September 25, 2017 Show with Kurt M. Smith on “Remembering Luther’s Fight”

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 25th day of September 2017.

And yet, in spite of my really radical cold that I'm battling today, I march on and I am conducting the program today because I was looking forward so greatly to have back on the program

Kurt M. Smith, who many of you recognize from his past interviews on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

He is an author and the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church of Pine Mountain, Alabama.

Today we are addressing his booklet, Remembering Luther's Fight, a primer on Martin Luther's life and legacy of standing for the gospel.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Kurt M. Smith. Well thank you brother

Chris, it's great to be back with you. And in studio with me is my co -host the Reverend Buzz Taylor. And once again, hello, it's good to be here.

And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is

ChrisArntzen at gmail .com, ChrisArntzen at gmail .com. Please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. And please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter. Let's say you disagree with your own pastor on theology or something like that and you don't want to publicly identify yourself, that's understandable.

But if it's not a personal and private matter, please give us at least your first name, city and state and country of residence.

And Pastor Smith, for those of our listeners who have not yet heard you, please let our listeners know something about Providence Reformed Baptist Church of Pine Mountain, Alabama.

Well Providence Reformed Baptist Church is a confessional

Baptist church that was constituted just over a year ago.

I have been here at this church actually a little more than a year.

When I first came, it was actually a Southern Baptist church. It was under a different name called

Pleasant Mount Baptist Church. And that church was established all the way back in 1899.

But sadly, but not surprisingly, because it's a story that's retold over and over again in so many

Baptist churches, especially in the South, Pleasant Mount Baptist Church was established confessionally as a

Calvinistic Baptist church in 1899. But over generations, they completely left the faith.

And it would be probably about four, maybe five years ago that the work and the seeds of Reformation started.

It started first with one of the deacons. And then eventually they called a pastor, a young Calvinistic Baptist pastor to come.

And he had a very heavy accent on the doctrine of regenerate church membership. And that really brought the house down.

The large majority of the church membership were unregenerate and proved it by their fruit.

But eventually the troublemakers all turned on each other and they all left.

And that was a very unusual happening. And so then the work of Reformation started gaining more traction.

And then eventually that pastor left, went to Wyoming to plant a church. And then in a matter of probably three or four months,

I contacted them and one thing led to another and the Lord opened the door for me to come here.

And so last summer, we reconstituted this Providence Forum Baptist Church. And then this year, in the spring of this year, we actually joined the

Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America, which is ARPCA, which of course is a church that where you're a member at,

Brother Chris and Grace Baptists in Carlisle is a sister church of ours in that same association.

Amen. And it's interesting how there are many Baptists across the country who view

Calvinists as the new kids on the block and the troublemakers, when we're actually, in many, if not most cases, trying to return to the roots of our

Baptist heritage and even more importantly, our biblical heritage. Right.

Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Very much so. You know that through the work that myself and Pastor Brandon Smith of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Jackson, Georgia, through the work that we did, as you well know, because you've interviewed both of us with the book that we wrote on the gospel heritage of Georgia Baptists, all of that research proved and improves emphatically because of primary source materials.

You can't change the facts of history. They are what they are. The Reformed faith, the

Calvinistic doctrines of grace, that's what

Baptists once believed and held very firmly and unashamedly.

Really, it's only been since the turn of the 20th century that you really started seeing the slow departure away from those very strong doctrinal distinctives that once held all

Baptists together. Well, I want to read an endorsement that Michael Haken, who is one of the most prolific

Baptist historians alive today, I've always enjoyed interviewing

Dr. Haken on my program, and he says about this booklet, there seems to be no end of Luther's studies, and especially in this year, 2017, when many are celebrating the beginning of the

Reformation. Kurt Smith's brief study is extremely helpful as he, as he, oh boy, the typing on the hair is really small, as he isolates the core legacy of Luther and why his life and thought is still needed today.

And this is a booklet that is brief enough where those who aren't even believers might be more willing to read it, and it's also inexpensive enough where churches can buy cases of these, of this booklet and, you know, give them away not only to visitors during Reformation month or at any time, but also to their own members.

What was it that led you, a Baptist, to write about Martin Luther to begin with? Well, remembering

Luther's fight um actually goes back to 2010.

I was asked by a Baptist pastor in Florida if I would be willing to come to a conference that the church where he pastored was putting on the following year in January of 2011.

It was, he was calling it the Shepherdology Conference, and he asked if I would give two different messages, but one of them being biographical, one of them on Martin Luther.

And, and he said, could you, you know, could you focus on, you know, what, you know, what, what was it that Luther really thought about?

What was it that he really stood for? And I said, okay, I will. And so I spent all summer of 2010 um researching, reading, studying everything

I could get my hands on about Luther, about his thought, about his theology. And, and so by the fall of 2010,

I put together what you now have in your hands as that published work,

Remembering Luther's Fight. But, but originally it was, it was a, it was an assignment for a pastor's conference.

And, but, but from the, from the moment I gave the oral presentation in January of 2011, um, just the, the response to it was, was very surprisingly positive.

And, and, and so I've, I've actually given the oral presentation of it several times since.

Um, but this year, um, I went to, uh, Mike Gaydosh. I told

Mike about it, uh, since it's the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. I said, what do you think about maybe having this published?

You know, I, you know, actually published as a booklet and Mike, Mike was all for it. Um, so, you know, going back to your,

I guess your original question, me as a Baptist writing, uh, writing about Luther, what

I had discovered and what I've learned as far as Martin Luther, what he was about, what he stood for, what he fought for.

I, as a Baptist would fight for the same thing because Luther would call himself and he did call himself an evangelical.

That was the, that was the favorite term that was used among the

Protestant reformers of the 16th century. Yeah, that's right.

Yes. Yes. Coming. Yeah. Coming from the, from the Greek word, um, of, you know, of the evangelical and, and, um, you know, another term they use, um, where it was called gospelers.

Uh, that was actually a term that, uh, William Tyndale had coined, but gospelers or evangelicals, the terms were synonymous.

Obviously the term evangelical was the term that stuck. And for Luther, that was his favorite term. I mean, he, he, he really latched onto that because for him, the, the reformation, the

Protestant reformation, it was all about the recovery of the gospel.

You know, he, he fought for 13 years just to be right with God, to be converted, to have a right standing before a

Holy God. And finally in 1518, when he came to faith in Christ, he came to faith in Christ by the revelation of Romans 1 17, that the just shall live by faith.

And you know, in, in through that passage of scripture, the Holy Spirit opened

Luther's eyes to what Luther himself would call the gates of paradise. I mean, he, he, he tried to understand

Paul in that passage for, for many years. And finally, the

Lord opened his eyes to see that a guilty sinner is made right with a only through the righteousness that God provides through faith in Jesus Christ.

And so for Luther, the doctrine of justification by faith alone, there, you know, the heart of the gospel, there was nothing more important to him than that.

Nothing more important. In fact, one of, one of the statements that Luther made regarding the doctrine of justification, he said, nothing in this article can be given up or compromised, even if heaven and earth and things temporal should be destroyed.

On this article rests all that we teach and practice against the Pope, the devil and the world.

Therefore, we must be quite certain and have no doubts about it. Otherwise all is lost and the

Pope and the devil and all our adversaries will gain the victory. In another place, Luther said concerning this doctrine of justification by faith alone, he said, we cannot emphatically and often enough sharpen our thinking on this doctrine.

We must devote ourselves to it with the greatest theological diligence and seriousness for neither reason or Satan is so opposed to anything else as they are to this.

No other article of faith is so threatened by the danger of false teaching.

So for Martin Luther, this is really what it was all about. You know, he, he, he stood so firmly, so uncompromisingly on this, the, you know, the, the heart, the core of the gospel.

And so for me as a Baptist, how, how, how, how can I not stand with Luther there?

I mean, you know, in, in granted, there are things obviously that as a Baptist, I disagree with Luther about, you know, doctrinally, theologically, but, but what

I learned in all of my study and research about Luther is that, is that how, how the

Lord used him and what has lasted the longest about him was his stand for the gospel.

Amen. And by the way, there are conservative, solid Bible -believing

Lutherans who disagree with Luther on things as well. And thank God for that.

Otherwise we would be guilty of idolatry. Right. And by the way,

I didn't want to put any apprehension on the parts of our listeners to think, because of my remark, that the entire booklet is in a very small font.

That's, I was reading from the back cover of the endorsement of Michael Hagen, which is smaller than the font inside the book.

So I just want to, people to rest at ease that you could easily read, even I can easily read with, yeah, even

I could easily read the inside of the book with my bad eyesight. And just another reminder that I have to go to the ophthalmologist.

But the, what part, because obviously since this is a brief study, what did you focus on to the exclusion of all else in, in regard to Luther's life, legacy and theology?

Well, it was two things. One, one, his fight for conversion and two was his fight for the recovery of the gospel.

That's, that, that's what I, that, that's what I just centered everything around. His, his fight for conversion.

I, I go through in the booklet and explain what Roman Catholicism taught about salvation.

How did, you know, this is what Luther grew up with. This is what every European grew up to believe, what they were taught.

And I go through all of the steps, you know, according to Roman Catholicism of how, of how a sinner is saved, but of course showing and proving that no, no

Roman Catholic ever has any true assurance or any true certainty of salvation. You know, because it's, well, it's not the gospel.

It's not the good news. In fact, there's no good news about it. And Luther, Luther in a 13 year struggle would come to see this.

And so it, you know, I, I just, I go through his journey there in that, in his fight for conversion.

And then, and then in the next, next part of the booklet, which is where I probably spend the most part is his fight for recovering the gospel.

And what were the events? What were the things that, what were the things that he did in, in seeking to recover the gospel of Jesus Christ?

As he, as, as he had come to faith in Christ, as he had come to see what the true gospel, what the true good news was, and that it absolutely contradicted and opposed everything that the

Roman Catholic church had taught. Luther was not going to be silenced.

I mean, he, he wanted the whole world to know and the ways in which he went about in seeking to recover the gospel.

I bring out in the booklet first, it was by his translation of the Bible in the

German language. This was absolutely phenomenal. This was huge.

The New Testament he completed in 1522. The Old Testament was brought forth 10 years later in 1532.

And as I point out in the booklet, this one achievement sealed the reformation for Germany by placing

God's word in the hands of the common people to read in their own language. And, and of course, by giving the people a vernacular

Bible, no one in Germany would be barred from reading the gospel for themselves. So that was the first big step in recovering the gospel.

The second was Luther's fight. Luther's fight to recover the gospel took shape in his influence as a

Bible professor, pastor, and mentor for the next generation. Martin Luther always had the long view in front of him.

He was always thinking about the next generation. And this can be seen in the production of his small catechism, which he wrote in 1529.

And that would, of course, explain the theology of the Bible and the gospel for children. Also, there was the enormous effect

Luther had on the university students by what would be called his table talk. These were informal discussions and exhortations

Luther would give his students and other guests who would gather around the dinner table in Luther's home. And through these talks,

Luther took great advantage to unpack the gospel and shepherd the impressionable and hungry hearts who sat at his table.

Third step in recovering the gospel, and this is really where it took the greatest shape for Luther, was in the form of preaching.

The act of preaching was central to the Reformation, since the

Reformation gave centrality to the sermon. And as the definitive biography on Luther's life by Roland Bainton, Here I Stand, Bainton said of Luther, the pulpit was higher than the altar.

For Luther held that salvation is through the word and without the word. The elements are devoid of sacramental quality, but the word is sterile unless it is spoken.

And for Luther, he took this conviction to heart. From the years 1522 to his death in 1546, he preached some 6 ,000 sermons.

He believed firmly that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the rhema of God, the actual

Greek word Paul uses here in Romans 1017, the spoken word, the preached word of God.

Faith comes by hearing the word preached. And Luther knew that God was saved as his gospel was preached.

But the last way in which Luther would fight for the recovery of the gospel was in giving his labors to the writing and the publishing of books that would work to spread the gospel to his generation, but even beyond.

And this is really where Martin Luther continues to fight for the recovery of the gospel even in the 21st century, because as his physical voice was, of course, silenced in 1546 when he passed away, yet his written voice would continue preaching on and has done so generation after generation.

But of everything Luther penned for this purpose of recovering the gospel, there would be no book more prized and revered for this purpose than Luther's forceful theological reply to Desiderius Erasmus in 1525.

And this particular book, originally titled in Latin as De Servo Arbitrio, which translated means on the enslaved will, we know this book by its more popular title,

The Bondage of the Will. And Luther himself regarded this book as the only book of two that he wished to be preserved.

The other book for preservation for Luther was his small catechism. But outside of these two books,

Martin Luther said you could burn everything else you wrote. So by the mere fact, yeah, it's amazing.

And it's amazing when you consider that when you take all of Luther's writings together, okay, in the

English edition, they fill 55 volumes. In the German edition, they fill 127.

Okay, the man was a prolific writer. But here he is saying, after everything

I've written, I only personally desire two things to be preserved, the small catechism, and the bondage of the will.

That's it. And so in considering that, in this of course, in the booklet,

I really hone in on the bondage of the will. Because if Martin Luther himself says,

I want this preserved, okay, burn everything else, but this and the small catechism are to be preserved, all right, well, then we need to know what was it that Luther saw that was so vastly important about this work that it needed to be preserved for the generations to come.

And for Luther, the bondage of the will, for him, this work gave him, it gave him an opportunity because it was actually his response to Desiderius Erasmus.

It gave him a platform, a public platform to recover the gospel with greater clarity than anything that he ever wrote.

B .B. Warfield, he said of the bondage of the will, he said, this is the manifesto of the

Reformation. Of everything that was produced by the

Protestant Reformers, Warfield said, this book is the manifesto.

And the theology in it was the key uniting factor that brought all the

Reformers in harmony because the Reformers disagreed on especially the sacraments and other things.

But this is the primary area where they all were in agreement. Absolutely, yes.

Yeah, they could all take their stand here together, hand in hand. I mean,

B .B. Warfield, he said in another place about the bondage of the will, he said, it is the embodiment of Luther's Reformation conceptions, the nearest to a systematic statement of them he ever made.

It is the first exposition of the fundamental ideas of the Reformation in comprehensive form.

So this, yeah, this is a very important work. And, you know,

Luther, he didn't write it as some big academic scholar. He actually wrote it as a gospel evangelist.

You know, he just took to the scriptures and he was expounding from the scriptures what the gospel is, which is why

I have recommended through the years, you know, to any Christian that would be willing to do it, read

The Bondage of the Will. This is a very readable book. You know, it's not a tough read because Luther wasn't writing as some academic scholar arguing with another academic scholar.

He really was pleading. And in fact, in The Bondage of the

Will, there are places in that work where he is pleading with Erasmus to come to faith to Christ.

Yeah, he highly regarded Erasmus. I mean, we shouldn't view

Erasmus as some kind of an evil, drooling villain. He was on the wrong side of the gospel, that's for sure, but he actually was a catalyst to Luther translating the

Bible into Germany, into German himself. Yeah, yeah, you're right. Absolutely he was, because the greatest gift that Erasmus gave to the church was his reproduction of the

Greek New Testament. And Luther himself felt great indebtedness to Erasmus for that publication.

So yeah, you're right, he had high regard for Desiderius Erasmus. He did. And isn't it interesting that so many

Baptists and so many Protestants and evangelicals that are more toward the conservative end, but are also not only anti -Roman

Catholic, but also anti -Calvinist. Isn't it interesting that so many of them don't recognize, in fact,

I would say that none of them recognize consciously, that they are siding with Erasmus and putting themselves in opposition to Luther in the great debate of the

Reformation in regard to the human will. They're actually siding with Rome. Yeah, really they are.

You're absolutely right, they are, because Erasmus, his doctrine of salvation was just pure semi -Pelagianism.

You know, because if I may, to give a little bit of the historic context of Luther's response to Erasmus, Erasmus had never publicly written anything against Luther.

But in 1524, after a great deal of pressure that was put on Erasmus from both popes and princes,

Erasmus reluctantly wrote his first and only attack against Luther. And it was a small book that he simply entitled,

A Discussion Concerning Free Will. And surprisingly, despite all the subjects that he could have chosen to rebut

Luther on, Erasmus took the heart of Luther's doctrine as the battleground.

And so for Luther, he could not have been more pleased with what Erasmus wrote.

And in his reply to Erasmus, which actually came a year later, he actually thanked him for attacking the real thing.

That's what Luther said. He said, thank you for attacking the real thing, the essential issue.

And that essential issue was the nature of salvation as it related to human freedom.

And so for Martin Luther, there was no subject more important than this. And as far as he was concerned, this matter was the centerpiece of the

Reformation because it struck at the very heart of the gospel. And so Luther's reply to Erasmus would be nothing less than a very strong, thorough, dogmatic exposition regarding the biblical doctrine of salvation.

Amen. And we're going to be going to a break right now. And Reverend Buzz Taylor, if you could hold on to your question. So don't forget what it was.

So when we come back, you can ask that question or make that comment, whichever it was.

And also, I don't know if you knew this, Kurt, but my very dear friend, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, just over the weekend preached at, or should

I say, from Martin Luther's pulpit at the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany.

Oh, wow. Well, that would be a privilege. Okay, we're jealous.

Nothing like a dose of jealousy to continue our conversation. I was filled with envy that I wasn't there.

I mean, what a monumental event for Dr. White that was.

And there are photographs of it on Facebook that you could see, a really gorgeous pulpit, elevated pulpit.

But we are going to a break right now. And we do have some listeners that have already sent in questions for you that we will ask and have you answer.

If anybody else would like to join them, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Don't go away. We'll be right back, God willing, with more of Kurt M. Smith and remembering Luther's fight.

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And we are now back to our discussion with Kurt M. Smith. He is an author, and he's the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church of Pine Mountain, Alabama.

We are discussing his booklet, Remembering Luther's Fight. This is a part of the Solid Ground Reformation 500 title series.

And before we went to the break, the Reverend Buzz Taylor had something he wanted to say. I just wanted to know, with your book,

Remembering Luther's Fight, do you have a particular target audience, and what would you say your main message is to evangelicals today?

Yeah, I would say my main target audience would be any professing

Christian, whether they're a Christian leader, Christian layman. Any professing

Christian is really the target audience there, because what you find when you read the booklet is you see and you read the content of what is the saving gospel of Jesus Christ as it is through Luther's life and through Luther's writings.

And in the practical lessons that I have in the conclusion of the book, that really answers more the question of, you know, what am

I really after by this booklet? It is to realize four things in particular.

One, Luther's conversion came by the objective means of God's Word alone. Two, Luther came to realize that salvation was entirely outside of himself.

Three, when the gospel is being sabotaged, we must fight for its recovery and renew its clarity.

And four, Luther's conversion and the subsequent Reformation occurred in one of the darkest periods of the

Church. And, you know, those lessons gleaned from Luther's life can, you know, really can be applied to any, you know, any

Protestant Church, any Evangelical Church, whether they call themselves Reformed or not. Because, you know, just as, again, my target audience is to all professing

Christians. And by the way, to segue from what you were just saying about Luther's belief that salvation was completely outside of himself, not long ago,

I believe it was just last week actually, when I interviewed a Missouri, actually he's not Missouri Synod, he's American, Association of American Lutheran Churches Synod, which is in communion with the

Missouri Synod, Christopher Roseborough, Chris Roseborough, who is the founder of Pirate Radio and an ordained

Lutheran minister. And in my interview with him, he admitted that Melanchthon, after Luther's death, had unfortunately took the

Lutheran Church farther away from Luther's God -centered focus of the gospel and of the fact that man's will is corrupt and bound.

And he brought it back closer to accommodate Roman Catholic theology as an attempt of some kind of a peace treaty.

So he did admit to that. And unfortunately, many Lutherans have followed Melanchthon's line of thinking rather than going back to not only

Luther, but more importantly, the Bible. Yeah, yeah. And that is sadly true.

That is sadly true. I have read about that in years past. And yeah, so many

Lutherans today, so many Lutheran pastors today, really, they really don't get

Martin Luther. They really don't get what he was really about and what he essentially stood for.

They just, yeah, they don't. And like that brother said, and rightly so, that really does go back to Philip Melanchthon.

You know, Melanchthon did turn the movement there in Germany. He turned it away from the very strong doctrinal position of Luther that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone.

And Melanchthon, he went back to more of that semi -Pelagian position, you know, which, as we said, you know, in the first half of the hour, you know, that was the very thing that Martin Luther was going after Erasmus with in his bondage of the will.

So... And we have a listener in Ada, Ohio, David.

Who has a question. What did Martin Luther think of the book of Revelation and why?

I know Calvin was terrified of it, but if you could let us know if you know what

Luther's thoughts are. I, you know, honestly, the only answer

I can give to that is I just know that for Martin Luther, he believed that the

Pope was the Antichrist, and he believed the Roman Catholic Church was the Whore of Babylon.

So that's probably as far as I can answer that question. You know, is getting into, well, you know, was he a historic pre -mill or what we would call all mill or anything like that, you know,

I don't know, honestly. I mean, I've never read

I've never read anything Luther actually wrote on the book of Revelation. I just know that in regards to who he believed the

Antichrist was and who he believed and how he interpreted what Revelation calls the

Whore of Babylon, he applied that directly to the Roman Catholic Church. And from what

I understand, Calvin didn't even write a commentary on Revelation. No, he did not, because Calvin, I mean,

Calvin said very plainly that he didn't understand it well enough to even attempt to write a commentary on it.

Well, thank you, David in Ada, Ohio, and thank you for giving us your mailing address, because you've won a free copy of Remembering Luther's Fight, published by Solid Ground Christian Books, and that will be shipped out to you by our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

That's cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for Bible Book Service .com. So thank you very much for contributing to the program today.

We have Joe in Slovenia, who says, Please keep having

Brother Smith back with you often. My question today has to do with how

Luther as a reformer was, because of his proximity to the Genesis of the

Reformation, unable to completely break with Rome on doctrines related to the Lord's Supper and Baptism.

Others like Calvin, Zwingli, Knox, and the Reformed Baptists, who followed close on his heels, were able to follow the implications of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, through their theological and scriptural conclusions regarding the memorial and symbolic nature of Baptism and the

Lord's Supper. In your research, what would explain why Luther was unable to move to these conclusions, and why many

Lutherans today are unable to benefit from other reformers and later evangelical scholarship on these topics?

Thank you so much for your commitment to ongoing reformation. Well, thank you,

Joe, for that really good question. Well, it is true that when you look at the

Protestant Reformers, Luther, in his view of the

Lord's Supper, which, of course, now, I mean, he did break from transubstantiation that the

Catholic Church taught, but Luther taught consubstantiation. And so while he didn't believe that the elements actually turned into the blood and body of Christ, yet he did believe very strongly that the presence of Christ was there in the elements.

And, of course, Calvin and Zwingli and Knox and the others, they didn't believe that.

And then, of course, with regards to Baptism, what's interesting in that is that all the

Protestant Reformers were Paedo -Baptists. Now, Luther's take on Baptism, where he differed in his

Paedo -Baptism was in regards to believing that through Baptism comes regeneration.

And so he did strongly differ with Calvin and Knox and Zwingli in regards to that.

I think another thing that should be understood, too, about Luther and how he really differed, especially from Calvin and those who would follow

Calvin, Luther did not believe in what is called the Regulated Principle of Worship. He didn't believe that worship should only constitute what

God has commanded, and whatever God has not commanded is false worship. For Luther, he took what is called the

Normative Principle, and of course Lutherans, the Lutheran Church still holds to that today, the

Normative Principle. So Luther believed that if it's not prohibited by God in his word, then it's okay.

Yeah, the silence in the Bible is a open doors for liberty rather than a closed door for prohibition.

Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, that's, yeah, that is exactly right. And that is how

Luther argued for, that is supremely how he argued for infant

Baptism, because Luther, he of course had a real hard time with the

Anabaptists, who held and believed in Believer's Baptism only. And so for Luther, his arguments for Pato Baptism, for infant

Baptism, were all marshaled against the Anabaptists and what they were doing. But at the core of his practice of that, he did not demand that the validity of every doctrine and practice had to be established by an explicit command of Scripture.

So he held to the Normative Principle. And so, you know, so in those respects, yeah,

Luther's reforming work only went so far. Of course, that could really be said for the other

Protestant Reformers too, but since we're talking about Luther, the

Lord in his providence used Martin Luther to recover the

Gospel. And when it came to the saving Gospel, Luther got it right.

He got it right. Justification by faith alone, through Christ alone,

Luther got it right when it came to how a guilty sinner is made right with the

Holy God. And that is where we today, as evangelicals, as Reformed Baptists, that's where we still can benefit so richly from Martin Luther.

You know, that's the reason why, you know, I said earlier, read the

Bondage of the Will. I encourage Christians to read the Bondage of the Will. You know, I would not encourage

Christians to read everything Luther wrote, obviously, but that one book,

I mean, if you're going to read anything about Luther, just read that. Just read the Bondage of the Will, you know, because even as you said,

Chris, you know, all the Reformers would stand in agreement with the content of that book. Amen.

And Luther, don't you think that Luther was the most inconsistent in regard to Sola Fide because of his views on baptismal regeneration?

It doesn't seem to be... Oh, yeah. It's a baffling thing to me. I still, no matter how many people have tried to explain whether they're

Lutheran scholars or just scholars who have studied Luther himself, I just can't wrap my head around how he can reconcile baptismal regeneration with Sola Fide.

Well, likewise, yeah. It is baffling. I go back to what

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13. We know in part and prophesy in part, I think, you know, clearly there were serious theological blind spots there in Luther, and of course, you know, granted that can be said of all the great

Bible teachers in church history and can be said of all of us, I mean, you know, because we're not the ones that are infallible as God's Word is infallible.

So yeah, Luther definitely had some strong doctrinal inconsistencies there.

You know, another interesting thing about Luther is Luther taught more of the doctrine of election than even

John Calvin did, but yet Luther believed that a believer could lose their salvation by apostasy.

So yeah, I mean, there were some very strong inconsistencies in his theology, but that's why, and certainly in the focus of my booklet,

Remember Luther's Fight, I really just focus on what is the core of his legacy that, you know, that we can all take away and stand with him on, and that of course, you know, is essentially his stand for the gospel itself.

So, you know, but I do think it's good for us, you know, as Reformed Baptists than I am, or if they're

Reformed Presbyterians, you know, or just Protestant Evangelicals, I think it's good for us when we look back, and as we're commemorating and celebrating the 500th anniversary of the

Reformation, you know, we're really celebrating what God did through these men more than celebrating the men themselves.

You know, the Reformation was a work of God. The famous church historian

Philip Schaaf called it the greatest event in history next to the introduction of Christianity.

And when you really study everything that happened as the result of the Protestant Reformation, then you understand that that high accolade that Schaaf gives to the

Protestant Reformation is not far -fetched, it's not hyperbole. This really was a work of God.

It was the recovery of the gospel, it was the recovery of biblical Christianity after 12 centuries of the gospel being buried out of sight, you know.

So we thank God for what he did in saving a

Martin Luther, and using a Martin Luther the way he did, even with Luther's very on -the -nose inconsistencies.

You know, I mean, you know, thank the Lord that he, you know, that he can and does use any of us with all of our inconsistencies.

But, you know, as we look back, as we commemorate, as we celebrate what the Lord did 500 years ago in that, yeah, it's good to be honest, honest with the facts of who these men were, what they believed.

You know, for me as a Baptist, for me as a Baptist, I think the, I think if there's anything that I would have the absolute strongest disagreement with over the

Protestant Reformers, the Magisterial Reformers of the 16th century, was their absolute strong insistence of the marriage of the church and the state.

Right. You know, they would not separate the church and the state.

That, of course, was the biggest argument that the Anabaptists had. In fact, you could pick up right where, you could pick up right there when we return from our break.

We have to go to our midway break right now, and also Reverend Buzz Taylor has a question or comment that you'll have to hold on to when we come back.

Don't forget what it was, Buzz. If anybody else would like to join us, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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This month, in fact, it's this weekend, Friday, September 29th, and Saturday, September 30th,

I'm heading out, God willing, to Long Island, New York to be at the Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island, New York to help them celebrate the

Gospel of the Reformation's 500th anniversary, featuring keynote speaker Dr.

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or call 631 -806 -0614, 631 -806 -0614.

Then the very next day, Sunday, October 1st at 11 a .m., Hope Reform Baptist Church will also have

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And coming up in November from the 17th through the 18th, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having their annual

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And if you would like to join me at that conference as well, where I intend to have an exhibitor's booth, go to alliancenet .org,

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and put advertising in the subject line. And we are now back to our discussion on Remembering Luther's Fight with author

Kurt M. Smith, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com, please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. And before the break, our co -host, Reverend Buzz Taylor, had something to say. Yeah, Kurt, getting back to,

I believe it was Joe's question, you did sort of answer it, and you know, so I'm not really going to be saying something you haven't said, but I just think that we need to just take a little magnifying glass on it and learn, because I've heard many people say in the conversation,

Luther didn't go far enough. And you know, we really need to cut him some slack, because if we consider where he was in church history, look how many hundreds of years it took to iron things out after the apostles.

And you know, when you had this darkness and then a reformation, the fact that Luther got anything right was amazing.

But we have to cut him slack because he is just like us. We don't know what we don't know.

So it's a learning process, and we all come to Christ, we're as ignorant as can be, and we learn as we hear the preaching of the word, we attend church, and we discuss with other brothers in Christ.

Well, if I can say the word, iron sharpens iron. You know, we grow through this, and we learn.

And it's part of our sanctification. I think the same thing is happening in church history, but it takes a lot longer to move masses of evangelicals than it does just individuals within it.

So, you know, we still haven't come to agreement since the reformation, and yet we're reformed.

I mean, I'm sitting here as a Presbyterian, and Chris is sitting here as a Baptist. We haven't hashed that out enough yet.

We're working on it. And when we come up with an answer, we'll let you know, okay? But I also am a little bit curious about,

I'm trying to wrap my mind around Luther's consubstantiation.

And, you know, I've heard many people say, well, we don't really understand what he meant by that.

And, you know, I'm certainly not going to settle the issue right now. And by the way, there are Lutheran scholars, in fact, every

Lutheran scholar that I've interviewed says they don't really like that term because they like to relegate this to more of the realm of mystery.

They don't want to pinpoint it specifically as that. Well, I just want to give an illustration that might help us to wrap our minds around it.

Most of us have been married before a minister saying, dearly beloved, we are gathered together in the sight of God and in the presence of these witnesses to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony.

And how many of us start looking around the room like, where's he sitting? Where's God sitting? We're in his presence.

We know he's there. We know that marriage actually does something very real in our lives.

When we leave, what used to be called fornication is now called adultery. There's a real change because God really was present there.

Is that kind of, do you think, what he had in mind with consubstantiation or whatever they want to call it?

Yeah, yeah, I do. In real presence. Yeah, that's right. Yes.

Yeah. Which is why he argued so, you know, vehemously with Zwingli, you know, in declaring, you know,

Christ said, this is my body. That, you know, it wasn't, he wasn't arguing for transubstantiation, you know, because as I said,

Luther made it clear. I mean, he broke from that, but yet he did still, you know, what he came to was believing that Christ is present.

He is present. In, around, and under the elements. Yes, that's right.

Yes, that is right. And one very serious, and probably even more serious departure that he had with Rome is that he did not worship the elements as Rome does, which is idolatry.

If you're worshiping bread and wine, you are committing idolatry. And he did not believe that the so -called mass was a perpetuatory sacrifice.

Right. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's, yeah, that's correct. That, you know, going back to what, to what

Buzz was saying at the beginning, which I'm in full agreement with everything that you said there,

Buzz, about, you know, in regards to why, you know, you know, why didn't Luther go, go further?

Well, you know, the Lord in his providence brought

Luther exactly, exactly far enough at that time, at that place in church history, that, well,

I mean, look at what it caused. You know, just, just Luther's stance on, you know, on Scripture alone, the authority, the authority and sufficiency of Scripture, and his stance on justification by faith alone.

At that time, at that period in church history, that was enough. That was enough.

It would be the next generation, or I should say, excuse me, the next century, you know, when you had the emergence of the

English, of the English Puritans, and then, you know, and you had your

Reformed Presbyterians and your particular Baptists who, you know, Reformed Baptists would be the heirs of that today, your

Congregationalists, you know, they would all keep going further, further than the

Magisterial Reformers went. But it was a different time. You know, the following century was, it was a different time than where Luther was there, you know, there in the beginning of the 16th century, and like Buzz said,

I mean, you know, you do have to consider the fact that the Gospel had been buried out of sight for 12 centuries.

So, you know, it is just a remarkable story of God's sovereign grace, you know, converting this man and then giving him the incredible courage and the boldness to take his stand against both the state and the church powers.

I'm thinking in particular of, you know, his most famous stand at the Diet of Worms of 1521.

But, you know, but what Luther stood for is the core of all evangelical, true historic evangelical theology.

You know, he stood for the Scriptures alone, and he stood for salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.

You know, that's the core of evangelical theology. And for that time, for that place in church history, well, that was enough.

You know, that was enough. So, Buzz, does that make any sense?

What I'm saying there? Oh, yes. Yes. Thank you. And we have, let's see, we have

Ronald in eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, who wants to know, I do understand that it is true and has been documented that the epistle of James was very problematic at Luther.

And he said something to the effect of, we should throw Jimmy in the stove, meaning we should get rid of that epistle.

But did he ultimately continue with that notion after he translated the Bible into German?

No, no, later, you know, later on in his later years, you know, as he would, as he just would come to understand the

Scriptures, you know, better, with greater clarity, he saw, you know, he saw and understood what the, you know, what the epistle of James was talking about when it said, faith without works is dead.

You know, because Luther, it would be Luther himself that would go on to say later that while we're justified by faith alone, yet that faith does not remain alone.

You know, it produces good works. And that's where Luther later would come to see that James was not contradicting

Paul. Paul was not contradicting James. You know, they were both preaching the same doctrine.

It was just, you know, one side of it, you know, and Paul is saying the same thing on one end,

James is saying the same thing on the other end. So yeah. For those of our listeners who may be new

Christians, or they're not even Christians at all, or unfamiliar with what we're talking about, James basically said that if you do not participate in good deeds, good works, that your faith is not genuine, it's dead.

And Roman Catholics and some of the cults will take that and twist it into meaning that our works cooperate with grace into, on saving us, and our, that our works are actually meritorious.

They help us achieve a worthiness to be welcomed into heaven, or whatever the afterlife according to each cult may be.

But James was merely saying that the works were a sign of life, that just like if you're breathing and your heart is beating, that's a sign of life, and our works are a sign of life, that we are truly regenerate.

That's right. Yes, it's the difference, I once heard it put this way, it's the difference between someone who says, you know, there's a burning fire in the house, and then the other one saying, well

I can see that because of the smoke. You know, the evidence, you know, yeah,

James is saying there's got to be evidence, there's got to be proof to what you're claiming about your faith.

And so while Paul was laying very heavily on the fact that, you know, we are, we're declared righteous by God through faith alone, you know, in Christ alone,

James, through the same inspiration of the Holy Spirit that Paul had comes, you know, coalesces that with, and there will be works that follow, you know.

And of course, Paul in Ephesians 2 .10, what does he say? You know, that we were created in Christ Jesus for good works, you know, so it's not, you know, justification by faith alone does not in any way teach, biblically it does not teach that, you know, that it's just merely faith.

Faith in Christ, as long as you believe in Christ, that's it. And we don't, you know, fruit, good works, good deeds, you know, that's not even necessary.

It doesn't matter. And of course, Luther himself did not believe that, and that's very clear in his writings, so.

And one of the things that I believe

I have learned through, you know, studying Luther is that when he was translating the

Bible into German, that this is really where his eyes were being opened to so many other things that he was previously blind to.

Roman Catholics are continually citing and quoting

Luther when he agrees with them on things that are peculiarly Roman Catholic, things involving

Marian devotion and so on. But what they don't realize is that Luther, like all of us, was a work in progress, and there are different Martin Luthers at different stages of his life that were, you know, he was gradually shedding more and more of his

Roman baggage, was he not, especially after translating the Bible? Yeah, absolutely was.

Well, I mean, just look at his practices as a monk. You know, Luther continued his practices as a monk six years after his conversion.

You know, so for six years following his conversion, he's still practicing, you know, the disciplines he had as a monk.

It was something that was difficult, you know, for him to get rid of, you know, he carried that baggage, you know, for several more years.

But of course, you know, when I think of that, we can parallel that to the Apostle Peter. I mean, you know, look at Peter at the

Church of Antioch and what the Apostle Paul had to rebuke Peter about. You know,

I mean, Peter firmly believed in justification by faith alone, and Paul did not dispute what

Peter believed about the gospel. But what Paul the Apostle would end up rebuking

Peter over publicly was how Peter actually worked that gospel out.

It was the practice of it in Peter separating himself from the Gentile Christians, you know, to go over and sit at the picnic table with the

Jewish Christians. You know, Paul said, this is inconsistent with what you believe.

And that was just, we know from, you know, from what the scriptures tell us in the book of Acts and then, of course, in the account of Galatians 2, this was baggage.

This was, you know, this was old Judaistic baggage that Peter himself, an

Apostle, was having to slowly get rid of. Darrell Bock And we are going to our final break right now.

And if you'd like to join us on the air, the question now is the time to do it. Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

ChrisArnson at gmail .com. Oh, I think I forgot to tell Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County that you have also won a free copy of Remembering Luther's Fight by Kurt M.

Smith. So make sure we have your full mailing address in Eastern Suffolk County. Don't go away. God willing, we'll be right back after these messages.

Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am

I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church.

We are a Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689.

We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts. We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how

God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things. That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the

Apostle's priority, it must not be ours either. We believe, by God's grace, that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.

If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts, or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.

You can call us at 508 -528 -5750. That's 508 -528 -5750.

Or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our TV program entitled,

Resting in Grace. You can find us at providencebaptistchurchma .org, that's providencebaptistchurchma .org,

or even on sermonaudio .com. Providence Baptist Church is delighted to sponsor Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor, frequent co -host with Chris Aronson on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

I would like to introduce you to my good friends, Todd and Patty Jennings at CVBBS, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

Todd and Patty specialize in supplying reformed and Puritan books and Bibles at discount prices that make them affordable to everyone.

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That means you can get to the good stuff faster. It also means that you don't have to worry about being assaulted by the pornographic, heretical, and otherwise faith -insulting material promoted by the secular book vendors.

Their website is CVBBS .com. Browse the pages at ease, shop at your leisure, and purchase with confidence as Todd and Patty work in service to you, the church, and to Christ.

That's Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service at CVBBS .com. That's CVBBS .com.

Let Todd and Patty know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio. And now we are in the final segment of our interview today with Curt M.

Smith on remembering Luther's fight. And Curt, I think that you use an important phrase in the very beginning of your booklet, rediscovering biblical

Christianity. Because I had a recent debate,

I just thought it was going to be a testimony time and a conversation, but it actually turned into a debate on unbelievable radio.

I participated with a Roman Catholic who was a former Anglican who converted to Roman Catholicism, who was an attorney in London, England, and we were both on this

UK program together. And the attorney, very nice man, but using a lot of old, tired arguments that Rome completely, or should

I say continually, perpetually regurgitates in regard to a defense of their religion.

And one of them is that no one believed what Martin Luther believed in regard to the gospel, the things that were uniquely intrinsic to the

Reformation, as opposed to Roman Catholicism at that time.

Nobody believed in those things until Martin Luther arrived on the scene. So if what he said was true, it would force us to believe that Christianity began in the 16th century.

And this is utterly preposterous, isn't it? Absolutely is preposterous.

You know, when Luther came to see the doctrine of justification by faith alone, he actually went into research to see if there had been anyone before him who had seen the same things.

And he discovered that, oh, there were those in the church before me that had seen the same things.

And of course, the one key figure in church history prior to Luther that saw the same things was none other than Saint Augustine.

And that's why when you read Luther's commentary on Romans and Galatians, but especially

Romans, Luther quotes more, and of course Calvin did the same thing in his

Institutes of Christian Religion, Luther quotes more from Aurelius Augustine than from any uninspired writer, because Augustine had seen the same things.

Which is why, incidentally, you know, when we talk about Calvinism or the

Protestant Reformation, really it was a revival of Augustinianism.

And so, you know, what Luther discovered in the 16th century was not anything new.

Now, of course, one thing that I make very clear in the booklet,

Remembering Luther's Spite, and this goes to, in the closing of the booklet, the practical lessons that I had mentioned earlier.

The first and really most important lesson at the end is that Luther's conversion came by the objective means of God's Word alone.

You know, it wasn't until Luther was being confronted by the truth of Scripture, first through the voice of the vicar of his monastery,

Johann von Staupitz. He was the first person in Luther's entire life to begin pointing

Luther to Christ. And then, of course, Luther pouring over the pages of Scripture in his study that, you know, there he finally heard the gospel.

But, you know, but even with that, even with the monumental transformation that took place, i .e.

his conversion, Luther still was honest enough to realize that if it's new, it ain't true.

And so he wanted to go back, he wanted to look back, was there anyone before me that saw these same things?

And he definitely found a friend in Aurelius Augustine.

And why did you use the phrase God's volcano in your book? Well, I actually take that phrase from Michael Reeves.

Michael Reeves, in his introduction to the Protestant Reformation called

The Unquenchable Flame, that is a wonderful book introducing the whole

Protestant Reformation published by Brauman and Holman. It is actually what

Michael Reeves said that Luther was God's volcano.

But I go on to describe that he was a great mountain of a man, but he was a mountain on fire.

And when he finally erupted on the medieval church, what came out was a torrent of Bible truth.

But it was mixed in with Luther's own very raw and rude and rugged personality that God would use to set the world of 16th century

Europe ablaze with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And Luther actually understood this about himself as far as being

God's blunt instrument to ignite the Reformation. Luther said, do not think that the gospel can be advanced without atonement, trouble, and uproar.

You cannot make a pen of a sword. The word of God is a sword. It is war, overthrow, trouble, destruction, poison.

It beats the children of Ephraim, as Amos says, like a bear on the road or like a lioness in the wood.

And so what I say in response to that quote from Luther is that for Luther, facing both the moral and doctrinal corruptions of the

Catholic Church, he had no category for confronting this in a half -baked, nonchalant, effeminate spirit.

The gospel was under siege and it would take a man of force and fire to retrieve it, preserve it, and propagate it against its enemies.

And so, quoting from Michael Reeves, and this is of course in the booklet,

Michael Reeves says, Luther certainly was no stained glass ideal.

Perhaps, though, such a bloodied and blunt man was just what was needed for the momentous and seemingly impossible task of challenging all

Christendom and turning it around. He was shock therapy for the world, and somehow his personality seems fit for the gospel he uncovered.

He inspires no moral self -improvement in would -be disciples. Instead, his evident humanity testifies to a sinner's absolute need for God's grace.

And, you know, we mentioned a moment ago about Philip Melanchthon. When Philip Melanchthon was actually eulogizing

Luther at Luther's funeral,

Melanchthon was, of all things, Melanchthon was quoting and affirming

Desiderius Erasmus' statement regarding Luther. Erasmus said, because of the magnitude of the disorders,

God gave this age a violent position. And so, it's for all of those reasons that, you know,

Luther was God's volcano. Luther, in another place,

Luther said, I was born to go to war and give battle to sects and devils.

That is why my books are stormy and warlike.

I have to root out the stumps and clumps, hack away the thorns and brambles.

Wow, that's powerful stuff. In fact, Carl Truman, Dr. Carl Truman of Westminster Theological Seminary, basically said as much in the recent documentary,

Martin Luther, The Idea That Changed the World. I don't know if you saw that. I thought it was an excellent documentary, a

PBS documentary. Oh, wow. Oh, no, I have not seen that. I need to look that up. Oh, yeah, it's very recent, and I was very pleasantly surprised that a liberal institution like PBS would produce such a historically accurate documentary, because even though some of the participants in the documentary, some of them, not all, some of them were from more liberal backgrounds, and even one

Roman Catholic, at least one Roman Catholic archbishop, Timothy Dolan of New York City, everything that they said, even those that were not in our theological camp, everything that was said was basically historically accurate, no matter who said it.

So it was a really phenomenal documentary. Let's see, we do have

RJ in White Plains, New York, and RJ in White Plains says,

What do you say to those individuals who entirely dismiss

Luther because of his anti -Semitic remarks and also because of his harsh words against Anabaptists and his lack of protection for them that led to the death of many of them?

Well, my first response to that would be that, you know, no one is claiming that Martin Luther was a perfect man, and that's not a cliche.

He was a very fallible man, and he himself knew how fallible he was.

He, you know, he was fraught with inconsistencies because he was plagued with remaining sin like the rest of us are, and so with that, you know, came very visible weaknesses and even sins, you know, in his life.

So, you know, to those that would just dismiss everything that Luther wrote because of a tract that he wrote that was really against Judaism, it wasn't against Jews per se, you know, and then, of course,

I would say the unfortunate stance that he took against Anabaptists to dismiss everything else because of things like this, you know, then we might as well dismiss every faithful pastor, teacher, you know,

Bible expositor in church history because we all have our inconsistencies.

None of us are infallible. None of us are without error. You know,

Luther had errors, but what did he get right? He got the gospel right.

He got what was the most important thing right, and if, you know, if I'm going to dismiss that, then

I need to personally be questioning a lot of things about myself, you know.

As I've sort of been saying throughout this whole interview, where we can stand with Luther is frankly where any true bona fide

Christian can take their stand, and that is with the saving gospel of Jesus Christ, that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, because for me to dismiss that,

I'm not dismissing Martin Luther. I'm dismissing the gospel of Jesus Christ, and so that would be my response to those people that would just say, well, you know,

I can't read, I can't read anything or pay attention to anything Martin Luther ever had to say because of, you know, because of what he said about either, you know, the

Jews or his stance against the Anabaptists. Frankly, that's just, that is being very, very unfair, and it's also being very foolish.

You know, and in fact, the rabbis who helped produce the

Talmud had some very harsh and nasty things to say about Jesus Christ. So, I mean, it's not just like a one -way street here in history.

Right, right. And we have, by the way, RJ, you've won a free copy of Remembering Luther's Fight, a primer on Martin Luther's life and legacy, and Standing for the

Gospel by our guest Kurt M. Smith. Please make sure we have your full mailing address in White Plains, New York.

We also have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who wants us to, who wants you to give us the main points about Martin Luther's life and legacy that we should remember, and it's interesting because that is a section of your booklet which you quote from Stephen Nichols on three major features of Luther's legacy.

Yeah, yeah, that's right, and that would be, that would be worth quoting.

Yeah, what are the, what are the, what are the main points of his life and legacy?

Yeah, I do quote from Stephen Nichols in his book Martin Luther, a guided tour of his life and thought, and Nichols highlights what he considers as the three major features of Luther's legacy.

First foremost, Luther served as the Reformation's architect. Second, Luther shaped the presuppositions that defined the

Reformation. We know, we know these presuppositions as what is called the five solas, sola scriptura, by scripture alone, sola fide, by faith alone, sola gratia, by grace alone, sola

Christus, by Christ alone, and sola dea gloria, to God alone be the glory. Third, Luther's tireless commitment to the church assures him a prominent place in its history, and on that particular point

Stephen Nichols wrote, not only did Luther take a bold stand and point the church in the right direction, but he committed his life to leading the church in the right path.

Luther worked tirelessly and offered a great personal sacrifice to see that the church thrived in his lifetime and beyond.

Well, to add more layers to this, to what Nichols was saying there,

I go on to point out that we owe to Martin Luther the principle of taking the

Bible as our highest authority. We also are indebted to him for the right of lay people to read the

Bible, having the Bible in our own language, having been taught to read so that we can read the

Bible in our own language, and having the Bible preached to us in our own language. In fact, just the preaching of God's word itself in a corporate worship service was the result of Luther's reforming efforts, and not only that, but the fact and reality of congregational singing is also a part of Luther's legacy.

Before Luther's day, congregational singing was virtually non -existent, and so having the freedom and the joy of singing in a gathered church, and even in our own language, is something which we can give thanks to Luther.

The last point that I made under this, as far as his life and legacy at a glance, is that I make the statement and say, it has been said that Martin Luther invented the

Christian family. And then I raise the question, what does that mean? And I pull from author

Gene Edward Veith, in his biography of Luther entitled, A Place to Stand, and he explains this accolade paid to Luther with qualifications.

Veith said the Christian family, though not of course invented by Luther, was nevertheless part of his legacy.

Before Luther, those who wanted to be truly spiritual rejected marriage and having children as being worldly, choosing instead the supposedly higher calling of the monastery, the convent, or the priest's cell.

Luther, though, stressed marriage and parenthood as among the highest Christian callings.

Before Luther, many marriages and the approach to parenthood were worldly, with both wives and children often treated like mere possessions.

Luther and his wife Katie, in their very public household, modeled the loving relationship between husband and wife and the loving relationship between parents and children.

The spiritual exercises that took place in a legalistic way in the monasteries and convents were transformed by the gospel and brought into the home with family devotions, the father catechizing the children, the whole family singing hymns together and Bible reading.

Luther brought out the spirituality of the home. So all of those different points are the main legacies, or I should say the main contours of Luther's legacy that we still benefit from today.

Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, wants to know, are you as troubled as I am by the sneakiness, it appears to be, in regard to modern day ecumenists who say that we can have solidarity with anyone who believes in salvation by grace through faith because of Christ, according to the scriptures, but they leave out a very crucial word, alone, in all of those vital elements, can you tell us the importance of the word alone?

Yeah, that little word alone, the Latin sola, is critically, critically important because what

Martin Luther and John Calvin and the other Protestant Reformers, what they were all stressing with the sola was that salvation, redemption, is all the work of God.

That man makes no contribution to this work whatsoever. Salvation, as Jonah 2 .9

says, is of the Lord, and that's why the

Reformers, like Luther, stressed, and stressed even at great sacrifice to themselves, that salvation is entirely of God's grace, and of course this takes me all the way back to Martin Luther's response to Desiderius Erasmus in the

Bondage of the Will, because Erasmus, as has already been pointed out, but it's worth repeating here, for Erasmus, what he believed, he believed that man must play some part and must make some contribution to salvation, however small it may be, and Erasmus' position is frankly no different than what we see in broad evangelicalism today right here in our own country and culture.

So for Luther, in his response to Erasmus, Luther wanted to make it absolutely clear that salvation is entirely of the grace of God, and it is

God's grace alone, that man makes absolutely no contribution, not even a small contribution to it.

To quote Luther on this point, Luther said, free will brought us sin and death. Every part of us suffers corruption.

So my position is this, anyone who thinks that by free will he could do anything, says no to Christ.

I have always taken this position in my writings, especially against Erasmus, one of the world's most learned scholars.

I stand resolutely by my thesis because I know it is true. I will stand by it even if all the world opposes it.

Divine truth stands. So all of that is to say, yeah, the word alone, the sola, is what makes the difference with the semi -Pelagianism and certainly the

Pelagianism that has gripped so many churches, and of course still has the

Roman Catholic Church, in spiritual death. So I hope that answers the question.

Yes, and thank you Harrison. You've also won a free copy of Remembering Luther's Fight, so please give us your full address, your full mailing address in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, where we can have

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service mail this out to you, cvbbs .com. We'll be mailing this out to you as soon as we have your full mailing address.

And we have Christopher in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says, isn't there a very strong distinction that we have to make when explaining our gospel to Roman Catholics and to others who believe that works are meritorious?

That works are indeed essential as a fruit or evidence, but they add nothing to the grace of God whose death alone provided our redemption.

Still, nonetheless, a Christian without works and without fruit is truly no true

Christian at all, but merely a dead person professing to be a Christian. Yeah, that's a very good question because of the fact that that is the main argument that those like Roman Catholics and even members of cults and so on, they will use against evangelicalism because they will brush us all into believing in a repentant -less

Christianity that will usher people into heaven who never repented from their wicked life.

And that is not what the Reformers nor what the Bible especially teaches, and that it's not what the heirs of the

Reformation who are being historically accurate and biblically faithful, that's not what we believe.

No, no, that is absolutely not what we believe. You know, it's interesting what we can say to Roman Catholics and to others who would fall into their camp of thinking is, well, we are saved by works.

It's just not our works that we're saved by. We're saved by the works of Jesus Christ. We're saved by what

Christ did, you know, by his life, by his death. You know, those are the works that save us.

Our works damn us. Our works send us to an eternal hellfire. But we are saved by the works of Jesus Christ.

But when Christ does save us, he gives us a new life, and the fruit of that new life, which the

Scripture identifies as the fruit of the Spirit, those are the good works that proceed from what has taken place, which is the transformation, the salvation of a human soul.

And so we are a new creation in Christ, and out of that new creation comes the fruit of the

Spirit. And I do agree with what this brother said that, you know, if there is no fruit, then the person claiming to be

Christian is obviously false. And yeah, I mean, absolutely, that's true. You know, that goes back to what

James says, faith without works is dead. But one thing

I do like to say to those who would accuse us of saying, well, you know, you just believe in a, like you know, no, we don't.

You know, it's just, I have had this kind of conversation and debate with brethren who are

Pentecostals because of their Wesleyan Arminianism, and they'll say, yeah, well, you

Baptists believe in one saved, always saved. And so you just believe that you can just live any way you want to.

It doesn't matter because, you know, the Lord has saved you, and so go live like the devil. No, that is not what the

Bible teaches, and that is not what I believe. You know, the Bible makes it very clear that we are created in Christ Jesus for good works.

You know, God's masterpiece of grace that we all are, those whom he saves, we will show the fruit of that.

We will bear the fruit of that in a life that is pursuing holiness, that is pursuing righteousness, that is pursuing peace with all men.

And so, you know, so it's not the false charge, and that's really what it is.

It just boils down to a false charge and a false accusation that they're claiming. Yeah, what

I say very often to people who make that charge against us is I say, yes, I do believe once saved, always saved, but not once you think you're saved, you're always saved.

There's a big difference between those two things. There is, there is. And we are out of time, and I know that your website for the

Providence Reformed Baptist Church is prbc1689 .org.

P -R for Protestant Reformed, B -C for Baptist Church, 1689 .org.

And of course, the Solid Ground Christian Books website where people can order your booklet is solid -ground -books .com,

solid -ground -books .com. Thank you so much, Pastor Kurt Smith. I look forward to having you back in the program, and if you could wait on the line,

I'd like to reschedule you for another interview. All right, thank you, Chris. I want to thank everybody who listened today.

I want to thank Reverend Buzz Taylor for being my co -host, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a human being. God bless, and tune in tomorrow for Phil Johnson of John MacArthur's Grace to You Ministries, who will be our guest for the two hours.