As the church celebrates the 500^th anniversary of the reformation, I thought we might take a moment to remember a few of the gifts of Christ that the church recovered through the ministry of the reformers: the gift of the gospel in the gift of God’s Word granted to His redeemed community. Before we examine the priority of Scripture to the Reformation, it is important to understand the historical and religious context within which the Reformation dawned.

The early church had a New Testament perspective of the church’s identity as a spiritual body that was manifested physically through local communities. This view of the church was drawn from the biblical teaching that believers were grafted spiritually by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ so that Christ as the head provided His body the spiritual benefits of His life, death and resurrection.

Between 300 and 600 AD, two Byzantine emperors, Constantine and Justinian, purported that the empire and Christianity should be united. It was during this period that the Christian community began losing its perspective of the church as the spiritual body of Christ.

Wycliffe attacked the Roman view of the church arguing that the true church on earth is equal to the elect, containing only saved people. Furthermore, Wycliffe called upon all men to judge the Roman Church from the basis of the authority of Scripture.

A century after Wycliffe, the Catholic monk, Martin Luther, entered the scene. Luther was a monk at the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt. Luther’s conscience was tormented day and night by his sin. Yet, his service as a monk could not placate his terrifying fear that God was a judge who would call him into account for every sin. Luther vainly endeavored to satisfy God’s justice by following a path of penance.

Eventually, Luther’s mentor proposed the study of Scripture as a means of dealing with his conscience. In 1515, Luther began to teach through the book of Romans. Upon arriving at Romans 1:17, Luther came face to face with the gospel. Romans 1:17 linked the righteousness of God, which he feared, to the good news of the gospel. He could not understand this relationship until the latter half of the verse dawned on him, “the just shall live by faith.”

He realized that this justice was not the punishment of God, but a work of God on behalf of those who believed. God credits His righteousness to those who live by faith. Consequently, the believer’s righteousness was not their own but God’s. Luther wrote, “I felt that I had been born anew and the gates of heaven had been opened. The whole of Scripture gained a new meaning. And from that point on the phrase ‘the justice of God’ no longer filled me with hatred, but rather became unspeakable sweet by virtue of a great love” (Justo Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, Vol. 2, 19-20).

Luther’s confidence in the righteousness of Christ fueled a fiery zeal that would sweep through Europe igniting the Reformation. His greatest threat had been the towering fortress of God’s justice and the uncompromising promise of God’s unmitigated wrath, but now safe in Christ, Luther would boldly open the Word of God to unleash the doctrine of justification by faith.

Indeed, while Luther had many spiritual warts (and thus his writings require biblical discernment), we see the power of the gospel unleashed in the heart and soul of a monk in bondage to sin and guilt. For many years, the message of justification by faith alone in Christ’s work alone was closed off from the common people, hidden away in the inaccessible Latin translations of the bible.

Like the apostle Paul, the sovereignly fashioned trials became a platform for Luther to proclaim the gospel to the common people, princes and kings, and religious rulers. May we stand on guard contending for the authority of Scripture, for in Scripture alone is the power of the gospel unto salvation (Romans 1:16-17).