In his definitive work on the Doctrine of Justification, James Buchanan once rightly and uncompromisingly stated that ‘the revival of the gospel doctrine of justification was the chief means of effecting the Reformation of religion in Europe in the sixteenth century.’

John Calvin, the great theologian of the Reformation and a contemporary of Martin Luther’s refers to the doctrine of Justification in his famous ‘Institutes of the Christian Religion’ as the ‘main hinge on which religion turns.’

Similarly the Puritan, Thomas Watson in his well-known and much blessed work, ‘A Body of Doctrine’ says that

Justification is the very hinge and pillar of Christianity. An error about justification is dangerous, like a defect in a foundation. Justification by Christ is a spring of the water of life. To have the poison of corrupt doctrine cast into this spring is damnable.

He goes on to note that it was a saying of Luther, that after his death the doctrine of justification would be corrupted. ‘In these latter times, the Arminians and Socinians have cast a dead fly into this precious ointment.’ Watson was rightly recognising not only the centrality of the doctrine but also the church’s indebtedness to Luther, the great trailblazer of the Reformation, who by God’s grace was responsible for first heralding those glad tidings of great joy after literally centuries of darkness and despair had eclipsed and obscured this foundational truth.

Justification by faith alone in Christ alone is the priceless jewel that Luther through the illumination of the Holy Spirit came to fully comprehend and apprehend in the Word of God. Consequently, he could dispense with the vast heap of religious ceremonies and rituals, good works and devotions that testified and continue to testify to fallen man’s ingenuity in manufacturing rituals, rules and regulations in an altogether fruitless and hopeless quest to merit salvation.

Luther, like the prophet Isaiah, came to understand that “we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away” (Isa. 64:6). He could say along with the apostle Paul, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom 7:18, 24).

God declares that “There is none righteous, no, not one”. He teaches us that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and that the wages of sin is death. Luther came to truly grasp that Jesus Christ is the only Saviour of sinners, for there is no other name given under heaven whereby we must be saved.

As he was to astutely remind those privileged hearers of his celebrated ‘Table Talks’, ‘Adam received the promise of the woman’s seed before he had done any work or sacrifice, to the end God’s truth might stand fast – namely, that we are justified before God altogether without works, and obtain forgiveness of sins merely by grace.’ Only the imputed righteousness of the One who knew no sin and was obedient unto death – even that accursed death of the cross, could propitiate God the Father and make atonement for the sins of all those who are called and equipped to place their faith and trust firmly and squarely in Him. The believer, in other words, as the apostle Paul assures us in his Letter to the Ephesians, is accepted only in the Beloved. When God the Father looks down upon His adopted children He sees the reflected glory of Christ in their persons because they are clothed in His perfect righteousness.

Luther came to recognise that a correct understanding and acceptance of the teaching of Scripture on this subject is absolutely vital to the spiritual well being of Christ’s church here in the world. He was to unambiguously state that justification by faith, ‘is the head and the cornerstone. It alone begets, nourishes, builds, preserves, and defends the church of God; and without it the church of God cannot exist for one hour. For no one who does not hold this article – or, to use Paul’s expression, this ‘sound doctrine’ (Titus 2:1) – is able to teach aright in the church or successfully to resist any adversary – this is the heel of the Seed that opposes the old serpent and crushes its head. That is why Satan, in turn, cannot but persecute it.’

On another occasion he was equally adamant that ‘whoever departs from the article of justification does not know God and is an idolater – for when this article has been taken away, nothing remains but error, hypocrisy, godlessness, and idolatry, although it may seem to be the height of truth, worship of God, holiness, etc.’

Luther was surely correct in his conviction that in order to proclaim the Gospel it is crucial that we fully understand and believe what the Scripture teaches concerning justification.

He warned the church in his day that ‘All heretics have continually failed in this one point, that they do not rightly understand or know the article of justification. If we had not this article certain and clear, it were impossible we could criticise the pope’s false doctrine of indulgences and other abominable errors, much less be able to overcome greater spiritual errors and vexations. If we only permit Christ to be our Saviour, then we have won, for he is the only girdle which clasps the whole body together, as St. Paul excellently teaches.’

He further humbly notes, in the introduction to his commentary on Galatians, ‘Yet I am compelled to forget my shame and be quite shameless in view of the horrible profanation and abomination which have always raged in the Church of God, and still rages today, against this, one solid rock which we call the doctrine of justification. I mean the doctrine that we are redeemed from sin, death and the devil, and made partakers of eternal life, not by ourselves (and certainly not by our works, which are less than ourselves), but by the help of another, the only-begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ.’

Before we briefly examine Luther’s definition of justification, let us consider how he came to discover this priceless truth and note the extent to which the professing church in his day had deviated from it. Roland Bainton begins his popular biography of Luther in the following dramatic way.

He writes: ‘On a sultry day in July of the year 1505 a lonely traveller was trudging over a parched road on the outskirts of the Saxon village of Stotternheim. He was a young man, short but sturdy, and wore the dress of a university student. As he approached the village, the sky became overcast. Suddenly there was a shower, then a crashing storm. A bolt of lightning rived the gloom and knocked the man to the ground. Struggling to rise, he cried in terror, ‘St Anne help me! I will become a monk.’

The man who thus called upon a saint was later to repudiate the cult of the saints. He who vowed to become a monk was later to renounce monasticism. A loyal son of the (Roman) Catholic Church he was later to shatter the structure of medieval Catholicism. A devoted servant of the pope, he was later to identify the popes with Antichrist. For this young man was Martin Luther.’

Luther’s upbringing, education and vocation were typical of many clergy of his day and age. He was born on 10 November 1483 into a relatively poor but nevertheless pious German family. His parents raised him in the nurture and admonition of the Lord but his faith was largely distinguished by a vast array of superstitious beliefs and practices that found acceptance and commendation in the visible church of his day. It was for this very reason that he cried out to St Anne, the so-called patron saint of miners, which was his father’s profession, when he thought his life was threatened and when in fear and ignorance he vowed to become a monk.

Up until that time there is nothing to suggest that Luther had contemplated renouncing life, as we are called to live it in the world, for the unbiblical asceticism and rigorous rounds of religious observances and works that were characteristic – at least in theory, of the monastic vocation. He attended a school at Magdeburg run by the Brethren of the Common Life as a boy and had matriculated at the University of Erfurt in 1501 with a view to studying Law on the recommendation of his father, Hans.

Nevertheless Luther was a conscientious monk, true to his monastic vows and meticulous in keeping the due ceremonial observances of his order, erroneously but sincerely believing that this was the sure path to reconciliation with God and eternal life. Reflecting on his monastic experience he later noted, ‘I was a good monk and kept my order so strictly that I could claim that if ever a monk were able to reach heaven by monkish discipline I should have found my way there. All my fellows in the house, who knew me, would bear me out on this. For if it had continued much longer I would, what with vigils, prayers, readings and other such works, have done myself to death.’

Nevertheless in spite of his incessant labours, confessions and penance’s he found no peace with God. He says, ‘The more I tried to remedy an uncertain, weak and afflicted conscience with the traditions of men, the more each day I found it uncertain, weaker, the more troubled.’ His notion that man had to earn his salvation through meritorious works was all but universal and was rigorously reinforced inside the confines of the institutional church.

It was particularly emphasised on his entry into the monastic life. Had Luther known the Bible’s teaching on justification that salvation is all of grace then he would have understood the futility and barrenness of such beliefs and practices. As the apostle so forcefully reminds us in his Letter to the Galatians: “a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 2:16).

While we should appreciate that Luther’s involvement in the famous Indulgence controversy helped focus and crystallise his thought on the vital question of how one’s sins are forgiven, we must appreciate that it was in the God-breathed Word alone that he grasped the solution to man’s greatest and most basic need – which is to be reconciled to God – to be declared just before an infinitely holy and just God.

Luther was without question first and foremost a student and devotee of Scripture. He taught biblical theology at Wittenberg and it was his lectures on the Psalms, 1513-14; Romans in 1515-16; Galatians, 1516-17 and Hebrews in 1517-18 that truly bore fruit through the germination in his mind of this foundational doctrine that Justification is by faith alone without the works of the Law.

He came to truly grasp this priceless jewel through the illumination of the Spirit who shed His light on God’s Word at Romans 1:17. “For therein is the righteous­ness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith”. Later reflecting on that wonderful awakening when the light of the gospel cast away all doubt, despair, darkness and frustration, he wrote,

I greatly longed to understand Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, ‘the justice of God’, because I took it to mean that justice whereby God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust. My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him. Yet I clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant. Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that the ‘just shall live by faith’. Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning and whereas before the ‘justice of God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven.

He went on to add, ‘If you have a true faith that Christ is your Saviour, then at once you have a gracious God, for faith leads you in and opens up God’s heart and will, that you should see pure grace and overflowing love. This it is to behold God in faith that you should look upon his Fatherly, friendly heart, in which there is no anger nor ungraciousness. He who sees God as angry does not see him rightly but looks only on a curtain, as if a dark cloud had been drawn across his face.’

Luther renounced his own righteousness recognising it was but filthy rags in God’s sight, and through faith found himself robed in the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ alone and assured of eternal life in the Beloved.

Luther once pertinently said that ‘the Roman Catholics and Anabaptists are today agreed on this one point against the Church of God (even if their words disguise it), namely, that the work of God depends on the worthiness of the person.’ Sadly there are many today – even professing evangelicals, who share these ill-conceived notions. They wrongly take the view that justification is not by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to guilty sinners but instead that it is by infusion of grace which enables the believer to earn his own salvation through doing good works. This is not the gospel but instead it is its antithesis. Moreover we must take heed and duly recognise that this false teaching of infusion was the grave error and poison that paved the way for sacerdotalism, sacramentalism and many other forms of idolatry and superstition.

How are you and I to judge in these matters? How can we be sure that Luther and his Reformed contemporaries and successors were/are correct on this vital issue of a sinner’s justification? Surely we must go to the bar of Scripture which can be the only true authority in all matters of faith and practice.

God says that believers are “justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.” Romans 3:24-28

Ephesians 2:8-9 similarly assures us: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”

Do we believe in the Word of the sovereign God, the omnipotent and omniscient One, the One who is all-wise and perfect in all His ways? Or are we to trust in the manifold inventions and machinations of fallen man? Let us declare, along with the apostle: let God be true and every man a liar!

Augustus Toplady once memorably and accurately stated that ‘Christ’s sheep do not contribute any part of their wool to their own clothing. They wear, and are justified by, the fine linen of Christ’s obedience only.’ We too must hold firmly to this doctrine and boldly proclaim it come what may. It alone can give comfort, peace and rest to our souls. Let me conclude by quoting the poignant words of the 18^th century English Baptist pastor, J. C. Ryland, who once said that ‘Justification by Christ’s imputed righteousness is the centre arch of the bridge by which we pass out of time into blissful eternity.’ May each of us say amen to that!