This Week
Livestream
Reformation morning
8:00 AM
East Valley Area Reformation
4:00 PM
Cause and Effect: The Truth Shall Set You Free
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Many people believe that freedom means being able to do anything sinful they want. Jesus teaches that is absolutely false. “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31,32). Jesus says that living according to the sinful nature does not make you free. In fact, that attitude toward life will make you a slave. We can only be free—spiritually, emotionally, eternally—“If you hold to my teaching” and therefore “know the truth.” Truth is the cause that effects freedom.
A key principle Martin Luther discovered through the Reformation is sola scriptura, Scripture alone. Who or what is the final arbiter of the truth that provides freedom? Scripture alone. Heirs of the Reformation still bind ourselves to Scripture. Does restricting ourselves in this manner curtail freedom? Just the opposite is true. God’s truth brings freedom from slavery to sinful delusions and from the burden of guilt.
This week we celebrate this cause and effect—the truth sets us free!
The Lutheran Reformation
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​Today we celebrate the Festival of the Reformation of the Church. The heart of the gospel is the forgiveness of sins, purchased and won for us through the innocent death of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who was slain for the sin of the world. The teaching of the Christian Church is based on Scripture alone. Neither church traditions, the decrees of popes and councils, nor emotion or reason can replace the pure Word of God as the foundation of truth.
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Our worship today celebrates the 1,700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed. In AD 325 the Roman Emperor Constantine convened bishops from around the church in the city of Nicaea to study Scripture and to affirm and confess what the Scriptures say about Jesus of Nazareth. This resolved the Arian controversy in the church.
Arius, a church elder from Alexandria in Egypt, taught that God the Son was a created being. “There was a time when he [Jesus, the Son] was not,” asserted Arius.
The Council of Nicaea condemned Arius’ teaching and affirmed that Jesus is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made.” We speak these words in the Nicene Creed to this day, joining with the whole Christian Church on earth in confessing that God the Son is coequal to the Father and coeternal with the Father.
Today we gather to observe the 508th anniversary of the beginning of the Lutheran Reformation. We celebrate the grace of God who reformed his Church and brought back the pure, simple, beautiful truth of the gospel of free forgiveness and eternal life through Jesus our Savior.
