Martin Luther & the Reformation: Study on Salvation, Justification, & Break with Rome, Lecture notes of Church History

Download Martin Luther & the Reformation: Study on Salvation, Justification, & Break with Rome and more Lecture notes Church History in PDF only on Docsity! Immanuel Church Brentwood - Adult Sunday School April-July 2017 – Church History Survey 6. MARTIN LUTHER AND THE BREAK WITH ROME 1. LUTHER’S PROBLEM WITH SALVATION (LUKE 10:25) Born 10 November 1483 in Eisleben, Germany 1505 brush with death: “Save me St Anne!” Ordained priest, doctor of theology, lecturer at Wittenberg Deep turmoil: - Stuck in the cycle of sin and penance - The Via Moderna (Gabriel Biel, d.1495) = God demands 100%... but if we do our best out of our own “natural goodness” then God will accept us 2. LUTHER’S BREAKTHROUGH TO SALVATION (a) Converted some time in 1510s, through studies in Psalms and Romans Romans 1:16-17, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith." “I had certainly wanted to understand Paul in his letter to the Romans. But what prevented me from doing so was… that one phrase in the first chapter: “the righteousness of God is revealed in it” (1:17). For I hated that phrase, “the righteousness of God”, which I had been taught to understand as the righteousness by which God is righteous, and punishes unrighteous sinners. Although I lived a blameless life as a monk, I felt that I was a sinner with an uneasy conscience before God. I also could not believe that I had pleased him with my works. Far from loving that righteous God who punished sinners, I actually hated him… “I was in desperation to know what Paul meant in this passage. At last, as I meditated day and night on these words… I began to understand that ‘righteousness of God’ as that by which the righteous person lives by the gift of God; [that] by which the merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, ‘the righteous person lives by faith’. This immediately made me feel as though I had been born again… From that moment, I saw the whole face of Scripture in a new light… This passage in Paul became to me the very gate of paradise.” (Luther, Autobiographical Fragment) (b) 6 characteristics of saving righteousness  Alien:  Imputed:.  Undeserved:  Personal:.  Side by side with sin: simul justus et peccator, semper justus et peccator  In hope, not daily reality: (c) How is this just? Because of the union we enjoy with our heavenly bridegroom! (d) Consequences of justification by faith?  perfect peace. “This passage in Paul became for me the very gate of paradise.”  humility. “We are all beggars now.” 3. LUTHER AND THE BREAK WITH ROME (a) 31 October 1517 = 95 Theses Against Indulgences The third incomparable benefit of faith is that it unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom. By this mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh [Eph. 5:31--32]. And if they are one flesh and there is between them a true marriage -- indeed the most perfect of all marriages, since human marriages are but poor examples of this one true marriage -- it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil. Accordingly the believing soul can boast of and glory in whatever Christ has as though it were its own, and whatever the soul has Christ claims as his own. Let us compare these and we shall see inestimable benefits. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death, and damnation. Now let faith come between them and sins, death, and damnation will be Christ's, while grace, life, and salvation will be the soul's; for if Christ is a bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which are his bride's and bestow upon her the things that are his. If he gives her his body and very self, how shall he not give her all that is his? And if he takes the body of the bride, how shall he not take all that is hers? (Luther, The Freedom of the Christian) 27. There is no divine authority for preaching that the soul flies out of the purgatory immediately the money clinks in the bottom of the chest. 36. Any Christian whatsoever, who is truly repentant, enjoys plenary remission from penalty and guilt, and this is given him without letters of indulgence. 37. Any true Christian whatsoever, living or dead, participates in all the benefits of Christ and the Church; and this participation is granted to him by God without letters of indulgence. 48. Christians should be taught that, in granting indulgences, the pope has more need, and more desire, for devout prayer on his own behalf than for ready money. 50. Christians should be taught that, if the pope knew the exactions of the indulgence-preachers, he would rather the church of St. Peter were reduced to ashes than be built with the skin, flesh, and bones of the sheep.