Monday, November 04, 2013

The legacy of Martin Luther

He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy (Titus 3:5).

Martin Luther is remembered for many things.  He is among the first to use the printing press to maximum advantage for the spreading of ideas.  He is known as a writer of great church music.  He is respected as Bible translator whose work has influenced scholars ever since.  But more important than anything else is Luther’s understanding of Holy Scripture and the merciful love that God shows to us through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Luther was not a happy man.  He felt deeply burdened by guilt—guilt for his failings, guilt for not living up to God’s righteous standards.  That guilt ate away at Luther until he got to the point that religion was more a burden than a joy to him.  Even though he was a member of the clergy, he felt alienated from God, isolated by his sinful inadequacies.

But Luther did not turn away from God, and God did not abandon Luther.  After much deep study of the Bible, it came to Luther that he had misunderstood what God was saying in the Good Book.  True, God demands perfection from us—perfection that is beyond our ability to achieve.  And it is true that God sent His Son Jesus to suffer the punishment for our wrongdoing so we might be forgiven.  But Luther was burdened with a commonly held idea: that Jesus expects us to respond to His death on the cross by living a holy life worthy of His sacrifice.  Luther felt constant guilt over his shortcomings.  His constant failures, his daily relapses into sin, made him angry at himself for being so weak and angry at God for being so strict.  But thanks to the Holy Spirit, Luther eventually saw what he was missing—when Jesus died for us, He never expected that we would pay Him back with our good behavior or be able to honor Him properly with righteous living.  Our Lord said I am the vine, you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing (John 15:5).  Jesus did not open heaven and then sit down at the gate waiting for us to arrive under our own power.  No, He comes down to lift us up and He supports us every step of the way as we stumble through life, weak and needful of direction.  Jesus demands nothing of us except that we place our trust in Him.  As the Bible says, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved (Acts 16:31).  This simple truth was a revelation to Luther; he stopped seeing religion as grueling duty and found instead pure joy as a servant of God.  This is Luther’s true legacy—rely on Christ, not yourself, for everything good.

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