Five hundred years ago today is the traditional date for Martin Luther nailing the 95 Theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg and sparking the Protestant Reformation. There are plenty of areas where I would disagree with Luther, and people in my denomination (Baptist) like to argue about whether we actually came out of the Protestant Reformation at all (it’s complicated), but I still see this as a day to celebrate. The movement unintentionally launched by Martin Luther 500 years ago ended up bringing back to the Christian consciousness at large 5 essential truths.

Scripture Alone is the basis of Christian faith and practice (II Timothy 3:16) which teaches that true righteousness comes from Faith Alone (Romans 1:17) which is a completely undeserved gift of God’s Grace Alone (Ephesians 2:8-10) resulting in good works, not produced by good works because it is made available through the death and resurrection of Christ Alone (2 Corinthians 5:20-21) with all Glory to God Alone (2 Peter 3:17-18).

Happy Reformation Day! (If you haven’t had enough of my preaching, here’s a link to a sermon I preached a couple weeks ago on the life of Martin Luther).