The Protestant Witness 10/30/49
Scripture: Revelation 21: 1-7
Text: Revelation 21: 4,5; ... “for the former things are passed away ..... ...... Behold, I make all things new....”
October 31, 1517 -- Martin Luther nailed to the door of the Castle church in Wittenberg, Germany, a public invitation to debate certain propositions. (He was not only pastor -- but professor of divinity in the Univerrsity at Wittenberg).
This was simply the accepted method of opening a public discussion. However, the response was such that that day in October, 1517 is regarded as the beginning of the religious movement known as the Protestant Reformation.
It was not a “bombshell,” - but one expression of a complex social revolution which changed the life of Europe. The voice in the book of Revelation speaks in these words. “The former things have passed away. Behold, I make all things new.” The Reformation made such an announcement early in the 16th century.
The late 15th and early 16th centuries were times of ferment in Europe. Intellectual and cultural life had been awakened following the crusades. Lethargy of Dark Ages was being thrown off. (Economic) Feudal system was being thrown off and there were beginnings of capitalism. (political) - rise of fervent nationalism. (social) Medieval awe of massive institutional systems disappeared and common man felt a new sense of individual personal worth and right to freedom. -- Scientific awakening. --- voyages of exploration and discovery. Columbus had reached America in 1492, 25 years before Luther’s theses for debate were nailed to the church door. The mind of man was bursting with growth and activity like a tulip bulb in the spring.
In Italy, the Renaissance, or rebirth of learning following the crusades, flowered in a profusion of art forms. Later, the movement spent itself in sensualism.
In central and northern Europe, the Renaissance took the form of intellectual activity - fresh interest in science, scholarship, religion. There were many social and political forces active in the Protestant Reformation. We are here concerned chiefly with the Reformation as a spiritual movement.
A. The word “Protestant” has two tones.
1) Because the Reformation was in part a criticism of existing evils, it has sometimes been regarded as a negative movement. It is negative only in the sense that removal of diseased tissues in the body by surgery is sometimes a necessary preliminary to the regaining of health.
Protestant Reformation - in part -- a process of clearing away noxious things in the Christian Church to permit the return of spiritual health.
Official church of Luther’s day was corrupt (a historical fact). He knew it -- he was one of its priests. Many others knew it, too, and were sick at heart about it. Church leaders in highest places had fought for power; some were sexually immoral; some maintained their place in the ecclesiastical system by bribery. Luther had seen at first hand the corruption in church officialdom while on a visit to Rome. And he was one of many who were ashamed of what they saw. It was the sale of indulgences that prompted him to debate and action.
Indulgences -- sold as a means of raising money for the completion of the vast cathedral of St. Peter in Rome. An indulgence is a remission of the whole or part of temporal punishment due to forgiveness of sin, granted by the pope -- It really remits the whole or part of the punishment due the sinner by God, either here or in purgatory.
The Roman church has not wholly abandoned this practice. But it was flagrant in Luther’s time. Common people were led to understand that indulgences granted forgiveness of sins and immediate release from purgatory. For a price, the punishment for not only one’s past, but also one’s future sins was remitted by the church. Indulgences were sold for remission of the sins of the dead. The traffic --- so extensive and so corrupt that bills for the sale of indulgences actually circulated as negotiable paper.
These practices prompted Luther’s invitation to debate. Perhaps no on was more surprised than he at the popular response to his bold action. So the Reformation was partly a testimony to the right in condemnation of a great evil.
2) Primarily & more important -- Reformation was an affirmation of faith. “Pro testis” - “a witness for” constructive testimony for principles, ideas, causes -- for the faith of the New Testament, the faith and experience of authentic evangelical Christianity in every age; faith in Jesus of Nazareth, God’s son appointed to reconcile sinful men to himself; Christ ministering even now as a loving personal presence with people.
Luther’s experience: Augustinian monk. Spiritual crisis. Sought peace of mind and soul. Wanted forgiveness. Wished the spiritual power of the early Christians. Was not helped by the conventional forms of his church. Found the answers to his need in the Scripture. Experienced salvation by faith (not by rite or sacraments). The soul appeals directly to the Heavenly Father who receives and ministers to him. This is the primitive experience of the earliest Christians - the experience that is the heart of all true evangelical Christianity.
Luther was spiritual brother of Paul who had only disillusion & despair in attempt to find salvation in Jewish law, but found it in the presence of Jesus. Salvation - peace of mind - is the free gift of God appropriated by faith, trust, obedience to God. “By grace are ye saved by faith.” [Ephesians 2: 8]. Man is not now, and never has been saved by externals -- laws, sacrifices, rites, sacraments -- only by an inner experience of God, a change of heart.
“The Reformation was simply the primitive creating principle of Christianity itself.” It is the faith of the apostolic Christians from which the hierarchical church of Luther’s day had grown away - a recapturing of the inner experience itself.
It was no novelty, but a return to truth. Martin Luther was not the only one of his kind in his time. He was the voice of a multitude of simple inarticulate folk of his day who wanted goodness. There were other attempts to purge the church of its impurities. John Huss had been burned at the stake in Bohemia - century before Luther. John Wyclif, in England, escaped the executioner only by death from illness. The Reformation was no novelty. It was a movement - and still is.
II. -- mention briefly - the things in which Protestants believe.
1) New Testament doctrine of salvation by faith. A full willing yielding of one’s trust and obedience to God. This is the opposite of belief in salvation by priestly intercession and sacraments.
We have sacraments but our salvation does not depend on them. They are “means of grace,” aids to Christian living.
2) Direct, immediate approach of the individual soul to God. “Priesthood of every believer.” Ministers & laymen are not of a different order. All have direct access to God without hindrance. No order of man, no institution can presume to withhold, or to grant, the grace of God to any soul.
3) Belief in the Bible - as having the supreme and authoritative Word of God about spiritual life. Through it one finds light & truth and freedom emanating.
4) Right of private judgment -- perhaps the most fundamental of the cardinal principles of Protestantism. We do not submit to the commands of authority. We can and do yield ourselves in free, voluntary allegiance to persons, causes, institutions. In spiritual matters, we do not obey commands of the church. We make moral choices based on reason, experience, open discussions, education, divine guidance obtained through prayer. We follow conscience.
5) The “self-verification of truth.” Some things are true in the very nature of things - man’s nature and universal nature. In final analysis, religious faith rests not upon an institution, nor even a book but on the experience of inner assurance. If truth does not win that inner assurance, it is form without vital force; consent without conviction.
III. This morning’s comment is not just a recital of history, nor an enumeration of Protestant positions. There are implications for us now. We take the blessings of the culture founded on the reformation far too much for granted. If they are to be continued for our day and our posterity they will be bought with eternal vigilant commitment.
Because of the Reformation, the individual man, woman and child has acquired a new dignity and worth wherein each has been able to hold up his head in self-respect as never before. This dignity is seriously challenged and denied in more than one portion of the earth’s life today. Nothing but the witnessing faith of primitive Christianity continued today, can hope to save man from re-enslavement to institutions.
Life is holy in its common aspects. One does not have to be a recluse in a convent or monastery to become holy. One needs, wherever he is, to seek the grace of God.
Protestantism is tolerant - and it prompts toleration. And it expects toleration from the tolerated! There is no true tolerance in Communist Russia. There is no true tolerance for Protestant Christians in Spain. Protestant Christians are now being arrested and heavily fined in Spain for meeting even in small groups in Spain for prayer and Bible study.
Protestant tolerance does not imply acceptance of the intolerance of non-Protestants. All Evangelicals should be awake at this point.
Eternal vigilance is the price of the liberty we have enjoyed and do enjoy in our part of the world -- where the majority of the Christian folk are of the Protestant persuasion.
[Here he included with his pulpit notes a pamphlet by G. Bromley Oxnam, Bishop of the Methodist Church, New York Area, entitled: “How the Protestants Fight Communism.” The inner leaf says the statement appeared in LOOK magazine in the issue of October 11, 1949, and was reproduced by permission. I have chosen not to reproduce this treatise here.]
Most vital of our vigilances must be the spiritual discipline of ourselves:
1) Acquaintance with the New Testament & its doctrines & experiences.
2) Direct approach to God in our own praying.
3) Careful exercise of private judgment and persuasion of that judgment on the thinking of society.
4) Concern to see what we believe to be the truth verified - tested by experience.
Let evangelical Christians of every church family bear witness, by word and deed, to the saving, freeing grace of God in the heart of each believer, and through the believer in all of mankind’s society.
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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, October 30, 1949.