On Friday, October 31, 2025, the protestant churches celebrate the 508^th anniversary of an event that transformed the world.

Eleven years before the 1517 Reformation was kick-started into high speed by the nailing of the 95-statement thesis on the door of a Catholic church building in Wittenburg, Germany, a twenty-one-year-old law student was caught in a sudden and violent storm while walking to his university in Erfurt, Germany, a lightning bolt smashed him to the ground. Terrified, he cried out “Saint Anne, help me! I shall become a monk!”

The young Martin Luther survived the lightning strike and upheld his vow. At the age of 23, he began a monastic life.

Luther’s deepest fear was of dying and having to stand before God his Judge. But becoming a monk gave him what he saw as a golden opportunity: he could make himself more attractive to God and so – hopefully – earn his love.

And he went for it. Every few hours he would leave his tiny monastery cell and make his way to a service in the chapel, starting in the middle of the night, then another at six in the morning, another at nine, another at twelve, and so on. He often took no bread or water for three days at a time and was quite prepared deliberately to freeze himself in the winter cold in the hope that he might please God. Driven to confession, he would exhaust his confessors, taking up to six hours at a time to catalogue his most recent sins.

Yet the more he did, the more troubled he became. Was it enough? Were his motives right? Luther found himself sinking into an ever-deeper introspection.

Worse, he was coming to see God as a loveless tyrant who demands perfection and gives nothing but punishment. “Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience,’ he later wrote. ‘I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God.”

And in that dark, dark place he made his happy discovery.

Five years before the act that initiated the Reformation, in 1512, in the Tower of the Black Cloister in Wittenberg, Germany, a brilliant Roman Catholic monk by the name of Dr. Martin Luther was sitting with his Bible open to Romans 1:17 where he read, "... the just shall live by faith." After years of fasting praying, self-flagellation and self-denial in an attempt to merit favor with God, suddenly the eyes of his understanding were opened, and the burden of his soul rolled away as he became a new creation in Christ Jesus. Luther saw that the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone was the heart of the gospel and became for him "an open door into paradise.... a gate to heaven."

HERE IN THE BIBLE, LUTHER FOUND, TRULY GOOD NEWS ABOUT A KIND AND GENEROUS GOD... WHO LOVES FIRST.

It was as if his whole world had flipped inside out. God, he saw, is not asking us to earn his love and acceptance in any way. God’s righteousness is something he shares with us as a gift. Acceptance before God, forgiveness and peace with him is received by simple faith or trust.

Then 508 years ago, on October 31, 1517, at the age of 33, Martin Luther, still a German Catholic priest, walked up to the church door in Wittenberg and posted a document containing 95 points - primarily as related to the abuse of the sales of indulgences by the Church of Rome. To his surprise that event exploded across Europe and altered the course of human history. It has now been over five centuries since Martin Luther stood up and confronted Roman Catholicism. The kindling had been laid over decades, and Luther’s little, and what appeared to be an almost accidental spark, soon set all of Europe ablaze.

Luther became the tip of the spear for massive reform.

Why was reform needed? What was lost that needed recovery?

John Phillips, correctly assessed the spiritual condition of the 16^th Century when he wrote: “The church of the Middle Ages had reburied Christ beneath the heavy, dark coverings of the mass, sacraments, interceding saints, ceremonies, indulgences, confessions, penances, etc. The Roman Church offered salvation on the installment plan and saw to it that the poor sinner was always behind in his payments. When a church member died, they still had such a large unpaid balance of debt that they must continue suffering in a place called purgatory until the debt that they had accrued was paid either by living relatives paying for masses to be said, by prayers, alms, and the sufferings of living relatives and friends. The whole system required two things: merit and money - from the cradle to the grave and beyond.”

What had been left and lost was the gospel of the grace of God alone that justifies sinners by faith in Christ alone, based upon the promise of the Scriptures alone!

The Protestant Reformation stands as the most far-reaching, world-changing display of God’s grace since the birth and early expansion of the church. It was not a single act, nor was it led by one man. This history-altering movement played out on different stages over many decades. Its cumulative impact, however, was enormous.

The Reformation was, at its heart, a recovery of the true gospel of Jesus Christ, and this restoration had an unparalleled influence on churches, nations, and the flow of Western civilization.

As we celebrate the initiatory, liberating events of 508 years ago, ultimately, we are celebrating the recovery of the gospel of God which has as its ultimate purpose, enjoying God and the exaltation of the glory of Christ.

A little over one hundred years later in Westminster, England, in 1647, the Westminster confession and catechism was written and adopted. Question one of the catechism asked: What is the chief end of man? It gave the answer: To glorify God and enjoy Him forever."

This is the heart of what the Reformation recovered - Joy in God and enjoyment of God!

The gospel the Reformers recovered is the good news that glorifies God because it announces that God has saved us from Himself to Himself through Himself by Himself for Himself!

And that’s the gospel truth!