On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther promulgated 95 propositions criticizing the sale of letters of penance (indulgentia). That day Luther probably never thought that his critical cry would bring change to the world, especially to church life. Separation, but also the beginning of freedom and diversity. In fact, Luther never intended to leave the Roman Catholic Church. In his defense, on the evening of April 18, 1521, at the trial of the city of Worms, Germany, Luther said, "Here I stand, I can do no other. May God help me. Amen.
Luther was born in Eisleben on November 10, 1483. A day later he was baptized with the patronymic Martin(us) after a saint born on that day. His father was Hans Luther and his mother was Margaretha Lidemann. Luther's family came from a farming background. His father, however, sought his fortune in one of the more promising ventures, coal mining in Mansfeld.
Luther and his three younger sisters were raised with great discipline. They were taught to be honest, tough, willing to do any kind of work at any time. Just for stealing a few beans, Luther was whipped by his mother until he bled. Luther was also beaten by his father until he ran away in fear, hiding himself at the edge of the forest. Fear of guilt, fear of scolding, and fear of punishment haunted Luther well into his adult life. However, whenever he talked about it to his friends he would say, "But I know very well that my father and mother had really good intentions behind those punishments." Luther also realized that his parents' hard work and sweat had made it possible for him to enjoy a university education.
Luther was also raised in an atmosphere of superstition. His father and mother often told stories of ghosts watching our behavior. If we did wrong, we would be bewitched and swallowed up by these evil creatures. Therefore, we need church services to ward off evil forces.
Luther's parents were faithful churchgoers. Luther always listened to every detail of the service with a keen eye from beginning to end He was also a passionate member of the children's choir. He knew all the church songs by heart. As was the custom at that time, Luther and his friends often traveled to other villages and sang loudly in front of people's homes. After singing, the children would leave, jumping for joy as they were rewarded with bread or apples, and sometimes a coin.
At the age of 14, Luther left his parents' home and attended Latin school in Magdeburg. The teachers at the school were graduates of the Brethren of the Common Life, a highly regarded faith and science education organization in the Netherlands, founded by the Christian Religious Education (CHE) philosopher Geert Groote (1340-1384).
A year later Luther moved to school in Eisenach. Wherever Luther studied he always stood out as the most intelligent, diligent and initiative student. Because of Luther's outstanding qualities, he was invited by Mrs. Ursula Cotta to live in the house of the noble Schalbe family as a private tutor for their children. This Mrs. Cotta was following in the footsteps of Saint Elizabeth of nearby Wartburg Castle, who was already legendary from the 13th century as a helper of poor peasants.
In the spring of 1501 Luther left Eisenach to attend college in Erfurt, the best in Germany at the time. His father wanted him to become a leading jurist. Meanwhile, Luther's father had secretly prepared a beautiful and wealthy lady for Luther to marry. The doors of the king's palace would be wide open for a jurist with skill and wealth. That was his father's dream.
Luther's life path seemed smooth from the outside, but he actually faced many struggles. All the good and bad experiences he had since childhood made him fearful. He believed that God was a judge. "God is a just judge and a God of wrath at all times" (Psalm 7:12). Luther immediately concluded that then everyone would be punished, including himself, because his sins were many. As a result, he sometimes thought of seeking peace by becoming a monk.
On his way back from visiting his parents, Martin Luther was struck by a rainstorm with lightning in Stotternheim, a village near Erfurt. The lightning struck so close that he was thrown several meters due to the strong air pressure from the lightning. In a situation full of fear, Luther reflexively shouted and vowed, "Saint Ana, help me! I promise, I will become a monk!"
Without his father's knowledge Luther left law school, entering the most strictly disciplined monastery, the Order of Augustin. It wasn't until much later that he wrote to his father. Luther's choice was beyond his father's expectations and angered Hans his father.
However, Marthin Luther had already established himself in the monastery. The path to his future had changed direction. Not a jurist in the king's court, but a simple monk in a monastery. Little did he know that this path before him would lead him to change the world.
In the monastery Luther was known as a disciplined, studious and intelligent monk. Noting his potential, his mentors gave him the additional task of pursuing formal biblical studies in college, in addition to his daily monastic duties. This field of study was unusual. Usually monks studied philosophy, but Luther was assigned to biblical studies, a field of study that had begun to flourish thanks to the Renaissance movement's scholarly exploration of Hebrew and Greek as the original languages of the Bible.
Meanwhile, Luther's father's anger began to subside somewhat. He was beginning to accept the fact that his dream of having a jurist in the king's court had been dashed. His son had become a monk. Then one day, still annoyed but nostalgic, his father invited his relatives to visit Luther. There were many who were interested. And so it was that twenty horses galloped to Erfurt, like an army, with the father leading the way at the front.
During his years in monasteries in the cities of Erfurt and Wittenberg Luther's ministry and performance continued to advance. He was heavily relied upon by the head of his order. He was assigned to teach philosophy in the faculty of artes liberals. He was ordained a priest. He was sent to Rome on behalf of his order to negotiate with the Vatican.
While in Rome Luther made the most of every opportunity. Each day he traveled around visiting historic churches. In each church he participated in the ceremony for the forgiveness of sins. He fasted He crawled on his knees up dozens of steps. At each step he knelt down and said the Lord's Prayer. He fervently prayed for the release of his deceased grandfather and purgatory. But at night he was restless, questioning the basis behind such efforts. Is our penitence measured by God by the number of steps we climb, the number of sins we utter, and the number of hours we fast? Did Christ tell us to torture ourselves?"
All his friends and mentors in the monastery saw Luther as a steady person. They didn't know that he was actually restless. What troubled Luther was the issue of forgiveness of sins. Since childhood, Luther had been taught that for the forgiveness of sins we must live piously and do good. He did all these things, especially in the monastery. He tortured himself. He did fasting prayers and even fainted. From dawn until late at night he said dozens of prayers. His whole life was worship. However, the more he did it, the more restless he became.
It was fortunate that the superiors of his order were open to accommodating Luther's restlessness. Luther greatly admired the wise nature of the head of his order, Johan von Staupitz, whom he regarded as a spiritual father. However, even these mentors could not answer Luther's concerns.
Luther continued to labor in the duties of his order. He became the head of eleven Augustinian monasteries in the state and authored books of biblical commentary. It was only after Luther graduated with a doctorate in Biblical studies that he became more and more restless, ”As the Judge who holds the truth, God is certainly just. The sinner goes to hell, the righteous to heaven. But is it true that God can be influenced by the amount of our worship and charity?"
Then, one day while studying the Book of Romans, Luther's heart was torn. It says, "The gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, because it declares justification by God, which proceeds from faith and leads to faith" (Romans 1:16,17, TB-2).
At first Luther found the verse odd because he had learned that righteousness meant the justice of a just judge who justifies the clean and condemns the guilty. If God's righteousness were to be interpreted in this way, then no one could be saved.
But the verse shows that God's righteousness is not justifying the clean, but justifying the sinner. That is, we are all considered righteous or declared righteous by God. That happens in the gospel (not in the sense of a book, but in the sense of Christ's work on the cross). That is the grace of God. God's righteousness means God's grace. That is the power of God. So, we obtain forgiveness not because of our works of worship and charity, but because of the grace of God given to us. Grace is a gift that we do not deserve but is given to us.
Hearing Luther's struggle and research, the monks were pensive, "Sola Gratia!" or "only by grace". That same year, between 1514 or 1515, Luther's research was spread through the book The Interpretation of the Epistle to the Romans. In many monasteries Luther's book was carefully studied. The monks began to open and renew their minds. They began to reform their thinking. The process of church reformation was set in motion.
A few years after the study of the Epistle to the Romans, Luther wrote, "At that moment I felt as if I had been born again and entered Paradise through a wide gate. The Bible became completely different. I had hated the term ”God's righteousness”, but afterward cherished it ….I was freed from the fear that had troubled me since my youth.”
As a disciplined monk, Martin Luther never doubted the Catholic Church's official teaching on the forgiveness of sins. He still held this belief, even after writing the book Interpretation of the Epistle to the Romans, which contains his argument that God's righteousness implies that God justifies or makes righteous those of us who were originally unrighteous. That justification is the mercy or grace of God manifested in the crucifixion of Christ.
However, the standard teaching is practiced differently in the field. Johan Tetzel, an abbot, taught that forgiveness from God could be obtained if we offered money. As a receipt for the payment, Tetzel gave a letter of remission of punishment. As a result, there were people who did not need to repent of their sins because they had already paid for the letter of expiation. Tetzel's teaching undermines the nature of the Catholic Church's standard teaching on the sacrament of forgiveness.
Luther strongly opposed Tetzel's teachings by posting 95 arguments on the door of the Wittenberg church on October 31, 1517. The first proposition reads, "When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ says, "Repent," he means that our whole life should be one of repentance." In his writings, Martin Luther calls repentance the life-long attitude expected of a Christian.
With his arguments Luther did not want to fight the teachings of the Catholic Church. He is defending it. What he is fighting against is the implementation on the ground. The most irritated by Luther's movement were the sellers of abolition letters and the states that received the proceeds. In those days the German empire included Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and parts of France, and was divided into states headed by kings or bishops. State and religion became one so that the king also governed the church and the bishop also governed the state.
To explain this polemic, Luther sent a letter to Pope Leo X. The Pope then decreed that Luther appear before a council of judges in Rome. King Friedrich rejected the Pope's decree since Luther's safety was not guaranteed in Italy. While waiting for further developments. Luther continued to work. He studied the history of ecclesiastical offices and found that the understanding of the roles of people and church officials had strayed far from the spirit of the first century church. He found that the clergy had accumulated too much power and pretended to be infallible, even though there had been several synods or councils that had made wrong decisions. According to Luther, the highest standard of clergy is not church regulations, but the word of God. Luther's writings on this subject shook the position of the clergy, including the Pope.
Then the Pope sent a council of judges to Germany to examine Luther. After polemicizing for about three years, Emperor Karel V convened a council of anti-Luther heads of state. On May 26, 1521, it was decreed that Luther and every follower of his teachings were to be condemned. All books by Luther were to be burned. Luther was declared vogel vry verklaard, i.e. liable to be persecuted and killed by anyone.
That night, on his way home, Luther's carriage was ambushed by a band of kidnappers. Luther was taken into the forest. Luther's guards were helpless. The next day the news spread that Luther had been murdered and his body had not been found. In fact, the kidnappers were sent by King Friederich who protected Luther. Luther was hidden in Wartburg Castle in Eisenach.
While in hiding Luther continued to work hard. He translated the Bible from its original languages into colloquial German. Previously, the Bible could only be printed in Latin so that only the clergy could read the Bible. Luther wanted everyone, including peasants, to be able to understand and enjoy the Bible and devotional books.
The condemnation by Emperor Karel V meant that the church had no room for Luther and his followers. Therefore, a number of priests began to organize their own worship apart from the church. What was strikingly different was the liturgy which included more participation of the people and the replacement of Latin with the national language. The people welcomed this renewal. This was the beginning of the fellowship of a new church separate from the Catholic Church. This was the seed of the Reformation Church.
Before the Reformation Church had taken root, it was undermined from within. In February 1522 in Wittenberg a group of people in the name of the Reformation Movement thought radically and acted savagely. They stormed Catholic churches and destroyed all Catholic symbols such as altars, crosses, statues of Christ and others.
Hearing this Luther came out of hiding and rebuked this radical group. Luther scolded Karlstadt (a professor at Wittenberg University) who led the radicals, "You fool! The Reformation is not to hate and destroy, but to repair and renew!"
Since then Luther has not hidden anymore. Apparently Emperor Karel V's curse had worn off. Because the emperor was no longer friendly with the Pope. Moreover, the emperor was in the middle of a border dispute with France and Turkey.
Luther continued his renewal movement by continuing to write. His books opened the minds of many. He was allowed to live in a monastery. At the age of 42 he married Catharina von Bora and had several children: Hanschen, Magdalena, Martin, Paul and Margaretha. To make ends meet, his wife raised cows and grew potatoes. She decorated the gate of his house with the words, "He lives!" ” He lives! ” as well as the words, "In quietness and trust lies your strength." ” Both words are quoted from Luke 24:23 and Isaiah 30:15. Today the Luther family home is a Wittenberg museum.
Luther died at the age of 62. Until the end of his life, he continued to be challenged to educate the church to review and renew its thinking about faith. Thousands of written works were bequeathed to the church. Nearly five centuries later, on October 31, 1999, in a solemn service, delegates from the Vatican representing the Catholic Church and delegates from the Lutheran World Federation representing the Protestant Church signed the Joint Statement on the Doctrine of Justification and removed all condemnations and denials that both parties had made in the past. This means that we as Christians, both Catholics and Protestants, recognize that we have equally received the grace of God. It is only fitting that as people who have received God's grace we share that grace with others, by being loving and gracious towards others.
