Quotations from Scripture and Other Writings Related to Martin Luther
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Biblical Verses Related to Martin Luther’s Teachings
From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.”
…they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.
If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.
But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace.
Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law; for “The one who is righteous will live by faith.”
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast.
So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.
For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.
For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them.
Quotes by Martin Luther
Unless otherwise attributed, the following quotes are compiled from the following websites: www.brainyquote.com, www.azquotes.com, www.goodreads.com, archives.relevantmagazine.com/god/15-martin-luther-quotes-still-ring-true.
Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason—I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other—my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.
Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.
Peace if possible, truth at all costs.
I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess.
On Grace and Faith
The sin underneath all our sins is to trust the lie of the serpent that we cannot trust the love and grace of Christ and must take matters into our own hands.
Lord Jesus, You are my righteousness, I am your sin. You took on you what was mine; yet set on me what was yours. You became what you were not, that I might become what I was not.
Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a man could stake his life on it a thousand times.
Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.
The most damnable and pernicious heresy that has ever plagued the mind of man was the idea that somehow he could make himself good enough to deserve to live with an all-holy God.
Faith, like light, should always be simple and unbending; while love, like warmth, should beam forth on every side, and bend to every necessity of our brethren
On Scripture
The Bible is the cradle wherein Christ is laid.
From the beginning of my Reformation I have asked God to send me neither dreams, nor visions, nor angels, but to give me the right understanding of His Word, the Holy Scriptures; for as long as I have God’s Word, I know that I am walking in His way and that I shall not fall into any error or delusion.
In a word, the Holy Scripture is the highest and best of books, abounding in comfort under all afflictions and trials. It teaches us to see, to feel, to grasp, and to comprehend faith, hope, and charity, far otherwise than mere human reason can; and while evil oppresses us, it teaches how these virtues throw light upon the darkness, and how, after this poor, miserable existence of ours on earth, there is another and an eternal life.
The Holy Scriptures surpass in efficaciousness all the arts and all the sciences of the philosophers and jurists; these, though good and necessary to life here below, are vain and of no effect as to what concerns the life eternal.
The Bible is alive, it speaks to me; it has feet, it runs after me; it has hands, it lays hold of me.
If you want to interpret well and confidently, set Christ before you, for He is the man to whom it all applies, every bit of it.
For some years now I have read through the Bible twice every year. If you picture the Bible to be a mighty tree and every word a little branch, I have shaken every one of these branches because I wanted to know what it was and what it meant.
One thing, and only one thing, is necessary for Christian life, righteousness, and freedom. That one thing is the most holy Word of God, the gospel of Christ.
God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.
The cross alone is our theology.
We need to hear the Gospel every day, because we forget it every day.
Whenever the true message of the cross is abolished, the anger of hypocrites and heretics ceases.. and all things are in peace. This is a sure token that the devil is guarding the entry to the house, and that the PURE doctrine of God’s Word has been taken away.
On Freedom
Man is man because he is free to operate within a framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy.
A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject of all, subject to all.
I frankly confess that even if it were possible I should not wish to have free choice given to me, or to have anything left in my own hands by which I might strive for salvation.
Let all the ‘free-will’ in the world do all it can with all its strength; it will never give rise to a single instance of ability to avoid being hardened if God does not give the Spirit, or of meriting mercy if it is left to its own strength.
God foreknows nothing by contingency, but that He foresees, purposes, and does all things according to His immutable, eternal, and infallible will. By this thunderbolt, “Free-will” is thrown prostrate, and utterly dashed to pieces.
If any man doth ascribe of salvation, even the very least, to the free will of man, he knoweth nothing of grace, and he hath not learnt Jesus Christ aright.
On Christian Living
Christian living does not mean to be good but to become good; not to be well, but to get well; not being but becoming; nor rest but training. We are not yet, but we shall be. It has not yet happened, but it is the way.
To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.
To gather with God’s people in united adoration of the Father is as necessary to the Christian life as prayer.
Pray like it all depends on God, then when you are done, go work like it all depends on you.
God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does.
A religion that gives nothing, costs nothing, and suffers nothing, is worth nothing.
God created the world out of nothing, and so long as we are nothing, He can make something out of us.
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.
Not only the adoration of images is idolatry, but also trust in one’s own righteousness, works and merits, and putting confidence in riches and power. As the latter is the commonest, so it also is the most noxious.
But know that to serve God is nothing else than to serve your neighbor and do good to him in love, be it a child, wife, servant, enemy, friend….If you do not find yourself among the needy and the poor, where the Gospel shows us Christ, then you may know that your faith is not right, and that you have not yet tasted of Christ’s benevolence and work for you.
You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.
There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.
Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.
Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.
War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity, it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.
Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles. We are conquered if we try too conscientiously not to sin at all.
On Preaching
It is not necessary for a preacher to express all his thoughts in one sermon. A preacher should have three principles: first, to make a good beginning, and not spend time with many words before coming to the point; secondly, to say that which belongs to the subject in chief, and avoid strange and foreign thoughts; thirdly, to stop at the proper time.
Always preach in such a way that if the people listening do not come to hate their sin, they will instead hate you.
The Gospel cannot be truly preached without offense and tumult.
On Music
Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.
1A mighty Fortress is our God, A Bulwark never failing;
Our Helper He amid the flood Of mortal ills prevailing:
For still our ancient foe Doth seek to work us woe;
His craft and power are great, And, armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not his equal.
2Did we in our own strength confide, Our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side, The Man of God’s own choosing:
Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;
Lord Sabaoth His Name, From age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.
3And though this world, with devils filled, Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us:
The Prince of Darkness grim, We tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure, For lo! his doom is sure,
One little word shall fell him.
4That word above all earthly powers, No thanks to them, abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours Through Him who with us sideth:
Let goods and kindred go, This mortal life also;
The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still,
His Kingdom is forever.
Quotes about Martin Luther
It has been said that in most libraries, books by and about Martin Luther occupy more shelves than those concerned with any other figure except Jesus of Nazareth.
Few if any men have changed the course of history like Martin Luther. In less than ten years, this fevered German monk plunged a knife into the heart of an empire that had ruled for a thousand years, and set in motion a train of revolution, war and conflict that would reshape Western civilization, and lift it out of the Dark Ages.
…[Luther’s] is the story of the birth of the modern age, of the collapse of medieval feudalism, and the first shaping of ideals of freedom and liberty that lie at the heart of the 21st century.
Through his studies of scripture, Martin Luther finally gained religious enlightenment. Beginning in 1513, while preparing lectures, Luther read the first line of Psalm 22, which Christ wailed in his cry for mercy on the cross, a cry similar to Luther’s own disillusionment with God and religion. Two years later, while preparing a lecture on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, he read, “The just will live by faith.” He dwelled on this statement for some time. Finally, he realized the key to spiritual salvation was not to fear God or be enslaved by religious dogma but to believe that faith alone would bring salvation. This period marked a major change in his life and set in motion the Reformation.
The discovery that changed Luther’s life ultimately changed the course of church history and the history of Europe. In Romans, Paul writes of the “righteousness of God.” Luther had always understood that term to mean that God was a righteous judge that demanded human righteousness. Now, Luther understood righteousness as a gift of God’s grace. He had discovered (or recovered) the doctrine of justification by grace alone. This discovery set him afire.
What seems to characterize him more than anything else is an almost childlike trust in God’s overarching forgiveness and acceptance. Luther talked much about his tentationes (“temptations”), by which he meant his doubts about whether this divine forgiveness was real. But he overcame these doubts, and his life thereafter was one of joyous and spontaneous trust in God’s love and goodness toward him and all sinners. Luther called this “Christian freedom.”
Luther and the other Reformers understood faith primarily as trust. To have faith in something is to commit oneself to it confidently. …Luther discovered that he could do nothing about his problem, and that God had done everything about it. He rediscovered, in other words, the reality of grace. … The most accurate way to describe Luther’s experience, therefore, is not “justification by faith,” but “salvation by grace through faith.”
For the Lutheran tradition, the doctrine of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone is the material principle upon which all other teachings rest.
He thought that if the Bible was made available in the vernacular, with the assistance of his forwards and his marginal comments, everyone would read it the same way he did. The irony is, of course, they didn’t. Within even a few months, people were reading it differently. Luther had released a genie. And once the genie was out of the bottle, Luther, try as he might, couldn’t get the genie back in again.
The combination of improved publishing technology and social networks is a catalyst for social change where previous efforts had failed. That’s what happened in the Arab spring. It’s also what happened during the Reformation, nearly 500 years ago, when Martin Luther and his allies took the new media of their day—pamphlets, ballads and woodcuts—and circulated them through social networks to promote their message of religious reform.
He was an earthy man who enjoyed his beer, and was bold and often totally without tact in the blunt truth he vehemently preached. While this offended many, it endeared him all the more to others…While a brilliant theologian, and a bold reformer, he would not have made a good politician. But then, he never aspired to any career in politics.
[T]he conflicts and the labors of the dramatic years had impaired his health and made him prematurely an irascible old man, petulant, peevish, unrestrained, and at times positively coarse.
Luther, to be sure, overcame servitude based on devotion, but by replacing it with servitude based on conviction. He shattered faith in authority by restoring the authority of faith. He transformed the priests into laymen by changing the laymen into priests. He liberated man from external religiosity by making religiosity that which is innermost to man. He freed the body of chains by putting the heart in chains.
It is Luther’s emphasis on the utter helplessness of human beings apart from God which is the scandal of his theology for modern men and women. He writes: “Free choice without the grace of God is not free at all, but immutably the captive and slave of evil, since it cannot of itself turn to the good.” … Christian liberty is not freedom of choice or freedom of the will but it means instead to have been justified as a sinner. It means to be freed from the curse of sin, liberated from the obsession with the self, from being turned into the self (incurvatus in se), and instead, having become absolutely dependent on God. In Paul’s terms, it is having become “a slave of Jesus Christ” (Rom 1:1) which is a phrase utterly abhorrent to contemporary theology and religiosity. …We do believe in our liberty but not as a gift of God, dependent every moment on God’s grace, but as a right that makes us into autonomous beings for whom faith in God is an option.
