MICHAEL REEVES
2 F RE E D OM MOVE M E N T
Running through this little book on the Reformation
is the surprising legacy of joy. The fact that we have
no portraits of any Reformers smiling is a fluke of history.
Nobody smiled for portraits until fifty years ago! If you want
to know what made this movement explosively joyful,
dont look at the pictures, read this book.
JOHN PIPER
Founder and teacher, desiringGod.org;
Chancellor, Bethlehem College & Seminary, Minneapolis, Minnesota
RICO TICE
Senior Minister at All Souls Church, Langham Place
Thank God for the world changing Reformation
recovering the truth of the all sufficient cross of Christ!
As Michael Reeves points out in his inspiring text, prior
to the Reformation religion was disguising the problem rather
than solving it. Five hundred years later people from around
the world with open Bibles celebrate the rediscovery of light
that dispelled their overwhelming darkness.
TERRY VIRGO
Founder of NewFrontiers,
an international network of over 1,500 churches
TREVOR ARCHER
FIEC London Director
RICHARD CUNNINGHAM
Director of UCCF: the Christian Unions
MICHAEL REEVES
2
CHAPTER 1
The secret was this: failing, broken people of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. The
are not loved because they are attractive, theses were about matters of love and
said Martin Luther, they are attractive forgiveness, but the reason he wrote them,
because they are loved. he explained, was because if these matters
That could not be more countercultural. were not dealt with, it would make Chris-
It is deep in our blood today that the more tians unhappy.
attractive we make ourselves, the more Martin Luther was concerned with
loved and happy we will be. The Reforma- peoples happiness. In fact, he would come
tion is the story of one man discovering to believe that he had found the secret
to his delight that with God, it is the other of happiness. And that, at its heart, was
way round. God does not love people because what the Reformation was all about. Not
they have sorted themselves out: he loves moralizing. Not self-improvement. It was
failures. And that love makes them flourish. a discovery of stunningly happy news
It started on 31 October 1517, when news that would transform millions
Martin Luther, a German monk, posted of lives and change the world.
ninety-five theses for debate on the door This is the story of that discovery.
6 F RE E D OM MOVE M E N T
From despair to
5 0 0 Y EA R S O F R EFOR M AT ION 7
8 F RE E D OM MOVE M E N T
CHAPTER 2
THE TWENTY-ONE-YEAR-OLD
SCREAMED
Caught in a sudden and violent storm while walking
to his university in Erfurt, Germany, a lightning bolt
smashed him to the ground. Terrified, he cried out
Saint Anne, help me! I shall become a monk!
The young Martin Luther survived, he so on. He often took no bread or water for
upheld his vow and began a monastic life. three days at a time, and was quite prepared
In a sense he loved it. Luthers deepest deliberately to freeze himself in the winter
fear was of dying and having to stand be- cold in the hope that he might please God.
fore God his Judge. But becoming a monk Driven to confession, he would exhaust his
gave him what he saw as a golden opportu- confessors, taking up to six hours at a time
nity: he could make himself more attractive to catalogue his most recent sins.
to God and so hopefully earn his love. Yet the more he did, the more troubled he
And he went for it. Every few hours he became. Was it enough? Were his motives
would leave his tiny monastery cell and right? Luther found himself sinking into an
make his way to a service in the chapel, ever-deeper introspection.
starting with matins in the middle of the He began to sense that his moral dirti-
night, then another at six in the morning, ness and lack of attractiveness to God went
another at nine, another at twelve, and deeper than his behaviour. He came to see
5 0 0 Y EA R S O F R EFOR M AT ION 9
10 F RE E D OM MOVE M E N T
M A RT I N L U T H E R
LUTHER AT HOME
Martin Luther was
no stained-glass saint.
Red-blooded, beer-swilling, Katie von Bora. And clearly the confidence to declare
and often rude, he was Martin and Katie enjoyed She will rise again at the
proof of his own discovery each others company, last day.
that Gods love and forgive- whether walking with their
ness are for real imperfect dog in the garden, fish-
people. Take his marriage ing together or eating with
to a runaway nun. friends. Martin had a bowl-
As his message of good ing alley built in the garden
news got out, many monks for when he broke from his
and nuns wanted to join work, while Katie looked
him in leaving the monas- after the household (and
tic life. He even helped one its private brewery).
group of nuns escape. On Twice, however, trag-
Easter morning 1523, he edy struck. Martin and
sent a herring merchant to Katie had five children,
their convent with a covered but both daughters
wagon full of empty her- died young one of
ring barrels. Nine nuns were them, Magdelene, in
smuggled out to a new life her fathers arms.
in Wittenberg. Martin wept over
Two years later, he was her coffin, yet his
married to one of them: discovery gave him
12 F RE E D OM MOVE M E N T
The joyful
5 0 0 Y EA R S O F R EFOR M AT ION 13
14 F RE E D OM MOVE M E N T
CHAPTER 3
Jesus loves broken people and through she has that righteousness in Christ, her
his death on the cross for them, makes them husband, which she may boast of as her own
attractive and beautiful in Gods sight. and say, If I have sinned, yet my Christ, in
It means, wrote Luther happily, Her sins whom I believe, has not sinned, and all his is
cannot now destroy her, since they are laid mine and all mine is his.
upon Christ and swallowed up by him. And
16 F RE E D OM MOVE M E N T
T H E R E F O R M AT I O N & L I T E R AT U R E
guilt, fearing Christ would ... now went I also home re-
not forgive me. Then he joicing, for the grace and
made the exact same discov- love of God.
MY CHAINS ery as Luther:
FELL OFF But one day, as I was
passing in the field, and
that too with some stains on
One of the great my conscience, fearing lest yet
all was not right, suddenly
literary classics
this sentence fell upon my
to flow out of the soul, Thy righteousness is
Reformation was in heaven; and I saw, with the
John Bunyans eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at
Gods right hand; there, I say,
Pilgrims Progress.
is my righteousness; so that
wherever I was, or whatever
I was a-doing, God could
A metalworker by trade, not say of me, He wants my
Bunyan travelled from vil- righteousness, for that was
lage to village with a 60lb just before Him.
anvil and hefty toolkit on He saw, in other words, FIRST EDITION COVER
his back: it became a model that it was not how good Pilgrims Progress is one of the
most published books in the English
for the great burden of guilt about himself he felt that language. Bunyan wrote it while
his Pilgrim carries on his mattered. Feeling good or he was in prison for preaching.
back (until he comes to the feeling bad, my righteous-
cross and it is loosed from ness was Jesus Christ Him-
off his shoulders to his self, the same yesterday,
enormous relief). and to-day, and for ever.
In his youth, Bunyan had Now did my chains fall off
been much like Martin Lu- my legs indeed, I was loosed
ther: driven to despair by his from my affliction and irons
5 0 0 Y EA R S O F R EFOR M AT ION 17
T H E R E F O R M AT I O N & T H E C H U R C H
JUST A CLEAN-UP?
People sometimes think of the Reformation
as little more than a five-hundred-year-old
clean-up job on the Roman Catholic Church,
which is quite misleading.
Certainly things had got a bit grubby before Savonarolas sermons condemning Pope
the Reformation. Rome which had become Alexander VI. Everyone laughed when the
the Las Vegas of its day had just reached poet Dante placed Popes Nicholas III and
an all-time low under the papacy of Pope Boniface VIII in the eighth circle of hell in
Alexander VI (14921503). Having bought his Divine Comedy. Of course there were
the necessary votes to get himself corrupt old popes and priests who drank too
elected, he proceeded to have nu- much before Mass.
merous children by his mistresses, But.
he was rumoured to have had an- If that had been what Luther was about,
other with his party-throwing, hed have been forgotten in a decade.
poison-ring wearing daugh- Five hundred years on, we remember the
ter Lucrezia, and is best remem- Reformation because it was not just an-
bered for his habit of throwing other call to do better. It was the recovery
orgies in the Vatican and poisoning of a message that had got buried a world-
his cardinals. changing message good for all centuries.
Yet it was others, not Luther, who Martin Luther had stumbled across
dedicated themselves to opposing such something people had not heard of in their
moral corruption. Almost everyone seemed day: sinners are attractive because they
eager for that sort of reform. In Florence, are loved; they are not loved because they
thousands thronged to hear Girolamo are attractive.
18 F RE E D OM MOVE M E N T
speaking my
Now youre
5 0 0 Y EA R S O F R EFOR M AT ION 19
20 F RE E D OM MOVE M E N T
5 0 0 Y EA R S O F R EFOR M AT ION 21
CHAPTER 4
Soon others were making the same happy To be so excited about the Bible strikes
discovery in the Bible. In England, a young most today as odd. But the message people
priest called Thomas Bilney read it and were finding there that God lavishes his
come across the words Christ Jesus came love and forgiveness not on the deserving
into the world to save sinners. Previously but on all wholl trust him was like a burst
he had been consumed with guilt, but with of Mediterranean sunshine into a grey
these words, he said, world of guilt and shame.
Immediately I seemed unto myself in- Another Englishman who made the same
wardly to feel a marvellous comfort and find a brilliant young linguist named Wil-
quietness, insomuch that my liam Tyndale described the discovery as
bruised bones leaped for joy. Af- good, merry, glad and joyful tidings,
ter this, the Scripture began to that maketh a man's heart glad and ma-
be more pleasant unto me than keth him sing, dance, and leap for joy.
the honey or the honey-comb.
22 F RE E D OM MOVE M E N T
Wanting others to read what he had read Just two years after Tyndale had died
and so share his joy, Tyndale set about his uttering that prayer, it was decreed by the
lifes work of translating the Bible from its king that an English bible be placed in eve-
original Greek and Hebrew into English. ry church in England. King Henry VIII or-
He sailed to Germany, where it was safer dered ye shall discourage no man from the
to work. And there, within a few short years, reading or hearing of the Bible, but shall
Tyndale managed to translate most of the expressly provoke, stir and exhort every per-
Bible. Accurate and easy to read, it turned son to read the same as that which is the
out to be a gem of a translation. However, very lively word of God.
it was illegal in England to own or even Six English bibles were placed in St Pauls
read such a translation and the penalty Cathedral, crowds immediately thronging
was death. round those who could read loud enough to
Some 16,000 copies of his Bible were make themselves heard. So great was the
smuggled into England before he was excitement that priests complained of how,
caught in 1535. The following October he even during the sermon, laypeople were
was officially strangled and burned near reading the Bible aloud to each other.
Brussels, uttering the immortal last words The message and the excitement
Lord, open the King of Englands eyes! were spreading.
5 0 0 Y EA R S O F R E FOR M ATION 23
O D E T O J OY
THE REFORMATIONS
ODE TO JOY
by Martin Luther,
trans. Frederic Henry Hedge.
A mighty fortress is our God, And tho this world, with devils filled,
A bulwark never failing; Should threaten to undo us;
Our shelter He, amid the flood We will not fear, for God hath willed
Of mortal ills prevailing. His truth to triumph through us.
For still our ancient foe The prince of darkness grim
Doth seek to work us woe; We tremble not for him;
His craft and powr are great, His rage we can endure,
And, armed with cruel hate, For lo! his doom is sure,
On earth is not his equal. One little word shall fell him.
Did we in our own strength confide, That word above all earthly powrs
Our striving would be losing; No thanks to them abideth:
Were not the right Man on our side, The Spirit and the gifts are ours
The Man of Gods own choosing. Thro Him who with us sideth.
Dost ask who that may be? Let goods and kindred go,
Christ Jesus, it is He; This mortal life also;
Lord Sabaoth His name, The body they may kill:
From age to age the same, Gods truth abideth still,
And He must win the battle. His kingdom is forever.
24 F RE E D OM MOVE M E N T
The
sweetest
5 0 0 Y EA R S O F R EFOR M AT ION 25
26 F RE E D OM MOVE M E N T
CHAPTER 5
MANS CHIEF END therefore actually enjoy God. Not hate. Not
avoid. Enjoy.
[POINT] IS TO GLORIFY The practical consequences throughout