Handout #148

Martin Luther

It was at the end of his life that Luther related what he regarded as his basic experience: salvation by faith alone. Many historians think that the event should be dated at the end of 1514 A.D.

I had burned with desire to understand a term used in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, where it is said: 'The justice of God is revealed in the Gospel,' since until then my dreams were troubled. I hated this word 'the justice of God' since the habitual usage of the doctors had taught me to understand it in philosophical terms. By it I understood that justice which they call formal or active, that by which God is just and which impels him to punish sinners and those who are guilty.

Despite the irreproachable character of my life as a monk, I felt that I was a sinner before God: my conscience was extremely disturbed, and I was by no means certain that God was appeased by my satisfactions. Moreover, I did not love this just and vengeful God. I hated him, and if l did not blaspheme in secret, I was certainly indignant and murmured violently against him. I said: 'Is it not enough that he condemns us to eternal death because of the sin of our fathers, and that he makes us undergo all the severity of the law? Must he increase our torment by the gospel and even announce his justice and his wrath there?' I was beside myself, my conscience was so violently upset, and I ceaselessly puzzled over this passage from St Paul in the ardent desire to know what Paul had meant by it.

Finally God took pity on me. While I was meditating, day and night, and examining the implications of the words 'The righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel, as it is written: the righteous shall live by faith I began to understand that the righteousness of God here means the righteousness which God gives and by which the righteous lives if he has faith. So the meaning of the phrase is that the gospel reveals to us the righteousness of God, but this is the passive righteousness by which God in his mercy justifies us by means of faith, as it is written: the righteous shall live by faith. Immediately I felt myself reborn, and I seem to have entered the broad gates of Paradise itself. From then on all scripture seemed different to my eyes. I ran through the texts as my memory recalled them and noted other terms which had to be explained in similar fashion, like the work of God; i.e. the work which God accomplishes in us, by which he gives us the strength, the wisdom by which he makes us wise: the salvation, the glory of God. Formerly I had detested this term "the righteousness of God, but now I loved and cherished so sweet a saying. Luther, Preface to his Works (1545 A.D.). 

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