Theology for Everybody: RomansSample

Roughly a millennium after Augustine, around the fall of 1515, the Holy Spirit once again sent a sniper shot into a man’s soul from heaven with a verse from Romans. Martin Luther is widely known as one of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation. Among the most important people to walk the earth, he lived from 1483 to 1546 as a contemporary of the first printing press with movable type, Copernicus, Henry VIII, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Christopher Columbus, and John Calvin. A copper miner’s son, Luther was born in Germany some 120 miles outside Berlin.

After a powerful encounter with God in which he was nearly struck by lightning, Luther became a priest and monk, which included taking vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience for the rest of his life. Trained as a lawyer, Luther lived an emotionally tormented life. Constantly judging his life by the demands of God’s laws in the Bible with a brutal honesty and brilliant legal mind, he drove himself nearly insane by seeking to make himself righteous in God’s sight, even while possessing a terrifying fear of God. He engaged in endless prayer, severe fasting that gave him significant intestinal problems, sleepless nights, freezing cold, and even beating his own body in an effort to atone for his sin.

But by the grace of God, Luther had an epiphany that changed not only his life but also the lives of countless others. While he was a professor of theology in Germany at the University of Wittenberg, he was teaching on Paul’s letter to the Romans, and he had a Holy Spirit revelation in Scripture that changed the world: “'I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates.' This new understanding of this one verse—Romans 1:17— changed everything; in a real sense, it became the doorway to the Reformation. 'Thus that place in Paul was for me truly the gate to paradise,' says Luther (Latin Writings, 336–337).”

Luther learned that righteousness is a gift God gives by grace and faith in Jesus Christ. It cannot be earned or merited through human religious and moral performance. In shorthand, theologians call this great doctrine “justification by faith.”

Over 200 years later, this time in London, the Holy Spirit would send yet another sniper shot from Romans to the soul of Anglican pastor John Wesley. He attended a worship and study meeting at Aldersgate Street in London on May 24, 1738. Part of Martin Luther’s commentary on Romans was read aloud. Wesley remembers, "He was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ. I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for my salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken my sins away, even mine; and saved me from the law of sin and death (John Wesley, Works (1872), volume 1)."

Wesley led a great spiritual revival in England based upon the life of the Spirit imparted to him, and Luther, through Paul’s letter to the Romans.

Today’s Reflection

As you consider these great movements in Christian history, how have Paul’s writings transformed your faith?