On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther famously nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, in hopes of bringing reform to the doctrine and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. In particular, he challenged the church's teaching concerning faith and works and its practice of selling certificates promising the pardon of sin, known as indulgences.

Luther's convictions were shaped by Romans 1:16-17:

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’”

In these verses, Luther discovered that the righteousness of the Christian is not earned through human effort but is the very righteousness of God received through faith in Jesus Christ. This rediscovery of the true gospel became the foundation of a movement that spread across Europe and forever changed the history of the church.

While Martin Luther is perhaps the best-known Reformer, he was not alone. Throughout Europe, men such as John Knox in Scotland, Ulrich Zwingli in Switzerland, John Calvin in France, and William Tyndale in England were preaching and defending the same biblical truths. They shared an unwavering commitment to the authority of God's Word and to the necessity of a church that submits itself to Scripture.

"The Scriptures of God are my only foundation and substance in all matters of weight and importance." — John Knox

More than 500 years have passed since the Reformation, yet the truths these men proclaimed remain just as vital today. We live in a post-Christian culture that increasingly views truth as subjective and locates ultimate authority within the individual. Against that backdrop, Christians must continually return to the unchanging Word of God as our final authority for faith and practice.

The church has always needed reformation—not by inventing new truth, but by continually bringing its doctrine and practice into conformity with God's revealed truth. This is the principle captured by the Latin phrase Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda—"the church reformed, always being reformed according to the Word of God.”

This fidelity to God’s Word fueled one concept and doctrinal point that kept coming to the forefront of the reformation and a point that we still must remember today, and that is sufficiency. This was especially seen in three areas: scripture, faith, and grace.

Sufficiency of Scripture

At the heart of the Reformation was a simple but profound conviction: Scripture alone is the highest authority for the church.

The Reformers saw a church that had gradually elevated tradition, extrabiblical church law, and papal decrees to a position that often carried greater practical authority than the scriptures themselves. Because the Bible was available primarily in Latin and Greek, most ordinary people could not read it for themselves. They were dependent upon priests to communicate its teaching and, as a result, were often unable to recognize when church doctrine or practice had departed from God's Word.

Martin Luther stood firmly on this conviction at the Diet of Worms in 1521. Summoned before the emperor and church leaders, he was ordered to recant his writings. Luther's response was not that he was unwilling to change his mind, but that he would do so only if he could be shown his error from scripture.

He declared:

"If, then, I am not convinced by proof from Holy Scripture, or by cogent reasons, if I am not satisfied by the very text I have cited, and if my judgment is not in this way brought into subjection to God's Word, I neither can nor will retract anything; for it cannot be either safe or honest for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen."

Luther's appeal was not to his own wisdom or personal conviction but to the authority of God's Word. His conscience was captive to scripture because scripture alone is God's inspired revelation.

As Paul reminds Timothy:

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16

Sufficiency of Faith

Luther and the Reformers also challenged the teaching that faith came through Catholic baptism and was administered by the church through good works and the Mass. This was the critical issue of the Reformation. They argued from scripture that justification—being made right before God—is accomplished by faith alone.

Faith is the means by which we receive the righteousness of Christ apart from good works, personal merit, or, in the context of the Reformation, the purchase of indulgences. Even this faith is a gift from God, leaving no room for boasting in our religious activity, family heritage, or personal morality. As Paul writes in Ephesians 2:8:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”

Salvation does not come through the church or its ordinances but through Christ alone and faith in his blood as the sufficient atonement for our sins. We possess no righteousness of our own to offer God; instead, we stand in absolute need of the righteousness of Christ, which he freely gives to those whom he has called as his children.

Luther himself was a powerful example of this truth. He was a monk devoted to tireless study, earnest prayer, constant confession, vigils, and the memorization of the Mass and scripture. Yet none of these religious exercises could bring peace to his conscience.

After his Spirit-led encounter with Romans 1, Luther wrote:

“Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. There a totally other face of the entire Scripture showed itself to me...Thus that place in Paul was for me truly the gate to paradise.”

Life—and life abundant—does not come through religious exercises or even the study of scripture itself, but through Christ alone and faith in him alone. Scripture points us to Christ, and in him alone we find forgiveness, righteousness, and peace with God.

Sufficiency of Grace

Finally, with the sufficiency of scripture and faith serving as the foundation of Reformation thought, it was of utmost importance to the reformers that grace was truly understood as grace.

Saving grace was not poured out by the saints, earned through good works, infused by participation in the Mass, or applied through confession or payment. Grace is, by definition, God's unearned and unmerited favor freely bestowed upon sinners apart from their works. We often summarize it by saying that grace is receiving what we do not deserve.

Paul expresses this clearly in Romans 11:5-6:

“So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.”

In God's providence, he chose to lavish his grace upon us apart from the works of the flesh or the will of man so that he alone would receive the glory for our salvation. Grace leaves no room for human boasting because salvation is entirely the work of God from beginning to end.

Our only boast is in Christ and him alone.

Would we be a people that remembers the miracle of salvation, that remembers that scripture is sufficient and authoritative to guide us in all of life and godliness, that Christ is the only way to salvation, and that faith in him by the grace of God is our only hope in life and death. Would we joyfully live for his glory alone and remember how gloriously indebted we are to our great and merciful God.

"Men will never worship God with a sincere heart or be roused to fear and obey Him with sufficient zeal until they properly understand how much they are indebted to His mercy.” — John Calvin