The Righteousness of God

The GOSPEL has something in it that everybody needs—but almost nobody wants… That is the RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD…

The story of Martin Luther's spiritual journey as a Roman Catholic monk trying to save his own soul by doing religious works of confession and penance… and then finally becoming a true follower of Jesus Christ is very fascinating… The great change began when Martin Luther was reading Paul's letter to the Romans… In Luther's own words,

‘I had certainly been overcome with a great desire to understand St Paul in his letter to the Romans, but what had hindered me thus far was… that one phrase in the first chapter: ‘The righteousness of God is revealed in it.' … I had hated that phrase ‘the righteousness of God' which, according to the use and custom of all the doctors (of theology), I had been taught to understand philosophically, in the sense of the formal or active righteousness (as they termed it), by which God is righteous, and punishes unrighteous sinners.

Although I lived an irreproachable life as a monk, I felt that I was a sinner with an uneasy conscience before God; nor was I able to believe that I had pleased him… I did not love – in fact, I hated – that righteous God who punished sinners, if not with silent blasphemy, then certainly with great murmuring. I was angry with God, saying, ‘As if it were not enough that miserable sinners should be eternally damned through original sin… and yet God adds sorrow upon sorrow through the gospel, and even brings his wrath and righteousness to bear through it!' Thus I drove myself mad, with a desperate disturbed conscience,'... – Martin Luther, 1545 edition of his “Collected Work"