Thursday, October 11, 2006
John 8:31 If you abide in my word, you are my disciples indeed.
SOLA SCRIPTURA -- SOLA CHRISTUS
To live this doctrine of Sola Scriptura is to receive and believe and hold to the Word of God despite the world's opposition. Luther refused to recant or retract one syllable of what he confessed and proclaimed on the basis of God's Word. That's what His famous stand at Worms, Germany was all about.
And by 1530 Martin Luther no longer stood a lone monk, conscience bound by the Scriptures, confessing before princes and the emperor. No, at Augsburg princes and dukes, and the representatives of free German cities joined him. They too confessed their faith as drawn from the one reliable and inspired source. "Here I stand" became "we here solemnly and publicly testify".
But what was their faith? What was the confession they made based on Scripture Alone? They held fast to Jesus as their personal Savior from sin, death and hell. You see, to live this doctrine of Sola Scriptura is first of all and above all to receive and believe in Jesus Christ. The Word alone can bring us lost sinners to Christ. He alone is the Savior. Sola Christus is firmly and intimately united with Sola Scriptura.
So Luther says: "The proper way to honor the Word is to fix it in your heart . . . for you cannot have life, righteousness, and salvation without the Word. Now when I say that you should fix the Word of God in your heart I do not mean merely that you should know it and meditate on it. That is nothing. I mean that you should regard and esteem it as it ought to be regarded and esteemed. That is, you should hold it to be a living, eternal, all-powerful Word that can make you alive, free from sin and death, and keep you eternally; that brings with it everything of which it speaks, namely, Christ with His flesh and blood and everything He is and has. For it is the kind of Word that can and does do all these things, and therefore it should be so regarded.
"In short, the proper honor for the Word is nothing else than a genuine faith from the bottom of one's heart, a faith that holds the Word to be true, that trusts it and stakes its life upon it for eternity."
