On this day more than 500 years ago a German monk named Martin Luther nailed 95 proposals for the Christian faith to the church door, better known as Luther’s 95 Theses.
This wasn’t as radical as it sounds: nailing things to the door was a way to get a conversation going, to engage people in debate, and it wasn’t necessarily the grand protest-starting gesture we think it was! However, if you come to the church office and start nailing things to the door that you want me to read, we might have a problem because it’s a glass door. Just email/WhatsApp/call me instead.
Luther was a German monk who gave his life to God after being providentially saved from a terrible storm. He joined a monastery wherein he lived a pretty austere life of prayer, confession, prayer, confession, prayer, learning, prayer…you get the picture.
It was his reading of the Bible that led him to the point of realising that God is good, we as people are not, and that through faith in Jesus Christ alone God would count us as righteous.
His coming back to the sole authority of the Word of God had profound impacts on his own life, on the life of the church, and on our lives too: we hold to the principle of sola scriptura due to men like Luther who passionately argued for the authority of the Word of God.
This two minute video from Ligonier Ministires is well worth a watch today…
James Travis 