Through Doors to Paradise

As we saw in yesterday’s study, Martin Luther declared that the doctrine of justification by faith alone was “the article upon which the church stands or falls.” He, perhaps more than any of the Reformers, brought the conflict over justification to a head and sparked the Reformation. How did he come to his conviction on the matter?

Luther began his adult life as a law student, a distinguished one. But one night in 1505, as the 22-year-old Luther was traveling home during a storm, lightning struck nearby and he was thrown to the ground. In panic, he cried out, “Help me, St. Anne, I will become a monk.” He thereupon joined the Augustinian order in Wittenberg, Germany. But as he applied his keen legal mind to the intense study of Scripture, he became troubled, seeing that he could not measure up to the requirements of the law of God. He would spend hours in the confessional, reciting sin after sin in an effort to assuage the guilt that tormented him, but he could not find relief for long. In 1510, Luther was sent as a delegate from his monastery to a convocation in Rome. He was elated, because sacred pilgrimages to Rome had great value for penance, and he hoped the journey would help him find peace. But he was shocked by the ecclesiastical corruption and perfunctory ministrations of the priests he witnessed there. Even climbing Pilate’s stairs on his knees while reciting the Pater Noster did not quiet his soul. Nevertheless, his career moved forward and, by 1515, he was a doctor of the church, teaching theology and Biblical studies at the University of Wittenberg. After completing a series of lectures on Psalms, he began preparing to teach through Romans. At first Paul’s references to the righteousness of God terrified him, for he knew he could not measure up to God’s standards. But in time, as he wrote: “I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that ‘the just shall live by his faith.’ Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise.”

Luther had grasped the Biblical concept of justification by faith alone. His intense guilt was taken away and he knew himself to be saved. Neither Luther nor the church would ever be the same.