The Goal of the Reformation

Reformation is needed in almost every day. If Paul, within years of founding the Corinthian congregation, needs to see them reformed, we can't be surprised that churches need reforming regularly in the history of the church. Sometimes that reform is more in the nature of a revitalization, but I think people have, especially in America, been too content to be satisfied with entertainment and with shallowness, and we need a seriousness about God, about Christ, and about His Word, and I think to be drawn again to a passionate interest in the Word is going to take a major reformation of the church today. My hope is that this series will serve the church by causing people to reflect on what the church ought to be according to the Word of God. Next, on the Reformation Day edition of Renewing Your Mind. I would say that the theological issues that prompted this 16th century reformation are as great as they ever were, but also the task of reformation is never over as far as the calling of the church to the purity of the gospel and to awakening of the people. On May 31, 1517, the day an Augustinian monk named Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the castle church door at Vittenberg. Luther's bold act touched off what would become the most important period in church history since Pentecost, a day we continue to celebrate more than five centuries later. Today we're going back to an interview I had the privilege of doing five years ago with R.C. Sproul and Ligonier president, Chris Larson. I began by asking R.C. to imagine what must have been going through Luther's mind as he approached the castle church that day.

Well, I can only guess. It's not that I'm unfamiliar with the man and his thought, but what Luther wanted was a theological colloquy, a meeting with his comrades on the faculty at Vittenberg University on the academic question surrounding the pastoral issue of the sale of indulgences. The sale of indulgences that had been authorized for the building of St. Peter's Basilica had been farmed out to several people who were involved as legates from Rome, and Tetzel, of course, was involved in this business. I won't get into the whole ramifications of it, but Tetzel was in a bordering county, more or less, from Luther, and Luther's parishioners were going across that county border to secure indulgences. And Luther was very concerned about his own people, so when he walked to that door, I know he was deeply concerned from a pastoral perspective about his flock and what was going on with their spiritual life. But his intent was to have a deep theological discussion about the whole penitential system that had developed through centuries of time during the Middle Ages, so he posted the theses in Latin, and that clearly indicates that he had no interest in a public scandal or public discussion because the people didn't read Latin. And it was simply for the scholars to discuss. Well, some enterprising students saw the theses.

They took advantage of the new invention of the printing press. They translated, without Luther's knowledge and permission, they translated the theses into German, and within two weeks, they were in every hamlet in Germany. Karl Barth said it was like a fellow who was blind and was climbing a ladder in the church, and he lost his footing, and as he tried to fall in the dark, he reached out to get something secure, and what he grabbed ahold of was the church belt.

He walked the whole world. Luther wasn't trying to awaken anybody except these scholars and to deal with the theological issues. So you don't think he had any idea that that day of the impact?

Oh, I don't think he had the slightest clue. Chris, you recently returned from Europe and helped lead two study tours of Europe, Reformation study tours. What insights did you gain from your month over there about Luther, about the impact of the Reformation? Well, the first thing you realize when you go to Germany today is Luther is everywhere. He's on road signs. He's in gift shops. He's on socks that you can buy.

Here I stand socks. They even have Luther pasta and cookie cutters. There's Luther everywhere in Germany today. But what is missing is the Luther of history. Luther has become a cultural hero for the German people, and in some sense, rightly so, in that he gave them their first codified language as he translated the New Testament from Greek into the people's language.

And just as in the English tradition, we revere Shakespeare for giving us the fullness of a lot of that Elizabethan English that we treasure so much today. Well, in the same way, Luther gave the German people their language as he translated the Bible. But the Luther who is the preacher of the gospel, who took a bold stand at Worms, the one who treasured Christ above all else, that Luther is forgotten. They don't want to talk about that Luther. And so this project of remembering the Reformation that we're engaged in even today is vital for the church. We must remember Luther preached Christ and Christ alone. If Luther were alive today, how would he assess the visible modern church?

I think he would be crushed, except for his confidence in the sovereignty of God, but he would be profoundly disappointed to see how the gospel has gone into darkness again. You know, the motto of the Reformation was post tenebras, looks, out of darkness, light, okay? And the darkness was that the gospel of saving faith in Christ alone, that that saves you by faith and by faith alone. That that gospel gradually and incrementally had fallen into obscurity in the Middle Ages and it was plunged into darkness. And the real point of the Reformation was the rediscovery of the gospel. And Luther said in his own lifetime, he said that the gospel must be preached with zeal and accuracy and purity in every generation or it will go into darkness again.

And I think if Luther came and walked the streets of Germany or the United States, he would say post lux tenebras, after light darkness, because we have so much allowed the eclipse of the gospel of justification by faith alone within Protestantism and within evangelicalism even today. So we maintain that the Reformation is not over? Well, there have been some church historians who have said the Reformation's over. And what they mean by that is that right now there's no real difference between the Roman Catholic communion and classical evangelicalism. And I would say that the theological issues that prompted this 16th century Reformation are as great right now as they ever were and that in that sense the Reformation is not over.

But also the task of Reformation is never over as far as the calling of the church to the purity of the gospel and to awakening of the people. And what are those issues, R.C., that are different today in 2017 that Luther was not dealing with? He wasn't dealing with the whole secularization of Western Europe. He wasn't dealing with moral relativism.

He wasn't dealing with issues like abortion and racism in that degree that we've had to experience in our culture. Dr. Schroll, when we look back at the Reformation, one thing I've learned from your ministry is that you're never enshrining some golden age. You're not taking us back to the Reformation so that we remember things as a museum and we just wish for the good old days. Instead, you teach theology from the perspective of here's how you're going to put this into practice today. And I've never felt like we've gone back to the Reformation just to stay there. There's always this forward-looking takeaway that you bring to the study of Martin Luther and the rest of the Reformers.

Well, that's true. And when we talk about Luther's famous statement, here I stand, it wasn't like he was paralyzed and couldn't walk and couldn't move. He wasn't standing still.

He was standing firm. But what we need today is a firm standpoint for the truth of the gospel. Now, we have to confront all kinds of different issues in our day than the ones that Luther had to deal with in the 16th century.

And again, this isn't an exercise of nostalgia. We don't want to just go back and memorialize the 16th century. But the reality of the 16th century was there was a rediscovery. Just like in America, we had the Great Awakening with the preaching of Woodfield and Edwards and Wesley.

And we had this unprecedented revival in New England, which has since fallen into disrepair. And what we need right now, like we've never needed it before, is an awakening, a new awakening. And that's what encourages me from the 16th century was the church was in its death throes, and the darkness had completely eclipsed the gospel. But God in His mercy used individuals here and there in Scotland and Switzerland and caused a renewal of understanding of the gospel. And a new understanding coupled with a new zeal, how could you come to an awakening of the understanding of the truth of the gospel and not have a renewed zeal and really missionary zeal to make sure this gospel is preached with urgency and passion in your own time? And again, here we are, needing this awakening.

We're in the case of the throes of spiritual death. I look at what's going on in our culture in the last few months, and I just say, wow, we despise our own history. We despise the monuments of the past. People want to blow up Mount Rushmore. They want to destroy all evidence and vestiges of what was America in her past. And I'm watching what's happening here in the United States of America, and I'm saying this hatred for the American past, the Western civilization past, what do you have to replace it? This seems like the exact moment out of which Ligonier Ministries was born, right? So you saw the 1960s and the upheaval there, and what you're describing today seems to indicate not much has changed since then.

It has changed. The revolution of the sixties was far more impactful for American culture than the 18th century revolutionary war. We were different from the French Revolution. The French Revolution was an attempt to overthrow the current culture of France. And what had happened in the American Revolution in the 18th century was the patriots were trying to preserve the American culture from changes that had taken place in the British Parliament. And so it was a revolution to preserve the culture of the colonists. You go through the sixties revolution. That was more like the French Revolution. It was unbloody, but it was far more radical in terms of changing the cultural system that we live in.

People who lived before, you know, in the fifties and forties and fifties, the great generation, so it's called, they see the difference. And so it's like we have two nations right now in a more brutal civil war than was even fought with bullets in the 19th century. This is a clash, a cultural clash, a clash of values, a clash of history, a clash of truth, and it's not very pretty. R.C., you mentioned earlier the need for awakening. What comes first, awakening or reformation?

Well, I think obviously awakening has to come first. Reformation technically means the new forms, the new structures. The whole structure of Western Europe was changed politically, economically, and all the rest because of the awakening spiritually and theologically that happened in the nations.

But that happened first, and then the structures were changed and the whole cultural impact took place. So that's why you have to have revival, and you can have revival and never have reformation. You can't have reformation without revival. Revival means new life, but reformation means new forms, new structures, new values, new culture, and that's what we're looking for. And we want to see a spiritual awakening through the truth of the gospel and through biblical categories that will then manifest itself not only in individual changed lives, but the individual changed lives making an impact on our institutions. Luther's bold stand at Worms is exactly the type of assertive conviction that we must have today within the church.

And just as we look at the world and upheaval around us, the church we find has lost its voice, and it's lost its backbone. I just saw an advertisement today for a church, just today for an advertisement that said, we have a new steel drum band. Come and enjoy. Come as you are.

Flip-flops, you know, advertising. Wear your flip-flops, wear your sweatshirt, wear your blue jeans, and come and worship with us from 11.30 to 12. Have a good time, half an hour. I mean, but that's where we are. It's madness. Can you imagine first century church that the apostles are going to gather together? We're going to meet in the catacombs, and we've got this brand new steel drum band, and we ask you to come in, we'll have coffee, we'll have pizza, whatever you want. Can you imagine that?

That's where we are. And as the church goes, so goes the culture. Dr. Sproul, we talk about Luther's stand. It was costly, right?

Certainly was. Of course, Luther did not die a martyr. Many, many Protestants did, but Luther still lived as an outlaw all his life. He was under the condemnation of the empire as well as the church, so whenever he traveled anywhere, he had to have safe conduct.

And so he pretty much had to stick for a year he spent in exile disguised as a knight, you know, at the Junker Jorge, and where he was at the Wartburg Castle where he worked to translate the New Testament from Greek to German. But he lived in isolation, and he had a bullseye on his back until the day he died. But throughout history, anyone who has taken a stand, and you can relate, you can empathize with how costly taking stands can be. Oh, I can empathize that, but I haven't had one scintilla of suffering and pain that our fathers had to endure. You really hear this in Luther's line in Mighty Fortress where he talks about letting goods and kindred go, this mortal life also, the body they may kill, but what? I remember one great crisis that I experienced in my life that I was in a church by myself, and I walked out of that church, and I was walking to the parking lot, and in my mind the words were, let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also, the body they may kill. God's truth abides still. Amen. I mean, you have to have those moments or you're not preaching it. Because at the end of the day, it's God's truth. Yes, it is. And we are called to be faithful stewards of it.

Exactly. And that hearkens, doesn't it, to the conclusion of verse one in that hymn where he said, Did we in our own strength confide our striving would be losing? We're not the right man on our side, the man of God's own choosing. Luther's theology of the cross just informed everything. Everything was built around the person and work of Jesus Christ. And it seems like within the church today, Dr. Sproul, you've observed many times that we are running to so many other things, except to the gospel, except to Jesus Christ. You've heard me preach on Luther's last sermon in February of 1546 when he was depressed, became home to his hometown, and he was saying people are running to the relics and they would go to Aiken, they would go to Trier, and they would say, well, in this place they had Joseph's pants. And these people were putting more confidence and trust in what Luther called the Pope's secondhand junk than they were in the gospel.

This was at the end of his own life, and he was really concerned that the people had already lost the awakening and were returning to Joseph's pants. As we think about all of this and contemplate it, Chris, I'll direct this first to you, first of all, I'd like for you to conclude our time together, but as we think about the goal of the Reformation, how does it shape the future, the vision for Ligonier Ministries and what we're doing? Dr. Sproul's already mentioned that the church has to be preaching the gospel.

Otherwise, how can you ever expect that we're going to see a renewal take place in the culture? The power of the gospel is what changes lives. So first and foremost, we're going to keep on keeping on. We are a gospel-centered, gospel-preaching ministry, and the person and work of Jesus Christ will always be the center of who we are. And then we draw strength as well as parameters for how we do theology from the work of the Protestant Reformers. It's not just that Martin Luther came out of nowhere.

He was really in a long line of Reformers that had preceded him and would follow him. So we're not here to celebrate and lift up a man. We're here to talk about the great and sovereign God who changes the course of human history through the powerful preaching and teaching of the word of God. At the end of the day, we need Christians who have conviction. They need a conviction to live for the Bible and the Bible alone. They need to receive Christ by faith and faith alone. They need to know that salvation is by grace and grace alone. They need to cling to the person and work of Jesus Christ and Christ alone.

And to what end? To live for the glory of God alone. That will bring reformation.

That is what you've taught us, Dr. Sproul, and that is the strength with which we move forward. When Paul talks about, in Romans, about he was separated as an apostle, called to be an apostle, set aside for the gospel of God. That gospel of God is not the gospel about God.

It's God's gospel. He owns it. He initiated it. He announced it.

He revealed it. And that's all we do is to try to receive it and preach it because there's the power. We think that a more interesting program at the church, we're going to change people's lives. The methods that we employ are powerless.

They're impotent. The power is in the gospel. I hope you heard Dr. Sproul's passion there. I'm grateful for that conversation that we had five years ago as we celebrated Reformation Day that year. It was actually just a few weeks later that R.C. went home to be with the Lord. You're listening to Redoing Your Mind on this, the 505th anniversary of Luther nailing those 95 theses to the castle church door.

What an important day to remember. The Protestant Reformation reshaped Europe. It redirected Christian history, and it recovered the truth of God's word. And now, these centuries later, there is again a desperate need for our churches to return to God's inerrant and infallible word and the gospel revealed therein.

That's why R.C. wrote the book Luther and the Reformation. It guides us through several crisis moments in the life of Luther. Through those challenges that he faced, Luther was driven to Scripture, where he discovered the gospel in the book of Romans. Justification by faith alone was a liberating truth for him and the other Protestant Reformers, and it's good news for us to cherish today. When you contact us today with a donation of any amount, we will send you this book, plus the ten-part teaching series by the same title.

Request R.C. Sproul's Luther and the Reformation online at renewingyourmind.org, or if you prefer, you can call us with your gift at 800-435-4343. The Reformation encourages us to return to Scripture as our sole authority for faith and practice. Both of these resources help focus our attention on the biblical theology of the Reformation. So again, I hope you'll contact us and request these resources with your donation.

Our phone number again is 800-435-4343, and our online address is renewingyourmind.org. Well, what does it look like to live out Reformation truths in the 21st century? I hope you'll join us tomorrow and the rest of the week for helpful messages from our 2022 Ligonier National Conference. Our focus was upholding Christian ethics, so we hope to see you right back here tomorrow for Renewing Your Mind. .