Why the Reformation Still Matters

As Luther showed in his marriage illustration, salvation by grace alone is about the believer’s being united to Christ as a bridegroom is united to his bride. In the story, the prostitute receives the royal status of her husband, but that does not tell us about the point or intent of the marriage. Marriages are supposed to point to the ideal marriage between Christ and the church (Eph. 5:31–32). And in an ideal marriage a man and a woman come together in order to get each other. Just so, believers trust in Christ and are united to him in order to get him. Not, first and foremost, to get heaven, righteousness, life, or any other blessing, but to get Christ, in whom all those other blessings are then found. Take the apostle Paul, who wrote so emphatically on salvation by grace alone. Writing to the Philippians he declared that his desire was to depart and be not “in heaven” but “with Christ” (Phil. 1:23). For him, Christ was the greatest attraction of heaven.

I could not have faith in God if I did not think he wanted to be favorable and kind to me. This in turn makes me feel kindly disposed toward him, and I am moved to trust him with all my heart and to look to him for all good things. . . . Look here! This is how you must cultivate Christ in yourself. . . . Faith must spring up and flow from the blood and wounds and death of Christ. If you see in these that God is so kindly disposed toward you that he even gives his own Son for you, then your heart in turn must grow sweet and disposed toward God. . . . We never read that the Holy Spirit was given to anybody because he had performed some works, but always when men have heard the gospel of Christ and the mercy of God.

He was like a rotten tree producing rotten fruit, his religious efforts no more than attempts to staple plastic fakes on his branches to disguise the problem. Sin was in his roots, in the very grain of his deepest self. Nothing was unscathed by it or neutral. What Luther needed—and what he came to see all sinners need—was a radical renewal: a new heart that would freely love and be pleased with God (Ezek. 36:26–27; Mark 7:14–23; John 3:3). And that would come about only through “the love of God, spread abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 5:5).60 As he would later put it, “the heart must be made glad. . . . The heart must grow warm and melt in the love of God. Then praise and thanksgiving will follow with a pure heart.”61 It is when people taste the love, grace, and glory of God through the gospel that their eyes are opened and their hearts turned: only then will they love God back with a pure heart.