Martin Luther on the nature of saving faith
Essentially trust that grasps Christ
Christ, that rich and pious Husband, takes as a wife a needy and impious harlot, redeeming her from all her evils and supplying her with all His good things... she has in her Husband Christ a righteousness which she may claim as her own.
THE POSITION
Faith is trust that grasps Christ and, in grasping him, receives what is his. Luther's image is marriage: Christ takes the soul's sin, death and hell as his own and gives her his righteousness, life and salvation, so that she can say 'all mine is His, and all His is mine.' Faith justifies not because it is a virtue but because it lays hold of a person; assent that does not trust is not the thing he means.
19 So I will betroth you to Me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in loving devotion and compassion. 20 And I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will know the LORD.”
9 OTHERS HOLD THIS
ABOUT THIS FIGURE
Augustinian friar whose protest over indulgences opened the Reformation, and the theologian for whom justification by faith and the bondage of the will are the whole of the gospel. This entry rests on his own writings only — The Bondage of the Will (1525), the Smalcald Articles (1537), the Large and Small Catechisms (1529), Concerning Christian Liberty (1520), the Heidelberg Disputation (1518), the Church Postil and his biblical prefaces — and deliberately excludes the Augsburg Confession and the Formula of Concord, which are not his.
Cite this page
"Martin Luther on the nature of saving faith", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/luther/saving-faith (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/luther/saving-faith).