Introduction
Martin Luther is known as ‘the monk who shook the world’! Indeed,
after thirteen centuries of spiritual corruption, the German reformer
heralded a return to the pure Gospel of Christ and his Apostles.
LUTHER’S LIFE
Born at Eisleben, Saxony on 10 November 1483, of pious parents, he
was educated at Magdeburg and Eisenach. After acquiring BA and MA
degrees at the University of Erfurt (1501-5), a thunderstorm terrified
him into becoming a monk in July 1505. Forsaking a law career (much to
the annoyance of his parents), Luther entered the Augustinian cloister
soon after. Ordained as a priest, he conducted his first mass in May
1507. His feeling of unworthiness created a further sense of terror in
the presence of God. In vain did his father confessor John von Staupitz
try to bring comfort to Luther’s soul. A pilgrimage to Rome in 1510
failed to bring relief. Indeed, it left him utterly disillusioned by the
hypocritical spirituality of ‘the holy city’. Returning to Erfurt, he
transferred to the new University of Wittenberg in 1511. The following
year Luther became Doctor of Theology.
When Luther began a series of lectures on the Psalms and Paul’s
Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians (1513-16), he was a pious
though deeply disturbed Catholic. Troubled by Paul’s expression the
‘justice of God’
(Romans 1: 17), he gradually understood that what God demands of us by His
law, He grants us in Christ through His
grace. This new understanding transformed him. Let us hear Luther recount his evangelical conversion in his own words:
Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the
justice of God and the statement that ‘the just shall live by his
faith’. Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by
which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith.
Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors
into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and
whereas before the ‘justice of God’ had filled me with hate, now it
became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul
became to me a gate to heaven… If you have a true faith that Christ is
your Saviour, then at once you have a gracious God, for faith leads you
in and opens up God’s heart and will, that you should see pure grace and
overflowing love.
Thus Luther now saw God in Christ not as an angry Judge but as a
loving Father. His revolutionary understanding of ‘Justification by
Faith alone in Christ’ and a powerful experience of the
Gospel led to a
radical reassessment of all he had known. The Pope’s religion was one of
fear and uncertainty. It majored on ritual and superstitious
ceremonies. The way to heaven demanded the gaining of merit by ‘works
righteousness’. Purgatory was the destiny of the pious whose arrival at
heaven was only a remote possibility. The glorious Gospel of Grace and
pardon through Christ had been shrouded in merit-mongering legalism. All
this falsehood was exploded by Luther’s conversion.
What was an intensely personal event soon became public by the Pope’s
declaration of Indulgences. Based on the worship of relics, the pious
could shorten their time in purgatory by contributions to the Church, by
which Pope Leo X wished to rebuild St Peter’s in Rome. They could even
reduce purgatorial time for their dead relations! In short, the way to
get to heaven was to pay up!
The Dominican John Tetzel was appointed to direct this papal racket
in Germany. Luther became horrified by such corruption. As Tetzel and
his retinue made their way around Germany, the cash flowed in to a
shameful jingle:
As soon as the money clinks in the chest,
A soul flies up to heavenly rest!
Luther’s revulsion was driven by his evangelical grasp of the
Gospel.
While churchmen (cardinals, bishops, parish clergy and monks, etc) were
enslaving the faithful in expensive piety, they completely failed to
see that ‘God had opened the gate of heaven through Christ, and the way
to enter was by faith in the sacrifice of Jesus’ (Dr R. Tudur Jones).
Indeed, the way to receive salvation was not by penance and ritual
observance but by repentance and faith in the finished work of Christ.
So Luther preached the true Gospel, urging the faithful: “My beloved,
you cannot
buy God’s mercy!”
Frederick the Wise, the Elector of Saxony, had arranged to offer his
indulgences and display a large quantity of relics at the Castle Church,
Wittenberg on All saints Day, 1 November 1517. As Dr Tudur Jones
states, Luther saw that this was the time ‘to strike’ a blow against the
infamous racketeering. So, on 31 October, he nailed his 95 Theses to
the door of the Castle Church. This document was little more than a list
of statements intended for debate. However, the explosive nature of
their ideas was to shatter Rome’s religious monopoly ‘right down to the
foundation’ (Dr Tudur Jones). This was the beginning of the Protestant
Reformation!
Luther’s protest spread like wildfire throughout Germany and beyond.
With their financial burden suddenly lifted, he became a national hero
for the Gospel-liberated faithful. The Pope became furious with rage on
hearing the news. When Luther was summoned to Rome, he appealed to
Frederick for support who refused to banish him. In 1519, academic
pressure was applied to Luther by Dr John Eck in a debate at Leipzig.
However, with his knowledge of Scripture and the early church fathers,
Christ’s new spokesman ran rings round the papal champion.
Eventually, Leo X issued a bull condemning Luther and his books.
Refusing to be intimidated, Luther burned it in public on 10 December
1520. In the spring of the following year, a special Diet [assembly] was
held at Worms, in the presence of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V.
After two hearings, despite every device to silence Luther and make him
recant, he refused to yield.
“If I have spoken error, bear witness against me.. Recant? I cannot
deny the work of many years. My conscience is captive to the Word of
God. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.”
To briefly summarise Luther’s impact, he was threatened with death
but was provided sanctuary in the Wartburg castle from May 1521 to March
1522. During this time, he translated the New Testament into German. It
was published in September. Thus the light of Christ’s true Gospel
brought increasing liberty from Rome’s errors and tyranny in every area
of life. The obligatory celibacy of the Lutheran clergy was ended,
Luther himself being married to former nun Katharine von Bora on 13 June
1525.
Later that year, Luther published his critique of Erasmus’ treatise on free will in
De servo arbitrio [
On the Enslaved Will].
Concerned to recover the Augustinian view of Paul’s Gospel of God’s
sovereign grace, Luther defended the doctrine of predestination against
Erasmus’ Pelagian doctrine of self-saving human power. Yet, as John
Calvin was to argue later, Luther equally affirmed the ‘free offer’ of
the Gospel:
It is certain that you are a part of the world. Do not let your heart
deceive you by saying: "The Lord died for Peter and Paul; He rendered
satisfaction for them, not for me." Therefore let every one who has sin
be summoned here, for He has made the expiation for the sins of the
whole world and bore the sins of the whole world (Comment on 1 John 2: 2).
Luther also revolutionised worship by composing chorales or hymns.
The most famous is ‘Ein’ feste burg ist unser Gott’ [A safe stronghold
our God is still], composed in 1527. Often afflicted by depression,
Luther’s list of remedies are interesting, both spiritual and human:
Faith in Christ
The love of a good woman
Music
Manual labour
Getting downright angry.
After sad disagreement with the Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli at
Marburg in 1529, the German Reformation was established in the issuing
of the
Augsburg Confession in 1530. The complete German Bible was published in 1534. Not before he produced an unhappy tract
Against the Jews in 1543 (sadly later appealed to by the Nazis), Luther died at his birthplace, Eisleben on 18 February 1546.
Rev. Dr Alan C. Clifford
