So here, I am not lecturing on Luther. Luther is not the subject of the preaching of the gospel. Okay, Luther has been an illustration of such things in the lectures so far, and later on tonight, the ministry of John Calvin. But one preaches the gospel. the gospel and not the heroes or the villains of Christian history, whatever they may be. And so let us then hear the word of God as it comes to us from the Apostle Paul, from the epistle to the Romans. We've already heard two of those verses in the call to worship. So Romans chapter 1 verses 8 through 17 and then skipping to chapter 3 verses 19 through 31. So first Romans chapter 1 verse 8 through 17. Let us hear then the word of God. First I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you. because your faith is being reported all over the world. God, whom I serve with my whole heart in preaching the gospel of his son, is my witness. How constantly I remember you in my prayers at all times. And I pray that now at last by God's will, the way may be open for me to come to you. I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong. That is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith. I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I planned many times to come to you, but I've been prevented from doing so until now, in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles. I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. And that's why I'm eager. to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome. I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, first for the Jew, then also for the Gentile. Where in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written, the righteous will live by faith. And then moving to chapter 3 where Paul culminates this argument in this portion of the letter. The intervening verses are all about the sinfulness, first of Gentiles in the rest of chapter one, and then the sinfulness of Jews in chapter two. And by chapter three, the grand sum of one plus one equals, okay, everyone, everyone under guilt, under judgment, whether by the law of Moses or by the law of conscience. That's Paul's argument that I'm skipping, sadly. All right, so now chapter three, verse 19. Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who were under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law. Rather, through the law, we become conscious of sin. 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 Jesus Christ. God presented Him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in His blood. He did this to demonstrate His justice. Because it is forbearance, he left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. He did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time so as to be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Where then is boasting? That's excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law. Is God the God of Jews only? Is He not also the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is only one God. He will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised by the same faith. Do we then nullify the law by this faith? Not at all. Rather, we uphold the law. So for the reading of God's own word, thanks be to God. It happened October 31st, 1517. 500 years ago, this month, it came out of nowhere, out of absolute academic Siberia, a junior college for monks, and not in one of the more enlightened parts of Europe, but in that German peasant province of dirt farmers called Saxony, and a tiny backwater town called Wittenberg, who started it. Well, a junior professor of Bible, That's all. A monk of the Augustinian order, the son of a peasant turned coal miner, I'm sorry, turned copper miner, and it happened without fanfare or cheering crowds with no drama or public acclaim. This young professor of Bible walked to the bulletin board of his university. It happened to be the door of the castle church. And he posted on that bulletin board a single long piece of handwriting, which we now call the 95 Theses. It was a call for public debate among university professors in his own Augustinian University at Wittenberg. It was the place where no doubt many such notices had been posted in a previous time. It was the bulletin board of the university like that one out there for this church. What did he wish to debate? 95 sentences in Latin. This sounds totally unlikely to start a worldwide movement, and yet it did. Astonishingly, it did. 95 propositions in Latin about something called indulgences, namely papers authorized by the Pope promising release from the punishments of sin. and granted by the payment of money. And to add insult to injury, the money from the sales was to go not to the poor and needy of the Germans, among whom the indulgence were being sold, but to pay for the building of the greatest building in the world. What would be the largest, the tallest, the vastest space enclosed by architecture? St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, a building that took nearly 100 years to complete, the crystal cathedral of its day. And it also went to repay the loans from a certain archbishop named Albert, or Albrecht in German, who'd just been named Archbishop of Metz at too young an age. He was only 26. Canon law said 30 for an archbishop, but the Pope decided to relax the rule if the archbishop would pay him about $3 million. 21,000 gold ducats. Okay, about $3 million. Okay, so we're 3 mil. You can be archbishop. And so it was done. And so in this academic obscurity, this undistinguished university, this peasant place called Saxony, this unknown Bible professor called Luther, we began what we now call the Protestant Reformation of the church. Crucial to that reformation was the inner struggle in Luther's own soul over the meaning of St. Paul. The letter to the Romans was the crucible upon which Luther's conscience was at last resolved, resolved with peace and with confidence. And the text I read was the key text for Luther. Luther in his monastic days, his monastery, sought and could not seem to find a gracious God. The God of the monastic rule seemed to be a God who was stern and severe and who did nothing but demand. Obey! Obey! Obey! And so Luther knew that he could never obey enough. If grace depends upon obeying, then how is God gracious? And so Luther's quest can be called the quest to find a gracious God. And Romans chapter 1 becomes the key text. And the word that we read repeatedly, the word righteousness, was the word that stuck in Luther's claw and he could not fathom it. How is it that in the gospel we have a revelation of righteousness when righteousness means by implication wrath upon those who are not righteous? How can the gospel be grace when the gospel, as Paul says in Romans 1 verse 17, is a revelation of righteousness? It's like that question in the book of Job chapter 9. How can a mortal be righteous before God? How can a mortal be righteous before God? That late medieval world of Western Europe sought peace with God by its deeds of piety. It was a very pious age, and so pilgrimages to the holy cities. The great vacation plan was not going down to Walt's dismal world in Orlando, Florida to worship some huge mouse, but rather to go to places like Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain, St. James of the Field of Stars. And there you might perhaps behold the shroud of churn, which was said to be the imprint of the face of Christ from his burial cloth, the imprint of resurrected glory." All right, to see such things, to perhaps even touch them, was to be granted a grace because of the effort of the pilgrimage that got you there. And so young John Calvin at age six is brought to the relics by his mama, and he kisses them to receive the grace inherent in those objects from the lives of sanctity that had been lived by these saints. And so the supposed bones of saints and martyrs were adored in the hope of obtaining grace. prayers and vigils and fastings and pilgrimages and alms to the poor. And the relics so proliferated that actually Luther's own prince, Frederick, had one of the greatest collections of holy relics in all the world. He spent millions of dollars equivalent. to gain about 100,000 relics, which he kept in his own personal museum. The bones of saints, the clothing of a martyr, the blood-spoon shoe or sandal of a saint, such things as these, the true wood of the cross, at least a little bit of it. And those who were skeptical used to joke that if you gathered into one place all the true wood of all the true crosses of all the churches of Christendom, you could build a very large house. John Calvin tells that joke. There was also the medieval joke about the church that had on display the skull of John the Baptist. John was beheaded, right? They had the skull of John the Baptist from when he was 12. That's a medieval joke. Okay, it's a medieval joke. Okay, so a thousand years later, I'm telling the same joke. Some jokes are old. That one's very old. And so there was skepticism over the power of relics, but there was nonetheless vast faith in them as well. And if you visited the relic, you were said to achieve merit. Merit. That was the goal. Could you achieve in your soul enough merit to make up for your sins? That was the goal. And so you worked. You inspected your soul to find the sin, and then you did the works of merit to counter the sin, and these were called satisfactions. So that by your virtue, God's wrath was appeased and satisfied. It is as if you are your own crucified Savior. The work of the cross is called a satisfaction for sin. Isaiah 53 uses that terminology, that he will see the suffering of a soul and be satisfied. That's about the cross of Jesus. In late medieval theology, you did your own satisfaction. Without the cross, of course, it would be impossible. This is premised upon grace. Yes, that's always the teaching of the church. But you did your own satisfaction. I wonder if Mick Jagger had been a good monk in Luther's day. I can't get no satisfaction. That would be a good Luther song, I suppose, in a different context. And so along with Eric Clapton, he's knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door and it doesn't seem to work. He could not believe that God was satisfied. Here's what Luther himself says, I was a good monk and kept the rule of my order so strictly that I may say that if ever a monk got to heaven by his monkery, it was I. If I had kept on any longer with my vigils and prayers and fastings and readings and other works, I should have killed myself. And so I lived as one who in dread of the last day, nonetheless from the depth of my heart wanted to be saved. Is God satisfied by such deeds? Well, Luther does get promoted within his monastery. He becomes a priest in 1507 and is terrified by the fact that he may hold God in his hands. At the moment of transubstantiation, when the bread is blessed with those words, this is my body, he's terrified that he's holding God in his hands. By 1510, he's the trusted assistant of his own monastic leader, Dr. Johann Staupitz, the leader of all the Augustinian monasteries in the German territories. By 1512, he is Dr. Martin Luther. And Staupitz appoints him to his own professorship, professor of Bible at Wittenberg. And there at last, he has the duty to teach Bible. It was only with the doctrine that he were permitted to teach Bible, the holiest of all topics. So Luther and I have the same profession, professor of Bible. I kind of like that thought. And he and I both are in these obscure little colleges. I think mine is called something like Geneva or something like that. Not nearly as famous as the one across the ocean. That's Geneva over there. And there he's lecturing on Psalms and lecturing on the letters of Paul. And he says, regarding his lectures on Paul, here's how he puts it, I had indeed been captivated with an extraordinary ardor for understanding Paul in his letter to the Romans. But up till then, it was the single phrase in chapter one that I hated. In it, the righteousness of God is revealed. Okay, now look again at verse 17. What does 17 say? Chapter 1, verse 17 of Romans, In the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed. All right, let's pause there for a moment as if that's all that was written. I hated that phrase, righteousness of God, which according to all the custom and use of my teachers, I've been taught to understand as the formal or active righteousness which God himself is righteous and punishes. the unrighteous sinner. And so I was angry with this God. I was angry with this God. And then he says, a furious battle raged in my soul, raged in my perplexed conscience. Now, I've told much more of this story in some of the lectures that many of you have attended, but not all have attended the lecture. So bear with a bit of repetition. All right. It's not bad to hear some things twice. And here's what he says. Meanwhile, I was knocking at the door of this passage in St. Paul, earnestly seeking to know what the great apostle wanted. Did you ever knock at a passage of the Bible as if it was a door into something great? Did you ever seek earnestly the meaning of a biblical text? Luther had the duty of lecturing on them, so that forced his mind upon them line by line. But Luther also knew that this was God's Word and was the medicine for his soul if he could only figure out how. A God who does nothing but demand was of no help to Luther. Is God only a God who demands? Here's at last what Luther says, finally God had mercy on me and I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that gift of God by which a righteous person lives, namely And that this sentence, the righteousness of God as revealed in the gospel, is the passive righteousness that the merciful God grants us by faith as it is written, the righteous will live by faith. That's the rest of the verse, isn't it? Look at verse 17 again. In the gospel, a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last. As it is written, the righteous will live by faith. Now the version I've read is the NIV, which has taken things in their proper theological sense. But Luther did not read it that way. The phrase in my version, which I've read, is that a righteousness from God is revealed. That's what Paul means. That's how the words are meant to be taken. But Luther reads them in a kind of form for form version in Latin. And there it says, a righteousness of God. And he thinks it's God's own righteousness by which he judges the wicked. At last, paying attention to the context, he realizes that this righteousness of God is not the righteousness by which God himself is righteous, but is the righteousness that he gives to those who believe. And suddenly, the one who believes is counted as God's own son and daughter, included in the family of God, welcomed at the table of the Lord, a citizen of the heavenly kingdom with no criminal record surviving whatsoever, because that person is justified, counted righteous by God, and Luther at last understands. that justification is not a process by which you render your sins now satisfied to God by deeds of virtue, hence justifying yourself by your labor, but rather justification is the gift that God gives instantaneously to the one who believes. It's wonderful news. It's the best news there could ever, ever be that God His love is so rich and generous that even in the midst of our sin, even in the midst of the fact that we've not yet loved God with all the heart, even in the midst of the fact that we always sin that sin until the moment we die, not yet loving God with all the heart, in the fact that we are still doing this sin even now, and the preacher is doing it too, not yet having loved God with all the heart, In the midst of such sin, not yet loving God with all the heart, God counts us righteous by faith in Jesus. That's the basis of acceptance with God. It is not what you do. It is what God has done. It's not what you do. It's what Christ, it is cross. has provided. And so in Romans 3, this righteousness of God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to whom? To all who believe. But there is no difference. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile. Jew and Gentile alike are invited into this great gift, and Jew and Gentile alike have verse 23 written about them. Look at verse 23 of chapter 3. It's the bad news, isn't it? For all have sinned. Okay, there's our history. There's our biography. And I can't tell you how many times I've had this verse misquoted at me, even by theologians and pastors. Here's the usual misquote. You ready? All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God. Well, that sounds right, doesn't it? But the second verb is not that. Paul did not write two past tense verbs about our history. All have sinned. The first verb is past tense. What's the tense of the second verb? Present tense in Paul's Greek and in our English versions and rightly so. All have sinned and fall short. That's our present moment. That's right now. That's the preacher and that's the hearer. We are falling short right now. There's one more verb, it's a participle in Greek and in English, at least in many versions. What's the participle? And are justified through faith in Jesus Christ. What a gift. That is, I do not need to satisfy God by making up for my crimes by acts of virtue. I can never outbalance my sins by my virtue. My virtue always falls short, even in my greatest moment. Even if I were to give my life to save my neighbor, even in that moment, I am still falling short. All have sinned and fall short. That's my past, that's my present, and that's my future in my mortal life until my last gasp of death rattle. But for the Christian, one more verb, and are justified through faith in Jesus Christ. What greater gift could God give that we are everlastingly his friends, his lovers, his sons, his daughters, adopted, secure, safe, safe in the arms of Jesus. This is the gospel. Luther should have believed it already. It was there in earlier Christian writings. It's all over the pages of the Bible. It's there in St. Augustine. It's there in the best Christian writers from all ages that God receives sinners by faith. You read it in the 2nd century, the 4th century, the 10th century. You read it, you read it, you read it. It's all over the place. But that truth had been obscured. The deeds of satisfaction imposed by the church eclipsed the grace and taught, as it were, salvation by works. And in salvation by works, there is no hope. It took the tender conscience of a young monk called Luther to tear that blasphemy to shreds and to restore the clarity of the Christian gospel. And so to sum up Paul's meaning, not Luther's meaning now, but Paul's meaning, Even there in Rome, Paul will say, even that imperial city, I'm not ashamed of the good news about Jesus. Despised though it is by the world, this gospel, paraphrasing Paul now, this gospel is the power, the mighty force, set in motion by God himself, sweeping aside all other claims and loyalties, sweeping aside all other ways of supposed reconciliation with deity, sweeping onto everlasting glory for every believer, Jew and Gentile alike, first the Jew, then also the Gentile, the unveiling of a gift. And what is the gift, says St. Paul? The gift of righteousness by which God Himself is righteous, namely the demonstration of His great love for the world. That's righteous. And the demonstration of the status of the believer, vindicated against all sin. available by faith in the crucified Christ who is alone the satisfaction for sins. This faith available in the preaching of this good news. And so Paul quotes the book of Habakkuk there at the end of verse 17. The righteous will live by faith. by faith. Luther says it this way, and this is beautiful. God our Father has made all things depend upon faith, so that whoever has faith will have everything, and whoever does not have faith will have nothing. Again, Luther, it is faith alone that achieves this. that all sins are forgiven us, and that the whole of the Ten Commandments is fulfilled by faith, because faith alone gives me Christ. And Christ is the fulfillment and the goal of the law. And what else does faith give, says Luther? It imparts and brings with it the Holy Spirit from whom all good works flow. So as Paul asks at the end of that passage in chapter 3, by this faith do we then nullify the law? Are the commandments then nothing? What's Paul's answer? Verse 31, the last clause is there, not at all. On the contrary, we establish the law. That is the believer in Christ having been justified, Now the son or daughter of God, the citizen of the kingdom, is empowered now beyond all guilt to love and serve God and love and serve neighbor and no longer be enslaved to that introspection of soul, that soul inspectorship that dominated medieval piety. Did I satisfy God by my acts of virtue? The introspection on that question dominated a vast amount of medieval Christian piety. Am I good enough? Am I good enough? If that's the dominant question, you are not free to serve God and neighbor. You are serving your soul. And Luther knows that that's damnable. What does the gospel give you? Faith alone gives me Christ, who is the fulfillment and end of the law. And what else does faith give? It brings with it the Holy Spirit, from whom all good works flow. That's beautiful. And so what's the motive for Christian obedience? Fear or faith? It's faith. It's hard to love someone whom you do not trust. And so a new relationship of love with God opens to the one who has faith. You now trust this God. And what had before been fear now becomes love. And that is the best motive of all. The one who obeys out of fear of punishment does not yet obey well. The one who obeys out of love, ah, that's the freedom of the Holy Spirit. Luther says it this way again, we are justified by faith alone, but not by a faith that remains alone. That is, true faith goes on to serve God and neighbor. Did Luther get it right? Did St. Paul get it right? Let's check with Jesus, all right? Can we check with Jesus on this question? And we turn to Matthew 18, verses 9 to 14. To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down upon everyone else, Jesus told this parable. Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself. God, I thank you I'm not like other people, robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get. Okay, pause just for the moment. Does the Pharisee thank God for his acts of obedience? Yeah, I think you're not like other men. All right, he thanks God for his acts of piety. But wait, he thinks that by them he stands. Next line. The tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but he beat his chest and said, God have mercy on me, the sinner. And now Jesus draws the moral of the story to those who would trust their own deeds. Quote, I tell you that this man, the tax collector, I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God." That's Luther's word, isn't it? Justified. Here it's on the lips of Jesus. And about whom? A tax collector who was a professional extortionist serving the Romans against his own people. No wonder they were hated. We still have trouble with tax collectors today, don't we? I are at the IRS, right? All right. You have some trouble there sometimes. This man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. And now the last line of the parable. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. The one who has faith has everything, says Luther, because the one who has faith has Christ, and Christ has everything. So here's a poem on faith. I'll dare to read my own poetry if you'll pardon my excess here. This was last read in public last Sunday in Helsinki, Finland. at the consecration of a dear friend of mine who was consecrated a senior pastor of a Lutheran congregation in Helsinki. So this was the poem for that consecration. I was invited to take part but could not go. So last week I was supposed to be in Helsinki but it didn't happen. So here's the poem. Faith. That word lays claim to a grace both great and good, the grace by which we stand, a stand we should. It links like chain our poor and mortal plight to heaven's throne till mercy yields its might and earth moves heaven by heaven's mighty gift. So Archimedes' love or even stars must lift and he bends low who is sovereign majesty to look upon the faith that makes us free. Though mortal minds may drift with time and tide and lose clear sight of how they must confide, the one in whom we trust proves faithful ever, and he who never fails avails forever. Stand true to that word, and faith, unaltering, proves. Yet even faltering, faith shall not be moved. How much faith saves if you have faith even so small as a grain of mustard seed? So says Jesus. Immense faith in the wrong Savior damns. The tiniest faith in the right Savior saves. Shall we pray? Lord God, we love to take pride in our own achievements. Like the Pharisees of the gospel story, we dream that we are not like other people, that we are special somehow, that the rules don't apply to us, and that we are good and that you're pleased with us just as we are. Or on the contrary, we sometimes despair and wonder how we could even be loved because we seem so far away. But your word and your son both teach us that while no one is good, and while even our best actions are like filthy rags, you embrace us for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself in life and death and resurrection to be ours and thus to save us. Humble us then, Lord, with this faith, this trust that divests itself of any claim of our own, of our own virtues and links to Jesus. And may we know in our deep need your ever deeper mercy and forgive us and grant us this lasting assurance, which ought to be ours, that knowing the one and only Savior, Jesus Christ, that everlasting life is the gift you already have given. Grant this, we pray. And in granting this, we know that we have all that we need. We ask it in Jesus, our Savior. Amen.