Martin Luther's Contribution To The Reform

Martin Luther was undoubtedly the most persistent and most successful of all the reformers of his time. He challenged the Church loudly and directly and refused to back down over what he saw as both great errors in doctrine and great failures in spirituality. Luther's most important teaching originated from his own personal experiences before he began his fight against the Roman Church. He had always struggled with his own perceived sinfulness and could never understand how he could attain anything but the wrath from a just God. However, the textbook tells us that in an event known as "the experience in the tower" Luther came to understand that God's mercy would grant him salvation. From then on, Luther taught that the removal of sin and bestowing
of righteousness could only be obtained by faith in God, or justification by faith.

In 1517 Luther's teachings began to take aim at the Church. It started when a friar began selling indulgences to the townspeople of Wittenberg, where Luther was living at the time. Luther witnessed the people of his town be scammed out of their money by the people who were supposed to be helping, by their religious leaders. This event filled Luther with a passionate anger and on October 31, 1517 he issued his most famous work, his ninety-five theses. This work displayed another of Luther's most important teachings, that the Pope only had authority to issue a pardon on the punishments that he had inflicted.