Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World

by Eric Metaxas

For Luther, this was a large part of what the Reformation was all about, to take holiness out of the church and into the wider world. To take it from the priest and give it to every father and mother. To take it from the praying monks and nuns and give it to every laborer and every housewife. It was never meant to be hidden in religious vocations. The wall between them must be broken down forever. Just as the curtain in the temple had been torn to allow us into the holy of holies, and to allow God out of the holy of holies, so now all that was once confined to the religious and ecclesiastical spheres must fly out and into the wide world. Thus was everything that God had made redeemed by faith in Christ. On the one hand, this had happened fifteen centuries earlier, but it was as if the money had been put in the bank then and no one knew it was there, or soon forgot it was there. So no one had made a withdrawal and spent it, which was the point of the money. Luther was declaring that it was there and that it was available to all and now we must take it out and use it in our own lives for God’s purposes. In this way, the Gospel would and should touch everything. Thus it was with sex and with every physical thing in this world, and so it must be with music too.