Quotes from Martin Luther

This is my answer to those also who accuse me of rejecting all the holy teachers of the church. I do not reject them. But everyone, indeed, knows that at times they have erred, as men will; therefore, I am ready to trust them only when they give me evidence for their opinions from Scripture, which has never erred. This St. Paul bids me to do in I Thess. 5:21, where he says, 'Test everything; hold fast what is good.

Man soll bauen als wollt man ewig leben, und also leben als sollt man morgen sterben. One should build as if one would live forever, and live as though one would die tomorrow.

Through this experience Your Royal Majesty should learn to trust solely in the true Father who is in heaven, to find your comfort in the true Bridegroom, Jesus Christ, who is also our Brother, indeed our flesh and blood, and to take delight in your real friends and true companions, the holy angels, who surround us and take care of us.

To preach Christ is to feed the soul, to justify it, to set it free, and to save it, if it believes the preaching. For faith alone and the efficacious use of the word of God, bring salvation.

We must pray and do our daily work, but everything we do must flow from faith.

Satan, the god of all dissension stirs up daily new sects. And last of all which of all others I should have foreseen or once suspected. He has raised up a sect such as teach that men should not be terrified by the Law but gently exhorted by the preaching of the grace of Christ.

Those who are already righteous and heirs of eternal life through Christ, whose merit they accept by faith — they do good, not with the purpose of attaining eternal life, to which they are already entitled by an alien merit, namely, Christ's, but with the purpose of being pleasing and obedient to the divine voice, so that the glory of God as well as holy teaching and life are promoted.

When you have learnt this, you will know that Christ is necessary for you, since He has suffered and risen again for you, that, believing on Him, you might by this faith become another man, all your sins being remitted, and you being justified by the merits of another, namely of Christ alone.

They testify that nature is not changed but is preserved by God. But the stupid and crazy mob of monks has taught that parents, wives, and the world should be abandoned and that one should withdraw into a monastery. But what is to become of human society or finally of all life? Surely that was not sanctity or worship of God, as they have called it; it was satanic madness.

For although greed of itself is idolatry, there was still the additional worship of the idols, or . Rachel

Therefore the first care of every Christian ought to be to lay aside all reliance on works, and strengthen his faith alone more and more, and by it grow in the knowledge, not of works, but of Christ Jesus

the whole Scripture of God is divided into two parts: precepts and promises. The precepts certainly teach us what is good, but what they teach is not forthwith done. For they show us what we ought to do, but do not give us the power to do it. They were ordained, however, for the purpose of showing man to himself, that through them he may learn his own impotence for good and may despair of his own strength. For this reason they are called the Old Testament, and are so.