After completing the lesson, the student will be able to: 
Explain who Martin Luther was and what he believed.
What the Reformation is.
Why the Reformation is important.
Be able to give a brief description of the Catechism (what it is) and its purpose.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”

Romans 1:16-17

Martin was born at Eisleben in 1483 to Margaret and Hans Luther and raised in Mansfeld, which are in modern day Germany.  When Martin was only 13 years old, he went to the University of Erfurt to study law. There he earned both his baccalaureate and master's degrees in the shortest time allowed by university statutes. Then in 1505 his life took a dramatic turn. When he was 21-years-old he was caught in a severe thunderstorm and a bolt of lightning struck the ground near him.    "Help me, St. Anne!" Luther screamed. "I will become a monk!"  He fulfilled his vow: he gave away all his possessions and entered the monastic life.

Luther was extraordinarily successful as a monk. He plunged into prayer, fasting, and ascetic (severe) practices—going without sleep, enduring bone-chilling cold without a blanket, and whipping himself. As he later commented, "If anyone could have earned heaven by the life of a monk, it was I."  Though he sought by these means to love God fully, he found no consolation. He was increasingly terrified of the wrath of God: "When it is touched by this passing inundation of the eternal, the soul feels and drinks nothing but eternal punishment." During his early years, whenever Luther read what would become the famous "Reformation text"—Romans 1:17—his eyes were drawn not to the word faith, but to the word righteous. Who, after all, could "live by faith" but those who were already righteous? The text was clear on the matter: "the righteous shall live by faith."  Luther remarked, "I hated that word, 'the righteousness of God,' by which I had been taught according to the custom and use of all teachers ... [that] God is righteous and punishes the unrighteous sinner." The young Luther could not live by faith because he was not righteous—and he knew it.

Martin Luther discovered the Gospel when he was ordered to take his doctorate in the Bible and become a professor at Wittenberg University. During lectures on the Psalms (in 1513 and 1514) and a study of the Book of Romans, he began to see a way through his dilemma. "At last meditating day and night, by the mercy of God, I ... began to understand that the righteousness of God is that through which the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith… Here I felt as if I were entirely born again and had entered paradise itself through the gates that had been flung open."  On the heels of this new understanding came others. To Luther, the church was the community of those who had been given faith. Salvation came not by the sacraments, but through faith.  Humility was no longer a virtue that earned grace but a necessary response to the gift of grace. Faith no longer consisted of agreeing with the church's teachings but of trusting the promises of God and the merits of Christ.  It wasn't long before the revolution in Luther's heart and mind played itself out in all of Europe.

The Reformation began on All Saints' Eve, October 31, 1517, when Luther publicly objected to the way preacher Johann Tetzel was selling indulgences. These were documents prepared by the church and bought by individuals either for themselves or on behalf of the dead that would release them from punishment due to their sins. As Tetzel preached, "Once the coin into the coffer clings, a soul from purgatory heavenward springs!"   Luther questioned the church's trafficking in indulgences and called for a public debate of 95 theses he had written. Instead, his 95 Theses spread across Germany as a call to reform, and the issue quickly became not indulgences but the authority of the church: Did the pope have the right to issue indulgences?  Events quickly accelerated. At a public debate in Leipzig in 1519, when Luther declared that "a simple layman armed with the Scriptures" was superior to both pope and councils without them, he was threatened with excommunication.

In 1521 he was called to an assembly at Worms, Germany, to appear before Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Luther arrived prepared for another debate; he quickly discovered it was a trial at which he was asked to recant his views.  Luther replied, "Unless I can be instructed and convinced with evidence from the Holy Scriptures or with open, clear, and distinct grounds of reasoning ... then I cannot and will not recant, because it is neither safe nor wise to act against conscience." Then he added, "Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me! Amen."  By the time an imperial edict calling Luther "a convicted heretic" was issued, he had escaped to Wartburg Castle, where he hid for ten months.

The Christ-centered Gospel of grace - Any discussion of the Reformation’s impact must begin with its central emphasis on the five solas (Latin meaning alone)– salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to the Scriptures alone, to the glory of God alone. This core biblical teaching of salvation by simple faith in Christ’s finished sacrifice had become muddled in the medieval church, replaced by a system of human merit mixed with God’s grace. Its rediscovery by the reformers remains their greatest legacy to the church.  Martin Luther, never shy about being direct, insisted that justification by faith is the central truth on which the church stands or falls. That was as true five centuries ago as it is today.

Martin Luther wrote the Small Catechism primarily as a tool for parents to use in teaching their children basic Christian truths.  The catechism provides a general summary of what Scripture teaches about salvation, the character and nature of God, the person and work of Jesus Christ, etc. It serves as a tool to help people better understand what the Bible teaches by organizing its contents according to subject.   Luther stated that, “The Catechism is the Bible of the laymen. In it the entire body of Christian doctrine, which every Christian must know in order to be saved, is contained. . . . Therefore, we should by all means love and esteem the Catechism and diligently impress it upon youth; for in it the correct, true, ancient, pure divine doctrine of the holy Christian Church is summarized. Whatever is contrary to this is to be considered an innovation and false, erroneous doctrine, be it ever so ancient, and we are to guard ourselves against it.”

As a pastor and teacher Martin Luther took a personal tour of various churches in his district (Saxony) in Germany in the fall of 1528 and was dismayed over the great ignorance he found amongst the people regarding basic Bible knowledge. The primary purpose of the Catechism is to help parents in the instruction of their children. Although written for young children and their parents, it was also intended for pastors as they taught within their churches. It is important to note, that the main parts of the Catechism, that is the Lord’s prayer, the ten commandments and the Apostles creed had been in use as basic building blocks of the faith for hundreds of years before Martin Luther. The Catechism is a brief and simple statement of Christian teaching, presented in the form of questions and answers. It contents are entirely biblical—Luther did not ‘invent’ the material; rather, he took its contents from the Bible. Although we have added and updated explanations, the structure of the Catechism remains the same from Luther’s time to ours.

Our Catechism is divided into five parts that give an overview of what the Lutheran Church believes:
The Ten Commandments
The Apostle’s Creed
The Lord’s Prayer
The Sacrament of Baptism; 
The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. 

You can find these parts in your Catechism from pages 3-24. The remainder of your Catechism is a series of expanded questions and answers for further explanation that was written by H. U. Sverdrup.