Coming up next on renewing your mind, why the Reformation matters?

Luther saw that at the heart of the gospel was the absolute necessity to take no glory for ourselves,

and if our wills are free, if there is one residual free molecule in our will, then we get the glory.

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses to the Castle Church door in Vittenburg, Germany.

It wasn't an act of rebellion, he simply wanted to begin a scholarly conversation among his fellow monks.

But what followed can only be described as a revolution. As we approached the 500th anniversary of

that seismic event, it reminded that the Reformation indeed still matters. Our teacher today is Dr. Derrick Thomas.

So why remember Martin Luther, this extraordinary man, an Augustinian monk of relative obscurity?

This man brilliant, a lawyer, a scholar with a massive ego, course, hugely industrious.

But why remember him 500 years later? Well Calvin, who was a generation ahead of Luther.

Luther would have been a father figure to John Calvin. One of the curious things of the Reformation

is that Luther did not speak French and Calvin did not speak German. And Calvin never really left

Switzerland once he had vacated France and Luther never really left Germany. And so the two had

very little correspondence. But Calvin writes that we ought to be thankful for Luther because he gave

us back the gospel. He rediscovered it and rediscovered it in such a dramatic and personal way,

almost reflecting the very way the Apostle Paul had discovered the gospel.

In that so-called breakthrough experience, the so-called tower experience, the cluster experience,

discovering that the righteousness of God, that God demands of us and that he had tried so

very hard to discover in himself. That righteousness of God which was a thoroughly intimidating doctrine

was a righteousness that God provides through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone, a passive

righteousness as he first called it. A righteousness that is all together

outside of ourselves, extra-nose. And there, just in that insight alone, he had rediscovered the gospel

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