual piety recommended
by the Church — fasting, pilgrimages, prayers to the
saints, Masses for the dead, indulgences, processions, gifts
to the Church; but he also included all “works, whatever
their character.”
Christianity
is a continual exercise in feeling that you have no sin
although you sin, but that your sins are thrown on Christ.
Luther defines love and charity as purely spiritual qualities,
stating that for Christians there must be a spiritual way
of approach, but “for the rough people, for Master
Everybody one must set corporally and roughly about the
task, and force them with the sword and the law, and to
be outwardly pious, as wild beasts are kept with chains
and cages.”
Of course he does not question the need of charity and
love for a healthy social life, but not as a criterion for
faith, justification, and salvation. Faith deals with a
person’s eternal standing before God but not with
his temporal standing in the world. The efficacy of the
sacraments depends on the faith of the recipient and not
on his forms and formulas. Faith is an individual matter,
producing a mystical (invisible) church.
The Litmus Test of True Faith
The book of James presents a litmus test for those who would
claim to possess saving faith. James stressed the importance
of faith
working together with works. He called faith
by itself (not having works) a
dead faith.
According to James, those who don't realize that faith without
works is useless, can be described as foolish. Luther rejected
the book of James as "an epistle of straw" since it did not
agree with his doctrine of "justification by faith alone."
As recorded in John 2:23-25, there was a time during a
Passover in Jerusalem when many believed in Christ, actually
in His name,
seeing the signs which He did. But Yahshua did not entrust
Himself to them, because He knew what was in them. The Greek
text indiscriminately says believe, but Yahshua distinguishes
what kind of belief it is, as to whether a person
believes in his mind or his heart.
Paul distinguished, too. He taught that salvation was
dependent upon believing in the heart, and he also explained
that such faith results in obeying and comes by hearing
a qualified preacher, or a “sent one,” as he
calls it.
This is completely in line with Christ’s teaching,
who made it clear that no one could receive Him without
receiving the one whom He sends.
The qualification for such a sent one is John 7:18 (seeking
the glory of the one who sends), and the qualification for
receiving faith is John 7:17 (being willing to do God’s
will). So faith is ministered from someone who is doing
God’s will to someone who is willing to
do His will.
Receiving faith in this way is believing in Him the way
Scripture teaches, with the promise that such a one will
have rivers of living water flowing out of him.
And this water will flow over to others, giving everlasting
life to them as well.
That’s the Spirit and the bride saying, “Come!”
And this bride has prepared herself through doing the righteous
deeds of the saints.
In other words, nobody is qualified to proclaim the gospel
except those who are doing the righteous deeds of
the saints.
Deeds are obviously very important, so much so, that Christ
gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every
lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people,
zealous for good deeds.
So the redeemed doing good deeds is obviously the purpose
of His redeeming sacrifice. For by grace you have been saved
through faith for works — not just to go to
heaven.
This says it all: Saved by God’s doing alone, for
the purpose of carrying out the works He has ordained for
those He saves. That’s why saving faith can only come
to those who are willing to do His will. After all He bought
us with His precious blood for a purpose. Would anybody
in his right mind go into a store and buy something with
his precious, hard-earned money that wouldn’t be useful
to him or serve him?
Paul then goes on to tell the Ephesians what these righteous
deeds of the saints are that they’d been saved to
do. In Ephesians 4:12,16 he makes it clear that this work
of ministry of the saints is for the building up of the
Body of Christ. In other words, these works represent church
life. Now we can see why the apostles established an actual,
real community when they established the church.
It wasn’t an invisible church, as Luther fancied,
but it was a city on a hill, as Yahshua taught – a
light to the world, where everybody could observe the church
life, the good works of the saints, and glorify God in heaven.
Since the church was such a city on a hill, we can see
the works. They are obvious. They were of one heart and
one mind. They lived like a big extended family, having
their meals together with joy and gladness of heart. They
had been forgiven, cleared from guilt, and they obviously
enjoyed being with each other. Nobody claimed anything he
possessed as his own, but they had all things in common.
There was nobody among them that lacked anything. They simply
did not live for themselves but laid their lives down for
each other, being continually engaged in the deeds of love
and charity they’d been saved for. And they knew that
they had passed out of death and into life because they
were loving each other in works and truth.
To Luther the teachings of Christ were not important because
all that he knew about works was that they were of no benefit
or merit in regard to salvation. By this thinking, he reduced
the gospel to only the redeeming and atoning sacrifice of
Christ on behalf of sinners. It became the gospel of going
to heaven. However Christ and His apostles preached the
gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore to the apostles
the teachings of Christ were very important, because teaching
others to keep the commandments of Christ would establish
His kingship or the Kingdom of Heaven.
In His last words to them He had commissioned them to
make disciples and to teach these disciples to observe everything
that He had commanded them during the years He had spent
with them. In obedience to this teaching they established
the community in Jerusalem.
Christ wants a visible church, because He wants
to demonstrate to the whole world what life under His rulership
is like. Luther had no wish to establish a church along
these lines, as is clear from his attitude towards those
who wanted to implement these things from the gospel:
The Gospel does not make goods common, except
in the case of those who do of their own free will what
the Apostles and disciples did in Acts iv. They did not
demand, as do our insane peasants in their raging, that
the goods of others – of a Pilate or a Herod –
should be common, but only their own goods. Our peasants,
however, would have other men’s goods common, and
keep their own goods for themselves. Fine Christians these!
I think there is not a devil left in hell; they have all
gone into the peasants.
Of course Pilate and Herod were not part of the church
and what the apostles established was binding only within
the church. But in the church, where by the Holy Spirit
the love of God had been poured out in the heart of every
believer, everybody just did what love demanded. For how
can the love of God be in a person who has the goods of
the world and yet closes his heart while seeing his brother
in need?
It is interesting to note that James, in his epistle of
straw, would call such behavior a dead faith, or a faith
without saving power.
At first, in the community in Jerusalem, there were no
needy among them. Some years down the road, however, someone
wrote a letter to the community in Jerusalem reminding them
that, “Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.”
He was charging them to remember those who led them, who
had spoken the word of God to them, and warned them to not
be carried away with various and strange doctrines.
In essence, the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews was
calling them back to the standard the apostles had established
in the beginning, as this is the pattern and foundation
of how the church is to be, yesterday, today, and forever.
The gospel is the gospel because it is the gospel. In
other words, the gospel cannot change and still be the gospel.
And the gospel will prove its authenticity by bringing forth
the same fruit it did when it was authentic, as at Pentecost
after Christ’s ascension. And what it brought forth
was authentic as well. The quality of life, the selfless
love it produced in the disciples, showed that Christ resided
in that place by His Spirit. So when a little while later,
persecution arose against this church, Christ Himself defended
it, saying, “Why are you persecuting Me?”
This is the faith that was once for all delivered to all
the saints.
Not just a doctrine, but the faith. Faith
is persuasion, the persuasion in the atoning sacrifice of
Messiah for the remission of sins so that the Holy Spirit
can be imparted, and the persuasion to do the deeds one
has been saved for, in the visible church of the redeemed.
This is saving faith.
Inconsistencies
It’s instructive to see how Luther moved from
tolerance to dogma as his power and certainty grew.
One comes across many contradictions along the way and
sees that his teaching is not to be easily understood.
He proclaimed freedom of conscience in matters of faith,
and the right of every individual to interpret the scriptures,
and then repudiated this when, as a result of such policy,
many sects arose. Then he instituted and enforced a
new dogma to insure unity.
He opposed most violently and successfully the distinction
between priest and layman, to then later on preserve
or create a priesthood in the Lutheran church.
He proclaimed the integrity of the secular order and
then supported the princes in their struggle against
the supreme secular head.
He stated that the commands of law have no divine quality,
and yet promised that even heavenly rewards would follow
on their observance.
He acknowledged that the princes are immoral and unreliable,
yet put in their hands, unreservedly, the material and
spiritual welfare of the people.
He opposed and accepted usury.
He did away with sacraments if they were not expressly
enjoined by Holy Scripture, but retained the sacrament
of infant baptism on the basis that Scripture says nothing
against it.
He argued that it was only the faith of the participant
that made a sacrament efficacious, to then declare that
the faith of the assembled congregation makes the sacrament
of baptism efficacious for the infant.
He argued that the Jews should be forgiven for keeping
their own creed under the fools of the “Romish
Church,” and advised dealing kindly with them
in order to win them, but later hurled the greatest
invectives against them and called for the sternest
judgments and measures against them.
He claimed Scripture to be the sole and final authority
in matters of faith, thereby dethroning the pope, yet
stated that his doctrine could not be judged by anyone,
even by the angels, and that anybody that did not receive
his doctrine could not be saved.
Luther’s apologists have had to advance excuses
for these inconsistencies for centuries, while his
enemies eagerly point them out. But there is no revelation
outside of having the commandments of Christ and keeping
them.[1] The commission of the apostles was to make
disciples, baptize them, and teach them to keep everything
they had been commanded by Christ.[2] All those who
were devoted to that teaching were together and shared
all things in common.[3] There is no revelation apart
from that life. Untaught people do not have these
commandments. Hence untaught people do not live the
life that comes as a result of keeping the commandments.
Untaught, unstable and unprincipled people
twist the Scriptures to their own destruction.[4]
[1] John 14:21-23
[2] Matthew 28:18-20
[3] Acts 2:42,44
[4] 2 Peter 3:16
|
Unterrichtung wie sich Christen in Mosen sollen schicken,
Vol. XVI, p. 367
Works, II, 316
Werke, XL, 436; XXV, 330, 142, 130; Werke (Erlangen),
XVIII, 260
Wider die himmlischen Propheten, Vol. XVIII, p. 66
James 2:14-26
Jesus is the English transliteration of the Hebrew
name Yahshua, which means “YHWH’s Salvation”
or “I am mighty and powerful and save” —
a befitting name for the Savior of the world. See
What's in a Name for
a more detailed explanation.
Romans 10:9-17
Matthew 10:40-41; John 13:20
Matthew 10:41
John 7:37-38
John 4:14
Revelation 22:17
Revelation 19:7-8
Titus 2:14
Ephesians 2:8-10
Acts 2:42-47; 4:32-37
Matthew 5:14-16
1 John 3:14-24
T. Münzer, Hochverursachte Schutzrede, Mülhausen,
1524
Romans 5:5; 1 John 3:17
James 2:14,17,20,26
Hebrews 13:7-9
Acts 26:14
Jude 3
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