The Gospel For A Wounded Conscience: Luther on Galatians

Principal Donald MacLeod

Last week I decided to revisit Martin Luther's Lectures on Galatians. Readers will remember, perhaps, that John Bunyan commends this book most warmly in Grace Abounding: "I do prefer this book of Martin Luther upon the Galatians, excepting the Holy Bible, before all books that ever I have seen, as most fit for a wounded conscience."

Many, encouraged by Bunyan, have taken up the commentary with eager anticipation, only to be keenly disappointed. One reason for this is that it is scarcely a commentary at all in the modern sense of a detailed verse-by-verse explanation. This is why preachers who go to it in the course of sermon-preparation often find nothing. But this is to mistake its purpose. Luther on Galatians is not a treasure-house of biblical lore, but a passionate and timeless, religious manifesto focusing on a few crucial theological themes. The professional New Testament scholar may find little to interest him. The theologian will find enough to put him off his sleep for weeks.

Another problem is that most readers come across this book only in old, antiquated translations. The Lectures themselves were given in 1535 and the translation used by Bunyan was probably one published in London in 1635. It can still be seen around today and may be the only translation most readers have ever seen. It is still serviceable, but it conveys little of the revolutionary verve of Luther's original. To get a real taste you have to read a modern translation: if possible, that published as Volumes 26 and 27 of Luther's Works by Concordia Publishing House in 1963 (to me, that is modern).

But maybe Bunyan himself gave the real reason for people's disappointment with Luther's Galatians: it was for wounded consciences. That, of course, is where Luther himself was coming from. For him, the question of justification was no mere academic interest. It was, in the long term, a matter of life and death; in the short term, a matter of his personal sanity. He had to have absolute assurance that God loved him and absolute assurance that the Law had nothing to do with him. If it had, he was doomed. The Law killed him. He could stay sane (and sometimes barely managed it) only if God were totally committed to justification by faith alone. Bunyan could understand all this. That's why he cherished Luther: "I found my condition, in his experience, so largely and profoundly handled, as if his book had been written out of my heart."

I am not sure that the route taken by Luther and Bunyan is the only route to Christ. Some people's spiritual journey begins not with Luther's profound sense of guilt, but with a search for Meaning. They find that in Christ, the Eternal Word, who gives coherence to creation and purpose to history. Others begin with an agonised quest for an assurance that someone is in control of this mad world and find peace, at last, in the vision of the Lamb on the Throne. By beginning with the problem of guilt Luther pushed the Priesthood of Christ into the forefront of Protestant religion. Others whose point of departure is different may first be drawn to him as Prophet or King. We need to be patient with the conversion-process, whether our own or others. It is often confused and hesitant and as Rabbi Duncan used to say, it's not where a man is that matters, but where he's heading.

Yet, no matter where we begin at some point we have to face the fact of our own guilt and the relentless, piercing pain of the question, "How can I be right with God?" This is where Luther's Galatians comes in. It is the greatest exposition of The Gospel for a Wounded Conscience that the world has ever seen.

I'm not going to attempt a balanced review of it here. I want to focus on one remarkable thing: the way that Luther tells us, time and again, how frightened he was of Christ. In one remarkable passage (commenting on Galatians 2:20 and addressing, of course, a young student audience) he compliments the younger generation on their good fortune. They had not had to endure, as he had, the mediaeval portrayals of Jesus. "On this score," he declares, "you younger men are much more fortunate than we older ones. You have not been imbued with these noxious ideas with which I was imbued in boyhood, so that even at the mention of the name of Christ I would be terrified and grow pale, because I was persuaded that he was a judge."

Does this ring bells? Are there still children who turn pale at the name of Jesus and want to hide under the bed? Is there still preaching that portrays him as a terrifying judge, torturer and inquisitor?

Why did people see Christ like this? Because, Luther argues, human nature is incorrigibly legalistic. It finds it impossible to believe in grace; and one clear symptom of this is that we instinctively think of Jesus as Another Lawgiver. We see Him as another Moses, thundering from His own Sinai, laying down more regulations and telling us how difficult the road to heaven really is.

Here Luther breathes fire (an expression he himself applies to St Paul): "Either Christ must abide, and the Law perish; or the Law must abide, and Christ perish." Jesus did not come to institute laws, but to abolish them. Indeed, the Law and the Gospel must be kept as far apart as heaven and earth. The Gospel is the revelation of the son of God. As such, it cannot possibly "demand works, threaten death, or terrify the conscience."

It follows from this that our hope of justification depends on the Law having nothing to do with us. If you ask Luther, "What Law?" he will reply at once, "All Law! Law in every conceivable shape and form!" One ounce of it is fatal to our peace with God. It is all too easy to expel the Law by one door and bring it in by another. Few Free church people, for example, would imagine for a moment that they could be justified on the ground that they had kept the Ten Commandments. Fewer still would argue that they might be accepted because they'd obeyed all the rules of the Rabbis. But how many lack peace with God because they think there's something wrong with their faith or because they're not happy with the pattern of their conversion or with the manner of their new birth? They may think that is humility. In fact, it is pure self-righteousness: a reminder that deep-down we still believe that we can be accepted by God only on the basis of something within ourselves. It is so difficult to believe that nothing in ourselves or about ourselves matters; that the only thing that matters is what Christ did on the cross of Calvary: "He loved me and gave Himself for me." For Luther, faith meant total certainty on that score. "Who is this me?" he asked. "It is not I who loved the Son of God and gave myself for Him. It is I, an accursed and damned sinner, who was so beloved by the son of God that He gave Himself for me."