Good morning, everyone. Today, I’m starting a short series of sermons about the Protestant Reformation. Today’s sermon is just an introduction to the topic, so we won’t read a Bible passage but in future we will do that.
First, let me tell you a story about a Japanese Christian which will help you understand why I’d talk to about the Reformation.
There is a YouTube channel I like called “Saki to Nihongo.” The host, a Christian called Saki-san teaches Japanese language for use in church settings. Recently, Saki-san announced that she has converted from Protestant to Eastern Orthodox. Her reasons are that Orthodox worship contains deep reverence, beauty, and strong connection to history, especially connection to the lives of the saints. Her story is still uncommon in Japan, but it reflects a trend happening in the West today.
Over the past few years, more young people in America, especially Gen Z, are converting from Protestant to Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. They tend to come from evangelical or non-denominational churches. A common reason for their conversion is feeling tired of churches that seem shallow or entertainment-driven, focused on emotional experiences, and whose sermons that sounded more like motivational talks than the preaching of God’s Word. They were looking for something deeper, more reverent, and more historically rooted.
We may think this conversion trend is mostly an American issue and not a Japanese one. But what happens in the American church often influences churches around the world. For example, many songs we sing in the Japanese church originally came from English-speaking churches. The last two times I visited Malaysia, I met young men in judo clubs there who told me they wanted to leave their Protestant churches and either become Catholic or Orthodox.
The conversion trend raises an important question: As Protestants, do we understand why the Protestant Reformation happened in the first place and what it means to be Protestant?
Over the next few sermons, I would like to talk about the key teachings of the Reformation, their basis in Scripture, and why they matter. These key teachings are called the five solas:
- sola scriptura — which means “Scripture alone”
- sola fide — faith alone
- sola gratia — grace alone
- solus Christus — Christ alone,
- and soli Deo gloria — to the glory of God alone.
For today, I will just provide the background story of the Reformation. Firstly, why did the Protestant Reformation happen? Secondly, who was Martin Luther and what was his contribution to the Reformation? Finally, why is knowing this history helpful for you and me today?
Why did the Protestant Reformation happen?
Let’s start by understanding the scene of Christianity before the Reformation happened.
Over the centuries, Christianity developed as the Church responded to different challenges and controversies. For example, early Christians debated the identity of Jesus Christ and the Trinity during the first few centuries.
In the same way, during medieval times the Roman Catholic Church was shaped by various questions. For example, St Anselm helped explain why Christ’s death was necessary for sinners. St Thomas Aquinas wrote extensively to organize and defend Christian theology. But some developments weren’t good, and they obscured the gospel.
There are many reasons why the Reformation happened, but I’ll focus on three main issues: (1) theological developments that were not clearly based on Scripture, (2) corruption and abuse of authority in the church, and (3) many people were not reading the Bible or familiar with its contents.
First, theological developments that were not based on Scripture. One famous example was the medieval system of penance. Originally, penance was developed to handle grievous sins such as apostasy and emphasize repentance. But over time, believers were taught that they needed to perform acts of penance to restore their standing before God.
This became connected to purgatory and indulgences. Purgatory was a place of temporary punishment for believers to purify their sins before entering heaven. Indulgences, meanwhile, reduced your time of temporary punishment—and you could buy indulgences with money or earn them through religious acts.
Another example was how Holy Communion was practiced. Over time, Holy Communion became a ritual that ordinary church members mostly watched rather than participated in. As they believed that the bread and wine become the real body and blood of Jesus, churches stopped serving the wine to avoid spilling Jesus’ blood by accident. In some churches, the clergy consumed the bread and wine on behalf of the congregation.
Secondly, besides these questionable developments, there was widespread corruption and abuse of authority within the church. For example, church positions were bought and sold, or given to relatives. Another example: Some clergy openly kept mistresses despite vows of celibacy. And when church authority was challenged, harsh measures were sometimes used against critics.
Third, there was widespread biblical illiteracy. In the early centuries of Christianity, translating the Bible into local languages was often encouraged. But during the medieval period, worship in Western Europe increasingly used Latin and the Bible was largely available only in Latin. The problem was that ordinary people could not understand Latin. And sadly, even many clergy had a limited understanding of Scripture.
Attempts to translate the Bible into common languages were often condemned by the Church. Men like John Wycliffe and William Tyndale said ordinary Christians should be able to read God’s Word for themselves. Tyndale was arrested for translating the Bible into English and executed by strangulation.
Yet around this time, the printing press appeared in the 15th century. Suddenly, books — including the Bible — could spread more quickly.
So when Martin Luther appeared in the early 16th century, the Reformation did not come out of nowhere. The movement arose in a Church that was confused about salvation, corrupted in leadership, and largely unfamiliar with Scripture.
That brings us now to Martin Luther and to his contributions.
Martin Luther and his contributions to the Reformation
Martin Luther, a German theologian, was the most influential person among the famous Reformers. His father wanted him to be a lawyer, so Luther pursued legal studies. But after nearly being struck by lightning, Luther became a monk.
Life in the monastery did not bring Luther peace, though. He took the holiness of God very seriously and was deeply troubled by his own sins. He spent long hours in confession and practiced harsh self-denial. Luther’s mentor, Johann von Staupitz, often told him to stop obsessing over his failures and look at the mercy of Christ and the cross.
Later, Staupitz sent Luther to Rome, but Luther ended up being disturbed by the corruption and worldliness he saw there. Later, he was sent to teach theology at Wittenberg University in Germany. Through careful study of Scripture and St Augustine’s writings, Luther’s understanding of the gospel began to change. He came to realize that the “righteousness of God” mentioned in the Bible was not only the righteousness by which God judges sinners, but also the righteousness God gives to sinners through faith in Christ.
Luther’s concerns about the church deepened when he witnessed people’s fears being exploited during aggressive sale of indulgences—authorized under Pope Leo X to fund major church projects like St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
So in 1517, Luther published a list called the Ninety-Five Theses in 1517. He did this to call for academic debate about repentance, indulgences, and the authority of the church. As Luther continued studying Scripture, he became convinced that popes and church councils were capable of making mistakes, so Scripture alone must be the church’s final authority. He also came to believe that salvation is secured by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. In response, church authorities increasingly condemned him.
The conflict between Luther and church authorities culminated in 1521. Luther refused to recant his writings unless he could be convinced by Scripture or reason. Afterward, he hid at Wartburg Castle, where he translated the New Testament into German so ordinary people could read God’s Word. Luther’s German Bible helped inspire the Reformation emphasis on translating Scripture and conducting worship in local languages.
But one of Luther’s greatest contributions to the Reformation was his recovery of a doctrine we call “justification by faith.” Over time, the medieval system of penance had obscured the centrality of Christ’s saving work and left many believers fearful that they had not done enough to earn a right status in God’s eyes. Luther rediscovered in Scripture that salvation is not primarily about what we do for God, but about what God has done for us through Jesus Christ. Martin Luther, like us, had his sins and weaknesses; yet God worked through him to impact many lives—including mine and yours.
Overall, his work inspired other Reformers such as Thomas Cranmer and John Calvin. The Reformation restored the centrality of Scripture and Holy Communion in worship, with Holy Communion being given to ordinary believers once more. Later generations of Reformers, in the 20th century, summarized their predecessors’ teachings into what we now call the five solas.
Today, we who are here in IBF are heirs of this Reformation legacy. That leads me to the last part of this sermon. Why does knowing our history matter?
Why we should know our Protestant history
I think one clear reason is to avoid repeating the Church’s past mistakes.
Another benefit of learning our history is to realize that the Church can drift away from biblical teaching. Traditions can accumulate. Some are good traditions, but others may shift our attention away from Christ and his finished work. That was the Reformers’ concern. They were not trying to invent a new Christianity or establish a new Church, but to bring the existing church back to the centrality of Christ and the authority of Scripture.
Let me reemphasize that not all traditions are bad. One example of a good tradition is “greeting time,” which is practiced in many churches including IBF. At the beginning of worship, we often greet the people sitting nearby. This tradition comes from an early Church custom called “passing of the peace.” Before Holy Communion, believers would reconcile with one another in obedience to Jesus’ command to make peace with a brother or sister they had a conflict with.
Moving on, learning our history not only enriches us but also teaches us not to be overconfident about our beliefs. The Church must always check itself with Scripture. We have to ask an uncomfortable but necessary question: “Has our church today drifted away from biblical teachings?” It is easy for Protestants to point at Catholics and say, “They have many unbiblical traditions; so, they are wrong and we are right.” But we Protestants have our traditions too, which should be examined.
Take our idea of worship, for example. I come from an evangelical background, so in my earlier years after becoming a Christian, I often heard people say, “The worship was great today.” Usually, what they meant was that the time of singing was exciting, the atmosphere was emotional, or the sermon was personally inspiring. Worship was centered on how they felt. But biblically, worship is not primarily about us and our feelings. Worship is first and foremost about God.
The Reformers understood worship very differently from this. In evangelical churches today, worship refers to song time. By the way, the concept of worship as song time led by a worship leader who doesn’t have to be an ordained minister is actually quite new—it developed in 20th century America. Anyway, for the Reformers, worship included the whole liturgy—not just the singing but also the reading of Scripture, confession of sin, reciting the creeds, prayers, preaching of the Word, and Holy Communion. Christians encounter God through the whole service.
Sometimes, the things we do in church today are not clearly wrong or sinful, but we have to discern if they are healthy or could be better.
Another example. I attended a church in Texas for a few years. The focus of Sunday service was a concert-like worship and powerful preaching by the senior pastor. He was very gifted at teaching. But one thing I felt strange about the church was how it did Holy Communion. Communion wasn’t quite part of the service. Instead, the bread and grape juice was placed in a hard-to-see corner of the sanctuary. If people wanted to take it, they could go and take it individually after the service. To me, it felt like eating at a Thai restaurant or Chinese restaurants. Some of these restaurants let you take a candy from the reception counter after settling your bill. Holy Communion at the Texan church was like that: if you want it, take it; if you don’t want it, doesn’t matter.
So we should not be surprised that young Protestants are searching for more reverence, depth, and connection to history. In trying to make church more attractive to young people and non-Christians, many evangelical and non-denominational churches simplify worship into something that looks more like modern entertainment than by historic Christian worship. But the answer is not necessarily to become more Catholic or more Orthodox. Neither do we have to imitate the past exactly.
The answer is for Protestant churches to recover their own deepest ideals. These ideals include worship centered on the Word of God, faithful preaching of Scripture, and shared participation in the Lord’s Supper. In many ways, that was the heart of the Reformation itself. Perhaps, if we truly do those things, I think our worship will have reverence and depth.
How about a greater connection to history? Martin Luther and the Reformers understood historical connection this way: they were attempting to recover their Christian history in terms of doctrine first and foremost. They wanted to recover the earliest and purest faith taught by Christ and the apostles. While I think it’s wonderful to feel your church has a great sense of history—and I myself often dream of becoming an Anglican because of that—what matters ultimately is that we are faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ. That challenge remains for the Church today. The Protestant Reformation was not perfect, and neither is any church. All traditions, whether we have many or few, should be tested with Scripture.
Conclusion
To conclude, we live in a time when many Christians hunger for a greater sense of reverence, depth, or historical rootedness in church. Those are good desires. But true depth is not found simply in ancient rituals or outward traditions. True depth is found in a church centered on Christ, grounded in Scripture, nourished by Word and sacrament, and shaped by the gospel.
As Protestants, we should know our history—not to boast in it, but to learn from it. There is an old Reformation phrase, ecclesia semper reformanda est — “the church must always be reforming.” With every generation, the Church must continually examine itself with Scripture, because error and drift can creep in over time.
As we study the five solas together in the coming months, my prayer is that we will not simply learn history but grow deeper in our love for the gospel.
Let’s pray. O God, by your grace your servant Martin Luther, kindled by the flame of your love, became a burning and shining light in your Church, turning pride into humility and error into truth: Grant that we may be set aflame with the same spirit of love and discipline, and walk before you as children of light; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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