Tetzel peddled righteousness for gold, but God gives it freely through faith in his promised Word, the person and work of Jesus Christ.
On August 11, 1519, Johann Tetzel, the German Dominican priest whose indulgence peddling sparked Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses, died. Tetzel was among many hawkers of these “get out of purgatory” cards, sold to the broken in spirit with promises that their hard-earned coins could free themselves or loved ones from purgatory’s trials. These funds, pitched as necessary for the building of St. Peter’s Basilica, exploited an era when truth was said to be whatever the Pope said. Unlike today’s church building campaigns, which often appeal to the need for larger spaces to host more people and events, Tetzel’s pitch promised heavenly entry at a price.
As vile as Tetzel and Pope Leo X’s roles in the indulgence fraud were, God excels at turning human evil into divine good. The Bible is full of accounts of God doing just that. Tetzel prompted Luther to nail his Ninety-Five Theses to the Wittenberg church door. Little did anyone expect that his ringing of the hammer and nail would inadvertently spark the Protestant Reformation. This gave us the reclaiming and refinding of the gospel, justification by faith alone, the Bible printed in the language of the people, and so many more life-altering and comforting truths from Scripture. Tetzel, unwittingly, became a tool in God’s hands, leading Luther to wield pen, paper, hammer, and nail for the sake of truth.
Years ago, I did everything “right” to secure my salvation: walked the aisle, said the sinner’s prayer, got baptized, joined the church, and checked every box to prove I was a Christian in right standing with Jesus. My motive feels similar to those poor souls spellbound by Tetzel’s false promises: I wanted to be saved from hell, and made certain I was bound for heaven. Yet, day after day, year after year, my Christian walk felt like a cycle of two steps forward, three steps back, endlessly striving to live a pleasing, obedient, righteous life. I figured that rather than a grand mansion in heaven, I’d be grateful just to get in the Pearly Gates. Sleeping on the streets of gold, essentially homeless in heaven, seemed better than an eternity in hell, right? That’s how I pictured my eternal fate—God barely tolerating my presence.
This mindset lingered until I encountered the story of Luther, Tetzel, and the Reformation. I’m sure I heard terms like “justification by faith alone” growing up in the Bible belt, but they didn’t click or even register in my memory and understanding until my thirties. A lecture by Rod Rosenbladt, “The Gospel for Those Broken by the Church,” stopped me cold. The idea that Jesus saves Christians too—that the gospel sustains us, and keeps us in perfect right standing as an adopted Child of God beyond conversion—was a revelation. What seemed like accidental stumbling and bumbling into this gospel, I now see, was God’s providence. Just as he used Tetzel’s false message to return Luther to his promises, he used my search for assurance and rest to push me to the same.
Martin Luther’s discovery of how we are saved, called by God, and declared righteous changed everything. Here’s how he described it in what is referred to as his “Tower Experience”:
I greatly longed to understand Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and had no wish but to know what St. Paul meant by the ‘righteousness of God’… I hated that word ‘righteousness of God,’ which, by the use and custom of all the doctors, I had been taught to understand philosophically as the formal or active righteousness, as they call it, by which God is just and punishes sinners and the unjust. Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt, with the most disturbed conscience, that I was a sinner before God… I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners… At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, ‘In it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, “He who through faith is righteous shall live.”’ There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith… Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. [1]
The righteousness I need is a gift through faith in Jesus Christ (Rom. 4:3, 5, 9, 22–23; Gal. 3:6.) It’s not bought with indulgences or drawn from some fictional treasury of merit. Silver and gold never purchased this. It could never purchase this! God himself paid the price for your righteousness, salvation, and eternal life—not with gold and silver, but with the most valuable currency in the universe, the precious blood of his only Son (1 Peter 1:18–19). A Good Father who loves you so deeply didn’t give his only Son so that you would be left on the streets of gold, but to welcome you into his own house as an heir, a beloved child of the King.
Tetzel was dead wrong. I pray that the gospel reached his ears, that he believed God’s promise—the promise given to Eve, Abraham, and to us through the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Tetzel peddled righteousness for gold, but God gives it freely through faith in his promised Word, the person and work of Jesus Christ.
This saving righteousness is declared to us, not infused into us to enable perfect deeds or a perfect life through our efforts. It’s a divine announcement from God: you are righteous because of the righteousness given to you as a gift, counted as your own through the faith God grants, which comes by hearing his Word (Rom. 10:17). This righteousness is credited, imputed, bestowed: it’s a passive gift you receive through faith that trusts God’s promise.
What does this promise say? That all the world is blessed through Jesus Christ, crucified for the forgiveness of your sins and raised to declare you “just” by the faith given to you, clinging to Christ.
God calls you his, not through Tetzel’s transactional jingle nor through constant effort to gain his favor. His call is not a business agreement: if you do this, God will do that. Instead, it is the gospel proclamation that Christ was crucified and risen for you, for the forgiveness of your sins (Rom. 4:25). It is the call that you have been given every good gift he has to offer, and you belong to him forever. To those anxiously hoping that the best God has to offer them is begrudging access into his kingdom, hear this Word, which is better than any jingle: “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32).
[1] Martin Luther, Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther’s Latin Writings (1545), in Luther’s Works, vol. 34, ed. Lewis W. Spitz (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1960), 336–337.
%20(1).jpg?width=36&height=36&name=untitled%20(16%20of%2039)%20(1).jpg){kind=small}
