Reformation Day – Does Anyone Really Care?

During the past week or so I’ve found one person, out of quite a few professing Christians, who knew that October 31 is the day that Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany in 1517. (While there is some discussion whether October 31 is the actual day, and that it may have been within a few days afterward, there is agreement that October 31 is the day that he sent letters to bishops expressing the concerns laid out in the 95 Theses).

Does it matter what we believe?

Ligonier Ministries recently commissioned a survey which, among other things, found that 97% of professing Evangelicals agree with this statement: “There is one true God in three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.”  However, 78% of these same respondents also agreed with this statement: “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.”  

The two statements are, of course, contradictory, which doesn’t appear to have bothered 78% of the people. If Jesus is “created” then He cannot be God. What have we descended to in our Biblical and theological illiteracy?

Does it matter what we believe? Does it matter that we know who Jesus is? It mattered to Martin Luther, but it does not appear to matter to us. Give us a nice religious or “spiritual” experience and we seem to be okay. Rather than love “abounding more and more in real knowledge and all discernment so that we may approve things that are excellent” (Philippians 1:9-10), we seem to be abounding more and more in all ignorance.

An earlier reformer, Jan Huss, was condemned at the Council of Constance in 1415 and on July 6 of that year was burned at the stake. Huss prayed, “Lord Jesus, it is for thee that I patiently endure this cruel death. I pray thee to have mercy on my enemies.” He was heard reciting the Psalms as the flames engulfed him. His ashes were tossed into a lake so nothing of his body would remain. His followers took soil from the place of his execution and took it to Bohemia from Constance.

Huss had been greatly influenced by John Wycliffe (died December 31, 1384). The same Council of Constance decreed that Wycliffe’s body be dug up and burned and his ashes thrown into a river in England. As John Foxe wrote in his book of martyrs, "…though they dug up his body, burnt his bones, and drowned his ashes, yet the Word of God and the truth of his doctrine, with the fruit and success thereof, they could not burn; which yet to this day...doth remain."

From those in Bohemia who believed the Gospel of Jesus Christ which Huss preached came the Moravian Brethren, who were influential in the conversion of John and Charles Wesley. Huss’s writings also encouraged Martin Luther. John Wesley, walking into a Moravian Chapel in England heard Luther’s preface to his commentary on Romans being read and, as Wesley writes, “My heart was strangely warmed.”

Does it matter what we believe? Ask Huss and Wycliffe and Luther and Wesley.

On 6 October 1536, William Tyndale was tried and convicted of heresy and treason and put to death by being strangled and burned at the stake. By this time several thousand copies of his New Testament had been printed and distributed in England. It was reported that Tyndale's last words before his death were "Lord, open the king of England's eyes."

Does it matter what we believe? Ask William Tyndale.

In Oxford, England on October 16, 1555, as Hugh Latimer and his friend Nicholas Ridley were about to be burned as heretics for their teachings and beliefs, Latimer encouraged his friend, “Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”

Does it matter what we believe? Ask Latimer and Ridley.

Western Christians live in a prison of comfort and pleasure. Instead of souls being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ, our souls and bodies are satiated with pleasure and comfort while our neighbors and coworkers and families live in spiritual death, alienated from the life of God. While our brothers and sisters elsewhere are suffering for the Gospel, and while many live on a subsistence level (even in our own developed nations) we seek teachers who will make us comfortable and require only that we acquiesce in entertainment and non-threatening man-centered “church” (2 Timothy 4:1 – 5). We preach a “gospel” that requires little if anything. We play intellectual theological games without risk to our lives or livelihood (thankfully there are exceptions).

Do we really want to know Christ in the koinonia of His sufferings (Philippians 3:10)? Do we really want to be conformed to His death? Do we really count everything as loss for the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:8)?

Does it matter what we believe? Does it matter how we live? Or is today just another day?

Oh…that’s right…how foolish of me…it’s Halloween…what was I thinking. Forget the whole thing about Reformation Day and the Gospel.