Luther was one of the many great Christians of history who suffered from scrupulosity. The answer he found- the answer Christians all over the world celebrate today- was that "the just shall live by faith;" that the Son of God became a human being to bear on His scourged back the burden of all our sins, all our guilt, and all our worries, and to reach out with nail-pierced hands to remove every obstacle that separates us from God.
He or she who does nothing more than hang on to that reality and not let go even when every other support and comfort fails cannot ever be lost, no matter how far they have strayed or how great their guilt, and can never finally die.
"Cast all your anxiety on him," the apostle tells us in 1 Peter 5:7, "because he cares for you." He says in Matthew 11:28, "Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." Repeatedly, and with no room for exceptions, Jesus tells us that every single person to trusts His promise to bear his or her sins will stand before the Throne on Judgment Day guiltless in the eyes of God. "Everyone the Father gives me will come to me," he says in John 6:37, "and the one who comes to me I will never cast out."
"Indeed, it is by grace you have been saved, through faith," writes Paul in Ephesians 2, "—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared in advance so that we would walk in them." Even our lack of good deeds disappears when we let Jesus have it. He gives us his good deeds in return; in fact, he does them in us and through us.
"Justification by grace through faith" is not salvation merely by knowledge of historical events. As Dr. Ian Osborn puts it, it's transferring responsibility for your sins and all the shortcomings of which you are afraid to Jesus in the confidence that he has already borne them on your behalf, and that they were crucified with him, and that he keeps his promises. And when Luther stopped trying to achieve the impossible and be good enough for God and simply laid hold on Christ's promise to bear his burdens and his sins and to take responsibility for them onto himself, he was free. He punned that on that day Luther became Eleutharios- Greek for "the Free Man."
No matter what anybody tells you, it's not a one-time deal, and it isn't easy. It means re-claiming what Jesus promises you in your baptism every day you live and starting all over again to live a life of discipleship based not on fear but on love, not because you have to but because you get to. It's to give up trying to change your behavior one fault at a time and instead let God change your heart.
But day by day, as we give our sins to Jesus and receive the gift of His righteousness anew, Christ is formed within us. The Old Man dies; the New Man rises from the dead. And as long as we live by Christ's righteousness rather than by our own, and let him take responsibility for our sins and our worries...
But wait! We don't do that, do we? We hang on to our sins and worry that we're not sorry enough or don't believe enough or in the right way. We are plunged again into despair by our failure. So we flee once again to the cross. What Jesus offers there doesn't even depend on the quality or degree of our faith. It only depends on the truthfulness of Christ's promise to receive and forgive and restore and heal everyone- without exception- who comes to him.
But our failure no longer matters. Christ has succeeded on our behalf, and despite our weak and sputtering and actually rather pathetic and partial clinging to him, we are forgiven and restored completely. Even the smallest and weakest faith receives everything Christ has to give.
Find the freedom Luther found. Lay your sins on Jesus and live before God by his righteousness. Don't rely on somehow coming up with righteousness of your own. You can't do it, and you don't need to. Jesus has already done it for you.
Is that too good to be true? Well, if it's not true, God is a liar. He repeats ir all through the New Testament.
Nobody- and that includes you- who trusts that is true can ever be lost. The seas will evaporate, the mountains crumble, and the stars fall from heaven before that happens.
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