Martin Luther and the Christian Life
The German Reformer Martin Luther is widely known as the father of the Protestant Reformation and as a towering intellect and theologian. These distinctions have even earned him a commemoration on February 18th in the ACNA’s Church Calendar. But Luther’s concern didn’t remain in the ivory tower of abstract theology. Indeed, in many ways, Luther’s aim was a robust recovery of the Christian life.
Luther’s Early Life and Ministry
Martin Luther was born in Eisleben, Germany, in 1483 and died in 1546 in the same place. His parents were Hans and Margaret Luther. His father, Hans, was a hardworking miner who did not want that life for his son. Instead, he envisioned a future for Martin in law. The young Luther began studying at the University of Erfurt in 1501, but that was not meant to be.
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A Change in Vocation
In 1505, while traveling, Martin was caught in a thunderstorm, an event that would change his life forever. As a lightning bolt crashed down at his side, he offered himself to God as a monk. He cried out to the patron saint of miners, “St. Anne, save me and I will become a monk!” True to his word, but much to his father’s chagrin, he presented himself to become a member of the Augustinian Order.
Priest and Professor
On April 3, 1507, Luther was ordained as a priest. In October 1512, he graduated with a doctorate in theology and became a professor of biblical studies at the University of Wittenberg. Perhaps it is this dual role that Luther held for the rest of his life, both as professor and pastor (and later, as husband and father), that makes him so vibrant and engaging. Luther is always and ever doing theology in life. Say what you will, but Luther is never boring. Author Carl Trueman writes,
Luther was a man of real flesh and blood; he was a son, a priest, a pastor, a preacher, a politician, a controversialist, a professor, a husband, a father, a drinking companion, a humorist, a depressive, a man who was to stand more than once at the grave of one of his beloved children. He baptized babies, performed marriages, heard confessions, presided at funerals. All of these things shaped his theology. Indeed, he wrote theology from the position of being immersed in the mucky reality of everyday life.[2]
Carl Trueman, Luther on the Christian Life, (Crossway, 2015), 26
The Ninety-Five Theses
This highlights another great turning point in Luther’s ministry and life. Luther is, of course, most famous for his Ninety-five Theses, which memorably begin, “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” The Theses were written amid the Indulgences Controversy, as Luther fought off Johann Tetzel and other “indulgences preachers” for their cheapening of grace. Infamously, Tetzel allegedly coined jingles like “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.” But what readers may not know is that it was the impact this means of false security had on his parishioners who encountered these “salesmen” in their own locale that led Martin to take the decisive stand he did.
On October 31, 1517, Luther threw down the gauntlet, so to speak, as he nailed his Ninet-Five Theses to the door of All Saints’ Church (Castle Church) in Wittenburg. Of course, this would lead to an even bigger confrontation at the now-famous Diet of Worms of 1521, where Luther made his famous “Here, I stand” speech.
A Theologian of the Cross
We know Luther best for his relentless recovery of justification by faith alone through the Cross of Christ alone (Article XI of the Thirty-Nine Articles, as well as the Homily of Justification, would echo this in the English/Anglican Reformation).
The Cross in the Christian Life
But, in his focus on the all-sufficiency of Christ’s Cross, he also extolled the Cross in the life of the Christian. That is to say, Luther steadfastly embraced the way the Cross is an enduring paradigm for the life of the Christian in this world. Against the “Theologians of Glory,” Luther was a “Theologian of the Cross.” Meaning that there is a consistent and unexpected logic to our lives as believers: Glory follows the cross, not the other way around. This also teaches us that God is at work in our lives in the places we’d rather not go: in the places where we feel our weakness and sinfulness most acutely. In his Heidelberg Disputation of 1518, he would memorably write,
He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.
Thesis 20, see also Theses 19 and 21
God Works Through Weakness
Furthermore, here we’re taught that God loves to work through his opposites. So, not strength, but weakness. Not independence, but dependence. Not in the world’s wisdom, but folly, at least in the world’s eyes. As Isaiah 57:15 declares,
For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.”
The Most High God makes himself known in the most unexpected people and places. Of course, above all, he does this in the shocking revelation of Christ Jesus, the crucified Messiah, hanging in the place of a criminal.
Luther would put it this way:
God receives none but those who are forsaken, restores health to none but those who are sick, gives sight to none but the blind, and life to none but the dead… He has mercy on none but the wretched and gives grace to none but those who are in disgrace.
Martin Luther, Weimar Ausgabe 1, 183f. As quoted in Mockingbird, “Theology of the Cross,” accessed August 13, 2024, https://mbird.com/glossary/theology-of-the-cross.
And Luther lived all this out. He suffered from life-long problems with constipation and other illnesses. He lived through a devastating plague. And with his wife, Katie, he endured financial stress, even serving for a time as gardeners together in their hometown to make ends meet.
Unradical Vocation
One of the ways Luther is perhaps underappreciated is found in his doctrine of vocation. Vocation comes from the Latin word vocatio, which carries with it a sense of being “summoned” or “called out.” The German Reformation was, in so many ways, a recovery of calling in the everyday Christian life. Author Carl Trueman reflects on Luther’s legacy in this way:
“We live in an age where everything has to be ‘radical’ and ‘revolutionary.’ For Luther the most radical thing one could do was to learn the basics of the faith with the simple trust of a little child.”[4]
Carl Trueman, Luther on the Christian Life, (Crossway, 2015), 27.
It was the routine and ordinary rounds of life that revealed, for Luther, the purposes of God in our lives.
So it is that the Lutheran professor Gene Edward Veith, in his book Family Vocation (co-authored with Mary J. Moerbe), can call Dr. Martin “the theologian of vocation” (emphasis mine). For example, around the estate and vocation of marriage, Luther writes this:
In my wife I have a lovelier adornment, one that God has given me and has adorned with his word beyond the others, even though she may not have a beautiful body or may have other failings. Though I may look over all the women in the world, I cannot find any about whom I can boast with a joyful conscience as I can about mine: “This is the one whom God has granted to me and put into my arms.”
As quoted in Paul Althaus, Ethics of Martin Luther (Augsburg Fortress, 1972), 84.
Here, marriage is the schoolhouse of forgiveness and the workshop of sanctification. It is the first place we love our neighbor as ourselves. So it is with all of our vocations in life.
How often have you been tempted to believe that if only my surroundings in the Christian life were different, I’d be a better Christian? Oftentimes, it is not the surroundings that the Lord seeks to change, but rather us. The Lord works not on the periphery but in and through our vocations.
The Ever-Relevant Sacramental Life
Unlike other 16th-century movements for reformation (or rather, re-formation), one of Luther’s key enduring legacies is that he did not sever the central place of the Sacraments (at least the Dominical Sacraments) in the Christian life.[7] Because of Luther’s understanding of the Extra Nos Word (that is, a declaration from God “outside ourselves”), Baptism and Communion remained places of great objective promise for the Christian. Of course, this is a place of basic agreement between Lutheran and Anglican theology (see Articles XXV, XXVII, and XXVIII of the Thirty-Nine Articles, for instance).
Practically, this is a place of great comfort in the everyday Christian life. Knowing that endurance in Christ is about more than continually pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps creates an amazing, essential buoyancy in the Christian. We see this in Luther. For instance, when Luther felt tempted, his defense was not to rely upon an internal mood or any energy of his own, but rather, his response was simply to remind himself of the truth: “I have been baptized.”
We see his love for and the place of Communion in his reformation is most clearly his preface to his Small Catechism:
For a person not to prize highly, the Sacrament is tantamount to saying that he has no sin, no flesh, no devil, no world, no death, no danger, and no hell. That is to say, he believes in none of these, although he is overwhelmed by them, and they are the devil’s possession twice over. On the other hand, he needs no grace, life, paradise, kingdom of heaven, Christ, God, or any good thing.
Surely, if he recognized how much evil is in him and how much he needs all the good things he lacks, he would not neglect the Sacrament, which gives help against such evil and bestows so much goodness. He will not need to be forced by law to the Sacrament but will himself come running in a hurry to the Lord’s Table, constrained within himself and pressing you to give him the Sacrament.
Concordia Publishing House, “Luther’s Preface”
It may be hard for some American Christians to hear this, but Luther would have seen a Christianity focused solely on private, individual Bible study and personal prayer as foreign and novel in the extreme. More than that, he would have regarded it as deadly to the souls of the sheep of Christ. For him, the focus remained on the gathered Church, focused on the preaching of the external Word, and immersed in the sacramental life of God.
We Are Beggars
Luther’s last written words before his death on February 18, 1546, were these: “Wir sein Bettler. Hoc est verum.” “We are beggars. This is true.” But he also came to know that God, who is merciful and kind, loves to fill the empty-handed and brokenhearted with good things. In his quest for peace with God, he learned to take God at his word and let God be God. So should we.
O God, our refuge and our strength: You raise up your servant Martin Luther to reform and renew your Church in the light of your word. Defend and purify the Church in our own day and grant that, through faith, we may boldly proclaim the riches of your grace which you have made known in Jesus Christ our Savior, who with you and the Holy Spriit, lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
The Church Pension Fund, Lesser Feasts and Fasts (New York, New York: Church Publishing Inc., 1998), 165.
Image: Luther Before the Diet of Worms by Anton von Werner (1843–1915). Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Learning to Preach from Martin Luther (Preachers of the Past, pt. 2)
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