"Luther" Tagged Sermons
Luther found his own justification by faith in this very verse, and it is God speaking in 2:4, not Habakkuk voicing his own conviction. Judgment falls on Babylon, but also on Judah, and even on Habakkuk himself, no one exempted from the reckoning. What 2:2-3 promises is nothing less than God’s impending revelation of Christ.
Despite the Reformation’s rediscovery of justification by faith, the modern church has drifted back into something like a new Dark Ages on the doctrine, for three specific reasons laid out here. 1 Timothy 3:16’s claim that Christ was ‘justified in the spirit’ is read as a statement about the resurrection itself. Christ’s own justification, in that sense, precedes and grounds ours.
Luther found real comfort in this psalm’s own account of justification by faith alone, a debt this sermon traces directly. The Calvinist and Lutheran readings diverge at points worth naming, even while agreeing on the doctrine’s core. Verses 8-11 turn from doctrine to practice: how the justified person is actually meant to live.