When the devil throws our sins up to us and declares that we deserve death and hell, we ought to speak thus: “I admit that I deserve death and hell. What of it? Does this mean that I shall be sentenced to eternal damnation? By no means! For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction in my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God. Where He is, there I shall be also!”
— Martin Luther, "Letter to Jerome Weller", in Letters of Spiritual Counsel, ed. and trans. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), p86-87
Tag: Martin Luther
Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.— Attributed to Martin Luther
Christian students today face increasing hostility, the more so as they cling to the ever-offensive gospel. Luther faced the wrath of the Emperor, the Pope, burning at the stake and the prospect of hell ever after if he was wrong. To all this he managed to reply: ‘I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. I cannot do otherwise, here I stand, may God help me, Amen.’
It was no mere bluster or passing bravado. Luther saw that it is precisely when the gospel is most under attack that God’s people must do theology – and thus bind themselves to the Scriptures – with all the more urgency.
Happy Reformation Day.
Who can comprehend the riches of the glory of this grace? Christ, that rich and pious Husband, takes as a wife a needy and impious harlot, redeeming her from all her evils and supplying her with all His good things. It is impossible now that her sins should destroy her, since they have been laid upon Christ and swallowed up in Him, and since she has in her Husband Christ a righteousness which she may claim as her own, and which she can set up with confidence against all her sins, against death and hell, saying, “If I have sinned, my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned; all mine is His, and all His is mine,” as it is written, “My beloved is mine, and I am His”.
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