These are only preliminary, unedited outlines and may differ from Andy’s final message.

I. A Vow in a Storm

1. A Vow in a Storm

“On a sultry day in July of the year 1505 a lonely traveler was trudging over a parched road on the outskirts of the Saxon village of Stotternheim.  He was a young man, short but sturdy, and wore the dress of a university student.  As he approached the village, the sky became overcast.  Suddenly there was a shower, then a crashing storm.  A bolt of lightning rived the gloom and knocked the man to the ground.  Struggling to rise, he cried in terror, ‘St. Anne, help me!  I will become a monk.’

The man who thus called upon a saint was later to repudiate the cult of the saints.  He who vowed to become a monk was later to renounce monasticism.  A loyal son of the Catholic Church, he was later to shatter the structure of medieval Catholicism.  A devoted servant of the pope, he was later to identify the popes with Antichrist.  For this young man was Martin Luther.” Roland Bainton, Here I Stand

1. The Greatness of Martin Luther

A few years ago, I travelled with my son Calvin to visit the Luther sites in the Lutherstadt in eastern Germany. We went to Eisleben, where Luther was born and amazingly where he happened to be when he died as well. Of course, there was a statue of Luther in the town square. But as we travelled around that entire region, we saw statues of Luther in every town. Luther is seen not merely as a spiritual leader but somewhat as the father of the nation.

But for me personally as a Christian, Martin Luther was the human instrument in the hands of Almighty God to bring about the greatest and most significant revival in the history of the Christian church… what is generally called “The Reformation.” His courage and powerful commitment to the Reformation ideals embodied in the “Five Solas” changed the course of history… the Five Solas are so-called because all theological writing and debate occurred in Latin in those days… and the Latin word “sola” means “alone”… and the five solas  summarized what Luther and the other leaders of the Reformation wanted to see changed in the Roman Catholic church:

• Sola gratia: “by grace alone”
• Sola scriptura: “by scripture alone”
• Sola fide: “by faith alone”
• Solus Christus: “by Christ alone”
• Soli Deo gloria: “for the glory of God alone”

These are the Reformation’s guiding principles… they all have to do primarily with the salvation of sinners… how a sinner can stand forgiven and reconciled in the sight of an infinitely holy God.

The central cry of the desperate soul: “WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED??!”

Before Luther, the medieval Roman Catholic church taught a doctrine of personal salvation that was corrupt and unbiblical. What Luther and the other Reformers did was to go back to the Bible alone, and find the central doctrine of justification by faith in Christ alone. And this was the greatest revival of true Christianity in the twenty centuries of the Christian church.

II. Medieval Roman Catholicism

1. Christendom: blending of church and state
2. The Papacy: powerful, worldly popes
3. The people: terribly ignorant, unconverted, superstitious
   1. Life in Medieval Europe was harsh
   2. Thomas Hobbes: life in Luther’s era as “nasty, brutish, and short.”
   3. Middle class Americans live at a level of luxury and physical comfort that Emperors and Kings of the Middle Ages could scarcely dream of: indoor plumbing, medicine and dentistry, clean and abundant food, central air conditioning and heating, heated showers, etc.
   4. For Medieval peasantry: 60% infant mortality rate; terrors and effects of the Plague constantly around them (e.g. Strasbourg, 16,000 out of 25,000 fell from the plague in one year)
   5. Infrastructure for travel and commerce was rudimentary; so a local bad harvest or flood could drive prices for all food up as high as double what they’d been
   6. Vacillating economic conditions forced countless numbers of people to beg; sometimes there were so many beggars, mentally disabled people, maimed, crippled, diseased, homeless that authorities rounded them up and forced them into a neighboring territory
   7. Crime was rampant and authorities lacked resources to check it adequately; you took your life in your hands to travel the roads for any length, especially at night
   8. People were ignorant of the Bible… Mass spoken in Latin and few people understood what was being said
   9. Sacramental system supposedly worked on you whether you understood or not, whether you believed or not
   10. Pagan ideas from the Germanic ancestry were mingled with a thin veneer of Roman Catholicism
   11. Bainton: “For German peasants, the woods and winds and water were peopled by elves, gnomes, fairies, mermen and mermaids, sprites and witches. Sinister spirits would release storms, floods, and pestilence, and would seduce mankind to sin and melancholia.  Luther’s mother believed that they played such minor pranks as stealing eggs, milk, and butter.”
   12. Luther himself carried these beliefs in some form to the day he died:

“Many regions are inhabited by devils.  Prussia is full of them, and Lapland of witches.  In my native country on the top of a high mountain called the Pubelsberg is a lake into which if a stone be thrown a tempest will arise over the whole region because the waters are the abode of captive demons.”  [Bainton, p. 27]

1. Defective Catholic Theology
   1. Catholic theology only exacerbated these fears… the Medieval hierarchical structure made the Lord of the Manor a figure you only saw very rarely, the Prince of the Country almost never, the Holy Roman Emperor was untouchably high, and peasants had no access
   2. How much more dreadful did Christ appear, the King of kings and Lord of lords… depicted in cathedrals and paintings with artwork as Judge of the Living and the Dead… sitting dreadful on a rainbow, with scores of the damned being thrown into hell at His word
   3. Commonly, medieval troupes would come into German towns and do a passion play designed to stimulate this fear of judgment and respect for the Catholic church
   4. Luther’s whole life: tormented by anfechtungen… anxieties, terrors, doubts, attacks, melancholy…
   5. The great fear was that he would be eternally condemned in hell; escaping purgatory seemed impossible… only the saints did that
   6. Purgatory was an unbiblical notion taught by Roman Catholicism; like hell only temporary
   7. The Catholic system was not designed to allay these fears, only use them to cow people into obedience
   8. Salvation was taught as a cooperation between the grace of God and the works of the people… but the people could never do enough to escape purgatory
   9. An age of confession: people were told that if they died with any unconfessed sin, their time in purgatory would be immeasurably greater… so the people were taught to confess as many sins as they could think of
   10. A “good priest” would help his people by asking probing questions: “Have you ever been angry with your spouse?” “Do you wish your house were better than your neighbor’s?” “Have you had any lustful thoughts towards women?”
   11. Whatever sins the people had committed, they were instructed to do penance to help pay for the sin
   12. An age of pilgrimages: shrines were opened and people would travel there expecting to get spiritual “points” with God and work off the penalties for the sins they’d committed
   13. An age of relics: splinters from the cross of Christ, bits of bone or pieces of cloth or the personal effects of the saints were considered superstitiously to have saving power
   14. An age of indulgences: written notes of forgiveness from the Church purchased at great cost
   15. An age of fire, brimstone and constant terror

III. Luther’s Spiritual Pilgrimage to Salvation

1. 1505: Made the Vow to Become a Monk… entered the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt, where he sought to work out his own salvation by endless fasting and prayers and good works and even a pilgrimage to Rome
2. However, nothing he did could ever allay his terrors of God and hell
3. Central to Catholic salvation: “Do what lies within you”… God only measures you by what you can really do… you have to do your part, then God will do His part
4. Luther said,

“I was a good monk, and I kept the rule of my order so strictly that I may say that if ever a monk got to heaven by his monkery, it was I.  All my brothers in the monastery who knew me will bear me out.  If I had kept on any longer, I would have killed myself with vigils, prayers, reading, and other work.”

1. He went above and beyond any call of duty in the monastery
2. Especially wore out his supervising monk, Father Johann Staupitz, with constant confessions… he would confess several times a day, for even the slightest motives or thoughts
3. Luther lived in constant terror of God
4. When he said his first mass, in which he believed he actually was God’s instrument for the transformation of the bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Christ, he stumbled over the words “The one, the true, the eternal, the living God”… he spilled some of the wine on the white tablecloth, shaming himself
5. His terror of God and of hell became so paralyzing that Father Staupitz said to him “Martin, you are making it too difficult! All you need to do is love God!” Luther responded, “Love God?! I HATE him!” And that was blasphemy.
6. Staupitz knew that Luther would probably go insane if he were not distracted in some way… so he sent him to study the Bible and theology… this saved his soul
7. Luther’s quest for forgiveness of his sins took a massive turn when he was studying the Psalms… he came to Psalm 22, which begins with the words “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” These words EXACTLY lined up with what Luther was feeling toward God… the terrors of being forsaken by God. BUT Luther was well aware that Christ had spoken these words from the cross. This caused Luther to pause and to wonder… Christ had never sinned… he was the perfect Son of his Father… yet he was forsaken on the cross… it led Luther to begin understanding Christ as our SUBSTITUTE, dying in our place
8. The journey of Luther’s understanding was made complete, however, when he studied the Book of Romans… he came to Romans 1:16-17

Romans 1:16-17  I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.  ¹⁷ For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

Luther pondered the words, “the righteousness of God.” Usually those words referred to the terrifying righteousness by which God judges and condemns the world. But here, the context was GOOD NEWS of SALVATION. Here are Luther’s own words:

“I hated that word [at Romans 1:17], ‘the righteousness of God,’ which according to the custom and use of all teachers, I had been taught to understand in the philosophical sense with respect to the formal or active righteousness, as they called it, with which God is righteous and punishes the unrighteous sinner.  Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt, with the most disturbed conscience imaginable, that I was a sinner before God.  I did not love, indeed I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners and secretly (if not blasphemously and certainly with great grumbling) I was angry with God and said, ‘As if indeed it is not enough that miserable sinners, eternally lost through eternal sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the Ten Commandments, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel’s threatening us with his righteousness and wrath!”

Then the understanding came based on his new insights:

“I greatly longed to understand Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, “the justice of God ” because I took it to mean that justice whereby God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust. My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him. Nevertheless, I beat importunately upon Paul at that place, most ardently desiring to know what St. Paul wanted. Night and day I pondered until 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. 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.

If you have a true faith that Christ is your Savior, then at once you have a gracious God, for faith leads you in and opens up God’s heart and will, that you should see pure grace and overflowing love.  This it is to behold God in faith that you should look at his fatherly, friendly heart, in which there is no anger nor ungraciousness.  He who sees God as angry does not see Him rightly but only looks at a curtain, as if a dark cloud had been drawn across His face.”   Preface to Luther’s Latin Writings, Wittenberg, 1545.

Notice Luther’s focus on the Word of God!

IV. Courageous Steps to Reformation: From Wittenberg to Worms

1. Johann Tetzel’s Indulgences
   1. Commissioned by the Pope to raise money for St. Peter’s basilica in Rome
   2. Indulgences were pieces of paper with the pope’s official seal assuring forgiveness of sins and reduction of time in purgatory for the person for whom the indulgence was purchased
   3. Luther hated the indulgences and realized they didn’t line up at all with his new insights from the Bible
2. The Ninety-Five Theses
   1. In Wittenberg, there was an oaken door on the Castle Church where public notices were fixed for the town to read
   2. October 31, 1517, On the eve of All Saints, , Luther spoke his convictions with pen and hammer blows that reverberated around all Europe
   3. In accord with standard custom, he posted on the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg a single placard with ninety-five theses written in Latin for debate
   4. The Ninety-five theses do not yet show a full theological understanding of justification by faith… Luther was still learning biblical doctrine of salvation at this point
   5. Unlike most academic theses, these were forged in anger and with sharp, crisp rhetoric

The first thesis:

1. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.
   6. Shortly after they were posted, printers got hold of the document and published it all over Germany… it created a sensation

1. In a Series of Steps, the Roman Catholic hierarchy began to respond… and to fight Martin Luther
   1. In the Spring of 1518, Luther went to Heidelberg to defend his view before a large group of learned Augustinian scholars
   2. Luther’s first thesis:

“The law of God, although the soundest doctrine of life, is not able to bring man to righteousness but rather stands in the way.”

3. Then Luther attacked free will and the possibility of human works doing in any way effective in working forgiveness of sins:
4. human beings could not satisfy God in any way apart from His grace… Luther also took on the issue of free will, saying it only leads to sin, and of “doing what lay within you” Luther was attacking the very foundation of the medieval church’s doctrine of salvation

“The law says ‘Do this!’ and it is never done.  Grace says, ‘Believe in this man!’ and immediately everything is done.”

5. Luther also defended his views at the Diet of Augsburg… a “Diet” is an official gathering of the leaders of the Roman Catholic church… Luther’s life at this point was in grave danger… Jan Huss had been burned at the stake a century before for these exact same views
6. Luther would not recant his views… and the Pope declared him a heretic

1. The Diet of Worms, 1521
   1. Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor was there
   2. Luther’s life was directly threatened for his heretical views
   3. The authorities asked him if he would recant; he asked for time to pray about it
   4. The next day, he made this climactic statement

Luther replied:  “Since then Your Majesty and your lordships desire a simple reply, I will answer without horns and without teeth.  Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason—I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other—my conscience is captive to the Word of God.  I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.  Here I stand.  I can do no other.  God help me!  Amen.”

Luther raised his arms in triumph and went out of the room…

Having been promised a safe conduct to and from Worms, he left soon after…

He was kidnapped by some soldiers friendly to him in order to save his life…

He was hidden away at an old gloomy castle called the Wartburg…

Here he translated the entire New Testament into German

Eventually, when it was safer to do so, he returned to Wittenberg and continued the leadership of the Reformation by the powerful preaching and writing of the Word of God and sound theology

The Debate with Erasmus on the Human Will:

In 1524, Erasmus wrote a book called The Freedom of the Will, and took aim at Luther, especially Luther’s belief that all things happen by divine necessity. Such necessity, said Erasmus, could not preserve the freedom of man’s will. Erasmus defended the will’s autonomy, arguing that even after the fall man’s will is free to resist divine grace or cooperate with it. For example, Erasmus defines free will as “a power of the human will by which a man can apply himself to the things which lead to eternal salvation or turn away from them.”

In 1525, Luther responded by writing The Bondage of the Will. Luther began by explaining why it took him so long to respond. It was not because Erasmus’s arguments were particularly difficult for Luther to refute! He felt that Philip Melanchthon had completely refuted them in his book:

So mean and worthless did your [book] appear when compared with it, that I exceedingly pitied you, who were polluting your most elegant and ingenious diction with such filth of argument, and was quite angry with your most unworthy matter, for being conveyed in so richly ornamented a style of eloquence. It is just as if the sweepings of the house or of the stable were borne about on men’s shoulders in vases of gold and silver!

Luther said the “thunderbolt” argument against the autonomy of the will was the simple fact that God has immutable, eternal foreknowledge. “God foreknows nothing contingently,” Luther wrote, but “foresees and purposes and does all things by his immutable, eternal, and infallible will.” If true, then man’s choice cannot be autonomous, as if he could always choose otherwise, for then God would not foreknow it as certain.

Luther:

“It is in the highest degree wholesome and necessary, for a Christian to know whether or not his will has anything to do in matters pertaining to salvation. Indeed let me tell you, that is the hinge on which our discussion turns. . . . For if I am ignorant of the nature, extent, and limits of what I can and must do with reference to God, I shall be equally ignorant and uncertain of the nature, extent, and limits of what God can and will do in me. . . . Now, if I am ignorant of God’s works and power, I am ignorant of God himself; and if I do not know God, I cannot worship, praise, give thanks, or serve Him, for I do not know how much I should attribute to myself and how much to Him.”

Turning to Scripture, Luther emphasizes the way the biblical authors attribute nothing to sinful humanity but guilt and corruption, resulting in a spiritual inability. A synergism or cooperation, one in which God’s will is contingent on man’s will, is an impossibility. Man can take no confidence in himself. Rather, he must totally despair of himself. As long as he continues to think he is free, he will remain in bondage. “Free choice without the grace of God is not free at all,” Luther clarifies, “but immutably the captive and slave of evil, since it cannot of itself turn to the good.”

For Luther, Erasmus was simply failing to take seriously the biblical witness to the depth and gravity of human sinfulness. In consequence, Erasmus also failed to appreciate rightly the profound, radical nature of God’s saving action in Christ and through the Spirit. It’s not that God asks people to cooperate with Him in salvation; in and through Jesus Christ, He sovereignly bestows upon utterly lost sinners a new creation, a new birth, a resurrection from spiritual death. To the triune God we owe the whole of our salvation—the plan, the provision, and the application. “Thanks be to God” is the keynote of all Christian meditation. In this context, Luther also defended the doctrine of election as God’s free, unconditional, and unmerited choice of sinners.

SUMMARY:

Luther was by no means a perfect man… he was bold, fiery, intemperate and sometimes uncharitable to theological opponents… his writing against the Jews are terrible—openly anti-Semitic

However, God used Martin Luther to clear away the corruptions of a man-centered works-based salvation taught by the medieval Roman Catholic church and pointed to justification by faith alone as our only hope.

When Luther died, he said “We are all beggars. This is true.”