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July, 2025 (Vol.59-No.7) |
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Preached by Dr. Gene Scott on October 7, 1990 Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free… Galatians 5:1 Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiv- en, and whose sins are covered. Romans 4:7 MARTIN LUTHER’S LECTURES ON GALATIANS have occupied our attention for the last several messages because the church needs to see how far it has departed from its foundations. Luther’s premise, indeed the premise of all the reformers, can be simply stated as follows: salvation is God’s gift to us, by grace and through faith. But if Protestant churches could depart from that message in less than 400 years, how much more has the church lost its way over the course of the past 2,000 years? That is why God must periodically raise up preachers to return the church to its gospel foundation. It might appear that I am being a little hard on the traditions of the church, but I think it is becoming apparent that I am rather mild alongside Martin Luther. In a previous message, I pointed out that Luther said it is better to be a whore than a self-righteous Christian. Luther’s study of God’s word, along with his lectures through Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews, produced the theological positions that became the basis of the Reformation. His series of lectures on Galatians published in 1535 are more fully developed in their theology than his earlier series. By the time he preached this latter series, he was very firm in his position about the law, and he even made this shocking statement: “Therefore the workers of the Law are very rightly called ‘martyrs of the devil’…” Who are these “workers of the Law?” Luther was talking about people who touch our lives every day. This can include relatives, friends, and neighbors, or anyone in bondage to the idea that doing good deeds and avoiding evil deeds is the way to get into heaven. It includes people in the traditional church who feel it is their God-given right to criticize you. They might say, “Well, I admit that your pastor teaches God’s word, but I can’t listen to him because he smokes a cigar:” or “I just can’t get past his use of harsh language.” “Workers of the Law” include anyone who lays a guilt trip on you. They speak with great authority because they are backed by the weight of traditions and supported by the devil, the prince of the power of the air. They validate themselves by their own reasoning, saying, “All of this preaching of grace sounds wonderful, but if you are really a Christian, your life will exhibit righteous deeds!” Let’s pause to analyze that argument. If it were true, then why would God have bothered to say, “Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart?” In other words, if “real” Christianity can be judged by someone’s outward behavior, then why should God bother to look on anyone’s heart? After all, if someone is “really” saved, won’t we be able to see it too? In fact, God has enough to do as it is, with universes to create and other things to manage in the heavens; so why should He bother to look on the heart? Why doesn’t He just check with us? God could make an appearance at a fundamentalist convention and ask them who should be allowed into heaven. Imagine a ludicrous scene in which God asks a fundamentalist preacher, “Should I let these people in? Look them over and let Me know what you think!” But God does not need the advice of any fundamentalist preacher who judges us by our works. The Bible says that no one will be saved by the works of the law! There is a war going on. You have been set free, but you have not been set free into a vacuum of nothingness. You have been set free from the world, the flesh, and the devil in their combined capacity to bring you down. And you have been set free into the unmerited favor of Christ. You are covered by His grace. Here, I am using the word “grace” in the sense of justification: God now looks at you as though you were Christ, instead of as you are. He implants new life in you as a gift. You have been set free from having to make it into heaven by your own strength. You do not have to prove you are righteous by your outward behavior, specifically, by your ability to appear to conform to the law. That freedom was dearly obtained by the shed blood of God’s Son, and it is maintained by vigorously acting in faith. You need to adopt a warfare mindset that fights against the pressures that would rob you of that freedom the moment you drop your guard. This is why Luther used such forceful language. If you address the “children of bondage” with courtesy, they will eat you up. They will twist you like a pretzel into their shape as they apply their standard to you. If you are in a tradition-bound church, the children of bondage are still holding you in their grasp. This is true of Catholics and Protestants alike; it is true of every legalistic denomination, sect, and cult. The devil can assume the guise of an angel of light and beat you with your conscience all day long. You might have thoughts from the pit of hell that cause you to doubt the good news about your freedom in Christ. You might hear the gospel and begin to hope, “Can this really be true?” but then slip back into the bondage of traditions. That is why you occasionally need the verbal equivalent of a sledgehammer to break you free! And that is why I like Luther; he did not mince words. He said, “Therefore the workers of the Law are very rightly called ‘martyrs of the devil’…” Did you know that many preachers today are martyrs of the devil? I have heard preachers shout, “God is a holy God, and He will only associate with a holy people!” That is a load of garbage! Those are the kinds of preachers who want us to do penance and confess to them, because in their perverted view, Christ’s death was not sufficient to cover all of our sins. Luther went on to describe these “martyrs of the devil,” saying: They earn hell by greater toil and trouble than that by which the martyrs of Christ earn heaven. They are worn down by a double contrition: while they are in this life, performing many great works, they torture themselves miserably without reason; and when they die, they receive eternal damnation and punishment as their reward. Thus they are most miserable martyrs both in the present life and in the future life, and their slavery is eternal. What does that tell you about Luther’s opinion of the good intentions of saints who base their salvation on their good works, even to the slightest degree? I have been reading from Luther’s commentary on Galatians 5:1, where the apostle Paul said, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.” Luther goes on to point out that Paul selected just one part of the law, circumcision, to use as an example. Paul’s point had nothing to do with the act of circumcision in itself. He used circumcision to represent any external act that someone might rely on as being necessary to have an eternal relationship with God. If you are relying on any external act, then you are relying on the law to get you into heaven. Yet if you miss even one jot or tittle of the law, you are guilty of breaking the entire law. Furthermore, you have fallen outside of Christ’s provision of grace. Luther, interpreting Paul, was saying that good intentions, zeal, stubbornly-held beliefs, and traditionally-taught conscience will not bring you any closer to God. Doing good works might make you feel good. Some people habitually perform works they learned as a child. There are former Catholics who, years after having abandoned their faith, will still light a candle in times of trouble. Protestants just as easily revert to legalism years after they have come to know freedom. Anyone is susceptible. Whenever something goes wrong in your life, Satan can park on your shoulder and say, “See, I told you so! Get back into the fold of righteous living, and the curse of God will be lifted off of you!” That is the miserable life of being in bondage to traditions, which is why Luther said, “They torture themselves miserably without reason.” They are unhappy in their present life because they think that in order to get to heaven, they can never do anything enjoyable. For too long, the church has been listening to Satan, who always misquotes Scripture to justify his damnable designs. The devil has succeeded in causing the church to invert the gospel. He even exerts pressure on people’s minds to cause them to reject the truth of Luther’s teaching. There are many people who have the sincerest of motives, yet remain in bondage to legalism as a means of obtaining salvation. Luther lectured on the book of Romas in 1515-1516, and in his commentary on Romans 4:7, we see him begin to challenge the prevailing theology of his day, saying, “I must say either that I have never understood the matter or that the Scholastic theologians did not deal adequately with sin and grace.” Even in this early teaching on Romans, he saw the flaw in the reasoning of the theologians: For they imagine that original sin, just like actual sin, is entirely taken away, as if sins were something that could be moved in the flick of an eyelash, as darkness is by light. The ancient holy fathers Augustine and Ambrose, however, dealt with these issues quite differently, namely, according to the method of Scripture. But the Scholastics follow the method of Aristotle in his Ethics, and he bases sinfulness and righteousness and likewise the extent of their actualization on what a person does… It is sheer madness to say that man can love God above everything by his own powers and live up to the commandment in terms of the substance of the deed but not in terms of the intention of Him who gave it, because he does not do so in the state of grace. O you fools, you pig-theologians! For it we can fulfill the law by our own powers, as they say, grace is not necessary for the fulfillment of the law but only for the fulfillment of a divinely imposed exaction that goes beyond the law. Who can tolerate such sacrilegious opinions! Does not the apostle say that “the law works wrath” (Rom. 4:15) and “that it was weak through the flesh” (Rom. 8:3) and that it can absolutely not be fulfilled without grace? The church had adopted a doctrinal position that salvation should produce behavioral attributes that lean toward the ideals of Aristotle. This allowed the church to claim it could produce better ethics than Aristotle or the Stoics. Thus, Christianity could gain a place on the stage of the world’s best moral philosophies by being able to proclaim, “What all your leading philosophers have set up as their goal, Christians can do better!” This reminds me of the pragmatic arguments some preachers make today. We live in an age that focuses on the self and on “looking out for number one.” It is a tragedy that Christianity has moved into that arena. Preachers try to convince the world that, on a smorgasbord of religious options, Christianity can obtain more for you than any other worldview. They say, “If you really want to look out for ‘number one,’ try Christianity!” But Christianity is not in competition with those eternal-death movements. Christianity does not challenge ethics. Indeed, there are certain philosophies that have made this earthly life their only sphere of operation. Christians should acknowledge the fact that some worldly philosophies can produce better ethical behavior than Christianity can. I have met many ethical people who are not Christians. To this day, I can attest that some of the professors I had at Stanford University stand out as more honest than many of the preachers I have met. I would rather do business with those professors than with most preachers! It is a fallacy to measure Christianity’s validity by its ability to produce ethical behavior. Ethics does not need Christianity. Ethics is relatively “right” in human sphere because history approves of its workability. In this series of messages, I have already distinguished between ethics and righteousness. The church’s message is not about ethics; it is about eternal life! The church’s message is about what takes us to heaven: we are saved by the gift of God’s grace through faith. God takes us as we are and puts His own nature in us, which comes forth in the fruit of the Spirit. That might sound revolutionary, but only because the church has strayed so far from the message the reformers preached more than 400 years ago. Whenever Satan comes cloaked in a wonderful white coat of ethical behavior that everyone accepts, he traps Christians into a martyrdom to the devil. Luther said, “They earn hell by greater toil,” that is, they become self-sacrificing “do-gooders” who still end up in hell. But he added, “It is not so with believers, who have troubles only in the present life.” Can you see why the legalists are martyrs to the devil? In contrast, believers or “faithers” are people who act in faith on God’s promises. Luther said they only have troubles here during their brief sojourn on earth. Faithers would rather have eternal life than a few piddling benefits in this short life. Faithers do not stop living, but if calamities come, at least they suffer only in this life, not in the life to come. Luther said: Therefore we must stand fast in the freedom Christ has acquired for us by His death, and we must be diligently on our guard not to be ensnared once more in a yoke of slavery. This is what is happening today to the fanatical spirits: falling away from faith and freedom, they have a self-imposed temporal slavery in this life, and in the life to come they will be oppressed by an eternal slavery. It is remarkable that these words were written in the sixteenth century. We might think they were written only yesterday. To continue with Luther’s commentary on Galatians 5: This teaching is the touchstone by which we can judge most surely and freely about all doctrines, works, forms of worship, and ceremonies of all men. Whoever…teaches that anything beyond the Gospel of Christ is necessary to attain salvation; whoever establishes any work or form or worship; whoever observes any rule, tradition, or ceremony with the opinion that thereby he will obtain forgiveness of sins, righteousness, and eternal life-will hear the judgment of the Holy Spirit pronounced against him here by the apostle: that Christ is of no advantage to him at all. Most Protestants do not appreciate the debt they owe Luther for the Reformation. Indeed, his teachings are the foundation upon which the Protestant church was formed. Legalists rest their righteousness on their ability to appear to obey commandments that are thundered from every pulpit in America. At some point in our lives, most of us have heard a preacher proclaim, “Thou shalt, and thou shalt not!” or “God wants the church of Jesus Christ to stand against sin! You must root out all wickedness in the church!” Well, let’s go back to the words of the founder of Protestantism. Luther had something to say about wickedness in the church: he concluded, “This makes it abundantly clear that there is nothing more wicked under the sun that…” I pause here deliberately. What did the great reformer say is the wickedest thing under the sun? If there are any fundamentalists listening to me today, I am sure I have their full attention. They are probably thinking, “Now we are going to hear about some really terrible sins!” Even the fools who pray for me to “get saved” are trembling in anticipation and thinking, “Finally, God is answering my prayers and will show Dr. Scott why he is wrong. He will finally realize there is nothing more wicked under the sun than what he stands for!” What could possibly qualify as the wickedest thing under the sun? What could be that bad? I can imagine those same fundamentalists thinking, “It must have something to do with sex! Or maybe it has something to do with smoking cigars! Or maybe it is cussing!” Let’s read what Luther actually said: “This makes it abundantly clear that there is nothing more wicked under the sun than doctrines of human traditions and works!” What do you think of that? Many Protestants would not believe that Luther really said this. This might even make them want to convert to Catholicism! In case you do not believe that Luther really said these words, let me give you the source: Luther’s Works, Volume 27, Jaroslav Pelikan, Editor; Walter A. Hansen, Associate Editor; Concordia Publishing House, Saint Louis. Now, let’s read Luther’s words again and continue on in this passage: This makes it abundantly clear that there is nothing more wicked under the sun than doctrines of human traditions and works; for with one blow they abolish and overthrow the truth of the Gospel, faith, the true worship of God, and Christ Himself, in whom the Father has established all things… Therefore anyone who is a founder or a worshipper of the doctrine of works suppresses the Gospel, nullifies the death and victory of Christ, obscures His sacraments and abolishes their proper use, and is a denier, an enemy, and a blasphemer of God and of all His promises and blessings. Anyone who is not frightened away from human traditions and from trust in his own righteousness and works and who is not aroused to yearn for freedom in Christ by the fact that Paul calls the Law of God “a yoke of slavery” is harder than a rock or a bar of iron. That is a good description of legalists! In past messages, I have quoted Paul saying, “Cast out the bondwoman and her son.” Today, I say, “Cast out the rocks and the bars of iron!” Do you see why Luther shook the Catholic Church to its foundations? I am thankful that this church is building securely on the foundation of the great reformer! Reprinted with permission from Pastor Melissa Scott | Return Home | Current Wingspread | Wingspread Archives | Contact Us | |
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