The Reformation’s emphasis on faith alone was the result of Luther’s tortured struggles to resolve the issue of how a fallen sinner may be saved. “My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and had no confidence that my character would satisfy Him. Night and day I pondered,” Luther said. The breakthrough came when Luther was given insight into Romans 1:17: “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.” Luther later wrote: “Then I grasped that the justice of God is the righteousness by which, through grace and sheer mercy, He justifies us through faith. Immediately I felt myself to have gone through open doors into paradise.”
Joel R. Beeke, Living for God’s Glory: An Introduction to Calvinism (Lake Mary, FL: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2008), 138.