“LIFT UP A
STANDARD FOR THE PEOPLE.” — ISAIAH LXII. 10.
Take a few examples of The Higher Life, or Full
Trust and Full Salvation. First,
This was in A. D. 1505, in summer. Taking advantage
of the summer’s vacation, Luther, now in his twenty-first year, paid
a visit to Mansfeldt the home of his infancy. Even then the purpose of a
life of devotion was forming in his heart, but not yet ripened into full
and final decision. The only life of religion known to him, and at all meeting
his convictions, was that of the convent, the life of a monk and a priest.
Whether it was because the purpose was only yet in embryo, or because he
dreaded his father’s displeasure, or shrunk from dashing his father’s
hopes and giving him pain, it seems he kept the matter back. The fire burned
on in his own breast, but the young Bachelor of Arts kept it hidden, even
from those most deeply interested in him of all upon
earth.
On his way back to the university, however, he
was overtaken by a terrific storm. “The thunder roared,” says
D’Aubigne; “a thunderbolt sunk into the ground by his side; Luther
threw himself on his knees; his hour is perhaps come. Death, judgment, eternity,
are before him in all their terrors, and speak with a voice which he can
no longer resist. ‘Encompassed with the anguish and terror of death,’
as he says of himself, ‘he makes a vow, if God will deliver him from
this danger, to forsake the world, and devote himself to his service.’
Risen from the earth, having still before his eyes that death must one day
overtake him, he examines himself seriously, and inquires what he must do.
The thoughts that formerly troubled him returned with re-doubled power. He
has endeavored, it is true, to fulfill all his duties. But what is the state
of his soul? Can he, with a polluted soul, appear before the tribunal of
so terrible a God? He must become holy“— for this he will go into
the cloister, he will enter a convent, he will become a monk and a priest
in the Augustinian order. He will there become holy and be
saved.
This scene has been compared to that on the Damascus
road centuries before, and they are not without certain similarities, both
in the men, and in the circumstances and results. But there were broad
differences: for while Saul of Tarsus was relieved of his blindness after
only three days of darkness and desolation, Luther had yet before him months
and months of monastic groping, before his eyes were opened to receive the
Lord Jesus as the All in All. And while at the word of Ananias the scales
fell from the eyes of the young devotee of Judaism at once, in a moment —
the eyes of the young devotee of Romanism were opened, not entirely at the
first touch of the Master’s fingers, but rather like him who first saw
only men as trees walking, and afterwards, when touched again, saw
clearly.
It was a terrible blow to his parents when Luther
entered the convent at Erfurth, and an astonishment to all his friends, and,
as it proved in the end, a painful experiment, and a vain one, to gain salvation.
Christ alone could pardon sin, but Luther had that yet to learn. He thought
to merit salvation. Christ alone is the sinner’s righteousness and
sanctification, but he fully believed the way to become holy and just, was
to shut himself up within holy walls, amongst a holy brotherhood, and perform
holy offices. God designed him to be the foremost reformer of the Church,
and therefore led him through all the processes of the Church, to show him
their emptiness and vanity: led him at last to Rome itself and made him see
the blasphemous hollowness of all its ceremonies, and the vile corruption
of the men he held in such veneration. But it is no part of our design now
to follow him though all this wearisome course, or to recount the painful
revelations of vanity and corruption made to him step by step as he was led
along. It is rather with Luther’s experience as a Christian than as
a Reformer, that our present purpose is concerned. The object before us is
to see how the Lord brought him out of bondage into liberty, and out of darkness
into light, and brought him at last out of church processes, and out of the
ways of his own devising, to take the a Lord Jesus as the all in all, rather
than to show how he was trained to break the bondage and dispel the darkness
of an enslaved and benighted church.
Buried in the convent at Erfurth he toiled and
suffered two terrible years in vain for salvation. He became emaciated, pale,
hollow-eyed, downcast, hopeless. The lovely and noble Staupitz, Vicar General
and head of the Augustine order in Thuringia, was the first to shed any ray
of light upon the dark and troubled mind of Luther. Staupitz pointed Luther
to the word of God and to the grace of Christ, and inspired him with some
gleams of hope that hope might some time be his. But although the floods
of wrath from the windows of heaven were stayed, and. the fountains of hell
from beneath were closed, the waters gone over him had not yet subsided,
the dove of peace found yet no resting place in his soul, and the bow of
the covenant of promise had not yet sprung forth to his view. Indeed his
struggles and watchings and fastings brought him to the brink of the grave.
He was seized with an illness that threatened his life. One day a venerable
monk came into his cell. Luther opened his heart to him. Despair had seized
upon him. The pains of hell got hold of him. The good old man pointed him
to his credo. Luther had learned the apostle’s creed in his childhood,
and had said it over thousands of times, but when the monk repeated to him
in the tones of a sincere faith the words, “I believe in the forgiveness
of sins,” they carried a light and a consolation, never before felt,
to the sufferer’s soul. “Ah!“ said the monk, “you must
believe not merely that David’s sins or Peter’s are forgiven; the
devils believe that. The commandment of God is, that we believe our own sins
are forgiven. St. Bernard says, in his discourse on the annunciation, ‘The
testimony of the Holy Ghost to your heart is Thy sins are forgiven
thee.”
Luther believed, and joy filled his soul. He rose
quickly from the depths of despair and from the bed of sickness. Life from
the dead was given him in a two-fold sense. The forgiveness of sins was ever
after a living article in his faith, and not a dead letter in the apostles’
creed. He knew and was a witness to others that the greatest sinner may be
forgiven. But as yet, the great underlying principle of justification by
faith, was to him one of the deep and hidden things of God. The noble Staupitz
and the good old Monk already before him, knew as much as Luther had now
learned, and more. And all this Luther himself might have known, and yet
lived a monk all his days. But God had greater things in store for him, and
greater lessons to teach him. All this and more he might have taught life-long,
with the burning zeal of a Paul, and the commanding eloquence of an Apollos,
without causing the foundation of Rome to tremble, or freeing the church
from a single fetter or chain, and without even enjoying himself, the liberty
of the children of God, or the blessings of full trust and full salvation.
Mark what follows.
The assassination of the dear Alexis had awakened
him. The thunderbolt on the Erfurth road struck the death blow of his indecision,
and Staupitz and the good Monk with his credo and his faith, had shed the
first rays and comforts of salvation upon his pathway. This was all they
could do. For all this God used them, but now he was about to make his own
Holy word the means of leading Luther out into the light, and onward into
the open field of truth not yet reached by either the prelate or the monk.
Luther had no Bible. He had access to one in Latin chained to a stone pillar
in the convent, a striking emblem of the Bible at that day. Locked up in
a dead language, and chained to a cold monastic pillar of dead stone. And
yet thank God neither itself dead nor yet bound. Another Bible he could see
also in the Latin by going to the library of the University to read it. That
was the first copy of the Bible he ever saw, and the first word of the Bible
he ever read, from the Bible itself, was the story of Hannah and her child
Samuel lent to the Lord forever, and this charmed him. Yet another copy of
the sacred word was within his reach by going to a brother monk’s cell
to read it, in Latin also. A Bible all his own, was a prize too great for
his fondest dreams. And yet God gave him one. Staupitz brought him a Bible,
a Latin Bible, and presented it to him to be all his own. 0, what a treasure.
How eagerly he searched it. What delight it gave him. That was the first
stone of his great work. That Latin Bible was all his own, and he, albeit
he knew it not, was called of God, and was yet to undo the Latin bolts and
bars, and break in sunder the monastic chains, and give a good honest German
liberty to the blessed Word of God, and bring home its hallowed light to
thousands of darkened hearths and homes, and to millions of benighted souls.
He himself was first to learn from it the fulness of the blessings of the
gospel of peace, and then become the foremost Bible teacher of the
world.
Soon he was ordained a priest, and then very soon
appointed professor of philosophy in the University of Wittemberg. Staupitz
recommended him to Frederick, Elector of Saxony, and the Elector sent him
his commission. At once besides the duties of his own professorship, he began
giving lectures during an unoccupied hour, upon the Bible, first upon the
Psalms, then upon Romans. It was a new thing under the sun. His lectures
were clear, warm, stirring, eloquent, powerful. His fame spread out. Students
gathered in. Soon by appointment of the Elector, and by the persuasion of
Staupitz, and by the hand of Carlstadt he was made “Doctor in
Theology,” Biblical doctor, and sworn to defend the gospel with all
his strength. Now at last he was in the very chair, and the very work designed
for him from the first.
But these are the events of his outward life.
The life within is that which concerns us. We have seen how Luther came to
the faith of the forgiveness of sins. We will now trace the steps of his
final and full freedom of soul through faith in the Lord Jesus. One day,
while studying Romans for a lecture to the students, the words of the prophet
Habakkuk as quoted by Paul, Rom. 1:17 — ”The just shall live by
faith,” struck their light through his soul. Here was the grand principle
of life and righteousness. He saw it, grasped it, exulted in it, and began
teaching it with all the force and fire of his eloquence and genius. There
were, it is true, applications of this great principle which he was not yet
prepared to see, or to make, both to the church and to his own heart and
life. But the principle of justification by faith was no longer a hidden
one to him, and it infused a new life and a new power into his soul and his
teachings. He applied it with sunbeam clearness to the forgiveness of sins.
He saw how God could be just, and yet justify him that believeth in Jesus,
however great his sins might be. Selected not long after to represent seven
convents in matter of difference between them and the Vicar General, at the
court of the Roman Pontiff he set off, led by the hand of God into Rome itself,
to witness with his own eyes and ears the blasphemous hollowness, and putrid
corruptions of the church. On the way he was again taken ill, and again brought
to look down into the grave and up to the Judgment Bar of God. His sins troubled
him. The old Erfurth horror of darkness returned upon him. But in tine midst
of it the words of the prophet, “The just shall live by faith”
came again to him with a new force and filled him with the light of heaven.
And yet again, while looking upon the ruins of ancient Rome, and almost
overwhelmed by the conviction that the Rome which then was would one day
be also in ruins, the holy city would pass away, lie in ashes, the same words
came to his relief and comfort again, “The just shall live by faith.”
The church shall live though Rome should die. Christ lives, and the gates
of hell shall never prevail against his church. Luther had not yet learned
to take the Lord Jesus for his sanctification. He had one process for the
forgiveness of sins, that of faith, and another for the pursuit of holiness,
that of works. He believed in Jesus, and trusted that for the sake of Jesus
who had died, and risen again for his justification, his sins were all freely
forgiven. But he longed for a holy heart and a holy life, and sought them
by means not by faith. The truth that Jesus is all to the sinner, that in
Jesus he has all if he takes him for all, he had not yet perceived. Christ
a propitiation he accepted, but Christ a sanctification he rejected. Strange
that having Christ, and believing in him, and having in him the fountain
of holiness, indeed our own holiness, just as really and fully as he is our
own sacrifice for sin, we should go about to work out, or seek for holiness
of heart imparted to us from God aside from, not in Christ. Yet so it is.
So it was with Luther. At Rome he performed all holy offices, and visited
every sacred place, hungering and thirsting after righteousness. One day
he sought to secure a special indulgence promised to all holy pilgrims who
should climb Pilate’s staircase, so called, on their knees. This
Pilate’s staircase was said to have been transported bodily by miracle,
in the night, from Jerusalem to Rome. As Luther crept painfully from stone
to stone upward, suddenly he heard, as he thought, a voice of thunder in
the depths of his heart, “The just shall live by faith.” These
words had often before told him that the just are made alive by faith, but
now they thundered through his soul the truth that even so “the just
shall live (be kept alive) by faith.” By faith they shall be kept by
the power of God; by faith they shall make progress onward and upward; by
faith their sins shall be forgiven; and by faith their hearts and lives shall
be made holy.
Ah! well might the historian say of Luther that
“this was a creative word for the reformer,” now for the first
time he was freed from all false processes of salvation, and fully established
in the true. Faith now, as the condition, and Jesus as the salvation he saw
was the whole. Full salvation was in Jesus, and Jesus was the soul’s
in full, through full trust in him. When this word resounded in this new
force through his soul, it is no wonder that Luther sprang to his feet upon
the stone steps up which he had been crawling like a worm, horrified at himself,
and struck with shame for the degradation to which superstition had debased
him, and fled from the scene of his folly. Luther himself says, “Then
l felt myself born again as a new man, and I entered by an open door into
the very paradise of God. From that hour l saw the precious and holy Scriptures
with new eyes. l went through the whole Bible. l collected a multitude of
passages which taught me what the work of God was. Truly this text of St.
Paul was to me the very gate of heaven.”