Martin
Luther (1483-1546)
of Germany was the man who took the first steps in leading the
Reformation, proclaiming the Word of God and its doctrine of justification by
grace through faith alone. As a young man he had earned his Master of Arts at
the
University
of Erfurt, but after a series of events including the death of a close friend and a
near-death experience of his own, he decided to try to atone for his sins as a
monk of the Roman Catholic Church. Luther went to great extremes in order to
obtain forgiveness of sins by his own “good works”, going so far as to
damage his health permanently by severe physical punishment such as fasting
for many days and abstaining from sleep. Ordained to the Roman priesthood in
1507, he still found no satisfaction, seeing nothing but the depth and
darkness of his own guilt. He then discovered a Bible in a library, from which
he found his first great rays of hope through Jesus Christ, and travelling to Rome
with the light of the Word in his heart, he saw through the pagan
superstitions of the Papal system. Finally he returned to his studies at
university, this time in
Wittenberg
where he gained a doctorate in 1512. Here, encouraged by his mentor, the
Augustinian scholar Johann von Staupitz (1470-1524), he continued earnestly to
study the Bible; and as the text from Romans
1:17, “The just shall live by faith”, had several times come to him with
power, so he began to preach this earth-shattering doctrine to the world.
Wherefore
do we say Our bread? Because we pray
not to have the ordinary bread that pagans eat, and which God gives to all
men, but for our bread, ours
who are children of the heavenly father.
And
what, then, is this bread of God? – It is Jesus Christ our Lord: I am the living bread which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life
unto the world. For this reason (and let us not deceive ourselves), all
sermons and all instructions that do not set Jesus Christ before us and teach
us to know him, cannot be the daily bread and the nourishment of our
souls……
To
what use will such bread have been prepared for us, if it is not offered to
us, and so we cannot taste it?......It is as if a magnificent banquet had been
prepared, and there was no one to serve the bread, to hand round the dishes,
to pour out the wine, so that the guests must feed themselves on the sight and
the smell of the viands……For this cause we must preach Jesus Christ alone.
But
what is it, then, to know Jesus Christ, sayest thou, and what advantage is
derived from it?......I reply: To learn and to know Jesus Christ is to
understand what the apostle says: Christ
is made unto us of God, wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and
redemption. Now this you understand, if you acknowledge all your wisdom to
be a condemnable folly, your own righteousness a condemnable iniquity, your
own holiness a condemnable impurity, your own redemption a miserable
condemnation; if you feel that you are really before God and before all
creatures a fool, a sinner, an impure, a condemned man, and if you show, not
only by your words, but from the bottom of your heart, and by your works, that
you have no consolation and no salvation remaining except in Jesus Christ. To
believe is none other than to eat this bread from heaven.
Reference
“History
of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century” by J. H. Merle d’Aubigné.
Baker Book House (USA). (Reprinted
from the edition issued in London in 1846.) Page 117.
