On the Door

Internet image cph.org

500 years ago, Martin Luther placed his 95 points of contention with current church practices on the community bulletin board - the front doors of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany.

His wanted to start an internal discussion questioning and hoping to correct church teaching and practices which he believed had gone astray from the Bible.

Instead, nailing those theses became the official beginning of the Reformation.

Thanks to modern technology invented some 70 years earlier, Martin Luther's propositions for the debate reached a much broader audience than church leaders.

The printing press put his arguments against the church sanctioned practice of selling indulgences to the people, which purported to be a 'get out of hell' card.  Luther declared that salvation was only through the sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ freely given to forgive our sins.  He argued it was wrong, unnecessary, and impossible for people to purchase their way, or try to buy their loved ones into heaven.

Luther didn't want to split from the church.  He disliked that years after 1517, the churches following what Martin preached called themselves Lutherans.

Luther was a prolific writer.  While living out of the public eye in Wartburg he translated the Greek Bible into German, essentially creating the German language as it is written today.  He finished the influential New Testament translation in 1522 and the entire Bible, with help, by 1534.

Reformed.  Still imperfect.  The work of the reformers pointed the church and Christians back to the one Word of God, one Faith, and one Savior was enough to be forgiven and redeemed as written in the Gospels.