The Life, Teaching, and Legacy of Martin Luther

By Andrew J. Lindsey

Historian and teacher Andrew J. Lindsey introduces students to the life of Martin Luther through this brief, accurate biography, which focuses on the key biblical texts that shaped the reformer’s teaching concerning the good news of Jesus Christ. During a time when Europe was in political and religious turmoil from within and without, one man’s struggle over the question of how sinners may be accepted in the sight of God would lead to a new source of conflict, but his answers from the Bible would bring great hope to many.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Dec 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781490819976

Andrew J. Lindsey

Andrew Lindsey earned a BA in history from Georgia State University and a ThM in church history from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Andrew has seven years of teaching experience in both public and private schools, from middle school through college, as well as fifteen years of teaching in the church (through various Sunday school classes, children’s church, and other venues). Andrew’s greatest passion in life is making the good news of the Lord Jesus known to those who have never heard it before and making this gospel message more clearly known to those who are already following Christ.

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The Life, Teaching, and Legacy of

Martin Luther

ANDREW J. LINDSEY

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Copyright © 2013 Andrew J. Lindsey.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture passages are the author’s translation.

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ISBN: 978-1-4908-1996-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-1998-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-1997-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013922866

WestBow Press rev. date: 12/17/2013

Contents

Chapter 1    Origin, Education, and the Monastery

Chapter 2    Early Monastic Career, First Mass, and the Pilgrimage to Rome

Chapter 3    Professorship in Wittenberg and Evangelical Experience

Chapter 4    Background to the 95 Theses

Chapter 5    Posting the 95 Theses

Chapter 6    Interview With Cardinal Cajetan

Chapter 7    The Leipzig Disputation and the Papal Bull

Chapter 8    The Diet of Worms

Chapter 9    Sir George

Chapter 10  Marriage and Family Life

Chapter 11  The Augsburg Confession

Chapter 12  Death and Legacy

Endnotes

Bibliography

Dedicated to Dr. Shawn D. Wright,

Associate Professor of Church History,

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,

who helped re-ignite my interest in Martin Luther

and appreciate his relevance for today.

Thanks to my wife (Abby Lindsey) and to my mother (Theresa Lindsey)

for invaluable help in editing this work.

Romans 1:17

For in [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith unto faith, just as it has been written, The just man by faith will live.

It is my goal in writing this work to render an account of Martin Luther’s life that is brief, simple, accurate, and evangelical.

In twelve short chapters, I give a brief sketch of Luther’s life, touching upon major events in his life, major controversies in which he was involved, major works that he published, and major doctrines that he taught. I hope to give readers a firm basis for doing further research into the life of this great reformer.

I have endeavored to make this work accessible even for readers who may still be in middle school or underclassmen in high school. (I began writing this book as I was teaching about the life of Martin Luther to fifth and sixth graders at Sayers Classical Academy in Louisville, Kentucky.) I have tried to keep the language simple, and when more complicated terms were necessary— such as justification, purgatory, indulgences, merits, or even supererogation— I have either directly defined the terms in the text or have tried to write in such a way that readers may gain a sense of these terms’ definitions from the immediate contexts in which they occur.

In seeking to compose a compelling biography, I have striven to relate the events of Martin Luthers’ life with a strict attention to historical accuracy. Martin Luther was a folk hero in his own day, and many legends sprang up concerning his various activities. Some previous simple, introductory biographies of Martin Luther have suffered from uncritically repeating these legends. Untruths are particularly out of place, however, in writing about someone who devoted his life to proclaiming the truth of the gospel.

As I was discussing the life of Martin Luther with my fifth and sixth grade classes at Sayers Classical Academy in Louisville, I was dismayed to find that my students had— from the particular biography that they were then reading, which will go unnamed here— gained no real sense concerning the occasion on which Martin Luther was converted to true faith in Christ. Indeed, the students seemed to think that Martin