On Oct. 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. Just what was on Luther’s mind at the time that he just couldn’t keep it to himself? What ended up making him one of the most beloved and hated men in history?

One way to think about Luther and the Reformation is to see that church door in Wittenberg as a door with two hinges on it. On Oct. 31 Luther opened the door a crack, just a crack. The rest of Luther’s life was devoted to swinging that door wide open to let in all the fullness of God’s grace and mercy in the Christ of the Scriptures.

The first hinge

The first hinge on which the door of the Reformation swings is this: Luther took God seriously. He saw in God an angry judge. That judge is holy and righteous in all that he does. He demands obedience to his law. And the law demands above all else that we love God with our whole heart and mind and strength. If we fail, he threatens his wrath in this life and an eternity of torment in the life to come.

But how can I or anyone else love a God who must be angry with me every moment, since I do not love him perfectly? In fact, God’s anger can only move me to hate him because of his impossible demands and his threats. But if I don’t love him, then I am lost, doomed, damned.

Luther became a monk and took the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience to try to still the anger of God. He became a priest and offered the sacrifice of the Mass to try to still his own fear of the wrath of God. He even became a doctor of theology and a university professor, studied and taught, fasted and prayed, confessed and then confessed again. He did it all in his struggle to turn away God’s wrath. But the more he struggled, the more he despaired.

It wasn’t that the church of Luther’s day didn’t take God seriously. It did. After all, it was the church that portrayed God as an angry judge demanding satisfaction for our imperfect love. It’s just that the solution of the church only made matters worse. It pointed Luther to ever more works—all of them, of course, flawed by that lack of perfect love. Then it offered—and still offers—the solution of indulgences. They were additional works, prayers, fasts, pilgrimages, the purchase of masses, and the imagined excess merits of the saints to make up for our imperfect love and flawed works.

But how does any of that take God seriously? Can the holy God really be bought off so easily? Can we really get around his anger at our failure to do the works he commands and the love he demands with works he never asked for? The more Luther studied, the more convinced he became that works cannot turn away God’s anger.

The second hinge