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Martin Luther was the German monk who on October 31, 1517 nailed the 95 Theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenburg which started the Protestant Reformation. Luther's intent was to spark debate over things which were wrong with the official church, but what ended up happening was the new Protestant churches splitting off of the old Roman Catholic church.

Luther became a monk after he was almost killed in a thunder storm. As a monk, he took vows to obey the church, stay poor, and to never marry. These vowes were supposed to help him gain favor in the eyes of God. Luther went above and beyond his requirements and duties as a monk. He wanted to be SURE that he did enough to get him into heaven. The problem was, he could never be sure that he had done enought to satisfy GOD!

Luther had a terrible sense of fear and anxiety about his salvation. He said prayer after prayer. He went through ceremony after ceremony. He did everything he could to ensure that he would be good enough before God. He confessed his sins to his priest for hours at a time (which really annoyed his priest.) As he was taught, sins need to be confessed to be forgiven. And they needed to be remembered to be confessed. What if Luther forgot a sin?! What if he had committed a sin that he didn't think was a sin?! Luther realized better than most that what makes a sin bad is not the size of the sin, but the size of the one who the sin is against. Sin is against an INFINITE GOD! What hope could Luther have to make himself right in the eyes of a perfectly holy God?!

Luther's dread grew worse and worse.

Luther was appointed to teach classes on Psalms and Romans at the college in Wittenburg. As he studied these books of the Bible, his view of things slowly began to change. In Psalsm, Luther saw that the Psalm writers seems to be sure that they were forgiven of their sins and that they would go to heaven when they died. But what finally changed Luther's life was the book of Romans. In Romans 1:17 Luther read, "For the just shall live by faith." Luther finally reaized that what makes someone "just" or "righteous" in the eyes of God, was not their works, but faith in Christ. Faith is what makes people righeous and gives them life.

Let's look at what Luther himself wrote about his testimony:

Though I lived as a monk without reproach [without any fault], I felt that I was a sinner before God with extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that He was placated [apeased] by my satisfaction [works]. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God, and said, "As if, indeed, it is not enough, that miserable sinners, eternally lost through original sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity [disaster] by the law of the decalogue [the Ten Commandments], without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel threatening us with His righteousness and wrath!" And thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience. Nevertheless, I beat importunately [insistently] upon Paul {Paul's writings] at that place, most adrently [fervently] desiring to know what St. Paul wanted.

At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, "In it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is writted, 'He who through faith is righteous shall live.'" There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the righeousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive [not worked for] righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, "He who through faith is righteous shall live." Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. There a totally other face of the entire Scripture showed itself to me. Thereupon I ran through the Scriptures from memory. I also found in other terms an analogy, as, the work of God, that is, what God does in us, the power of God, with which he makes us strong, the wisdom of God, with which He makes us wise, the strength of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God.

And I extolled my sweetest word with a love as great as the hatred with which I had before hated the word "righteousness of God." Thus that place in Paul was for me truely the gate to paradise.

Before this, the gospel message had been for the most part lost for centuries. But finally, it was rescued. People aren't saved by their works, but by faith in Christ who died in our place on the cross.

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Read an article on a passage in Galatians, another of Luther's favorite books of the Bible.