How fragile a thing the church!

As a church planter, laboring to “get some little church to be rightly… ordered,” Luther’s warning here rings so true to me.  Because the Gospel is so counter-intuitive, because sin is so deceptive, the deadly malignancy of Cross-denying religion is an ever-present danger to the church.  Luther’s description of the “mad brain,” the “fantastical spirit,” i.e., the false teacher, is apt indeed.

 

Galatians 1:6A—I Marvel That So Soon.

To fall in faith is an easy matter. Paul warns Christians in another place that he who stands should take heed that he fall not (1 Corinthians 10:12).

We also daily prove by experience with what great difficulty a perfect people is gotten to the Lord. A man may labor half a score years before he shall get some little church to be rightly and religiously ordered; and when it is so ordered, there creeps in some mad brain, yea and a very unlearned idiot, who can do nothing else but speak slanderously and spitefully against sincere preachers of the Word, and he in one moment overthrows all.

We by the grace of God have gotten here at Wittenberg the form of a Christian church. The Word among us is purely taught, the sacraments are rightly used, exhortations and prayers are made also for all estates, and to be brief, all things go forward prosperously. This most happy course of the gospel some mad head would soon stop, and in one moment would overturn all that we in many years with great labor have built. Even so it befell to Paul, the elect vessel of Christ. He had won the churches of Galatia with great care and travail, which the false apostles in a short time after his departure overthrew, as this and diverse other of his epistles do witness. So great is the weakness and wretchedness of this present life, and so walk we in the midst of Satan’s snares, that one fantastical head may destroy and utterly overthrow, in a short space, all that which many true ministers, laboring night and day, have built up many years before. This we learn at this day by experience to our great grief, and yet we cannot remedy this enormity.

Seeing then that the Church is so soft and so tender a thing, and is so soon overthrown, men must watch carefully against these fantastical spirits who, when they have heard two sermons, or have read a few leaves in the Holy Scriptures, make themselves masters and controllers of all learners and teachers, contrary to the authority of all men. Many such you may find among craftsmen, bold fellows, who, because they have been tried by no temptations, never learned to fear God nor had any taste or feeling of grace. These teach whatever they like best, and such things as are plausible and pleasant to the common people. Then the unskillful multitude, longing to hear news, join themselves unto them. Yea, and many are seduced by them.