Why Reformation Was Needed

hey everybody I'm recording this video for reformation day and I want to articulate why many of us believe the Reformation was a good and necessary corrective within the church and in particular why it was necessary not only doctrinally but Also spiritually and of course those two the doctrinal and the spiritual are interconnected I'm going to focus on two aspects of spiritual life in the late medieval West that demanded Reformation Financial manipulation through indulgences and vicious persecution of descent to that practice now the motive here is not just to attack those things but it's to defend the Reformation against various misunderstandings that I hear a lot in my time on YouTube I've kind of been amazed at how negatively protestantism is viewed uh I think you know for example you get this common perception that there's the one true church that Jesus Christ founded here and then the Protestants are jumping off they're jumping off the ship to start their own church and sometimes even bad motives are attributed to that of course what we believe as Protestants is exceedingly simple namely there are certain errors in the church that had accured and they needed to be corrected that's it it's as simple as that you can't you have to follow your conscience you can't submit to what you think are later accretions that are erroneous so that's why we call it a Reformation of the church not a recreation of the church but I think a big contributing factor to these negative perceptions of protestantism is that people simply don't know how bad had gotten in the late medieval West and how desperately reform was needed here's what happens a lot I think because medieval abuses have been exaggerated and garbled by some Protestant historiographies you think of like Baptist succession theories for example many of us have heard of James Carroll's book The Trail of blood some of us unfortunately have read it's a very problematic book by the way if you want a better book about baptist Origins see Matthew bingham's book orthodox radicals but here's my concern people respond to those really bad kind of exaggerated uh historiographies in the other direction and so they downplay things and they but this is a real problem it's just as wrong to minimize scandals as it is to exaggerate them and so we need to be historically accurate here as painful as it can be to get into these ugly realities of church history we have to see them in order to understand why Reformation was necessary if you watch this video to the end you'll get an overview of some pretty shocking realities history is absolutely fascinating and sometimes just brutal but what I'm going to offer is not drawn from scholarship that has a Protestant bias and so I'm going to put up lots of books so you can just do your own research to look into this and encourage you to verify all of this if if you make it to the end and you uh think I've been unfair in any way leave a comment but be specific in the comment if it's just a generic insult that's not productive but if you think hey you know you you misstated something be specific and I'll I'll read the comments okay let's talk about indulgences first I'll put up a definition from the Catholic catechism and Indulgence basically it's a remission of temporal punishment for sin okay given in certain conditions so in Roman Catholic theology there's a distinction between Eternal punishment which involves the ultimate consequences of sin in hell for example uh versus temporal punishment which has to do with the process of being purified from sin in this life and potentially in purgatory so indulgences are possible because of the idea of the treasury of Merit which is the supposed infinite Storehouse of the merits of Christ and Mary and saints that the church can apply to Christians either on Earth or in purgatory in certain conditions in responding to the Reformation the Council of Trent did oppose certain abuses in the practice of indulgences but it affirmed indulgences as such and in fact it pronounced an anathema on anyone who denies their power or their validity now the challenge for modern people in trying to get a sense of how indulgences were functioning at the dawn of the Reformation is to try to understand how scandalous it was without just dismissing that with skepticism because it sounds too fantastic because it really was that bad so I'm going to put up what I'm going to try to do again is quote from scholarship that you can see is not biased to a Protestant side so let me quote from the Catholic encyclopedia which is a work of early 20th century Catholic scholarship and its description of how indulgences sparked the Reformation some of us will have heard of Johan tetel he was a Dominican frier who eventually became the grand commissioner for indulgences in Germany he's the one that Luther was opposing some of Luther's thesis and his 95 thesis that he nailed up on the church door in Wittenberg uh vitberg we should say on October 31st 157 maybe maybe 506 years to the day of when you watch this video depending upon when you watch it well Luther's responding to tetzel preaching among others for example thesis 27 says they preach only human doctrines who say that as soon as the money clinks into the money chest the so flies out of purgatory he's targeting tetel there well tetel had been appointed by Archbishop Albert of Brandenburg he was another someone who became a great opponent of Luther here's how the Catholic encyclopedia explains what's going on the immediate cause of the Reformation was bound up with the odious Greed for money displayed by the Roman curia that's the papal court and shows how far short efforts at reform had hitherto fallen Albert of Brandenburg already Archbishop of magniberg received in addition the Archbishop brick of mains and the bishop brick of howad but in return was obliged to collect 10,000 ducats which he was taxed over and above the usual confirmation fees so this is talking about the practice of simony which is the buying and selling of ecclesiastical offices or other benefits it's called simony because of the character Simon in Acts chapter 8 who offered Peter money for Spiritual power we'll talk more about simony the passage continues to indemnify him and to make it possible to discharge these obligations Rome permitted him to have preached in his territory the plenary Indulgence promised all those who contributed to the new St Peters he was allowed to keep one half of the returns a transaction which brought dishonor on all concerned in it so just imagine this you're a lay Christian in Germany in the early 1500s you're told let's say Your mother has just died and you're told by Church authorities that giving money will uh release her from thousands of years of agonizing fire in atory maybe even longer you know you hear these astronomical time links in the historical records and you're told that this will go to fund reconstruction of St Peter's Basilica in Rome uh of course that's going to be motivating for you I mean people especially at this time people had this very literal understanding of the fire of purgatory so the thought of releasing a loved one from that kind of horrific suffering for that kind of time scale is very financially motivating what you don't know is that half of the money is going to pay off Albert for his debts for buying his Archbishop Rick def despite the fact that he already holds other offices contrary to canon law that's here's the brutal reality that has to be faced that was happening a lot at the turn of the 16th century indulgences were a booming industry just to give a little bit of immediate context the Roman Catholic Cardinal who collected funds for indulgences throughout Germany just prior to tetel Raymond Parow between during his time in that role between 1486 and 1503 he was able to raise more than half a million gilders which was the basic monetary unit in that place to support Crusades you can read about that in this book I'll put up on the screen that's just one guy over a course of 15ish years or so and it gives you a sense of just you know we're talking about large quantities of money what's that money being used for among other things we I mention Crusades in those cases but simony is one of them tragically the uh clergy are living in luxurious immorality at this time how do you how do I convey how much this was happening again I'm just if I say it people will just dismiss me if they if they don't want to accept it so what I'm going to do is just give you anecdotes and and put up the sources you can look into it yourself this was tragically very common so here's one example uh you may have heard of Queen Isabella of cast she was a Roman Catholic Queen I don't know if I'm pronouncing Castile right but you may have heard of her because she and her husband sponsored Christopher Columbus's journey to the new world in 1492 she's also famous for her role in expelling Jews from Spain and for supporting the Inquisition well in the year 1500 she talks about how the majority of her Bishops lived openly with concubines and that they couldn't discipline this because the Bishops would take up the sword to defend that practice that's the kind of thing that is going on and if you want to read more about the problem of clerical concubinage that means basically the clergy having concubines you can read in this book I'll put up on the screen you can look into that more in his examination of the Council of Trent Martin kemnitz gives documentation of uh indulgences offered in the year 1475 in the city of Rome and he he kind of calculates and adds up uh the seven churches there other churches in the area just giving you a flavor of How It's functioning so he talks about you know in this church there's a chapel the chapel has 28 steps whoever ascends these steps with devotion receives nine years of indulgences whoever does so on their knees also releases a soul from purgatory and he's giving all these examples and then he notes that if you add up the indulgences of all the stations in the city it comes to more than a million years that's just in the city of Rome so so I'm trying to give people a sense that at the dawn of the Reformation this is a massive problem it's just a financial Scandal and you wonder how did this happen how did this start you know I have another video on indulgences where I I show that it's a slow accretion bit by bit growing and uh I argue that indulgences as such began in the 11th century with the concept of reduced temporal punishment apart from Penance and that's an outgrowth of earlier practices of relaxing penitential requirements and that goes all the way back into the patristic era it's this slow bit bybit accretion you know it's it's almost a case study in how tiny little changes uh added up can get you from one side of the spectrum to the other because you go from the 3r century to the 13th over that Millennium you go from about as much rigor as you can imagine in church discipline to about as much laxity as you can imagine in church discipline but it's a slow bit-by-bit process so 11 11th century emergence for indulgences as such where it's taken out of the context text of penance and then from the 12th to 16th centuries you just see this mushrooming up of how indulgences are functioning and they're getting more and more interwoven with the power of the papacy with the Crusades other things going on and just basically the financial revenue of the Roman Catholic hierarchy so you get uh you start to get and they're growing you know you get plenary indulgences that is the remission of all temporal punishment for sin toward the end of the 11th century and eventually that comes to be applied to Purgatory as well as to this life you get the idea of the treasury of Merit in the 13th century in the 13th and 14th centuries the practice of indulgences on behalf of deceased Christians in purgatory emerges and then expands greatly even though it's very controversial and then you get in the 14th century Jubilee indulgences which promise full forgiveness for all who visit the basilicas of St Peter and St Paul in Rome under certain conditions and that starts a tradition it's it happens in 1350 in 1390 and then on in the 15th century going forward so you can watch this video If You of mine if you want to get a brief overview of that you can also look at this seminal work of scholarship by the German Roman Catholic priest Nicholas palus back in the early 20th century which kind of set the table for the scholarship on this question if you want to get a Protestant evaluation that's more recent and really brings in the uh European scholarship you can read this book by Thomas Sherer some people will object to what I said about the 13th centur for the treasury of Merit you can read this article about that but what I want to say is this this General timeline of 11th century emergence for indulgences proper as distinct from prior penitential reductions with aggressive expansion and development over the next four centuries that is the common narrative in the scholarship including among Roman Catholic historians palus was a Catholic priest here's how uh geard Mueller who's a contemporary Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church puts it the the Indulgence has neither a model in the New Testament nor in public church penants found in the first Millennium be it in practice or in so far as theological grounds are concerned I quote the scholars and other clerics because oftentimes they're more honest because I have a lot of people online who try to discredit me someone texted me this tweet recently from Christian Wagner basically I was asked a question about solo fed prior to the Reformation and I gave Thomas aquinus and Bernard of clairo as a medieval examples of where you can find that language and so Christian misconstrued that as a claim that Thomas affirmed a Protestant view of justification wholesale and made a response video and then he complained that it was crickets chirping uh because I didn't respond to his response video and like I get these dozens of these rebuttal videos and then people fault me for not responding to all of them it's like I can't respond to all of them but uh the expectation that I would is ridiculous I have a full-time job I have writing and speaking commitments I have a large family I do YouTube on the side and I get dozens of rebuttal I can't respond to them all so it's not just crickets chirping it's just it's just an unrealistic expectation um other Catholic AP but but the language of this comment is just it's it's what people try to do they want to dismiss you they want to just kind of move you to the side so they don't have to deal with your arguments so they give these more wholesale dismissive kind of comments William alre another Catholic apologist who does this he just blatantly makes up lies about my sources about my scholarship he's trying to discredit me and even when I correct him and it's like verifiably wrong he just continues to persist and and I'm just astonished that he he doesn't care about the ninth commandment he's just flagrantly making up lies about me but I I go into this I don't I don't think about this too much I just kind of ignore it but I go into it to try to help people not buy into that and be fooled by that because people will try to dismiss what I'm saying in this video too uh I anticipate that and so uh you know the thing is the people who try to dismiss my scholarship don't have academic qualifications my scholarship goes through academic review you know blind peer-review processes in competitive journals and presses and it does well in those contexts so I'm going to trust those contexts more than you know online critics as an evaluation of my work but people watching their videos may not realize that and so I'm kind of don't want to be defensive but I need to say this so that people are not fooled into these dismissive comments the reason I'm saying this is I know people will try to dismiss what I'm saying in this video everything I am saying here is standard it's just stand that's why I'm quoting from these other books that don't have a Protestant bias okay I'm being historically accurate and I will too in the brutal Parts we're about to get to about violence so but people try to people want to dismiss me and then minimize the extent of the Scandal here's my challenge for anybody who wants to know the truth look into it poke around in the in the scholarship yourself or just go back to the historical sources and just read you know you will not be underwhelmed and so the the the the question that comes up is this if you believe that indulgences are a historical accretion that ultimately represent error what can you do but protest we Protestants are not jumping off the ship to start a new church we are simply trying to be obedient to God we are simply trying to follow our conscience and we can't submit to error so it's in love and service to the one true Church of Jesus Christ that we reject the Theology of indulgences that's one one example of why re Reformation was desperately needed in the church now the question comes up if things were really that bad I mean this is a financial Scandal this is uh this is financial abuse if things were really that bad why didn't people object why didn't people notice Why didn't it stir up controversy are you saying the entire church was just on board with this accretion well the answer to that is people did protest a lot and they often were brutally massacred for it this is the most painful part of this the simple fact is large numbers of people were burned alive for opposing indulgences again this is historically accurate everything I'm going to give I'm going to document I'm going to show this with specific examples um but it's so painful I know people want to dismiss it I would just ask you I know I have a lot of non-protestant viewers who are of good faith and are good people I'm sorry if this causes pain I'm sorry if it makes you angry but we just need to know what happened we have to tell the truth about history and the truth is that the late medieval West it got really bad so we need to know about that now one of the objections that that's going to come up here that I want to address right up front is well well Protestants persecuted people too that's just how things were back in the ancient world or in the medieval world as well now here's what I will say to that I'm a Baptist one of the one of my deepest values is non-violence in the church I really admire that about the Baptist tradition the separation of church and state and the absolute commitment to you know put it like this we don't Advance the Gospel of Jesus Christ by coercion and power and threat and violence we advance the gospel through love and persuasion and reason so from those values I without any hesitation fault Protestants when they have sinned against those values as well okay absolutely and I admire this about the early church as well in the early a lot of early Christians were pacifists I'm not a pacifist but I'm close to that but in the early church you know things did change in the 4th Century I'm not saying the church died in the 4th Century but there were changes so I fault to Protestants as well for historical persecutions and violence and when people take up the sword and so forth when they shouldn't but it is also wrong to try to neutral neutralize this concern by equalizing the blame on both sides that's like saying well yeah Texas might be a big state but so is Rhode Island and you're like that's not the same uh for one thing there is just nothing comparable to the scale of late medieval violence some of the medieval Crusades classify as genocide again people don't know this I'll put up this book by Mark Peg he he uses uh that term genocide and he defends that categorization for The alagan Crusade in the early 13th century so you can read that again it's not me who's making this stuff up but here's the most important difference between where where later Protestants engaged in violence medieval persecution resulted from theology promulgated by the highest levels of authority within the Roman Catholic Church including within allegedly infallible teaching and there's just nothing like that on the Protestant side okay so this represents a falsification for claims of ecclesial infallibility let me give some examples I've done two videos on yanus the Bohemian reformer and priest he's one of my personal Heroes he protested lots of different abuses in the church simony and indulgences being two of them he was tried and then burned at the stake at the Council of constance in the early 15th century Council of constance is the 16th ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church uh in those videos I drew from the outstanding scholarship of Thomas fudge who's written almost a dozen books on this subject fudge cannot possibly be accused of having a Protestant bias in the early pages of one of his books he talks about how he's been accused of being a right-wing Roman Catholic for his refusal to demonize H H's opponents and because he defends the legality of H's trial though not its morality and he defends the the conviction that H was indeed a heretic he admires H and he says he was a good man and he talks about basically he says I admire him but technically he was a heretic I'll put up that passage I'll also talk put up the passage where he describes who's opponents the Roman Catholic Bishops at the Council of constant as scheming and and treacherous so I'm not going to go deep into the Weeds on H's specifically I've done that in other videos you can watch those but the reason H's death is important is because it's a window into the world of late medieval western Christianity what must be grasped is this who's execution was not a violation of medieval Roman Catholic theology it was its expression and as shocking as that sounds again I know it's it's bracing to hear those words but it's just true okay let me document that let me quote from sources to explain that basically the medieval Roman Catholic Church claimed the authority to exterminate Heretics and to do that through the secular authority over which she claimed jurisdiction okay so for examp and by the way before I give my examples if you want to work through this yourself I'm going to put up this book by R Moore it talks about why persecution increased so dramatically in the medieval Church specifically I'll put up another book that's an introduction to the Inquisition I'm not going to talk about the inquisitions very much in this video it's a whole other issue I don't even have time to get into but here's a first example bonfice the8's 1302 Pap bll Unum sanum most people think that at least some portions of this would represent infallible ex cathedra teaching he he's basically talking about the temporal sword which is wielded by the secular Authority and the spiritual sword which is wielded by the church but he's insisting that the temporal is subject to the spiritual both therefore are in the power of the church that is to say the spiritual and the material sword but the former is to be administered for the church but the latter by the church the former in the hands of the priest the latter by the hands of kings and soldiers but at the will and sufferance of the priest however one sword ought to be subordinated to the other and temporal Authority subjected to spiritual power so the important point to note is that again the temporal Authority is subjected to the Spiritual Authority that is why Civil Authorities were threatened with excommunication if they neglected to follow orders for example Canon 3 of the fourth leran Council in the early 13th century if however a temporal Lord required and instructed by the church neglects to cleanse his territory of this heretical filth he shall be bound with the bond of excommunication or you can read Pope Innocent IV's papal Bowl in 1252 this is one that's famous for authorizing the use of torture by inquisitors to extract confessions from Heretics and others but it also threatened secular Leaders with various penalties if they allowed themselves to become Protectors of Heretics and again don't think I'm making this up you I I'll put a link to that in the video description you can go read the whole thing online if you want this is why it is so offensive when people uh uh say that oh it was the secular authorities rather than the Roman Catholic Church that uh burned who at the stake it's like no anybody who's familiar with the trial and how things were proceeded in my videos I talk about this how it was a Roman Catholic Archbishop who's preaching the sermon right there at the trial from Romans 6 that the body of sin must be put to death death this is the theology the reigning Theology of the day the extermination of Heretics during who's ceremony of min mysterial degradation where he's has the paper miter covered with demons put on his head it's the same Archbishop who puts it on his head with his own hand and then they call him Judas and they strip off his Priestly vestments and so on and so forth and his execution is immediately and directly in response to the council's verdict so this was in other words who's death was done the agent responsible is an ecumenical council okay so there's more to say about who you can watch my videos but the important point to recognize is this who's is one example of what was going on now people again I don't think people can take it in I think they're just going to say oh that was an exceptional case that was a particularly bad instance I am sorry to have to tell you it wasn't who I am I am sorry to have to tell you that who's is actually not rare this is why again it is so uh so tough on us when people say you know oh you're just arrogant individualist leaving the church it's like what do you expect people to do if your conscience is set against indulgences you live in the 1500s what do you do you know what can you do but protest um so to document my claim that H's is not rare of course you can look at other hites you know Jerome of Prague burned at the stake same way exact same geographical location one year after H the hites alone had a total of five different Crusades waged against them by the Roman Catholic Church starting in 1420 and continuing on we typically think of Crusades as being waged against Muslims but they were also waged against these separatist groups like the hites and many others some of those separatist groups were less Orthodox like the cathars or Albans others were more Orthodox like the waldensians uh that was a protal Protestant group that eventually actually United with the Reformed Church and very similar to Protestant in it's in their theology but uh here's the thing opposition to indulgences was one of the common tenants among these separatist groups the waldensians opposed indulgences and denied the existence of purgatory one of the charges against them is that they maintained that offerings for the dead benefit the clerics who devour them not the souls who need them they also opposed simony and ungodliness in the clergy uh I won't outline the the repeated massacres against the waldensians that took place uh it's it happened over the course of four centuries so you know just repeatedly over 400 years you starting in around early 13th century and then into the late 17th century and many of these occasioned by the promise of a plenary Indulgence from the pope okay look up 1487 or 1685 if you want to get two particularly gruesome examples in which women and children are not spared the cruelty was unbounded okay and people just don't know this stuff today but we need to know it we need to know the history of what happened and this happened to a lot of different people all kinds of people objected to indulgences and were burned alive for it or massacred in some other cruel and unusual and inhuman way you could read for lots of if you want to go piece by piece through different groups and how many of these sometimes protto Protestant groups sometimes just other separatist groups sometimes people within the Roman Catholic Church like wessell gford he's a German Scholastic Theologian who was imprisoned for his Treatise against indulgences but if you want to get like really work through this you get this book it's an older three volume Protestant text by Henry Lee and he just gives all kinds of of examples he talks about the spiritual franciscans who were tortured in Rome in 1466 they opposed Financial laxity within the church Conrad Schmid and his followers burned at the stake in 1414 1416 other times like that he talks a lot about in Northern Italy some of the separatist groups there especially those following jalamo savonarola uh not him himself he was not burned alive but many of his followers were in 1502 now someone might say well that this is coming from a Protestant text so it's biased but these points are not disputed you could just Google these people uh you know it's again it's not in dispute that this happened so uh almost it's almost Universal as a theme among the different protor Protestant groups that arise in the Medieval ages to oppose indulgences the only exceptions would be like in France in the 12th century there's two different protor Protestant groups there where I can't identify indulgences as one of their concerns Henry of laan and uh Peter of I don't know how to pronounce his last name I'll put it up on the screen if I can remember B Ru Ys Peter of Brie maybe or I don't know but anyway these are some early protor Protestant groups that are in France that they don't I can't see indulg but I think that's because indulgences had not grown to the point where they were such an issue at that time that's back in the 1100s so there's all these groups I mean this is one of the reasons why it feels awkward when people say where was the protest where were the Protestants before the Reformation you know why was your church not here before and of course on the one hand I think there's just a that assumes kind of institutional view of the church but the deeper problem is this issue of persecution makes that such an awkward thing to say it's kind of like if somebody shoves you in the closet and locks you in there for 6 hours so you miss the party and then when you finally get let out they say why are you so antisocial it's like it's like when people say where was your church before the Reformation in light of the fact that a lot of these groups were treated like cockroaches to be Stamped Out and that's true to history and it really happened and it really is that bad and we need to know that and we need to be able to talk about that because it affects why what protestantism is and it these charges against us like we're jumping off the ship it's like no we're trying to serve the church uh but we need to know why reform was so needed and how bad things really got now let me ward off a misunderstanding here a lot of times when people hear these things they're they might assume I'm offering a succession Theory you know that as though all these groups were like Proto Baptists no I'm not saying that you know there there's greater and lesser degrees of Orthodoxy in these groups like The cathars you know a lot of these people are heretical okay all I'm trying to do is make an exceedingly simple point that there was a need for reformation the church needed Reformation both doctrinally and spiritually by the in the late medieval West can put it simply like this Reformation was needed in the church because a the gospel was being obscured by the Financial Scandal of ever expanding indulgences that to some degree are supporting immoral luxurious living among the clergy and B opposition to that abusive practice is being viciously persecuted by the highest levels of leadership within the Roman Catholic church so when people say you know why do you leave the church that Jesus established it's like you know what can we do number one we don't think we're leaving the church Jesus established of course again that is assumes a kind of narrow institutional view of what the church is but more basically that question it just uh it it drastically underestimates how badly Reformation was needed in the late medieval Church what can we do but protest things like financial and physical and spiritual abuse what can we do but stand against that the only in in the context of of you know Bohemia in 1415 the only way to be faithful to Jesus Christ is to protest because what happened to who's was just sin it's just bad it's just wrong it's offensive you know it stinks to God it's wrong to burn alive people who are have Godly reasonable concerns uh so you know another way to put it if you think that indulgences are bad and the reigning power is defending them with sword and fire all you can do is protest and then pray you know so uh that let me conclude in this way by focusing on the gospel ultimately Behind These concerns about financial and physical uh abuse there's the deeper concern is that the gospel itself needed to be revitalized and clarified and reentered Luther's articulation of justification by faith alone was not a bare formula or slogan it was an alternative to this entire commercial system that had acred take for example his the first of his 95 thesis when our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said repent he willed the entire life of Believers to be one of repentance now you might out of context just read that as like just giving a general affirmation for the need to for ongoing repentance but in its historical context it was a protest against this financial manipulation of the leoty that had obscured the gospel's call to repentance for example one of Luther's colleagues describes how uh Luther's parishioners came to him with letters of Indulgence from tetel complaining that he would not absolve them because they did not want to desist from adultery whoredom Usery unjust goods and such sins and evil so in other words at the street level indulgences were coming to function as a substitute for repentance and so Luther's concern was about the financial abuse but it was also just about the Distortion of the Gospel message itself both the call to repentance and the consolation and assurance that the gospel is designed to give to a penitent believer Luther of course that's his own experience this in order to understand the Reformation it's about theology I'm not minimizing the theology but I'm trying to also pull back the curtain on the spiritual experience behind the theology that's in interwoven with it because Luther's own experience was like many of us you know the late medieval West was a time of spiritual anxiety much like today Luther's own experience was he just could not resolve his guilty conscience he lived in dread fear before God we know of these anecdotes of him spilling the wine during communion because he was so afraid um and no matter what he did it wasn't enough and then he breaks through and he understands the gospel from Romans 1:17 he talks about how he felt born again he entered Paradise itself this is what uh ultimately is behind the even the deeper concern even beyond the issues of financial abuse and violence is that people need to know the gospel people need to know how their sins are forgiven people need to have that anxiety relieved uh with these wonderful words peace with God in Romans 51 no condemnation Romans 81 and this is the spiritual experience that was renewed and revitalized in the Protestant Reformation I'll close this video with one example you may have heard of Katherine Parr she was the final of Henry VII's wives she was raised as a Roman Catholic but she developed Protestant sympathies she actually eventually published a work promoting Sola justification by faith alone when she's commenting on Matthew 11:28 she cites the verse and then she says what gentle merciful and comfortable words are these to all Sinners what a most gracious comfortable and gentle saying was this with such Pleasant and sweet words to Allure his enemies to come to him by this faith I am assured and by this assurance I feel the remission of my sins this is it that maketh me bold this is is it that comforteth me this is it that quenches all despair thus I feel myself to come as it were in a new garment before God and now by his Mercy to be taken as just and righteous what is the spiritual experience that stands behind those words what do you feel in your heart you saw that word I feel what is going on in your heart that makes you say words like gentle gracious Pleasant sweet emboldened Comfort assurance do you feel what's what's going on in her heart when she says these things this is what we believe was recovered in the Reformation um not that it had died but it had been mangled and obscured by various abuses and it was recaptured and reentered and put right out in front in the 16th century by the Protestants and that is the happy truth that we are made right with God simply by repenting and receiving the gospel that's it repent of your sins come to Jesus place all your faith on him you're right you're righteous in God's sight there's no additional offerings or sacrifices to be made least of all through money there's no further punishments to be Meed out through purgatorial fire all you have to do is come to Christ and place your trust in him Surrender Your Life to him completely and he he welcomes you into citizenship in heaven he cleanses you of all your sins he W wraps you in his righteousness he adopts you as a child of God you are indwelt by the spirit of God you are united to Christ that is the most wonderful truth in all reality and I'm burdened for people today to know that you know all my videos are trying to get to that I want people to experience what Katherine par knew in her heart may I just say it as the uh go into Baptist preacher mode for a minute you whoever you are watching this video you can know that same piece you can know more certainly than you know anything else that your sins are forgiven through the power of the Holy Spirit giving testimony in your heart that's the gospel and that's the Assurance if you know you need you need it's not just that God forgives your sins it's that he'll give you an assurance that he's forgiven your sins and you can know more certainly than you know anything else in all of reality that when you stand when you die and you stand before God he will say to you righteous in my sight because you are clothed in the righteousness of Christ and in its recovery of that happy truth the Reformation brought not only doctrinal Clarity but spiritual renewal to the [Music] church

Channel: Truth Unites

Views: 35,051

Keywords: Gavin Ortlund, Truth Unites, Reformation, Protestant, Indulgences, Church History, Persecution, Church, Martin Luther, John Huss, Catholic vs. Protestant

Id: AwoJ1N1z_No

Length: 38min 56sec (2336 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 30 2023