Sunday was the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing 95 theses to a church door in Wittenberg, which lit the flame of the Reformation.
Luther believed that there was no skill more basic for a theologian or preacher, than the ability to distinguish between law and gospel. His life was turned upside down when he realized that God’s righteousness wasn’t something that he had to earn and live up to, but was in fact a gift from God, in Christ. He described the good news of the Gospel as a ‘Royal Marriage’ where Christ, as the bridegroom, gifts His bride, the church, with all that He is and all that He possesses.
In this beautiful and biblical (Eph 5:25-27, Rev 19:17) picture of the Gospel, let the truth of Luther’s words strip you of your own pride and shame, and make you cling, ever more tightly, to Christ and the glories of His grace.
“Who can understand the riches of the glory of this grace? Here this rich and divine bridegroom Christ marries this poor, wicked harlot, redeems her from all her evil, and adorns her with all his goodness. Her sins cannot now destroy her, since they are laid upon Christ and swallowed up by him. And she has that righteousness in Christ, her husband, of which she may boast as of her own and which she can confidently display alongside her sins in the face of death and hell and say, ‘If I have sinned, yet my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned, and all his is mine and all mine is his.’”
Martin Luther
