I don't know about you, but I woke up this morning and the first thing I thought was, it's really cold. So we're on our way to church this morning and my kid's in the car and she says, my dad, it's so cold, my feet are freezing. And of course, October is here, right? It's made its presence known in our home of Wisconsin. I always love October. And I think about when I was growing up, that this time of year, I was always really excited because there's a certain day that we celebrate at the end of this month that always got me really excited. And unfortunately, I'm talking about Halloween because the kids, we love to go out. And how could you really compete with going out and being able to get as much candy as you want, and simply for the asking, that kind of thing is kind of hard to compete with for a young child. But I had a younger sister, the youngest of us, and when we were excitedly talking about Halloween, she would always say, it's not Halloween, it's Reformation Day. As a child already, she was very pious. Of course, then she would fall asleep during the church service and wake up crying at the end. Sherry, if you're listening to this, your heart was in the right place and you gave a great witness. many years to reflect back. Of course, I think about Reformation Day, and it's so exciting, right? Because you've got this grand story about Luther and his rediscovering the gospel in the Book of Romans, and then his confrontation in the Diet of Worms when he was up against the powers of not only the state, but the church, the Kaiser himself, and the Pope, and all the bishops. and all the grand music that we play, you know, in Festiburg, the mighty fortress is our God, how we sing these songs, and it's, what could be better than that, right? We just love Reformation Day. So now, as we kind of prepare for the end of this month, for our Reformation Day this year, it's only appropriate that we go through the basic tenets of the Reformation and the five solas. So for those of you who were tuning in or who were here last week, we started out with the five solas, and we talked a little bit about sola scriptura, and we talked, of course, about John Huss, who, along with others, really kind of championed that concept without really championing the phrase itself. And so if you haven't had opportunity to hear that, perhaps as you have opportunity, you may go back and listen to that recording because it's kind of an introduction for everything that follows. But in any event, today, last week, we talked quite a bit about John Huss and his contributions. And then we started to get into Sola Scriptura. And we didn't really have a whole lot of time to do the topic justice so we're going to take that into this week and we'll be speaking about Sola Scriptura and then we'll be speaking a bit about Martin Luther and giving an introduction to him and his life. So. Where were we with sola scriptura? We had started to speak about Reformed theology and what it means and what it is and what it isn't. And we were talking about this idea of sola scriptura, which means scripture alone. So the big question is, how is it that we can encounter and get to know God? Well, there are a couple of ways, right? There are a couple of ways. What ways do we know that we can learn about God? Anybody want to hazard? Yep, natural revelation and special revelation. So if you think about natural revelation, what are we thinking about? the creation around us, right? Look at the creation around us. Scripture even tells us that that creation gives witness to God and it teaches us about him. So that natural revelation teaches us even without having the scripture, we can glean something about its creator by simply looking about us and studying his creation, his handiwork. But of course, the other way that we can get to know God is through special revelation. And here's the big question, what exactly qualifies as special revelation? Well, that is the topic that we got into, we started to get into last week, and we talked a little bit about that context. So, within this context of special revelation, historically, there was something of a divergence here, because as we know, sola scriptura means what? Scripture alone, right? Scripture alone. And opposed to what? Tradition and scripture. So that might get you to thinking, OK, tradition and scripture, what exactly does that mean? In my house, the first weekend of every December, we put up a Christmas tree. That's tradition. Does that count? I have Catholic friends that when they enter a sanctuary or when they pray, they give the sign of the cross. Is that tradition? I know there are other specific teachings that are relevant to the Catholic Church that we don't have in the Protestant world, and which ones of those qualify as tradition? So I think there is a lot of some amount of confusion about this. So if you have notes in front of you, at the top you see Luther's view and then you get into the Roman Catholic view. I'm going to switch that around because I think it helps to see first where we came from and then to see what the Protestant view was in response to that. So, when we talk about scripture and tradition, we're not just talking about any tradition that we might think of. We're not even talking about, you know, all the traditions that are distinctive to the Roman Catholic Church, like crossing yourself. So, what exactly do they mean? Well, I have here an excerpt from the Roman Catholic Catechism, which I'm going to read to you to try to set the stage of what is meant here. Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit. And holy tradition transmits in its entirety the word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles. So if I understand that the way I think it is supposed to be understood, I believe that is telling us that tradition, this tradition with a capital T, has given us the Holy Scripture. And I don't wanna get off on a tangent before we're even through this text here, but as I think through this from our own perspective, what would we say to that? We would say that the church received the Holy Scripture from God and it recognized the Holy Scripture, but it did not create the Holy Scripture. So anyway, I'm gonna keep reading here. which was entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and His Holy Spirit, and transmits it to the successors of the apostles, so that, enlightened by the spirit of truth, they may faithfully preserve, expound, and spread it abroad by their preaching. Going on here, as a result, the church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of revelation is entrusted, And I'm gonna stop right there again and just jog our memories a little bit. If we remember what we were talking about, about the history of the church, many, many centuries beforehand, when the church apologists were debating with the broader community in the Roman world, about theology and about the basic tenets of the Christian faith. So there was a lot of criticism coming from the outside world, from certain learned people who were critical of the Christian faith. And so certain among the apologists, the early apologists of the Christian church responded to them in part by saying things like, the scripture was not given to you to interpret. So if I put it in a paraphrase, you're basically opening up other people's mail. The scripture was not given to you to interpret, therefore you're not interpreting this correctly with the spirit that you should be, nor could you be expected to do that. This sentiment is coming back again and being expressed here in this catechism, I think, to refer to probably anybody that is outside of the Roman Catholic Church. So, as a result, again, to whom the transmission and interpretation of relevation is entrusted. does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the Holy Scriptures alone, but Scripture and Tradition, with a capital T, must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence." I'm going to read this last section here. The Tradition here in question comes from the Apostles and hands on what they received from Jesus' teaching and examples of what an example and what they learned from the Holy Spirit. Tradition is to be distinguished from the various theological, disciplinary, liturgical, or devotional traditions born in the local churches over time. These are the particular forms adapted to different places and times in which the Great Tradition, capital T, is expressed. In light of the tradition, capital T, again, these traditions can be retained, modified, or even abandoned under the guidance of the church's magisterium. In other words, not everything that we give the term tradition to, even some of those traditions which we may hold dear, necessarily qualify as tradition with a capital T that the church, according to this understanding, received from the apostles and from Jesus. So as I was reading this, to better understand this stance, I was reading the explanation about this idea of tradition and why it is that tradition was viewed in such a high way. And I was trying to understand this. And so the explanation that was given and that I looked up started out explaining that we have to take seriously not only those things which are written in the Scripture, but there are also things which were not written down, things that Christ practiced and that he taught his disciples. And so if you read some of the epistles, it refers to For example, Paul encouraging his listeners, his readers, to do those things which he had admonished them to do and taught them to do in word and in writing. And so not all of these things that he taught them to do were included in the canon. And so these are ideas about... the context in which tradition was given. So I think the idea here, as I was reading this, I was thinking, well, I understand that makes a certain amount of sense. Not everything was written down and tradition could be understood to be this is the context in which we received the word of God in the writings of the apostles. That much made sense to me. It was not until a little bit later when I was trying to understand, okay, what exactly does this mean then when the Catholic Church is talking about tradition? And I don't know that all Catholics necessarily agree on what qualifies as tradition with a capital T. I think there are different viewpoints on this, but these are some examples that I found that I just want to throw out there for your benefit. Examples of this tradition, Peter is the head of the church, Mary retained her virginity before, during, and after the birth of her son, our Lord Jesus Christ. So if you think about the immaculate Mary, the heart of Mary, and the immaculate conception, it's not referring to Christ, it's referring to Mary herself, right? That Mary was, and I'm gonna continue here, Mary was born without original sin. And so this whole idea about, you know, these ideas that the Catholic Church espouses about Mary. So I'm reading this and I'm kind of scratching my head and thinking, you know, I can see how these doctrines were derived in a sense to be consistent with Catholic doctrine. Because if Christ is without sin, he's without original sin, you know, how could that be if his mother had original sin? I can understand why this would attempt to be an explanation for that, but that this was tradition that we received from the Christ and the apostles, I just, I scratched my head on that one quite a bit. Mary was born without original sin. Mary was assumed into heaven, body and soul. And then of course there is the Trinity, you know, which is obviously something we all agree on. So these are just some examples. And again, what I don't know about Catholic doctrine could fill volumes. So I certainly don't have the last word here. And maybe if you know more about that, then I'd be happy to learn from you. But that is kind of the direction that we're coming from when we're talking about tradition. That is the point here. So Luther. And the reformers rejected this, of course. They challenged this. And of course, when we read about these examples of what is meant by tradition, then we understand why he did that. Now, I don't know how it is that all of these things, these tenets, came to be included as tradition with a capital T. I do know that. When I read church history from some of the very early sources like Eusebius, for example, some of the stuff that he writes is very clear and it seems very true. There are other things that are written that seem very far-fetched. And so when we read about history from non-canonical sources, of course, we must always do so in a very discerning way, not to say that nothing is can be trusted, but we have to be very discerning and understanding that at the end of the day, whatever else is true, you've got two options as I see it. You've got the canonical books and sacred scripture on the one hand, which we can trust, and anything outside of that is basically from non-canonical sources, right? That's what it kind of boils down to. I don't see any third option. And so I think that's why Luther and the reformers looked at that and said, it's in scripture, which is God breathed that we must put our trust and not these other things. And that was not new to Luther. So I'm gonna give you a quote here, a Luther's response. So Luther's contemporaries challenged him and they said, you reject all the teachings of the church fathers. And Luther responded, no, I don't do that. In fact, Luther believed in many cases that he was speaking and that his teaching was in the very best Catholic tradition from early times. So I'm going to read you an excerpt here of Luther speaking in response to some of these charges. He says, this is my answer to those who also Those also who accuse me of rejecting all the holy teachers of the church, I do not reject them. But everyone indeed knows that at times they have erred, as men will. Therefore, I am ready to trust them only when they give me evidence for their opinions from scripture which has never erred. So here, I'm just gonna stop a moment. There are those who look at the Reformers and say, you know, the Reformers never used the word infallible or inerrant or things like this. They might not have coined these terms, but the concept was there. So here he's saying, scripture which has never erred. This St. Paul bids me do in 1 Thessalonians 5.21, where he says, test everything, hold fast what is good. And then he says, St. Augustine writes to St. Jerome, these very early important teachers, to the same effect. I have learned to do only those books that are called the Holy Scriptures, the honor of believing firmly that none of their writers has ever erred. All others, So, I so read as not to hold what they say to be truth unless they prove it to me by Holy Scripture or clear reasons. So, in other words, he's looking at non-canonical writings with a critical eye, which we should all be doing, right? No big surprise there. So, what does this mean? Does it mean that Luther is saying, hey, it's not in the Bible, I'm going to get rid of this. It doesn't hold any weight with me." No, that's not what he's saying. That is not what Sola Scriptura says. What does Sola Scriptura not mean? Sola Scriptura does not claim that there are no other authorities beyond Scripture. Not the case. The Reformers did not just jettison the teachings of the predecessors. and wisely so. So if we think about, a lot of us have been together for many months and we've been talking about church history and we're talking about, you know, the Gnostics and their impact on the church, how the church responded, and other heresies that came into the church and how the church responded. And in time, what did the church do? It developed, it was forced to sharpen its stand on various issues and develop clear and comprehensive answers to some of these charges. And out of these discussions came the creeds that we have today, like the Nicene Creed, which is dealing with the truth of the Trinity, of course, right? Would it do us good to jettison these things and say, you know, this isn't the scripture, it isn't written down in the scripture somewhere, so I'm not going to give this any credence? No, that's not what's being done. And obviously, these things came into being for very important reasons. And if we do away with them, then we subject ourselves to the same dangers that the Church has encountered throughout the ages. All right. The Reformers saw a great spiritual truth set forth in the teaching of the Church Fathers and later theologians, most notably Augustine. They made use of early creeds like we talked about, the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and so on. All controversies over theologic questions must of course be settled in the final analysis by Scripture. So what does Sola Scriptura mean then? Scripture is the final answer. All these other things can be helpful. They can lay things out in ways that we can understand. They can tie the Scripture together and help us understand how one topic impacts another topic. But they do not replace Scripture, and they are not to be understood at the same level as Scripture. They are simply there to help provide clarity. Sola Scriptura bears on questions of inerrancy. Since Scripture is the Word of God, it is infallible and inerrant. Some scholars argue that the doctrine of inerrancy was not held by the Reformers. We already talked about that. Statements from the Reformers themselves indicate that they believe the Scriptures to be inerrant, which we just read in Luther's statement there. So the last paragraph here on this page, if you're following along on the second page, it speaks to the hermeneutical principle. So when Luther was debating with the Catholic Church about the implications of if every Tom, Dick, and Harry could have access to the Bible, what would that mean? And Luther's opponents said to him, if the common people get access to scripture and they start interpreting it on their own, that is going to open a floodgate of sin. What do you think Luther responded? No, that's not true, everybody can understand everything, no. He said if it opens a floodgate of sin, then it opens a floodgate of sin. But it is better that the people have the Scripture, because there is a basic hermeneutical principle in play here, and that is the perspicuity, I believe is the term, of the Scripture. The concept of private interpretation was based upon the principle of the perspicuity of scripture. Basically, this means that the basic message of the gospel can be understood. It is there, and it is clear enough, and it is written in such a way that though we may not understand everything, that the basic message of the gospel is there to be understood, and we can understand it. And so that is why common people must have access to the scripture. Though we may say that the common people, such as us, have access to the Scripture and that we have the right to interpret it, what does that not mean? This does not mean that we have the right to interpret Scripture incorrectly. Right. Cults or You know, there are those who hold that view, right? That it's just God and I. I've had discussions very similar to this, but where would we be without the teachings that are handed down from these great minds? Very good point, thank you for that. All right, so let's move on. and talk about Martin Luther. So last week we got an introduction to John Huss, and John Huss was something of a forerunner to the reformers, and he introduced the notions of, along with Wycliffe, of sola scriptura, not the phrase itself, but the idea. So now we are introducing Martin Luther, and I don't know if we're going to be able to cover everything that we have before us today, but we're going to do our level best. There's a lot here to dig into, and we are going to continue to speak about Luther in weeks to come, but we'll get at least an introduction today. So who was Martin Luther? He was born in 1483 in Eisleben, Germany. And basically, if you think about a picture of Germany in your head, it's kind of in the center east of Germany, of the current day Germany. Of course, at that time, there was no Germany. As we know, it's a fairly modern construct. At that time, it was the Roman, the Holy Roman Empire, which included all these little duchies and dukedoms and kingdoms and so on. But in any event, he was born in what we would today call Germany, in kind of the center east of the country. He was not like John Huss. He was not from nobility. He was somebody who had a great mind, who God used, but he was not from a family that was, as we said of John Huss, he wasn't one with a silver spoon in his mouth. His parents were very strict and austere. So his father grew up as a miner and worked his way up to the point where he owned multiple foundries. So he was kind of a, you say, living the American dream, but they weren't American. It was the German dream I guess. So he worked very hard himself and he wanted great things for his son Martin and he knew to do this involved a lot of work and he, let's just say he did not, apparently from what I read, he did not spear the rod and spoil the child. He was very austere, he was very serious, he was fairly hard on young Martin. This is probably not unusual, right, in the historical context, but Martin grew up with a fear of his father and his father's justice and judgment, and these notions that he had kind of colored the rest of his worldview, and we're going to see that a little bit more as we go on. He went to school, and again, at school, when he didn't know his lessons well, he would get whipped. I guess if I were thinking transporting myself to that position, I don't think I would have survived, quite literally, my elementary school years. because I wasn't always ready with my lessons. But anyway, yeah, so he was very strictly handled, whipped when he didn't know his lessons, etc. Again, probably not distinct to Luther, but that's kind of the way things were. Very austere background, and again, this colored his experience. So he grew up in this austere way with a a great fear, it would seem, of justice, of his father, of authority figures in general, and somehow it seems that that viewpoint extended to God himself and his idea about God as a judge and himself measuring up. You can imagine how nervous would you be sitting in school if you got whipped if you don't know your lessons correctly. I get nervous sitting in piano lessons. At any rate, Martin grew up in a sense of fear, it would seem. So as he grew, his father wanted him to become a lawyer. He wanted to do what was best in order to secure his salvation. And so what did he do? He became a monk. So the story goes, and you've probably heard it, some of you, that one day Luther was traveling along the countryside and he was caught in a great storm. And so a bolt of lightning comes crashing down. Oops, sorry about that. Fairly close to where he was standing. And you know what that's like when bam, you hear lightning that just shakes the ground and it seems like it's right next to you. He was terrified. And so he was out in the open and he was terrified. Thinking about the judgment of God, right? Am I gonna survive this night? And he cries out, as the story is told, to Saint Anne. Saint Anne, save me, and I'll become a monk. I believe that's how the story goes. Well, Luther's life was spared, and indeed, he becomes a monk. So in other writings, it seems to indicate that Luther became a monk for other reasons, that it had to do with his upbringing. In any event, he becomes a monk. and he joins a monastery and he takes his vows and so on. 1505, that is when all of this took place. And finally, it seems like he looked around at where he was and said, okay, now I'm at peace after all these years of being afraid of judgment, of God's judgment, of judgment upon myself from authority figures. I'm availing myself of the opportunities that I have, the means of grace that God has given me through this church. And he seemed like he was at peace with himself and with the world, at least for a while. But it was not to last. So throughout his novitiate, his superiors recognized his exceptional capabilities. Here's a guy who's got a great mind, very intelligent, good with languages. He ought to become a priest. So they recommend young Martin become a priest, and that's what he does. Martin Luther is ordained as a priest in 1507. And at this point, if you thought, well, if he was kind of satisfied at becoming a monk, now becoming a priest, he would be even more at peace. But such was not the case. Apparently, when he was, for example, handling the mass and he was distributing the bread and the wine, He was gripped by a great terror. Now again, think about it in the mindset of what they believed those elements to be quite in a literal fashion. You're handling the body and the blood of Christ, of God himself. And he was terrified at this. And he didn't think himself worthy. So I had a friend, and he's not the only one that expressed the idea that Luther was, he actually had mental problems. And it was these mental problems that led to his actions. And for all I know, he may have. I don't really know if he did or not. Perhaps he did. But in another sense, if you consider handling the body and blood of Christ, or what they believe to be quite literally the body and the blood of Christ, who would not be terrified at such a prospect if you think about what you're actually doing, right? Who would not be terrified of that? Who would not be terrified at the judgment of God? I would rather ask the other question, why weren't more people terrified? Why wasn't everybody terrified? So anyway, we're going to keep going here. These terrors that he had, instead of going away, they just intensified with time. So how do you deal with that? You're a young Catholic growing up. How do you deal with these concerns about sin and judgment? Well, of course, there's confession, right? And there's the sacrament of penance. So he goes to confession, and he confesses, and he confesses, and he confesses, and his confessors get sick of listening to him confess. And then he gets done confessing, and he goes home, and he thinks about a dozen things that he didn't confess, and then he gets worried about that, and he can't sleep. And again, we might look at this thinking, oh, Martin, you know, what do you have to be confessing so much about? But Martin was onto something. Martin was considering himself and saying, I don't measure up. I know enough about God to know that he's holy. I know enough about myself to know that I am not. And here is a startling revelation. This sinfulness is not something that is simply something that is an overt action necessarily that we do, or even necessarily something that we think. It is part and parcel of who we are. It's in our fabric, the fabric of our beings. What does that mean for confession? When do you stop confessing? You know? When do you stop confessing when your very being is fallen? How do you get absolution for that? And so, again, I would pose the question to those who think Martin was just a little bit mad. Think about the realities as they saw it. Would you not feel something like the same way? If you're honest with yourself and you know yourself, and I'm speaking to myself here, right? Who would not feel this way? In any event, this situation went on for a while. He availed himself of the sacrament of penance. He engaged in activities to punish himself, to try to bring his body to bear and be more righteous. And all of this was giving him no satisfaction. Somewhere along this time, Luther decides to go to Rome and make a pilgrimage. In this pilgrimage, he goes into the city of Rome, and he's very excited. And he gets to Rome, and quite an arduous journey, right? You're going over mountains without the modern conveniences we have today. And he arrives in the city of Rome, and he looks around, and he's just kind of disgusted at what he sees. He sees a lot of corruption. You know, he sees these These clergy, they have these, a lot of these folks have had affairs. A lot of them have, they're engaging in prostitution. There are all these basically love children running around that are kind of a result of this. And this is going up to the highest levels. And so he's looking around and saying, really? And what he expected to be a spiritual high point is turning out to be an utter disappointment to him. And at some point during this pilgrimage, he ascends the sacred steps, the Scala Sancta, I believe that's what it's called, right, in Rome, in St. John Lateran Church. Perhaps some of you have been there and done this yourself, but these steps, one is required to ascend on one's knees. So he ascends these marble steps on his knees, You know, doing everything he really could to be righteous and holy and deserve salvation. And he gets to the top and it is said that he's stated, who knows if it's even true. So he's doing all this stuff and he thinks, is this it? Intellectually he's not satisfied, spiritually he's not satisfied. So his His dilemma continues, and I don't recall offhand if this happened before or after he became a professor, but somewhere along the way, his confessors, thinking back to the experience of Jerome, early church father, said, you know, Jerome was plagued by temptation, and he fought against that temptation through study. Luther, you've got a great mind. Why don't you study, become a professor? And that will divert your mind and help you resist temptation. So he does this. He studies and he becomes a professor. I believe it was 1512. Luther receives his doctorate and becomes University of Wittenberg Theology Department Chair at age, I think, 29. All in all, not a bad achievement for a 29-year-old kid, right? Professor Luther. So all of this time, Luther, of course, is not devoid of knowledge of the scripture. He studied scripture throughout his time as a monk and presumably heard scripture growing up. So he was very familiar with scripture. He would have been super familiar with the psalms that he would have recited as a monk, and he probably would have known those psalms by heart. But now when he's studying the psalms, in preparation for his lectures, he's doing so with a different perspective. And he begins to read Christ into the Psalms, right? So when we read the Psalms today, this is exactly what we do. We read the Psalm of David, and we can easily see parallels to the life of Christ expressed within these Psalms. And this is beginning to dawn on him as he looks at this. So he's gaining a perspective that he previously hadn't had. and this goes on for a period of years, and he begins to mature, he begins to learn more. And during this time, his doubts and his concerns about personal righteousness and the holiness and judgment of God, all of these concerns, they have not gone away, all right? And one fine day, he comes across a text. I'm gonna read it to you. If you have your Bible, you can crack your Bible open. I'm gonna read Romans 1. And we're gonna go straight to verse 16. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, and this is a key, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed. So think about these key factors, gospel, righteousness of God. Those two things being tied together, that is the key point here. I am not ashamed of the gospel, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith as it is written, the righteousness shall live by faith. On the surface of it, you might look at this and think, how is this any comfort? It's telling him he's supposed to be righteous, It's telling him he's supposed to live by faith and God is demanding faith of him. But if we dig into the text a little deeper, we'll see that that's not what is being expressed here. Let's look back again at the terms gospel and the righteousness of God. What is being expressed here is not that God expects you to be righteous and that God is demanding faith. What is being expressed here, as Luther believed, was that what the gospel is, it is the salvation of God, and it is the righteousness of God that is in view in this text. It is the righteousness of God that is given to the believer. Faith itself is a gift of God. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. It's all about faith. As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. And this finally opens his eyes to something that has been the solution to something that has been worrying him for a very long time. I'm gonna I'm going to stop where we are in our notes. I'm going to jump forward, okay? Because if we jump forward a little bit, it will provide context for what we're going to read next, okay? So if you have a handout, you go to this page here, which it shows a couple of different views, right? And it says on one side imputation and the other side infusion. And I want to give us some context here about why young Martin was so concerned about obtaining salvation because I think most of us come at this from a Protestant viewpoint and most of us, many of us maybe have never heard any other viewpoint. But if we begin to understand what the opposing view is, then we begin to understand why it was such a big deal. So I want you to look at, the left hand side of the page where it says imputation view. This is what we hold to today as Protestants and as Presbyterians. How is it that we are made righteous? How do we get the grace of God? We might say that there is a double imputation going on here. So the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us. So as I explained to my kids, when God looks at you, he's got his Jesus glasses on. God looks at you with his Jesus glasses. So the righteousness of Christ is imputed to you. When God looks at you, he doesn't see your righteousness, he sees Jesus' righteousness. At the same time, the sins of the Christian are imputed or credited to Christ on the cross. So there's a double imputation, right? Or you can think of it as a credit. What that means is Christ pays for the sins of the believer, of the Christian, and at the same time, the righteousness of Christ himself is imputed to the believer. So there's a double imputation going on here, right? Through this double immutation, the sinner is justified in God's eyes. And I think this is what Martin was seeing in this text, something along these lines. This grace is the only means of justification. Works are involved. But the works that are involved are the works of Christ, not the works that we do. And here is the kicker, folks. Justification precedes sanctification. in this view, right? God justifies us and God sanctifies us. First he justifies us and then he sanctifies us. And those two things are two different things, right? That is the view here. Now let us see where he came from. This is the other view. This is what we would call the infusion view. So you're looking at the picture of a water pitcher pouring water into a glass Think about infusion as something like that. It's being poured into. So the idea here is that the righteousness of Christ is poured into the Christian. You might be thinking at this point, these are all metaphors. What difference does it make what metaphor we use? Well, bear with me a second and you'll get it. How does the Christian get this grace and this righteousness? Well, if you know anything about Catholic doctrine, the Catholic Church is a church that places a lot of importance in its sacraments. It is a very sacramental church, right? So the way that this righteousness and grace get into the believer are through the sacraments. So the child is baptized, right? And so doing this grace, this righteousness is infused into the child. there are various other sacraments along the way. And as this goes on, this grace continues to be infused, as it were, poured into this believer. All right, now here's the problem. There doesn't seem to be a distinction here between justification and sanctification for one thing. So how is it, at what point does God see you as being righteous? And here, again, I'll say here's the kicker. God sees you as being righteous when you're righteous. When you're righteous. So this righteousness that's being infused into you is your righteousness, but God is not gonna see you as being truly righteous until you really are righteous, until righteousness adheres to your soul. And here's the problem. Well, here's one of many problems or many concerns that I would have What if you sin? And when you think about Constantine, he put off being baptized until his deathbed. If you read this, you kind of understand why that might have been the case, right? He was not alone in that. There were a lot of people who believed, you know, if you sinned seriously after your baptism, then you were in big trouble. Well, I guess we're all in trouble when we sin, but the concern here is that there are things that you can do to nullify that grace. and make shipwreck of your soul, as theological speech goes. And so the Catholic Church makes distinctions between what it views as venial sins versus being mortal sins, and I don't know what all the differences are, but the key point here is that if you commit a mortal sin, you make shipwreck of your soul, and then the grace that you've received in these sacraments is now, either it's diminished or it's gone. You do have the ability to turn things around, and that ability comes in the form of, as I understand, penance. Okay, so there's a way, there is, as it's called, a second plank to becoming, you know, righteous. So if you think about this, and you think about the fact that we all have sinful natures, and you think about the fact that Martin is growing up in the background that we described, you really begin to understand the reasons for his concern. And again, I come back to the question I would pose to us all is, why wasn't everybody worried about this? Why wasn't everybody screaming about this and concerned about this? And I think many of them were. And that is why they did things like purchase indulgences, which was said to, as a part of the sacrament of penance, to forgive a lot of your sins. But that is the background that he came from. Again, why is it that this text that we read in Romans such a comfort? Because all along he's been thinking in these terms. It's my righteousness, I've gotta be righteous, and until God sees me as righteous, I am under the threat of judgment, and who would not be worried about that, okay? OK, so this discovery that he made erupted like a bombshell. One other thing I'm going to read for you, and we're running rapidly out of time, but this is a good note to end on. If you have a Reformation study Bible, you will see a note. And if you don't, then you can just read your text there, or I'll read it to you. But I do want to read a note here. This is Reformation Study Bible, note 2117, Righteousness of God. This is a key phrase in Romans, and I'm not going to read every word here. It's regularly explained in the letter as righteousness. Skipping on a bit, God's righteousness is shown in the righteousness of Christ. is imputed to or considered by God to belong to the one who believes. This imputation of righteousness to sinners who believe is fully consistent with the personal righteousness of God as a just and righteous judge. God, through the death of his Son, justifies or declares righteous Those sinners who come to true faith in Christ. Luther's reading of this verse had a decisive impact on his understanding of justification. So here is something to kind of close on. In the medieval age and in ancient times, The theologians of the church were relying on the Latin Vulgate translation of the scripture. And in their studies, the way that they read it, they came to the understanding, as we have said, that sanctification precedes justification. And that is at the heart of this issue. The reformers were reading this in the Greek translation, right? And they came to their understanding of God declaring us righteous through their understanding of this Greek translation. So what we can say here is that from the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, there were two very different views about what it meant to be justified and what it meant to be sanctified. So you'll see here at the bottom of the page, if you're reading along, the Protestant Reformation focused on the attention on the Greek meaning of the concept of justification, which was the word, I'm not even gonna try to say this. Where's Tony Dominic when you need him, right? Dikaiou, I don't know how to say it. Which means to declare righteous. So God is declaring the person righteous. Early on, there was a complete difference in the understanding regarding the order of salvation between the two communements. If you want to read more about this topic, there's a great book. It's called Are We Together? It's written by R.C. Sproul. You can get it on Kindle. And it's not a real tough read, and it's very, very interesting. But to sum it all up, the difference What made such a profound difference here in Luther's life is because he was coming at this notion of justification, meaning he had to earn it. And through his studies, he came to understand that the gospel means that this justification is a gift of God. The sanctification comes from God. The faith that we have, the very faith itself is a gift of God. And so all these fears he has are suddenly gone, right? This image of this austere judge, rather, just waiting to condemn you is eradicated, and now he sees the gospel coming from a loving God who is righteous, who is holy, who does judge, but who justifies his people through the work of his son. That's what the gospel is all about, right? And that's what Luther rediscovered. at the time of the Protestant Reformation. So we're going to learn more about this in coming weeks. So I hope that you've enjoyed that and learned something from it. If you have not already done so, you might want to listen to the introduction lesson from last week. It's online. Otherwise, next week we will be studying more about Luther, his view of justification, and we'll read about the great impact that had in the world. Let's close.