Luther on Justification by Faith

J-515

"In like manner Moses must precede and teach people to feel their sins in order that grace may be sweet and welcome to them. Therefore all is in vain, however friendly and lovely Christ may be pictured, if man is not first humbled by a knowledge of himself and he possesses no longing for Christ, as Mary's Song says, 'The hungry he hath filled with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away,' Luke 1:53."
Sermons of Martin Luther, ed., John Nicholas Lenker, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1983, II, p. 149. Matthew 15:21-28; Luke 1:53.

J-516

"The apostle says 'our,' 'our sins;' not his own sin, not the sins of unbelievers. Purification is not for, and cannot profit, him who does not believe. Nor did Christ effect the cleansing by our free-will, our reason or power, our works, our contrition or repentance, these all being worthless in the sight of God; he effects it by himself. And how? By taking our sins upon himself on the holy cross, as Isaiah 53:6 tells us."
Sermons of Martin Luther, ed., John Nicholas Lenker, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1983, VI, p. 180. Hebrews 1:1-12; Hebrews 1:3.

J-517

"Christ is speaking here not of the word of the law, but of the Gospel, which is a discourse about Christ, who died for our sins, etc. For God did not wish to impart Christ to the world in any other way; He had to embody Him in the Word and thus distributed Him, and present Him to everybody; otherwise Christ would have existed for Himself alone and remained unknown to us; he would have thus died for himself. But since the Word places before us Christ, it thus places us before Him who has triumphed over death, sin, and Satan. Therefore, he who grasps and retains Christ, has thus also eternal deliverance from death. Consequently it is a Word of life, and it is true, that whoever keeps the Word shall never see death."
Sermons of Martin Luther, 8 vols., ed., John Nicholas Lenker, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1983, II, p. 177. John 8:46-59.

J-518

"To this incline your ears, and be persuaded that God speaks through men and forgives you your sins; this, of course, requires faith."
Sermons of Martin Luther, 8 vols., ed. John Nicholas Lenker, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1983, II, p. 200.

J-519

"If I do not believe it, I will not receive its benefits; but that neither renders it false nor proves that anything is lacking in Christ."
Sermons of Martin Luther, 8 vols., ed., John Nicholas Lenker, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1983, II, p. 258. Easter, Third Sermon. Mark 16:1-8.

J-520

"It is a faithful saying that Christ has accomplished everything, has removed sin and overcome every enemy, so that through Him we are lords over all things. But the treasure lies yet in one pile; it is not yet distributed nor invested. Consequently, if we are to possess it, the Holy Spirit must come and teach our hearts to believe and say: I, too, am one of those who are to have this treasure. When we feel that God has thus helped us and given the treasure to us, everything goes well, and it cannot be otherwise than that man's heart rejoices in God and lifts itself up, saying: Dear Father, if it is Thy will to show toward me such great love and faithfulness, which I cannot fully fathom, then will I also love Thee with all my heart and be joyful, and cheerfully do what pleases Thee. Thus, the heart does not now look at God with evil eyes, does not imagine He will cast us into hell, as it did before the HS came...."
Sermons of Martin Luther, 8 vols., ed., John Nicholas Lenker, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1983, III, p. 279. Pentecost Sunday. John 14:23-31.

J-521

"All who are born into the world of man and woman are sinful under God's anger and curse, condemned to death. For all are conceived and born in sin as Scripture testifies (Psalm 51:5): 'Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.'"
Sermons of Martin Luther, The House Postils, 3 vols., ed., Eugene Klug, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1996, II, p. 26. Easter Tuesday. Luke 24:13-35; Psalm 51:5.

J-522

"The 'rod of His mouth' signifies the spoken Word or the Gospel, which proceeds from the mouth of all whose teaching is pure. It is not inefficacious; it bears fruit; it justifies the godly and destroys the ungodly."
What Luther Says, An Anthology, 3 vols., ed. Ewald M. Plass, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1959, III, p. 1469. Brief comment. Isaiah 11:4.

J-523

"Christ did indeed suffer for the whole world; but how many are there who believe and cherish this fact? Therefore, although the work of redemption itself has been accomplished, it still cannot help and benefit a man unless he believes it and experiences its saving power in his heart."
What Luther Says, An Anthology, 3 vols., ed., Ewald Plass, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1959, II, p. 705f. Smalcald, 1537.

J-524

"If remission of sins without repentance is preached, the people imagine that they have already forgiveness of sins, and thereby they are made secure and unconcerned. This is a greater error and sin than all error of former times, and it is verily to be feared that we are in that danger which Christ points out when He says, Matthew 12:45: 'The last state of that man shall be worse than the first.'"
C. F. W. Walther, The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel, trans., W. H. T. Dau, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1928, p. 123. Matthew 12:45.[19]

GA? - Does It Still Happen at Mequon

One student has claimed that the Wisconsin Synod's secret initiation rite was dumped five years ago.

We do not know that GA is still active until Wayne Mueller officially denies it.

Ahem, not Amen

About Me
Christopher Evans San Pablo, California, United States View my complete profile

My Lifestyle
A brother in the Spirit, partnered, in vows of stability, obedience, and lifelong conversion, to a fellow Christian, who happens to be a Lutheran pastor.

Has ELCA's cooperation with the Episcopal Church gone too far?

***

Evangelical Lutheran churches are semiautonomous, said Frak Imhoff from church headquarters in Chicago, but no national policy bars the ordination of gays and lesbians nor the affirmation of gay relationships.

However, Lutheran Bishop Herbert W. Chilstrom wrote to President Clinton, "We have a clear set of standards and expectations for all who are ordained. We judge them by their behavior rather than on the basis of their sexual orientation." Chilstrom was urging Clinton to lift the ban against gays in the military.

And, Chilstrom said, "Ordained persons who are homosexual are expected to abstain from homosexual realtionships."

The church sponsors Reconciled in Christ congregations and synods, similar to the United Methodist Church's Reconciling and Presbyterian U.S.A's More Light groups.

The Grand Canyon Synod, which embraces Arizona and southern Nevade, is not Reconciled in Christ, nor are there any RC congregations within Arizona, said Bishop Howard Wennes in Phoenix.

Neither are there any openly gay clergy members in the synod, Wennes said, "at least not that I am aware of." The synod was created in 1978. At its second annual meeting, Wennes said, a speaker attempted to "sensitize people on how the church deals with gays and lesbians. The church feels that there is room under the cross for everyone, that homosexuals are real people with real feelings."

From Arizona pulpits, he said "we try to create an atmosphere where we can talk about it without people zooming out in space. It's a very complicated subject."

Note the UOJ Poll

Until this noon, all the votes were for justification by faith. Then, at the same time a WELS seminarian posted his UOJ beliefs, we suddenly had 10 votes for UOJ. Are Mequonians jumping on the poll, urged by GA Pope M Schottey? There are 10 knuckleheads saying "All sins are forgiven." I used to watch seminarians at Mequon sleeping in class. The amusement kept me awake when Somo-Nitz was droning on, when we went through doctrinal quotations in Gawa's class, like football fans going through a bag of Fritos.

Yes, Ichabodians, I was there at Mequon too.

Everyone is forgiven, but not everyone is justified. No wait. They are justified but not justified-justified.

Therefore, based on UOJ, I was not born with Original Sin and had no need for Holy Baptism.

My Calov versus Your Calov - Wauwatosis

Hardly anyone knows who Calov is. Luther correctly taught that the Holy Spirit speaks to us concisely so we do not have vast volumes of work to twist into pretzels (my rough translation).

I do not have enough years left to read Calov or the rest of the post-Concord theologians. Calov and Gerhard were astonishingly productive. Unfortunately, this era grew more philosophical and scholastic, leaving the ordinary pastor and layman behind.

Although Luther's Works travel around from owner to owner, usually in pristine condition, few have read much of Luther, who surpassed all other theologians in Christendom. I am glad some of the older works (post-Concord) are now available in English. In a few years no one will be reading Latin except a few classics majors.

If someone spent 20 years and proved Calov taught UOJ, our confession of faith would still rest primarily on the Scriptures first as the ruling norm and the Book of Concord second as the ruled norm. The Wisconsin Synod does not like the Book of Concord, but they love their Wauwatosa opinions. A few statements from them will show that they place their fads above all authority. A common statement is: "In our circles, this means..." Thus, they suffer from a bad case of Wauwatosis.

The Book of Concord was knitted together to prevent a sect, city, or territory from wandering off on its own. Lutherans study the Book of Concord as an act of humility: these confessors have something to teach me about the Scriptures and Patristic Age. Yes, those reformers did not skip from Paul to Luther as the modern know-nothings do. They used the Fathers (Augustine, Jerome - not J. P. Meyer and Sig Becker) to show they were in harmony with orthodox Christianity.

I have noticed that when people rail against the Book of Concord, they show very little knowledge of the work (ditto, railing against Luther).

I have three reasons for quoting authors so frequently:
1. To show the anti-Scriptural opinions of false teachers, especially UOJ and Church Growth fanatics.
2. To repeat what has always been taught in Lutheran orthodoxy.
3. To evoke interest in reading the classics of the Faith.

If my house were on fire and I had the last books left in Christianity, this is what I would grab on the way out the door:
A. The KJV, my Hebrew OT, my Greek NT.
B. Luther's Sermons (now in five volumes, check Christian Book Distributors).
C. Luther's Family Devotions.
D. The Book of Concord. Triglotta? I am not Arnie.
E. Anything by Chemnitz I can run out the door with.

***

M Schottey has left a new comment on your post "My Calov versus Your Calov - Wauwatosis":

The WELS does NOT teach that men are saved a part from faith.

Salvation and Justification are two different terms.

Again, faith is the method by which the blessings of justification (which is for all men) is (sic) imparted (subjective) on each man.

Therefore no one is saved apart from faith. But all are justified.

The purpose of many of the quotes you have trotted out is that they were written to support the Pauline justification by Grace through faith. They were not written against UoJ.

Find me an author, one, who would have said that Jesus came to earth, suffered, and died only for some. Christ's death was not for some, but for all mankind.

You seriously and gravely misuse interchangibly the words 'justify' and 'saved'.

You also seriously and gravely attribute a false teaching to the WELS which is not there. None of us men are being taught that a person is saved apart from faith. We are taught that all were declared 'not guilty' but that the promises af that declaration are recieved only by grace THROUGH faith. As Paul teaches.

***

GJ - WELS had an "evangelism" campaign where the banners said, "I am saved, just like you." Even die-hard WELSians were shocked by the Universalism. Preuss would have nodded his approval.

A common WELS pastoral saying, "Two thousand years ago, all sins were forgiven."

Salvation comes from the forgiveness of sins, so do not erect so many straw man fallacies in the same post.

I am glad the comment was posted, because it reveals the anti-Scriptural opinions of those who are brain-washed at Mequon. I will recap:
1. There are two justifications.
2. The first justification is really important - all sins are forgiven: Hottentots, Hindus, Muslims, but not critics of WELS.
3. The second justificaiton is also important: all sins are forgiven, with all people declared righteous - but that does not count until they are subjectively justified and forgiven.

True Calvinists say that Christ died only for the elect. Their numbers are few and, like the Wisconsin Synod membership, growing smaller each day.

The two-justification false doctrine of WELS/ELS/LCMS is a recent opinion, at odd with the Book of Concord. UOJ is from Pietism, imported by Walther, blessed by Pieper, but fueled lately by the Church Growth professors like Valleskey and Bivens.

J. Gerhard - UOJ Fanatic? - Judge for Yourselves

J-559

"The entire Scripture testifies that the merits of Christ are received in no other way than through faith, not to mention that it is impossible to please God without faith, Hebrews 11:6, let alone to be received into eternal life. In general, St. Paul concludes concerning this [matter] in Romans 3:28: Thus we hold then that a man becomes righteous without the works of the Law—only through faith."
Johann Gerhard, A Comprehensive Explanation of Holy Baptism and the Lord's Supper, 1610, ed. D. Berger, J. Heiser, Malone, Texas: Repristination Press, 2000, p. 165.

J-560

"Therefore, the fulfillment of this promise to Abraham is in no way to be interpreted to mean that Abraham's seed became righteous and saved without individual faith."
Johann Gerhard, A Comprehensive Explanation of Holy Baptism and the Lord's Supper, 1610, ed. D. Berger, J. Heiser, Malone, Texas: Repristination Press, 2000, p. 167.

Pieper-Walther Error
UOJ false teachers claim that Gerhard taught Universal Objective Justification. Too bad his works have been translated into English. See how F. Pieper tried to do this, below:

J-565
"Now, then, if the Father raised Christ from the dead, He, by this glorious resurrection act, declared that the sins of the whole world are fully expiated, or atoned for, and that all mankind is now regarded as righteous before His divine tribunal. This gracious reconciliation and justification is clearly taught in Romans 4:25: 'Who was delivered for our offenses and was raised again for our justification.' The term (dikaiosis) here means the act of divine justification executed through God's act of raising Christ from the dead, and it is for this reason called the objective justification of all mankind. This truth Dr. Walther stressed anew in America. He taught that the resurrection of Christ from the dead is the actual absolution pronounced upon all sinners. (Evangelienpostille, p. 160ff.)…Calov, following Gerhard, rightly points out the relation of Christ's resurrection to our justification as follows: 'Christ's resurrection took place as an actual absolution from sin (respectu actualis a peccato absolutionis). As God punished our sins in Christ, upon whom He laid them and to whom He imputed them, as our Bondsman, so He also, by the very act of raising Him from the dead, absolved Him from our sins imputed to Him, and so He absolved also us in Him.'" [Bibl. Illust., ad Rom. 4:25]
Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, 3 vols., St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1951, II, p. 321. Romans 4:25

Robert Preus used a Calov citation in Justification and Rome to show Calov's correct teaching. The Walther-Pieper gang tried unsuccessfully to prove UOJ back to Adam. In fact, UOJ is a new doctrine embraced by a few Midwestern sects in the last century.

From Catholic, Lutheran, Protestant (second edition):

However, Preus clarified the true meaning of justification in his final book, Justification and Rome, which was published posthumously. Preus wrote this definitive comment:

But the imputation of Christ's righteousness to the sinner takes place when the Holy Spirit brings him to faith through Baptism and the Word of the Gospel. Our sins were imputed to Christ at His suffering and death, imputed objectively after He, by His active and passive obedience, fulfilled and procured all righteousness for us. But the imputation of His righteousness to us takes place when we are brought to faith.

Preus immediately followed the statement above with a quotation from Quenstedt, one of his favorite orthodox Lutheran authors:

It is not just the same thing to say, “Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us” and to say “Christ is our righteousness.” For the imputation did not take place when Christ became our righteousness. The righteousness of Christ is the effect of His office. The imputation is the application of the effect of His office. The one, however, does not do away with the other. Christ is our righteousness effectively when He justifies us. His righteousness is ours objectively because our faith rests in Him. His righteousness is ours formally in that His righteousness is imputed to us.

Preus also quoted Abraham Calov with approval:

Although Christ has acquired for us the remission of sins, justification, and sonship, God just the same does not justify us prior to our faith. Nor do we become God's children in Christ in such a way that justification in the mind of God takes place before we believe.

Justification by faith, in the original sense, was taught in the official catechism of the Missouri Synod, and then was gradually changed:

#305 Why do you say in this article: I believe in the Forgiveness of Sins? Because I hold with certainty that by my own powers or through my own works I cannot be justified before God, but that the forgiveness of sins is given me out of grace through faith in Jesus Christ. For where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also true justification. Psalm 130:3-4; Psalm 143:2; Isaiah 64:6; Job 25:4-6 (Q. 124).

A proper study of the chief article of the Christian Church will restore the meaning and terminology of the Scriptures, the Church fathers, Luther, the Book of Concord, and the orthodox Lutheran theologians.

Hottentots and Hindus Forgiven without Faith

J-578
"So, then, we are reconciled; however, not only we, but also Hindus, and Hottentots and Kafirs, yes, the world. 'Reconciled', says our translation; the Greek original says: 'placed in the right relation to God'. Because before the Fall we, together with the whole creation, were in the right relation to God, therefore Scripture teaches that Christ, through His death, restored all things to the former right relation to God."
F. R. Eduard Preuss, 1834-1904, Die Rechtfertigung der Suender vor Gott. Cited in Rick Nicholas Curia, The Significant History of the Doctrine of Objective or Universal Justification, Alpine, California: California Pastoral Conference, WELS. January 24-25, 1983. p. 24.

Preuss (not to be confused with the one-s Preus clan) is a big hero to the UOJ Fanatics. Preuss taught at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, 1869-71. He prayed to God for a sign about whether the Church of Rome was the One True Church. He saw a brilliant sunset and became a Roman Catholic theologian. A former editor of Chemnitz, he published works in opposition to Luther's doctrine. When asked how he could have proved both sides of the same issue, he said, "Give me the texts and I can prove anything." Above is proof of his attempts to do just that. Compare his bovine statement to Luther's below.

Preuss' conversion is never mentioned by his fellow-Schwaermer UOJ fanatics.

Luther on Resurrection and Faith

“The resurrection and life of Jesus Christ is a cause, that is, an efficacious means of our spiritual resurrection and spiritual life; for it causes us to believe and to rise (from sin), as we read in 10:9: ‘If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.’ In Christ’s death we die unto spiritual life, as we read in 6:3-4: ‘So many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death (that) we also should walk in newness of life.’”
Martin Luther, Commentary on Romans, trans. J. Theodore Mueller, Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1954, p. 93. Romans 5:10.