Body
LIGHTBULB MOMENT. It is a relatively modern idiom, but a significant lightbulb moment lit the soul of Martin Luther over 500 years ago. God turned on the light when Luther was studying Romans. But first, some significant backstory. Luther lived in an age that placed heavy emphasis on achieving God's favor by good works. He apparently had a serious fear of God's judgment, so much so that when caught in a thunderstorm, fearing for his life, he exclaimed, 'Help me, St. Anne. I'll become a monk.' He had only recently begun studying Law but changed course. However, as a monk, Luther became fanatically more concerned about his soul. While other monks confessed minor sins for a few minutes, Luther confessed his sins for hours a day. He was then made a priest, making his fears even worse. How could such a wicked sinner hold the communion elements, the actual body and blood of Jesus, as was then believed, in such sinful hands? Yet that was his job! The horror of God descended over his soul. To help him out, he was then made a professor of theology, and that meant he must learn Greek to teach the New Testament. That brings us back to Romans. As he studied Romans in Greek, as opposed to Latin, God flipped the switch and turned the lightbulb on! God says in Romans 1:17, 'The righteous shall live by faith.' The Latin word for 'righteous' was 'justificare,' meaning 'to make righteous.' Luther believed his service and the sacraments would eventually make him righteous in God's eyes. But the Greek of Romans 1:17 used a word meaning 'to declare righteous.' And the lightbulb shone brightly in Luther's heart! At that moment, he realized that God's Word unmistakably taught that he must be declared righteous by trusting in Christ's perfect righteousness instead of his own very imperfect righteousness! Luther said, 'When I discovered that, I was born again of the Holy Ghost.'
