June 9 – LD 23, Day 6: By Faith Alone
by Prof Herman Hanko
Read: Galatians 2:16-21
The great truth of the
Reformation was “Justification by faith alone.” Luther opened the door to
reformation in the church with that simple, four-word statement.
The Roman Catholic
Church taught differently. This apostate church that held sway over the whole
of
Chief among these works
was his confessions of his sins to his superior, Johann Staupitz.
He would spend long periods of time confessing to Staupitz
every little sin he could think of; and minutes after leaving Staupitz, he would think of another sin, and hurry back to
confess that sin as well.
Staupitz
got sick of it all, and finally said to Luther, “Brother Martin, if you are
going to confess all these sins to me, please commit some big sin, like
murdering your mother, to make your confession worthwhile.
Staupitz
did not mean that literally, but he tried to show Luther the way to the cross
of Christ, a way Luther could not yet see as the way to peace. The blinders of
the Roman Catholic church prevented him from seeing
the cross.
But God led Luther,
through this dark way, to the cross. And when Luther finally saw it, he
exclaimed, “I saw heaven itself opened before me!” He saw heaven as a reality
for him through that dark and murky cross of
The cross revealed
heaven because Luther finally turned away from a preoccupation with his own
works, and saw only the work of Christ, which Christ performed on the cross.
When Luther translated
the Bible into German, he translated such texts as Romans 5:1: “Therefore being
justified by faith alone, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ:” the Roman Catholics badgered him mercilessly for adding the word
“alone,” which they said was not in the original Greek.
Luther’s reply was, “I
know the word is not in the Greek, but the idea is.” It was the word “alone”
that infuriated the Roman Catholics. But Luther insisted on it. It was the
salvation of the church.
Why do so many leaders
in the church and ministers of the gospel want to go back to that awful error
of
We cannot tell with
certainty, but man’s pride is a terrible thing and sinful man wants to preserve
some tattered remnants of his pride. And so he says, “I can do something too. I
am justified by faith and my works.”
We ought to fall on our
faces at the foot of the cross and confess that we can do nothing– nothing at
all to be justified.