November 2014

More volumes of Luther’s writings are being translated for the first time into English. The latest is volume 68, sermons on Matthew 18-24 from 1537-40. Among my favorite passages are the following: “If a husband and wife [are] at odds with each other, they should not divorce on that account” (12); “A good marriage is rarely to be found” (13); “We must not brew together faith and reason” (24); “Reason wants to become the master of Holy Scripture and outthink [uberklugln] it, but reason is much too blind to be able to judge and decide about Holy Scripture” (26); “What God does and says is certain” (30); “Christ wants to have…. poor sinners, weak, fragile, and unable to boast of much good” (35); “The Scriptures are full of such testimony – ‘He has borne the sin of many’ [Is 53:12]” (38); “Christ…. tells me what I should do, so they say, ‘I can do it.’ Not by a long shot, my dear fellow!” (39); “A husband always wants another woman. And if he gets her, he soon grows tired of her too” (43); “To love your neighbor as yourself means to… seek your neighbor’s benefit… before your own benefit [and] leave it behind for the benefit of [your] neighbor…. [Therefore we] should not have any regard for our life” (44); “Wealth is God’s gift [therefore] thank God for it and use it in a Christian manner” (53); “It is impossible to be saved by human ability or powers. God’s hand must reach in” (55); “Whoever is full… and is prepared to part with everything rather than provoke God’s wrath, truly he is genuinely… sad in great joy” (59); “Neither you nor I nor anyone else should rule Scripture according to our thoughts” (67); “The temple…. is where God Himself would listen to all who would call on Him” (88); “Sheer need – that is what we bring before…. Christ” (96); “God has shown us where life is, namely, in His Word” (97); “From [vainglory] stems the thought: ‘I must preach something…. special and new,’ so that the people marvel and say:… ‘Never before have I heard anyone say it like that.’ Then he gets all puffed up… and thinks he is an ox, though he is hardly a toad” (102); “[When it] concerns God’s honor,… every Christian must be proud,… but especially the preacher…. Here he must stand firm like a wall” (106); “The foolishness of our reason is enormous” (107); “The Word of God is what established the church” (109); “More Christians go to heaven from the gallows than from the church cemetery” (110); “Anyone who does not want [Christ, the cornerstone] differs from God like winter from summer. God, the master builder, rejects them, since they want to be rejected and reject themselves as a result of having rejected the stone” (120-21); “Preaching…. is called the office of builder” (126); “It is better for you to fall on top of [Christ] the stone than for it to fall on top of you. For if you fall fittingly, the shards become part of the building, but if it falls upon you, it crushes you, so that you have righteousness neither on earth nor in heaven” (129); “[The ungodly say that] conscience is a hideous beast that makes a person sad and pits him against himself. [So they say] away with conscience!” (137); “[The ungodly read God’s Word] superficially, as a maiden sweeps a room” (139); easy work to make someone who was dead alive again…. As to how this all happens, reason can neither see nor comprehend” (140); “I should set my trust in Christ, not in myself,… Christ alone must reign therein” (147); “Everything depends on the nature of one’s heart” (152); “We were not created to live for ourselves, but to promote God’s honor and to be useful to other people” (152); “Where things are preached one way in one church and another way in another,… discordant preachers each capture a following, though they are supposed to point to Christ alone” (155); “A preacher should not take notice of whether people berate or laud him” (157); “[Being] part of Christ’s kingdom [calls us] to sing a song to God day and night” (157); “I preach my shame, so why would I want to seek my honor here?” (157); “If you want to be something special over and above other people, that is a sign that you are jumping out of the Church” (158); “God established the preaching office so that people might be saved from hell” (162); “[Don’t] read into Scripture [your] own interpretation” (162); “A false preacher…. is the worst person on earth” (163); “We may find fault with the Jews [even though they remain] fine, reasonable people, and not as asinine as we are” (177); “No one can offer resistance to the devil except one whom God’s Word has enlightened” (180); “God [doesn’t have] any great need for you” (188); “The world suffers from severe blindness” (188); “The world courts the Babylonian whore when she preaches that good works save” (190); “If you do not [love your neighbor as yourself], you may be good before the world, but before God you are condemned” (193); “When what used to be vices become right and customary and are no longer called sins, there is no more help” (194, 216); “Christians… bear in mind that this life must have an end, we learn [this] so that we… await a better life, where everything will be better than it was in this life” (198); “Do not think that you are pure before God, even if you are unsullied and irreproachable before the world” (198); “Burial should be kept beautiful and honorable for the sake of the article of our Christian faith, since we know that we will rise again” (202); “In the estates instituted by God, man see only dead people’s bones and filth, but Christians see what lies underneath – gold and gemstone” (205-206); “Christ is a friend of the truth and an enemy of lies” (209); “Where there is no contrition or repentance, there is also no forgiveness of sins” (216); “Divine grace… cannot help if someone says, ‘I do not need grace’” (216); “We can never make satisfaction for our sins…. Rather, Christ must do all of this” (218); “Anyone who wants to win [the world] over and attract it will by no means remain with God’s Word” (227); “If the devil were to make something new,… we would long and throng for it” (229-30); “The dear world [is a] beautiful, darling little brat” (233); “[Bad] preaching [can] not even… lure a dog out from behind the oven” (234); “Read the Scripture day and night” (236); “The one mark of the Christian Church… is following and obeying the divine Word” (244); “Where people hear God’s Word, that is where God’s Church is, even if it were in a cattle stall like where Christ was born” (245); “[It’s wrong to] say that we have to hear the holy Christian Church above the holy Word” (245); “If someone were to preach the Gospel in a whorehouse, it would still be the Church” (245); “No matter how filthy a place is, if only His Word is heard there, it would still be the church” (246); “Where [God’s Word] is absent, the devil shits into that church” (246); “The apple [from Eden] is still stuck in everyone’s throat because man is still inclined to be perpetually displeased with what God does…. This apple gives us a stomachache and rattles in our throat as we try to cough it up” (254); “I am better off not knowing what God has not wanted to reveal” (254); “[God] has given me His Son; with that you have enough to study” (254); “‘I do not need to know why’…. That is what to answer when someone asks about the secret, hidden will of God, because if you sharpen yourself with these thoughts, the questions will grow worse as time goes on, and there will be more of them than there is sand by the sea” (254); “Apart from [the Son of Mary], God has closed and hidden His heart and will” (255); “It is true that [the Messiah] brought peace, but it is a spiritual peace. So the Lord preached entirely contrary to the thought of the Jews,…. who believed that all would be calm and tickled themselves with such sweet dreams” (259); “It is nothing great when God merely… fills my belly… as with sows” (260); “No one is so crude or wild as not to ponder at least once how he might escape death” (261); “Taking away death… shall be done by Christ alone” (262); “The Church is not seen by outward peace, but by the Word and Sacraments” (265); “The veins of a beautiful maiden are also full of pus and impure blood” (270); “Reject all compromisers as… heretical Christians, for they… obscure the doctrine of Christ while seeking how they might hold out [until] Christ would be totally blotted out” (297-98); “Let Christ alone be the compromise [or Mediator]” (299); “I find God nowhere but in Christ alone” (300); “I thought I could not do wrong, but as soon as God withdrew His hand, there I stood like a helpless little man” (308); “[Imprudent Christians] think the teaching of the Gospel hovers somewhere up above and will not touch the ground” (315, 309); “Now we know how we must die, where we are going, and how to escape death and the devil; we know who has redeemed us and how we are to obtain these great treasures. We learn it from this book of Holy Scriptures alone” (318-19); “[Christians are ridiculed] because [they] believe in the scorned, deceased Christ, who is a rotten, dead carcass that hung like a rogue on the gallows” (322); “Holy Scripture is God’s Word” (324); “Christians will be a meager little bunch” (334); “The more we preach, the less they pay attention” (338); “You have to understand the words ‘take place’ [Matthew24:34] differently, so that they… mean ‘begin to take place’” (340). Shouldn’t we all then, with Kierkegaard, “Praise God for Luther!” (JP 4:4549)?

Remember in prayer before God those whom He has made your

brothers and sisters through baptism.