Luther saw this and he was at that moment by his own testimony, by his own account that he believed he was born again by the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit came rushing in and regenerated his dead, stony heart, and Luther said it's as if the gates of heaven were flung open wide to me.

He realized it couldn't be his own righteousness. It had to be the righteousness of Christ.

Luther was racked with guilt. He worked harder and harder to perfect himself, to save himself from the wrath of God.

Then he discovered the gospel. Hello and welcome to the Tuesday edition of Renewing Your Mind, I'm Lee Webb.

Today Dr. Burke Parsons will reflect on how God worked in the 16th century and he'll remind us that the same passion that fueled Luther and the Reformers then

should do the same for us today.

It is appropriate that we would come together to celebrate and remember the Reformation. It is right and good to do so.

And as soon as we draw our gaze to Luther and to Calvin and to the other Magistral Reformers of the 16th century,

as soon as we begin talking about them and praising them, and they would be the first to say, you're praising the wrong one.

Luther and Calvin and the other Reformers would draw our attentions and our gazes to Christ alone.

They would tell us to fix our attentions on the gospel of Jesus Christ. They would say it is right to see what God has done.

It is appropriate to celebrate what the Spirit has done, but they would be the first to say that they themselves were not by any means the heroes of the Reformation.

But that God was the hero of the Reformation, that the Word of God was the hero of the Reformation, that the Spirit of God was the hero of the Reformation,

that it was God who by his sovereignty and by his grace and by his power, who led these humble sinners to serve him,

giving them the stewardship and the message of the gospel to expound it and the whole council of God for the people of God,

that God's people from every tribe, tongue, and nation from all around the world might hear that gospel that had been hidden and bound and chained for so long.

And so it is to the gospel of Jesus Christ that we turn this evening to that passage which the Lord used by his Spirit to awaken Luther and ignite Luther,

to invade Luther's heart by his Spirit. And so we turn this evening together to Romans chapter 1 and verse 16 and 17.

Turn there with me if you would. We read in Romans 1, in verse 1, that this is the gospel of God. Paul says this is God's gospel.

It's not fundamentally Paul's gospel. It didn't belong to him. It was the gospel that Paul preached, but this was the gospel of God, that Paul expounds throughout the epistle to the Romans.

And it is one sense is that which is expounded by God himself throughout all of sacred scripture. And so in verse 16, we read these two verses that ignited Luther and set the world on fire.

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