Luther's Tower Experience:
        Martin Luther Discovers the True Meaning of Righteousness

     
       Meanwhile in that same year, 1519, I had begun interpreting the
       Psalms once again. I felt confident that I was now more
       experienced, since I had dealt in university courses with St.
       Paul's Letters to the Romans, to the Galatians, and the Letter to
       the Hebrews. I had conceived a burning desire to understand what
       Paul meant in his Letter to the Romans, but thus far there had
       stood in my way, not the cold blood around my heart, but that one
       word which is in chapter one: "The justice of God is revealed in
       it." I hated that word, "justice of God," which, by the use and
       custom of all my teachers, I had been taught to understand
       philosophically as referring to formal or active justice, as they
       call it, i.e., that justice by which God is just and by which he
       punishes sinners and the unjust.

       But I, blameless monk that I was, felt that before God I was a
       sinner with an extremely troubled conscience. I couldn't be sure
       that God was appeased by my satisfaction. I did not love, no,
       rather I hated the just God who punishes sinners. In silence, if I
       did not blaspheme, then certainly I grumbled vehemently and got
       angry at God. I said, "Isn't it enough that we miserable sinners,
       lost for all eternity because of original sin, are oppressed by
       every kind of calamity through the Ten Commandments? Why does God
       heap sorrow upon sorrow through the Gospel and through the Gospel
       threaten us with his justice and his wrath?" This was how I was
       raging with wild and disturbed conscience. I constantly badgered
       St. Paul about that spot in Romans 1 and anxiously wanted to know
       what he meant.

       I meditated night and day on those words until at last, by the
       mercy of God, I paid attention to their context: "The justice of
       God is revealed in it, as it is written: 'The just person lives by
       faith.'" I began to understand that in this verse the justice of
       God is that by which the just person lives by a gift of God, that
       is by faith. I began to understand that this verse means that the
       justice of God is revealed through the Gospel, but it is a passive
       justice, i.e. that by which the merciful God justifies us by
       faith, as it is written: "The just person lives by faith." All at
       once I felt that I had been born again and entered into paradise
       itself through open gates. Immediately I saw the whole of
       Scripture in a different light. I ran through the Scriptures from
       memory and found that other terms had analogous meanings, e.g.,
       the work of God, that is, what God works in us; the power of God,
       by which he makes us powerful; the wisdom of God, by which he
       makes us wise; the strength of God, the salvation of God, the
       glory of God.

       I exalted this sweetest word of mine, "the justice of God," with
       as much love as before I had hated it with hate. This phrase of
       Paul was for me the very gate of paradise. Afterward I read
       Augustine's "On the Spirit and the Letter," in which I found what
       I had not dared hope for. I discovered that he too interpreted
       "the justice of God" in a similar way, namely, as that with which
       God clothes us when he justifies us. Although Augustine had said
       it imperfectly and did not explain in detail how God imputes
       justice to us, still it pleased me that he taught the justice of
       God by which we are justified. 

      An Excerpt From:
      Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther's Latin Works (1545)
      by Dr. Martin Luther, 1483-1546
      Translated by Bro. Andrew Thornton, OSB rom the
      "Vorrede zu Band I der Opera Latina der Wittenberger Ausgabe. 1545"
       in vol. 4 of _Luthers Werke in Auswahl_, ed. Otto Clemen, 6th ed.,
       Berlin: de Gruyter. 1967). pp. 421-428.

      Translator's Note: The material between square brackets is
       explanatory in nature and is not part of Luther's preface. The
       terms "just, justice, justify" in the following reading are
       synonymous with the terms "righteous, righteousness, make
       righteous." Both sets of English words are common translations of
       the Latin "justus" and related words. A similar situation exists
       with the word "faith"; it is synonymous with "belief." Both words
       can be used to translate Latin "fides." Thus, "We are justified by
       faith" translates the same original Latin sentence as does "We are
       made righteous by belief."