As Free Reformed Churches of North America we trace our heritage to that branch of the Reformation that is commonly called Calvinism. At the same time we also claim as one of our own, Martin Luther who was God's instrument to launch the mighty movement of the Spirit known as the Protestant Reformation. Yet, apart from his ninety-five theses and his rediscovery of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, most of us know very little about the German Reformer's views on other articles of the Christian Faith. I thought it useful therefore to devote a few editorial articles on the theology of this great man of God.

Luther's Doctrine of God⤒🔗

Although Luther was a theologian of the first order, he was a very practical man whose sole purpose in preaching and teaching was to edify saints and convert sinners. This practical bent can already be detected in his treatment of the doctrine of the trinity. Unlike the medieval school-men who were given to speculation and academic hair-splitting, especially when dealing with this deep doctrine, Luther approaches it from the viewpoint of the redeeming love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For him the triune God is the God of our salvation. Although Luther took seriously the reality of the "hidden God," the Deus absconditus, whose concealed will can so easily inspire fear, his pastoral heart constrained him to advise and urge seeking souls to turn from the hidden God to the revealed God.

Scripture reveals a God who in Christ reaches out to sinners, promising eternal life to all who come to His Son and receive the salvation obtained by Him, by grace alone through faith apart from any works. In Luther's words: "He who has a God without His Word (that is, who "dreams up" a God not taught in the divine Word), has no God. For outside His Word He does not want to be conceived of, be sought and found by our speculation and cogitation."

Like Calvin who emphasized that Christ is the mirror of our election, Luther sought to direct sinners to Christ as the only way to come to certainty about one's election. He writes: "If you desire to find the Father, then close your eyes and look on nothing in heaven and earth than on His Son." Again, "Christ says: Come unto me and I will give you to drink; that is, 'In me and through me you will find the Word and doctrine which will comfort and strengthen your heart.'" Luther warned against putting the "hidden God" in opposition to the "revealed" God, and stressed that the God we find in the Gospel is the only and true God, and that we should not think of the secret counsel of God as contradicting His revealed counsel of salvation in Christ.

Luther understood the struggles many believers have with election. While in the monastery, he him­self had agonized over the question whether or not he belonged to God's chosen. His fears and doubts had been removed in part by his kind and evangeli­cal abbot, John Staupitz, who told him: "If you desire to argue your election, then start from the wounds of Christ, and your troubles will cease. But if you insist on continuing the argument about your election, you will lose Christ, the Word, the Sacraments, and all other things." Luther never forgot that advice and passed it on to others who were similarly troubled.

"Listen to the incarnate Son," he would say, "and predestination will offer itself to you of its own accord ... If you have Him (Christ), then you will have both the hidden and the revealed God." Luther thus taught that believers must seek their assurance of salvation solely in the Gospel message of God's love in Christ. In His gracious promises God is always present, granting us by faith, kindled by the Holy Spirit, joy, peace, and certain­ty of salvation.

Luther is very emphatic here. Not only may God be found in the Gospel and in the sacraments; these are the only means by which He can be found. He defended this truth with all his might against the enthusiasts or the people of the "inner light" who boasted new revelations and the inner assurance of the Spirit apart from the divine Word. He writes: "God gives us no invisible thing to believe, but which He has put in a tangible token, and these He makes to be one; that is, the divine promise attached to outward signs such as the word and the sacraments."

Salvation, he maintains, is to be obtained only through the Gospel and the sacraments, the latter being signs and seals of the grace of God promised in His Gospel, or the visible Word assuring us of His gracious promises.

Surely, this is sound, Biblical teaching with which any Reformed Christian will wholeheartedly agree as it is but another way of saying what we confess in our Heidelberg Catechism, namely that "Sacra­ments are holy visible signs and seals, appointed of God for this end, that by the use thereof He may the more fully declare and seal to us the promise of the gospel, viz., that He grants us freely the remission of sin, and life eternal, for the sake of that one sacrifice of Christ, accomplished on the cross" (Answer 66).