Romans 1:17 & 5:1-5

Mike Davies considers the impact of the life of Martin Luther

Mike Davies

I spend a lot of time in my car journeying to various places in the south-west of England. On average I drive 4,000 miles each month, sometimes more but seldom less. It crossed my mind that I also seem to be journeying somewhere. But there again aren't we all?

We are certainly on a spiritual journey. Some things used to be really clear to me and now I am not so sure, whereas some of the things I used to view with uncertainty, I now see clearly.

Our perspectives change as we journey either alone or together. But what a wonder God's creation is! Christianity is a journey of faith, or more simply put a faith journey.

As we continue to pray, read the Bible, meet with other Christians, experience Christian life, we see and interpret some matters of the faith differently than maybe we once did.

The Church is made up of such a variety of people. There are key doctrines that we will be mainly in agreement over; the Trinity, Jesus being the Son of God, the Virgin Birth, the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, his Ascension and much more. But there are other areas in which we might have a difference of view: The End Times, Heaven, Angels, the time scale of the Creation of the Earth, how the dinosaurs fit in and so on.

Martin Luther, was the theologian behind the Protestant Reformation, but long before he started to preach the Doctrine of Justification by Faith, Luther was an Augustin monk who tried to earn God's favour by doing good works.

Luther had an important revelation concerning Romans Chapter 1, which changed his life and, in fact, millions of people.

While on a continual search he had a life changing experience that changed the way he viewed God, and ultimately in how you and I see God.

Situated in a monastery in Wittenberg, Germany, his behaviour in the 'confessional' was notorious. He would go in to daily confession and not spend five minutes like all of the other monks, but Luther would spent an hour, two hours, sometimes up to four hours confessing his sins to his confessor until his confessor would become utterly frustrated.

However frustrated they were on hearing Luther's confession they knew that he was not staying in the confessional just to avoid duties, they knew he was sincere.

He really was tormented about his sin. He was really known to struggle with torment over guilt. Some people suggested that he was mentally unbalanced.

Look at the life of Martin Luther, his life was marked with one crisis after another. In 1505 he was a student studying law. He had great intellectual ability and his family believed he would become a great and prominent lawyer.

He went to University and qualified. He was known as one of the greatest thinkers in the area of law and certainly in the area of juris prudence (the theory behind the legal system).

Luther being a Christian, brought his expert legal mind to try and understand the Law of God, particularly in the Old Testament. This drove him even more into despair as he realised that his life never measured up to the radical demands of purity and holiness that are found in the Old Testament.