“…the presumption of righteousness is the dregs of all the evils and the sin of all the sins of the world.  For all other sins and vices can be corrected, or at least prohibited by by the punishment of the magistrate.  But this sin, each man’s personal presumption of his own righteousness, peddles itself as the height of religion and sanctity, because it is impossible for the nonspiritual man to judge rightly about this issue.  Therefore this disease is the highest and greatest empire of the devil in the whole universe….”

Lectures on Galatians, Vol. 26 Luther’s Works

“A counterfeit faith is one that hears about God, Christ, and all the mysteries of the incarnation and redemption, one that also grasps what it hears and can speak beautifully about it; and yet only a mere opinion and a vain hearing remain, which leave nothing in the heart but a hollow sound about the Gospel, concerning which there is a great deal of chatter.  In fact, this is not faith at all; for it neither renews or changes the heart.  It does not produce a new man, but leaves him in his former opinion and way of life.  This is a very pernicious faith, and it would be better not to have it.  A moral philosopher is better than such a hypocrite with such a faith.”

Lectures on Galatian, 1535 (Works, Vol. 26, p. 269)

Saturday

On Friday, the nailing and the cutting-down of God.

On Sunday, the rising up.

What happened on Saturday?

Brenden Kenelly

“Why do Augustine and the Holy Fathers, in their disputations and teachings, refer back to Holy Scripture as the primary principles of truth, and use their light and power to enlighten and strengthen their own darkness and weakness? Through this example they indeed teach that the divine words are more certain and clear than those of all men, even their own words, so that the words of men need be corrected, proven, completed and strengthened by Scripture and not these by the words of men. […] How godlessly perverse are we indeed that we should wish not to learn Holy Scripture learnt through itself and its own spirit but instead through the words of men, in contrast to all the Fathers?”

In a time when populations are being displaced by war and famine, when economic stagnation results in fewer government services, with a potential environmental crisis looming over the world, one can note the rise of a harsher attitude towards the poor, the sick, the unemployed, and the dispossessed.

Scripture (Wisdom: 2) also noted this very human temptation and gives voice to it before condemning it in the last verse:

“10 Let us oppress the righteous poor man [they say]; let us not spare the widow or regard the gray hairs of the aged. 11 But let our might be our law of right, for what is weak proves itself to be useless. 12 “Let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions; he reproaches us for sins against the law, and accuses us of sins against our training. 13 He professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a child of the Lord. 14 He became to us a reproof of our thoughts; 15 the very sight of him is a burden to us, because his manner of life is unlike that of others, and his ways are strange. 16 We are considered by him as something base, and he avoids our ways as unclean; he calls the last end of the righteous happy, and boasts that God is his father. 17 Let us see if his words are true, and let us test what will happen at the end of his life; 18 for if the righteous man is God’s child, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries. 19 Let us test him with insult and torture, so that we may find out how gentle he is, and make trial of his forbearance. 20 Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for, according to what he says, he will be protected.” 21 Thus they reasoned, but they were led astray, for their wickedness blinded them….”

“The premise of most urban church work, it seems, is that in order for the Church to minister among the poor, the church has to be rich, that is, to have specially trained personnel, huge funds and many facilities, rummage to distribute, and a whole battery of social services. Just the opposite is the case. The Church must be free to be poor in order to minister among the poor. The Church must trust the Gospel enough to come among the poor with nothing to offer the poor except the Gospel, except the power to apprehend and the courage to reveal the Word of God as it is already mediated in the life of the poor. When the Church has the freedom itself to be poor among the poor, it will know how to use what riches it has. When the Church has that freedom, it will be a missionary people again in all the world.”
William Stringfellow

“A king’s existence is demonstrated by way of subjection and submissiveness.  Do you want to try and demonstrate that the king exists?  Will you do so by offering a string of proofs, a series of arguments?  No.  If you are serious, you will demonstrate the king’s existence by your submission, by the way you live.  And so it is with demonstrating God’s existence.  It is accomplished not by proofs but by worship.”

Soren Kierkegaard

“Let it suffice for the present that this star [the Gospel] is the visible sermon and the bright revelation of Christ as he is concealed and foreshadowed in the promises of the Scriptures. Therefore, whoever sees the star certainly recognizes the king of the Jews, the newly-born Christ. For the Gospel teaches nothing else but Christ and therefore the Scripture contains nothing else than Christ. But he who does not recognize Christ may hear the Gospel, or indeed carry the book in his hands, but he has not yet its real meaning. To have the Gospel without its meaning is to have no Gospel; and to have the Scripture without recognizing Christ means to have no Scripture and is nothing else than to let this star shine and yet not see it.”

“Why was Luther not satisfied  with lecturing and preaching?  Why did he take up the pen?  The primary reason was not the urge of the scholar nor the controversial zeal of a reformer, but the responsibility of a pastor for a pure, clear, comprehensible, convincing and liberating proclamation of the gospel.  He had himself struggled to understand the righteousness of God, which, as the gospel reveals, means that the righteous live by faith.  This struggle had to be proclaimed publicly to the language in which they spoke….”

(Luther:  An Introduction to his Thought)

I

“The will of God is not a system of rules which is established form the outset; it is something new and different in each different situation in life, and for this reason a [person] must ever anew examine what the will of God may be.”

Ethics