The plumb line is an old building tool that helps the constructor to correctly erect the walls. It is a weight hanged on a line that serves to vertically orient the setting up of the bricks. When the plumb line is used the walls are raised straight.
For Christians the Bible is like the plumb line, it is a divine tool that orients the healthy building of life. Therefore, the Protestant Reform can be understood as the occasion when God through Martin Luther categorically applied this tool over the Church, revealing its existing deviances and the corrections to be made.
The Reform teaches that the genuine truth must be preserved and the deviances must be corrected, but mainly it teaches that the indispensable tool for that is the Bible, the Word of the eternal God.
For the wall to be well built it’s not enough to follow the plumb line just for the bottom two or three levels of bricks, all the upper levels must also be set following that vertical orientation. It is now over 500 years since the Reform, the bricks then were very well set down, but now in the 21st century it is up to us to continue to set them up properly according to the divine line.
In our days, sociologist recognize that we are not only living in times of change but in a change of times. That is, the change is generalized, profound and absolute. It is in this context that the Church continues its construction and must do it always focusing on how to remain faithful to the Word of God but also how to continue to be relevant in the present days.
Therefore, the Protestant Reform cannot be considered as an isolated event in history, but as a continuous construction that we as Christians individuals and as the Church of Christ must continue undertake following the Lord’s divine plumb line.
- What are the deviances that the Bible allows you to see in your own life construction?
- What are the corrections that the Bible is telling you to do in your own life construction?
(The plumb line objective, 2 Timothy 3:16 / The use of the plumb line, Matthew 7:24)