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Martin Luther - A Reformation Hero
Sometimes we make heroes out of men who had their own struggles and needed deliverance from the power of sin.
When Martin Luther was admitted to the monastery to be an Augustinian monk, he thought that he would out-monk all the other monks. He thought that he would find purity and holiness inside the walls of the cloister. But he discovered the terrible depths of his own sin and the powerlessness of man to help him.
For years he fasted until he fainted. He kept all-night vigils until he was deathly-ill. As a form of penance, he wore sackcloth next to his skin and whipped himself until his blood flowed from his back. He became a walking corpse in the monastery, yet nothing would cure him of his torturous inner troubles from a sense of guilt.
Hope and peace did not come to him from self-denying body destroying acts, nor did they come from his pilgrimage to Rome, which only exposed the corruption of the Roman Catholic clergy who were ignorant of true religion. While in Rome he found that sin was everywhere. He said, The closer I got to Rome the closer I was to hell.

The thing that opened his eyes was the gospel doctrine of justification by faith alone. He discovered the Greek N.T. in which he found and read the book of Romans. Then his eyes fell on the words "The just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17).
That was the first rays of light that flashed into the soul of Martin Luther. He discovered for the first time the long-lost truth that God has provided a way for man's sin to be pardoned. Luther learned that God does not require a man to save Himself, nor pay off his own guilt due to sin, for God has provided full salvation through the sacrifice of His Son. On the cross of Calvary, the Lord Jesus offered up himself as payment for sin to fully satisfy the justice of God.
When a sinner believes in the life and death of Jesus for salvation, God declares him righteous, or to be right in His sight with no trace of sin whatsoever. He treats us just as if we had never sinned. This doctrine of justification by faith alone is the secret bullet of the gospel. With faith in Christ's death, you are saved with certainty: without it, you are condemned to hopeless efforts that can never save but are certain to damn the soul. On the basis of what Christ accomplished in His death, God the Father declares a believer in Christ to be justified or just-as-if-he-had-never-sinned. We are fully pardoned from head to toe. We then stand in God's sight with no sin to our account, while we do have Jesus’s righteousness to our account. On the debt side of the ledger, nothing is recorded, while on the credit side all of the perfect obedience of the Saviour is listed.
Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe ;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.
 
You can be justified by faith alone. Believe that Jesus died for you and take the promise of full salvation by faith alone. The Father will declare you to be righteous in His sight giving all glory to the Son.