What Does Katharina von Bora show us about Faith?

“Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9, NIV)

Imagine: you’ve made a choice that will change the course of your life forever. What lies behind is a life you can’t go back to or be content in, so you have chosen to leave it. If caught, you would be severely punished, and yet the future you venture towards is vastly uncertain and unknown.

In many ways, this analogy applies to the Christian walk: being saved by grace and living righteously will require us to step on to a different path. Becoming sanctified by the Lord will mean leaving our old lifestyles, haunts, and routines in order to make new ones that glorify God. In doing so, we may find that those we once called friends no longer understand us and shun us. We may find things that once gave us comfort, don’t anymore. 

There’s a reason that old song says, “The cross before me, the world behind me. No turning back, no turning back.” 

For Katharina von Bora, a nun living in Nimbschen, Germany, at the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, that sentiment was never more true. Finding herself dissatisfied with the teachings of the Catholic church, where works and good deeds counted as higher than God’s grace and power to save, Katharina found herself in a group of twelve nuns that climbed into a fish wagon and left behind their lives at the convent. If they were found, they would be criminalized by the Catholic church; but these women found that breaking away from religious practices that neither gave them assurance of faith nor could be backed by or proven in scripture was necessary.

For a nun of that day, the only options outside of the convent were to return to her family and hope they’d accept her back, or to marry a man that would support her. For Katharina, returning home was not an option, so she continued on with a group of women to Wittenberg, which was a safe haven for Christians that were fueling the Reformation in Germany, among them was Martin Luther.

After two years, and two attempted proposals by others, Katharina resolved that she would either marry Luther himself, or his close friend, Nicolas von Amsdorf. If they would not accept her, she would live as a spinster, which was an unforgiving place in society at the time. On June 13, 1525, Martin Luther took Katharina von Bora to be his wife.

To the world, the marriage was controversial: an ex-monk and an ex-nun entering into the covenant of marriage. Erasmus of Rotterdam predicted that the union would bring about the Antichrist, and to many others, Katharina married below her station. But the two proved to have an affectionate, long-lasting, and faithful relationship. In many ways, Katharina became the framework for a role that didn’t exist before: the Pastor’s Wife.

Soon, the Luther home was full of six children, and Katharina dedicated herself to managing the parsonage– a former monastery that she renovated with over 40 rooms for the many guests that came to Wittenberg to hear her husband preach. She purchased farmland and cultivated orchards, gardens, and livestock to help feed her family and any guest that came through her door. She took in orphaned children and hosted dinners for those who came from near and far to gather around in conversation with her husband. Because of Katharina, the Luther household came to be known as a welcome landing place for those who wanted to talk about the Gospel and reformed Biblical doctrine. These nightly dinners became known as “Table Talks,” where both Luther and Katharina engaged in conversation.

In fact, because of her background as a nun, von Bora was well-versed in Latin and scripture, so Luther encouraged His wife to participate in even heated debates about the Lord and His Word.

Talk about a Proverbs 31 woman! Katharina championed her husband in his ministry that included translating the Bible from Latin to the language of the people. She supported his travels to share Christ with others that liberated them from the ideologies of the Catholic church and gave scripture back to the people who no longer had to rely on priests to interpret the Word. 

To Katharina, the practical tasks of motherhood held no difference from the spiritual. For her, every duty of being a wife, a mother, a pastor’s wife, and a community figure was an opportunity to serve God. Everything was built upon Him and in pursuit of Him. She was more than “just a wife,” “just a mom,” or even “just a woman.” She was the helpmate of one of the most well-known pastors to have ever lived. Martin Luther left a mark on the Church that still reverberates to this day, but Katharina’s support of His ministry and delight in her part of his work no doubt affected the world as well.

After Martin’s death, Katharina spent six years trying to raise funds to keep their household and their legacy going. In 1552, after falling out of a wagon, Katharina’s final words were, “I will stick to Christ as a burr to a topcoat!”

Oh, that we should all live a life so in service of the Lord. May we all walk by tenacious faith so that we would refuse to allow any chapter of life to pull us away from our love and service to God. May our commitment to the Lord encompass all we do and our hunger for the Truth of the Gospel be our comfort when we step out into uncharted waters. 

Like Katharina, we should not be afraid because God is always with us. If we know His Word, live lives that glorify Him by killing our sin and conforming to His Son, we should be strong and courageous. Even in our failings or our struggles, we should not feel discouraged, but take heart.

There are so many facets of Katharine’s life that should stand as an example of godliness and zeal for working in God’s will, but I will leave you with this: both Martin Luther and Katharina von Bora were driven to seek the Lord because they were dissatisfied by the rules and rituals that religious leaders put on the church. Things like indulgences and pennance, where working at doing good deeds and performative acts were what earned salvation and bought peace.

They worked, toiling away at things they thought were the marks of good faith and devoted belief to Christ. And it wasn’t enough. There was still something missing in their hearts that drove them out of the Catholic church and into reforming the church as it was known. 

God saves. God saves us because it is His delight to draw those He calls His own. It’s not because of anything we did or didn’t do in our own strength. Only God has the power to pay the debt of our sins and rebellion. That is the truth at the heart of the Reformation, and that is the truth that continues in all of God’s children today. 

The truth of the Gospel and God’s work of redemption was enough to make people like Martin and Katharina leave everything they knew. It should be the same for us: the truth of God’s Word should be enough for us to leave everything behind and step out into unknown territory. If we have no desire to pursue that, then we need to be convicted of the depth of our sin all over again, and allow God to reveal Himself to us again. 

Because God Himself is enough. He is enough for us to get uncomfortable if it means sharing Jesus with someone who needs Him. He is enough for us to confront and kill our sin. He is enough to change what we need to change in order to glorify Him more. He is enough to lay down our lives in building His kingdom. 

Stick to Him, friends. Stick to Him the way a burr sticks to a jacket, and follow Him where He leads.