On this, the birthday of Martin Luther, I will pause to thank God for his birth.
On November 10, 1483, in the small Saxon mining town of Eisleben, a miner’s son was born who would go on to alter the course of history. Martin Luther is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in Western Civilization. His name at birth was Martin Luder. Few could have imagined that this infant—born in an obscure corner of the Holy Roman Empire—would one day stand before emperors, challenge popes, and change the way the world understood God, faith, and itself.
Martin was the first surviving son of Hans and Margarethe Luder, hardworking townspeople who belonged to the rising middle class of miners and smelters. Hans Luder was ambitious, determined that his son would not follow him into the mines but would instead study law and bring honor and stability to the family name.
The next day—November 11, the feast of St. Martin of Tours—the infant was baptized in the church of St. Peter and St. Paul and given his saint’s name. The baptismal font still stands today, a quiet monument to the beginning of a life that would forever shape how millions understand God, and more importantly, how to have a God.
Years later, Martin would alter his surname from Luder to Luther, a change that may have carried more than phonetic meaning. Some scholars believe the shift reflected his growing theological identity—possibly inspired by the Greek, eleutherios, meaning “free one.” If so, it was a fitting change for a man whose central discovery was the freedom of the Christian: through faith in Christ alone, the believer is liberated from sin, death, and the devil.
After decades of reform, controversy, and exile, Luther died on February 18, 1546, in the same town where he was born. Surrounded by friends, his final written words, found in his pocket after his death, were “We are beggars. This is true.” This was written in response to his friend Justus Jonas's question about whether he wanted to die firm in his teachings. Luther replied, “Yes,” and then wrote these words on a scrap of paper. This reflected his belief that humans have nothing to offer God and can only receive his gifts through faith alone, a concept central to his theology. From beginning to end, Luther rested on that confession of utter dependence on God’s mercy.
Luther’s life stands as a watershed in history. Through his courage, the Western Church was called back to the gospel: the good news that salvation is God’s work from start to finish. His Ninety-Five Theses, nailed to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg in 1517, began as an academic debate about indulgences but soon ignited a movement that reshaped Europe religiously, politically, and intellectually.
The Disputation that Changed Everything
But if the Ninety-Five Theses began the Reformation, it was the 1518 Heidelberg Disputation that gave it its soul. There, Luther drew a sharp distinction between what he called a theology of glory—which seeks God through human wisdom, moral effort, and visible success—and a theology of the cross, which finds God hidden in weakness, suffering, and the crucified Christ. A distinction between two kinds of theologians—those who seek to find God on their own terms, and those who recognize that God can only be found in the means and places he wills to be found.
The Heidelberg Disputation didn’t just change the church; it changed my life.
My own journey into Lutheranism began within the wide stream of American Evangelical Christianity. For many years, I worshipped and pastored in a context that placed enormous emphasis on doing more, trying harder, and proving one’s faith through visible effort. Success in the Christian life was often measured by commitment, enthusiasm, or ministry productivity.
Over time, I began to recognize that something was profoundly off. The relentless drive toward self-improvement—this theology of glory—wasn’t producing stronger faith but spiritual exhaustion. I watched as sincere believers burned out, grew cynical, or despairingly walked away from the church altogether.
It wasn’t that they didn’t love Jesus; it was that the version of Christianity they were handed kept pointing them back to themselves. Sermons, books, small group studies, and conferences all seemed to echo the same refrain: Do more. Be better. Try harder.
When I began reading Luther, it was like discovering a language for what I had long felt but could never quite articulate. He gave me the words for the tension I saw all around me—the crushing weight of a faith that measures worth by performance.
Luther named what I had been experiencing: the futility of human striving under the law and the freedom of finding one’s righteousness entirely in Christ. He showed me that the gospel for the Christian isn’t a baptized law; it’s a whole new way to live—a life where sinners are declared righteous because of Christ’s work, not their own. A life where God does not invite us to find him through moral ladder climbing, but finds us by coming all the way to us. A life lived not by measuring performance but resting in a promise. A life lived not under scrutiny, but acceptance.
He gave me the words for the tension I saw all around me—the crushing weight of a faith that measures worth by performance.
Through Luther, I found theological permission to say what I had always known was true: our hope does not lie in climbing higher toward God, but in trusting the God who has already come all the way down to us.
God doesn’t wait for us to become righteous; instead, he creates righteousness by speaking it into existence.
In fact, he says just this in Thesis 28 of the Heidelberg Disputation, a beautiful prose that still takes my breath away:
“The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it.”
Those words changed me. They exposed the futility of trying to make myself lovable to God and revealed a love that is creative rather than reactive—a love that calls into being what does not exist. God’s love is not earned; it is spoken, in a promise, and in that word of promise, sinners are made saints. This is how Luther distinguishes a theologian of glory from a theologian of the cross—the theologian of the cross calls a thing what it is. In contrast, a theologian of glory calls what isn’t (works) something they aren’t (able to make you righteous).
It was as if Luther’s arguments at Heidelberg were not merely aimed at his fellow monks but written specifically for me and the American Evangelical church of the 21st century.
Luther’s Important Distinctions
Another distinctive feature of Luther’s theology is his remarkable comfort with theological tension. While many theologians throughout history have tried to resolve paradoxes by leaning heavily toward one side of a doctrinal issue, Luther was content to let two Scriptural truths stand side by side—each fully true, even if they seemed to contradict one another. For Luther, this wasn’t intellectual laziness or confusion; it was an act of faith. He understood that God reveals only what he chooses to reveal, and that everything else about him remains hidden to sinful humanity. To go beyond that revelation, to try to peer into the mystery of God’s hidden will is, as Luther once put it, like “trying to look up God’s skirt.” In other words, it’s presumptuous and futile.
I am deeply grateful for Luther’s willingness to let paradox remain. He teaches us that faith does not demand resolution but trust. God can be both hidden and revealed, righteous and merciful, terrifying and gracious, all at the same time. This comfort with tension keeps theology honest, humbles human reason, and drives us again and again to Christ, where all of God’s mystery finds its resolution.
One of Luther’s most profound insights was his understanding of the distinction between the law and the gospel. These two words of God serve different purposes but belong together. The law exposes our sin; the gospel forgives it. The law diagnoses our helpless condition; the gospel delivers us into the hands of the only one who can help. The law kills; the gospel makes alive.
In the Heidelberg, Luther wrote: “The law says, ‘Do this,’ and it is never done. The gospel says, ‘Believe this,’ and everything is already done.” (Thesis 26)
This stood in stark contrast to the theology I grew up with, where the law was treated as a target—a moral checklist for spiritual achievement. But Luther recognized that the law’s real purpose is not to inspire us but to undo us. God uses it to strip away every illusion of self-righteousness so that we might find life outside ourselves, in Christ alone.
This is the heart of Luther’s theology, and it’s a great gift to weary believers. It frees us from the exhausting cycle of self-examination and moral bookkeeping. It invites us to look away from our own spiritual progress and fix our eyes on Christ’s finished work. Luther taught me to stop trying to climb up to God and instead trust the God who came down to me.
And that trust is not abstract; it is embodied. God’s promises come to us through tangible means: in words, in water, in bread and wine. Luther’s theology is not theoretical but sacramental. He saw that in baptism, Christ doesn’t merely symbolize forgiveness; he actually gives it. God’s word, joined to ordinary elements, become the very means by which faith is created and sustained.
Why Luther Still Matters
More than five centuries after his birth, Luther’s voice still rings true. In an age obsessed with self-improvement and performance, his message of grace alone remains a necessary scandal. Despite our culture’s emphasis on finding peace with yourself and being told “you are enough,” our souls remain restless. More often than not, if I’m honest, I don’t feel like I’m enough. I feel the constant pressure to be more.
Luther reminds us that peace is not found by looking within but by hearing the external word that declares us righteous for Christ’s sake. Many of us live with a secret feeling of insecurity; an imposter syndrome that forces us to “fake it until we make it.” The problem, as it relates to our standing with God, is that we never make it.
This reality brings me to another of Luther’s important distinctions. The distinction between the Christian’s dual-natured life: the simultaneity of sinner and saint. The Christian is, at the very same time, 100% sinner and 100% saint.
Luther reminds us that peace is not found by looking within but by hearing the external word that declares us righteous for Christ’s sake
While many speak of the unconditional love of God and the fact that sinners are saved by grace alone through faith alone, there is often a disconnect as it relates to the ongoing Christian life. An overrealized soteriology that sees the Christian life as a monolith. You were a sinner, now you’re a saint—“so you better start acting like one!” Luther recognized that the Christian is simul, both a sinner and saint at the same time. Here, the law and the gospel can be understood and given their proper place. Rather than the law being used as a means toward growth in sanctification, the law is recognized as a means to put the sinner to death. The word of the gospel then is not merely a front door that welcomes the sinner into God’s kingdom, it is a word of promise of God’s continued forgiveness, not some vacuous acceptance by God “just the way you are” but a promise rooted in the person and work of Christ. The Christian continues to need to hear the gospel because they continue to sin. While we are freed from sin, we are simultaneously still wrestling with our old Adams and Eves, and as such, still need the law to confront our sin and put our old man to death.
Luther’s message continues to set captives free, not by giving us new spiritual techniques, but by giving us Christ himself.
A Birthday to Remember
On this, the birthday of Martin Luther, I will pause to thank God for his birth. His life was not without flaws or failures—he was as human as any of us—but through him, God spoke a word that still echoes across the centuries: a word of grace, of freedom, of Christ for sinners.
In Luther’s theology, I rediscovered the gospel—the good news that looks past my striving to the Savior who strives for me. In his story, I find my own: the story of a sinner declared righteous by the sheer mercy of God.
Thank God Luther was born.
