Hot Was the Conflict, Glorious was the Victory
Lord Jesus, hot was the conflict which once our fathers had to fight; but glorious was the victory which you granted them. Therefore, we today joyfully extol and praise you. For what our fathers once had to gain by fighting, your precious pure saving Word, that today is still their children’s, our precious inheritance.
However, this holy war has not yet ended. The foe is continually trying to tear from us what we have. Therefore, you also constantly cry to us: “Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.” (Rev 3:11). “Earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” (Jude 3). Therefore, grant that the remembrance of our fathers who fought faithfully until death will today enkindle us to fight in our days as they did, so that we may be as victorious as they, some day be crowned by you, and also rejoice with them forever and ever. Amen.
Scripture text: Jude 3. Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. [Return to top]
The history of the Reformation, whose remembrance we today celebrate, is the story of a continuous war of almost 30 years, from the year 1517 when Luther publicly posted his 95 Theses against the papal abomination of the indulgence until the year 1546 when Luther died. This war was not so much a physical as a spiritual one. On the one side stood Luther, a defenseless monk, no weapons in his hand but the Bible, and supported alone by a few generally fainthearted friends. On the other side stood the well-reinforced pope with the temporal and spiritual sword, as he called it, that is, the power of church and state, in his hand, supported by a countless host of prelates, of cardinals, bishops and archbishops, of priests, monks, and nuns, as well as by the greatest world monarchy of that time in Christendom, the Emperor. On the one side, however, stood error, on the other, the truth; on the one side, the word of men, on the other, God’s Word; and this is the main thing: on the one side stood the invisible Jesus Christ, the King of truth and the Lord of salvation with all his holy angels, on the other, Satan, the prince of darkness and ruin with his entire hellish army.
Today 359 years ago, on October 31, 1517 it was as Luther with those 95 Theses first declared war on the pope and all his followers, girded himself with the sword of the Spirit, as David once did with his sling against Goliath, left his dark monk’s cell in the name of the Lord the living God, made his appearance, and to all who wanted to stand on the side of the Lord and his true Church gave the signal for the attack and the holiest war which was ever waged on earth.
Then followed one engagement upon another, orally and in writing. In the year 1518 Luther was victorious in a secret duel in Augsburg with the Cardinal Cajetan on the subject of the one little word: “Revoco,” that is, “I recant;” but all the rhetoric of the wily Italian was in vain: Luther did not recant and thus left the arena as victor. In the year 1519 followed a public debate between Luther and the papal sophist Dr. Eck in the Leipzig Disputation in which the matter dealt chiefly with the standing of the papacy and the councils; but at the close all who were of the truth, even papists, granted Luther the prize of victory. Two years later in the year 1521 Luther was finally cited to appear in Worms, in order to appear personally before emperor and empire to defend himself and hear his sentence. All the friends of Luther trembled but not he. He stated: “And if there were as many devils in Worms as tiles on the roof tops, I would go; and if my friends would make a fire from Wittenberg to Worms which would reach up into heaven, I would still enter the mouth between his large teeth, confess Christ, and let him rule.” Thus a hot battle began. but see! as Daniel came unhurt from the lions’ den and as the three men came unscathed from the fiery furnace, so Luther again left Worms unconquered; for his closing declaration is and remains: “I do not recant! Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen!”
A second hot Reformation battle was fought during the presentation of our Confession to the Diet at Augsburg in the year 1530. Because he was excommunicated by the pope and outlawed by the emperor, Luther could not stand in this great, decisive conflict at Augsburg with the rank and file of the confessors of the Gospel, but as the real God-chosen general in this war he was not only the one who by the writing of the Torgau Articles, so to say, had sketched the battle plan and dictated the articles of peace, but he was also the one who during the diet led and encouraged from Coburg the little group in Augsburg who stood before the foe by his daily letters. And what happened? What Luther even during the raging conflict had composed and sung:
A mighty Fortress is our God,
A trusty Shield and Weapon;
He helps us free from every need
That hath us now o’ertaken.
That was gloriously fulfilled. Also this decisive battle was won. In spite of the threatening bloody imperial recess, the huts of the righteous of all Christendom again sang of victory.
However, the story of the Reformation is not only the story of a war from without, but also a spiritual civil war. After Zwingli, the Swiss preacher, had at first agreed with Luther and had bravely battled with him for God’s Word against the papal doctrines of men, Zwingli soon fell away and declared: It is against reason to believe that Christ’s body and blood is in the Lord’s Supper. With dismay Luther saw that Zwingli intended to replace the pope with human reason. So after the futile exchange of several polemical writings between Luther and Zwingli in the year 1529 after the Colloquy at Marburg there finally came a decisive battle. Whether the words of the truthful and almighty Son of God: “This is my body, this is my blood,” still stand firmly, hence whether God’s Word must give way to reason or whether reason must give way to God’s Word, that was the second causus belli, the second great cause of war which was to be decided in Marburg. And praise God! Luther did not give ground even here; as he in Worms had preserved God’s Word against the pope’s authority of the church, so in Marburg he preserved the same Word of God against the authority of human reason.
And thus Luther continued the fight until he was finally called into the land of eternal peace, in order to be crowned there and to celebrate with all faithful soldiers the feast of triumph of eternal life.
Now my dear brethren, has the victory of the Reformation of the Church finally brought peace? Alas no! The Church is to triumph above; here it must fight until the peal of the last trumpet. That God’s Word testifies to us on all pages, and so also the apostle Jude, who has the surname Thaddeus, writes in our text: “Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.”
- excerpt from C.F.W. Walther, ‘Sermon on Jude 3′ (1876)
