The Roman Catholic monk/priest, Martin Luther, was tormented by his sin. He had been well-schooled in the Roman Catholic understanding of sin, its consequences and the man-made system developed by Rome to try to rid oneself of that sin.
Historian Roland Bainton describes Luther’s journey in the classic book Here I Stand:
Luther “…confessed frequently, often daily, and for as long as six hours on a single occasion. Every sin in order to be absolved (cleansed by God through a Roman Catholic priest) was to be confessed. Therefore the soul must be searched and the memory ransacked and the motives probed. As an aid the penitent (the one confessing his sins) ran through the seven deadly sins and the Ten Commandments. Luther would repeat a confession and, to be sure of including everything, would review his entire life…
His immediate supervisor, Johann von “Staupitz tried to bring Luther to see that he was making religion altogether too difficult. There is just one thing needful, and that is to love God. …The intended word of comfort pierced like an arrow. How could anyone love a God who is a consuming fire? The psalm says, “Serve the Lord with fear.” Who, then, can love a God angry, judging, and damning?
“Staupitz then cast about for some effective cure for this tormented spirit…Plainly argument and consolation did no good. Some other way must be found. One day under the pear tree in the garden of the Augustinian cloister…(Staupitz) informed Brother Martin that he should study for his doctor’s degree, that he should undertake preaching and assume the chair of Bible at the university. Luther gasped, stammered out fifteen reasons why he could do nothing of the sort. The sum of it all was that so much work would kill him. “Quite all right,” said Staupitz. “God has plenty of work for clever men to do in heaven.”
Bainton explains: Staupitz had decided “to drive this agonizing brother to wrestle with the source book of his religion. One may wonder why Luther had not thought of this himself. The reason is not that the Bible was inaccessible, but that Luther was following a prescribed course and the Bible was not the staple of (Roman Catholic) theological education. Yet anyone who seeks to discover the secret of Christianity is inevitably driven to the Bible, because Christianity is based on something which happened in the past, the incarnation of God in Christ at a definite point in history. The Bible records this event.”
So Bainton explains that Luther began studying and teaching the Bible. He eventually came face to face with the Apostle Paul in the Book of Romans.
“These are Luther’s own words: I greatly longed to understand Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, ‘the justice of God,’ because I took it to mean that justice whereby God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust. My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him. Yet I clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant. Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that ‘the just shall live by his faith.’ Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the ‘justice of God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven. . . .”
The Collection 