A Word from Bob: Today’s post is Part 4 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. I’ve developed this blog mini-series from my book Counseling Under the Cross: How Martin Luther Applied the Gospel to Daily Life.
In Abject Failure, Luther Turned to the Merits of the Saints
For Luther, no amount of human effort worked:
“I saw that I was a great sinner in the eyes of God and I did not think it possible for me to propitiate him by my own merits.”[i]
Since his own merits would not suffice, Luther fled to the merits of the saints.
Luther, who had prayed to St. Anne for her protection before he entered the monastery, exponentially expanded the list of saints he clung to once he arrived at Erfurt:
“I chose twenty-one saints and prayed to three every day when I celebrated mass; this I completed the number every week. I prayed especially to the Blessed Virgin, who with her womanly heart would compassionately appease her Son.”[ii]
Notice Luther’s goal: that the merit and mercy of Mary would mollify the Messiah.
Alas, for meticulous Martin, even the merits of twenty-one saints would not be enough. So, wanting to take full benefit of the transfer of merits (indulgences), Luther felt himself highly privileged when an opportunity arose for him to go to Rome. Rome, like no city on earth, was richly endowed with spiritual indulgences so Luther could seek to appropriate for himself and his relatives all the enormous benefits available.
After a lengthy pilgrimage to Rome, Luther finally began to ascend the scala sancta—the twenty-eight marble steps thought to be those Jesus walked on the way to his trial before Pilate. Luther climbed Pilate’s stairs on his hands and knees repeating a Pater Noster for each stair and kissing each step in the hope of obtaining grace from the merit of the saints.
But doubts assailed him. At the top, Luther raised himself up and exclaimed, “Who knows whether it is so?” He later described that he had gone to Rome with onions and returned with garlic.[iii] Now another tenet of hope was shattered. Luther did not receive the merit necessary to earn God’s grace, nor did the church have the means to quell his conscience and free his soul.
In Obsessive Scrupulosity, Luther Confessed Meticulously
Luther thought that if he could not acquire heaven by becoming a saint or by the merits of the saints, then perhaps he could do so by the confession of every known sin. Even Luther’s pilgrimage to Rome focused on scrupulous confession:
“My chief concern when I departed for Rome was that I might make a full confession of my sins from my youth up and might become pious, although I had twice made such a confession in Erfurt.”[iv]
This too became a futile remedy for Luther:
“While I was a monk, I no sooner felt assailed by any temptation than I cried out—‘I am lost!’ Immediately I had recourse to a thousand methods to stifle the cries of my conscience. I went everyday to confession, but that was of no use to me.”[v]
Luther “quickly became a virtuoso self-examiner, boring his mentor during six-hour confession sessions.”[vi] He believed that every sin, in order to be absolved, had to be confessed. Truly penitent sinners were expected to search their hearts for sins of action and of motivation. Therefore, Luther would review his entire life, to be sure of remembering everything, until his confessor grew weary:
I often made confession to Staupitz, not about women but about really serious sins. He said, “I don’t understand you.” This was real consolation! Afterward when I went to another confessor I had the same experience. In short, no confessor wanted to have anything to do with me. Alas, what am I to do!”[vii]
Assurance still escaped Luther. His soul would recoil in horror when, after six hours of confession, a new sin would come to mind which he had not remembered. Even more frightening was the realization that some sins were not even recognized as such by sinners. Luther’s despair only escalated:
“I tried to live according to the Rule with all diligence, and I used to be contrite, to confess and number off my sins, and often repeated my confession, and sedulously performed my allotted penance. And yet my conscience could never give me certainty, but I always doubted and said, ‘You did not perform that correctly. You were not contrite enough. You left that out of your confession.’ The more I tried to remedy an uncertain, weak, and afflicted conscience with the traditions of men, the more each day found it more uncertain, weaker, and more troubled.”[viii]
In Human Hopelessness, Luther Stood Naked Before a Holy God
A hopeless Luther had availed himself of every resource of the medieval church for assuaging the anguish of a spirit alienated from God. When Staupitz met Luther, he met a man in the midst of the most frightful insecurities. Panic had invaded Luther’s spirit. His soul was tortured by despair because his sin left him alienated from God.
Luther entered the monastery to find peace with God. Though driven there for rest for his soul, monastic life failed to ease his guilt:
“Then, bowed down by sorrow, I tortured myself by the multitude of my thoughts. ‘Look,’ exclaimed I, ‘thou art still envious, impatient, passionate! It profiteth thee nothing, O wretched man, to have entered this sacred order.’”[ix]
Luther failed to find peace for his anxious soul in his works of righteousness—all his strivings only increased his despair. The purpose of his good works was to compensate for his sins, but he could never believe that the ledger was perfectly balanced. He could not satisfy a holy God at any point. None of Luther’s good works worked. At this stage of his life, Luther finds himself standing stark naked and empty-handed before the God who is “Holy, Holy, Holy.”
The Rest of the Story
What now? What next?
Every works-righteousness cistern that Luther dug was broken beyond repair. But why keep turning to broken cisterns when God, the Spring of Living Water, is inviting Luther to drink? At this point of his life, Luther had a faulty, non-Christ, non-cross, non-gospel, non-grace view of God.
Reflecting upon this time in his life, Luther told his students of Satan’s bewitching deceptions. Referencing Galatians 3:1, Luther explains:
“To tell the truth, Satan sometimes assails me so mightily and oppresses me with such heavy cogitations, that he utterly shadows my Savior Christ from me and, in a manner, takes Him out of my sight.”[x]
Satan was cropping the Christ of the cross out of Luther’s picture.
What’s missing throughout the first chapter of Luther’s story? The Christ of the cross is missing. We can encapsulate the primary gospel-centered counseling lesson thus far with this tweet-size summary:
Satan seeks to crop the Christ of the cross out of our salvation picture
so we’ll flee from the Father and entrust ourselves to anyone but God.
Think back on Luther’s spiritual journey thus far. Imagine that you could time travel back 500 years to counsel Luther when he is crying out, “Alas, what am I to do!”
Would our counsel be works-centered? Would we tell Luther what to do? Or, would our counsel be gospel-centered? Would we invite Martin Luther into a gospel conversation about what Christ has already and eternally done?
Join me for Part 5, where we discover what biblical counsel Luther uncovers in his redemption journey.
Join the Conversation
In your life, how has Satan sought to crop the Christ of the cross out of your salvation picture so you’d flee from the Father and entrust yourself to anyone but God?
[i]D’Aubigne, The Life and Times of Martin Luther, p. 32.
[ii]Luther, LW, Vol. 54, p. 340.
[iii]Bainton, p. 38.
[iv]Luther, LW, Vol. 54, p. 237.
[v]D’Aubigne, p. 24.
[vi]Marty, p. 14-15.
[vii]Luther, LW, Vol. 54, pp. 94-95.
[viii]Quoted in Steinmetz, Luther in Context, p. 2, from WA 40. II.15, p.15, translated by Rupp, in The Righteousness of God, p. 104.
[ix]D’Aubigne, p. 31.
[x]Luther, Commentary on Galatians, p. 125.
