We may know October 31st as the day where kids (as well as maybe adult kids) dress up and go “trick or treating,” but on the church calendar, it marks Reformation Day. On October 31st, in the year 1517, the German pastor and scholar Martin Luther officially posted a document called the “95 Theses,” which essentially called the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church to repent for distorting the biblical Gospel for the sake of their own gain. The heart of the problem was that Roman Catholicism had become a works-based religion that was more influenced by tradition than by the Word of God.
Luther reached into the inspired Scriptures, which he read in the original languages, and held onto what he believed was the answer: justification by faith alone in Christ alone. This may seem like a common, even cliche, Christian phrase today, but at the time, it was a revolutionary idea, which meant that our salvation was not based on our works, or any human work (e.g. priests), but instead on the work of Jesus on the cross. He who knew no sin became sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
Songs such as, “What can wash away my sin…nothing but the blood,” or “Jesus paid it all…,” or “In Christ alone, my hope is found…” may have never been written if Luther hadn’t courageously heeded the voice of God to oppose the error and tyranny of the religious and political idols of his time. That ‘post’ was the spark that engulfed all of Europe in the flame that became known as the Reformation, a widespread revival of the Gospel throughout the world by a faithful return to the saving reality of the Gospel in Jesus, as revealed by the infallible authority of the Bible (NOT the pope or king).
As Reformation Day 2021 providentially lands within our Transformation series, let us take a moment as 21st century Protestants (the larger branch of Christianity that Pentecostals have derived from) to appreciate and praise God for the faithful men and women in history, who were so transformed by the Gospel and the Word of God that it set them on fire to change history. Be encouraged and emboldened by these final words of Luther’s Reformation hymn A Mighty Fortress Is Our God:
Let goods and kindred go,
this mortal life also;
the body they may kill,
God’s truth abideth still:
His Kingdom is forever!
