Tricky number 4 (Luther's 95)

As long as hatred of self abides (i.e. true inward repentance) the penalty of sin abides, viz., until we enter the kingdom of heaven.


All points of Luther's 95 had to do with either abuses by the Roman church, or interpretations of scripture by the Roman church that Luther wanted to discuss.  This one is a little tricky, especially in our day and age where we like to emphasize the freedom that Christ offers us as opposed to continuous repentance that is in step with that freedom.


What did Luther mean by hatred of self?  If we read about Luther (there are many good biographies about Luther's life) we soon see that he was considered quite mad by many people.  Even while in training to be a priest, he drove his senior priests crazy by repenting for hours on end (no exaggerate) in confession, to the point where he was told "Go and do something worthy of confessing!"  The major disconnect was Luther's sensitivity to his own sinfulness in the eyes of God as to compared to the worldly sinfulness as seen by the priests.  Luther was adamant about his wretchedness, confessing every thought and action that he felt was not in accordance to the will of God.  This was a good thing, as the law and God's standards is supposed to point us to Christ, and in Luther's case, it did.


The hatred of self is an understanding that while in these sinful bodies, we will continue to fight against the flesh (Romans 7).  This sinfulness that we fight against daily is the hatred we have.  We do not think like gnostics that claim the body is evil, therefore there is no way Jesus was really a human being, but that we, in our fallen nature, will struggle with sin until our glorified bodies are raised with Christ.  The penalty of sin, as we all know, is death.  We will die in this life, and it is due to our sinfulness that we do die.  But once we enter the Kingdom of heaven, we will have new bodies, bodies that are not stained by sin, which then allows us to live for eternity with God.