It is still not a foregone conclusion exactly at what time the monk Martin Luther made his reformational discovery that formed the basis of his 95 theses of October 31, 1517. Luther did not get that special experience in papal Rome, the corrupt town where he had travelled to in 1511.

Luther was probably already occupied with his reflection on the questions about justice and grace at the time, but it took a few years before these matters began to become clear to him. And then it happened in Wittenberg, a small town in the electorate of Saxony, on the edge of the civilized world (as some called it in a derogatory way). Could anything good come from such a place?

Turm-erlebnis [Tower Experience]⤒🔗

While the one researcher argues for an early date (1512/1514) of Luther’s “reformatorische Wende” [reformational turning point], others opt for a late date, even later than 1517. It does make a big difference: whether his discovery led to the reformation of the church, or rather that the new insight was a fruit of the Reformation.

The attention for Luther’s “Wende” (meaning, turning point) usually focuses on his so-called Turm-erlebnis, the experience in the tower room in the Augustinian monastery of Wittenberg. There he more or less unexpectedly discovered the liberating account of Romans 1:17: “The righteous shall live by faith.” Luther later said that by God’s grace he saw the gate to paradise opening up! If we want to relate this event to Luther’s university treatment of Paul’s letter to the Romans, then it will have taken place somewhere in 1515. However, a year earlier something started to dawn already.

We will not involve ourselves in the endless discussion about the exact time period, but we want to pay particular attention to the substance of the “Wende.” What preceded this Turm-erlebnis? How and when did Luther begin to question critically what “righteousness” and “justification” actually mean? After all, it became the starting point of a fundamental turnaround, which allowed Luther to teach the church to follow Scripture alone: ​​sola scriptura and sola gratia. This discovery may be described as “sudden” in Luther, but it is part of a fundamental and lengthy process of thinking. This is what we would like to delve into, and we will pay attention to two aspects with Luther:

1. his explanation of the Bible as teacher at the university;
2. his preaching about the Bible.

“Vorlesungen”←⤒🔗

After Luther had obtained his doctorate in theology in 1512 (with as supervisor Professor Andreas Karlstadt), he was appointed professor. But he waited until the winter semester of 1513/14 with his university education at the Leucorea, as the university of Wittenberg was then called. He may have waited for his official appointment by the general of the order of the Augustinian Eremites, to which Luther belonged. His first series of “Vorlesungen” (lectures) was about the Psalms. Instead of a scholastic explanation, the students were given here a new insight into the deeper sense of the Old Testament songs: Luther often applied these to Christ, regarding them as prayers of Christ. Here we already notice something of the solus Christus: that only through Christ would it be possible to properly understand the Old Testament. The “reformatorische Wende” must have started in this context. After this — that is, after the summer of 1515 — Luther presented his lectures on the letter to the Romans and then on the letters to the Galatians and the Hebrews.

Sermons←⤒🔗

Already in the Augustinian monastery of Erfurt (1509/1510) Luther must have known a moment when, in connection with a lecture on Psalm 51, he had to delve into the meaning of the word “righteousness.” Although we know few concrete statements about it, one can nevertheless suspect that a small “alarm bell” had already sounded in Luther’s study.

In 1514 Luther was given a permanent appointment to lead the services as a priest in the Town Church of Wittenberg, the St. Marienkirche. The building is known for the two connected church towers, dating from the late Middle Ages. Through Luther’s sermons this church was to grow into the “mother church” of the Reformation. Luther’s sermons drew much attention, and more and more churchgoers wished to hear him. At Christmas 1514 he preached about the first chapter of the Gospel of John, the well-known prologue (vv. 1-14a) in which the apostle writes about the Word who was God and was with God and that had created everything, who had become flesh and had come to live among the people: Jesus Christ.

Luther’s theology is sometimes called “Word Theology” — the comprehensive content would become decisive in his teaching in church and university.

John 1←⤒🔗

In the sermon on John 1, Luther asks the intriguing question: why does John present Jesus here as the “Word”? Luther points to the similarity with Genesis 1 and states that God is creatively active in his Son. The Word is at the same time God’s action. Creation, however, has degenerated through sin. Now God comes back into action through the Word: he establishes a new community of life through Christ, which will result in a renewed creature in perfect righteousness and holiness. All of this is an act of grace from God, which manifests itself in Christ. Whoever believes in him sees God’s actions and may be certain of the new life in Christ, both now and later.

This classification makes it clear — and Luther is working toward this in his sermon — that there is a threefold birth of Christ:

1. a birth of eternity: Christ is God’s Son from eternity, and through him creation came into being;
2. a birth in time: through his birth from the Virgin Mary, he became the Son of Man to save humanity and he remained God’s Son;
3. a new birth in man: through this Christ comes to dwell in the heart of the believer through his Spirit and he promises to make believers share — in the way of faith — in his blessed work of re-creation.

In short, it is not the human word that is decisive for life now and in eternity, but Christ who became the incarnate Word of God and in whom — through his eternal power — our re-creation unto eternal life is guaranteed. So promise and faith are here side by side; they are inextricably linked in Christ!

The Psalms←⤒🔗

Luther always prepared the lectures on the Psalms in his tower room in the Augustinian monastery. There he used the old Vulgate text, which had been printed in such a way that a considerable space had been left for special notes both between the lines of the verses and at the edge of the text. Luther also used the translation of the French language scholar Faber Stapulensis (1455-1536), but he did follow a new method in his exegesis. Luther placed an important notice in no fewer than 48 of the psalms: the subject of these songs is Christ. No interpreter before Luther had ever done this: the Psalms characterized as the proclamation of Christ. A new and brighter light began to shine.

God’s Righteousness←⤒🔗

The word “righteousness” is a central concept in the development of Luther’s theology. He was raised and educated in a scholastic understanding of God’s justice. That had dominated the entire mind of the church in the Middle Ages. All of Roman Catholic pastoral care was marked by it. God was seen as righteous in himself, full of righteousness. That is how it was also found in the Bible. But this was not Luther’s problem. For him, the urgent question was: how does a righteous God stand over against man? And this is not about man as God had created him, in true righteousness and holiness, but as man had turned himself against God and had fallen into sin. Only one answer could be possible: God’s justice demanded that man would be punished. A sinful person could not stand before God. At best he could make some improvements before God through penance and good works. However, no matter how faultless man would live, he could not escape the wrath of God.

Then what about Christ? It appears that he has no place in this narrative. But he is there: Christ is also God and he is the One who will judge the living and the dead. He is standing at his Father’s side. And therefore his justice is nothing more than God’s punishing judgment for eternity. But how can a person then ever be saved?

Luther Is Desperate←⤒🔗

Luther was kept occupied with this desolate prospect. He always experienced his theological insights very personally, in a very existential way. He could lie awake for nights and get desperate. Had he then entered the monastery for that reason? Couldn’t the lightning have struck him dead in 1505? Had he chastised himself for nothing, and turned away from all sorts of earthly pleasure? What had it all been worth? Luther got stuck in his thinking. He sought for something to hold onto in his own righteousness.

At the end of his life, in 1545, Luther looked back on this period in his life. “I hated those words ‘the righteousness of God’, which I had learned to understand philosophically as a so-called formal or active righteousness. The meaning is then that God is righteous and that he punishes sinners and those who are unrighteous or unjust. But I felt that I was a sinner before God, even though I lived my life as an impeccable monk. I said to myself: As if it is not enough for the poor sinners to be affected by the law of the Ten Commandments by every possible misery. Does God now also have to turn his righteousness and wrath against us through the gospel? I longed to know what Paul meant. Until I, through God’s mercy, contemplating this matter for days and nights, noticed the connection of the words, namely, God’s righteousness is revealed in this, as it is written: the righteous shall live by the grace of God, namely, by faith. That is the meaning, that the passive righteousness of God is revealed through the gospel. That is the righteousness with which our gracious God justifies us by faith.”

Psalms 31, 32, 51, and 71←⤒🔗

Luther learned from the Psalms that man had to disregard any self-righteousness and that he was to live by the righteousness that God would give. It has to be this way: Adam (the old nature) has to be destroyed and Christ alone must have the supremacy. Luther first learned all of this in his studies on the exegesis of the Psalms. Several songs testify of God’s righteousness. Psalm 31 shows the sinner who calls out, “In you, O LORD, do I take refuge...in your righteousness deliver me!” And the sinner also confesses, “My strength fails because of my iniquity [or: unrighteousness], and my bones waste away” (verse 10).

In Psalm 32 David sings out, “Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,” and in verse 5: “You forgave the iniquity of my sin.” Forgiveness here essentially means getting rid of sin, forever! And for that reason the person who has been acquitted can also call out to others: “Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart” (verse 11)!

And Psalm 51 speaks in a very open way about penance, sin and grace, justification, and the true worship before God. Likewise, Psalm 71 speaks in clear terms about deliverance through God’s righteousness.

Then Luther asks the big question how all of this has become possible. His answer: that here Christ himself is speaking. He is our Judge and our Saviour. And so the man can learn very clearly that this justification and deliverance only take place because of the righteousness granted by Christ. Luther did speak of “a foreign righteousness,” which came from outside, from the Redeemer, for sinners who in themselves possessed no single trait of righteousness.

As we review Luther’s method of dealing with these matters we can conclude that his treatment of the Psalms paved the way for him to a fresh and new understanding of Romans 1:17 (as well as Romans 3:21-24). It is probably better to put it this way: his two activities (preaching and teaching) supported each other in an excellent way.

The Path of Learning←⤒🔗

What have we been able to observe with Luther? What path of learning did he follow? As a teacher and as a preacher, in a lengthy thought process, through a Christian explanation and application of various psalms, he received a good perspective of the true meaning of God’s justice. That was in addition to the justice meted out as punishment, especially (yes, most of the time) the justice (or righteousness) bestowed on us: God’s grace in Christ! Luther could now continue his life without the old Roman scholasticism. He had discovered the Word, the power with which Christ — as the “incarnate Word — lovingly conveys salvation obtained by him to sinners who expect all their salvation from him alone.