“What are you looking for?” “God's grace and your mercy,” Martin Luther replied. “Are you married?” continued the prior. He was the head of the Augustinian monastery where Luther wanted to live. Martin thought that a life of poverty, chastity, and humility would bring him closer to God and free him from the guilt for sin with which his conscience tormented him. “Are you married?” the prior asked. “No.” “Do you owe anybody any work or money?” “No.” “Do you have any secret diseases?” “No.”
“The life you are about to take up will be a hard one. You will no longer be able to do as you please, your food will be skimpy, and you will have to wear rough clothes. During the day you will have to work hard and at night you will have to spend long hours in prayer. You will have to fight sin, you can never marry, you will be poor and forced to beg, and you will be lonely. Are you, Martin Luther, ready to accept these hardships?” “Yes.” With that Luther set out on a life he thought would bring him closer to God.
But it only drove him further away and cast his troubled conscience into a pit of despair. He did all that he was told to do. But had he done enough? Could God ever be pleased with him?
Luther fasted, spent sleepless nights in prayer, locked himself in his room, and beat himself as punishment for his sins. A few days later his fellow monks forced the door open and found him lying unconscious on the stone floor. Yet, in all that he did, he never once felt that God loved him or that he was doing enough to be saved. The thought of Christ, his Judge, tormented him. As he said later, “The name of Christ often frightened me, and, when I looked on Him and the cross, He seemed to me like a flash of lightning. Mention His name and I would rather have heard the devil mentioned, for I believed that I would have to do good works until they made Christ love and forgive me.”
Do the things you do, dear friends, make or break your relationship with God? Do your works draw you closer to Him? Do they make you His disciple? After all, that is what Luther desired – He wanted to be able to say, Lord Jesus, I Am Yours.
I. If we make our home in Your Word…
One day when Luther felt especially low, an older priest spoke to him in words that he never forgot. “Martin,” he said, “don't you remember the Apostles' Creed? Don't you know that it shows that God loved you enough to send His Son to save you? Haven't you often said, ‘I believe in the forgiveness of sins'? Martin, don't torture yourself with your sin. Throw yourself into the Savior's arms – the Savior who died for you!”
Throw yourself into the Savior's arms. Where do you learn about that Savior, dear friends? The Apostles' Creed hasn't made Him up on its own. It only states the truths that we confess from the Word of God. It's the Word that makes these things clear to us; it's the Word that shows us Christ. So to that Word Luther went.
He dedicated himself to a life of studying God's Word. One day in 1514, he was studying St. Paul's letter to the Romans in his room on the second floor of a tower attached to the monastery. As he worked his way through the first chapter, he came to verses 16 and 17: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.'”
“Now wait a minute,” Luther told himself. “What does Paul mean when he talks about the ‘righteousness from God'? And how does man become righteous before God? Oh, I know that God shows His righteousness by punishing sinners every time they do wrong. And the only way a man can become righteous is to do all that God wants him to do. (That's impossible!)
“But, no, that can't be right. Paul says man is made righteous by faith , by believing something that comes from God. Well, what has God done for man to make him righteous or holy?
“Let me see now. Paul says the Gospel is the power that saves. Now what does the Gospel talk about? Why, it tells us about Jesus Christ. Jesus kept the Law perfectly. Yet, He was punished on the cross. But why? Because he had done something wrong? No, because I had, (and “God laid on Him the iniquity of us all” Is.53:6; “He became a curse for us and thereby redeemed us from the curse of the law” Ga.3:13).
“I see the answer! I see the answer! God punished Jesus in my place, the same Jesus who had kept God's holy law. By punishing His Son, God carried out His threat that sin will be punished by death. All I do is accept this fact, and I need not fear that God will
punish me with eternal death. I am holy in God's sight because I know and believe that Jesus is holy for me and has taken my punishment.”
With those words, Luther described what was later called his “tower experience.” He had finally found the answer to the questions that had tortured him for so long: “How can I be sure that God has forgiven my sins and that He loves me? How am I drawn closer to Him? How Am I His and escape the fear of death for my sin?”
How, dear friends? one word, Christ. Christ has done for me what was necessary. Christ is my righteousness. To believe that makes me His , now and forever.
Where did Luther get that conviction? Right here in God's Word, not through his own works, not through his own thinking, not by what someone else told him or did for him, but here in God's Word it was revealed to him. So, from then on Luther made the Word of God his home where he dwelt day in and day out, for the Word and only the Word told him how he belonged to Christ.
About it he said, “Among all gifts the gift of the Word of God is the most valuable, for if you take this away, it is like taking the sun away from the earth. If the Word were removed, what would the world be but a hell and a mere realm of Satan? What do people (know or) accomplish without the Word? For only the Word keeps a joyful conscience and a gracious God (before us)….Though there are many great gifts of God in the world…the one gift which includes and sustains all the others is the Word, which proclaims that God is merciful and promises forgiveness of sins and life everlasting” (Plass #4733).
And we dare to neglect that Word?! How silly we are when we do, for if we have this Word of grace, dear friends, We Are God's . Is it any wonder then that Jesus encouraged us in our text, “If you make my Word your home, then you are really my disciples.”
A home means you dwell there, day in and day out. A home is where you come back to time and time again. A home is your refuge where you find rest and safety. Have you made God's Word your home where you live constantly, not just once in a while? Here God speaks to you; here you find aid against the devil, sin, and eternal death; here you find heaven. Hold to it; learn from it; believe its promises; dwell in it constantly, for if we make His Word our home, We Will Be His.
II. And then His truth will free us . Our text says : “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Now that raises the question: “From what do we need to be set free?”
After hearing earlier just a small portion of Luther's struggle in his life, would we really have to ask that question? His struggle is our struggle, too. It's a struggle against sin, death, and the devil who darkens our conscience with doubt about God's complete forgiveness for us in Christ.
Haven't you ever felt that too, as you looked at your sins and failures to walk in God's ways? Have you never been tempted to be overcome by them, to ask: “Is God angry with me? Am I being punished for something I did? Has God forgotten about me? Does He really care?”
The devil tempts us to doubt God's grace in Christ and to despair just like he tempted Luther. And in that he tries to enslave us to himself, denying us heaven. That's why Luther felt the way he did in his early years. The devil had taken him as his captive, just like he took Adam and Eve captive in sin, and every other sinner from that time on. In sin the devil seeks to enslave us to himself, and it is horrible.
But, like the Bible says, “Thanks be to God. He gives us the victory over him through our Lord Jesus Christ.” That is the reason that Christ came into our world - to live, to die, and to rise again so that in Him the works of the devil could be destroyed (1 Jn. 3:8). Christ was too strong for Him; He brought us back to God. And when one believes the truth of our forgiveness and life that are promised, it frees us from the devil's hold so that the devil can no longer harm us. There is no longer any reason to fear him.
About such freedom from the devil, Luther said: “Why should you fear? Why should you be afraid? Do you not know that the prince of this world has been judged? He is no lord, no prince any more over you. You have a different, a stronger Lord, Christ, who has overcome and bound him. Therefore, let the prince and god of this world look sour, bare his teeth, make a great noise, threaten, and act in an unmannerly way; he can do no more than a bad dog on a chain. He may bark, run here and there, and tear at the chain. But because it is tied and you avoid it, it cannot bite you. So the devil is towards every Christian. Therefore everything depends on this that we do not feel secure (in ourselves) but continue in the fear of God
and in prayer; then the chained dog cannot harm us” (Plath #1185).
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” His Word of truth assures us of it. We Are His if we make our home in His Word, for then His truth will free us.
So, it is a call to constancy that our Lord issues to us in these days as we celebrate the blessings of the Reformation. Whether or not we shall continue to enjoy the blessings of this salvation depend upon whether or not we live up to the encouragement that the Savior lays before us: “If you continue in My Word, you are really my disciples.” What has our record been in this respect? How zealous have we been in our studies?
We shall not long remain “free” if we neglect “the truth,” and we shall not remember “the truth” very long if we do not diligently continue in God's Word. That's what makes disciples – not only knowing His Word but remaining constant in it.
To that end may God help us to continue making our home in His Word, for if we do His truth will free us and We Shall Be His ; for Jesus' sake. Amen.