If righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose (Galatians 2:21).

One of the things I like most about Martin Luther is that he was a sinner.  He was shockingly honest in his writing about his own sinfulness, and he needed to be for the sake of people who constantly forget that Christ died for the ungodly.  Let me give an example of what I mean:

If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter, are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign (Sämmtliche Schriften, Letter 99, emphasis added).

And Luther was no imaginary sinner.  He wrote this questionable advice to a younger friend, Jerome Weller, “Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles.”

That doesn’t mean Luther took sin lightly.  He often lamented over his indwelling sin.  His great sinfulness, his recognition of it, and his despair over it made him a good companion to sinful people.  And his understanding that God was the only one who could free him from his sin made him totally reliant on God and his grace, just like Augustine a millennium before him who prayed, “Command what you will, and will what you command!”  Indeed, Luther was an Augustinian monk, so he was likely quite familiar with this famous passage from the Confessions.  Luther wrote of his own struggles:

I sit here at ease, hardened and unfeeling—alas! praying little, grieving little for the Church of God, burning rather in the fierce fires of my untamed flesh. It comes to this: I should be afire in the spirit; in reality I am afire in the flesh, with lust, laziness, idleness, sleepiness. It is perhaps because you have all ceased praying for me that God has turned away from me . . . For the last eight days I have written nothing, nor prayed nor studied, partly from self-indulgence, partly from another vexatious handicap . . . I really cannot stand it any longer . . . Pray for me, I beg you, for in my seclusion here I am submerged in sins.

Perhaps Luther’s deep understanding that the gospel was solely for sinners made him so free to talk about his sinfulness.  As he himself once said, “Sin cannot tear you away from [Christ], even though you commit adultery a hundred times a day and commit as many murders.”  The church could use more sinners like Luther.

His dying words fit his life and teaching so well, “We are beggars.  This is true.”