Quotes from Martin Luther

Now you see for yourself that all those who do not at at all times trust God and do not in all their works or sufferings, life and death, trust in His favor, grace and good-will, but seek His favor in other things or in themselves, do not keep this Commandment, and practise real idolatry, even if they were to do the works of all the other Commandments, and in addition had all the prayers, fasting, obedience, patience, chastity, and innocence of all the saints combined.

Before you can cry to God and seek him God must come to you and must have found you

On the other hand are the ungodly who want to have a full and secure belly. If anyone talks to them about faith and patience, they mock and despise Him and say, "Can this fool tell us what is good? Yes, you be patient until a roast chicken flies into your mouth. Trust in that and you will starve!

Rather than walk about holy places we can thus pause in our thoughts, examine our heart, and visit the wheel promised land.

Virtually the whole of the scriptures and the understanding of the whole of theology—the entire Christian life, even—depends upon the true understanding of the law and the gospel.

an enemy is not more baneful than a flatterer.

It was easy for you to say these things, since you either knew you were not writing to Luther, but for the general public, or you did not reflect that it was Luther you were writing against, whom I hope you allow nonetheless to have some acquaintance with Holy Writ and some judgment in respect of it.

trust not in any who exalt you, but in those who humiliate you. For this is the judgment of God: "He hath cast down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble.

Paul makes it clear enough that it takes more than an Abrahamic pedigree to be a child of God. To be a child of God requires faith in Christ.

Here I stand, I can do no other.

The Bible is alive, it speaks to me; it has feet, it runs after me; it has hands, it lays hold of me.

Hence the best service that anybody can render God is diligently to hear and read God's Word.

what I am after in this dispute is to me something serious, necessary, and indeed eternal, something of such a kind and such importance that it ought to be asserted and defended to the death, even if the whole world had not only to be thrown into strife and confusion, but actually to return to total chaos and be reduced to nothingness.

You must pray diligently and strive to resist the desires of your sinful nature. Ask God to give you a Rebekah or Isaac instead of a Delilah or Samson—or someone even worse. Finding a devoted, loyal wife or husband isn't a matter of good luck. It's not the result of good judgment, as unbelievers think. Rather, a devout spouse is a gift from God.

that prudence of yours makes you veer about, determined not to commit yourself to either side, but to pass safely between Scylla and Charybdis; with the result that, finding yourself battered and buffeted by the waves in the midst of the sea, you assert everything you deny and deny everything you assert.

The Deceiver can magnify a little sin for the purpose of causing one to worry, torture, and kill oneself with it. This is why a Christian should learn not to let anyone easily create an evil conscience in him. Rather let him say, "This error and this failing pass away with my other imperfections and sins, which I must include in the article of faith: I believe in the forgiveness of sins.

The Gospel is to aggrandize Christ and the mercy of God.

For hardly any of the ecclesiastical writers have handled the Divine Scriptures more ineptly and absurdly than Origen and Jerome.

it has been and always will be my desire not to attack even those whom public repute disgraces. I am not delighted at the faults of any man, since I am very conscious myself of the great beam in my own eye, nor can I be the first to cast a stone at the adulteress.

For what harm can come to you even if the world is most hostile to you, persecutes and torments you? You still know that you have Christ the Lord as your Friend, and not only Him but also the Father, who assures you and testifies through the mouth of His Son that He loves and cherishes you because of your faith in Christ, and your confession of Him. Now, since you have this Lord on your side, together with all the angels and saints, why should you worry about or fear the world's ire?

Jerome] is a man quite without either judgment or application.

We also know that God is no respecter of persons. A plain factory hand who does his work faithfully pleases God just as much as a minister of the Word.

This new subterfuge is, of course, calculated to deceive the simple and innocent into thinking that the matter is settled.

Since God will have us leave father and mother for his sake, certainly he will have us leave lords (governors) for his sake.