Does God owe us?

Fred Meuser on Martin Luther's intolerance for righteousness based on a person's works:

Not only indulgences, pilgrimages, alms, repetitious prayers, and other so-called churchly good works felt Luther’s lash, but also every innate human impulse to make God somehow indebted to us. Luther knew not only the Scriptures; he also knew people. From the way in which, year after year, he glorified God’s undeserved grace despite our unworthiness, we can conclude that it was as hard for the Wittenbergers to say “Yes” to God’s judgment on their lives and “No” to the urge to bargain with God as it is for us today. The frequency and clarity of Luther’s words makes one wonder why he needed to say it so often, but they also give us a bit of comfort in our need to speak repeatedly to the perversions of the gospel in our day.

Luther himself said:

If you preach faith [and assurance] people become lax…But if you do not preach faith, hearts become frightened and dejected…Do as you please. Nothing seems to help. Yet faith in Christ should be preached, no matter what happens. I would much rather hear people say of me that I preach too sweetly…than not preach faith in Christ at all, for then there be no help for timid, frightened consciences…Therefore I should like to have the message of faith in Christ not forgotten but generally known. It is so sweet a message, full of sheer joy, comfort, mercy and grace. I must confess that I myself have as yet not fully grasped it. We shall have to let it happen that some turn the message into an occasion for security and presumption; others…slander us…and say [that by preaching so much of Christ] we make people lazy and thus keep them from perfection. Christ himself had to hear that he was a friend of publicans and sinners…We shall not fare any better.

Martin Luther Struggles to Love God

I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.” – Romans 1:15-17

 

Tim Keller writes about Martin Luther's early struggles with Romans: 

Martin Luther was a German monk who had been taught that God required him to live a righteous life in order to be saved. And so he had grown to hate God, for first requiring of him what he could not do, and then for leaving him to fail. Then Luther read and finally grasped the meaning of Romans 1:17—"In the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last”: 

“I labored diligently and anxiously as to how to understand Paul’s word … the expression ‘the righteousness of God’ blocked the way, because I took it to mean that righteousness whereby God is righteous and deals righteously in punishing the unrighteous. Although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner…therefore I did not love a righteous and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him …Then I grasped that the righteousness of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us by faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise … I broke through. And as I had formerly hated the expression ‘the righteousness of God,’ I now began to regard it as my dearest and most comforting word.” 

Everyone in Church is a Saint?

"May a merciful God preserve me from a Christian Church in which everyone is a saint!  I want to be and remain in the church and little flock of the fainthearted, the feeble and the ailing, who feel and recognize the wretchedness of their sins, who sigh and cry to God incessantly for comfort and help, who believe in the forgiveness of sins.”

Martin Luther, in Luther’s Works (St. Louis, 1957), XXII:55.

Free.....You Pay Nada

“ The heart of man finds it difficult to believe that so great a treasure as the Holy Spirit is gotten by the mere hearing of faith. The hearer likes to reason like this: Forgiveness of sins, deliverance from death, the gift of the Holy Spirit, everlasting life are grand things. If you want to obtain these priceless benefits, you must engage in correspondingly great efforts. And the devil says, ‘Amen.’

We must learn that forgiveness of sins, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, are freely granted to us at the preaching of faith, in spite of our sinfulness. We are not to waste time thinking how unworthy we are of the blessings of God. We are to know that it pleased God to freely give us His unspeakable gifts. If He offers His gifts free of charge, why not take them? Why worry about our lack of worthiness? Why not accept gifts with joy and thanksgiving?”
 
— Martin Luther
Commentary on Galatians

Luther on Works Righteousness

“If you cannot believe that God will forgive your sins for Christ’s sake, whom he sent into the world to be our high priest, how then, I ask you, will you believe that he will forgive your sins for the works of the law, which you never could perform, or for your own works, which, you must admit, cannot possibly counteract the judgment of God?"    -  Martin Luther

Busy

"Tomorrow I plan to work, work from early until late. In fact I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer."

    -Martin Luther

 

"Sometimes we think we are too busy to pray. That is a great mistake, for praying is a saving of time."
    -Charles H. Spurgeon

Are You Asking for Great Things?

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask . . . . Ephesians 3:20

“He is like an eternal, unfailing fountain.  The more it pours forth and overflows, the more it continues to give.  God desires nothing more seriously from us than that we ask Him for much and great things.”

                      Martin Luther, quoted in The Lutheran Study Bible, at Ephesians 3:20.

HT:  Ray Ortlund

Our Own Hands

"The sin underneath all our sins is the lie of the serpent that we cannot trust the love and grace of Christ, that we must take matters into our own hands."     

Martin Luther

Quote of the Week - Martin Luther

Someone asked Martin Luther what we contribute to salvation, and he said, "Sin and resistance!"

-Michael Horton, in a Christianity Today interview by Mark Galli