Imagine a man struggling. He knows the terror of God – His wrath, curses, justice, condemnation, holiness and his punishment of sinners. And these things torture him! He knows that sin overcomes his life each day, many times over. Little lies, self-worship, no prayer life, cursing others, rejection of his family, lustful thoughts, and the general sins of heart, speech and behavior. Each sin makes his pack heavier. Is there any rest? The hill gets steeper, the road seems longer, and the burden is too much to bear.
His torment lasts for a time. Day in, day out he struggles. “God, why do you curse men?” “Why do you make me miserable in my sin?” “Kill me now! Do not spare my wretched life.” “Where is your great mercy?”
What if this man were your pastor? The man who is to be God’s ambassador to you to make reconciliation between you and God? The servant of God that is supposed to be able to advise others with deep and troubling questions like these? This man was indeed a pastor – the famed Dr. Martin Luther. He asked questions like these. He struggled in torment, not knowing if the Righteous Judge would really spare him or not!
Many in the church today have these same struggles. They wonder if they are forgiven. They wonder if their individual sins, though they are saved, will oust them from eternity with Christ. And has been the case throughout Christian history. It was especially the case in the years leading up to the 16th century Protestant Reformation. The Church had substituted preaching with pomp and circumstance. No translations of the Bible were available to the common man. No other interpretation but the Pope’s was allowed. Man had to blindly accept the interpretations of men, no Acts 17:11 Christianity allowed.
Every generation of the church has secret conservatives, those who hold fast to the Scriptures though not the status quo. Luther’s advisor was one. He sent him to seminary. Luther opened up the Scriptures. He challenged false doctrine wherever it surfaced. He began to preach in church services. He told of his struggles with condemnation. And he opened up the promises of God, preaching justification by faith!
The Word of God does not return empty. Luther made his complaints known. “Will you refute your writings,” he was asked? “As far as they are in error with Scripture,” his reply. He, a quiet theologian from a German university, but his “95 Theses” attached to the chapel door for debate were pounded in with a sound heard around the world.
No man can bear his own guilt for the sins that he commits. God’s justice demands perfection only achieved through his Servant. An excellent definition of Luther’s biblical view of justification is “an act of God’s free grace, wherein he pardons all our sins, and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.”
Luther is famous for saying, “For if the doctrine of justification be lost, then all true Christian doctrine lost.”