Faith to faith free#

This word “righteousness” ( diakaiosune) means a perfect conformity to a standard. What God requires, He gives without cost or merit in the gospel.

Faith to faith free#

“The righteousness of God” is the free gift of God to those who believe in Jesus Christ. He discerned that this righteousness of God is not what God requires, but what comes from God. In a moment, he saw the truth that had been previously veiled from his eyes. As he was meditating on Romans 1:17, searching for acceptance with God, it was like a ray of light suddenly flashed into his darkened soul. Luther was well taught in the Bible’s original languages, especially in the Greek language. He realized that there was nothing he could do to gain acceptance with holy God, who required sinless perfection. But in all of these efforts, he was growing further and further away from God. Surely, this self-flagellation would commend himself to God. Luther even slept outside in the freezing cold without a blanket in order to pummel his own body. He was trying by His own self-righteousness to achieve a right standing before God. He would punish his own body in order to find acceptance with Him. Luther understood that, and pushed himself to the breaking point by fasting and praying.

So, he can never get over the bar of God’s own holiness. God does not grade on the curve or lower the bar to come down to fallen man’s level.

The impossible standard that God set is absolute sinlessness. In his mind, God had set a mark of required righteousness so high that he could never meet it. He knew he could not meet that standard or moral perfection, and grew angry with God. He had mistakenly assumed that meeting the perfect standard of the righteousness of God was what He required of him. Two years later, in 1519, Luther, at last, was converted to Jesus Christ while in the tower of the Castle Church, meditating on this very verse, Romans 1:17. But he, nevertheless, knew that this practice was grossly wrong. The posting of Luther’s theses was a call for a public debate regarding how a man could be right before God. This public act was a protest against the trafficking of indulgences that were sold for the forgiveness of sins on behalf of deceased loved ones who were perceived to be in Purgatory. In response to the sale of indulgences throughout the region of Saxony in Germany, Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the front door of the church in Wittenberg. This was the dynamic verse that God used to convert an Augustinian monk, a professor of Bible at the University of Wittenberg, whose name was Martin Luther. This was the explosive text that ignited the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago.

We now find ourselves standing at the top of this towering pinnacle of truth. Everything thus far has been building up to this verse. It is the highest mountain peak in this epistle, the loftiest summit, and finds itself at the end of the opening prologue, Romans 1:1-17. To understand this verse is to understand the book of Romans. This is the key verse for the entire book of Romans. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, ‘But the righteous man shall live by faith’ (Romans 1:17).