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Why The Reformation Still Shapes Your Family Faith · Equipped for Impact

• 0:00
  Luis: I'd be curious what you think would happen if you asked most of our students what happened on October 31, 1517.
• 0:09
  Nate: I think most of them would guess something about Halloween, honestly.
• 0:13
  Nate: But maybe one of the sharper kids would say something vague about Martin Luther and Adore and probably not much else.
• 0:20
  Luis: And that's not really their fault.
• 0:22
  Luis: It's ours.
• 0:23
  Luis: We've let 500 years of history shrink down into a trivia answer when it's actually the reason most of our families trust what they believe in the first place, whether they realize it or not.
• 0:35
  Nate: And it's strange when you think about it.
• 0:37
  Nate: We'll spend a whole month talking about discernment and culture, how to think biblically about what's in front of us, and never once explain to our kids why we even believe the Bible is the authority we're using to do all of that thinking in the first place.
• 1:02
  Nate: Welcome to Equipped for Impact, the podcast designed to assist Christian parents, leaders, and educators to raise up the next generation to stand firm in their faith and influence the world for Christ.
• 1:13
  Nate: We're your hosts.
• 1:14
  Nate: I'm Nate.
• 1:14
  Nate: And I'm Lewis.
• 1:15
  Nate: And this episode lands probably just a few days before Reformation Day.
• 1:21
  Nate: And we wanted to close out the month of October with a foundation underneath everything we've been talking about recently and really what this whole podcast is about, right?
• 1:32
  Nate: Things like loving the local church and discipling which your children and honoring your pastor and all of those things rest on something.
• 1:40
  Nate: And today we're naming what that something actually is.
• 1:44
  Luis: And let's be clear, this isn't a church history podcast.
• 1:48
  Luis: We're not here to lecture you on church history.
• 1:50
  Luis: But it's about why a 16th century monk nailing potentially a list of arguments to a door and how it shapes the way your family reads a Bible verse at dinner.
• 2:05
  Nate: And so the real question is what did Martin Luther say after he posted the 95 thesis on the door in Wittenberg?
• 2:12
  Nate: I don't know.
• 2:13
  Nate: Nailed it.
• 2:14
  Nate: Nailed it.
• 2:17
  Nate: We can't have a podcast without dad jokes.
• 2:20
  Nate: But let's uh let's set the scene, okay, of what this actually was, okay?
• 2:24
  Nate: Because we we don't really get a feel for it, and and sometimes our history classes just kind of gloss over it.
• 2:30
  Nate: But you know, what what's really going on, right?
• 2:33
  Nate: The shorthand version that everybody knows really skips one of the most important things, right?
• 2:38
  Nate: Martin Luther was not trying to start a new church, right?
• 2:42
  Nate: He was a Catholic monk, he was a professor, and he, because of his study of the word, became convinced that the church of his day had drifted from what Scripture actually taught, particularly about how a person is made right with God, the theological term justification.
• 3:00
  Luis: Yes, and so the specific part w was the sale of indulgences.
• 3:05
  Luis: Essentially, what was happening is that people were paying money to reduce punishment for sin, either for themselves or for someone who had already died.
• 3:17
  Luis: And so Luther, Martin Luther, he looked at that practice and he looked at scripture and he just could not reconcile the two.
• 3:25
  Luis: And so in October of 1517, he wrote out these ninety-five arguments against it, and then he posted them publicly, which was the normal academic way of inviting debate in his culture at that time.
• 3:42
  Nate: Which you alluded to this already.
• 3:44
  Nate: It may have not actually been nailed to the door of the church in Wittenberg.
• 3:48
  Nate: It it was probably mailed or whatever, but that was where they would post like public announcements, which is why we kind of get that.
• 3:55
  Nate: Like he he might have.
• 3:56
  Nate: He might have actually nailed it, just like that.
• 4:01
  Nate: Which I've actually been there and now they've replaced those because the church burnt down.
• 4:06
  Nate: And when they rebuilt it, they actually replaced those doors with these like bronze doors that have his 95 thesis spelled out in Latin and all of that stuff.
• 4:15
  Nate: So it's it's pretty cool.
• 4:16
  Nate: It's the it's the you know the the thesis door there.
• 4:20
  Nate: But but what he was really asking was a question that sounds almost too simple.
• 4:25
  Nate: Like, where does scriptural authority actually come from, right?
• 4:29
  Nate: Is it the church's tradition and the Pope's declarations, or is it scripture itself that has the authority?
• 4:36
  Nate: And that question is really what sparked the whole Reformation just in a single sentence.
• 4:41
  Nate: Yeah.
• 4:42
  Luis: And so his answer became one of the five four convicts, I'm sorry, one of the five core convictions that came out of that movement, right?
• 4:50
  Luis: And we usually remember it as the five solas.
• 4:54
  Luis: Scripture alone as the final authority, scripture alone as the basis, I'm sorry, grace alone as the basis for salvation, faith alone as the means of receiving, Christ alone as the one mediator between God and man, and all of it for God's glory alone, not for human merit or human institutions.
• 5:16
  Nate: Yeah, so every one of those sounds pretty basic to us now, just because we've grown up with it, right?
• 5:23
  Nate: That was a long time ago, and now it's just kind of in the culture, at least evangelical Protestant culture here in America.
• 5:31
  Nate: But none of it was assumed in 1517, right?
• 5:34
  Nate: People were literally burned at the stake for teaching these ideas.
• 5:39
  Nate: And so this wasn't just an academic debate.
• 5:42
  Nate: It it was something that was very costly to pursue this course of reasoning.
• 5:48
  Luis: So this wasn't just the argument between two middle school boys at a cafeteria table because they took different positions.
• 5:54
  Luis: No, not at all.
• 5:55
  Luis: And so here's where we want to push past the history lesson because you might be listening to this and glossing over because you don't care about the history part of it, right?
• 6:06
  Luis: And you might think, yeah, that sounds interesting, but what does that actually have to do with my kid and our faith today?
• 6:14
  Nate: And and honestly, it has everything to do with it, right?
• 6:17
  Nate: Because every single one of those five convictions is still the the water that your family swims in, right?
• 6:24
  Nate: When you open a Bible at home and read it as the final word rather than deferring to a religious authority to tell you what it means, you're living out sola scriptura, right?
• 6:35
  Nate: Whether you've ever heard that phrase or not.
• 6:39
  Luis: And when you tell your kids that nothing they do earns God's love, that it's a gift received by faith, that it's not a reward for good behavior, you're teaching them grace alone and faith alone straight out of Ephesians 2, 8 and 9.
• 6:56
  Luis: And for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing.
• 7:00
  Luis: It is the gift of God, not a result of work, so that no one may boast.
• 7:05
  Nate: And when you teach your kids that when they pray, they pray directly to God, not Mary or the Pope or your pastor, whoever, right, without needing a priest or any other mediator to carry that prayer for them.
• 7:21
  Nate: That's, you know, Christ alone, straight out of First Timothy 2, 5, right?
• 7:25
  Nate: There's one God and one mediator between God and man, the man, Christ Jesus.
• 7:30
  Luis: Yeah, and this is the part that we really want you to catch here, right?
• 7:34
  Luis: Your kids are growing up in a culture that constantly tells them that truth is whatever feels right to them personally at that moment, or whatever some type of influential voice declares it to be.
• 7:50
  Luis: Well, the reformation is the historical reminder that truth isn't up for a vote and that it isn't handed down by whoever happens to hold power.
• 8:01
  Luis: Truth is anchored in something outside of us, something that doesn't shift based on who's currently in charge of interpreting it and telling us what it means.
• 8:11
  Nate: Which means this isn't really a history episode at all, right?
• 8:16
  Nate: It's all foundations, right?
• 8:18
  Nate: It's a foundations episode.
• 8:20
  Nate: Everything we talk about here on Equipped for Impact comes back to these ideas, right?
• 8:25
  Nate: Having convictions and loving people who disagree, belonging to the church, you know, how we talked about last week's episode on the Halloween and we reason through these things.
• 8:35
  Nate: Like every bit of that assumes we actually have a trustworthy source to reason from.
• 8:41
  Nate: And that source is scripture, right?
• 8:43
  Luis: It's available to ordinary people to read for themselves in their own language, and it's not something that every generation of Christians has always had access to.
• 8:54
  Luis: It's something the Reformation specifically recovered and fought to protect.
• 8:59
  Nate: Yeah.
• 9:00
  Nate: So so let's get practical, right?
• 9:01
  Nate: Because this episode can feel more abstract and and you kind of theoretical, and like we said, a history lesson and all of that.
• 9:09
  Nate: So what are some ways that this actually plays out and and what does it look like in a family to remember these reformation principles?
• 9:20
  Luis: So the first thing I'd tell is simply tell the story, right?
• 9:25
  Luis: Most of your kids have probably never heard this story in any real detail.
• 9:31
  Luis: And so sit down this week and walk through it.
• 9:34
  Luis: A monk who studied scripture carefully enough to risk everything on what it actually said rather than what he had been told it said.
• 9:42
  Luis: And that's a pretty compelling story on its own.
• 9:46
  Luis: And here's the thing, mom, dad, if you're listening to this and you don't know the story, then you go read it for yourself and understand, right?
• 9:54
  Luis: How this story sets a pattern for how your kids should approach truth claims generally.
• 10:01
  Nate: Yeah, and and the second thing is to let your kids actually watch you treat scripture as the actual authority in your home, not just a book you own, a tradition to read it, or anything like that, right?
• 10:13
  Nate: When a decision comes up, when a disagreement happens, when culture says one thing and the Bible says another, let them see you go back to the text and wrestle with what it actually says rather than just going on whatever feels good or comfortable in the moment.
• 10:29
  Nate: That would be like we talked about last week with Halloween and like using whatever quote discernment to try and justify whatever you were gonna do anyway on Halloween.
• 10:38
  Nate: Like, this is a time.
• 10:40
  Nate: Actually, wrestle with it because it does have the authority over you.
• 10:44
  Nate: You don't have the authority over it.
• 10:45
  Luis: Absolutely.
• 10:46
  Luis: And then remember to teach your kids that they are allowed to ask hard questions and that they are allowed to go look for real answers the way that Luther did.
• 10:57
  Luis: Faith that never examines tends to be faith that doesn't hold up under pressure later on.
• 11:04
  Luis: And if your kid has been taught to search the scriptures for themselves the way that the Bereans did in Acts 17, they even check Paul's teaching against what the Bible actually says.
• 11:16
  Luis: That's helping your kid build a faith that is theirs, not just one that you handed down to them and they never tested it.
• 11:26
  Nate: Right.
• 11:26
  Nate: And and the final thing is don't let this become something you just talk about at, you know, Halloween near Reformation Day.
• 11:35
  Nate: Don't let, you know, how that whole c concept you heard Christians talk about, oh, don't celebrate Halloween, I celebrate Reformation Day.
• 11:41
  Nate: I heard that.
• 11:42
  Nate: Yeah, and if you do that, that's fine.
• 11:44
  Nate: But you know, don't forget that these principles are important the other 11 months out of the year, right?
• 11:49
  Nate: The five solas are not just a cool trivia thing to help your kid pass the history test.
• 11:54
  Nate: They're the the grammar of your family, right?
• 11:58
  Nate: You should constantly be coming back to these truths.
• 12:01
  Nate: Why you trust the Bible, why grace matters more than performance, why Jesus alone is enough.
• 12:07
  Nate: All of that is very important in your family.
• 12:10
  Luis: I like that.
• 12:11
  Nate: So, Lewis, this is, you know, it's kind of a shorter episode of really just hitting this idea to kind of wrap up this month of, you know, Pastor Appreciation Month and, you know, the Reformation Month and all of that.
• 12:23
  Nate: But do you have any words of encouragement to parents who are listening to this, thinking about these truths and how they play out in their family?
• 12:30
  Luis: Uh let me start off by saying pastors, happy pastor appreciation month.
• 12:34
  Luis: Yep.
• 12:34
  Luis: Uh I hope that you have been appreciated this month by your church, by the congregation that you serve.
• 12:40
  Luis: Uh, and I hope that these episodes have been a blessing to pastors that listen to us, yep, as well as the parents.
• 12:47
  Luis: Um, but he think about this this week, right?
• 12:49
  Luis: So, mom, dad, if you're listening to this this week, open a Bible up with your kids and remind them that what they're holding is something that people once risked their lives to make sure that ordinary families could read it for themselves.
• 13:06
  Luis: One of the most fascinating stories to me of this period of time is the story of John Wycliffe.
• 13:15
  Luis: Yep.
• 13:15
  Luis: He wanted to translate the Bible into English because it wasn't translated into English, and so he faced opposition and he was hated for it, and then he was hated so much because of that, and he actually did it, that after he died, they dug up his bones and they post-death burned him at the stake because of what he had already done, right?
• 13:40
  Luis: And that's not a small thing.
• 13:42
  Luis: So when you read your Bible in English, you are reading the work of a man who risked his life to do it, right?
• 13:54
  Luis: That's the foundation under every conviction that we talk about on this show.
• 14:01
  Luis: And it's worth your kids knowing exactly why it's there.
• 14:06
  Nate: That's great.
• 14:07
  Nate: So thank you all for joining us today on Equipped for Impact.
• 14:11
  Nate: If this episode was helpful, please share it with somebody else who could use the encouragement and use the thoughtful resources.
• 14:18
  Nate: We're putting these out there just to help the church, to help you as parents grow so that you can equip your children and uh, you know, just lead your family well.
• 14:30
  Nate: So uh also don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss our next episode.
• 14:34
  Nate: But until then, keep leading the next generation to stand firm in their faith and influence the world for Christ.