Selected Passages of Martin Luther
texts translated for Project Wittenberg by Rev. Robert E. Smith
Martin Luther's Definition of Faith
An excerpt from "An Introduction to St. Paul's Letter to the Romans,"
Luther's German Bible of 1522, by Martin Luther, 1483-1546
Translated by Rev. Robert E. Smith
from DR. MARTIN LUTHER'S VERMISCHTE DEUTSCHE SCHRIFTEN.
Johann K. Irmischer, ed. Vol. 63
(Erlangen: Heyder and Zimmer, 1854), pp.124-125. [EA 63:124-125]
Faith is not what some people think it is. Their human dream
is a delusion. Because they observe that faith is not followed by good works or a better life, they fall into error, even though they
speak and hear much about faith. ``Faith is not enough,'' they say, ``You must do good works, you must be pious to be saved.''
They think that, when you hear the gospel, you start working, creating by your own strength a thankful heart which says, ``I
believe.'' That is what they think true faith is. But, because this is a human idea, a dream, the heart never learns
anything from it, so it does nothing and reform doesn't come from this `faith,' either.
Instead, faith is God's work in us, that changes us and gives new birth from God. (John 1:13). It kills the Old
Adam and makes us completely different people. It changes our hearts, our spirits,
our thoughts and all our powers. It brings the Holy Spirit with it. Yes, it is a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this
faith. 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. He stumbles around and looks for faith and good
works, even though he does not know what faith or good works are. Yet he gossips and chatters about faith and good
works with many words.
Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times
trusting in it. Such confidence and knowledge of God's grace makes you happy, joyful and bold in your
relationship to God and all creatures. The Holy Spirit makes this happen through faith. Because of it, you
freely, willingly and joyfully do good to everyone, serve everyone, suffer all kinds of things, love and praise the God
who has shown you such grace. Thus, it is just as impossible to separate faith and works as it is to separate
heat and light from fire! Therefore, watch out for your own false ideas and guard
against good-for-nothing gossips, who think they're smart enough to define faith and works, but really are the greatest of fools.
Ask God to work faith in you, or you will remain forever without faith, no matter what you wish, say or can do.
Martin Luther on Quoting Martin Luther
An Excerpt From Martin Luther's Spiritual Last Will & Testament
CONFESSION CONCERNING CHRIST'S SUPPER (1528), Part 3
by Martin Luther, 1483-1546
Translation by Rev. Robert E. Smith
From the German text in:
DR. MARTIN LUTHERS WERKE: KRITISCHE GESAMTAUSGABE.
(Weimar: Herman Boehlaus Nachfolger, 1909), pp.499-500.
Because I see that the mobs are always growing, the number of
errors are always increasing and Satan's rage and ruin have no end, I wish to confess with this work my faith before God and the
whole world, point by point. I am doing this, lest certain people cite me or my writings, while I am alive or after I am dead, to
support their errors, as those fanatics, the Sacramentarians and the Anabaptists, have begun to do. I will remain in this
confession until my death (God help me!), will depart from this world in it, and appear before the Judgment
Seat of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So that no one will say after my death, ``If Luther was alive, he would teach and believe this article differently,
because he did not think it through sufficiently,'' I state the following, once and for all: I, by God's grace, I have
diligently examined these articles in the light of passages throughout the Scriptures. I
have worked on them repeatedly and you can be sure that I want to defend them, in the same way that I have just defended the
Sacrament of the Altar.
No, I'm not drunk or impulsive. I know what I am saying and understand fully what this will mean for me as I
stand before the Lord Jesus Christ on the Last Day. No one should think that I am
joking or rambling. I'm serious! By God's grace, I know Satan very well. If Satan can turn God's Word upside down and pervert
the Scriptures, what will he do with my words -- or the words of others?
An Excerpt From Martin Luther's LARGE CATECHISM
Translation by Rev. Robert E. Smith
From the German text in: TRIGLOT CONCORDIA.
(St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921). p. 580.
The First Commandment
You must not have other gods.
That is, I must be your only God.
Question: What does this saying mean? How should we understand it? What does it mean to have a god? What
is God?
Answer: To have a god means this: You expect to receive all good things from it and turn to it in every time of
trouble. Yes, to have a god means to trust and to believe in Him with your whole
heart. I have often said that only the trust and faith of the heart can make God or an idol. If your faith and trust are true,
you have the true God, too. On the other hand, where trust is false, is evil, there you will not have the true God either. Faith
and God live together. I tell you, whatever you set your heart on and rely on is really your god.
Discovering
the Gospel:
The Tower Experience
An Excerpt From:
Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther's Latin Works (1545)
by Dr. Martin Luther, 1483-1546
Translated by Bro. Andrew Thornton, OSB
from the "Vorrede zu Band I der Opera Latina der Wittenberger Ausgabe. 1545"
in vol. 4 of _Luthers Werke in Auswahl_, ed. Otto Clemen, 6th ed.,
(Berlin: de Gruyter. 1967). pp. 421-428.
[Translator's Note: The material between square brackets is explanatory in nature and is not part of Luther's preface. The terms "just, justice, justify" in the following reading are synonymous with the terms "righteous, righteousness, make righteous." Both sets of English words are common translations of the Latin "justus" and related words. A similar situation exists with the word "faith"; it is synonymous with "belief." Both words can be used to translate Latin "fides." Thus, "We are justified by faith" translates the same original Latin sentence as does "We are made righteous by belief."]
Meanwhile in that same year, 1519, I had begun interpreting the
Psalms once again. I felt confident that I was now more experienced, since I had dealt in university courses with St.
Paul's Letters to the Romans, to the Galatians, and the Letter to the Hebrews. I had conceived a burning desire to understand what
Paul meant in his Letter to the Romans, but thus far there had stood in my way, not the cold blood around my heart, but that
one word which is in chapter one: "The justice of God is revealed in it." I hated that word, "justice of God,"
which, by the use and custom of all my teachers, I had been taught to understand
philosophically as referring to formal or active justice, as they call it, i.e., that justice by which God is just and by which he
punishes sinners and the unjust.
But I, blameless monk that I was, felt that before God I was a sinner with an extremely troubled conscience. I
couldn't be sure that God was appeased by my satisfaction. I did not love, no, rather I hated the just God who punishes sinners. In silence, if I
did not blaspheme, then certainly I grumbled vehemently and got angry at God. I said, "Isn't it enough that we miserable sinners,
lost for all eternity because of original sin, are oppressed by every kind of calamity through the Ten Commandments? Why does God
heap sorrow upon sorrow through the Gospel and through the Gospel threaten us with his justice and his wrath?" This was how I was
raging with wild and disturbed conscience. I constantly badgered St. Paul about that spot in Romans 1 and anxiously wanted to
know what he meant.
I meditated night and day on those words until at last, by the mercy of God, I paid attention to their context:
"The justice of God is revealed in it, as it is written: 'The just person lives by
faith.'" I began to understand that in this verse the justice of God is that by which the just person lives by a gift of God, that
is by faith. I began to understand that this verse means that the justice of God is revealed through the Gospel, but it is a passive
justice, i.e. that by which the merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written: "The just person lives by faith." All
at once I felt that I had been born again and entered into paradise itself through open gates. Immediately I saw
the whole of Scripture in a different light. I ran through the Scriptures from memory and found that other terms
had analogous meanings, e.g., the work of God, that is, what God works in us; the power of God,
by which he makes us powerful; the wisdom of God, by which he makes us wise; the strength of God, the salvation of God,
the glory of God.
I exalted this sweetest word of mine, "the justice of God," with as much love as before I had hated it with hate.
This phrase of Paul was for me the very gate of paradise. Afterward I read Augustine's "On the Spirit and the
Letter," in which I found what I had not dared hope for. I discovered that he too interpreted
"the justice of God" in a similar way, namely, as that with which God clothes us when he justifies us. Although Augustine had
said it imperfectly and did not explain in detail how God imputes justice to us, still it pleased me that he taught
the justice of God by which we are justified.
Love and Faith
by Dr. Martin Luther, 1483-1546
Translated by Frank Hale
Excerpted from: "Fastenpostille 1525, Matt. 8:1 ff"
D. MARTIN LUTHERS WERKE. KRITISCHE GESAMMTAUSGABE
17. Band., Zweite Abteilung,
(Weimar: Hermann Boehlau Nachfolger, 1927),
p. 74, line 20 to p. 75, line 12.
Furthermore, here is the example of love for the one learned in Christ toward the leper. Because there you see
how love made Him a servant, that He might help the poor freely and without any return; he sought neither
profit nor honor from it, but only the benefit of the poor and the honor of God the Father. That is why
He also commanded him, that he should tell it to no one, so that it would be a truely pure work of free and good love.
That is, as I have often said, In the way that faith makes us lords, love makes us servants, even that through faith we become Gods and
partakers of the Divine nature and name, as Psalm 81 says, "I have said, you are
Gods, and all children of the most high." Yet through love we all become like the poorest one. Through faith we
lack nothing and have abundance. Through love we serve everyone. Through faith we receive good things from
God above. Through love we distribute them to a neighbor. Just as Christ lacked nothing
according to Divinity, but according to humanity served everyone, according to their need.
We have spoken of this often enough, that we also then through faith must be born to be God's children and
gods, lords and kings, just as Christ was born of the Father in eternity, a true God. And
furthermore, through love we reach out to abundantly help those nearby, just as Christ became man to help us all. And Christ is
God in the same way, not through merit of work done before, nor through what He earned as a man; but He was the
same from birth, without any work, and earlier, before He was man. Thus we also have the divine sonship, that
is the forgiving of our sins and that death and hell cannot harm, not earned through work or love,
but without work and before love, through the faith in the gospel received out of grace. And as Christ first of all, being
eternal God, became man to serve us, so we should likewise do good and love our neightbor, if we are already
devout, without sin, enlivened, blessed and childred of God. That is from the first
example of the leper.
Martin Luther, 1483-1546
From: Sermo Lutheri in natali Christi, [December 25, 1514])
D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesammtausgabe
(Weimar: Hermann Boehlau, 1883) Vol. 1, p. 28.
Just as the Word of God became flesh, it is also certainly necessary to say that the flesh became Word. For the
Word became flesh in order that the flesh might become Word. That is, God becomes man in order that man
might become God. Likewise strength becomes weakness in order that weakness might become
strength. He put on our form and figure and image and likeness in order that He might clothe us with His image, form and
likeness. For wisdom becomes foolishness in order that foolishness might become wisdom; and likewise in all
other things pertaining to God and to us, in all of them He took on what is ours in order to give us what is His.
If Christ Had Come With Trumpets Sounding
Excerpt from the Sermon on Luke 2:1-14
At Noon on Christmas Day of 1530
by Martin Luther, 1483-1546
Translated by Rev. Robert E. Smith
From: _Dr. Martin Luthers Kirchen-Postille:
Epistel=Teil, nebst vermischten Predigten_
(St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, N.D.), vol. 12, col. 1661
A Wonderful thing happened [when the angel announced this birth to the shepherds]. All of this occurred, to
present this birth to us with tender, loving care and to attract hearts to it, so that these hearts might love
Christ.
If this birth had been proclaimed to the nobles of this world; If the shepherds had measured themselves against
the standard of these important fellows; If the shepherds had compared to royal wisdom and wealth, they
would have been afraid, because power frightens and wisdom intimidates people.
If Christ had come with trumpets sounding; If he had a cradle of gold, His birth would have been a stately thing.
But it wouldn't comfort me. So, He had to lay in a poor girl's lap and be scarcely noticed by the world. In that
lap I can come to see Him; In this way He now reveals Himself to the distressed.
Yes, He would've had greater fame, if He'd have come in great power, splendor, wisdom and high class. Yet,
He will come some day, in another way, when He comes to oppose the great nobles. But now He comes to the
poor, who need a Savior. Then He will come as judge to oppose those who oppress the poor now.
_________________________________________________________________
These texts were translated for Project Wittenberg by Rev. Robert E. Smith and
are in the public domain. You may freely distribute, copy or print these texts. Please direct any comments or
suggestions to:
Rev. Robert E. Smith
Walther Library
Concordia Theological Seminary
E-mail: CFWLibrary@CRF.CUIS.EDU
Surface Mail: 6600 N. Clinton St., Ft. Wayne, IN 46825 USA
Phone: (219) 481-2123 Fax: (219) 481-2126
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