Audio As a young man, Martin Luther recognized that he had a serious problem. He took the Bible seriously, and knew that he did not live up to the righteous standard of the holy God who was revealed in the Bible. He knew that all the commands of Scripture stood written as an indictment of a well-deserved condemnation over his life. Desperate to find some way to placate God and rid himself of the burden of his sin-guilt, Luther decided to become a monk. Surely renouncing all worldly pleasures and possessions and devoting oneself fully to the service of the Lord would earn him God’s approval. Or so he thought. In the monastery, he was shepherded by a faithful mentor to devote himself to the study of Scripture. And that Luther did with all his heart and with his mind. In his study, he came upon this verse of Scripture, Habakkuk 2:4, and it lit a fire within him. As Boice writes, “He recognized that somewhere in these words was a revelation of a different way of pleasing God than by fastings, self-immolations, prayers, charity, and good works.”[1] Not yet sure of the answer to all of the longings and questions of his soul, Luther set out on a pilgrimage to Rome. There at the churchof St. John’s Lateran, a staircase can be found purporting to be from Pilate’s hall of judgment in Jerusalem. Plates of glass cover stains which are said to be from the blood of Christ. And there pilgrims come from all over the world, still to this day, to climb those steps on their knees, reciting prayers at each step, pausing to kiss the glass-covered stains. This is done as a means of receiving an indulgence – a minimizing of the penalty of sins. The most recent pope to issue such a promise of indulgence at the Lateran Stairs was Pius X in 1908. And it was for this reason that Luther went to visit the Lateran Stairs. But something happened midway up those stairs. A handwritten letter from Luther’s son Paul is displayed in the Library of Rudolstadt today in which the following account is given: “my late, dearest father, in … his journey to Rome … had come to the knowledge of the truth of the everlasting gospel. It happened in this way. As he repeated his prayers on the Lateran staircase, the words of Habakkuk the prophet came suddenly to his mind: “The just shall live by faith.” Thereupon he ceased his prayers, returned to Wittenburg, and took this as the chief foundation for all his doctrine.” [2]Later, as Luther meditated on Paul’s quotation of this verse in Romans 1:17, he said, “although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against Him. … Night and day I pondered … the statement that ‘the just shall live by his faith.’ Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning.”[3]The words which are translated in the New American Standard as “the righteous will live by his faith” are just three words in the Hebrew Bible. In these three words, Walt Kaiser says, “one of the most triumphant notes of biblical revelation is sounded.” The fact that this short portion of a short verse in a short book of the Old Testament in quoted in three separate books of the New Testament gives us a hint of the significance of these words. Before we investigate the meaning of these words and their application to us, let us set them in their original context in Habakkuk. Again, I will remind you that Habakkuk was staring at an unprecedented national crisis. Judahwas infested with immorality, injustice, and idolatry. Habakkuk had cried out to God to do something about the problem, and God answered by saying that He was sending the Chaldeans – better known as the Babylonians – to overtake the nation