LUTHER—Before and After

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