If you have a Bible tonight, would you turn with me to the other end of Romans? That is Romans 1 from this morning. And I'd like to read a few verses from Romans 1. Now, I thought about this earlier, that it probably would be better if I was at a lectern rather than behind the pulpit, because tonight I'm really not going to be preaching as much as maybe just teaching. And you'll see the difference. But this isn't going to necessarily be considered a sermon. I hope that's OK. And you can always fire me. But I want to read these verses because it does lay a picture for us of what I do want to talk about tonight. So beginning in verse 14 of chapter 1 of Romans just down through verse 18. Paul says, and this is God's word, I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. 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 the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. Let's pray as we look at these things tonight. Father in heaven, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the history of the church and what it teaches us about yourself and about ourselves and the wonderful privileges that we have in proclaiming and holding to the gospel of the righteousness of Christ. Hear our prayer and be with us as we talk about these things this evening. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. On the first Sunday after Pam and I leave here, that week we'll be driving to Berry, Vermont, where the session of Covenant Presbyterian Church, OPC, in Berry has invited me to what they call a Reformation seminar. And in talking with Pastor Durham over the last few months about this, I know that you are going to have a similar conference here. I forget what the title is. With All Your Heart. With All Your Heart. That's right. I'm sorry. And I'm not quite so sophisticated as Pastor Troxell is. In the advertising heading up to the conference in Barrie, Pastor Durham has put out a brochure, the title of which is, What do Peter, Paul, and Mary have to do with the Protestant Reformation? Some of you are old enough to appreciate that? The answer, of course, is that Peter Zorro and Paul Stuckey and Mary Travers have nothing to do with the Protestant Reformation. But the title came from a very clever friend of mine in Syracuse several years ago where we did a similar seminar there. And so I thought that I would share actually the session, we talked about it in session meeting, and the session thought that it would be helpful or interesting at least for the congregation here to talk about some of these things that have to do with the Reformation and the history behind it. And so tonight I just want to talk about Paul. What is Paul? Luther and Paul have to do with the Protestant Reformation. Now, Paul, not the Paul of Peter, Paul, and Mary, but the other Paul, died in around the year, the historians think, 67 what's called now CE. 67 CE. Do you know CE? Common Era? It's kind of funny, isn't it, that the moderns relish the thought that they can abolish any reference to the coming of Christ by just changing the nomenclature. And yet, when you stop to think about it, what's the difference between CE and BCE? Christ is the difference. That's the dividing mark. But there remains a very critical interest, certainly a keen interest, in the life and writings of the Apostle Paul. And we talked a little bit about that this morning. This man and his writings are probably second only to the words of Christ in the Gospels. And Luther himself said that the epistles of St. Paul far surpass the three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. because they are the books that show you Christ and teach you all that is necessary and salvatory for you to know. And of course we understand that as Christians we believe in the facts concerning the Lord Jesus Christ and those are critical and important. But then the interpretation of those facts, what we are to believe concerning what Jesus did, we've been over this before in past weeks. are the critical things. And so we have in the Gospels the facts concerning Jesus and then certainly in the writings of the Apostle Paul and the other Apostles we have the explanation of what it means that Jesus came and that he died and that he rose again. Now it's certainly true that Paul and his letters had a significant influence upon the leaders of the Protestant Reformation. And even to this day, this is true and it's very important for us to continue to try to understand the things that Paul wrote in his letters. And for the church today, understanding Paul is very important. Somebody reminded me that I left out one of the recent controversies in my list this morning, and that is the new perspective on Paul. Somebody should come up with it. No, that won't go there. I decided instead to bend thoughts this evening toward more of the historical angle and particularly looking at Martin Luther and Paul and remind you of some of the historical incidents that probably you're well aware of and try to put them in perspective and answer the question, well, what does Paul have to do with the Protestant Reformation, especially in the life of Martin Luther? Now the general thesis and theme of this short talk about this is to look at the two different ways in which Luther wrestled with the Apostle Paul. He wrestled with Paul on two fronts. One was just with regard to the weight and the significance of sin. particularly his own sin. But then as it broadened out in later years, the sin that was in the church and in the communities in which he lived. But particularly at the beginning, Luther was wrestling with Paul's view of sin in his own life. And then the opposite of that, or sort of the flip side of that, is Luther wrestled with Paul with respect to the matters of grace. So we want to look at that look at it from that perspective. It's kind of probably accurate to say that Luther did not so much wrestle against Paul in his understanding of these things, but rather, as you look at the scripture, you find that Paul too was wrestling with these issues of sin and righteousness and grace. And so, in one way, Luther and Paul wrestled together in these matters of of sin and grace. And these were some of the places where the Reformation had its birth, at least in Luther's mind. Some histories of Luther's life include a statement by his friend whose name was Crollus Rubinus, who actually compared Luther's conversion, Luther's experience, with the conversion of the Apostle Paul. Rubinus wrote, Divine Providence looked at, speaking to Luther, Divine Providence looked at what you were one day to become when on your return from your parents the fire from heaven threw you to the ground like another Paul and drove you to the Augustinian order. Now Luther himself would have disagreed with that, and we'll see the reasons for that in a couple of moments. He did not consider himself to be an Apostle Paul by any stretch of his own imagination, and he thought it would be rather negative or he wouldn't want people to compare himself to Paul. But you know the story probably of Luther's life as he was on a short leave from his education in Erfurt to visit his family in Mansfeld in Germany. back in the 1500s. And on his return toward the university, with every intention of continuing his father's desire that Luther become a lawyer, Luther confronted a severe thunderstorm. So you remember the thunderstorm story when he saw and felt the bolt of lightning that was very close to him. If you've ever been really close to a bolt of lightning, you know what that's all about. It's a very frightful thing. But in his own words, Luther said, encompassed with the anguish and terror of death, I made a vow to devote myself to the Lord God by entering a monastery. And of course, the famous quote is that this vow was made to Saint Anne. Who's Saint Anne? What? Okay, you're getting close, but who is she? Yes, the Mother of Mary, according to the apocryphal Roman Catholic Gospels. I think it's the Gospel of James. It seems to me, but I can't remember exactly. Anne is supposed to be the mother of Mary. Next week we'll look, Lord willing, at what does Mary have to do with the Reformation. And I'll tell you a little bit more about Mary. But you know that Mary was supposedly immaculately conceived. And I don't want to get into that tonight. But anyway, Anne is her mother, and therefore the grandmother of Jesus. And why she is a saint, I don't know. I suppose you have to have a saint to mother another saint in order to mother Jesus. I don't know exactly how many mothers you have to go back in order to accomplish that. But anyway, in the Catholic Church, you only have to go back that one generation. Anyway, Anne is considered to be the patron saint of minors. of sailors and the one to whom you cry out to protect you in a time of storm. So, therefore, it's logical that Luther, being a good Catholic at that point, knew Saint Anne and she was the patron saint of storm. Protect me from this storm, Saint Anne, and I will enter into a monastery. Now it's not likely, however, that it was just this one event that moved Luther to the Augustinians. There were at least four other events in his life that preceded the thunderstorm. Let me just tell you those because I think they're interesting. As a youth, Luther was intrigued by books. He liked all sorts of books. And one of Luther's hobbies, I guess you can call it a hobby, was that he would go to libraries at the university and he would just open books to see what was in them. And on one occasion, he was particularly interested by a very large volume in the library that did not have a title on it. And so he opened it up, and he discovered that it was a Bible. He opened the Bible and was astonished, number one, at the size of this volume. Now you remember, back in those days, they didn't have Bibles that were printed like this on nice thin paper. They were all handwritten. And so you can imagine the size of these Bibles. By the way, we just got word this week that we're going to get to go to the new museum of the Bible in Washington in just a few weeks. If you don't know about that, you can talk to me later. But anyway, Luther was intrigued by this Bible. And so he opened it and he started reading it. And he was astounded by the vast amount of material in the Bible. because he had been used to, in the church, getting these little snippets of the Bible. And he was reading these tremendous passages of Old Testament history, and the Psalms, and the Proverbs, and so forth. He went to Samuel, and he was intrigued by the words of Hannah. In 1 Samuel 2, the Lord makes poor and makes rich. He brings low and he exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust. He lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor. And as he devoured page after page of this Bible that he discovered in the library, He reported later that he prayed in his heart with great longing, oh, that God would give me such a book for myself. Such a book for myself. And it's probably that very early longing in Luther's life, along with the fact that later he went to a different library and he also found a Bible, but that Bible was chained to a post. And of course, in his mind, he thought, wouldn't it be great if the Bible was unchained and given? And so Luther was to see to it in his lifetime that the Bible was translated into German so that people could read it. A second incident took place prior to the lightning, and that was because of his utter devotion to his preparation for his lessons and his classes in university, he contracted a very dangerous illness. Now I don't know what the nature of that illness was, but Luther at any rate thought he was going to die on this occasion. An elderly man who knew him, again, don't know the name of this person, it's not revealed to us, but in the university, he came to Luther and he prophesied over Luther. And he said, My dear bachelor, take courage. You will not die of this illness. Our God will yet make of you a man who in turn shall console many. For God lays his cross upon those whom he loves. and they who bear it patiently acquire much wisdom." So here Luther had this in the back of his mind, that after he recovered, this word of a prophecy of essentially an unknown person in history was in his mind prior to the thunderstorm. The third one is in 1503. When, ironically, on another occasion, Luther was on a break and he was going home again to visit his family. And according to the custom of the day, as you were traveling on the roads, you carried a sword. And on this particular occasion, somehow or other, Luther's sword was dislodged from its scabbard and it cut him. It cut an artery. in his leg and he was bleeding. As his companion went to get help, Luther, number one, tried to stop the bleeding and as he felt death approaching him, he cried out according to his words, Oh Mary, help me. Now, unfortunately, Mary was on the other side of heaven singing Michael row the boat ashore, but no, I'm sorry. And Luther himself later, I shouldn't be, anyway, Luther himself remarked that he should have died calling on Mary for help, right? So that was a third thing. And then a fourth thing is one morning at the University of Erfurt, as he studied, word came to him that a friend of his had been murdered. And without much detail, all we know is that Luther began at that point to consider of himself, what is going to happen to me? on the day of my death. And this thing began to consume his mind. And the point of reference to all four of these incidents, plus the lightning, is that Luther's mind and heart began to breed questions in his own life, and wonder why I mean, what was going to happen to him? And so, on the occasion of the lightning storm, it's not much wonder, I suppose, to us that seeing that flash of lightning and God's power, he should make a vow to enter the monastery. Now, in Luther's mind, again, he didn't He didn't observe a parallel between his choice to enter the monastic life and Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus. In the first place, for Luther, it was not a conversion. His entering into the monastery was not a conversion, but something of a very different sort. Luther wasn't turning from his affluent life, or even his life as a student, in order to be a monk. He wasn't turning from unbelief to belief at the time that he entered the monastery. He wasn't leaving the world in order to become a minister of the gospel, if you will, in the Church of the Christ. No, it was something entirely different. It was in this monastic life, in the sacrifice of his will, in the meager meals that he would eat, in the long hours of prayer that he would enter into, in wearing the rugged clothing, mortifying himself in the public square by begging or by fasting or having a life without any variety of any kind. All this was an effort on Luther's part to find mercy from God. He was making an effort to find mercy and peace of mind from God. In the initial questioning that candidates received in the order of the Augustinians, he was asked, what do you seek here? And the required answer of the new monk was, the gracious God and your mercy, Father. And then afterwards, as he is stripped of his worldly clothing to put on the habit, the prior praise, over the candidate, Lord save your servant, grant him mercy, acknowledge this your servant to whom we have given the spiritual habit of your holy name so that he shall deserve to achieve eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ. You see the mentality that's being planted in Luther's mind coming out of his experience, but now entering into the monastery. Luther would say on reflection, in the monastery, I did not think about women, money, possessions. Instead, my heart trembled and fidgeted about whether God would bestow His grace on me. For I had strayed from faith and could not but imagine that I had angered God, whom I in turn had to appease by doing good works. And so Luther went into the monastery with this in his mind. And of course, having entered it, he found no tranquility. He found no peace in that he didn't find what he desired in the monastery. He wanted the assurance of his salvation, of his right standing with God. And without that, he continued trembling and fidgeting as he used those words. The fears that he had first known on the outside, followed him right into his monastic life, and, as a matter of fact, were highly exacerbated as time went along in his life, only increasing as he began to study the Bible and to look into it. The Bible told him that he was to be holy, but he was finding out that neither in his life, and especially in his heart, He did not conform to all that the law demanded of him. In later years, when he had written his commentary on the book of Romans, he wrote in the preface these words, Sin in the scripture means not only external works of the body, but also all those movements within us which bestir themselves and move us to do the external works, namely the depth of the heart with all its powers. You must get used to the idea that it is one thing to do the works of the law and quite another to fulfill it. Difference between doing the works of the law and fulfilling the law. Because in such doing works, the heart abhors the law. Yet it is forced to obey it. The works themselves are a total loss and are completely useless. And that was his perspective that he came to. In other words, what Luther was discovering was that the more he tried to do the right thing, the more he realized that he was doing it for the wrong reasons. And having done it for the wrong reasons, it became useless to him in terms of his spiritual relationship before God. And he wasn't obeying the law because he loved the law. Rather, he was just doing it because he feared the consequences of disobeying the law. Now, to understand this a little bit more fully in the life of Luther, You almost have to follow Luther down into the depths and to the pits of his life and his heart while he was in the monastery to give us the view. He tells his readers and his students right up to the time of his ordination into the priesthood when he said his first mass that he was extremely troubled. He was embarrassed that his father had made the effort to come and to watch him say his first Mass. And yet, at the time, on this occasion, he was in such agony that he felt himself utterly unworthy to talk to people about the grace of God, because he felt nothing of the grace of God. He had no assurance of his own place before the Lord. And so, as you look at it from the perspective of what influence Paul was having on Luther at this point, you can see that he wrestled with Paul on the nature of sin and the law. Paul says in Philippians 3, I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reasons for confidence in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised the eighth day of the people of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law, a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I count them as rubbish. And of course in Romans, Luther confronted these words, by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin. And that's what Luther was confronting. Again, Luther wasn't comparing himself to Paul, but he had come to understand the impact of what Paul was writing, and it was excruciating to him during this time. In the biography of Luther, And it's impossible to deal with it in detail. I'm just giving you the highlights. One of the wonderful providences that came upon Luther was that while he was in the monastery, he had a confessor, a father confessor. His name was Johann von Staupitz. He was the vicar of the Augustinian order at the University of Wittenberg. And at the time that Luther was struggling with his need to confess this sin that was oppressing to him, he took it upon himself to go to Staupitz and make an effort to confess every single sin that he could remember. Everything that he had ever done wrong, he tried to bring it to his mind and confess it. And so, in the end, the biographers tell us that he just wore Staupitz out. The confessor was just worn out, trying to remember every sin that his mind would try to cover up. And on one occasion, he confessed for six hours straight. Father, forgive me, for I have sinned." Six hours. Luther said, if it had not been for Dr. Staupitz, I should have sunk into hell. Now, Staupitz, on the other hand, tried to explain to Luther the grace of God. That he should surrender to the love of God. That Luther should lose himself in God. These were the words He was making religion too difficult. Martin, you're making religion too difficult. All he needed to do was love God. But Luther was tormented by fears. He said, I was myself more than once driven to the very abyss of despair so that I wished that I had never been created. Love God? I hated God. Stalpitz persisted with Luther, and I have this from the historian. Stalpitz said, Oh, my friend, more than a thousand times have I sworn to our holy God to live piously, and I've never kept my vows. Now I swear no longer, for I know I cannot keep my solemn promises if God will not be merciful toward me for the love of Christ. and grant me a happy departure. When I must quit this world, I shall never, with the aid of all my vows and all my good works, stand before Him. I must perish." Why, said Staubitz, do you torment yourself with all these speculations and these high thoughts? Look at the wounds of Jesus Christ, to the blood that was shed for you. It is there that the grace of God will appear to you. Instead of torturing yourself on account of your sins, throw yourself into your Redeemer's arms. Trust in Him, in the righteousness of His life, in the atonement of His death. Do not shrink back. God is not angry with you. It is you who are angry with God. Now, I don't know the extent to which Stalpitz understood or appreciated the issues of justification by faith alone. But he did encourage Luther at this time in seeking the truths of justification and of the forgiveness of God through the grace of God. And it certainly was his generosity that allowed Luther to continue to not only study at Wittenberg, but then become a teacher there. And it was this study that, having become a professor, that Luther continued and pursued the study of the writings of the Apostle Paul. It was a love-hate relationship with Paul. And this is where I began. Toward the end of his life, Luther would write, I had indeed been captivated with an extraordinary ardor for understanding Paul in the Epistle to the Romans. But up to then, it was not the cold blood about the heart, but a single word in chapter 1, verse 17. In it, the righteousness of God is revealed. The righteousness of God that had stood in my way. For I hated that word, righteousness of God, which, as I understood it, with which God is righteous and punishes the unrighteous sinner. I did not love, writes Luther, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemingly, certainly murmured greatly. I was angry with God and said, as if indeed it is not enough that miserable sinners, eternally lost through original sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the Decalogue. without having God add pain to pain by the gospel, and also by the gospel threatening us with his righteousness and wrath. Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience. Nevertheless, I beat importunately upon Paul at that place, most ardently desiring to know what St. Paul wanted. And so it was during and after this excruciating battle with the issues of the grace of God that Luther eventually understood what it was that Paul was saying. And that is that righteousness is the gift. Righteousness of God is the gift of God by which he mercifully justifies us through the work of his Son and we gain that righteousness by faith alone. Paul's not describing in Romans, Paul's not describing the rigid standard which for anyone who attempted to keep it could lead only to condemnation. If it's just the standard of God that you have to keep, you're left with only condemnation. That could never be called Good news. That could never be called the gospel. Paul is speaking in Romans and Galatians and elsewhere of the righteousness of Jesus and his righteousness alone who did fulfill all the law of God. Who kept the law of God? Jesus kept the law of God. and then revealed that love for his people on the cross in the death of Jesus as the sacrifice and substitution for sinners. Now, Paul Harvey used to say, and here's the rest of the story, you can imagine what that did to Luther. It turned his world upside down. The bitter became so ultimately sweet to him. And the doors that imprisoned his soul were suddenly burst open into joy. He wrote, I extol this sweetest word with a love as great as the hatred with which I had before hated the words righteousness of God. Thus that place in Paul was for me truly the gate of paradise. So as Luther found himself wrestling with Paul, he was also wrestling with God. And like Jacob of old, Luther would never be the same. He rose from that. How he loved Paul. How he loved God. How he loved God's word after that. And he studied and he lectured and he taught. in Romans and Galatians and Hebrews. His zeal for the Gospel and for the Scripture, of course, as we know, brought him into great conflict with the powers that be. And that's what we know of as the Reformation. That little obscure message of this little monk or this little priest, by faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. And so from then on, all the conflicts that would come about, it was the authority of Paul in the scripture, in the scripture, above the church, above the fathers, above the tradition, above and ultimately in the face of the Pope, right? That formed the foundation of all that Luther preached. And so at the Diet of Worms, what did he say? Show me in the Bible, and if you don't show me in the Bible, then here I stand. I can do no other. It formed the foundation of everything that Luther preached and did, and it was a lifelong affection. Luther never thought he would exhaust Paul, and even though he continued to teach, his thrust was that believers would take Paul as the constant companion on their journey through life. At the end of his preface to the first commentary on Galatians, Luther writes to each of us, I have only one aim in view. May I bring it about that through my effort, those who have heard me interpreting the letters of the apostle may find Paul clearer and happily surpass me. But if I have not achieved this, well, I shall still have wasted this labor gladly. It remains an attempt by which I have wanted to kindle the interest of others in Paul's theology. And this no good man will charge against me as a fault. Farewell." And that was the end of his introduction to the Galatians.