Paul writes in Romans chapter 5 and verse 1, "Therefore, since we have been justified
through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."
There are, I think, two kinds of evangelical ministers, as there were two kinds of Reformers.
There were those who fairly calmly, consistently, carefully expounded the Scriptures and disclosed
very little about their personal lives.
And you would immediately think, I'm sure, of John Calvin.
And there were others who dragged their friends and their congregations through their spiritual
discoveries until eventually they and their congregations ultimately realized and experienced
the power of the gospel.
And I think it's fairly clear when Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the
Wittenberg church door five hundred years ago, October the 31st, that he was a man who
was still struggling to understand the gospel.
I'd like to go to all the Lutheran churches in the world and say, "Hands up all of you
who have read the Ninety-Five Theses and understood them."
Because well-known as they are, most Christians probably lack the patience to read through
them all.
As you know, they were intended as points of academic discussion written in Latin, probably
for only scholars and priests to read.
But there are occasions, especially as Luther makes his way towards the end of the Ninety-Five
Theses that you feel he is really on the edge of understanding the gospel and perhaps even
more in his agony of heart over the falsehood of indulgences, longing that he and the people
to whom he was already preaching knew what it was to have real peace with God.
And so he writes in Thesis 92, "Away then with all those prophets who say to the people
of Christ, 'Peace!
Peace!' and there is no peace."
And it was, of course, only when he discovered the real significance of the saving righteousness
of God that he discovered true peace in Jesus Christ and was able to say that he felt himself
to be born again and the very doors of heaven opened to him, and he entered into paradise,
not only for the future, but paradise here on earth in the assurance of faith and genuine
peace with God.
And he discovered, as many people have discovered since, who know relatively little about the
Reformation that the ways of salvation that were being offered to him, afforded to him
in the traditions of the church, could never bring his guilty conscience peace.
One of those ways, as you know, was expressed in a little Latin formula, that a man should
do what was in him, facere quod in se est.
And as he cooperated with God's grace, then eventually a righteousness would be produced.
He would stumble and fall, but there was a way of contrition and penance and if necessary,
indulgence.
And perhaps if he proved to be an extraordinary saint, he might become so righteous that God
could actually justify him.
And Luther, very early on, understood there was no salvation and no peace to be found
in such a way.
He began to learn that our basic problem is we are incurvatus in se, "turned in upon ourselves,"
and there is no good in us.
There is no power to cooperate with the grace of God, and there is no man or woman who has
ever lived, apart from Jesus Christ, who has ever done enough to be justified.
But there was another way, and it was Luther's own way.
It is the way of many men and women, which is why Luther's message resonates still with
us today.
And it was this way, if I can just be sorry enough for my sins then I may, at the end,
find justification.
And so Luther confessed his sins, was sorry for his sins, did penance for his sins, and
found that there was no peace.
There was no hope in this false gospel.
He might've been able to sing earlier on in his life, "Not the labors of my hands can
fulfill Thy law's demands."
He could sing, "Could my zeal no respite know," and he could also sing, "Could my tears forever
flow.
All for sin could not atone; Thou must save, and Thou alone."
And then in the grace of God in Jesus Christ, he discovered the righteousness of God, the
saving righteousness of God that covers us, cloaks us in the righteousness of Jesus Christ,
enables us to stand before God as righteous as Jesus Christ because clothed in His righteousness.
And immediately this happened to him.
As Paul says here in Romans chapter 5, he found true peace with God, "Being justified
by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."
That little expression at the end is so significant, as Luther discovered.
He discovered, as been said, that we are certainly not justified by our works, we cannot be justified
by our sorrow, we are not even justified by our faith.
We are justified by Jesus Christ through faith.
And when he came thus to trust in Jesus Christ, the peace of God broke over his life, just
as it broke into the life of the Apostle Paul in a marvelous way, as Paul goes on to say.
In Luther's life of tribulations you cannot read or sing his Mighty Fortress or his Safe
Stronghold our God is Still without understanding this was a man whose peace was threatened
by tribulations, and he understood the guarantee that is given to us in the gospel of which
Paul goes on to speak, that rather than destroy our peace with God, tribulations work patience,
and patience that endurance that produces character, and character produces hope, hope
of the glory of God, that is to say certainty of the glory of God because it does not depend
on my righteousness but on Jesus Christ's righteousness.
And I can no more be seized from the glory of God through my tribulations than heaven
can be emptied of Jesus Christ.
And like Paul, more and more, contrary to all that had been wrought in his instincts
from his earliest childhood when he had seen that portrayal of Jesus Christ seated on the
rainbow throne as the judge of sinners and the condemner of sinners, he now discovered
in the depth of the gospel and was poured out into the depths of his heart that Jesus
Christ came into the world because he loved sinners.
And so he began to grasp, not least because now he was able to read in Erasmus' New Testament,
that all of his salvation was to be found not in his doing, but in Christ's dying.
Christ's dying!
And because of Christ's dying, he said the love of God is actually poured into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit, and you can hardly read Luther and think about all that Dr. Thomas
has told us about what he did, without really feeling this was a man who was filled with
the Holy Spirit and constrained by the love of Christ.
And he understood where to look for that love, to look to that same Jesus Christ, not enthroned
upon any rainbow of this world but enthroned upon the cross of Calvary for the forgiveness
of our sins.
And so, as he himself studied Paul's letter to the Romans, he remembered that it was true
that at just the right time, when we were still powerless, in Erasmus' Greek Testament,
"For the ungodly, Christ died.
Very rarely will anyone for a righteous man die, though for a good man someone might possibly
die.
But God demonstrated his love for us in this that while we were still sinners, for us Christ
died."
The knowledge that He died, bearing His sin under the judgment and wrath of God, and the
realization that therefore he was free from that wrath, he was free from that judgment,
there could be no condemnation for him as long as he was in Christ Jesus, his Lord.
So many people have gone Luther's way.
I remember a number of years ago a friend telling me that he was called to the bedside
of a dying lady, a lady brought up in the same church as Martin Luther, who for all
that she had done, and she had done so much that she had been made a Dame of the British
Empire by Her Majesty the Queen.
Renowned throughout the land for her good works, and a non-Christian nurse came to my
friend and said, "Will you visit her because she has no assurance of salvation?"
Well, of course she had no assurance of salvation until she looked in faith to Jesus Christ
and found, as Martin Luther did, that there is a righteousness in Him that covers all
my sins and prepares me for the judgment day and gives me boldness on that great day to
stand before Him, clothed in a righteousness that is divine.
Our evening began with the story of Tetzel selling his indulgences, preaching in a criminally
emotionally way into the broken hearts of men and women who feared their families were
in purgatory.
And because he failed in his ministry, Tetzel became a depressed, disconsolate, broken,
and rejected man.
In his dying days, Martin Luther himself wrote to him to speak to him a word of counsel and
peace and gospel hope.
And you contrast that with Martin Luther and those last words of his found written out,
"We are beggars, this is true," and discovering that although he was a beggar, he was able
to die in the unfailing love of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that three times from the dying
lips of Martin Luther came the words, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten
Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him
should not perish but have everlasting life.
God so loved the world that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting
life because of the righteousness of Jesus Christ given to us in the gospel of His grace."
Isn't that a great reason to remember the Reformation?
Isn't that a great reason to thank God for Martin Luther?
But isn't it also the greatest reason to understand that we are still surrounded in our world,
they may not be churchgoers today as Luther was a churchgoer then, and his companions
churchgoers longing for salvation.
But they need salvation, and they believe that there are two ways in which they will
find salvation.
They will be able to do enough, or they will be able to be sorry enough.
But they slowly discover by God's grace, as we pray for them, that they can neither do
enough not be sorry enough, but they have nowhere else to look.
And dear friends, we need to remember as we think about the Reformation and as we glory
in the theology and the doctrine of the Reformation and the discovery of these great biblical
doctrines, that the Reformation was not simply a recovery of doctrine.
It was a spiritual awakening of an extraordinary degree in which men and women were finding
Jesus Christ and being found by Him.
And we want to sound again that note that's already been sounded this evening that we
need a new kind of Reformation, that is to say we need a new awakening.
My own great, great predecessor in gospel preaching in Scotland, John Knox, you know
when he was asked to explain how it was that the Reformation came about did not answer,
"It was because of Martin Luther," or "because of John Calvin," or "because of John Knox,"
but says Knox, "Because God gave his Holy Spirit to ordinary men in great abundance."
That's the explanation for Luther.
That's the explanation for the Reformation.
And as we celebrate it tonight and tomorrow and look forward to the future, we need to
cry to God that He will send the same Spirit again.
We need to pray like Elisha and his companions, not just "Where is the Lord God of Elijah?"
but "Where is the Lord God of Martin Luther?"
You did it once, Lord.
In your infinite mercy, do it again.
Give Your Holy Spirit with Your Word to ordinary men in great abundance that they may be filled
with the peace of Christ and the love of God and bring the gospel to a needy, lost, broken
and dying world.
This is our prayer for our Savior's sake.
Amen.