The exact date of Luther’s conversion is debated. We do know that some time between 1513 and 1518 Luther understood the doctrine of justification by faith. His study of Paul’s epistles to the Romans and Galatians forced him to reckon with the concept of the righteousness of God. At this time, he was studying the writings of Augustine as well. His conversion came after much pain of body and soul. Luther describes his monastic life as follows:
I was a good monk, and kept my order so strictly that I could say that if ever a monk could get to heaven through monastic discipline, I should have entered it. All my companions in the monastery who knew me would bear me out in this. For if it had gone on much longer, I would have martyred myself to death, what with vigils, prayers, reading and other works.[1]
Some of his fellow monks tried to talk him out of such scrupulosity but to no avail. To him God was horrifyingly angry and there was no consolation, only accusation.
He experienced terror in his soul for many years. Some of these terrors lasted until death. His early anxieties centered on the confessional.
I tried to live according to the Rule with all diligence, and I used to be contrite, to confess and number my sins, and often repeated my confession, and sedulously performed my allotted penance. And yet my conscience could never give me certainty, but I always doubted and said, “You did not perform that correctly. You were not contrite enough. You left that out of your confession.” The more I tried to remedy an uncertain, weak and afflicted conscience with the traditions of men, the more each day found it more uncertain, weaker, more troubled.”[2]
Bainton adds:
He confessed frequently, often daily, and for as long as six hours on a single occasion. …Luther would repeat a confession and, to be sure of including everything, would review his entire life until the confessor grew weary and exclaimed, “Man, God is not angry with you. You are angry with God. Don’t you know that God commands you to hope?”[3]
In his later years, he believed he had caused permanent damage to his intestines due to his overly scrupulous monastic disciplines.[4]
Luther did receive some worthy advice while in the monastery. Reformation scholar David Steinmetz comments:
[Of much] help to Luther was the advice of Dr. John Staupitz, Vicar-General of the Augustinian Observants and professor of Bible in the newly founded University of Wittenberg. “If I didn’t praise Staupitz,” Luther later told his students, “I should be a damned, ungrateful, papistical ass, for he was my very first father in this teaching, and he bore me in Christ.”[5]
Concerning Luther in the confessional with Staupitz, Bainton adds:
This assiduous confessing certainly succeeded in clearing up any major transgressions. The leftovers with which Luther kept trotting in appeared to Staupitz to be only the scruples of a sick soul. “Look here,” said he, “if you expect Christ to forgive you, come in with something to forgive – parricide [from pater, father, and coedo, to kill], blasphemy, adultery – instead of all these peccadilloes [from peccatum, a little sin].”[6]
In a letter written in 1518 to Staupitz, Luther testifies to the fact that it was Staupitz who pointed him to Christ and that sometime prior to the writing of the letter Luther had looked to the wounds of the sweetest Saviour and been gloriously saved from the wrath to come.[7]
Luther’s struggle with God ended when he understood Paul’s concept of the justice and righteousness of God. Bainton gives Luther’s own words:
I greatly longed to understand Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, “the justice of God,” because I took it to mean that justice whereby God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust. My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him. Yet I clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant.
Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that “the just shall live by his faith.” Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the “justice of God” had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven.[8]
[1] Steinmetz, Luther, 7.
[2] Steinmetz, Luther, 2.
[3] Bainton, Here I Stand, 41.
[4] Ibid., 34.
[5] Steinmetz, Luther, 8.
[6] Bainton, Here I Stand, 41.
[7] Steinmitz, Luther, 9, 10.
[8] Bainton, Here I Stand, 49, 50.
Dr. Richard Barcellos is associate professor of New Testament Studies. He received a B.S. from California State University, Fresno, an M.Div. from The Master’s Seminary, and a Th.M. and Ph.D. from Whitefield Theological Seminary. Dr. Barcellos is pastor of Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Palmdale, CA. He is author of Trinity & Creation, The Covenant of Works, and Getting the Garden Right. He has contributed articles to various journals and is a member of ETS.
Courses taught for CBTS: New Testament Introduction, Biblical Hermeneutics, Biblical Theology I, Biblical Theology II.
