​

For by grace you have been saved through faith;

and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.  Ephesians 2:8

 The 31st day of October each year is celebrated as Reformation Day.  Although other reformers challenged the church as many as 300 years before, and years after, in his own quest for spiritual peace with God Martin Luther unleashed a 16-century revolution in the church that changed the course of the western world.  Martin Luther rocked the very foundations of the medieval church and changed the political landscape.

          As a professor at the University of Wittenburg, while lecturing on the books of the Bible, Luther came to understand that he did not have to earn God’s grace as he had been taught.  So, on the crisp October night of All Hallow’s Eve, October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed a printed sheet of Ninety-five Theses to the main entrance door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg, Germany.  Many of the students of the university of Wittenberg passed through this door, for the building served as the university chapel, and the now famous door was used as a bulletin board.  To faculty and students, it was known as the schwarze Brett, or black board.  Those Ninety-five Theses were simply 95 statements he wanted to discuss concerning the sale of indulgences. 

Those hammer blows were to echo around the world.  Yet, as is often the case, Luther little realized that five centuries later all the Protestant world would still commemorate this historic event.  Luther simply intended to announce a public debate, to which all faculty and students of the university were invited, and which he hoped would result in clarifying the position of the university toward the sale of letters of indulgence.  The people believed these letters would buy them forgiveness.

          Because of the effort of Martin Luther, we can now rely on the clear teachings of God’s Word today, that we are saved, not by our own efforts, but by God’s grace through faith in Jesus.