The Just Shall Live by Faith
Romans 1:17
Indulgences
Purgatory
95 Theses
In an age driven by experience and feeling more than by truth; the Reformation seems to most people like much ado about nothing.
To many, the essence of religion is the experiential feeling of the Divine. Creeds and confessions, liturgies and Scripture all seem too binding and divisive.
The motto quickly becomes: “Nor creed but Christ.”
But is this not the slippery slope to the gates of Hell? Yes, doctrine divides and sadly some of those divides have been caused by fights over trivial minutia. When that happens, the casualties that pile up are the tragic result of the Churches obsession with petty things.
But when separations happens over core, essential truth; that division is demanded by faithfulness to Scripture.
During the Protestant reformation, the things that separated Luther from Catholicism were essential truth’s that had been obscured by years of accumulation of tradition.
These traditions had slowly superseded Scripture’s authority. When that happened, the gospel was compromised.
The 5 core convictions that came out of the Reformation were convictions based on what we call the “sola’s” or “alone’s”. Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone), Sola Christus (Christ alone),Sola Gratia (Grace alone), Sola fide (Faith alone), Sola Dei Gloria (To God alone be the glory).
These sola’s must still serve as the foundation from which all our conviction grow.
Today we think on these things.
Because of grace,
Tim
