A Word from Bob: Today’s blog post is Part 2 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? This blog mini-series is taken from chapters 1 and 2 of my book, Counseling Under the Cross: How Martin Luther Applied the Gospel to Daily Life.

Spiritual Separation Anxiety 

Before Luther could teach us about grace-based counseling, he had to learn a new view of Christ—a view that was a universe apart from the religious culture of his day. A man of his times, Luther viewed God as his vindictive enemy and merciless judge:

“I lost hold of Christ the Savior and comforter and made of him a stock-master and hangman over my poor soul.”^[i]

Luther was not alone. He inhabited a world where people “thought a threatening God kept a suspicious eye on every human act” and where “their religious ventures taught them to be consumed by the threat of damnation.”^[ii] And if this God was angry with Luther, then Luther was plenty angry with God:

“I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God, and said, ‘As if, indeed, it is not enough that miserable sinners, eternally lost through original sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the Decalogue, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel threatening us with his righteousness and wrath!’ Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience.”^[iii]

An Anxious Pilgrim in a Vale of Tears 

The spiritual culture of Luther’s day helps us identify with Luther’s sense of foreboding in the face of an angry God. Shortly before midnight on November 10, 1483, in Eisleben, Margarethe Lindemann Luder gave birth to a son. Martin was named after St. Martins of Tours, whose feast day was November 11. Luther’s father, Hans, moved to Eisleben to work in the copper mines, eventually becoming a leaseholder of mines. In 1484, Luther’s parents moved to Mansfield where they stayed for the rest of their lives.

Life was hard and the people were harder. Years later, in a table talk shared during the winter of 1533, Luther reflected upon the evil that lurked around the edge of everything in Mansfield:

“Luther said many things about witchcraft and nightmares, and how his mother had been tormented by a neighbor woman who was a witch.”^[iv]

Spells, poison, and death inhabited the air they breathed.

Because their life was so difficult, people hoped at least for a better eternal life after their earthly vale of tears. However, Luther, like the people of his day, worried about death because he feared he had not done enough to please God. He was terrified of the jungsten Tag—the day of final reckoning when Christ would return to judge the world.

It seemed impossible to Luther that even his best efforts in cooperation with grace could ever prove anything but inadequate. No one could love God as the Bible required, and God stood ready to condemn and destroy in that last day of judgement.^[v] 

Salvation was something to be earned; theirs was a religion of works; and their God was a God of wrath. Christ was commonly pictured seated on his throne, from one side of his head came a lily (symbolizing the resurrection), and from the other side came a sword. The burning question was, “How can I avoid the sword and earn the lily?”^[vi]

In a December 1531 table talk, Luther depicted how his religious environment had impacted him personally:

“It’s very difficult for a man to believe that God is gracious to him. The human heart can’t grasp this.”

In the same table talk, Luther illustrated his sub-biblical view of God from an event from his student days:

“This is the way we are. Christ offers himself to us together with the forgiveness of sins, and yet we flee from his face. This also happened to me as a boy in my homeland when we sang in order to gather sausages. A townsman jokingly cried out, ‘What are you boys up to? May this or that evil overtake you!’ At the same time he ran toward us with two sausages. With my companion I took to my feet and ran away from the man who was offering his gift. This is precisely what happens to us in our relation to God. He gave us Christ with all his gifts, and yet we flee from him and regard him as our judge.”^[vii]

Luther, like the men and women of his day, lived in ultimate fear of God and terror of eternal separation from God—spiritual separation anxiety.

Martin experienced incessant torment in his soul because he believed that no matter what he did, he could never obtain the love of God. Luther’s every human effort only made matters worse:

“For I had hoped I might find peace of conscience with fasts, prayer, and the vigils with which I miserably afflicted my body, but the more I sweated it out like this, the less peace and tranquility I knew.”^[viii]

Before he came under the influence of the cross, Luther lived life as a man terrified that he would never find peace with God because his God was not a God of peace. Luther lived with a constant sense of guilt and dread in the face of a terrifying, angry, and unforgiving God.

The Rest of the Story 

Join me for Part 3, where we’ll see the helpless and hopeless attempts Luther made to find peace with God apart from Christ. 

Join the Conversation 

Like Luther, have you ever been here: “I lost hold of Christ the Savior and comforter and made of him a stock-master and hangman over my poor soul.” If so, how have you laid hold of Christ as your Savior and Comforter?

Notes

[i]Kittleson, p. 79. 

[ii]Marty, Martin Luther, pp. 14, 9.

[iii]Luther, LW, Vol. 34, pp. 336-337.

[iv]Luther, LW, Vol. 54, p. 188.

[v]Krey, Luther’s Spirituality, p. xxi.

[vi]Kittelson, p. 41.

[vii]Luther, LW, Vol. 54, pp. 19-20, emphasis added.

[viii]Luther, LW, Vol. 8, p. 326.