“Here I Stand!”: Martin Luther’s Story, Part 2—A Spiritual Pauper

“Here I Stand!”: Martin Luther’s Story, Part 2—A Spiritual Pauper

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Note: This week’s posts share a dramatic reading that I present in character as Martin Luther telling his story of salvation by grace alone through faith alone. To read Part 1, click on Unable to Satisfy God. Click on the following link for a 200-page presentation of Martin Luther’s Pastoral Counseling.

Recap: When we last heard from Martin Luther, he was sharing with us: “My conscience was terrified. My spirit despaired. I was unable to satisfy God at any point. What could I do?”

B. Standing before God with Filthy Rags and Ashamed

I did exactly what the Church taught me to do. I latched onto every help that the Church had to offer: the monastery, works, sacraments, pilgrimages, indulgences—everything. It was only years later that I discovered that all my works of righteousness left me standing before God ashamed of my filthy rags. Walk with me down the foolish road of works. Walk first with me into the monastery where I tried on the garment of the filthy rags of good works.

1. The Filthy Rags of Works: Monkery in the Monastery

I entered the monastery to find peace with God, to earn peace with God. I knew that I could never appear before the tribunal of a terrible God with an impure heart; so I must become holy. What better place to practice good works unto holiness than in the monastery? Here lived heroic athletes rigorously training to take heaven by storm.

One of the privileges of monastic life was that it freed me from all distractions, allowing me to strive to save my soul through works of chastity, charity, sobriety, poverty, love, obedience, fastings, vigils, and mortification of the flesh. Whatever good works a man might do to save himself, I was resolved to perform.

I was a good monk and I kept the rules of my order so strictly that I may say that if ever a monk got to heaven by his monkery, it was I! All my brothers in the monastery who knew me testify to this. If I had kept on any longer, I would have killed myself with vigils, prayers, fasting, and other disciplines.

For instance, when I was a monk, I was unwilling to omit any of my required prayers. However, when I was busy with public lecturing and writing, I often accumulated my appointed prayers for a whole week, or even two, or three. Then I would take a Saturday off, or shut myself in for as long as three days without food and drink, until I had said the prescribed prayers. This made my head split, and consequently I could not close my eyes for five nights. I lay sick unto death, and went out of my senses. I thought I could save my soul by punishing my body.

Though driven there for soul rest, the monastic life of good works failed to ease my guilt. Bowed down by sorrow, I tortured myself with the multitude of my thoughts. I would say to myself, “Look! You are still envious, impatient, passionate! It profits you nothing, O wretched man, to have entered this sacred order.”

I clearly recognized the futility of my good works when I said my first Mass. I wrote my father about my ordeal.

Here I experienced another thunderstorm, this one in my spirit. I stood before the altar and began to recite the introductory portion of the Mass. Then I came to the words, “We offer unto Thee, the living, the true, the eternal God.” At that very moment, the terror of the Holy struck me like lightning. At these words I was utterly terror-stricken. I thought to myself, “With what tongue shall I address such Majesty, seeing that all men ought to tremble in the presence of even an earthly prince. Who am I, that I should lift up mine eyes or raise my hands to the Divine Majesty? And shall I, a miserable little pygmy, say, ‘I want this, I ask for that?’ For I am dust and ashes and full of sin and I am speaking to the living, eternal, and the true God.”

In short, as a monk I experienced the horrors, the shame, and the futility of trying to earn peace with God through good works.

2. The Filthy Rags of the Merits of the Saints: Indulging in Indulgences

I hungered to find assurance of my salvation. However, the rigors of the monastic life could not calm my clamoring conscience. I saw that I was a great sinner in the eyes of God and I realized how impossible it would be for me to please God on my own merits. So I fled to the merits of the saints.

Though I was not good enough, perhaps the pooled goodness of all the saints would be good enough to please God. I believed the Church’s teaching that the combined goodness of the saints, especially of the Blessed Virgin Mary, could save me. Mary, I was taught, was better than she needed to be for her own salvation. The extra merit of her righteousness constituted a treasury that the Church could transfer to my account. In other words, I would borrow her goodness to make up for my lack. Such a transfer or borrowing, the Pope called an indulgence.

Wanting to take full benefit of such a transfer, I felt myself highly privileged when the opportunity arose to go to Rome. Rome, like no city on earth, was richly endowed with spiritual indulgences. I could touch a piece of the very cross on which Christ died and shorten my time of punishment by 17,000 years. Each “Hail Mary” I said before the statue of the Blessed Virgin would earn me ten years worth of good works. I felt truly blessed to be able to climb, on hands and knees, the very stairs Christ climbed in Pilate’s temple. Each “Our Father” said on each step was worth nine years’ forgiveness, and an “Our Father” said on the step with the silver cross was worth double merit. I even kissed each step for good measure.

However, arriving at the top stair, I raised myself to full height and exclaimed, “Who knows whether it is so?” I had gone to Rome with the onions of my good works, and returned home only with the garlic of the merits of the saints.

My chief concern in going to Rome was that I might become a saint through the merits of the saints. Yet, all I found in Rome was the shamelessness, godlessness, and wickedness of all people, so-called saints included. For they, too, were sinners, unworthy of a holy God. How could they possibly offer me anything acceptable to God? I was striving after my own good works and the merits of the saints in order to compensate for my sins, but I could never feel that the ledger was balanced.

3. The Filthy Rags of the Sacrament of Penance: Confessions about Confession

I could not acquire heaven by becoming a saint, nor by the merits of the saints. However, I had one more set of filthy rags to wear—the filthy rags of the sacrament of penance. I was taught that the sacraments—like baptism, communion, confession or penance—actually added or dispensed grace. We may not be good enough, the saints may not be good enough, but the Church can add to our goodness because our participation in a sacrament serves as a reservoir for accumulating more of Christ’s grace.

In particular, I availed myself of the sacrament of penance or confession to a priest. I confessed frequently, often daily for as long as six hours. I believed that every sin, in order to be absolved or forgiven, had to be specifically confessed. Therefore, I had to search my memory for sins of action and sins of motivation. I would review my entire life to be sure to remember everything, until even my confessor grew weary.

The great difficulty I experienced was my lack of assurance that I had recalled everything. My soul would recoil in horror when, after six hours of confession to a priest, a new sin would come to mind that I had not recalled. Even more frightening was the realization that a sinner like me did not even recognize some sins as sins. I went every day to confession, but it was of no use to me. I always thought. “You did not perform that correctly. God has not forgiven you.”

I had recourse to a thousand methods to stifle the cries of my conscience. Yet I despaired because I always doubted that God was gracious to me. I could find no portal of salvation. I could not enter into fellowship with God through the harbor of my own good works. I could not approach God through the window of the merits of the saints. I could not draw near to God through the door of the Church.

I came to realize that the religious answers of my day would never quiet my soul. I came to realize that all human beings and all human institutions were spiritually impoverished. I was a spiritual pauper.

The Rest of the Story

I invite you to return tomorrow as we learn how Martin Luther turned from works to faith.

Join the Conversation

What futile works did you cling to before you placed your faith in Christ’s finished work?

Sacred Friendships: Refuse to Bury Your Talents

Sacred Friendships: Refuse to Bury Your Talent

The Sacred Friendships Blog Tour enters its second exciting week today.

Angela Ambroise, at her He Speaks to Me blog site (http://bit.ly/1VHhvo) has posted an Author Interview.

Among other questions, she asks about the great women of the Reformation.

One of our answers: "The commonality among all these women of the Reformation is their refusal to bury their talents."

To learn more, be sure to visit: http://bit.ly/1VHhvo

You'll also learn about the African American woman who was Mary Lincoln's sole scared friend when President Lincoln was shot.

Angela also graciously linked the Sacred Friendships Blog Tour to the Book Blogs website at: http://bit.ly/8sUxh

The Hidden Tradition: The Women of the Reformation, Part IV

The Hidden Tradition:

The Women of the Reformation, Part IV

Reformation historian Roland Bainton proposed that the Reformation had a primary effect on the role of women in society. The dropping of monasticism in Protestant lands “made for the exaltation of the home, the especial domain of the wife, as the sphere for exercise of the gentler virtues of the Sermon on the Mount. In Catholic thought these have been called the counsels of perfection to be observed by monks. Protestantism made no distinction between the counsels to be observed by the few and the precepts binding upon all. The entire Christian ethic was held to be incumbent upon every believer.”[i]

Reformation Wives: Daughters of the King of Kings

Ruth Tucker explains the impact of this titanic change upon marital relationships. “For the first generation of Protestants, marriage was a far more significant decision than it was in the generations that followed. Renouncing celibacy was viewed by the Catholics as giving in to the sin of lust.”[ii] For the leading male Reformers, the decision whether or not to marry was thus mired in complexity, culture, and conflict. For the women who married them, the nature of their husband-wife relationship was equally multifaceted.

Katherine von Bora Luther: Sticking to Christ and Ministering to Christians

Katherine von Bora is the best known of all the women of the Reformation because she was Martin Luther’s wife. However, she was much more than that. Katherine was born in January 1499 in a little village near Leipzig. Her parents enjoyed a degree of financial security and unlike most girls her age she received an education, studying at a Benedictine school beginning at age six. At age ten, when her mother died and her father remarried, they sent Katherine to a Cistercian convent to prepare for solemn vows, eventually taking them when she was sixteen.[iii]

In the early 1520s, Luther’s writings began to infiltrate monastic houses. “The sisters at Nimschen, nine of them, disquieted in conscience, sought his counsel. Luther advised escape and undertook to make the arrangements.”[iv] Luther turned to a highly trusted layman, Leonard Kopp, who delivered barrels of smoked herrings to the nuns. Hidden in the covered wagon, they rumbled into Wittenberg. A student there wrote to a friend, “A wagon load of vestal virgins has just come to town all more eager for marriage than for life. May God give them husbands lest worse befall.”[v]

Luther felt responsible that worse should not befall. All were placed either in teaching posts, in homes, or in matrimony. Katherine spent two years working in a home while Luther sought a husband for her. Finding no match, and at her initial suggestion, Luther agreed to marry Katherine because his marriage “would please his father, rile the pope, make the angels laugh and the devils weep, and would seal his testimony.”[vi] She was twenty-six; he was forty-two.

Though initially a marriage of convenience, they grew to love and depend upon each other profoundly. In fact, Luther would say of her, “In domestic affairs, I defer to Katie. Otherwise I am led by the Holy Ghost.”[vii] When he thought her at the point of death, he pleaded, “Don’t die and leave me.”[viii] Thirteen years after their marriage, Martin would say of Katherine, “If I should lose my Katie I would not take another wife through I were offered a queen.”[ix]

What was it about Katherine’s character and ministry that so endeared her to Luther? She “ministered to her husband’s diseases, depressions, and eccentricities.”[x] Her son, later a physician, praised her as half a doctor. He could not have survived his depression, which he interpreted as satanic temptations to doubt God’s forgiveness, without her sustaining and healing ministry. At night he would turn over and plead with Katherine, “Forbid me to have such temptations.”[xi] Based upon Luther’s own methods of soul care for such depression, we can surmise that Katherine responded by ministering sustaining empathy and healing encouragement through spiritual conversations and scriptural explorations.[xii]

Luther’s own testimony further describes Katherine’s empathic care. Speaking from the experience of their marriage and parenting he writes, “Marriage offers the greatest sphere for good works, because it rest on love—love between the husband and the wife, love of the parents for the children, whom they nourish, clothe, rear, and nurse. If a child is sick, the parents are sick with worry. If the husband is sick, the wife is as concerned as if it were herself. If it be said that marriage entails concern, worry, and trouble, that is all true, but these the Christian is not to shun.”[xiii] Undoubtedly, Martin frequently experienced Katherine’s as if compassion numerous times in his battles with depression.

Katherine was unafraid to lovingly rebuke Martin. When his language was too foul, she would say, “Oh come now, that’s too raw.”[xiv] Luther’s Table Talks also disclose that Katherine at times prodded her husband to respond forcefully to unfair attacks and doctrinal error.[xv]

As with Idelette Calvin, Katherine’s ministry was not exclusively to her family. The Augustinian Cloister where Luther had lived as a monk was first loaned and then given to the couple by the Elector. It had on the first floor forty rooms with cells above. Eventually not a single room was unoccupied. A friend described the scene. “The home of Luther is occupied by a motley crowd of boys, students, girls, widows, old women, and youngsters.”[xvi] Katherine “came to be a mistress of a household, a hostel, and a hospital.”[xvii]

Luther recognized and appreciated her versatility and creativity. “To my dear wife Katherine von Bora, preacher, brewer, gardener, and whatsoever else she may be.”[xviii] On other occasions he referred to her as “my kind and dear lord and master, Katy, Lutheress, doctoress, and priestess of Wittenberg.” Yet again, ten years after they married, he had this description. “My lord Kate drives a team, farms, pastures, and sells cows . . . and between times reads the Bible.”[xix]

But for Katherine, reading the Bible was insufficient. She longed to apply it. “I’ve read enough. I’ve heard enough. I know enough. Would to God I lived it.”[xx] Such was her testimony to her dying day. Ill for three months after an accident landed her on her back in a ditch filled with icy water, Katherine died on December 20, 1550, at age fifty-one. The final words from her lips depict how she lived her entire life. “I will stick to Christ as a burr to a top coat.”[xxi] The last words of Idelette and Katherine each communicate that they were not simply wives of Reformers, but more so daughters of the King of King.


[i]Bainton, Women of the Reformation in Germany and Italy, 7.
[ii]Tucker, Private, 40.
[iii]Bainton, 23.
[iv]Ibid.
[v]Ibid., 24.
[vi]Ibid., 26.
[vii]Ibid., 27.
[viii]Ibid., 26.
[ix]Ibid.
[x]Ibid., 29.
[xi]Ibid., 29-30.
[xii]Kellemen, Spiritual Care in Historical Perspective, 45-56.
[xiii]Bainton, 42, emphasis added.
[xiv]Ibid., 37.
[xv]Ibid., 38.
[xvi]Schwiebert, Luther and His Times, 584.
[xvii]Bainton, 30.
[xviii]Ibid., 39.
[xix]Tucker, Private, 27.
[xx]Bainton, 37.
[xxi]Ibid., 42.