Martin Luther: Life, Calling, Ministry, and Effect

By: Dwayne Spearman

Introduction

Many people within the church today refer to themselves as Protestants in ignorance. They, like many who have come before them, have forgotten those who prepared the way. They have neglected the influence of those who made the hard decisions so that they will most likely never have to. The purpose for this study is to take a closer look at one man who dared to stand alone in the face of an institution that had declared him a heretic and sought his life in exchange. The life, calling, and ministry of Martin Luther had far-reaching effect on all those who would come after him, and fundamentally changed the face of Christianity forever.

Luther’s Life

Martin Luther was born in Eisleben, Germany to Hans and Margarette Luder on November 10th in the year 1483.[1] It was also in this small town that he died sixty-three years later on February 18th, 1546.[2] There is no doubt that his sixty-three years upon this earth was destined to change the face of Christianity permanently.

His parents were peasants. Yet, his father was a copper miner who apparently had a head for business and eventually rose through the ranks to found several foundries.[3] Even with the business success of his family, by all accounts, Luther’s childhood was less than ideal as a result of his father’s severe treatment of him. Unfortunately, this abusive treatment translated over into other areas of his life such as school, and bouts with depression, anxiety, and fear that constantly plagued him throughout his adulthood.[4]

To make matters worse, his mother had a preoccupation with witches that also had an interesting effect on Luther.[5] While he spoke rarely of her, she obviously influenced his superstitious and enhanced views of the unseen world. He even once said that witches were responsible for spoiling milk, eggs, and butter.[6] He even believed that the maladies that he himself suffered where not natural but devil’s spells.[7]

Luther’s Calling
Storterheim

His father’s desire was that his son would become a lawyer. As such, he enrolled young Luther in the University of Erfurt in 1501 to pursue a degree in law.[8] However, something was to happen in young Luther’s life that would change everything. The story goes that on one particular day in the year 1505, Luther was caught in a thunderstorm that scared him so badly, that he made a vow to St. Anne that he would drop out of law school and dedicate his life to serving the Lord by becoming a monk if she would spare his life.[9] True to his word, on July 17, 1505, he left law school and joined a monastery of the Augustinian Order as a friar.[10]

Upon entering the monastery, Luther was almost immediately recognized for his academic abilities. As one author put it, his induction into monastic life did not nothing to “terminate his study, it merely redirected it into the pursuit to theology” instead of law.[11] Another author noted that he was “clearly academically competent” and had even placed second in his class of seventeen students.[12] As a result of the insistent encouragement of his order’s leadership, he entered the priesthood and was ordained on April 4, 1507 at the age of twenty-three.[13]

However, this is where Luther’s childhood that was filled with abuse and a dominating father came into play. He struggled with feelings of unworthiness of God’s love and lived in constant fear of judgment.[14] It reached the point in his life that good works and the sacrament of penance was just not enough because he felt that he was just too unworthy to be justified before a holy and a righteous God.[15] He even went on to punish his body through self-flagellation until he finally reached the conclusion that God was not a God of love, but one of hatred.[16] This went on until finally one of his superiors, decided that the best thing that Luther could do was to begin an academic career so that he would take his mind off of his “obsessive preoccupation with his inner life and he was immediately ordered to the University of Wittenberg to begin his studies.[17]

Wittenberg

It was a Wittenberg that many of Luther’s questions were answered through the careful study of the Scriptures. This came about largely as a result of him being forced to study them for not only himself; but to teach them to others as well. It was during this time in his life that he came to so trust in the Scriptures that he once said of them “The Scriptures have never erred. The Scriptures cannot err. It is certain that Scripture would not contradict itself; it only appears so to the senseless and obdurate hypocrites.[18]

It was at this point in his life that his eyes were finally opened to the truth and he was able to see things that he had never seen before in regards to the Christ of Scripture. For example, in his lecture of the Psalms to his students, he found that if they were to be interpreted correctly, they must be done so Christologically.[19] It was this series of lectures that gave him for the first time the ability to see that Christ himself underwent similar trials to his own. It was a source of great comfort for him to know that Christ also suffered just as he had suffered in so many ways. Also, it was during this time that he came to understand that even though God the Father does indeed expect total perfection from His creation, it is God the Son who stands as the intermediary for his creation’s forgiveness.[20] This did much to remove the sense of guilt and unworthiness that Luther had carried with him practically his entire life.

This led to another series of lectures on the Epistle to the Romans in 1515 in which Luther exclaimed that he had finally found the solution to all of his difficulties.[21] Of course, it was not something that happened over night, but it was something that happened ever so slowly as he began to understand the truth of Romans 1:17 which simply says “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, the just shall live by faith.”[22]

It was not a simple matter as it is approached today. For him, the first part of the verse that says that the “righteousness of God is revealed” was extremely condemning in that he understood that the righteousness of God could only be satisfied first through the justice of God. At issue was the “juxtaposition of the righteousness of God and the righteousness of man.”[23] To Luther, that meant that the “just” mentioned in the verse had to have some sort of righteousness within them that was akin to the righteousness of God. [24] Of course, therein lay the problem, Luther knew that he was not able to obtain this necessary righteousness through penance and the sacraments of the church as he had tried to do for so many years.[25]

Great Discovery

The revelation, or what Luther referred to as the “great discovery of the gospel”, came when he realized that the righteousness spoken of in the verse does not refer to any standard that the Christian must obtain in order to be saved, but instead, is referring to the fact that God Himself had already provided the righteousness that is required for the believer that resulted in salvation as a free gift.[26]

This is the point in which Luther’s theology was developed in regards to the issue of justification or divine acceptance.[27] Simply stated, he had come to the conclusion in what he believed to be the guidance of the Holy Spirit that “personal transformation and renewal are the consequence and not the precondition of God’s love.”[28] This changed everything for him. His years of self-condemnation and loathing were finally over. He finally understood for the first time that “justification by faith” does not mean that what God demands of us is faith which he then dutifully rewards. Instead, it means that faith and the resultant justification that it brings are a free gift from God.[29] He was now firmly grounded in his famous doctrine of justification by faith which would serve as his banner from that point forward in his ministry.

Luther’s Ministry
Hero

From all appearances, Luther did not take his newfound understanding of the doctrine of “justification by faith” and attempt to overtly convert everyone around him to his way of thinking. Instead, he continued to give himself to his pastoral and teaching responsibilities at the university.[30] Some historians even speculate that he initially did not totally grasp the “radical contradiction” in what he had come to understand and the accepted penitential system that was widely taught and accepted by the church of his day. However, this passivity dissipated quickly once he was able to bring his colleagues at Wittenberg into his way of thinking through careful exposition of Scripture and quite persuasion.[31] This eventually led to the conviction by Luther that the traditional view must be challenged and corrected through debate.

His initial attempt to get the word out via an academic debate was a total failure. His preparation had been to merely write out ninety-seven thesis that he thought would generate an interest, but nothing happened. It fell upon deaf ears. Most have speculated that it was because he had written the theses in “the language of the academy” which was Latin and was more of an attempt to “attack the main tenants of scholastic theology.”[32] Of course, that did not appeal to the common man.

His second attempt is the one that he is famous for. In this attempt, he wrote another set of theses that he entitled Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences. That was all it took, but with a little push from someone who took them and translated them from Latin into the language of the people, German. Little did Luther know that he had just done a frontal assault on the Church of Rome and their attempt to raise the funds necessary for the completion of the Basilica of Saint Peter.[33] This placed Luther squarely in the sights of Pope Leo X who is credited with being one of the worst popes during a time filled with “corrupt, avaricious, and indolent popes.”[34] Needless to say, he had aroused a very powerful enemy.

Heretic

The end result was the exact opposite of what Luther had wanted in that his initial desire was to “establish the church once more upon the foundation of the gospel” and not to divide it.[35] He merely wanted to rid the church of their reliance upon human merit and good works. His discovery of the true gospel that did not include the need for penance and sacraments proved to be simply too much to hold the two together. He had sown the seeds that would rip the church as he knew it apart.

Even still, he chose to stay in the church that he had known and loved his entire life. The protests that he voiced were out of a heart felt responsibility that he had as a priest and theological professor.[36] His attempts were as one member to another. His desire was never to leave the church, but to right the church through proclamation and not separation.[37]

In truth, and as history contests, the papacy could not stand for such clarity. Therefore, after several warnings that went unheeded, Martin Luther was excommunicated from the very church that he had given his life to by Pope Leo X in 1520 in the Bull Exsurge Domine.[38] The Bull condemned forty-one of his beliefs as heretical, scandalous, false, offensive to pious ears, seductive of simple minds, repugnant to Catholic truth.[39] This was when Luther finally repudiated the pope and burned the Bull publicly.

Later the following year, he was given the opportunity to recant at the Diet of Worms. To the offer of recantation, his final words after laying out his defense was simply, “I stand convicted by the Scriptures, to which I have appealed, and my conscience is taken captive by God’s word, I cannot and will not recant anything, for to act against our conscience is neither safe for us, nor open to us. On this I take my stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.”[40] The break with Rome was complete.

Luther’s Effect

After the Diet of Worms and amid the chaos that ensued, Luther simply disappeared. Some thought for sure that he had already been killed for his actions. However, that was not the case, as that he had actually been granted safe passage by Frederick the Wise who had already taken steps to ensure his safety.[41] He did this by having him basically abducted and whisked away to Wartburg Castle where he was to stay for his own protection from May of 1521 to February of 1522.[42] While there, Luther did not waste his time in idleness. Instead, he used the time to begin his translation of the New Testament into German which he completed two years later, followed by the Old Testament that he completed ten years later.[43] Luther’s Bible, as it came to be called, proved to be instrumental in the reformation.

According to legend, it was also at Wartburg Castle that Luther had his famous confrontation with the Devil when he threw his inkwell at him. Of course, the legend was born when he said that he had “driven the devil away with ink.”[44] No one really knows for sure if Luther actually had a physical encounter with the Prince of Darkness, or if it was just a reference to the consequences of his new translation of the New Testament.

Meanwhile, others had taken up the cause while Luther was in exile. These included men like Andreas Karlstadt and Philipp Melanchthon who had been heavily influenced by the truth of Luther’s teachings while at Wittenberg. These men pushed for changes quickly in regards to encouraging monks and nuns to leave their monasteries and to be allowed to marry. Worship was simplified, German replaced Latin, masses for the dead were abolished, and the cup was given to the laity in communion.[45] Many of these things happened much quicker than Luther himself would have ever pushed for or even imagined. He actually voiced concerns, but the flood gates had already been opened and change, radical change in many respects, was already well on its way.

Conclusion

What came to be known as the Protestant Reformation changed the face of Christianity forever. Long after the deaths of Luther and the other great reformers, Protestantism has continued to evolve much farther than Luther himself would have ever imagined, or most likely even would have approved of. Of course, most Protestants would agree that God was behind the Reformation and that He was the one that gave Luther the wherewithal to stand in the face of tremendous opposition up to an institution that he had loved and devoted his life to, and yet declared him a heretic.

This present generation would do well to be mindful of the great sacrifices that were made by those like Luther who have gone before at cost to mind, body, and spirit. Protestants, and to a great degree, even Roman Catholics today owe a huge debt of gratitude to them. They made the difficult decisions that paved the way for future generations of Christians to walk. All would do well to be mindful of them.

Bibliography

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Erickson, Millard. Christian Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker House Books, 1998.

Evans, G.R. The Roots of the Reformation: Tradition, Emergence, and Rupture. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012.

Gonzalez, Justo L. The Story of Christianity, Volume II, The Reformation to Present Day. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2010.

Luther, Martin. The Table-Talk, trans. William Hazlitt. Philadelphia, PA: United Lutheran Publishing House, 1846.

Marius, Richard. Martin Luther: The Christian Between God and Death. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

McGrath, Alister E. Christianities Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Reformation – A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2008.

McGrath, Alister E & Darren C. Marks, eds. The Blackwell Companion to Protestantism. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004 Pelikan, Jaroslav. Obedient Rebels: Catholic Substance and Protestant Principle in Luther’s Reformation. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, 1964.

Shelley, Bruce L., Church History in Plain Language. 4th ed. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2008.