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| Church doors where Luther nailed his 95 Theses. |
On October 31, 1517, Luther wrote to his bishop, to protest
some of the things that the church was doing. It was a list of 95
statements or theses that Martin thought the leaders of the church should
change.
In those days, the church doors were used kind of
like a bulletin board. Luther nailed The Ninety-Five Theses to
the door so that people could read and discuss his ideas. And they did!
The theses were printed and distributed through Germany and in two months,
people all over Europe had read what Martin had to say.
In the next few years, Martin did a lot of preaching and teaching and writing. Of all the things he talked about, Martin felt that the most important was the idea of justification by faith.
Justification means to be made right. One way to understand that word is to look at how printing is justified.
This sentence is justified to the left.
This sentence is justified to
the right.
The first
paragraph on this page is also justified to the left. Do you see how it
is neatly lined up on the left side but not the right? The column is only "right" on one side.
The second paragraph is
fully justified. It is even on both sides. Extra spaces were added between the words in order to make the paragraph look like a neat
column on both sides. When we're talking about people being justified, it means being made right with God, so that even though we do things that are wrong, God treats us like people who are not sinful. It's because, the like the second paragraph we've been made justified. This may sound a little complicated, so let me know if you have questions.
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| People buying indulgences so they could be justified. |
In Martin's day, the church was teaching that if you wanted to be okay with God, you needed to do good things. And if you couldn't do enough good things, they would help you out by selling you some forgiveness. If you had enough, then you would be right with God.
The church was making a lot of money this way and Martin knew it was wrong. He had studied the Bible very carefully and he said, that we
are justified, or made okay with God, not by the things we do, but because God
loves us even though we are sinful. We are saved by God's grace through
our faith in Jesus Christ.
This got Martin in a lot of trouble. The leader of the church, the Pope, didn't like what Martin was saying. He told Martin he had to stop trying to change the church. He needed to recant, or take back, what he had said.
