Am I worth repeating? Only in my own mind, so here is a re-run anyway from Hallowe’en (All Saints Day Eve), 2004. This year marks the 490th anniversary of Martin Luther’s attempt at reforming the Church. “Oh happy day!”

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Just in time for the 487th anniversary of the commencement of the Protestant Reformation—when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses of protest against certain doctrines practiced in the Western Church on the door of Wittenburg’s Castle Church—there is a story circulating about Luther’s lavatory.

From BBC News, the by-line went like this:

“Archaeologists in Germany say they may have found a lavatory where Martin Luther launched the Reformation of the Christian church in the 16th Century.”
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3944549.stm)

Unfortunately, the news article stops short of explaining the significance of the doctrines Martin Luther rediscovered. The free encyclopedia at Wikipedia includes this short statement which adds crucial details:

Luther’s discovery of grace
The demands of study for academic degrees and preparation for delivering lectures drove Martin Luther to study the Scriptures in depth. As an acute sufferer from constipation, he spent a great deal of time in the lavatory— in cloaca, or “in the sewer” as he put it—and is said to have spent many hours in contemplation there. [1] Heeding the call of humanism ad fontes —”To the source”—he immersed himself in the teachings of the Scripture and the early church. Luther recounted that his great breakthrough came in 1513, as he was lecturing on the Psalms at Wittenberg. He realized that the phrase “righteousness of God” in Rom. 1:17 did not mean active righteousness, that by which humans are adjudged righteous by God on the basis of their works, but passive righteousness, by which humans receive righteousness from God, who makes sinners just. Terms like penance and righteousness took on new meaning. Soon, Luther’s study of the Bible convinced him that the Church had lost sight of several central truths. To Luther, the most important of these was the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

With joy, Luther now believed and taught that salvation is a gift of God’s grace, received by faith and trust in God’s promise to forgive sins for the sake of Christ’s death on the cross. This, he believed, was God’s work from beginning to end. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther)

Were the archaeologists and reporters intent on making Martin Luther and the Reformation look ridiculous (and by implication, their doctrine, as well)? We can’t know for sure. It is typical of most news agencies to focus on the trivial, the quirky, and the bizarre, without reporting the most significant and needful information. Why should we be surprised here?

If the account (considering the information from both the news outlet and the encyclopedia article) is absolutely accurate, you have to admit, God chose a creative way to illustrate His lifting The Word out of the very place where the Church had buried these essential doctrines for centuries—”in cloaca.”

It is the essence of God’s daily work to rescue man from the sewer of sin. By faith, I received God’s gift of salvation, knowing that my sin is forgiven, having been justified by faith and no merit of my own because of Jesus Christ’s (the God-man) death on the cross. By God’s grace, I am “in cloaca” no more!

If you believe this doctrine, neither are you. Which makes us living proof that God certainly does have a sense of humor!

Toward the latter days of high school, the church sponsored an evangelist to host a week of meetings. One night after admonishing everyone as to the importance and necessity of a life verse, he asked of us all, “do you have a life verse from the Bible?”

I don’t remember if we scrambled to find “that life verse I recently stumbled upon, in case of just such an emergency” or if any number of possible life verses conveniently recalled from memory passed our lips to satisfy the evangelist. Whichever it was, at that time I said my life verse was John 15:7.

“If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.”

I hadn’t anticipated the third question he would ask, “why is that your life verse?” If I had been the quarterback of a football team, my explanation would surely rank up there with the greatest of all fumbles on record. I didn’t want to admit that I liked the promise part of the verse because it seemed to be like the same offer made by Aladdin’s genie. No one would be so simple as to believe that Jesus would make such an open-ended, carte-blanche offer as “your wish is my command.” Except me, of course.

I did read the entire verse, but it wasn’t until later that I realized there was a condition on this supposed magic formula. Once again, the simple-minded took control, swinging the pendulum to another extreme. “Abide” could not just be about the disciplines of going to church, reading the Bible, and praying. Abide had to be something more— more substantive, more subjective, more something. But what, I didn’t know.

It is difficult to identify what Jesus was aiming for when one sentence is isolated from the others in the same conversation. In figurative language that His disciples would have easily understood, Jesus was explaining the doctrines of our union with Him that would be made possible by His death and resurrection and what our experience in Him could be like. These doctrines, in part, are justification and sanctification. Maybe, in an effort to be clear, we’ve muddied the waters a bit. Some refer to these portions of justification and sanctification as our “standing and state,” or our “position and practice.”

Paul elaborates in Romans on what Jesus said in John 15 about our union in Christ (a result of justification). The Spirit baptizes the believer in Christ (Romans 6:3-4) is the same as “if ye abide in me (just like a branch is attached to the vine)” (John 15:7); is the same as our “standing” and “position.”

Later Paul gives an explanation in Romans on what Jesus said in John 15 about our experience in Christ (a result of sanctification). The believer “reckons himself dead to sin and alive unto God” (Romans 6:11) is the same as “and my words abide in you” (John 15:7); is the same as our “state” and “practice.”

John 15:7 is not voodoo expectations. It is a picturesque description of our salvation, its justification and sanctification in Christ. “Abide” is not a mystical practice. It is objective, accomplished outside of ourselves by Jesus Christ in us.

The result is that, as our experience, state, or practice is more closely aligned with our union, standing, or position “ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you” is the same as the “fruit-bearing” Jesus spoke of in John 15; is the same as “reckoning” Paul spoke about in Romans 6.

You now have my “put the simple-minded on the spot rationalization of why John 15:7 is my at-one-time life verse from the Bible.”