“I entered through the open doors into the very paradise of God.”
AFTER LUTHER’S THREE YEARS IN THE MONASTERY, he was dissatisfied. It was becoming increasingly clear to him that he could not appease God for his sins by his own deeds. In his desperate search for righteousness before God, he declared, “I tortured myself almost to death in order to procure peace for my troubled heart and agitated conscience; but being surrounded by thick darkness, I found peace nowhere.”
Since faith comes out of hearing (Romans 10:17), Luther needed someone from whom he could hear the way of salvation. That man seems to have been John Staupitz, an administrator in the Augustinian order.
Staupitz noticed Luther’s downcast disposition and asked him why he was so sad. Luther told him about all his troubles. Staupitz asked him, “Why do you torment yourself with all these speculations? Behold the wounds of Jesus Christ, the blood that He has shed for you. It is there that the grace of God will appear to you….Throw yourself into the Redeemer’s arms. Trust in Him….He became man to give you the assurance of divine favor.”
These words penetrated Luther’s heart. He later testified, “If Dr. Staupitz, or rather God through Dr. Staupitz, had not helped me out of my trials, I should have drowned in them.”
Professor
In 1508, at the age of 25, Luther was given a temporary assignment as a professor of philosophy at the University of Wittenberg. Wittenberg was a small village with a population of less than 3,000 people. Luther had been ordained a priest the year before but continued to study and earned his degree of Bachelor of the Bible. Luther would eventually confound the doctors as he learned to “stand on the writings of the prophets and apostles and rely on the words of Christ.”
Disappointment in ‘Holy Rome’
Luther was later transferred back to Erfurt in order to teach at the University of Erfurt for a few years. While at Erfurt, he was commissioned to make a trip to Rome to represent the Augustinian order and to help find a solution to some problems of strife. Luther had the highest esteem for the ‘holy’ city of Rome and was looking forward to representing these matters before the pope. As he approached the seven-hilled city, Luther was in awe and proclaimed, “Hail, thou holy Rome, hail!”
In the next few weeks he had the opportunity to see many of the sights in Rome. He became disillusioned: Rome was not the great city of holiness he had imagined. Instead, his impression was that it was a place of worldliness, sin and vice. He was troubled by the mockery that fellow priests made of what he considered sacred things. It was in Rome also that he heard many stories about the evil life of a recent former pope. Luther’s feelings changed regarding Rome. Later he said, “If there is a hell, Rome is built over it!”
Doubts on Pilate’s Staircase
One place in particular in Rome that attracted Luther was the chapel Sancta Sanctorum. It was in this place that the supposed stairway of Pilate’s palace was located. This stairway of twenty-eight steps
was reputedly transported from Jerusalem to Rome and was said to be the stairway that Jesus climbed in his appearance before Pilate before His crucifixion. An earlier pope had declared that whoever crawled this stairway on his or her knees would receive nine years of forgiveness of sins for every step. Luther began his climb, but in his heart he had doubts. He thought to himself, “What if it is not true? Then I am yet in my sins! Who knows?” Therefore he continued in despair, again not finding the peace and holiness he longed for.
Becoming Wise unto Salvation
Luther eventually was transferred back to Wittenberg to teach theology. There, in 1512, he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity. He later testified, “When I was made doctor, I did not yet know the light.”
But it was here at Wittenberg that the light did begin to dawn. What he had heard from Staupitz gradually began to become his. By God’s mercy, the Scriptures began to illumine him regarding the way of salvation.
During this time, Luther was laboring to understand Paul’s writings in Romans. He said, “I had indeed been captivated with an extraordinary ardor for understanding Paul in the Epistle to the Romans.” Romans 1:17 especially caught his attention, which says that “the righteousness of God is revealed in it out of faith to faith, as it is written, but the righteous shall have life and live by faith.”
Luther had previously hated the phrase, “the righteousness of God.” He had always been taught that God is righteous and punishes the unrighteous sinner. Though living without reproach as a monk and a priest, he still felt he was a sinner before God and would face coming punishment. He testified, “I could not endure those words, ‘the righteousness of God.’ I had no love for that holy and just God who punishes sinners. I was filled with secret anger against Him.”
Luther felt crushed under the law of the commandments and threatened by God’s righteousness and wrath until he met God’s mercy! He declared, “But when, by the Spirit of God, I understood these words [Rom. 1:17], when I learned how the justification of the sinner proceeds from the free mercy of our Lord through faith, then I felt born again like a new man; I entered through the open doors into the very paradise of God.”
Luther was indeed born again; he was also justified by faith. He testified, “And as previously I had detested with all my heart these words, ‘the righteousness of God,’ I began from that hour to value them and to love them as the sweetest and most consoling words in the Bible.”
His clarity concerning being justified by faith can be seen through a letter to a friend, George Spalatin, in 1516. He wrote, “I should be very glad to know what is the state of your soul. Have you learned to despise your own righteousness and to put your trust in the righteousness of Christ alone? Many do not know the righteousness of God, which is given us abundantly and freely in Christ, but they endeavor to do good works and depend on their own merits. You were full of this great error when you were here, and I was full of it. Even now I must fight against it and have not finished. Therefore, my beloved brother, learn Christ and Him crucified. Learn to despair of yourself and to say to Him, ‘Thou, Lord Jesus, are my Righteousness, but I am Thy sin. Thou hast assumed what was mine and given me what was Thine.’”
Luther was enlightened by the word of God as to the way of salvation. He was turning from the way of works to the way of salvation by grace through faith in Christ.