Great Christian Biographies with John Piper: Martin Luther, Part 3

Luther’s Extraordinary Diligence and the Call to Hard Work

Number four, trait number four of Luther, indolence. He just referred to it. The fourth trait of his study was extraordinary diligence, in spite of tremendous obstacles. He was a professor of Bible all of his life.

He wrote theological treatises, scores and scores and scores of them. He was always translating, well, for a period of about 13 years, translating the Bible. He carried on voluminous correspondence because everybody wanted his counsel and advice.

And remember, no computers, no typewriters, all longhand and no ballpoint pens, no ordinary paper, all dip and scratch, dip and scratch. And he was preaching 200 times a year. Now, we are not Luther, OK?

These are always discouraging talks if you try to measure yourself by Spurgeon or Luther or somebody. We are not Luther. Let's just settle it. I'm not Martin Luther. I can't read more than about 250 words a minute.

I read less than most of you in this room. I know that to be a case. And I get discouraged when I go into that bookstore and look at all that stuff that I will leave unread when I die. But the question he poses for us is this.

Wherever you are, whoever you are, are you diligent or are you slothful? Are you casual about your life or are you intense about living? Here, I can't help but quote my friend Edward's resolve to live with all my might while I live.

He wrote, some pastors and preachers are lazy and no good. They do not pray. They do not read. They're not they don't search the scriptures. The call is watch, study, attend to reading. In truth, you cannot read too much in the scriptures.

And what you read, you cannot read too carefully. And what you read carefully, you cannot understand too well. And what you understand well, you cannot teach too well. And what you teach well, you cannot live too well.

The devil, the world, and our flesh are raging and raving against us. Therefore, dear sirs and brothers, pastors, preachers, pray, read, study, be diligent. This evil, shameful time is not the season for being lazy or sleeping and snoring.

He said, household sweat is great sweat. Political sweat is greater sweat. Church sweat is the greatest sweat. That's right. And then, of course, to bring in the balance, as George Verwer says, let's be balanced here.

Luther, here's what he says about balance. 1532, a person should work in such a way that he remains well and does not injure his body. We should not break our heads at work and injure our bodies. I myself used to do such things.

And I have racked my brains because I still have not overcome the bad habit of overworking, nor shall I ever overcome it as long as I live. Now, I know that a psychologist counselor would rebuke me at the end of this because of how many burned out and broken pastors they deal with.

However, I want to read the Apostle Paul to you because Luther loved his dear apostle who wrote, 1 Corinthians 15 .10, his grace toward me was not in vain, but I worked harder than any of them. That's the two apostles.

How about his relationship to the false apostles? He wrote 2 Corinthians 11 .23, are they servants of Christ? I speak as if insane. I am more so in far more labors, far more imprisonment. Beaten, times without number, often in danger of death.

So I don't know whether the Apostle Paul at the end of his life would say, I shall never overcome the habit of overwork. But there's enough as you look at the Apostle Paul to say, let's not be lazy. Let's work hard.

Affliction as the Hermeneutical Touchstone

Number five, temptation and affliction are the hermeneutical touchstones of his study. Temptation and affliction are the hermeneutical touchstones of his study. Here's the key text. He said, now some of you remember this from seminary days, that there were three ways to become a theologian.

He gets this from Psalm 119. Oratio, meditatio, tentatio. Prayer, meditation, and in German, Anfechtung, trials, suffering. The hermeneutical key to the Bible is affliction. Biblical basis for that, Psalm 119, 67 and 71.

Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep thy word. Here's the key verse, verse 71. It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I may learn thy statutes. Is that not amazing? Where do you see that in any hermeneutical textbook?

You've got to go back 300 years, 400 years, to read a hermeneutic that says the touchstone of my hermeneutic is pain. He wrote, I want you to know how to study theology in the right way. I have practiced this method myself.

Here you will find these three rules. They teach you not only to know, the afflictions teach you not only to know and to understand, but also to experience how right, how true, how sweet, how lovely, how mighty, how comforting God's word is.

It is wisdom supreme. Listen to this. For I myself owe my papists many thanks for so beating, pressing, frightening me through the devil's raging that they have turned me into a fairly good theologian, driving me to the goal I never would have reached.

He's not playing games there. He was a marked man. The ban of Emperor Charles. Charles said, I have decided to mobilize everything against Luther. This is the emperor of the Roman Empire, Charles V. I have decided to mobilize everything against Luther.

My kingdoms, my dominions, my friends, my body, my blood, my soul. You can kill him. Frederick of Saxony was the only reason he lived. There was some family dynamics going on here that he had a little space.

He had a little space and he could only go under armed guard to all these little places where he would go. Relentless slander. He said, if the devil can do nothing against the teachings, he attacks the person lying, slander, cursing, ranting at him.

Just as the papists Beelzebub did to me when he could not subdue my gospel. He wrote that I was possessed by the devil and was a changeling in my beloved mother, a whore and bath attendant. The rumor that was spread systematically was that his mother had had sex with the devil and that Martin Luther was half demon.

Which was not mythology in those days. That was a real possibility. Physically, kidney stones, headaches, buzzing in his ears, infections, and this incapacitating piles. I nearly gave up the ghost, he said, and now bathed in blood can find no peace.

What took four days to heal immediately tears open again. Emotionally, spiritually, listen to this kind of torment. For more than a week, I have been thrown back and forth in death and hell. My whole body feels beaten.

My limbs are still trembling. I almost lost Christ completely driven about in the waves and storms of despair and blasphemy against God. But because of the intercession of the faithful, God began to take mercy on me and tore my soul from the depths of hell.

He looked very invulnerable on the outside. You read his biography, you think, wow, this man was a giant. But here he is in Wartburg, where he supposedly was flat out translating the New Testament in ten months.

And this is what he wrote to Melanchthon. I sit here at ease, hardened and unfeeling, alas. Praying little, grieving little for the church of God, burning rather in the fierce fires of my untamed flesh.

It comes to this. I should be a fire in the spirit. In reality, I am a fire in the flesh with lust, laziness, idleness, sleepiness. It is perhaps because you have all ceased praying for me that God has turned away from me.

For the last eight days, I have written nothing, nor prayed, nor studied, partly from self-indulgence, partly from another vexatious handicap. That's his piles he's talking about. I really cannot stand it any longer.

Pray for me, I beg you. For in my seclusion here, I am submerged in sins. My own testimony here in this regard would be that I am tempted constantly to resent the hardships of the ministry. Precisely because they get in the way of what I want to do.

And Luther has rebuked me and he has taught me afresh that the very painful visit that you may have to make today, the very painful phone call that you have to make, the very squabble that you may have to address, the very practicalities that frustrate you so much, may be, will be, the lens through which this text opens.

Tentatio is the pathway to be a faithful biblical theologian. One final point. He says, the faith to get through this exceeds my powers. And this is probably the most important point because Luther believed it was the most important point in his theology.

Prayer, Self-Despair, and Dependence on the Holy Spirit

The sixth point is prayer and reverent dependence on the all-sufficiency of God. We've heard this too, but I want you to hear it from Luther because it's remarkable. You get right to the center of Luther's theology this way.

1518, he writes, that the Holy Scriptures cannot be penetrated by study and talent is most certain. Therefore, your first duty is to begin to pray and to pray to this effect, that if it please God to accomplish something for his glory, not for yours or any other person's, he very graciously grant you a true understanding of his words.

For no master of the divine words exists except the author of these words. As he says, they shall be all taught of God. You must therefore completely despair of your own industry and ability and rely solely on the inspiration of the spirit.

Now, he did not mean you leave the external word, the book, and go to mystical reveries. He meant bathe all of that study that he's been talking about in prayer and cast yourself on God to sustain you and prosper you in your study.

He says, since the holy writ wants to be dealt with in fear and humility and penetrated more by studying with pious prayer than with keenness of intellect, therefore it is impossible for those who rely on their intellect and rush into Scripture with dirty feet like pigs, as through Scripture they were merely a sort of human knowledge not to harm themselves and others whom they instruct.

And he goes again to Psalm 119. And you read Psalm 119 and what do you find David doing? Open my eyes that I may see. Make me understand thy way. Teach me, O Lord. Give me understanding. Make me walk in thy path.

Incline my heart to thy testimonies. Revive me. In other words, he's crying out to the Lord to be an interpreter through him and to enable him. So be saturated in prayer. Go to the study with self-doubt and God-reliance.

He says, you should completely despair of your own sense of reason, for by these you will not attain the goal. Rather, kneel down on your little private room and with sincere humility and earnestness pray God through his dear Son graciously to grant you the Holy Spirit to enlighten and guide you in this understanding.

Now, here's the last thing to get. This approach towards study through a despair of your own ability and a reliance upon God was the essence of his theology and what he saw the essence of the Reformation controversy to be.

And it came out in his controversy with Erasmus over the bondage of the will. He wrote on Romans 8 -7, The natural mind cannot do anything godly. It does not perceive the wrath of God. Therefore, cannot rightly fear him.

It does not see the goodness of God. Therefore, cannot trust or believe in him either. Therefore, we should constantly pray that God will bring forth his gifts in us. In other words, we are helpless and God is free to help us.

And that is our only hope. We are totally dependent. Which is why he said on the bondage of the will that this book is the one he wants to survive. This is the book he thought worthy of publication. And Erasmus has written his freedom of the will.

Luther responded with the bondage of the will. And he credited Erasmus with penetrating to the heart of the Reformation. He said, others think it's indulgences. Others think it's authority. The issue of the Reformation is the powerlessness of man before God.

Erasmus smelled it. And as a modern man, he didn't like it. He wrote against it. And Luther gave his strongest response to it. By defending the powerlessness of man. It was a great offense to Erasmus and the others.

Here's what Luther wrote. I condemn and reject as nothing but error all doctrines which exalt our free will. As being directly opposed to this mediation and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, the gospel of free grace depends upon a free God and a bound human will.

If we begin to think that our will is not bound but can break free of its own and launch ourselves towards God. Then God's freedom is not the key to my justification. And there's the end of the Reformation.

And the end of the gospel in Luther's idea. For since apart from Christ, sin and death are our masters. And the devil is our God and prince. There can be no strength or power to wit. No wit or wisdom by which we can fit or fashion ourselves for righteousness and life.

On the contrary, blinded and captivated, we are bound to be the subjects of Satan and sin. Satan is doing and thinking what pleases him and is opposed to God and his commandments. The root issue of the Reformation and the root issue of studying the Bible is the powerlessness of the human mind and the human heart.

He wrote on Galatians 1 .11,. It is true that the doctrine of the gospel takes all glory, wisdom, righteousness from men and ascribes them to the Creator alone who makes everything out of nothing. And so his approach fundamentally to the word is to come as a beggar.

Reliant upon the Lord, believing that everything he has in his head and everything he has in his hands, he has from the Lord. And so the heart of the Reformation in its exaltation of the free grace of God over against the powerlessness of man is the essence of the way you study the Bible as well.

Namely, in prayer, crying out to the Lord for his enabling grace and acknowledging that without him we can do nothing. And this is the way he lived. This is the way he studied. And finally, this is the way he died at 3 a .m. February 18, 1546.

With these last words, Combining his German and his Latin. We are beggars. This is true. Father, I pray that the zeal of Martin Luther and his allegiance to the external word and his lifelong passion to know it and to proclaim it and to defend it and to preserve it would inspire us to follow in these footsteps.

In Jesus name I pray. Amen.

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