When we look at the Body of Christ , we focus on th efinished work at the cross to redeem mankind from the Original Syn of Adam!
When anyone detracts from the Savior's life giving Grace in order to confuse or distract it is good to seek an answer from the best authority, which in this case is not Luther but Saint Paul. Paul wrote most of the "rest of the Bible" I suggest you study inside the Epistles of Paul, rather than a "contemporary . The entire story of salvation is perfectly spelled out by Paul!
When Luther began to read what Paul wrote in the scriptures his catholic eyes were OPENED!
"When Luther began to read what Paul wrote in the scriptures his catholic eyes were OPENED!"
Your assertion bears no relationship to reality. First, Luther was a professor of Sacred Scripture long before he rebelled. Second, he came up with all sorts of new doctrines when he began to substitute his own personal beliefs for what had always been believed by Christians. To do this, he even went so far as (among other things) to insert the word "alone" after "faith" in Romans 3:28 in his German translation of the New Testament--which, by the way, was far from being the first German translation of the NT. (For some reason, I guess, the Holy Spirit was unable to make that verse sufficiently clear for the uneducated to understand with out Dr. Luther's help.) Of course, the only place where the phrase "faith alone" actually exists in the New Testament is James 2:24, where the efficacy of "faith alone" is flatly denied.
Moreover, Martin Luther believed all his life that the Lord Jesus Christ is truly present in the elements of Holy Communion, as Lutherans do to this day, though in his later years he departed from strict conformity with Catholic doctrine in that regard.
On this topic more generally, the Catholic (and Orthodox) doctrine of the Real Presence of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist is so clearly spelled out in the Bible in numerous places (the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper, St. Paul's account and reflections on it, and the Lord's own teaching at the Synagogue in Capernaum, related by St. John in his Gospel) that one can only be persuaded to explain them away by the desire to conform to some prejudiced belief, springing from false traditions of men that arose in the sixteenth century, contrary to the plain meaning of plain words in the Bible.
This is funny considering that the older he got, the further away from Catholic doctrine he became. Having read some of Luther's works, he sure didn't interpret Paul's epistles as Catholics did.
Christian.