Next week, people all around the world will be celebrating Halloween, but did you know that October 31st is also a special day for the Church?
Just over five hundred years ago, on October 31st, a monk who had been wrestling with much of what the “church” had been teaching nailed his “95 Theses” to the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany. What followed is what we now know as “the Reformation.” What started as one man’s thesis turned into many godly men and women joining together to lead the Church away from the Roman Catholic teachings that had corrupted it.
Much was accomplished during this time, and, of course, I can’t mention all of these accomplishments. However, among the more prominent areas of reformation, how one is brought into a right relationship with God, I would argue, was the greatest of all. Through many different false teachers, leading to erroneous doctrines, the truth about the sinfulness of man and the only cure for that sinfulness had been either minimized or completely done away with.
Because of their commitment to going ad fontes (back to the sources), the Reformers sought to derive their understanding of these crucial aspects of the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek texts, instead of through the traditions that had been passed down or through the corrupted interpretations of others.
Thus, through reading such passages as Romans 3:10-28, Ephesians 2:1-10, etc., a right understanding that man is saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to the Scriptures alone, for the glory of God alone, was restored.
This Halloween, instead of joining in with the “festivities,” let us honor the legacy of the Reformers (and ultimately the Lord Himself) by being thankful for His great mercy towards us in Christ. May the rich truth of the Gospel fill your hearts with love for the Lord and encourage you to reach out to your loved ones with the greatest news they could ever hear.
-Shaun M. Hewlett