The rise of Luther's revolutionary influence coincided with the invention of the printing press by Johann Gutenberg.
Why was this revolutionary?
Freedom is not a word I would typically use to describe work. Even in good jobs, there is a weight and pressure that makes work much closer to slavery than freedom.
When Jesus says, “Go and make disciples of all nations,” it starts in the living room. For most of us, the primary callings that we have take place in our home. We are called to be husband or wife, father or mother, brother or sister.
It’s easy to dream about the living the life of somebody else. We can look at the allure of the CEO of a Fortune 500 company who has endless amounts of money that most of us couldn’t even imagine.
In The Journal of Neuroscience, there was a man referred to as E.P. He was an 84-year-old retired lab technician. E.P. suffered from one of the most severe cases of amnesia ever documented. In his case, his amnesia was so bad he could only recall his most recent thought.
Today, I’m excited to announce the launch of a new eBook that I’ve been designing and editing in order to share for free with the world - Galatians: Selections from Martin Luther.
When Jesus died, his life was not taken… it was given.
Even in the last statement Jesus makes on the cross, we can see this.
The Gospel is what defines the Church. In a world that is constantly pushing us to do more, try harder, the Gospel runs counter to everything the world preaches. In our own sinfulness, we naturally trust in our own performance, but it is the performance of Jesus alone that sets us free.
Oscar Wilde said, “I can resist anything except temptation.” I can resonate with that. The devil knows exactly where I’m weak and vulnerable and I’m a sucker for his lies.
Throughout the scriptures there’s a looping pattern that we see in the nation of Israel. Over and over and over again, the Israelites rebel against God.
We all have a crazy collection of religious ideas that we’ve gathered throughout our life. It’s a crazy collection with ideas from Grandma and Grandpa and Oprah and all kinds of other influential people in our life that we’ve crammed into a spiritual junk drawer that shapes what we believe.
My son is almost three years old, which means he is now at the age where I can give him a rule and with evil in his eyes and a grin on his face, he will happily ignore my rules. Since he’s just a toddler, he’s not very good at being naughty and it’s usually more entertaining than frustrating.
There is no question that the Reformation was crucial to the development of Christianity and incredibly important in the recovery of the central teaching of grace. In Luther’s day, the Church had by and large abandoned a true teaching of the Gospel for something that was nothing more than buy-your-own-forgiveness.
Behavior modification is like putting band-aids on cancer. It’s not really going to fix the underlying problem. You know when you were little and you thought that your mom’s kiss could fix any scraped knee?
I’ve heard people often say, “I’m my own worst critic.” I’ve even said this before about myself. But I don’t really think it’s true. At least not all the time, and definitely not for myself.