Though Martin Luther lived an exemplary life as a monk, inside he felt he could never live up to God’s requirement of righteousness. God’s righteous judgment proclaimed in the gospel seemed cause for despair until he realized that the righteousness offered in the gospel is not active (something we must do), that is, not a result of our external struggle; but passive, that is, righteousness received by faith in Christ’s finished work something He and only He did). “I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith.”[i] This revelation of a faith which rests in God’s gift rather than striving in religious activity transformed all of life for Luther. He referred to it as a ‘new birth’. This rest of faith is the fourth aspect of the heart God seeks in the believer living inside out.
