A Time of Reform

Behold the proud, His soul is not upright in him; But the just shall live by his faith.

Hab. 2:4^NKJV

It was a hot humid afternoon in July 1505. A brilliant young law student, was traveling near the German village of Stotternheim, in what was then Electoral Saxony. He had recently earned his Master’s degree, & by all indications had a promising law career ahead of him. Yet, as often happens on hot summer days, the sky without warning swiftly darkened. A wind arose and it started to rain. Soon sheets of water were coming down, driven in sharp angles by the wind. Suddenly a bolt of lightning struck so near the traveler that he was knocked to the ground.  Fearing God’s wrath would forever rest upon him if he should die, the terrified young man cried out, “Help me, St. Anne! And I will become a monk.” And so the man who would later renounce the cult of the saints vowed to a saint, and the man who would later condemn monasticism entered an Augustinian monastery, just 15 days later in nearby Erfurt Germany.  The man’s name was Martin Luther.  He was 21 years old.

If that seems strange to you, you must understand Christian piety at end of the Middle Ages. Christians understood God’s holy hatred of sin, and that He would condemn every sinner who died in state of sin. To be justified before Him required righteousness. Righteousness has to do with the works of a rational being done in accordance with the Law of God. The best way to get righteousness, it was widely believed, was to enter a monastery, where you could spend the rest of your life in the gospel works of prayer, fasting, and meditation. The monastery was designed to refute the three great powers of the devil and sin: Lust—by a vow of chastity; Avarice—by a vow of poverty; and Pride—by a vow of obedience to one’s superior in a monastic order. So Luther, rightly feeling the condemnation of his sin, entered the monastery to save his soul. You see he had to acquire the righteousness God justly requires of His rational creature. And the best way to do that was to dedicate his life in service to God in good works in a monastery.

Luther soon discovered that all of his prayers, fasts, studies, and meditations fell short of the righteousness God required. There was always a little pride, a little selfishness, or what have you mixed in. Even after he had spent hours in the confessional, trying to recall and fully confess all of the sins he was convicted of in his heart, from just the PREVIOUS 24 HOURS(!), he would soon recall a sinful thought he had forgotten to mention, or he would feel proud about something, and he would have to wait until his next confession to try to get clean again. It was only upon reading in Augustine, that the righteousness God requires is not a righteousness achieved by one’s works, in adequately cooperating with the grace infused into a believer objectively by the sacraments, but a righteousness freely and fully given to the one who believes in Jesus. The good news of the gospel is that God justifies sinners immediately and permanently, by the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ, and not by their own eventually good enough faith and works.

It was this foundational gospel doctrine that fueled Luther to oppose the indulgence racket of certain peripatetic preachers. The 95 Theses of Oct. 31, 1517, primarily called out their abuses, as they promised full pardon and even assurance of eternal salvation for the most outrageous sins, simply through the act of purchasing an indulgence. The famous indulgence preacher John Tetzel was reputed to have said “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs!” In posting his theses for academic debate on the town bulletin board (the church door), Luther saw himself as a loyal son of the church seeking to correct an abuse of some, whom he thought were being unfaithful to Rome. Thus, the Theses were written in Latin, intended only for scholars and academics to debate, which was a common practice. Luther even personally sent a copy of them to his bishop, Albert of Mainz, along with a very humble letter pleading for the bishop to do something about the abuse of indulgences, along with all of the unbiblical things that their hawkers were claiming. However, as we know, God had other plans, as students of the university took Luther’s Theses, translated them into German, and using the recently invented printing press, circulated them far and wide. Another storm was coming for the lawyer turned priest, professor, and monk. But this time, his heart was covered in the righteousness of Christ!