Conclusion

For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen. ROMANS 11:36

Twenty chapters may give the impression that Luther taught many things. He did write on almost everything — on the Bible and the sacraments, on marriage and money, on schools and princes, on music and plague. But at the centre of it all is one discovery, made by a frightened friar over the letter to the Romans: the righteousness that God requires is the righteousness God gives. Everything else he taught is that discovery followed out into the whole of life.

Follow the thread and the shape appears. God’s righteousness is a gift, received by faith alone, and faith is the heart’s trust that Christ is for me. God is found not where we look for Him in glory, but hidden in the cross. The law shows us our sin; the gospel gives us Christ. Faith makes the Christian lord of all, and love makes him servant of all. The will cannot free itself; only God can turn it, and He does so by His Word. That Word gives every believer access to God and makes every believer a priest for others. It turns ordinary work into holy calling. It comes to us in water, bread and wine, with the promise for you. We answer it in prayer, learn it in the catechism, sing it in hymns, and cling to it in the dark, when the old enemy accuses and our feelings fail. We remain sinners to the end, yet righteous in Christ; and at the end we come to Him as beggars, and find life in the midst of dying.

What he got wrong

This book has not hidden Luther’s sins, and it would be a false tribute to end by doing so. Some of them were the ordinary faults of a passionate and overworked man — impatience, pride, a temper that flared. Others were public and grave.

The gravest was his writing against the Jews. In his early years he had rebuked Christians for their cruelty to Jewish people, and in 1523 he wrote a treatise reminding his readers that Jesus Christ was born a Jew. His sermon on Christ’s sufferings, in this library, begins by warning against those who meditate on the passion only to rage at Judas and the Jews. But when the Jews did not turn to the gospel as he had hoped, he turned on them. In 1543, three years before his death, he published On the Jews and Their Lies and other writings urging that synagogues and schools be burned, Jewish homes destroyed, their books taken, their rabbis silenced, and their people driven out or set to forced labour. There is no way to soften this. It was a betrayal of the gospel he preached and of the Jewish Christ he worshipped. These writings were revived by antisemites in later centuries and used by the Nazis to lend Luther’s name to their hatred, in a century when six million Jews were murdered. Many Lutheran churches have since formally repudiated them, and every reader of Luther must do the same.

He also called for the slaughter of the rebel peasants in 1525; approved the death penalty for Anabaptists; secretly counselled a prince to commit bigamy; poured coarse and abusive language on popes, fellow Reformers and opponents; and refused fellowship to Christians who differed from him over the Lord’s Supper. These were not small failings. They caused real suffering, and some of them helped to harden the divisions of the church for centuries.

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. PSALM 139:23–24

None of this is raised to cancel what he saw. It is raised because his own teaching demands it. Luther taught that the justified believer is still a sinner, that even the best teachers can err, and that everything must be tested by the Word of God. He would not want his sins excused for the sake of his doctrine. He would want his doctrine to be judged by Scripture, and his sins to be named as sins. The honest reader will hold both: gratitude for the gospel he recovered, and grief for the harm he did.

What to carry away

If you carry nothing else from this book, carry three things.

First, the two words for you. The gospel is not a report about other people. Christ was born, died and rose for you. Faith is taking it personally.

Second, the difference between feeling and faith. Your standing with God does not rise and fall with your emotions or your progress. It rests on Christ and His promise. When your feelings fail, go back to the Word, to your baptism, to the table, to the cross.

Third, the freedom that makes us servants. Because you are already accepted, you do not have to earn anything. So you are free to spend your life on your neighbour — in your family, your work, your community — as Christ spent His on you.

For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s. 1 CORINTHIANS 6:20

Luther would not want to be admired. He wanted to be a finger pointing to Christ. He asked, in a pamphlet of 1522, that his followers not call themselves by his name, since he had not been crucified for anyone. Go past him, then, to the One he pointed to. And go to his own writings, which are freely available, to hear him point for yourself.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Look back over the chapter titles of this book and choose the one teaching you most need to take to heart. Read that chapter again this week.

2. Read one of Luther’s sermons in the Ochorus library from start to finish, and underline the places where he says for you.

3. Name the sins of a teacher or tradition you love, plainly, before God; then give thanks for the good they gave you.

4. If you have ever spoken with contempt of the Jewish people or of any group, repent of it, and pray for them with love.

5. Choose one of Luther’s own works from the guide that follows, and begin reading it.

A PRAYER

Gracious God, You gave Your servant Martin eyes to see that Your righteousness is a gift, and a voice to proclaim it.

Thank You for the gospel he recovered, and forgive the church for the sins he committed and we have repeated.

Keep me from every hatred, and teach me to love the people of whom Christ was born.

Let me live by faith, serve my neighbour in love, and die as a beggar made rich in Christ, to whom be glory for ever. Amen.