Summary
Well many of us had a 2020 where what we were planning to do, just didn’t happen! One of the things I planned to do in 2020 was to mark, with a sermon series, the 500 years since the reformer Martin Luther wrote three important pieces:
- A treatise on Good Works (read it here)
- The Freedom of the Christian (read it here)
- An appeal to German Nobility (read it here)
Actually he wrote four in 1520 (the fourth was the The Babylonian Captivity of the Church), but I won’t highlight that one as I didn’t think its content fitted a modern day sermon.
The themes that Luther touched on 500 years ago in these pieces are just as important today. The errors and questions that faced the church in Luther’s day are ones that we too will continue to face. These questions go back to Jesus time, and even before that, and if one question could summarise them all it would be: “What is the Christian Life?” So with Luther we will examine that question considering some of the scriptures that he drew on:
- What motivates ‘Good Works’?, Deuteronomy 5:1-22; Deuteronomy 6:1-9; Romans 13:8-10 (June 6)
- Christian freedom part 1, Matthew 4:1-4; 2 Cor 4:7-18; Gal 5:13-18; Rom 10:1-10 (June 20)
- Christian freedom part 2, Matthew 7:15-20; 1 Cor 9:19-27; Gal 2:15-21; Titus 3:3-8 (June 27)
- Proper spiritual authority, John 6:41-52, 1 Peter 2:7-12, 1 Tim 4:6-16 (July 25)
