Luther – here and now – Justification above all! (Part 5 of 5)

This continues from Part 4 (Table of Contents – Part 1) where I expanded on one of the highlights found in Pastor Hermann Fick's Life and Deeds of Dr. Martin Luther book – The Article of Justification at the Diet of Regensburg.  As Pastor Fick relates, this is an extremely important series of events in the life of Luther and the Lutheran Church.  It has application for today!... here and now!! (that's right, President Harrison)
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Today's sorely troubled Lutheran Church has gotten away from its birthright, the Article of Justification.  And so even those conservative Lutherans who have separated from the LC-MS, who do not hold the center of the reason for separation to be the Doctrine of Justification, are also losing sight of the reason for the Reformation.  For example, when the WELS says the LC-MS is correct in its Doctrine of Justification because of its 1983 CTCR and yet attempts to find fault in other doctrines, it then creates an inconsistency because all errors in Christian doctrine flow from aberrations in the Doctrine of Justification.

Martin Luther, in the writing below, shows today's Church this point.  He said that he would be willing to suffer the poison of the errors of Rome in the Ten Articles, i.e. Rome's errors on:

• Transsubstantiation in the Lord's Supper
• prohibition of marriage of clergy (AC, Article 23)
• Primacy of the Pope (BoC, Treatise)
• Church ceremonies: certain holy-days, rites, fasts, and vestures (AC, Article 26.8)

What?  Luther would have allowed the above practices in the Churches?  How is this possible?  It seems blasphemous!

Ah, but Luther knew... he knew the over-arching power of the Gospel purely preached, the Article of Justification.  Luther knew that the poison of the Ten Articles was not so powerful when faced with the Gospel of free Grace!... the Grace of God in Christ Jesus.  Luther knew that any ambiguities in the agreed article on Justification would be swept away if only the pure Gospel were allowed to stand.  Read Paragraph 9 of Luther's letter again in Part 4.  Mind you, this was not the early Luther who was still weak in identifying the Anti-Christ, but the latter Luther, who had grown in faith to see all the abominations introduced by the Papacy.  Luther knew the power of the pure Gospel!

And so readers can ignore all of modern theology's judgments on the Diet of Regensburg by the likes of Alistair McGrath, or Peter Matheson, or Bruce L. McCormack, or Daphne Hampson, or David Wright, or Brian Lugioyo, or Suzanne Hequet, or Athina Lexutt, or any of a host of so called scholar/theologians.  None of these understand the true Doctrine of Justification like Martin Luther.  As C.F.W. Walther put it:

The Doctrine of the Lutheran Church Alone Gives All Glory to God, 

an Irrefutable Proof that Its Doctrine Alone is True

And Pastor Hermann Fick is a true pastor of the Lutheran Church and judges rightly that Luther had the true judgment over all the opposition from the Romanists or the Reformed.

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The book Gasparo Contarini by Elisabeth G. Gleason has a chapter "Illusion and Reality: Regensburg, 1541".  In her sub-heading "The Chimera of Concord" (page 223), the instruction that the pope's adviser Granvelle gave to the papal legate Cardinal Contarini before the Diet of Regensburg is summarized:

Granvelle warned him that unless a solution were found at the diet, the Catholic religion would be ruined, since the license introduced by the Protestants attracted people to their teaching everywhere, even in Italy.

The "license" that Granvelle referred to is the pure Gospel – no conditions.  It was this "license" that Martin Luther uncovered again in the Reformation in the Doctrine of Justification, or the power of the Gospel unto salvation.  God says it this way:

Isaiah 55:1 – ...he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.  

Romans 1:16 – For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth

And Martin Luther carried this doctrine to his grave, relying entirely on God's grace to hang on to the free gift of life and salvation.

Pastor Hermann Fick would surely be charged by today's modern church historians with being too simplistic.  But all true Christians in simple faith can put their trust with the dear Fick in his book Life and Deeds of Dr. Martin Luther who pointed our modern Lutheran Church to the way to avoid being so sorely troubled.  He said

If the princes and theologians had taken this answer of Luther as their model in the negotiations respecting the Interim, which was, shortly after Luther's death, fabricated from that of Regensburg, the Lutheran Church would not have been so sorely troubled.

Who would deny that the Lutheran Church is sorely troubled today?  Therefore, today's Lutherans, go...

Back To Luther!