This quick study on Reformation History was given at the end of service at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on August 13, 2017. The text of the study is included and you may play the audio of the study here.
Last week, we talked a bit about church history. Remember that the church of God on earth was broken. While they wanted to a unified Church, it wasn’t in the cards. Abuses of the Church began to run rampant. Martin Luther was born into these abuses. There were many. The teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, the church that dominates the western world, even still today, are well-known. The people of the Roman church would seek after relics of the saints, tokens from their lives, or at least they pretended to be. They would pay to have sins forgiven. They would pay to have a mass said in their name and think that the forgiveness of sins would come even if they weren’t there. They would pray to the saints. The pope was infallible speaking from his chair. There were, and are, so may errors, but the worst of them is this: God is angry at you for your sin and you must purge the sins from your life, otherwise He’ll do it for you in the fires of purgatory.
This was the worst for Luther. As a monk, he couldn’t get over the fact that he knew God was angry at Him. He confessed his sins so often, trying to think of the least of his sins, so that there was nothing that would pass from God’s forgiveness. Yet, for all of the times that he worked himself into a frenzy, he never could escape the feeling that God hated him.
Luther was born in 1483. It was a turbulent time, not even just in the Church, but in the entire world. The Turks, we would call them Muslims today, had just conquered the city of Constantinople, once the jewel city of the eastern church in Turkey. They were marching across Europe, with their sights on everyone submitted to Allah or dying. The Spanish Inquisition was occurring, where people would be killed or exiled if their beliefs didn’t fall in line with Catholic dogma. Yet, there was also some amount of hope and excitement. In nine short years, Columbus would reach the Americas. Books and pamphlets were more readily available due to the invention of the movable-type printing press. And the art of the Renaissance was about to kick off. That was Luther’s world.
He was born to Hans and Margarethe, a mining family who expected more from their son. The intention was always for Luther to go and be a lawyer so that he would make enough money to care for his parents and his younger siblings. His upbringing was fairly inauspicious. He seemed to have always had a sharp mind, and when he realized, after entering the university, that law just wouldn't be for him, he wandered a bit aimlessly in his studies.
However, in 1505, an event would happen that would focus his mind and heart so sharply that there would be no turning back. As Luther made his way back to school after visiting home, he was stuck in a thunderstorm that shook his soul as much as the trees. As the lightning struck around him, he cried out to Saint Anne that if she would help him, he would become a monk. The storm soon went away, and Luther looked upon that promise as something he never could break. It was for life.
This incredibly disappointed his parents. In fact, it seems that is was nearer to his father’s death that Luther and he finally were able to somewhat reconcile. Hans looked upon Luther as a disobedient son, abandoning the command to honor his parents for his own selfish reasons, the ability to get closer to heaven through religious obedience. This, I think, helps explain how Luther saw God. His father seemed to despise him for abandoning him, and Luther learned, rightly, that all sin is an abandoning of God. If his father hated him, how much more did a holy and righteous God hate him?
So, Luther became a monk in 1506, he was made a priest in 1507, and it was after that he began to study theology. I know that seems a bit different than what we’re used to, but that was the way it went. The priest never needed to say anything other than what the mass said, in Latin, and it didn’t matter if he or anyone else understood it. Yet, as Luther began to study theology, he began to get more and more worried with that idea and many others. He started to realize, even as his conscience was plagued with his sin, that things were not quite right.
The weight of it all began to kill him, literally. Many doctors and professionals today believe that the later health problems Luther would suffer in his older age were due to the conditions of his monastic days. He would freeze himself, he would whip himself, he would scream in agony, he would punish his body, all to try to bring his flesh into submission to the word of God. This is how tortured he was by his sin. In one way, it’s almost admirable that he realized the depth of his depravity. Yet, because the freedom of the Gospel was not to be found, Luther suffered all the more.
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