Sermon for Reformation Sunday, AD 2026

Grace and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Reformation Sunday recalls one of the most important events in the Church since Pentecost: the recovery of the pure Gospel. That is what it is about—the recovery of the pure Gospel.

To say that the Reformation is about Martin Luther, the founding of the Lutheran Church, or breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church is too narrow and not entirely accurate. Luther was a man whom God used for great things, but he was just a man. The Lutheran Church is the same Church founded by Jesus Christ. We believe what Jesus taught from the very beginning. If our Church had been founded by Luther in 1517, then it would not be the true Church. But our Church was founded by Christ. If it were different from that, we should abandon it.

Breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church was necessary, but the reason for the split is not something to celebrate. It was good that the Lutherans—the evangelical Church—were willing to cling to the pure Gospel. But the fact that many are still misled and do not understand the pure Gospel is not something to celebrate.

What we celebrate is that through Luther, the Gospel of Jesus Christ—that we are saved by grace through faith alone—was proclaimed again after years of obscurity. It had not gone away. There have always been Christians; there has always been a Church. Christ said, “The gates of hell will not overcome the Church.” The Church never went away. But especially before Luther’s time, the pure Gospel was not clearly taught. When it was taught, it was often taught by a minority, not by those in power. Those who preached it were sometimes persecuted by the institutional Church.

Immediately before the Reformation, salvation was often taught as a series of works laid out by church authorities. They explained how these merits were supposed to help people become saved. People were told they could gain some merits of their own, have some of Christ’s merits, and even buy, sell, or trade other people’s merits. Saints and monks—all these merits went back and forth. This obscured the fact that only Christ’s merit pleases God and is sufficient for our salvation.

Luther turned to Scripture and saw that what pleases God is faith in Jesus Christ and in His work—His merit alone. As we read in Romans: “By the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe.”

By the law, by our own works, or by piling up our own merits, we gain nothing before God. We will not be right before Him, because the law shows us our sin. It reflects back on us and shows us that we have not done what is required. But apart from the law, God revealed righteousness in Jesus Christ: through His merit, His work, and His fulfillment of the law in His life, passion, death, and resurrection. Through all these things, He completed God’s righteousness, and we receive it by faith. He says, “I give this to you if you simply believe.” He says, “Come, you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”

That “come” is not a difficult command: Come and rest. Believe. Hold to My words. Grasp these things and do not let go.

Luther was tormented by his sins and by the thought that he had never done enough works for God. He would go to confession, then think a bad thought and have to go right back five minutes later. His confessor would say, “Stop coming to confession. You’re coming too much.” Luther was so sure he could not do what God required. Then he saw in Scripture that salvation is not about us doing what God requires; it is about Christ having done it for us.

Luther saw that his works would never make him right before God, as St. Paul says. Rather, it is apart from the law that we become right before God. Christ has atoned for us by His blood on the cross and made peace with God. His merit, death, and shed blood make us right with God. When we trust that this is true for us, that is faith, and we have His righteousness.

So the Christian life is faith. It is trust in what Christ has done. We must trust that Jesus completed everything necessary for our salvation. It was all finished on the cross when He said, “It is finished.” We must hold to this truth and know that nothing we do could please God any more than what Christ has already done. We must also know that to sin against this truth is to break faith with God. Hold to it as true. Take hold of it. Cling to the kingdom of heaven by clinging to what Christ has done and to His promise of forgiveness for us.

Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.” What is He talking about? Is He talking about persecution? Are we reading this on Reformation Sunday because the Lutherans were persecuted by the Roman Catholics, or because John Hus was burned? Let’s look at it another way.

To take an earthly kingdom by violence, you conquer it with an army. There was a man in Athens in ancient times named Peisistratus who wanted to be tyrant of Athens. He staged an attack on himself, went into the marketplace covered in blood, and said, “I’ve been attacked.” The people gave him a bodyguard of 50 men, and he tried to use them to rebel and take over the city, but it failed.

Then he had another scheme. He had a woman dress as the goddess Athena and ride with him in a chariot through the city. He hoped the people would say, “Look, Athena favors Peisistratus. We should make him tyrant.” That failed, too.

Then he left the city, raised an army, returned by force, and conquered Athens. He became tyrant. Peisistratus took Athens by committing his full military force to the effort. He put everything into it. He took the whole army and said, “All right, no more half measures. I am going to take this kingdom.”

So, too, Christ wants us to take hold of the kingdom of heaven—but not by the force of an army, because this is not an earthly kingdom. We take hold of it by faith, by a forceful faith. We seize the kingdom of heaven not with weapons—not with spears, swords, guns, or tanks—but with trust: a trust that holds on through all things and will not let go of Christ’s promises. It is a trust that puts everything into holding fast to those promises.

Christ says it had to be this way in the days of John the Baptist. Why? Because John the Baptist was a reformer. He led a reformation. There have been many reformations in the Church, both before and after the Lutheran Reformation.

In the Old Testament, King Hezekiah led a reformation. He tore down all the idols and the high places where people worshiped other gods, rejected foreign rule, and turned the people of Judah back to worship of the true God.

His great-grandson, King Josiah, also led a reformation. He took down the idols and rebuilt the temple. As we heard in the Old Testament reading, the Book of the Law was found there—a book the people had not been following for decades. It said, “You must obey this, or you will be cursed.” In repentance, Josiah heard the Word of God, turned back to God, and led the people to do so as well, at least for a time. He led a reformation by returning to the Scriptures.

John, too, came at a time when the Gospel of the Old Testament was not widely taught. There is a Gospel in the Old Testament: the promise of the offspring of the woman who would crush the serpent’s head, the offspring of Abraham who would bless many nations, the prophet like Moses who would lead His people, and the Son of David who would be King—the Messiah.

The Pharisees and the leaders had turned people away from the promises of the coming Messiah and focused them on their own man-made laws for keeping the law of Moses. They said, “Just do what we say, and you’ll be saved.” They turned people away from faith and toward their own works. The focus was on pleasing the religious leaders, not on faith in the promises given through Moses and the prophets.

John the Baptist was a completely different teacher. He turned the hearts of the fathers to their children and the children to their fathers. He came with a simple message: “Repent and be baptized for the remission of your sins, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” He prepared the way for the Lord and pointed people to Christ, the One they should have been hoping in and clinging to.

This was the way the Pharisees and the leaders of the Jews rejected. They did not like John. He was popular, so they did not like to say so openly, but they rejected him and were not baptized by him. If the Jews came to the synagogue, the leaders would not tell them to go to John the Baptist. They tried to turn people away from him. They did not want people to repent and be baptized.

So the people had to make their way to where John was—to go out into the wilderness, hear his voice, see this strange man, turn from their sins, and be baptized despite what their leaders were telling them. They came and heard the Word of God and clung to its promises by faith.

We see this later in Jesus’ ministry with the man born blind. Jesus healed him, and because the Pharisees hated Jesus, the man was disowned by his parents and kicked out of the synagogue. Yet he still clung to Jesus in faith, saying, “I know I was blind, but now I see. I know this Jesus is the Christ.”

Any reformation requires the kingdom of heaven to be taken by force. It would have been much easier for Luther to stay in his lane. At first, all he said was, “I think this buying and selling of indulgences, where people can pay to get their relatives out of purgatory, is not biblical or right.” When he said that, the whole Church came down on him: “Stop talking about that. We don’t want to debate this.” He could have said, “All right. I don’t want to bother anyone.” But then he kept pressing further, reading Scripture more and more, and saying, “I must cling by faith to what the Scriptures say. I cannot cling to what men say.”

When Luther was brought before the emperor at the Diet of Worms, with the power of the pope and the Holy Roman Empire arrayed against him, he was told to recant what he had written. He said he could not recant. It was not wise or safe to turn away from conscience, and he insisted that his opponents prove by Scripture and plain reason that he was wrong. He knew it was safer to trust in God than to trust in men. He would rather disappoint and disobey even the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world than disobey God. He clung to God forcefully. He took hold of the kingdom of heaven by faith when all the world seemed to be against him.

It is safer to disobey man than God. It is safer to disagree with the powerful than to let go of God’s promises. How, then, are we taking hold of the kingdom of heaven by force?

Jesus says that the least in the kingdom is greater than John the Baptist. John spoke of a coming kingdom. He knew Christ, but did not see the fulfillment in the crucifixion and resurrection. He did not see the Ascension or the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. But we have. We know what Jesus has done: He was crucified, rose on the third day, ascended 40 days later to the right hand of His Father, and poured out His Holy Spirit on us.

The importance of the purity of the Gospel is that we receive the true works of Christ for us. These great works of Christ are given to us through the Gospel. By grace, every person may take hold of them through faith. Everyone who receives them is greater than John the Baptist, because we have the complete work of Christ through the Gospel, simply by believing that what He says is true.

That is holding on forcefully to the kingdom of heaven. In John the Baptist’s time, prostitutes and tax collectors took hold of the kingdom by force. They were told there was no forgiveness for them. Yet they pressed in, went to John, were baptized, and believed the promises he gave.

Today, no matter what your sins are, you can hold on to the promise of forgiveness by force. Even when you are accused and condemned, hold on to that promise. Even when your past is brought up against you, hold on to it. Even when you don’t feel forgiven, and your flesh pushes you to sin and says, “You’re such a bad sinner anyway,” hold on forcefully to the promise of what Christ has done for you. Cling like barnacles to the side of a ship. Don’t let go.

It is like an adventure movie: someone is hanging over a pit, and on the other side there is treasure just out of reach. You must let go of whatever you are grasping that seems important—whether it is things, money, or the opinions of others—and cling to the help Christ offers. Cling to His promise alone.

It may be immorality or sins that you cherish. It may be self-confidence, pride in your own goodness, or your self-image before others. Do not let sin, your good works, or your own goodness keep you from grasping Christ’s promise by faith.

What should you reform today? What must you let go of? What better hand is there to hold than the one pierced for your forgiveness? What better hand is there to hold than the one that will wipe away every tear from your eyes? What better face is there to look upon than the face of the One who gives peace?

In Christ we have peace alone, by grace, through faith. Amen.