A Word from Bob: Today’s post is Part 6 in a week-long blog mini-series on Reformation Week and the life and ministry of Martin Luther. You can read Part 1 here: How Do We Find Peace with a Holy God? You can read Part 2 here: Luther’s Spiritual Separation Anxiety. You can read Part 3 here: A Hopeless Sinner in the Hands of an Angry God. You can read Part 4 here: Works Do Not Work. You can read Part 5 here: Cropping Christ Back Into the Picture. I’ve developed this blog mini-series from my book Counseling Under the Cross: How Martin Luther Applied the Gospel to Daily Life.

The Sufficiency of Scripture

Confident in the sufficiency and efficacy of the Scriptures, Luther brought the questions that troubled his soul to them, expecting answers. God’s Word was his daily bread:

“No other study pleased me like that of the Holy Scripture. I read in it diligently and imprinted it upon my memory. Often a single passage of weighty import occupied my thoughts the whole day…. I want only the Word of God and do not ask for any miracle, nor desire any vision, nor will I believe an angel that teaches me anything different from the Word of God.”^[i] 

The Anfechtungen of Christ on the Cross

While studying Psalm 22, Luther was stunned by the realization that Christ had experienced anfechtungen. On the cross, Christ cried out the words:

“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:2).

Christ had suffered what Luther had suffered—the cry of forsakenness, of abandonment, of separation. Luther wanted to know how this could be, for he did not understand why the sinless Christ should have known such desolation. Christ was neither weak, nor sinful. Luther, yes. Christ, no. 

A new picture of Christ was emerging for Luther. As he focused on the cross, Luther concluded that the only explanation must be that Christ took to himself the iniquity of the human race. He who was without sin, for our sake became sin for us and so identified himself with us as to participate in our alienation.

A new view of the Father was also developing. The All Terrible was now the All Merciful.

Wrath and love mingled on the cross of Christ.

Somehow, in the utter desolation of the forsaken Christ, God the Father was able to reconcile sinners to himself.^[ii]

This would become a constant theme of Luther’s pastoral care—seeing, perceiving, imagining, and viewing God through the lens of the Christ of the cross.

The contemplation of the cross had convinced Luther that God was not malicious; however, the problem of the justice of God still remained. Bainton depicts the dilemma now facing Luther:

“Wrath can melt into mercy, and God will be all the more the Christian God; but if justice be dissolved in leniency, how can he be the just God whom Scripture describes?”^[iii] 

Our Righteousness from Christ

The study of Romans proved to be of inestimable value to Luther in answering this final question. In the fall of 1515, Dr. Martin Luther, now professor of Sacred Theology at the University of Wittenberg, began to expound Romans to his students. As Luther prepared his lectures, he gradually came to a clear knowledge of what he saw as the central teaching of Scripture—the doctrine of justification by grace through faith in Christ apart from works. In his preface to the written edition of his lecture notes on Romans, Luther writes:

“This Epistle is really the chief part of the New Testament and the very purest Gospel, and is worthy not only that every Christian should know it word for word, by heart, but occupy himself with it every day, as the daily bread of the soul.”^[iv]

In Romans, Luther found the answers that he had been searching after for so long.

Most importantly for Luther’s struggle and for the development of his Reformation theology, it was in Romans that Luther uncovered the meaning of righteousness. After searching for three decades, in the winter of 1542-1543, Luther offered a clear contrast between his understanding of righteousness when he was a monk and his understanding of righteousness from his study of Romans:

“For a long time I went astray in the monastery and didn’t know what I was about. To be sure, I knew something, but I didn’t know what it was until I came to the text in Romans 1, “He who through faith is righteous shall live.” That text helped me. There I saw what righteousness Paul was talking about. Earlier in the text I read “righteousness.” I related the abstract “righteousness” with the concrete “the righteous One” and became sure of my cause. I learned to distinguish between the righteousness of the law and the righteousness of the gospel. I lacked nothing before this except that I made no distinction between the law and the gospel. I regarded both as the same thing and held that there was no difference between Christ and Moses except the times in which they lived and their degrees of perfection. But when I discovered the proper distinction—namely, that the law is one thing and the gospel is another—I made myself free.”^[v]

Luther had previously interpreted righteousness as the active righteousness of God—his attribute that rightly and justly condemns the guilty sinner. Now Luther began to understand righteousness as passive righteousness from God—his gift of righteousness that justifies the ungodly through faith alone by grace alone.

Righteousness by Faith, Not by Works

In Romans, Luther found that the route to God led through the path of faith:

“Hence it comes that faith alone makes righteous and fulfills the law.”^[vi]

Going further, Luther discovered that the essence of sin is unbelief or lack of faith:

“Hence, Christ calls unbelief the only sin, when He says, ‘The Spirit will rebuke the world for sin, because they believe not on me.’ For this reason, too, before good or bad works are done, which are the fruits, there must first be in the heart faith or unbelief, which is the root, the sap, the chief power of all sin.’”^[vii] 

Luther also uncovered the meaning of faith through his study of Romans. In that meaning he found the implication of faith—life lived freely and powerfully for God and others—faith active in love:

“Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a man would stake his life on it a thousand times. This confidence in God’s grace and knowledge of it makes all men glad and bold and happy in dealing with God and all His creatures; and this is the work of the Holy Ghost in faith.”^[viii]

Lecturing to his students on Galatians 3:13, Luther powerfully pictures the amazing nature of this grace:

“Hereby it appears that the doctrine of the gospel (which of all others is most sweet and full of most singular consolation) speaks nothing of our works or of the works of the law, but of the inscrutable mercy and love of God towards most wretched and miserable sinners. Our most merciful Father, seeing us to be oppressed and overwhelmed with the curse of the law, and that we could never be delivered from it of our own power, sent His only Son into the world and laid upon Him all the sins of all men, saying, be Thou Peter that denier; Paul that persecutor and cruel oppressor; David that adulterer; that sinner who did eat the fruit in Eden; that thief who hanged upon the cross, and be Thou that person who has committed the sins of all me; see therefore, that Thou pay and satisfy for them.”^[ix]

For Luther, none of these theological discoveries were abstract, esoteric, academic, or unrelated to life. His discoveries in Romans directly related to his search for peace with God. Speaking of Romans 5:1, Luther lectured his students:

“With ‘peace’ the Apostle here means that peace of which all prophets speak, namely, spiritual peace as he indicates this by the phrase ‘peace with God.’ This peace consists properly in an appeased conscience and in confidence in God, just as conversely the lack of peace means spiritual anxiety, a disturbed conscience and mistrust over against God.”^[x]

The gospel grace of justification/reconciliation is Christ’s answer to our spiritual separation anxiety—an answer that calms our conscience with the assurance of forgiveness and being welcomed home. 

The Rest of the Story 

Join us in our 7^th and final post: In Christ Alone, Luther found the Door to the Father’s Home.

Join the Conversation 

How could Luther’s quote bring you daily assurance, peace, and joy? “Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a man would stake his life on it a thousand times.”

[i]Nebe, pp. 18, 19-20.

[ii]Bainton, pp. 47-48. 

[iii]Ibid., pp. 48-49.

[iv]Luther, Commentary on Romans, p. xiii.

[v]Luther, LW, Vol. 54, pp. 442-443.

[vi]Luther, Commentary on Romans, p. xv.

[vii]Ibid., p. xvi.

[viii]Ibid., p. xvii.

[ix]Luther, Commentary on Galatians, p. 182.

[x]Luther, Commentary on Romans, p. 89.