Martin Luther on Where to Look for Certainty

Today’s guest post is from someone with a rare combination of qualifications–David Emmerich is a Christian pastor AND a therapist who helps people with religious OCD. David and I got chatting about Martin Luther’s response to uncertainty, and he has graciously written up this article for us. His full and impressive bio are listed at the end of this post. So read on to hear his thoughts about Martin Luther, and check out his counseling page when you’re done!

Do you know who Martin Luther is? Not the Martin Luther King Jr. who was active in civil rights, but the Martin Luther who was born in 1483 in Germany. Many Christians aren’t aware of the struggles with scrupulosity that he and other notable Christians have had. Here’s how Martin Luther describes his personal struggles regarding the fate of his soul:

…They were so great and so much like hell that no tongue could adequately express them, no pen could describe them, and one who had not himself experienced them could not believe them.[1]

His inner conflicts had to do with how Martin Luther could be certain that he was saved and in a right relationship with God.

I don’t know if my personal struggles ever reached the intensity of Martin Luther’s, but I do remember as a child of about 7 or 8, getting out of bed and walking into the living room to ask, “Mom, how do I know if I really believe in God?” My mother wisely responded, “David, if you’re worried about it, that means the Holy Spirit is working in your heart.”

That answer satisfied me as a child, but as my mind and faith matured, I traded in my child-like fears for grown-up, adult moments of full blown terror. Moments like reading a Bible verse and concluding, “If what this says is really true,” (and I believe Scripture is the truth) “then I am headed to hell.”

In my 20s I had high levels of anxiety, and also what seemed like countless panic attacks, for which I had no real explanation. I only had the feeble reassurance from the Emergency Room staff that even though it might feel like I was dying, I really wasn’t. I remember being taunted by the quote, “Cowards die a thousand deaths, but the brave die but once.” By that definition of bravery, I had a greater yellow-belly than any coward!

Scrupulosity Lessons from Martin Luther

I attended a Lutheran college and seminary afterward in my late 20s and early 30s, where studying theology, I had an in-depth introduction to Martin Luther and his world of thought. It turns out that Luther was hugely troubled about his faith, and thank God, I was able to learn from him when it came to my relationship with God. Luther writes:

Nevertheless, my conscience could never achieve certainty but was always in doubt and said: “You have not done this correctly. You were not contrite enough. You omitted this in your confession.”[2]

Uncertainty seems to be the necessary result of viewing my faith in terms of what I have to do in order to believe and be forgiven. All kinds of questions come up: How much faith do I have to have? Is my faith sincere enough? Do I have faith even when I’m not thinking about God? How can I be certain that I really do have faith?

Trying to answer those questions to find assurance is never very satisfying, because they all focus on me and what I have to do. As a human being, I have discovered that I am fallible, and that I can never count on myself to do anything perfectly. I make many mistakes. I sin each day in ways I am aware of, and also in ways that I know nothing about. Do I do good things because I truly love God, or am I really doing them because they make me feel good about myself? Because I have a sinful heart, I even lack the ability to judge my own motives with accuracy!

Certainty from Above

Even though Luther couldn’t change his own sinful heart, he eventually did find certainty. Surprisingly, he didn’t discover it from within. Instead, he discovered that his certainty lay outside of him, because it comes from Jesus. He writes:

…All our good is outside of us, and this good is Christ, as the apostle says (1 Cor. 1:30): “God made Him our wisdom, our righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” And none of these things are in us except through faith and hope in Him.[3]

Luther says that any spiritual goodness we have is not a natural endowment. It comes from outside of us, because Christ lives in us. God gives us credit for every good thing Jesus has done. Since my rescue comes totally from outside of me, my own anxious thoughts and feelings about it can have no harmful effect on my being saved. Instead, my rescue depends solely on the abilities of my Savior.

When I am rescued from sin by Christ, my 100 % sinful heart becomes 100 % forgiven. God no longer counts my sins against me. Although I still struggle to live like somebody who has been 100% forgiven, God continues to forgive me and uses the good things I do for His loving purposes—even when I can’t be absolutely certain what my motives are for doing them!

Objective and Subjective Experiences

One concept that can be helpful is to differentiate between objective and subjective experiences. Take the temperature, for example. The thermometer says the temperature is objectively 70 degrees, but subjectively, it feels like about 67 degrees to me. Knowing the objective temperature can persuade me not to turn up the thermostat, because if I know the thermometer says it’s 70 degrees, it’s likely I will warm up after being in the room for a while.

In the same way, God’s thermometer—His Words—tell me objectively that all is well with me and God. Consider a Bible verse such as 2 Corinthians 5:19 (ESV): … “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them….” “The world” includes everybody, so I have to assume that I’m one of the ones whose trespasses God is not counting against them.

Knowing God’s love for the world He created can persuade me not to turn up my emotional thermostat as well. If I know that God’s thermometer objectively says He loves me, it’s likely that my cold fear will warm into love for Him the longer I ponder that truth.

For Martin Luther, God’s Word alone is the deciding factor in matters of faith: “Therefore we must base our salvation firmly on the power of God’s Word, not on our own zeal and imagination.”^[4] He also points to the power of God’s Word to bring God’s good blessings: “The word of God brings life, truth, light, peace, righteousness, salvation, joy, liberty, wisdom, power, grace, glory, and every other blessing imaginable.”^[5]

Dealing with Spiritual Doubts

Luther wrote a letter to Barbara Lisskirchen, a woman who was troubled with doubts about whether she had been chosen to go to heaven. In it, he outlines what his strategy for scrupulous thoughts is:

“First, you must firmly fix in your mind the conviction that such thoughts as yours are assuredly the suggestions and fiery darts of the wretched devil.”^[6]

He directs Barbara to Psalm 131 as one scripture passage to use for meditation:

¹  O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. ²  But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me. ³ O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore.[7]

Avoiding “things too great and marvelous” is a familiar theme in Luther’s writing:

In faith, however, you must remain with Christ incarnate in the manger. If you want to climb higher and take a look at our Lord God’s work, you will fall. I often give you this advice, because I know what I am talking about.^[8]

Luther continues: “Secondly, when such thoughts assail you, you should learn to ask yourself, “If you please, in which Commandment is it written that I should think about and deal with this matter?”^[9] Here, Luther challenges his own mind’s demands that he must know everything about how God saves us before he can achieve certainty.

He goes on: “Thirdly, if these thoughts nevertheless continue (for the devil is reluctant to give up) you too must refuse to give up.”^[10] It’s not enough to occasionally convince myself that everything between me and God is ok. I have to persist in correct thinking.

Luther writes: “Fourthly, the highest of all God’s commands is this: that we hold up before our eyes the image of his dear son, our Lord Jesus Christ”^[11] In other words, I’ll never get security if I guess about whether or not God chose me. The only way I can tell God’s feelings toward me is to look at Jesus and the sacrifice of His life in my place. Any Father who would sacrifice His own Son in place of me must surely be devoted to me and my welfare!

When it comes to intrusive thoughts, Luther has a concrete suggestion: “If they enter your mind cast them out again, just as you would immediately spit out any filth that fell into your mouth.”^[12] The strategy Luther uses here is to treat intrusive thoughts as a minor irritation. Elsewhere, Luther refers to them as “the nagging nit–picker, the hissing of geese.”[13] Depersonalizing intrusive thoughts as an annoyance and externalizing them can help to lessen their impact.

Martin Luther concluded that since God can’t lie, His words are always trustworthy. Even when Luther could not be assured by the thoughts of his own mind, he could rely on the objective truth of what God says, and that truth gave Luther confidence in God’s love for him.

How to Have Confidence and Assurance with God

How does a person look at the dimensions of having faith in Jesus? The Bible describes it in many ways. Certainly faith is our human response to God’s actions. It’s knowledge about God, having confidence in Him. It’s having a relationship with God. Faith in Jesus also carries the idea of trust with it. I can trust God and His Word because He is reliable and can’t lie.

For a person with uncertainty, it’s especially comforting to look at Scripture passages that emphasize the trust aspect of faith. Take, for example, Psalm 22:9: “Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.”^[14] The Psalmist David says even as an infant, he could trust the Lord—just like a baby trusts its mother! Or Paul’s thought in 2 Corinthians: “…Indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead….”^[15]

Here is where being helpless before the Lord isn’t a bad thing, because God specializes in helping those who can’t help themselves! Paul says, “For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ^[16]” And Jesus is moved by those who need Him: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”^[17]

Our human pride tells us we would like to be strong and independent when it comes to trusting God, but our true condition before Him is one of depending on God for everything, so that our trust is totally in Him and not in ourselves.

Think about all the Bible passages that speak to the certainty of having faith and life in Jesus: “Faith is the certainty of things not seen,” (Heb. 11:1), “Such is the confidence we have through Christ toward God,” (2 Cor. 3:4), “It is a faithful saying that Christ came to save sinners,” (1 Tim. 1:15), “These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His name,” (John 20:31), “For whenever our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and He knows everything,” (1 John 3:20), and one of my personal favorites: “I believe; help my unbelief!,” (Mark 9:24). Words like these have the power to carry you through your dark nights of the soul, and give you the foundation on which to build a life.

The last line of the last paragraph Luther wrote in his life reads, “We are beggars. That is true.”^[18] That image of a beggar with empty hands lifted to God—in need of everything for physical and spiritual life—is an accurate picture of our standing before Him. Knowing and remembering that fact gives me certainty, because everything that has to do with my faith comes from God. All I can do is respond to His love. And when I do that—imperfect as my response may be—I begin to realize that although I am a spiritual beggar, God by His grace gives me forgiveness of sins, life with Him here, and salvation in eternity.

If you were to ask me. “David, are you going to make it to heaven?” my response could only be, “I hope so.” But if you were to ask, “David, is Jesus merciful enough and strong enough to bring you to heaven in spite of yourself?” the answer would always be, “Of course He is!” Those two responses illustrate the difference between looking for certainty within myself, or finding it in Christ. Martin Luther found His certainty in Jesus and not himself. By God’s grace, you can do the same!

Many thanks again to David Emmerich for sharing this beautiful guest post! Now for the very impressive bio I promised earlier:

David Emmrich serves as pastor for Living Savior Lutheran Church in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. He has also served as a university campus pastor and congregational pastor in his 35 years of ministry. He currently serves as a psychotherapist for the Center for Christian Counseling in Madison, Wisconsin, at their Fort Atkinson office. His areas of special interest are anxiety, depression, marital counseling, and spiritual issues.

David graduated from Concordia University Wisconsin with a BA in theology. He received his Master of Divinity degree from Concordia Seminary St. Louis in 1989; a Master of Sacred Theology degree in Systematic Doctrine from Concordia Seminary in 1999; and a Master of Arts in English from St. Cloud State University in 1999. He completed a Master of Science in Counseling from Concordia University in Wisconsin and is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of Wisconsin.

David met his wife, Nancy, at Milwaukee Lutheran High School. His daughters Jenifer, and Jayne are Licensed Professional counselors as well.

[1] Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works, Vol. 31: Career of the Reformer I. Edited by Jaroslav Jan Pelikan et al., vol. 31, Fortress Press, 1999, p. 129.

[2] Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works, Vol. 27: Lectures on Galatians, 1535, Chapters 5-6; 1519, Chapters 1-6. Edited by Jaroslav Jan Pelikan et al., vol. 27, Concordia Publishing House, 1999, p. 13.

^[3] Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works, Vol. 25: Lectures on Romans. Edited by Jaroslav Jan Pelikan et al., vol. 25, Concordia Publishing House, 1999, p. 267.

^[4] Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works, Vol. 22: Sermons on the Gospel of St. John: Chapters 1-4. Edited by Jaroslav Jan Pelikan et al., vol. 22, Concordia Publishing House, 1999, p. 484.

^[5] Luther, Martin. Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings. Edited by William R. Russell and Timothy F. Lull, Third Edition, Fortress Press, 2012, p. 405.

[6] Luther, Martin. Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel . Papamoa Press. Kindle Edition.

[7] Psalm 131 (ESV)

^[8] Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works, Vol. 17: Lectures on Isaiah: Chapters 40-66. Edited by Jaroslav Jan Pelikan et al., vol. 17, Concordia Publishing House, 1999, p. 397.

[9] Luther, Martin. Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel . Papamoa Press. Kindle Edition.

[10] Luther, Martin. Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel . Papamoa Press. Kindle Edition.

[11] Luther, Martin. Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel . Papamoa Press. Kindle Edition.

[12] Luther, Martin. Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel . Papamoa Press. Kindle Edition.

[13] Pietsch, Stephen. Of Good Comfort (p. 278). ATF (Australia) Ltd. Kindle Edition.

[14] Psalm 22:9 (ESV)

[15] 2 Corinthians 1:9 (NASB95)

[16] Romans 5:6 (NASB95)

[17] Matthew 9:36 (ESV)

[18]Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works, Vol. 31: Career of the Reformer I. Edited by Jaroslav Jan Pelikan et al., vol. 31, Fortress Press, 1999, p. 129.