In this 200th-anniversery episode, Dr. Stephen Nichols is joined by a special guest to celebrate 5 Minutes in Church History.
Stephen Nichols: For our two-hundredth installment, we have a very special guest, Dr. R.C. Sproul. Welcome back.
R.C. Sproul: Thank you very much, Steve. It’s a delight to be with you.
Stephen: Well, not only are we celebrating the two-hundredth installment, it happens to fall in the year 2017. Now, why is this an important year, Dr. Sproul?
RC: It’s the five-hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation as dated from Martin Luther’s posting of the Ninety-Five Theses at the church door at Wittenberg.
Stephen: It is indeed. You know, as you stop and think about that moment—and I know it’s a moment you’ve thought about often—you cannot overestimate the value of what happened on October 31, 1517.
RC: I quite agree on that. That’s a watershed moment in the history of the church.
Stephen: So, as you think of Luther and his influence not only on the church, but even on Western history and culture, just talk for a little bit about the influence of Luther in your own life.
RC: When I became a Christian in a sudden conversion in my freshman year of college, I assumed and adopted the basic standard Arminian position on theology. Roger Nicole used to say that we were by nature Pelagian in our thinking. And it wasn’t until I really started studying the Reformers that I came to an understanding of the doctrines of grace and really understood justification by faith alone. Now, obviously, as a new convert I had no concept of theology. I wasn’t involved in debates about the how and the why and the where of justification; I just knew I was a sinner who had been forgiven of his sin. But when I began to study the doctrine of sola fide—justification by faith alone—which was so central to Luther’s protest, then my eyes were opened and I realized, yes, this is exactly what happened to me. I didn’t do anything to earn it; I didn’t do anything to achieve it. It was solely by the grace of God.
Stephen: I’ve heard you refer many times to the last sermon that Luther preached at Wittenberg. In that sermon, Luther gives a stern warning to his congregation about this very doctrine and its place and its prominence in the life of the church.
RC: Yes, he said that in every generation, the gospel has to be understood anew; it has to be preached with vigor and urgency, because as quickly as we receive it and understand it, like the ancient Galatians, we are fast to move away from it and try to interject some additive that we give to secure our own justification. It is always faith plus something rather than faith alone.
Stephen: We smuggle works in.
RC: Yes, we do.
Stephen: You know, Paul warned Timothy, “Guard the good deposit.” We see how God raised up men through church. That is why study church history: to remind us of these men God raised up to guard that good deposit, and that’s even the task in our own day. We continue this great legacy we’ve been handed and guard the good deposit of faith.
RC: Yes indeed.
Stephen: Dr. Sproul, I’d like to thank you for joining us on this moment—a little opportunity to step back in time and remember our good friend Martin Luther and how God used him to bring about reformation in the church. And here we are, five hundred years later, still enjoying the benefits and the fruits of his labors. We only pray that God would use this generation to make its mark, so that five hundred years from now we might be talking about the legacy that the church of today leaves behind.
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