Can Guilt Ever Be Silenced? Luther Found a Way

Martin Luther faced a major crisis in 1515. Luther was by then a doctor of the church and was teaching theology and biblical studies at the University of Wittenberg. He had recently finished a series of lectures on the book of Psalms and was about to begin a series on Paul’s letter to the Romans. While he was preparing for those lectures, he studied the verse in which Paul, introducing the theme of justification, said, “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith’” (Rom. 1:17). Luther naturally assumed that when it spoke about the righteousness of God, it was referring to God’s own intrinsic, inherent righteousness. This was the thing Luther feared most in all the world, because he knew that he was not righteous and God was. He couldn’t see much good news in a gospel that reveals the righteousness of God to people who aren’t righteous.

During the course of his preparations, Luther read some works by the patron of his order, Augustine of Hippo. On Paul’s use of “the righteousness of God,” Augustine wrote:

He does not say, the righteousness of man, or the righteousness of his own will, but the “righteousness of God,”—not that whereby He is Himself righteous, but that with which He endows man when He justifies the ungodly.¹

Luther said that, as he understood this insight from Augustine, light flooded his soul: “Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise.”² He had a profound existential experience where the burden of his unresolved guilt rolled off his back, and he realized that the only way he could stand before a just and holy God was to be cloaked in the righteousness of Christ, which Luther couldn’t beg, borrow, steal, deserve, or earn, but could only humbly receive.

When you look at the Reformation, there is a sense in which Martin Luther stood contra mundum—against the world. A man has to be unbelievably insubordinate, arrogant, or crazy to defy all of the authorities that Luther defied and refuse to budge from his position. Certainly, Luther was a stubborn man, but even the most stubborn of men ought to have been worn down by the relentless critique that he received from the authorities. Why wouldn’t he back down? He had fought too hard and long to gain peace with God to surrender to anyone. It was in that experience in his study that his conviction of justification by faith alone was awakened, and when he came to the rest of Romans after that insight from Augustine, the clarity of Paul’s teaching on the doctrine steeled Luther such that he wouldn’t negotiate it with anyone for any earthly reason.

I don’t think Martin Luther was crazy. I think he was perhaps the most honest Christian who ever lived after the first century. He understood something about the character of God, the righteousness of God, and the justness of God—and the more we understand how righteous God is, the less we can deceive ourselves about our lack of righteousness. We tend to evaluate ourselves by our own standard, hoping that God will grade us all on a curve. If we think He can find someone who’s more wicked than we are, we take solace or refuge in that, and we don’t focus on the standard by which we are to be judged.

But Luther saw that God’s standard is not a sliding scale; it is His own perfect righteousness. It was at that moment that Luther realized that the only righteousness that could ever save him could not come from himself; it had to come from God. At that moment, the seeds of the Reformation germinated.

There have been times in my life where I have been afflicted by melancholy. Particularly as a young student and a budding theologian, I used to find myself feeling depressed about things and discouraged. When I found myself in such a place, I would turn to Luther—not because I was looking for theological insights that I couldn’t find somewhere else, but because I could identify with him. He was so earthy. He had to fight these things all the time. He talked about having an ongoing, endless struggle with Satan himself where Satan would come at him with what Luther called an Anfechtung—an unbridled assault against him to take away his joy, his peace, and his comfort. Luther said that at such times he would rush to the gospel and rest upon it in order to refresh his understanding of the peace with God that was his in Christ. Luther embodied the struggle of every Christian to have peace with God, and in his victory we too can see the path to hope that is found in Christ.