50 Martin Luther Quotes

It is Reformation week again, folks! This week, I am dedicating my weekly article to fifty quotes from the champion of Protestantism, Martin Luther.

Enjoy!

50 Martin Luther Quotes

1.- Although I am rude in speech, yet, by the grace of God, I am not rude in understanding.

2.- Not to delight in assertions is not the character of the Christian mind: nay, he must delight in assertions or he is not a Christian. (...) By assertion, I mean a constant adhering, affirming, confessing, defending and invincible persevering.

3.- What is more miserable than uncertainty?

4.- What can the church decree that is not decreed in the Scriptures?

5.- The Holy Spirit is not a sceptic, nor are what He has written on our hearts doubts or opinions, but assertions more certain, and more firm, than life itself and all human experience.

6.- Take Christ out of the Scriptures, and what will you find remaining in them?

7.- No man sees one iota in the Scriptures, but he that has the Spirit of God.

8.- All our good is to be ascribed unto God.

9.- God foreknows nothing by contingency, but He foresees, purposes and does all things according to His immutable, eternal and infallible will.

10.- Our corrupt will cannot, of itself, do good.

11.- The greatest and only consolation of Christians in their adversities is the knowing that God lies not, but does all things immutably, and that His will cannot be resisted, changed or hindered.

12.- The world and its god cannot and will not bear the Word of the true God: and the true God cannot and will not keep silence. While, therefore, these two Gods are at war with each other, what can there be else in the whole world but tumult? Therefore, to wish to silence these tumults is nothing else than to wish to hinder the Word of God, and to take it out of the way.

13.- Truth and doctrine are to be preached always, openly and firmly, and are never to be dissembled or concealed.

14.- Christ is better than the authority of the church fathers.

15.- The reason of the divine will is not to be inquired into, but simply to be adored, and the glory given unto God.

16.- A man cannot thoroughly be humbled until he comes to know that his salvation is utterly beyond his own powers, counsel, endeavours, will and works, and absolutely depending on the will, counsel, pleasure and work of another, that is, of God alone.

17.- The human will is, as it were, a beast between the two. If God sit thereon, it wills and goes where God will (...). If Satan sit thereon, it wills and goes as Satan will. Nor is it in the power of its own will to choose, to which rider it will run, nor which it will seek; but the riders themselves contend, which shall have and hold it.

18.- Free-will without the grace of God is absolutely not free; but, immutably the servant and bond-slave of evil; because it cannot turn itself unto good.

19.- Life without the Word of God is uncertain and obscure.

20.- What is the whole human race together without the Spirit but the kingdom of the devil and a confused chaos of darkness?

21.- No man on earth, unless imbued with the Holy Spirit, ever secretly knows or believes in or wishes for eternal salvation how much so ever he may boast of it by his voice and by his pen.

22.- Free-will is a mere empty term, whose reality is lost. And a lost liberty, according to my grammar, is no liberty at all.

23.- God tries us, that by His law He might bring us to a knowledge of our impotency.

24.- The work of Satan is so to hold men that they come not to know their misery.

25.- In the New Testament, the Gospel is preached; which is nothing else than the Word by which are offered unto us the Spirit, grace and the remission of sins obtained for us by Christ crucified; and all entirely free, through the mere mercy of God the Father, thus favouring us unworthy creatures, who deserve damnation rather than anything else.

26.- It pleases God not to give the Spirit without the Word but through the Word.

27.- Who are we that we should inquire into the cause of the divine will?

28.- It is therefore a settled determination with me not to argue upon the authority of any teacher whatever but upon that of Scripture alone.

29.- If God thus be robbed of His power and wisdom to elect, what will there be remaining but that idol Fortune, under the name of which all things take place at random?

30.- Since, therefore, Reason praises God when He saves the undeserving but accuses Him when He damns the undeserving; it stands convicted of not praising God as God, but as a certain one who serves its own profit: that is, it seeks, in God, itself and the things of itself, but seeks not God and the things of God.

31.- He who believes nothing certainly may easily believe and say anything.

32.- All things, even the ungodly, co-operate with God.

33.- There will be in the Scriptures no contradictions.

34.- We are but men and there is nothing in us that is not touched with human infirmity.

35.- Free-will is nothing else than the greatest enemy to righteousness and the salvation of man.

36.- The law is necessary which might give the knowledge of sin; in order that he who is proud and whole in his own eyes, being humbled down in the knowledge of the iniquity and greatness of his sin, might groan and breathe after the grace that is laid up in Christ.

37.- The righteousness of faith comes by grace without the law.

38.- Christian righteousness exists without the works of the law.

39.- Paul distinguishes most manifestly the two righteousnesses; assigning the one to the law, the other to grace; and declares that the latter is given without the former and without its works.

40.- A free justification allows no workmen because a free gift and a working preparation are manifestly in opposition to one another.

41.- If grace comes by the purpose of God or election, it comes of necessity, and not by any devoted effort or endeavour of our own.

42.- If I obtain grace by my own endeavours, what need have I of the grace of Christ for the receiving of my grace?

43.- Since God has put my salvation out of the way of my will and has taken it under His own and has promised to save me, not according to my works or manner of life, but according to His own grace and mercy, I rest fully assured and persuaded that He is faithful, and will not lie, and moreover great and powerful, so that no devils no adversities can destroy Him or pluck me out of His hand.

44.- If we work less or work badly, He does not impute it unto us, but, as a Father, pardons us and makes us better. This the glorying which all the saints have in their God.

45.- What is man compared with God?

46.- What perverseness must it be in us to attack the righteousness and judgments of God only and to arrogate so much to our own judgment as to wish to comprehend, judge, and rate the divine judgments.

47.- This life is nothing more than an entrance on, and a beginning of, the life which is to come.

48.- Truth is more powerful than eloquence; the Spirit is far above human talent.

49.- Christ fears neither the powers of the air nor the gates of hell.

50.- Who can always so temper his pen as never to grow warm?