ABSTRACT
A key moment in the 16th century Reformation took place when Martin Luther was studying Paul’s letter to the Galatians. He was seeking to understand what Paul meant when he used the Greek word, dikaioō, usually translated into English as ‘to be justified’. Luther felt the same difficulty as many other interpreters down the years. Paul appears to be speaking of something momentous – a real change which in other contexts he can describe as a liberation. And yet this was not Martin Luther’s own experience. Luther was acutely aware of the intense and continuing struggle in his own life – he did not feel this sense of ‘liberation’. He continued to struggle with the reality of sin. To make sense of his own experience – and what he felt was the general experience of the Christian believer – he came to consider that Paul, when he used the word dikaioō, was indeed meaning a real change, but a change in the status of the individual in the eyes of God, not a felt change in the lived experience of the believer.
