Monastery Cell

Hi, I’m Pastor Lutzer. I’m speaking softly because we are in a monastery, or I should say, what was a monastery. This is the very monastery that Martin Luther came to, way back in the 1500’s.

What we have here is a cell. It’s the kind of cell in which the monks lived. Of course, there was not a lot of furniture in the cell. We can understand that. Often the monks slept without clothes to mortify the flesh. It is here where oftentimes they endured hunger, and then they went begging for food. Why? They wanted to do enough acts of mercy so that they would be worthy of the grace of God. Martin Luther went through a lot of agony here. The German word is “entfremdung.” That is a sense of existential despair, a sense of alienation, and a sense of guilt. He could not find peace here, no matter what he did.

Now, of course, as we stand here, we can’t help but admire the monk’s desire to live the rest of their life in a monastery, but at the same time, it’s a great illustration of the fact that works of righteousness cannot save. Only when Martin Luther studied the psalms in the book of Romans did he understand that the just shall live by faith, and we are declared righteous through our faith in Christ. At last, he was a free man. You can’t understand the Gospel unless you realize that when Jesus died on the cross, He got what He didn’t deserve, namely our sin, and we in turn, got what we don’t deserve, the gift of His righteousness. If Martin Luther had understood that earlier in his life, he wouldn’t have spent the rest of his life seeking salvation through good works.

This is Pastor Lutzer, and we are here in Erfurt, Germany, in the very place where Martin Luther sought salvation, but he did it in vain. Thanks so much for joining us. God bless you.