Martin Luther

The Tower Experience

Luther himself tells us about the dramatic turning-point in his life. He was sitting alone in his study at Wittenberg, thinking as he did so often of God's terrible justice. His Bible lay open before him and his eyes fell on a passage from the first chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans.

Verse 17 says, in part, that "the just shall live by his faith." He must have read this passage many times before, but at this moment a light kindled in Luther. As he read the passage, he saw that all of his fasting and penance counted for nothing, and that the only thing that would save him was simple faith.

This became one of the foundation-stones of Protestantism, and often goes by the catch-phrase of "justification by faith" (in Latin, sola fide). That is, individuals are justified, are made able to meet God's justice, by faith alone.

This blinding insight completely changed Luther, who later called it a conversion, for he felt he'd been converted from a false understanding to true faith. Only then was he part of the true Church. Those who did not understand that Christians were saved only by faith and not by any other agency were in fact not true Christians. This is what allowed him to be so fierce in his condemnation of the teachings of the Church of Rome: it wasn't actually Christianity. Worse, it was a false religion pretending to be Christianity.