Luther, Zeal, and the Gospel

While reading the Table Talks by Martin Luther one of the sections stood out to me. It was Luther’s description of his journey from Catholicism towards his understanding of justification by faith which culminated with the Protestant Reformation. He starts off with his motivation for entering the monastery, discusses how his beliefs led him to eventually discard the trappings of what he was preaching against, and what those steps meant for him personally. This portion has an almost Pauline flavor at the beginning. He writes (pg. 76), “For in the period of my monk days I served the Pope with such diligence that I out-did all the papists who lived or now live… and I observed the regulations of our order in the strictest manner.” This echoes what Paul wrote in Philippians 3:4-6 (ESV), “Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” Luther, like Paul, was more than zealous then many of his contemporaries. Early in the book he mentions how upon his trip to Rome he was repulsed by the mockery of the sacraments and he said that neither sin, God, nor shame were given any notice (pg. 74). Both men were blinded by their zealotry and both men had encounters with God, via scripture in Luther’s case, and a vision in Paul’s case. When this happened the zealotry remained but it was reformed into something better and it was pointed towards a new purpose.

It must have been a terrible shock to the monk who took his religion seriously to see the excesses before him. I heard a pastor say recently that we do not obey God because we want him to love us; rather we obey God because he loves us. This in an apt description to the problems Luther saw and how these problems are still with us in the church today. Many ministers, myself included, have a zeal to help the people in our churches so we invent programs, fancy advertisements, loud music, flashy graphics, and sermons that reduce the transformative power of the Gospel to moral obligations. We do these things to attract people, to appear relevant, to put a good image but this can be just as bad as the belief that relics could take years off of time spent in purgatory. The life of Luther should show us that preaching a Gospel of morality or self-help is just as harmful as the gospel of works and paid-for salvation of the church of that time. In our attempts to contextualize the Gospel we must never dilute the Gospel and understand that the Gospel, while understood in various cultural contexts, is something that calls culture to submit to Christ. If we as ministers do not understand it or disagree with it we run the risk of becoming just as legalistic and bound to ritual and formulae as the church of Martin Luther’s day.