500 years ago today Martin Luther sparked a world-changing event, the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of church effectively challenging the most powerful entity of his day to get right or quit. Neither of those seemed to happen as Luther was the one who quit the church and began his own movement, Protestantism.
While Luther had some very good points in his theses, and he was right to challenge the church, he missed something very important. Ephesians 4:3 (NIV) says, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Looking back at Luther’s great work, I don’t know that he made every effort to keep the unity. Even his own movement became fractured quite quickly. Men such as John Calvin and Huldrych Zwingli quickly separated themselves from Luther creating their own sub-movements.
I am grateful that Luther had the courage to challenge the status quo of the Church, but I am dismayed to see the resulting disunity that has occurred since then. Perhaps what we need is not further fracturing but more unity amongst Christians in general: Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox and others. Perhaps we need a new reformation that calls us not to listen to the voice of men but to listen to the voice of Christ, and underneath Him, we can unite.
In any case, take a moment today to think about what God and Christ and what one man’s courage led to in our world. What courageous act can you do today that might change the course of history? Perhaps that act is courageously calling someone back to God. I imagine Luther did not think that he was going to create a whole new sect of Christianity when he nailed his theses to the door. Rather, he was trying to call men back to God. I think no matter where you stand on Luther, as a Christian, we can all agree that we all need to be called back to God in some way.