Devotion on Sola Scriptura, Reformation Festival, 11/1/09
“We believe, teach, and confess that the sole rule and standard according to which all dogmas [teachings] together with [all] teachers should be estimated and judged are the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures of the Old and of the New Testament alone, as it is written Psalm 119:105: ‘Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.’ And St. Paul: ‘Though an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you, let him be accursed, Galatians 1:8.”
Dear fellow Christians, these words are found in the beginning of the Formula of Concord, a part of our Lutheran Confessions. This work was prepared by Luther and his fellow reformers to deal with the controversy that arose when they departed from teachings the church in Rome held to that were not biblical. It is this position of the founders of the Lutheran faith that came to be known as the third of the Solas, Sola Scriptura, or By Scripture Alone.
It is fitting that this sola be discussed last. As we so often look at a house and how it is built, it is the foundation we tend to look at last; yet it is that foundation that is depended upon to hold the rest of the house together and upright. Remember how important the foundation of our faith is from Jesus’ parable of the house built upon the rock. It is also fitting to consider it last, as through these devotions we have been flowing from the first conversion of a person that Luther described, the conversion of the heart, where a person comes to know they are saved, and is filled with gratitude and love for God, to the second conversion, that of the mind. Here, a person comes to the conviction that God’s Word is true, and submits himself or herself to believe it and obey it, regardless of the opinions or ideas of others.
Luther came to the conviction that our Christian faith should be based on God’s Word alone from passages like the two we heard in the introduction to the Formula, and others like II Timothy 3:16,17: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. There are writings out there that attack Sola Scriptura, the main point being that the Bible doesn’t explicitly teach this. While the Bible doesn’t contain the words “By Scripture Alone” as a direct quote, we are told that the Bible is inspired of God, inerrant, is sufficient, cannot be broken, is useful, and that faith in its message brings salvation. In the same way that we teach God is Triune- the Bible not containing the exact word, but full of evidence that God is at the same time one God yet three persons, we understand the it is through the Bible alone that we can come to saving faith, and that only through the Bible did God reveal himself and his plan of salvation to us. What the Bible speaks, we know to be true.
Luther held to this conviction in the face of two opposing views, very different from each other, yet ending up the same. On the one hand was the Roman Catholic position, which wanted to give Scripture a back seat to the traditions of the Church and the proclamations of the Pope. Luther saw all the false doctrines and practices that had arisen from this tripod basis for teachings, and noted that everything false came from traditions of men and pope. Luther commented on the Roman Church that the Pope and the early fathers had gathered the flock by its teachings and was herding them away from the Savior to hell. On the other hand Luther could view the Anabaptist radicals, who wanted to dispense with the teaching office of the church, and didn’t really seem to need the Bible either, since they believed the Spirit spoke to them, or at least to their leaders, directly. According to this approach, each person was to come to their own conclusion about who God was, and how they would come to terms with him. Luther said of this individualistic approach to the Bible, with its picking and choosing, its reinterpreting according to human reason, or setting it aside entirely in favor of vain imagination, “That would mean that each man would go to hell in his own way.”
That was how it was- and that is how it remains today. The church in Rome still sets aside the Word of God to dictate according to the will of the Pope and tradition; the Reformed church continues to trust the Bible only as their human reason interprets it, and those who believe the Spirit speaks to them directly continue to do what even Calvin decried. “When the fanatics boast extravagantly of the Spirit, the tendency is always to bury the Word of God so they may make room for their own falsehoods.
Yet God’s Word remains true, unchanging, reliable. So we thank the Luther and his followers for providing us with a sound foundation for our Christian faith- Sola Scriptura – and continue to submit to the Word our gracious God has given. Amen.
Reformation Sunday, November 1st, 2009
Text: Jude 3 “Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.”
Daniel 7:18 “…The saints of the Most High will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever – yes, for ever and ever.”
Introduction: This has been a week! Dear fellow believers, the radio and TV have been overrun for the last several days by songs like “The Monster Mash”, and movies featuring slashers, monsters, demons, and witches. Yesterday morning I filled the Torrent up with gas, and a young Superman was tending the cash register. In the afternoon, various superheroes, princesses, and creatures of the night roamed our streets, bags in hand, to knock on doors and ask for treats. Superheroes and superstitions- all for show, for fun.
However, in the world in which Martin Luther grew up, thoughts of superheroes and evil creatures were dead serious! In medieval times, people were very superstitious, and the church of the time not only played on that, it encouraged it by its teachings. Life was a struggle, daily duties hard, and most expected the dismal grind to continue after the present life to that temporary place of suffering, purgatory, or worse. Roman Catholicism promoted a religious “survival of the fittest”, and Christians were encouraged to pray to the saints for aid on the grueling journey. Saints, proclaimed the church, were those who had lived such perfect lives that they had not only made up for all their owns sins, but had a treasure-chest of good works that could be tapped into by request. They numbered in the hundreds or thousands, most of them patrons of a category of people. The children were watched over by St. Christopher, those who cared for animals by St. Francis of Assissi, and so on. There were and are patron saints for everything from architects and air travelers to widows and workers. St. Anne, patron saint of miners, was very popular at Luther’s time; in fact, looking back, Luther admitted “Saint Anne was my idol.” Luther, believing in the religious system, took up the practice of calling on three saints at each day’s mass; so in the course of a week he had called on the twenty-one he felt would benefit him.
In a world of Christians who were busily confessing their sins to the priests, striving to atone for them, and asking the saints to help them and their departed loved ones, there was little time to focus on Jesus, or desire to, for that matter. You see, Jesus was portrayed as The Executioner, the one who would demand to see our righteousness and chide us for failure. People feared Jesus and fled from him, calling upon Mary and other saints to deliver them from distress. Having the view the church had given him, Luther recalled; “Christ in His mercy was hidden from my eyes. I wanted to become justified before God through the merits of the saints.” He showed that those weren’t just empty words by his life. When he wounded his leg with a sword and feared he would bleed to death, he called out, “Mary, help!” The mature Luther would later say, “I would have died [apart from God’s grace,] with my trust in Mary.”
In such a world, with such a mindset, Halloween- the evening when evil has great power and threatens, was endured with fear and trembling; and All Saints’ Day, the celebration of the superheroes of the faith, was celebrated as though they were a liberation force driving out the occupying enemy. What would help Luther and so many others come to greet this day as 1) A day to remember what we are in Christ, and as 2) A time to be reminded of how we hold it fast? It would come by the Spirit, working through the Word.
1) Before Luther had come into contact with the Gospel, as we shall discuss in a moment, the introductory verses of several of St. Paul’s letters must have seemed confusing. In Romans chapter one, Paul introduces himself as a servant of Christ Jesus, writing “To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints.” In I Corinthians, Paul introduces himself and brother Sosthenes as writing “To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ- their Lord and ours.” Ephesians begins, “Paul, and apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus.” The final example I will mention is found in Philippians 1:1 “Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi…”
There are similar beginnings to many of the other epistles, but these share a common term, hagios, or holy. Paul refers to those called to be holy, those who have been “holified” and called to be holy, to the holy ones. The proper way to say “holified” would be “sanctified”; and those who have been made so or who are so are properly termed “saints”. Catholics of then and now must look at these epistle openings as congratulations to those superheroes of the church, who earned their sainthood, and as a challenge for the rest of us to apply ourselves to. That is certainly how Luther saw things, and it didn’t make for a very happy church holiday. Not, of course, until Luther came to Wittenberg to study the Bible, particularly the Psalms and Paul’s letter to the Romans, in preparation to teach courses on these subjects.
When Luther read Romans chapter 3 verses 21 and following, he said it was as though the windows of heaven were opened, and he for the first time saw the grace of God and the love of Christ. These are the words that gave him and us so much comfort: “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.…”
What filled Luther with joy, what gave him so much comfort, was the knowledge that this righteousness originated with God! God the Son had accumulated it by his perfect life of obedience, and by his willing suffering and death to pay for our sins. And the fact that it comes to everyone who believes in Jesus through faith- that seals God’s gracious offer! No work on our part can or will save, and no righteousness exists apart from Jesus’ righteousness, to be received by faith and nothing else. Listen to Luther as he extols the sanctifying effect of the Word as the Spirit works through it to turn those who by unbelief are children of God’s wrath into saints, by grace, through faith:
“For the Word of God is the sanctuary above all sanctuaries, yea, the only one which we Christians know and have. For though we had the bones of all the saints or all holy and consecrated garments upon a heap, still that would help us nothing; for all that is a dead thing which can sanctify nobody. But God’s Word is the treasure which sanctifies everything, and by which even all the saints themselves were sanctified. At whatever hour, then, God’s Word is taught, preached, heard, read or meditated upon, there the person, day, and work are sanctified thereby, not because of the external work, but because of the Word, which makes saints of us all.”
So we celebrate this day as a reminder that the Holy Spirit called us to faith in Jesus through the gospel, with the result that the guilt of our sins is removed, we are clothed with Jesus’ righteousness, and are declared right with God our Father. We have been made holy, made saints, as a gracious gift.
2) It is a wonderful truth that we celebrate today, that review of how we came to be saints, all. But the reason for that status is what makes it so wonderful. If saints received a free car wash, how great would that be? Listen again to what Daniel was told being a saint meant: “The saints of the Most High will receive the kingdom, and will possess it forever.” Heaven is ours is a claim every saint can make. Yet those saints who are still alive are at risk of losing that kingdom by falling from saving faith. That is why Jude wrote, to encourage us “to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.”
So, the life of a believer is a life of guarding our faith and allowing the Spirit to preserve us in it- as the hymn goes, “I walk in danger all the way”. That being the case, how are we to contend, or strive to remain in the status of saint and finally receive the kingdom? Well, the same Spirit who called us to faith works through the Means of Grace- the Gospel in Word and Sacrament to keep our faith in Christ the Savior strong. We are directed by Jesus to remain in him, and he in us, and we will bear much fruit.
But we also have the help of the saints. Wait! What did I just say? Have I just slipped away from the truths of the Bible on this subject back to the man-made teaching of the saints that held sway in the pre-Reformation church? Not at all! There are two very valuable uses of the saints, as correctly understood, mentioned in the Bible. First, saints are called together to worship with those of like faith. They are to pray for one another, support one another, forgive one another, and spur one another on to love and good works, done in thanks for having been saved. The living saints serve as a support group, and we strengthen each other as we confess the same faith and follow the same Lord.
Second, those who have been “sainted” –that is, who have passed away in the Lord, serve as proof that God is faithful in all He has promised us, and serve to move us to so believe, and so receive the kingdom of heaven that is for all believers. Hebrews chapter 11 contains an extensive list of Old Testament believers who trusted God, are asleep in the Lord, and will arise with us to be welcomed into heaven (we might well add all those who did likewise in the New Testament times, as well as though whom we know died believing in Jesus from more recent times, from our congregations or families). In chapter 12, the writer follows up on that list with a call to use this “great cloud of witnesses” to give us perseverance and boldness to “fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith”, and follow where God leads us: to live a believers’ life, and die a believer’s death, without losing heart, but with full confidence in the glory that awaits us in Christ.
That is how we hold onto that blessed status of being saint; and the saints – those who have been made holy by the gospel, both living and dead, are valuable to that end. We thank God that he has seen so many safely home, and pray that by grace we will join them. Happy day, all you saints! Amen.
