Dear Cornerstone family,
On June 15, 1520, Pope Leo X issued a papal bull of which Martin Luther was the subject. The Pope cited Luther with 41 instances of doctrinal deviation from the Roman Catholic Church. Luther had sixty days to recant or further action would be taken.
Luther wasted no time in publishing his answer. With some pomp and publicity, Luther lit a match and burned the papal bull publicly. Luther’s in-your-face rejection of the papal bull was not received kindly by the Pope. In response, in January 1521, Luther received an edict of excommunication from the Pope. Just like that—he was no longer a member of the Roman Catholic Church.
It’s hard for modern Christians to appreciate the gravity of this action. The Roman Catholic Church was the church in Western Europe at the time. You couldn’t go down the street to the Baptist or Episcopal church because there were no Baptist or Episcopal churches. Indeed, other than the Eastern Orthodox Church, which was thousands of miles away, there was no other branch of the church to which one could affiliate. To be cut off from the Roman Catholic Church was to be completely cut off from the church. Period. End of story. Or was it?
Luther responded to his excommunication with an excommunication of a more significant kind. The theological errors of Rome were obscuring the gospel to such a degree that Luther claimed Rome could no longer be considered a true church. Indeed, Rome’s rejection of justification by faith alone––“the article by which the church stands or falls”––was proof enough in Luther’s mind that Rome could no longer be regarded as a true church.
To support this claim, Luther returned to the Bible’s doctrine of the church. Luther argued that the true church does not consist in its history or in its institutional structures. Rather, the true church is found wherever the true gospel is preached. “The sure mark by which the Christian congregation can be recognized is that the pure gospel is preached there. For just as the banner of an army is the sure sign by which one can know what kind of lord and army has taken the field, so too the gospel is the sure sign by which one knows where Christ and his army are encamped” (Luther’s Works, 41:231-232).
Including Luther but speaking more broadly of the Magisterial Reformers, Michael Reeves and Tim Chester said this, “It was not the Reformers who had departed from the true church. It was Rome that had departed from the true gospel…the church is the universal body of people on earth and in heaven who have been formed by the gospel. You are not saved by being a part of the church. You are a part of the church by being saved” (Why the Reformation Still Matters, p. 164-165).
In worship today, we join with thousands of churches across the world remembering and giving thanks for the truth of the gospel recovered during the Protestant Reformation. At the same time, we recognize the work of reformation is not done. Even the purest churches today are “subject to mixture and error” (WCF 25.5). And so we labor in hope, asking the Lord to continue reforming the church until a yet more glorious day dawns—the perfection of Christ’s church (Philippians 1:6).
Your servant,
