The
Word and Martin Luther: Begging, Listening, and Believing
By
Ben Heath
The life of Martin Luther is
indeed interesting. His
writings reflect that he was a man of good humor, sharp wit, and often
blunt speech. He is
probably more well known as the shaker of the foundations of the Western
church that sparked the Protestant Reformation: nailing his ninety-five
theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg in 1517 and standing
against papal and imperial attempts to silence his theological
convictions at the Diet of Worms in 1521.
His comical statements are certainly entertaining and his
leadership of the Reformation has greatly influenced the Western religio-politico
landscape up to the present day. Often
overlooked, however, are the rich theological insights that formed in
his mind and heart over the course of many years.
In particular, Luther offered visions of God and of mankind
before God that are thoroughly steeped in biblical insight.
As such, his example of looking to the Word of God for leadership
bears important relevance to the life of the Christian today as it did
nearly five centuries ago.
The foundation of much of Luther’s theology is in
the Word itself. This
foundation did not simply come to him in a blast of dramatic revelation
as he ruminated over the meaning of the gospel in chapter one of Romans. Rather, the many long, sometimes painful years that he
devoted to careful study, meditation, prayer and reflection on the
contents of Scripture developed his spiritual life with the Lord.
Luther described these tortuous times within his soul as his Anfechtungen,
times of despair or of a sense of foreboding doom. These were most prominent during the early years of his life
as a monk, as he day and night struggled with where he stood before the
righteous God. Indeed,
Luther feared God’s wrath and loathed, even hated, God for His
judgment. In 1512, Luther
received his Doctor of Theology degree from the University of Wittenberg
and continued to pour over the Scriptures for an understanding of how
the gospel could in fact be “good news” when it seemed to speak only
of the coming wrath of God upon man.
Finally, in what he considered to be a breakthrough moment,
Luther understood Paul’s words in Romans 1:17: “In it [the
gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it
is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’”
He would later describe that watershed moment as a time of
rebirth, as if he had “entered paradise itself,”
and his hatred for God’s righteousness was replaced by a deep love and
appreciation for the freeness by which God gives it through faith.
Luther would go on to develop a devotion to Scripture that made
the Word to him, as it should be for all Christians: authoritative and
final, yet personal and living. It is this view of Scripture that made possible the return to
a biblical faith and an understanding of the heart of the gospel.
At the heart of this theology
stood a firm belief in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. It was this work and belief in its sufficiency for atonement
of God’s righteous wrath that led Luther to be the foremost proponent
of justification by faith alone contra the religious belief system of
his day. Moreover, it is
because of the depravity of man, steeped in sin, unable to make right
his wrongs before God that led Luther to firmly believe that before God,
we are in total need and dependence on Him for our salvation.
Fortunately, Luther came to understand that forgiveness was
provided freely through the cross and that this justification was by
faith alone, sola fides justificate.
Yet his devotion was not about
scholastic speculation and “ivory-towering.”
Rather, Luther’s reorientation of theology around the biblical
text was a break from the scholastic theology of his day. In addition, Luther himself would argue that his convictions
and stands against the papal abuses and obscurantism of the gospel came
not from his own insight but rather because he listened to the Word in
his study of it, fides ex auditu, faith out of hearing.
He states:
If
you were to ask a Christian what his task is and by what he is worthy of
the name Christian, there could be no other response than hearing the
Word of God, that is faith. Ears
are the only organs of the Christian.
Likewise,
he attributes the working of the events of the Reformation not to his
own efforts but to the working of the Word through him:
I simply taught, preached, wrote God’s Word;
otherwise I did nothing. And
then, while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my Philip and my
Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that never a prince
or emperor did such damage to it.
I did nothing. The
Word did it all.
Even
after Luther’s break with Rome, he stressed time and time again to his
flock that the Word is God’s provision for His people, to guide them
in their struggles and triumphs of faith and lead them closer to
Himself. This is highly
evident from his ecclesiology in which the church is “constituted by
the Word,” not vice-versa. Even
the central elements of this ecclesiology (the priority of the gospel,
the Word and sacrament, and the priesthood of all believers) placed the
Bible as the standard and guidepost for the church and the privilege for all
Christians to believe, share, and publicly preach.
As such, he regarded the ministry of the Word as the highest
office in the church.
At
our point in history, the challenge to the church continues to be its
view of Scripture. Whether
or not Christians hold to a high view of Scripture will determine the
quality the God’s workforce, the growth of younger believers, and the
impact that the church will have on the non-believing world.
A faithful listening to the Word will lead to changed lives and
cause the church to be a light leading the way in a dark world,
alienated from God. With a
reverence for and constant listening to the Word, the church will
be thoroughly equipped to continue the work of Christ faithfully and
confidently fend-off the attacks of our spiritual enemy.
We live in a day in which our lives are constantly saturated with
media stimulation and technological toys hoarding our thoughts and time.
Therefore, there is no more important time than now to resist the
pull away from the written Word and rededicate our lives to scriptural
study and preaching of the Word in order to place God Himself and His
purposes at the center of our lives.
After his death in January 1546, Martin Luther’s
friends found these words that he had scrawled just prior to his death:
Let
nobody suppose that he has tasted the Holy Scriptures unless he has
ruled over the churches with the prophets for a hundred years.
Therefore there is something wonderful, first, about John the
Baptist; second, about Christ; third about the apostles.
“Lay not your hand on this divine Aeneid, but bow
before it, adore its every trace.”
Wir sein Pettler, Hoc est Verum.
We
are beggars, that is true. Very true, Dr. Luther,
very true indeed.
back
to history page