A Sketch of Luther’s Reformation
Those who embrace Protestantism are supposed to be protesting something. Yet for some of us, this story is shrouded in mystery—or at least it lacks substance. For many accounts, the story begins with Catholics teaching legalism and Luther merely preaching the Gospel. But the story is more complex and more compelling. Luther, in fact, teaches us to be cautious of even those who speak of a certain kind of false grace.
The start of the Reformation
Luther was a monk, he nailed 95 theses to a door, and the Western church was ripped in half. These are the basics we all know. The question for today is to grasp why he did this. The answer starts by learning what medieval Catholicism actually taught about salvation.
Luther joined the monastery, not so much to save his soul as to ensure that his soul remained saved. This is often one of the places we misapply Luther’s comments about the Roman church: we believe Catholicism is a pure works-righteousness faith. In actuality, it is not. The medieval system is an ‘in by grace, stay in by grace and works’ approach to the faith. The church had centuries earlier condemned Pelagianism (or works-righteousness), so no one was foolish enough to make that mistake. Everyone believed that grace comes in baptism, washes sin away, and places us within the bosom of the church.
The problem is what is required after our baptism. The church taught (rightly) that there is ongoing repentance and remorse in our life for ongoing sins. What had developed in the Middle Ages, though, was a set of beliefs that these works somehow restored the Christian to the state of grace. Sin tarnished the grace given to the believer, so works properly restored the believer to intimacy with a gracious God. These works are seen as the natural outwork of grace, but they eventually became the focus of pastoral advice to layfolks.
The problem, again, is this language described this entire process as an outwork of grace: God allows our meager repentance to count towards the guilt we need removed. He will not throw us out if we are sorry and seek change. Works are therefore not the ground of salvation but they are nevertheless mixed with God’s lovingkindness. Even Purgatory was said to be gracious, because we are given the chance to perform our final penance, even after we have died.
What is perhaps the most ambiguous part of the medieval teaching on salvation is whether the believer has true assurance based on the cross. There was always the threat of losing salvation—of ignoring your penance to the point that you work yourself out of the church. At the very least, the fires of Purgatory were hot enough to make one concerned about the quality of your confession.
So Luther joined the monastery to ensure his salvation would not be lost. He knew he was baptized, but he was unsure if his life in the world provided enough opportunity to deal with sin. There always stood before him the gallows of judgment. Maybe his confession was half-hearted or insincere. Maybe his will was not fully in it. Maybe he was weak. In the end, the simple mixture of mandatory works resulted in the loss of any confidence in the cross itself.
Luther on Grace and Works
This background helps us grasp the initial Protestant message. Luther was aware of the many ways the medieval system approached penance as if it were grace. He just failed to see where any of this was true grace, true salvation by Christ. The mixture of our work with that of Christ is the real problem, no matter how pleasantly these doctrines are taught.
Luther’s claim is essentially that Catholic teachings on works amounts to salvation by works—even when this was always denied by Catholics.
What is convicting about the struggle within the medieval church is how easily we, too, can collapse grace into the same process. We can also describe the Gospel as in by grace, stay in by works. Many of us can tell of experiences where it seemed our conversion was the first moment of grace, but that the Christian life at some point has to be driven by our effort to do better. We may not call it penance, but we too can run the risk of treating works as if they are grace. Do this or that, or run the risk of falling away from God and losing your faith. Stop being a sinner—at least a really bad one—or else maybe the grace of the cross is not truly yours.
Of course, the Bible does frequently warn us against false conversion. But these texts do not point us inward to our own natural qualities or our own strength. Instead they point to the work of the Spirit within us, that we are a new creation, rather than left to re-create ourselves.
This is not to equate evangelical challenges with medieval Catholic problems, but to highlight the radical way Luther wakes us up to true grace. Luther serves us again and again by reminding us that even our talk of grace can mean less than we intend. True grace is, for Luther, seeing the entirety of the Christian life as resting in Christ. Our efforts, our repentance, are not mixed with his final work on the cross. Our sanctification does not maintain our inheritance. Rather, they are a product of the Spirit, which was the downpayment of our inheritance already won.
If you want more, I have a video on Luther’s Reformation that tells this story with more depth (~30 minutes) on my YouTube channel:
