Martin Luther and Justification by Faith Alone

Historical Theology

Historical Setting

Martin Luther was born in 1483 in Eisleben, the son of a copper miner who meant his bright boy for the law. A thunderstorm and a vow to St. Anne turned him instead to the cloister, and in 1505 he entered the Augustinian friary at Erfurt. He was, by every account, a model monk — fasting, praying, confessing for hours until his confessor wearied of him. And he was miserable. The God of his imagination was a stern Judge whose righteousness was the standard by which sinners are condemned, and Luther knew himself a sinner to the depths.

His superior, Johann von Staupitz, pointed him to the wounds of Christ and pressed him into the study and teaching of Scripture. Made a doctor of theology, Luther lectured on the Psalms, then on Romans, then on Galatians, and there in the text the chains began to fall.

What Was at Stake

The question was the oldest and most personal a sinner can ask: How may I, guilty, stand accepted before a holy God? The medieval answer, in Luther’s experience of it, set grace as a help by which the sinner so cooperated as finally to become, and be reckoned, righteous. The verdict waited upon the process; the conscience could never be sure it had done enough. The whole apparatus of penance, satisfaction, and indulgence assumed that justification was a road one walked, uphill, into the fog.

At stake was whether the gospel is news of something done — finished, given, received — or a program of something to be achieved. On this hung the assurance of every Christian conscience and the very character of God’s grace.

Key Players

Martin Luther, the friar-professor at the new University of Wittenberg.

Johann von Staupitz, his vicar-general and spiritual father, who turned him toward Christ and Scripture.

Johann Tetzel, the Dominican indulgence-preacher whose crass selling — “as soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs” — provoked the 95 Theses.

Johann Eck, the able Catholic theologian who at Leipzig (1519) forced Luther to admit that he stood, on some points, with the condemned Jan Hus and against councils and popes.

Cardinal Cajetan and Charles V, who met him at Augsburg and at Worms.

The Outcome

Sometime in these years — Luther later placed it in the tower of the Black Cloister — the meaning of Romans 1:17 broke upon him. The “righteousness of God” was not only the justice by which God condemns, but the righteousness with which God clothes the believer, a gift received by faith.

“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)

“Here,” he wrote, “I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates.” On October 31, 1517, he posted the 95 Theses against indulgences. He had meant an academic disputation; the printers made it a continental event. Summoned, examined, and finally excommunicated, he stood before the Emperor at the Diet of Worms in 1521 and would not recant: “My conscience is captive to the Word of God… Here I stand; I can do no other.” Spirited away to the Wartburg by friendly hands, he translated the New Testament into German and returned to lead the reform of the church in Saxony.

Scriptural Grounding

Luther’s gospel rested on the apostle Paul.

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes… For in it the righteousness of God is revealed.” (Rom. 1:16–17)

“But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law… the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe… and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” (Rom. 3:21–24)

“For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” (Rom. 3:28)

“We ourselves… know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.” (Gal. 2:16)

Romans 4 anchored the whole in Abraham, who “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” — counted, imputed, reckoned, not infused or earned.

Doctrinal Significance

From these texts Luther drew the two great formulas of evangelical religion. The first is simul iustus et peccator — the believer is at once righteous and a sinner: righteous in the verdict of God who reckons Christ’s perfection to him, yet a sinner still in himself, indwelt by remaining corruption, depending wholly on grace. The second is the alien righteousness of Christ — a righteousness “from outside” us, not produced within us, laid hold of by faith. Faith does not justify as a virtue or a work; it justifies as the empty hand that receives Christ and all His benefits.

This is the doctrine our standards confess:

“Those whom God effectually calls, he also freely justifieth… by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on him and his righteousness by faith.” (WCF 11.1)

A Reformed Assessment — Wheat and Chaff

The wheat is golden and abundant. Luther recovered the article on which, he said, the church stands or falls, and the Reformed tradition received it gladly and refined it — distinguishing justification (a forensic verdict) from sanctification (a renewing process), so that grace neither flatters sin nor leaves the conscience uncertain.

Yet charity requires honesty about the chaff. Luther’s polemical violence grew ugly with the years; his late writings against the Jews and against the peasants are a grief to those who love him, and we name them as sin, not as legacy. His doctrine of the Supper kept a bodily presence the Reformed could not follow (see 04_03). And his volcanic temperament, so useful in 1521, made him a difficult partner in the work of building. The man was a hammer; God used the hammer, but we are not bound to admire every blow.

Connections

Soteriology — justification: the heart of this topic; see the systematic locus and WCF 11.
Bibliology: Luther’s “captive to the Word” stands behind sola Scriptura, WCF 1; see 04_02.
Medieval forerunners: the Augustinian theology of grace and the late-medieval crisis of assurance (03_05) prepared the ground.
Later development: the controversy over the Supper opens to 04_03 and 04_05; the Catholic reply comes at 04_07.

Lessons for Today

Luther reminds us that the gospel is for the conscience, not merely the seminary. Wherever a soul is trying to climb to God by its own performance, the word of free justification is the only rescue. He teaches that assurance is not presumption but the proper fruit of resting in a finished work. And he warns that great courage in one battle does not guarantee charity in the next; the same boldness that defied an emperor could wound a brother. We give thanks for the doctrine and pray to be spared the temper.