dev183

As I urged you upon my departure for Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith.

1 Timothy 1:3-4

On my recent trip to Rome I got the opportunity to visit the Sancta Scala, which is believed by the Roman Catholic Church to be the stairs which Jesus descended before Pilate in Jerusalem on his way to be crucified. I was excited to see these stairs on my trip, as I was not able to see them on my previous voyages to Rome. My desire to see them was not because I believed them in any way authentic or because I believed them to have some sort of redemptive power, but because they are an important landmark in the history of Protestantism and gave me a good reminder of the true nature of God. The story goes like this…

Martin Luther was searching for God. He had become a Catholic monk and was carrying the party line, teaching without reservations the sale of indulgences, which supposedly award people time away from the punishment of purgatory. Indulgences could be gained in all sorts of ways, from paying money to build churches to pilgrimages to relics and holy places. So, for Luther, he was very happy when he was sent to accompany another monk as a representative on a trip to Rome, the center of the Catholic world and a place where he could obtain many indulgences. He spent much time travelling around the ecclesiastical sites in the city, being discouraged by being rushed along by priests.

But alas he came to one of the most important sites, the Sancta Scala. At the time of Luther, the Church was telling the people that this staircase had been transported to Rome from Jerusalem by angels (they are proposing a different story today, of course). The pilgrim was instructed to climb each step on their knees, kiss the steps, and say an “Our Father” each time. After each step they did this they were to have earned themselves 9 years out of purgatory, with some steps earning double because they had crosses carved into them. If the pilgrim made it up every step, they were to be absolved from purgatory.

Luther did this. After kissing his way up the stairs and having reached the top, he looked back down and said, “Who can know whether these things are so.” Far from finding his peace with God performing these rituals, he left Rome with seeds of doubt that eventually grew into the Protestant Reformation and a rediscovery of the Scriptural mandate that the just will live by faith.

On my trip to Rome I decided not to go up the stairs on my knees. Rather, I took the side steps and looked down the steps as I watched many deceived people kissing the stairs that they thought would keep them from burning. It saddened me, because there will be no peace with God found there. These steps are a good representative for me of the religion of man, namely, rituals invented by the minds of prominent men and accepted by the masses because they want to do something to please God and be right with him. This desire is good and natural. This arrogance is evil and reprehensible.

Why is this arrogance? It is arrogance because it is affectively a declaration to God that we want to invent our own ways to Him and reject the one that He made. Jesus is the way to God, and it was through the cross that this way was paved. Yet the religions of the world agree in their denials of the path God showed when He came to us. After all, is there really any difference in a pilgrimage to Mecca, the abstaining from eating cows, or the ascent of holy stairs? They are all simply superstitions that deceive people into to thinking they can get to God some other way of their choosing, making God a liar and telling Him that the cross wasn’t necessary.

Luther found only dead ends when he was chasing relics and following ritual. Yet when he read the scriptures he found directions to the way that Christ had paved. The just will not live by ritual. The just will live by faith.