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So we are here tonight, in more ways than one we here because 500 years ago… something significant happened within the world of Christianity, now initially it was something very small that happened but it led to something that led to something that something really big. But that first thing that happened, all it was essentially was that a man stuck a notice up on a public notice board.
I’m told that in the past some preachers of a more anti-Catholic strain, would portray the young Luther, bravely and solemnly marching up the streets of Wittenberg with a crowd of his supporters behind him, encouraging him to drive the nails into the door of the church and with each physical strike of the hammer he was driving a spiritual nail into the coffin of that apostate church!
That is not what happened. It was a very ordinary request for debate over some theology. Later on in this I’m going to spend some time recounting the history of the reformation. It’s important that we know what happened.
But before I do that we need to be up front that what we are trying to do with this series is not stoke the fires of anti-Catholicism. Let’s just address that straight away. I wasn’t going to do so much of this, I was just going to say you know, don’t be sectarian but the more I thought about it the more I saw there is not 500 years of frankly a lot of animosity for no reason so I need to explain myself a bit better and in fairness I think its actually quite hard to talk about protestant essentials, which is what we are doing in this series, without talking about how that affects your view of and your treatment of your Roman catholic family or friends or neighbours.
There are significant differences of belief between ourselves and our catholic neighbours. For example, differences in our beliefs about how one gets to heaven, on how one is made right with God, on the acceptable ways to communicate with God, on what happens to us after we die, on the things we should be doing here in this life, and many other things. So you know these are not insignificant. There is a lot of disagreement on theory and a lot of disagreement on practice.
But the thing is, our fight isn’t with Roman Catholicism. Our fight is with everyone! I’ll come back to that later but we are going to talk about a lot of things in this series about scripture, about sin, about the sacraments maybe and other things, and tonight we are going to talk about justification and we are going to talk about all of them because what we discovered during the reformation was that we had lost sight of these things that are essential not just for following God but for being alive! We say the reformation still matters because what we rediscovered there is applicable to everyone everywhere always.
Now this comes to the crux of the matter, because there is an implicit criticism of Roman Catholicism in what I’ve just said. If I say that the teachings of the reformation are essential for living surely it’s fair to say that I then believe that Catholics are somehow less alive if they follow the teachings of their faith? No is the answer I do not believe that. I’ve met many Catholics who have a loving faith in the Lord, I’ve read many works by Catholics that were stimulating and uplifting and beneficial to me, I’ve read a lot of the catechism of the catholic church and there is much in there that is good and useful. I was reared as a catholic and much of my thinking and practice of my faith comes from what I was thought there and yet I do believe that the teachings we are going over in this series are correct and the corresponding counter-parts in Roman Catholicism are not. How do I reconcile this?
Well firstly we believe that you are saved by faith, not by claiming a protestant identity, and Catholics do have faith and as such receive the benefits of believing in Christ even if they go on to formulate, as they do, a very different understanding of how one is saved. They are still saved if they have faith in Jesus, romans 10:10 is quite clear, if you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord you will be saved,
Secondly accepting that many Catholics have faith, a saving faith, a faith that may produce in them as much if not more God glorifying good deeds than our own faith does, I still say that the Roman Catholic system of doctrine undermines a number of the chief benefits of faith in Christ. Namely that it adds unnecessary burdens to the Christian life, it explicitly denies that we can be assured that we will be saved and at times ironically enough given what I’ve just said, it gives a false sense of security to folk who have no faith whatsoever. That’s as polemical as I’m going to get. The humbling thing is that many Catholics overcome these things and have a depth of faith in God that surpasses the faith of many Protestants including myself. I’m aware I could be seen as patronising there. Oh I see Richie so you recon some of us could overcome our limitations is it? and do better is it? Yes. Such is what ive seen such is what I believe. Here I stand.
Now let me say two things in response to this accusation of being patronising.
Firstly the Catholic Church itself teaches what I’ve just said there, just in reverse, paragraph 816 and 819 of the Catholic Catechism says that it is within the Catholic Church that the fullness of Faith can be found. Non-Catholic Christians, or what they call other ecclesial communities have ‘many elements of sanctification and truth’.
Essentially they are saying that we have some good things but not all of it. In fairness they are probably being more generous than I am, however you should that know that also in their Catechism, you guys who were brought up as protestants are less culpable than I am who was brought up in the RCC and left and further not only am I more guilty than you but because I have studied Catholicism and rejected it wholeheartedly I am actually guilty of heresy which is a mortal sin, and so in their understanding should I not repent of it before I die I will go to hell. Such is their theology, so you could forgive me for being a little bit more combative.
The second thing that might help you is that when I meet any catholic friends of mine I don’t consider them a pagan in need of converting. They might be, but they could just as well be a brother or a sister with whom I have doctrinal disagreements with, and from whom I might learn a lot about following Jesus.
Either way as I said I find the catholic system to add unwarranted and unnecessary duties to people, if when I’m chatting to them I find them labouring under these extra duties I’m not going to hesitate to tell about my faith. And also if I think that their Catholicism is just something they use to rubberstamp the various sections of their life well i’ll feel free to talk them about coming to my church.
I want to convince people to come to my church if I think it would be good for them to do so, or if it think it’s necessary for them but if they’re Catholics and believe Jesus is the Lord and are doing all right in their faith, well then I’m happy to have the conversation about our differences and see what happens, if they want to have that conversation but I’m not going to push it. And also practically speaking particularly here in the North, it’s not small thing to convert from Catholicism to some form of Protestantism or vica versa, like today is remembrance day and the reality is that to go a church that celebrates remembrance is a bridge too far for many Catholics so it may be that they accept everything I have to say to them but coming to a protestant church is just not going to happen and I have live with that.
Now all that said and I still haven’t got onto the Justification. I do feel all that needed to be said. I hope you can see now why I say our fight isn’t with Roman Catholicism its with everyone! Like I need to talk to the boys who are saying I’m going to hell, if you meet or are friends with a catholic for whom their catholic faith isn’t doing the job then tell them gospel, but for the most part these doctrines we are going to be talking bout in this series are for those who don’t know him who don’t care about him, who are antagonistic to God and that is ture whether they are catholic protestant or whatever.
In fact let me say this if we were going to feel the need to have a fight with anyone over these doctrines it would be within our own church. The NT has many warnings about the wolves in sheep’s clothing teaching things that are not the truth. That’s a reference to folk who are in your church. Now ones in the one down the road.
Anyway, lets talk about Justification.
So as I said earlier Luther nailed a document to a church door in his home town of Wittenberg and they say this is the start of the reformation but as always there’s a bigger picture going on. And the two bigger things you need to know is that pope was a political ruler in Europe at the time and a lot of lesser princes and kingdoms were seeking ways to gain more power and so the reformation became a way that they did this. I’m not going to talk about that aspect of it at all but you should know that this was happening because later on when Luther was on trial for his teachings he would have burned as heretic had he not a prince who was favourable too him and that prince effectively overruled the rule of the church and rescued Luther. If hadnt done that, then I would here saying Mass right now and I certainly going home to my wife.
The second bigger context which I find very interesting is that the western church at the time was very corrupt and this isn’t like protestant bigotry speaking, all historians agree with this catholic or otherwise. The clergy were uneducated, the popes were elected with a lot of influence from local powerful families, the moral standards of Rome itself was not great, popes had mistresses, they had children, it wasn’t a good situation, Luther himself went to Rome and he was shocked by the lack of moral integrity that he saw on display there. On top of all this you have a situation where the king of France is increasingly powerful and he organises things so that the papacy moves to Avignon in France. This is about 1300. Now this caused a lot of controversy, and the next 7 popes were there in France and then there was a period where there was two popes at the same time one in Rome and one in France and there was even one year where there was three. Eventually they got back to having one pope in Rome but the reputation of the papacy had been shook
So by the time Luther comes along and does his thing, you have a population that is wary of the papacy and a leadership in Europe that would love to shake off some of the strictures that are upon them. And in a church that in general has a lot of issues.
Luther himself then, was a bright young Augustinian monk. He was very scrupulous in his studies and in his personal life, he would go to confession regularly and spend a long time telling the priest every little thing that he did wrong. He had this tremendous sense of his own failings and of the holiness of God. He says that when he first performed a mass he was terrified, because as you know the Catholic Church teaches that bread turns into the body of Christ, so Luther thought well I’m holding God in my hands and he was so scared he nearly dropped the bread! Anyway Luther superiors saw that he had a good mind and they thought it might help him with his constant doubts and fears if they sent him to study the bible and teach it and so they did and he took to this like a duck to water.
Now you see the picture of what happened is getting clearer, Luther was a scrupulous man, and he began to study the bible and as he studied it his sense of the awesomeness of God grew and his sense of fear of him grew as well because one of the things that happens as you study God’s word is that you find it is full of moral principles.
One thing that particularly galled him was this phrase in Romans chapter one verse 17 which Steven read out earlier, in the gospel it says a righteousness from God is revealed. Now I need to explain this word righteousness because it’s not one we use too often in conversation is it.
Righteousness is a validating performance record which opens doors. For example, if you want a job, you make a cv. That cv is a record of all you have done. It should have all your accomplishments and experiences. If you want a job, you take it to the employer or whoever you have to apply to, and it’s your validating performance record. You say, “here look at what I’ve done I’m worthy of this position. Accept me.” If your performance record is good enough, if you’re good enough, the door opens.
Or let’s say you want to go to college. What do you do? In that case it’s not your job record but your academic record. You bring out your grades. These now function as a validating performance record. You say, “Hey queens Look at this! I got two A stars and an A, I am worthy of getting into this course. Please accept me.” If you’re good enough, you’re accepted.
That’s the way it is in all of life. Everybody has these validating performance records by which they get into jobs, by which they get into college. That’s the reason every religion and every culture, everywhere in the world, believes it’s the same with God. If there is a God and you want to have a spiritual connection, it’s the same. It’s not a work record or an academic record; it’s a moral record
And Luther felt caught by this.
This righteousness of God really played with Luther’s mind. For he was aware of the fact that God was a holy God, God’s performance record was perfection and Luther knew more than most that he was not perfect. So that being the case then why in the gospel, the so called good news, would there need to be another reference to the righteousness of God! How was that good news??