My dearest Spalatin, I heartily sympathize with you and earnestly pray our Lord Jesus Christ to strengthen you and give you a cheerful heart. I should like to know, and am making diligent inquiries to find out, what your trouble may be or what has caused your breakdown. I am told by some that it is nothing else than depression and heaviness of heart, caused by the matrimonial affair of a parson who was publicly united in marriage to the stepmother of his deceased wife. If this is true, I beseech you most urgently not to become self-centered and heed the thoughts and sensations of your own heart, but to listen to me, your brother, who is speaking to you in the name of Christ. Otherwise your despondency will grow beyond endurance and kill you; for St. Paul says, 2 Corinthians 7:10: ‘The sorrow of the world worketh death.’ I have often passed through the same experience and witnessed the same in 1540, in the case of Magister Philip, who was nearly consumed by heaviness of heart and despondency on account of the landgrave’s affair. However, Christ used my tongue to raise him up again? I say this on the supposition that you have sinned and are partly to blame for the aforementioned marriage, because you approved it.
Yea, I shall go further and say: Even if you had committed more numerous and grievous sins in this present and other instances than Manasseh, the king of Judah, whose offenses and crimes could not be eradicated throughout his posterity down to the time when Jerusalem was destroyed, while your offense is very light, because it concerns a temporal interest and can be easily remedied; nevertheless, I repeat it, granted you are to blame, are you going to worry yourself to death over it and by thus killing yourself commit a still more horrible sin against God? It is bad enough to know that you made a mistake in this matter. Now do not let your sin stick in your mind, but get rid of it. Quit your despondency, which is a far greater sin. Listen to the blessed consolation which the Lord offers you by the prophet Ezekiel, who says, chap. 33:11: ‘As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Do you imagine that only in your case the Lord’s hand is shortened? Isaiah 59:1. Or has He in your case alone forgotten to be gracious and shut up His tender mercies? Psalm 77:10. Or are you the first man to aggravate his sin so awfully that henceforth there is no longer a High Priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities Hebrews 4:15. Do you consider it a new marvel when a person living this life in the flesh, with innumerable arrows of so many devils flying about him, is occasionally wounded and laid prostrate?
It seems to me, my dear Spalatin, that you have still but a limited experience in battling against sin, an evil conscience, the Law, and the terrors of death. Or Satan has removed from your vision and memory every consolation which you have read in the Scriptures. In days when you were not afflicted, you were well fortified and knew very well what the office and benefits of Christ are. To be sure, the devil has now plucked from your heart all the beautiful Christian sermons concerning the grace and mercy of God in Christ by which you used to teach, admonish, and comfort others with a cheerful spirit and a great, buoyant courage. Or it must surely be that heretofore you have been only a trifling sinner, conscious only of paltry and insignificant faults and frailties.
Therefore my faithful request and admonition is that you join our company and associate with us, who are real, great, and hard-boiled sinners. You must by no means make Christ to seem paltry and trifling to us, as though He could be our Helper only when we want to be rid from imaginary, nominal, and childish sins. No, no! That would not be good for us. He must rather be a Saviour and Redeemer from real, great, grievous, and damnable transgressions and iniquities, yea, from the very greatest and most shocking sins; to be brief, from all sins added together in a grand total.
Dr. Staupitz comforted me on a certain occasion when I was a patient in the same hospital and suffering the same affliction as you, by addressing me thus: Aha! you want to be a painted sinner and, accordingly, expect to have in Christ a painted Savior. You will have to get used to the belief that Christ is a real Saviour and you a real sinner. For God is neither jesting nor dealing in imaginary affairs, but He was greatly and most assuredly in earnest when He sent His own Son into the world and sacrificed Him for our sakes, etc. Romans 8:32; John 3:16. These and similar reflections, drawn from consolatory Bible-texts, have been snatched from your memory by the accursed Satan, and hence you cannot recall them in your present great anguish and despondency.
For God’s sake, then, turn your ears hither, brother, and hear me cheerfully singing—me, your brother, who at this time is not afflicted with the despondency and melancholy that is oppressing you and therefore is strong in faith, so that you, who are weak and harried and harassed by the devil, can lean on him for support until you have regained your old strength, can bid defiance to the devil, and cheerfully sing: ‘Thou hast thrust sore at me that I might fall; but the Lord helped me. Psalm 118:13. Imagine now that I am Peter holding out my hand to you and saying to you: ‘In the name of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk.’ Acts 3:6. For I know I am not mistaken, nor is the devil talking through me; but since I am laying the Word of Christ before you, it is Christ who speaks to you through me and bids you obey and trust your brother who is of the same household of faith. It is Christ that absolves you from this and all your sins, and I am a partaker of your sin by helping you to bear up under it.
See that you accept and appropriate to yourself the comfort I am offering you; for it is true, certain, and reliable, since the Lord has commanded me to communicate it to you and bidden you to accept it from me. For if even I am cut to the quick by seeing you in such awful distress because of your deep melancholy, it gives God a far greater displeasure to behold it; for ‘He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth Him of the evil.’ Joel 2:13. Therefore do not turn away from him who is coming to comfort you and announce the will of God to you and who hates and abominates your despondency and melancholy as a plague of Satan. Do not by any means permit the devil to portray Christ to you differently from what He is in truth. Believe the Scripture, which testifies that He ‘was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil.’ 1 John 3:8. Your melancholy is a work of the devil, which Christ wants to destroy if you will only let Him. You have had your fill of anguish; you have sorrowed enough; you have exceeded your penance. Therefore, do not refuse my consolation; let me help you.
Behold my faithful heart, dear Spalatin, in dealing with you and speaking to you. I shall consider it the greatest favour that I have ever received from you if you allow the comfort which I am offering you, or rather the absolution, pardon, and restoration of the Lord Christ, to abide in you. If you do this, you will, after your recovery, be forced to confess yourself that you have offered the most pleasing and acceptable sacrifice to the Lord by your obedience; for in Psalm 147:11 it is written: ‘The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear Him, in those that hope in His mercy’; again, in Psalm 34:18: ‘The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart and saveth such as are of a contrite spirit; and in Psalm 51:17: ‘The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise? Therefore let the accursed devil with his despondency scamper away like a whipped dog. He wants to make me sad on your account; he wants to blast my joy in the Lord; yea, if he could, he would swallow us all up at one gulp. May Christ, our Lord, rebuke and chastise him, and may He strengthen, comfort, and preserve you by His Spirit! Amen.
Comfort your wife with these and your own more effectual words. I have not the leisure to write also to her.
Given at Zeitz, August 21, AD 1544.
Your Martin Luther.
Martin Luther Letter to Geoge Spalatin, 21 August 1544
(Weimar Ausgabe, Br X. No.402).1
note
1. This English translation [by Stephen Pietsch] from the Latin (WA Br X. 402) was made with the aid of a translation from Latin to German by C. F. W. Walther in the 19th century (St Louis edition X.1729) and an English translation published online at the Mission Lutheran Church Website.
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“You have had your fill of anguish; you have sorrowed enough; you have exceeded your penance. Therefore, do not refuse my consolation; let me help you.”
Thank you for posting this historical example of Christian love!! This admonition to a friend brings me joy–joy at the right time!
Dr. Clark,
I have questions regarding the actual relationship and the communications between Martin Luther and his dear friend, Pastor Spalatin.
Did they actually write, talk, meet and pray, sit-down and converse with one another regarding the challenges pastor faced regarding a decision and the consequences?
Or did the pastor’s wife and mutual friends write/talk with Martin Luther about the Pastor’s condition?
Was Pastor Spalatin comforted by Martin Luther?
Thank you!
Catherine,
The geographically separated at the time of the writing of the letter and travel in the 16th century was difficult and dangerous. They were friends and Luther knew him personally.
They were contemporaries. He was born one year after Luther. He studied in Wittenberg. He returned to Wittenberg in 1511, just about the time Luther arrived to teach. He was an important figure in the progress of the Reformation in Saxony. According to the entry in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, “his later years were darkened by melancholy.”
We only have Luther’s but they were friends. When they were in Wittenberg together they certainly did talk, pray, and worship together. I’m sure that Georg was at Luther’s table with the others.
Since we don’t have Spalatin’s letters we can’t know with certainty the outcome but I hope and trust that he found consolation in this letter.
Dr Clark,
Thank you for responding and reasoning through the conditions of the time in which these two men lived and the depth of their friendship in Christ. My first read was flat, because I laced an historical perspective. It is a tender-hearted, personal letter of encouragement strengthened with relevant Scripture and distinctions.
thank you for posting this letter
John MacArthur would give this a hardy Amen!
William,
What makes you say so?
Because for MacArthur the only possibilities for the man’s depression would have to be his sin. Or as Luther adds, the Devil. Could it be the result of serotonin reuptake? Could it be bipolar disorder? Of course, Luther was a man of his times and knew nothing of these chemical imbalances. One of the symptoms of Serotonin deficiency is deep sense of guilt. No amount of contrived “faith” will make that go away. Telling someone to buck up is like telling a blind man to see. That type of letter would only crush a man suffering from these disorders he cannot control.
William,
If I’m understanding you properly, I think you’ve misunderstood Luther’s message and intent. Spalatin was depressed about his sins. He was worried that he was under judgment for them and outside the favor of God.
Luther repeated to him the same counsel that he got from Staupitz, his father confessor in the monastery but he did so in light of what he had learned through the Reformation.
Luther’s spiritual counsel was just right.
He wasn’t dealing with clinical depression. He was dealing with a man who thought he was still under the law and encouraged him with the gospel.
Frankly, I don’t think this has much to do with MacArthur at all.
William,
I don’t understand your objections, as though Luther is exhorting the sinner to “buck up” to overcome his depression. Rather Luther is encouraging Pastor Spalatin to look to the long suffering kindness, undeserved mercy and forgiveness of God to comfort him in the face of the devil’s accusations of sin which caused his regrets.
William,
The chemical imbalance hypothesis is finally being rejected after decades of damage. It has turned out to be the case that we moderns didn’t really know that much more about supposed chemical imbalances than Luther did. The fact that SSRIs and other antidepressants may help a patient attain a certain mental state did not prove that there was some chemical imbalance in the first place, and the overprescription of these medications has caused horrible follow-on effects and dependency. See this.
It seems that MacArthur might have thought it better for Luther to point to Spalatin’s sins and question in an accusatory whether the guy was a legit believer in the first plane. Let’s not forget this despair-filled assessment from MacArthur: “Ones assurance of salvation is directly proportionate to his obedience to God’s commands”
Paul,
Amen! I have seen the fruit of that counsel and it is not sweet.