A Word from Bob: Today’s post is Part 7, and our final post, 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. You can read Part 6 here: Luther Staked His Life on Christ. I’ve developed this blog mini-series from my book Counseling Under the Cross: How Martin Luther Applied the Gospel to Daily Life.
Luther’s Tower Experience
Luther’s tower experience is so called because it occurred in the tower of the Black Cloister in Wittenberg (later Luther’s home) at an undetermined date between 1508 and 1518. In later years, Luther often reflected on this experience and saw it as the breakthrough for which he had been searching:
“The words ‘righteous’ and ‘righteousness of God’ struck my conscience like lightning. When I heard them I was exceedingly terrified. If God is righteous (I thought), he must punish. But when by God’s grace I pondered, in the tower and heated room of this building, over the words, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live’ (Rom. 1:17) and ‘the righteousness of God’ (Rom. 3:21), I soon came to the conclusion that if we, as righteous men, ought to live from faith and if the righteousness of God should contribute to the salvation of all who believe, then salvation won’t be our merit but God’s mercy.”[i]
This was a soul-freeing, joy-filled encounter for Luther:
“My spirit was thereby cheered. For it’s by the righteousness of God that we’re justified and saved through Christ. These words (which had before terrified me) became more pleasing to me. The Holy Spirit unveiled the Scriptures for me in this tower.”[ii]
Six years later, on September 12, 1538, Luther’s thrill of discovery had only grown:
“The expression ‘righteousness of God’ was like a thunderbolt in my heart. When under the papacy I read, ‘In thy righteousness deliver me’ and ‘in thy truth,’ I thought at once that this righteousness was an avenging anger, namely, the wrath of God. I hated Paul with all my heart when I read that the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel. Only afterward, when I saw the words that follow—namely, that it’s written that the righteous shall live through faith—and in addition consulted Augustine, was I cheered, When I learned that the righteousness of God is his mercy, and that he makes us righteous through it, a remedy was offered to me in my affliction.”[iii]
The very expression at which Luther had trembled—the justice of God—now became his friend. Luther explains the results of this shift.
“Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise.” Now, “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.”[iv]
Staupitz, Psalms, and Romans all converged to provide Luther with a new cross-centered view of Christ, God, and himself.
He saw Christ as a gracious Savior instead of a wrathful enemy.
Luther now viewed God as a loving Father instead of an avenging judge.
He perceived himself as loved by God and freed to love others instead of being hated by God and consumed with hate.
Jesus the Open Door
Luther’s quest for personal peace ended at the foot of the cross. Because Christ was nailed to the cross, Luther no longer found himself standing outside the door of his Father’s home.
So he nailed his theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, proclaiming that Christ the great Shepherd is the only door to the Father’s house. Having found personal spiritual peace, Luther shifted his focus from his own spiritual state to the spiritual state of the sheep he was called to shepherd. He did not want them to experience the tormented conscience he had so long endured.
Luther’s Ninety-five Theses are the theological, logical, historical, and practical bridges between Luther the troubled soul and Luther the pastor of souls.
Picture again the religious situation. According to the officially sanctioned practice of the medieval church, absolution of sin was granted to sinners who had repented, upon their confession and penance (such as fasting, prayers, pilgrimages). Yet sinners who were reconciled to God through absolution still had to experience purgatory. Indulgences relaxed or even commuted the punishment that the penitent would have to undergo in purgatory. Indulgence letters were granted for certain religious works such as participation in a crusade, the visiting of certain shrines, praying in sanctuaries where relics of saints were kept, ordering and paying for the celebration of masses, or simply for the payment of money to the church, a practice which became extremely popular in Luther’s day.
Since purgatory was to cleanse the sinner of any remaining guilt, people increasingly viewed indulgences as a means of canceling their guilt. This inflamed Luther as he had broken free from guilt and was concerned that others also find such freedom from guilt. Luther’s pastoral and theological concerns merged at this point. He was convinced that indulgences were positively harmful to the recipients because they impeded salvation by diverting one from the grace of God in Christ received by faith. Indulgences further induced a false sense of security. Luther reasoned that since Christ came to save sinners, then people who feel all their sins atoned for by indulgences will no longer see themselves as a sinner. In this state of self-deception, the need for faith in the sacrifice of Christ for sin has vanished.
As Peter Manns notes:
“Luther’s religious experience canonized his pastoral work.”[v]
His conscience had been tortured by the theology of the religious culture of his day, and now he sought to warn others away from this agony. His first and highest task was to ease the conscience of the faithful by pointing them away from works and toward Christ’s grace. The Ninety-five Theses was a pastoral soul care ministry of consoling troubled consciences by pointing people to Christ’s gospel of grace.
Timeless Truth for Life and Ministry Today
We capture the essence of how Christ’ gospel story invaded Luther’s life story with this tweet-size summary:
The Christ of the Cross transformed Luther the man terrified before God
into Luther the man at peace with God.
Join the Conversation
How has the Christ of the Cross transformed you from being terrified before God into being at peace with God?
[i]Luther, LW, Vol. 54, pp. 193-194.
[ii]Ibid., p.194.
[iii]Ibid., pp. 308-309.
[iv]Bainton, pp. 49-50.
[v]Manns, Luther’s Ecumenical Significance, pp. 1-48.
