Desiring God is offering a free copy of John Piper’s biographical message on Martin Luther in commemoration of the anniversary of Luther’s death.
In Germany 467 years ago, in a small, backwater town called Eisleben, the shaking hand of a dying man scribbled this simple line: We are beggars. This is true.
Martin Luther died on February 18, 1546. These last words of weakness echoed the life-changing truth he’d unearthed in the Scriptures: we don’t bring anything to the table of our justification. Jesus truly died for the ungodly.
Luther came to understand that if we are to be accepted by God, we need a perfect righteousness we can’t produce — we need an alien righteousness given to us by Another.
But this discovery didn’t just happen. It came after hours of the painstaking study of Scripture. Luther gave himself to the Book, which he later explained as the primary actor in the Protestant Reformation. And a great movement of God in our day won’t happen apart from that same ingredient. Pastors and Christian leaders must be devoted to God’s word.
So we have much to learn from Luther, says John Piper.
Luther was the subject of Piper’s biographical message at the 1995 Conference for Pastors. We’ve since reformatted that message into a five-chapter ebook, which presents a sketch of Luther’s life and distills relevant lessons for not only pastors and leaders, but all Christians.
—Jonathan Parnell
Get a free download of Martin Luther: Lessons from His Life and Labor (available in PDF, MOBI, or EPUB) from Desiring God.
Via: Desiring God Blog