Today is Reformation Day, a day many Christians remember Martin Luther posting 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Much of Luther’s work reclaimed the simple teaching of Ephesians 2:8-9 – “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.”
A characteristic of life today is compartmentalization. For whatever reasons, what we do in one area of our life doesn’t carry over to others. So we may go to church and hear that forgiveness of sins and eternal life is God’s gift, purely God’s gift, but come Monday morning grace and faith seem far away, irrelevant. Need not be! Working with Luther was a scholar named Philip Melanchthon. About life in the workaday world, the struggles, the frustrations, all that you and I go at again today… Melanchthon wrote, in these God “wills to develop our faith and worship in the midst of our common perils and labors.” That is, the works that are not easy…who could be saved by our weekday slog? All this pushes us to grace, pushes us to trust God’s promises. What you deal with today is why Sunday is relevant. Happy Reformation!