Luther's Groaning Bones

In the winter of 1515, Martin Luther knelt in his cramped cell at the Black Cloister in Wittenberg, his body gaunt from fasting and sleepless nights. For years, the young Augustinian monk had confessed his sins for hours at a stretch — sometimes six hours in a single session — cataloging every wayward thought, every impure motive, every failure to love God perfectly. His confessor, Johann von Staupitz, once told him in exasperation, "Martin, either find a new sin or believe you are forgiven."

Luther's body bore the marks of his unresolved guilt. He suffered headaches, insomnia, and stomach ailments. His colleagues worried he was destroying himself. He later wrote that during those years he felt God's hand pressing down on him like a millstone.

Then Luther began lecturing on the Psalms. When he reached Psalm 32, the words pierced him: "When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long." David had described exactly what Luther was living — the crushing physical weight of trying to manage sin alone.

But the psalm didn't end there. "Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity... and you forgave the guilt of my sin." Luther began to see that confession wasn't an exhaustive inventory of failures. It was a surrendering — an opening of the hands to receive what the Almighty had already decided to give.

The monk who had groaned under the weight of his own guilt discovered what David knew centuries before: the blessed relief of being fully known and fully forgiven.