Explanation is both unnecessary and irrelevant.
Did you read the article?
For that matter, do you even know what Luther’s position is? And can you provide textual first person evidence to back it up?
>>Although I’m not a Roman Catholic, it boggles the mind to imagine how Luther’s position can fail to offend the conscience.
Luther’s position should offend the conscience of the Worldly Man. After all, the Worldly Man knows that he is pretty good, certainly better than most, and probably as good any of the men around him. The Worldly Man loves to tell the others, who aren’t as good as he is, that they need to sin less.
His sin, of course, is not really that bad and can be easily justified by him.
In Reformed theology, we understand that we are all sinners who cannot be good enough to meet God’s perfect requirements. Luther is telling us to stop pretending that our sin is OK, but our neighbor’s sin is too much.
This is the actual good news of the Gospel and explanation is never irrelevant since so many Christians are fearful and worried that they are not being good enough. They think they were washed clean when they were dunked in the water or said a prayer and that they started needing to “earn” it afterwards.
They were washed clean almost 2000 years ago and will still be clean 2000 years from now.
Indeed but while he never should have said this even though it was only in a private letter, yet as the article says, Luther was prone to strong hyperbole. It's his style, and this statement is a perfect example...The Catholic scholar Jared Wicks has correctly pointed out, “One needs to be on the lookout for Luther's rhetorical flights, and to be judicious in discriminating between the substance of his message and the linguistic extremes with which he sometimes made his points."
However, as invoked by haters of Luther such statements do not reflect what he formally taught by such statements as
Faith cannot help doing good works constantly. It doesn’t stop to ask if good works ought to be done, but before anyone asks, it already has done them and continues to do them without ceasing. Anyone who does not do good works in this manner is an unbeliever...Thus, it is just as impossible to separate faith and works as it is to separate heat and light from fire! [http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/luther-faith.txt]
This is what I have often said, if faith be true, it will break forth and bear fruit. If the tree is green and good, it will not cease to blossom forth in leaves and fruit. It does this by nature. I need not first command it and say: Look here, tree, bear apples. For if the tree is there and is good, the fruit will follow unbidden. If faith is present works must follow.” [Sermons of Martin Luther 2.2:340-341]
“We must therefore most certainly maintain that where there is no faith there also can be no good works; and conversely, that there is no faith where there are no good works. Therefore faith and good works should be so closely joined together that the essence of the entire Christian life consists in both.” [Martin Luther, as cited by Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963], 246, footnote 99]
if you continue in pride and lewdness, in greed and anger, and yet talk much of faith, St. Paul will come and say, 1 Cor. 4:20, look here my dear Sir, "the kingdom of God is not in word but in power." It requires life and action, and is not brought about by mere talk.” [Sermons of Martin Luther 2.2:341-342]
“This is why St. Luke and St. James have so much to say about works, so that one says: Yes, I will now believe, and then he goes and fabricates for himself a fictitious delusion, which hovers only on the lips as the foam on the water. No, no; faith is a living and an essential thing, which makes a new creature of man, changes his spirit and wholly and completely converts him. It goes to the foundation and there accomplishes a renewal of the entire man; so, if I have previously seen a sinner, I now see in his changed conduct, manner and life, that he believes. So high and great a thing is faith.”[Sermons of Martin Luther 2.2:341]
“For it is impossible for him who believes in Christ, as a just Savior, not to love and to do good. If, however, he does not do good nor love, it is sure that faith is not present. [Sermons of Martin Luther 1:40]
if obedience and God’s commandments do not dominate you, then the work is not right, but damnable, surely the devil’s own doings, although it were even so great a work as to raise the dead...And St. Peter says, Ye are to be as faithful, good shepherds or administrators of the manifold grace of God; so that each one may serve the other, and be helpful to him by means of what he has received, 1 Peter 4:10. See, here Peter says the grace and gifts of God are not one but manifold, and each is to tend to his own, develop the same and through them be of service to others.” [Sermons of Martin Luther 1:244]
In addition, upon hearing that he was being charged with rejection of the Old Testament moral law, Luther responded,
And truly, I wonder exceedingly, how it came to be imputed to me, that I should reject the Law or ten Commandments, there being extant so many of my own expositions (and those of several sorts) upon the Commandments, which also are daily expounded, and used in our Churches, to say nothing of the Confession and Apology, and other books of ours. Martin Luther, ["A Treatise against Antinomians, written in an Epistolary way", http://www.truecovenanter.com/truelutheran/luther_against_the_antinomians.html]
More http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/Reformation_faith_works.html
I'm a "lapsed" Catholic who decided that they had so many non-Christ focuses that I wasn't getting what I needed from them and that the Bible itself is the best available source for what one needs to know in order to become saved and to carry the Word.
That doesn't mean that I will automatically poo-poo that which i may not agree with w/o at least reading it - useful knowledge can be gained by delving into that which one would rather condemn as not worth one's time w/o checking it out...
The Sociologist Herbert Spencer is attributed (there are those who claim it came from others, but it doesn't lessen it's utility )with a useful set of words:
There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance — that principle is contempt prior to investigation.
If one questions (investigates) all things, even God, then one will gain a greater understanding of those things.....the only way to do that is to not shirk it for pre-set ideas.
Some of thsoe who are most effective about carrying the Word of God and the Gospels started out trying to disprove God's existence and the more they investigated, the more sure they became that He Is....