What shall we say, then, that Abraham has found, who is our father according to the flesh? For if Abraham were justified by works, he has whereof to glory, but not before God. For what says the Scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him unto righteousness. (Rom. 4:1-3.)
This "Abraham believed" must be understood in an absolute and general sense and not only with reference to the passage of Gen. 15:6, which the apostle here quotes. What is meant is this:
Abraham was a man who, at all times, was ready to believe God; he was always a believer. This is shown by the fact that, according to chs. 12 (Gen. 12:1 ff.) and 13 (Gen. 13:1 ff.), it was in this way that he believed God, as he called him and commanded him to leave his own country and to go into a strange land. Also, there it was therefore "reckoned to him unto righteousness." Likewise, according to Gen. 22:1 ff., he believed God as he commanded him to sacrifice his son Isaac—and so also in other passages. He did all this out of faith—so the apostle intimates clearly in Heb. 11:8-10.
And so our text here follows without any conjunctive clause upon the preceding one, so that one should understand what follows as pertaining not only to the preceding passage in particular but, without any qualification, to every evidence of Abraham's faith. The text reads: "So shall your seed be" (Gen. 15:5), and then there follows immediately without any conjunctive clause:
"And Abraham believed God" (Gen. 15:6). It does not say: "And Abraham believed God this," but it says simply that he believed.
So then: "Abraham believed God" means that he regarded God as truthful; and "to believe God" is as much as to say "to believe him at all times and places." Now all this needed to be said, lest some fool should charge the apostle with trickery for his reasoning on faith as such on the basis of Abraham's example, and, also, lest someone should raise the objection that, prior to this particular passage, the Scripture speaks of Abraham's having found favor with God and that there it does not say anything to the effect that "Abraham believed God" and that "it was reckoned to him unto righteousness."
Now to him that works, the reward is not reckoned according to grace, but according to debt. But to him that works not, yet believes in him that justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned to righteousness, according to the purpose of the grace of God. As David also terms the blessedness of a man, to whom God reckons righteousness without works. (Rom. 4:4-6.)
One must construe this passage as follows: His faith is reckoned for righteousness even as David terms (i.e., asserts) the blessedness of a man (i.e., that man is blessed, and that only that man has blessedness) unto whom God imputes righteousness without works.
And this "without works" must be understood, as we have stated before, to refer to works by the performance of which one thinks' he has obtained righteousness, as if one were righteous by virtue of such works or as if God regarded and accepted him as righteous because he did them. But this is not true, because God does not accept a person on account of his works, but the works on account of the person, and the person before the works. As it is written:
"And the Lord had respect" (first) "to Abel" and (afterward) "to his offerings." (Gen. 4:4.) This shows that it is not so much works, as such, as the interpretation and foolish estimation one applies to them that are dis< approved. For the righteous, too, do the same works as the unrighteous, but not from the same inner attitude. In other words: the righteous do them in order to seek and obtain righteousness thereby, the ungodly, on the other hand, in order to demonstrate their righteousness by them as if they had already obtained it.
The former are dissatisfied with the works they have done and seek the justification of their heart and hope that it may be healed from wrong desires, but the latter are unconcerned for their inner attitudes and are content with the works they have done outwardly.
Thus, they are simulators and hypocrites, i.e., outwardly they are like the righteous, but they lack inward righteousness. As it says in Job 39:13: "The wing of the ostrich is like the wings of the heron and the hawk," i.e., but it cannot fly and seek its prey like the heron and the hawk. So they decide for themselves that they are righteous. The others proclaim the teaching: A man who has done this or that is righteous, but these say: A man to whom God
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS does not impute his sin is righteous. The others know how much and what a man must do in order to be righteous, but these do not know when they are righteous, because they are righteous only by God's reckoning them as such; but nobody knows his reckoning; one must ask and hope for it. The former know precisely when they are no longer sinners. But the latter know that they are always sinners.
If the passage that follows: "Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered" (Rom. 4:7), is to be rightly understood, we must therefore keep the following theses in mind:
(1) The saints are intrinsically always sinners, therefore they are always extrinsically justified; but the hypocrites are intrinsically always righteous, therefore they are extrinsically always sinners.
"Intrinsically" means as we are in ourselves, in our own eyes, in our own estimation, and "extrinsically," how we are before God and in his reckoning. Hence, we are extrinsically righteous in so far as we are righteous not in and from ourselves and not by virtue of our works but only by God's regarding us so. For his reckoning is not dependent upon us and does not lie in our power.
Therefore, our righteousness, too, is not of our own making and it does not lie in our power. As Hosea says: "Destruction is your own,
O Israel; your help is only in me" (Hos. 13:9), i.e., inside of you there is nothing but perdition, but your salvation is outside you.
And Ps. 121:2: "My help comes from the Lord," i.e., not from me.
So we are intrinsically sinners according to the law of correlation.1
For if we are righteous only by virtue of the fact that God reckons us so, then we cannot be righteous by virtue of our life and work.
For this reason we are intrinsically and from ourselves always ungodly. As it says in Ps. 51:3: "My sin is ever before me," i.e., I am always aware of the fact that I am a sinner. "Before thee have I sinned" (I am a sinner), "therefore thou wilt justify me in thy word," etc.
By contrast, the hypocrites who are intrinsically righteous are, according to what is implied in being reciprocally related, extrinsically (i.e., in the reckoning of God) unrighteous, as it says in Ps.
95:10: "I said: These always err in heart"; they turn all the words of Scripture upside down, as, for example, this one: "My sin is ever before me," for they say: My righteousness is ever before me
(i.e., I am always aware of it) and blessed are they who work righteousness, etc. Before thee, so they say (I have not sinned, but) I 1 "Per naturam relativorum." The relativum (being in relation) must be understood in terms of the Aristotelian doctrine of categories (pracdicamenta). Cf. Ficker, 269, n. 8,13. work righteousness; indeed, before themselves they work righteousness.
(2) "God is wonderful in his saints" (Ps. 68:35); to him they are at the same time righteous and unrighteous. And God is wonderful in the hypocrites; they are to him at the same time unrighteous and righteous.
For inasmuch as the saints are always aware of their sin and implore God for the merciful gift of his righteousness, they are for this very reason also always reckoned righteous by God. Therefore, they are before themselves and in truth unrighteous, but before God they are righteous because he reckons them so on account of this confession of their sin; they are sinners in fact, but by virtue of the reckoning of the merciful God they are righteous; they are knowingly righteous and knowingly unrighteous, sinners in fact but righteous in hope.
And this is what is meant by what it says here: "Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered" (Ps.
32:1). Hence, there follows this: "I said I will confess against myself my unrighteousness" (i.e., I am always aware of my sin, so that 1 can confess it to thee) and therefore "thou hast forgiven the wickedness of my sin" (Ps. 32:5), not only to me but to all. Hence, there follows: 'Tor this let everyone that is holy pray to thee."
(Ps. 32:6.) Notice here that everyone who is godly is a sinner who prays for himself. So a righteous man is basically one who accuses himself. And again: "The righteous man will make supplication for his faults" (Ecclus. 39:7) and once more in Ps. 38:18: 'Tor I will declare my iniquity, and I will be sorry for my sin." It is the mercy of God, then, which is wonderful in its great sweetness: he takes us at the same time for sinners and nonsinners. Sin remains and simultaneously does not remain in us. (This psalm must therefore be interpreted in the light of its heading.)2 On the other hand, his wrath is wonderful in its severity, for he takes the ungodly at the same time for unrighteous and righteous. He does take their sin away and at the same time he does not.
The apostle deals here not only with sins as they are committed in deed, word, and thought but also with the "tinder"3 of sin
2 "A Psalm of David, to bring to remembrance." Faber Stapulensis interprets this as follows (Quincuplex Psalterium, ad loc): "The prophet in spirit introduces Christ the Lord as the one who, in our stead, confesses our sins as his to God the Father."
3 The Scholastics called concupiscence (concupiscentia) "fomes peccati" (the "tinder," or "fuel," of sin). This Corollary is recorded in the notes of Luther's students as follows (WA 57, 164, 21 to 165, 13): "He does not speak
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS which he defines in ch. 7 of this letter by the words "not I, but the sin which dwells in me" (Rom. 7:20). He also calls it there
"the passions of sins'1 (Rom. 7:5), i.e., the sinful desires, feelings, and inclinations which he says bring forth fruits unto death.
Therefore, actual sin (as the theologians call it) is, strictly speaking, the work and fruit of sin, and sin itself is that passion (tinder) and concupiscence, or that inclination toward evil and resistance against the good which is meant in the statement, "I had not known that concupiscence is sin" (Rom. 7:7). (These passions
"work" in our members to bring forth fruit and are, therefore, not themselves the work; but they are working to bring forth fruit; they themselves are not the fruit.
Conversely, we may say: As the righteousness that comes to us from God is that turning toward the good and that turning away from evil which grace gives to us inwardly, and as good works are not righteousness itself but rather its fruit, so sin is the turning away from the good and the turning toward evil, and the works of sin are the fruit of sin, as will be seen more clearly below in chs. 7 and 8.
It is with respect to sin in this sense that we must understand all the aforementioned texts, namely: "Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven" and "I said, I will confess against myself my unrighteousness to the Lord, and for this let everyone that is holy pray unto thee," (Ps. 32:1, 5-6) and "For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me," and "Against thee have
I sinned" (Ps. 51:3-4), etc. This is the evil which, inasmuch as it is the reality of sin, God in his mercy forgives by his nonreckoning to those who acknowledge and confess and hate it and ask to be so much of the sins of deed, word, and thought as of the sin of the tinder.
Hence he says below in chapter 7: 'Not I, but the sin that dwells within me/ There he calls it 'the passions of sins' (i.e., the desires, inclinations, etc.) which, he says, 'bring forth fruit unto death/ Therefore, actual sin, as the theologians call it, is not sin but rather the work and the fruit of sin. Now, it is this sin which, in the gospel, our Lord calls a 'bad tree* (Matt. 7:17;
12:33), according to Blessed Augustine against Julian (Contra Jul. V, 21).
Therefore, as righteousness is the very inclination toward evil, so evil works are the fruits of sins. It is as with a sick man who believes his physician when he gives him the most certain assurance that he will get well. Hoping for the promised recovery, he obeys the physician's orders and abstains from all that is prohibited to him and waits for the fulfillment of the physician's promise. This man is at once sick and healthy, sick in fact but healthy in the hope for the promised health. In the same way, our Samaritan Christ took the man who was half dead in order to cure him by promising him the most perfect well-being in the life to come. Therefore, also, this man was righteous and sinful at the same time, a sinner in fact but a righteous man by virtue of his faith in the promise and of his hope that it would be kept/'
ROMANS, CHAPTER FOUR healed from it. Thus it comes about that "when we say we have no sin, we are liars" (I John 1:8). And it is a mistake to think that this evil can be healed by good works, because experience shows that in every good we do there remains that concupiscence toward evil, and nobody is free from it, not even an infant a day old.
But it is by the mercy of God that this evil, though it remains. is not reckoned to those who fervently call upon him to set them free. With caution and circumspection, they will readily do good works because they eagerly long to be justified. So then, we are sinners before ourselves and yet in the reckoning of God we are righteous through faith. And we practice this faith in him who sets us free in so far as, while we wait till he takes our sin away, we meanwhile see constantly to it that it does not get the upper hand but is held in check.
It is as with a sick man who believes his physician as he assures him that he will most certainly get well. In the meantime, he obeys his orders in the hope of recovery and abstains from whatever is forbidden to him, lest he slow up the promised cure and get worse again, until finally the physician accomplishes what he has so confidently predicted. Can one say that this sick man is healthy?
No; but he is at the same time both sick and healthy. He is actually sick, but he is healthy by virtue of the sure prediction of the physician whom he believes. For he reckons him already healthy because he is certain that he can cure him, indeed, because he has begun to cure him and does not reckon him his sickness as death.
In the same way, Christ, our good Samaritan, brought the man who was half dead, his patient, to an inn and took care of him
(Luke logoff.) and commenced to heal him, having first promised to him that he would give him absolutely perfect health unto eternal life.4 He does not reckon him his sin, i.e, his sinful desires, for death, but in the meantime, i.e., holding up to him the hope that he will get well, he forbids him to do or not to do anything that might impede his recovery and make his sin, i.e., his concupiscence, worse. Now can we say that he is perfectly righteous? No; but he is at the same time both a sinner and righteous, a sinner in fact but righteous by virtue of the reckoning and the certain promise of God that he will redeem him from sin in order, in the end, to make him perfectly whole and sound. And, therefore, he is perfectly whole in hope, while he is in fact a sinner, but he has already begun to be actually righteous, and he always seeks to become more so, always knowing himself to be unrighteous. (But if now this patient should like his feebleness so much that he
* Luther builds on the moral (or tropological) exegesis of Luke 10:31 ff. in the Gl. ord. and in Lyra.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS does not want to be entirely cured, will he then not die? Yes, he will! And so it is with people who follow their desires in the world. Or when someone imagines that he is not sick but healthy and spurns the physician, he is of this sort. This is wanting to be justified and to be whole by one's own works.)
If this is so, then I must say either that I have never understood the matter or that the Scholastic theologians did not deal adequately with sin and grace.5 For they imagine that original sin, just like actual sin, is entirely taken away, as if sins were something that could be moved in the flick of an eyelash, as darkness is by light.6 The ancient holy fathers Augustine and Ambrose, however, dealt with these issues quite differently, namely, according to the method of Scripture. But the Scholastics follow the method of Aristotle in his Ethics, and he bases sinfulness and righteousness and likewise the extent of their actualization on what a person does.7 But Blessed Augustine said most plainly that "in baptism sin (concupiscence) is forgiven, not in the sense that it is no longer there, but in the sense that it is not counted as sin."8 And Saint Ambrose says: "I am always in sin, therefore I always commune."9
Fool that I was, I could not understand, in the light of this, in what way I should regard myself as a sinner like others and in what way I should not put myself ahead of anyone, inasmuch as I had contritely made confession of my sins, for I thought that thereby they had been taken away and made of no effect, also inwardly. But if I should regard myself as a sinner like them on account of my past sins10 which, they say, must always be remembered (and here they speak the truth but not emphatically enough), then, I thought, they are really not forgiven, though
God has promised to forgive them to such as confess them. Thus I fought with myself, because I did not know that though forgiveness is indeed real, sin is not taken away except in hope, i.e., c Duns Scotus, IV Sent., d. 1, q. 6, n. 7 and 8; d. 14, q. 1, n. 17-19. Gabriel
Biel, IV Sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 2, concl 1-3.
7 Aristotle, Eth. Nicom., Ill, 7; IV, 9; V, 10. The Scholastics generally quote 8 Augustine, De nupt. et concup., I, 25, 28. Luther quotes this passage frequently, probably because it defined the forgiveness of sins as the nonimputation of sins. Augustine did not give a consistent interpretation of forgiveness (remissio peccatorum), and this had important influences upon the thinking of the Scholastics. For example, Gabriel Biel (IV Sent., d. 14, q. 1, a. 1, n. 2G) speaks of remitti seu deleri peccatum, while Ockham (IV Sent., q. 8 and 9) uses deleri and remitti indiscriminately. Cf. Ficker, p. 273, n. 4.
9 Ambrose, De sacramentis, IV, 6, 28.
10 Cf. Gabriel Biel, IV Sent., d. 4, q. 1, n. 3; d. 14, q. 1, a. 1, n. 2. that it is in the process of being taken away by the gift of grace which starts this removal, so that it is only not reckoned as sin.
For this reason it is sheer madness to say that man can love God above everything by his own powers11 and live up to the commandment in terms of the substance of the deed but not in terms of the intention of Him who gave it,12 because he does not do so in the state of grace. O you fools, you pig-theologians!13 So, then, grace was not necessary except in connection with a new exaction over and above the law! For if we can fulfill the law by our own powers, as they say, grace is not necessary for the fulfillment of the law but only for the fulfillment of a divinely imposed exaction that goes beyond the law. Who can tolerate such sacrilegious opinions! Does not the apostle say that "the law works wrath"
(Rom. 4:15) and "that it was weak through the flesh" (Rom. 8:3) and that it can absolutely not be fulfilled without grace?
Even their own experience could have made them aware of the utter stupidity of this opinion and caused them to be ashamed of themselves and to repent. For willy-nilly they must sense the wrong desires in their own selves. Therefore, I say now: Hui! Go to work, please! Be men! Try with all your powers to eliminate these cove tings that are in you! Give proof of what you say, namely, that it is possible to love God "with all one's strength"
(Luke 10:27) naturally, in short, without grace! If you have no sinful desires, we will believe you. But if you live in and with them, you no longer fulfill the law. Does not the law say: "You shall not covet" (Ex. 20:17) but "you shall love God" (Deut. 6:5)?
Can, then, one who covets and loves something else also love God?
Yet this concupiscence is always in us; therefore, the love of God is never in us, except in so far as grace has given us a beginning of it. We have the love of God only in so far as the rest of concupiscence, which still must be cured and by virtue of which we do not yet "love God with our whole heart" (Luke 10:27), is by mercy not reckoned as sin. We shall love God only at the end, when it will all be taken away and the perfect love of God will be given to those who believe and who with perseverance always yearn for it and seek it.
These monstrous views were made possible by the fact that the 11 Duns Scotus, III Sent., d. 27, q. un., n. 13, 15, 21. Pierre d'Ailly, I Sent., q. 2, a. 2F. Gabriel Biel, II Sent., d, 28, passim; III Sent., d. 27, a. 3, dub.
2; IV Sent., d. 14, q. 1, a. 2, concl. 2. i2Aegidius Romanus, II Sent., d. 28; Pierre d'Ailly, I Sent., q. 2, a. 2M; Gerson, Be vita spirituali, lect. 1; Gabriel Biel, II Sent., d. 28, a. 1, n. 4; a. 2, concl. 3; III Sent., d. 2J, q. un., a. 3, dub. 2, propos. 5. Cf. Ockham,
13 "0 stulti, O Sawtheologen."
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS Scholastic theologians did not know the nature of sin and forgiveness. For they reduced sin as well as righteousness to some very minute motion of the soul. They said, namely, that when the will is subject to synteresis, it is , only slightly to be sure, "inclined toward the good."14 And this tiny motion toward God (of which man is naturally capable) they imagine to be an act of loving God above everything! And now look at man as he actually is, and see how his whole person is full of these sinful desires (and how that little motion has no effect at all). But, according to the law, he should be bare and empty in order to be wholly subject to God.
Therefore, Isaiah laughs at them and says: "Do good or evil, if you can!" (Isa. 41:23).
So then, this life is a life of cure from sin; it is not a life of sinlessness, as if the cure were finished and health had been recovered. The church is an inn and an infirmary for the sick and for convalescents. Heaven, however, is the palace where the whole and the righteous live. As Blessed Peter says: "The Lord will make a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwells righteousness." (II Peter 3:13.) Yet here on earth righteousness does not yet dwell, but by healing sins it meanwhile prepares for itself a dwelling place.
All the saints had this understanding of sin, as David prophesied in Ps. 32.15 And they all confessed themselves to be sinners, as the books of Blessed Augustine show. Our theologians, however, have neglected to consider the nature of sin and have concentrated their attention upon good works; they have been concerned to teach only how good works might be made secure, but not how with fervent prayers one must humbly seek the grace that heals and how one must acknowledge himself a sinner. And so they inevitably bring it about that people become proud, thinking that they are already righteous by having done good works outwardly, unconcerned as they are to make war on their evil desires by unceasing prayer and devotion to the Lord. This is also the reason why there is, in the church today, such frequent relapse after confessions. The people do not know that they must still be justified, but they are confident that they are already justified; thus they come to ruin by their own sense of security, and the devil does not need to raise a finger. This certainly is nothing else than to establish righteousness by means of works. And even if they implore the grace of God, they do not do so rightly but only in order to get rid of the work of sin. But true Christians have the spirit of 14 Duns Scotus, II Sent., d. 39, q. 2, n. 5. Gabriel Biel, II Sent., d. 39, q. un., a. 2, concl. 1.
15 It is Ps. 32 which Paul quotes in the fourth chapter of his letter.
Christ and act rightly, even if they do not understand what we have just said; they act before they come to understand why they behave as they do; indeed, they obtain more understanding from life than from doctrine.
There remains one more point that is raised against what we have said so far, an objection against our assertion that the righteousness of God is imputed to believers without works. We read in the legends of many saints (so runs the argument) that some of their works or prayers were accepted by God and commended to others as an example; therefore, they were justified by their works.
I answer: This is a nice argument; for on the one hand, it puts forth a great error, and on the other hand, it can help to clarify the right understanding of what we have said so far.
The error lies with those who presumptuously proceed to imitate all these works that were accepted by God, and thus want to be regarded as righteous because they claim to do the same as the saints to whom their works were reckoned unto righteousness. But this means to pervert the example of the saints and not at all to imitate them, for it is an attempt to accomplish a righteousness of works. For the saints, to whom these works were counted for righteousness, certainly did not do them in order to be regarded as righteous; indeed, they did not know whether God would behold them. But they did what they could in humble faith, always with the prayer that their works might be acceptable to God according to his mercy. And so they were first reckoned as righteous on account of the yearning of their faith, and only afterward also their works were accepted and approved. But foolish perverter that you are, you commence with the works that were accepted and you leave aside the inner yearning by which you, too, could first be reckoned as righteous just as they were. You want to be regarded as righteous by your works alone; you want to have "respect" directed "to the offering" rather than to "Abel" (Gen. 4:4), but this cannot be. And this madness rages today everywhere in the pulpits of preachers who are supposed to proclaim the word of EXPOSITION OF THE VERSES OF THE PSALM (PS. 32)
The Hebrew text uses here three different terms for sin. According to Reuchlin,16 it reads as follows: "Blessed is the man who is being lightened of his crime, who is being covered to his sin. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not count his iniquity" (Ps.
32:1-2). The first term: "crime," which is variously interpreted and in Hebrew is called "pesha'/' I should understand as designates Reuchlin, in his exposition of the Penitential Psalms.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS ing the work of sin. The second one: "sin," which is called "hata? " and practically everywhere interpreted as sin, I take to refer to the root-sin in us or to concupiscence for evil. The third one: "iniquity," which is called tc<awatiJ and is everywhere interpreted as iniquity, I should interpret to mean hypocrisy, if this were not made impossible by "Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin" (Ps. 51:2). Here the two terms appear to have the same meaning: a man is "iniquitous" when he turns away from the good, and he is a "sinner" when he turns toward evil; on the one hand, he is defiled by an omission and, on the other hand, by a commission, if, indeed, it is "iniquitous" to esteem God less than a creature, and "evil" or "a sin" to adhere to a creature. "Here" one is unable to find the good, and "there" it is iniquitously placed last.
So then, it says first: "Blessed is the man who is being lightened of his crime," i.e., who by grace is made free from the burden of his crime, namely, the actual sin he has committed. But this is not enough, unless he is at the same time "covered to his sin," i.e., unless the root-evil in him is not imputed to him as sin. His sin is covered when, though it is there, it cannot be seen—and what cannot be seen can also not be counted. That he is lightened or, rather, made light—this means that he is freed from his sin not by his own powers but by the action of God, while in himself he remains passive.17 For it does not say: Blessed is the man who lightens himself, i.e., by his own powers, but: who is lightened.
Now, sin is covered by Christ when he dwells in us, as Ruth said allegorically to Boaz: "Spread your coat over your handmaiden, for you are a kinsman" (Ruth 3:9). "And she took off the coat and laid down at his feet" (Ruth 3:7), i.e., the soul lies down at the humanity of Christ and is covered by his righteousness.
Likewise Ezek. 16:8: "I spread my garment over you and covered your nakedness." And Ps. 63:7: "Under the cover of thy wings I will rejoice." Likewise, Ps. 45:9: "The daughters of kings have delighted thee in thy glory," i.e., in thy adornment, when they are honored by thee and thou in them. And "with your comeliness and your beauty set out," etc. (Ps. 45:8), and thus the evil work is put away and the remainder of sin, i.e., of the "tinder," is not counted until it is healed.
Then follows, thirdly, that he is already an ungodly man who is justified; he is a sinner, to be sure, but not ungodly. A man is called ungodly if he is not a worshiper of God and turns away from him instead and does not fear and honor him. But a man who is justified and "whose sins are covered" is already turned toward
17 "Sed per Deum active et in se passive liberatur." him and is godly; he worships God and seeks him in hope and fear.
And because of this, God regards him as devout and righteous. As it says in this same psalm: "Thou hast forgiven the ungodliness of my sin" (Ps. 32:5). What is here called "ungodliness" is above called "sin." For it is one and the same thing to say: "Thou hast forgiven the ungodliness" or "The Lord will not count as sin."
The meaning, therefore, is this: It is not sufficient that we ourselves consider us godly, for it is the Lord's to accept us as such, and he accepts only those "whose transgressions are forgiven and whose sins are covered." For to them he does not impute their ungodliness but rather their godliness. For inwardly "there will be no guile" in them (Ps. 32:2), as it must necessarily be in the case of those who reckon to themselves no ungodliness and whose sins are not covered by God and whose transgressions are not forgiven.
To say: "God has obliged us to have grace and therefore to what is impossible"18 is an inept and foolish way of speaking. I excuse the most blessed God. He is innocent of this deception. He has not done this. He has not obliged us to have grace, but he has obliged us to fulfill the law, in order to give us his grace when, humiliated, we ask for it. But these men make grace into something that causes indignation and they imagine what is hateful. For what does it mean to say: God has obliged us to have grace, and he does not want to accept the fulfillment of the law according to the substance of the deed if it is not also fulfilled according to the intention of the lawgiver?19 Is this not the same as to say: Look, can we, then, fulfill the law without grace? Is it not enough that he has burdened us with the law, without adding his demand that we should have grace, as a new exaction? What arrogance! What ignorance of sin!
What ignorance of God! What ignorance of the law! Thus, when God offers grace to us miserable creatures because he sees that we cannot fulfill his law and so that we may now fulfill it by the power of grace, these people are not yet sufficiently humbled and they still do not know that the law cannot be fulfilled according to the substance of the deed as they themselves say. It may be, then, that they mean by "substance of the deed" an external action. But they do not do this at all; they have reference also to an internal action.
18Ficker (p. 278, n. 25) says that Luther thinks here especially of Pierre d'Ailly, I Sent, q. 14, propos. 4R: "Rationalis creatura potest obligari ad sibi impossibile. . . . Patet quia quelibet rationalis creatura tenetur habere gratiam" Cf. also the Scholastic definition of original sin as carentia iustitiac originalis debitae, e.g., in Gabriel Biel, II Sent., d. 30, q. 1 and 2.
*» Cf. Ockham, II Sent., q. 26U; Pierre d'Ailly, I Sent, q. gS.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS For they subsume under "substance of the deed" a work that is done for the sake of God from the heart by an act of the will that is naturally educed. Fools that they are, they do not notice that the will, even if it could, would never do what the law prescribes. For it resists the good and inclines toward evil. This they certainly must know in their own experience, and yet they talk so irreverently and sacrilegiously. For as long as it is reluctant toward the law, it is turned away from it and thus does not fulfill it. Consequently, it needs grace to make it willing and cheerful toward the law.
I was right, then, when I said that all our good is outside us; and Christ is this good. As the apostle says: "He was made unto us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption/' (I Cor. 1:30.) All these are in us only by faith and hope in him. Therefore the church's entire praise in The Song of Solomon belongs to Christ who dwells in it through faith just as all this light of the earth does not come from the earth but from the sun that shines upon it. So, in The Song of Solomon, the church often confesses herself to be naked,20 longing, so it is written, only for the bridegroom and saying: "Draw me after thee, we will run in the odor of thy ointments" (S. of Sol. 1:4). She always seeks, always desires, and always praises the bridegroom. Thus she shows clearly that she is inwardly empty and bare and that her fullness and righteousness are outside her.
For if the confessions of the saints are to be understood only with respect to their past sins and they show themselves pure in the present, why, then, do they confess not only their past but also their present sins? It is only because they know that there is sin in them but that it is covered and not counted because of Christ, and because they want to testify that all their good is outside themselves in Christ who is nonetheless in them through faith.
Thus, in Psalm 45, the heart of the prophet "utters a good," i.e., sweet and consoling, "word" (Ps. 45:1). What is this word? "You are beautiful above the sons of men" (Ps. 45:2), i.e., Christ alone is beautiful and all children of men are ugly. Therefore, "with your comeliness and your beauty set out, proceed prosperously and reign." (Ps. 45:4.) We are his Kingdom, but the beauty in us is not ours but his, and with it he covers our hideousness.
Hence, many yield to indolence and security, because they rely on a word which Blessed Augustine is supposed to have said:
"wanting to be righteous is a large part of righteousness."21 So they identify this "wanting" with the smallest "elicited act of the 20 Cf.S. of Sol. 5:3; 7:12.
21 Cf. Augustine, Ep. 127, 5. will,"22 which, moreover, soon falls apart and leads to nothing, and they go on unconcerned, but, nevertheless, feel themselves very secure. Now, it is true that wanting to be righteous is not only a large part of righteousness but all the righteousness we can have in this life. But this "wanting" is not that of which we were just speaking but that which the apostle has in mind when he says:
"To will is present with me, but to accomplish I find not" (Rom.
7:18). Our whole present life is a time wherein we will righteousness but never accomplish it; this happens only in the life to come.
"To will," therefore, means to demonstrate with all our powers, efforts, prayers, works, sufferings, that we long for righteousness but that we do not yet have what shall be (I John 3:2). Read
Blessed Augustine who has written about this very beautifully and extensively in many books, especially in the second book against Julian,23 where he quotes Saint Ambrose, Hilary, Cyprian, Chrysostom, Basil, Nazianzen, Irenaeus, Retitius, and Olympus.
Now it is this security which is the mother of hypocrites and causes hypocrisy. The reason why God leaves us in the sin (of which we spoke), in the "tinder," in concupiscence, is that he wants to keep us in fear of him and in humility so that we may always keep running to his grace, always fearful that we may sin, i.e., always praying that he does not impute our sin to us and that he does not let it get dominion over us. Indeed, we fall into sin precisely by having no fear, for this evil in us (i.e., security) is by itself sin since, because of it, we do not love God above everything.
It becomes a venial sin and is not counted as sin24 only if we bemoan it and, deeply troubled, implore God that, in his mercy, he not condemn us because of it, nor impute it to us, and if we pray that he take it from us by his grace. Thus, we confess that we are sinners, and with our weeping, penitence, grieving, and tears we show that we are sinners also in our own eyes. As soon, namely, as such fear and uneasiness cease, the sense of security lays hold of us; and where security prevails, the divine decree of counting our sin to us is again in force, for God has decided that he will not impute sin to anyone who implores his mercy with fear and trembling. It is by this, his most merciful counsel, that God, whose name be blessed forever, forces us to tire of this life, to long for his mercy, to hate sin, to repent, etc.
22 About the actus voluntatis eliciti, cf. Trutvetter, Summa in totam physicen, VIII, Tract. 1, c. 2; Ockham, II Sent., q. 3P and Q; III Quot lib. q. 13-19;
Gabriel Biel, II Sent., d. 27, q. un.; Ill Sent, d. 23, q. un.
23 Augustine, Contra Julianum, II, 2, 4-10; I, 7, 32.
24 On the opposite of this view, cf. Gabriel Biel, IV Sent., d. 16, q. 5, a. 3, dub. 4: ("XJtrum . . . mortale peccatum possit fieri veniale" "whether a mortal sin can become a venial one").
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS This is why, in the Holy Scriptures, hypocrites and people who regard themselves as holy are reproached for nothing so much as for this sense of security; it is considered as the source of the pride by which they give up the fear of God. Proverbs 1:29 f.: "Because they have hated instruction and received not the fear of the Lord, nor consented to my command," etc. Psalm 36:i:24a "There is no fear of God before their eyes." Hosea 10:3: "We fear not the Lord." This wretchedness results from the fact that people do not seek to drive out the internal sin, of which we have spoken, but give consideration only to the actual sin of deed, word, or thought.
When they are rid of this kind of sin through confession, they go their way, feeling secure, and do not trouble themselves with the thought that, with a single sigh to God, they might cure also that internal sin, so that it is not imputed to them. As it says in Rev.
3:17: "Because you say, I am rich and have gotten riches, and know not that you are wretched and miserable, naked and poor."
And the apostle says: "Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump even as you are unleavened." (I Cor. 5:17.) But who among them sees that these two prevail at one and the same time, namely, that they are unleavened and yet that the old leaven must be purged out from them? This can be because the one is there in fact and the other is made up of hope and God's nonimputation because of the reverent humility of faith. They have the old leaven but they are grieved on account of it and invoke grace, and thereby they are unleavened by God's reckoning; he does not count the old leaven as sin, but he lets it remain so that it can be purged out.
A man, therefore, who considers only his actual sin, and is anxious that it should be purged out, soon becomes presumptuous and secure because he knows that he can be cleansed by the sacrament and by confession, and so he walks about without fear and is no longer conscious of any sin.
Others, again, are too pusillanimous. They sin in a different way. They are in too great a hurry to have the old leaven purged out in order to obtain perfect health. They would like to root out entirely even the internal sin, but when they find this to be impossible because they fall from time to time, they become sad and dejected and lose hope. Inasmuch as grace does not co-operate with their excessive zeal, they try, therefore, to make themselves entirely pure by their own good works—and are most miserably dashed down. (These people do not have a sense of security, it is true, but they strive to obtain what those others have already achieved. Both, therefore, seek security and want to avoid the fear of God; the former are doing so in fact, and the latter wish to 2*a Luther writes ?s. 14!
I37 do so, and neither fears God.) They are too fearful, indeed foolishly so, because they think that they can please God only if they are pure; and they believe that they are bound to displease him if they are impure. This shows that they really do not know anything of God's mercy. They should have implored it and then their impurity would not be imputed to them. And so, they too rely on their own powers to their own greatest peril.
Those at the right, who have rid themselves of the fear of God, sin through their sense of security, and those at the left, who have given up the mercy of God, sin through their despair. These do not know that this internal sin cannot possibly be taken away in this life, but this is precisely what they want. The former, on their part, do not know that it is to those who do not fear God that this sin is imputed. Both, then, do not know this sin and do not properly attend to it. As I have said, they are concerned only about actual sin, believing that it must be purged out so that one can become pure. And if this does not happen, those at the left think that they are lost. But the others at the right believe themselves saved because they regard themselves as pure, while in fact, it is impossible for anyone to be without any actual sin so long as that radical and original sin remains.
This, therefore, is the royal road25 and the way of peace in the spirit: really to know and to hate sin and so to walk in the fear of God, lest he count it and permit it to rule in us, and at the same time to pray for his mercy that he free us from it and not impute it to us. The fear of God cuts off the way at the right which leads
25 The notion of the "royal road" (or via media), which Luther often referred to throughout his career, is derived from Num. 21:22: "[Israel sent messengers to the king of the Amorites, saying:], 'Let me pass through thy land: we will not go aside into the fields, or the vineyards; we will not drink waters of the wells; we will go the King's Highway, till we have passed thy borders.'" The Gl ord. interprets this in relation to Christ:
"Hac via incedendum est et nusquam declinandum. . . . nee ad opera nee ad sensus diabolicos volumus pacifice transire per mundum" ("On this road we must travel and we must not lose it. . . . Turning neither toward works nor toward the devilish senses, we want peacefully to pass through the world"). Bernard of Clairvaux often gave the admonition that Christians should keep to the middle: "Tene medium. . . . Locus medius tutus est. Medium sedes modi, et modus virtus" ("Keep to the middle. . . . The place in the middle is safe. The middle is the seat of moderation and moderation is a virtue") (De consideration,
II, 10). In connection with a discussion of the theological virtues, Biel says (III Sent., d. 26, q. un., a. 3, dub. 5) that "spes mediare potest inter presumptionem et desperationem" ("that hope can hold the middle between presumption and despair"). On Luther's thought, cf. Gunther Jacob, Daj Bitd vom "Weg in der Mitte" in der Theologie Luthers, in H.-D. Wendland (ed.), Kosmos und Ekklesia (Festschrift fur W. Stdhlin) (Kassel, 1953), 84-92.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS to security and vain self-satisfaction, and faith in the mercy of God cuts off the way at the left which leads to despair of self and despair of God.
In order at last to bring the discussion of the verses of the psalm to a close, let us consider the three terms of which we have spoken before,26 namely: "pesha'" meaning "crimes"; "heinous deeds" or "actual sins," "crooked actions," "transgressions"; "hdta'/' meaning "tinder of sin," "root-sin," "concupiscence," "sickness of human nature"; '"awah" meaning "unrighteousness" or "lack of righteousness" or that one is not righteous before God even though he does many good and righteous deeds. This unrighteousness is imputed to us on account of our crimes or our sin.
Unrighteousness, therefore, stands in relation to God's reckoning just as righteousness does; it is a sin of omission and, as such, the failure to worship and serve God. This is what the apostle has in mind, when, in the third chapter of this letter, he quotes the saying
"There is none righteous" (Rom. 3:10); i.e., everyone has unrighteousness, and this having really means having nothing, or rather that God does not regard one as righteous even though he does good works, for good works do not establish righteousness in the sight of God, just as they also do not annul unrighteousness. The fourth term is the Hebrew word "rasha'/' meaning "ungodliness."
This is the vice of pride which becomes apparent when one denies God's truth and righteousness, practices self-righteousness and dogmatically asserts one's own wisdom. It makes people godless, heretical, schismatic, eccentric, and individualistic or particularistic.27 Psalm 80:13 speaks of this in the words: "A singular wild beast has devoured it."28
The meaning of the psalm is, then, as follows: Blessed is the man (for the Hebrew text has the singular) who is lightened of his crime, i.e., pesha' (i.e., who is forgiven for his evil deeds and crimes, actual sins and crooked dealings, as they are produced by the evil of the "tinder"), and whose sins are covered; or, as the Hebrew text has it: to whom sin is covered or whose sin is covered, namely, this very "tinder," by God's not reckoning it to him be26 Here Luther relies on Reuchlin's Septem psalmi poenitentiales.
27 Luther writes "moniacos [individualistic] . . . sive monicos [particularistic]." These terms are derived from monos (i.e., singularis). The Gl. ord.
(quoting Augustine) and Lyra interpret singularis (cf. Ps. 80:13) as superbus (proud). In his lectures on The Psalms, (WA 3, 172), Luther attributes the vitium singularitatis to those "who reject obedience and the faith and establish their own righteousness" ["qui reiecta obedientia et fide suam statuunt iustitiam"]. Cf. Holl, op. cit., pp. 198 ff.
28 In his lectures on The Psalms, Luther interprets the "singular wild beast"
("singularis ferus") with reference to Antiochus, Herod, the Romans, and the Turks.
I39 cause of his humility and the yearning of his faith. God regards as righteous a man to whom these two evils are forgiven. Hence, the next line: "Blessed is the man to whom God will not impute iniquity/' What our text29 calls "sin" must more correctly be understood as "unrighteousness" in order to be consonant with the intention of the apostle who wants to prove from this word that righteousness is given without works by the reckoning of God; and this happens only by the nonimputation of unrighteousness.
Therefore, it is one and the same thing to say: to whom God reckons righteousness, and: to whom God does not impute sin, i.e., unrighteousness. But he will not forgive this unrighteousness to anyone, regardless of the many good works he may have done or do, unless his sin has first been covered (i.e., his root-sin, his original sin, the sin of his nature, which is covered by penitence, baptism, and a prayerful fear of God) and his iniquities, i.e., evil deeds or works, have been forgiven.
So there is an irksome confusion of these terms in this psalm, more so than in others. They should be read as follows: "Blessed are they whose crimes are forgiven and whose sin is covered" (Ps.
32:1.) "Blessed is the man to whom God will not impute unrighteousness." (V. 2.) And farther down, we read in the Hebrew text,30
"Because I have acknowledged my sin unto thee" (v. 5), where our text31 has "fault," though earlier the same word is rendered
"sin." "And my unrighteousness I have concealed" (V. 5.) This is correctly and very well translated. For here the same word is used as above where it says: "God did not impute sin"; here the term
"sin" is a poor translation of a word that means unrighteousness.
And then: "/ said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord"
(v. 5), where our text reads wrongly "my unrighteousness." As, in the second verse, the translator wrongly uses the plural "iniquities," so he uses here the wrong singular "unrighteousness."
"And thou forgivest the ungodliness of my sin," i.e., "the unrighteousness of my sin" (v. 5). Here again he changes the word which, in the first verse, he had rendered "sin," and, in the fifth and here
(as I have said, correctly), "unrighteousness." What is meant is:
Thou hast not imputed to me the unrighteousness that is in me on account of that certain radical and deep sin. "For this let everyone pray unto thee" etc. (v. 6), i.e., for the unrighteousness of his sin.
For all will confess that in reality they are unrighteous before thee on account of this sin. Therefore, thou wilt forgive them and, by covering their sin, not impute unrighteousness to them.
And then: "Many are the scourges of the sinner" (V. 10.) Here 20 I.e., the Vulgate.
80 Following Reuchlin and Faber. si I.e., the Vulgate.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS the translator should have said "the ungodly," i.e., one who justifies himself and despises God's righteousness by considering his unrighteousness as righteousness before God. And this is ungodliness and a double sin.
In the Hebrew text, these distinctions are consistently maintained, but in our translation every word stands for everything, and so there is plain confusion. So also in Psalm 51: "According to the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my iniquity'9 (v. 1)
(i.e., "my transgressions"). "Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity*9 (instead of "unrighteousness") "and cleanse me from my sin"
(V. 2.) "For I know my iniquity99 (instead of "my evil deeds" or "transgressions") "and my sin is ever before me.99 (V. 3.) "Against thee only have I sinned," etc. (V. 4.) "Behold I was conceived in iniquities99 (instead of "in unrighteousness") "and in sin99 (i.e., "tinder") "did my mother conceive me" (V. 5.) "Turn away thy face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities99 (v. 9) (instead of "all my unrighteousness").
Likewise: "I will teach the wicked" (instead of "transgressors") "thy ways and the ungodly" (instead of "sinners") "shall be converted to thee." (V. 13.)
According to the Hebrew text, the verse: "Behold, I was conceived in iniquities," (i.e., in "unrighteousness" "and in sin my mother brought me forth" speaks specifically of original sin. For properly understood, the terms "unrighteousness" and "sin" must not be related to her who conceives and brings forth but to the one who is conceived and brought forth, so that what the text says, is this: Behold, when I was conceived, I was in unrighteousness before thee; I was not righteous because I lost righteousness through Adam and was thus conceived without it. For thou reckonest as unrighteous all that are conceived on account of the sin which is there transferred by the parents, even when they do not sin.
And "in sin," i.e., with the "tinder," concupiscence, "my mother brought me forth." For the mother does not sin when she gives birth, but the son who is born sins, i.e., is a sinner. He certainly does not confess the sin of someone else, but his own, not only in this verse but also in the preceding ones, wherever they speak of something that is "mine." But the reason why this verse speaks of "my" iniquities and "my"sin is that the sin in which he says he was conceived is common to all. And the sin belonging to all is now, he says, also become his. This is why he said first: "Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity," etc.
And another reason is this: this sin is his own and not his own.
This is why he did not say: conceived "in my iniquities," but "in iniquities/' i.e., this inquity is there regardless of my involvement in it by deed or thought. I was conceived in it; I did not create it.
It began to rule in me before I began to be; it and I were there at the same time.
For if this were only the sin of my parents, I could not possibly have been conceived in it, but they would have sinned before I was conceived. Therefore this iniquity and this sin were there and yet they were not mine; I was conceived in them without my consent. But now they have become mine. For now I know that I do evil and violate the law. The law prescribes: "You shall not covet"
(Ex. 20:17), but if I do not observe the law, then it is I who sin and, indeed, it is I who covet. Therefore, sin is now also mine, i.e., it has my approval and my consent, for without grace I could not subdue it in me; and so, having acted in that "tinder11 and concupiscence, I myself am now an actual, and not only an "original," sinner. This is why I said: "For I know my transgression," etc.
The Scripture interprets "righteousness" and "unrighteousness" quite differently from the way the philosophers and jurists do.
This is shown by the fact that they consider them as qualities of the soul.32 But, in the Scripture, righteousness depends more on the reckoning of God than on the essence of the thing itself. For a person who possesses only the quality of righteousness does not have righteousness, for he is an unrighteous sinner through and through, but that person has righteousness whom God mercifully reckons as righteous because he confesses his unrighteousness and implores the divine righteousness; it is such a man that God wants to regard as righteous. Thus we are all born in iniquity; i.e., unrighteousness, and we die in it, but we are righteous, through faith in God's word, only as he mercifully regards us as righteous.
Let us now gather up the words of Scripture in which it is asserted that all men are sinners.
First: Moses in Gen. 8:21: "I will no more curse the earth for the sake of man. For the imagination and thought of man's heart are prone to evil from his youth."
Second: the same in Ex. 34:7: "O Lord God, who takest away iniquity and transgressions and sin, and no man of himself is innocent before thee," i.e., from the fact "that thou alone takest away sins" it follows "that none is righteous before thee," etc.
Third: Solomon in I Kings 8:46 and II Chron. 6:36: "For there is no man that sins not."
»2 Cf. Aristotle, Categor., 11.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS Fourth: the same in Eccl. 7:20: "For there is no righteous man upon earth that does good and sins not."
Fifth: Job, and he speaks of it more fully than all the rest: in ch. 7:20 f. he says: "I have sinned, why dost thou not remove my sin," etc. And farther down in ch. 9:2: "Indeed, I know it is so, and that man cannot be justified compared with God." "Although
I should have any just thing, I would not answer, but would make supplication to my judge." (Ch. 9:15.) In the same way he speaks throughout almost the whole book, though, in the twenty-seventh chapter, he adduces his own righteousness by saying: "My heart does not reprehend me in all my life" (ch. 27:6). But then, even the Lord himself commended him before Satan. (Ch. 1:8.)
Sixth: The Psalter: Ps. 32:6: "For this let everyone that is holy pray unto thee." Psalm 143:2: "For in thy sight, no man living shall be justified." And likewise: "And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities." (Ps. 130:8.) And Ps. 72:14: "And he shall redeem their souls from usuries and iniquity." And there are many similar sayings.
Seventh: Isa. 64:6: "We are all become as one unclean and all our righteousness as a polluted garment."
Eighth: "I will chastize you in judgment that you do not seem innocent to yourself." (Jer. 30:11.) From the New Testament:
Ninth: the apostle: "Jesus came to save sinners, of whom I am the chief." (I Tim. 1:15.) In Rom. 7:19, he says: "The evil which I will not, that I do," etc. And likewise: "I do not think that I have obtained." (Phil. 3:13.)
Tenth: James 3:2: "For in many things we all stumble."
Eleventh: I John 1:8: "If we say that we have no sin." Yet farther on, he says: "Who is born of God sins not" (I John 5:18).
Twelfth: Rev. 22:11: "He that is righteous, let him be justified still."
Hence, Blessed Augustine says in the twenty-ninth letter to Jerome:33 "Love is the power by which one loves what is to be loved. In some it is stronger, in others weaker, in still others it is not at all; but to the fullest extent, so that it cannot be increased, it is in no one as long as man lives here on this earth. But as long as it can be made stronger, that in it which is less than it ought to be comes from a fault. Because of this fault 'there is not a righteous man on earth who does the good and does not sin'
(I Kings 8:46). Because of this fault 'no man living will be justified in thy sight' (I John 1:8). Because of this fault 'we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us when we say that we have no 33 Augustine, Ep. 29 (ad Hieron.), 4, 15. sin/ On account of this fault, it is necessary for us to say, even if we make much progress: 'Forgive us our debts' (Matt. 6:12), even if in baptism everything has been forgiven—all we have said, done, and thought." So far Augustine. The reasoning by which he here explains the necessity of baptism explains also the need of penitence and indulgences, indeed much more strongly so.
Thus it is obvious that no sin is venial according to its substance and nature, but there is also no merit. For even good works that are done over against the resistance of the "tinder" and sensuality are not done with such intensity and purity as the law requires, since they are not done with one's whole powers but only with the powers of the spirit that resist the powers of the flesh. For this reason, we sin even if we do good, unless God covers this imperfection through Christ and does not impute it to us because of our faith and the humble prayer that this imperfection be endured in A man, then, who thinks that he must be regarded as righteous because of his works is very foolish, for measured in the judgment of God they are sins and are found to be such. As it says in Ps.
36:2: 'Tor in his sight he has done deceitfully that his iniquity may be found unto hatred/* i.e., before God and inside his spirit there was deceit and not the truth of righteousness, even when he shows his righteousness publicly. For he cannot be inwardly righteous without the mercy of God, because he is corrupted by the "tinder." And thus iniquity will be found in his righteousness, i.e., also his good works are unrighteous and sinful. This iniquity cannot be found in believers who humbly pray, because Christ helps them with the fullness of his purity and covers thereby this imperfection. Precisely this they ask and hope from him; the others, however, do not ask for it but presumptuously claim it for themselves.
Pesha'. "Evil-doing" iniquities, crimes, etc. They relate to actions that are evil in themselves and to sins.
Hata'. "Sin/' understood as the "tinder" that inclines toward evil deeds and is their cause and thus the tree on which this kind of fruit grows.
'Awak. "Iniquity," unrighteousness, those good works which are done over against the resistance of sin, especially if they are held to constitute righteousness. But they cannot be good works by virtue of the striving of him who runs, but by the indulgence of God who has mercy. Thus they are iniquities and unrighteousnesses and not righteous actions that conform to what is required.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS Rdsha'. "Ungodliness" This is the basis of this very unrighteousness and this denial of sin; it manifests itself in this, that one refuses to confess himself a sinner and declares his good works to be righteousness and abominates only atrocities and crimes. The result is that people of this sort are righteous in the judgment of men but that, before God, they are unrighteous.
You ask: Why, then, is there so much preaching on the merits of the saints? I answer: Their merits are not their own but they are the merits of Christ in them. Because of him, God accepts their works; otherwise, he would not accept them. For this reason, they themselves never know whether they deserve or have merits, but they do all their good works only because they want to obtain mercy and escape the judgment. All the while, they pray for forgiveness rather than that they reach presumptuously for a crown.
Hence, "God is wonderful in his saints." (Ps. 68:35.) He keeps them hidden in such a way that, in being saints, they appear to themselves as common and profane. By the hope of mercy, " their life is thus hid with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3). But by the fear of judgment, their sin and death are manifest all about them and in their own conscience. They always judge themselves in fear because they know that they cannot be righteous before God by their own power. And so they fear the judgment of God in all their doings, as Job says: "I was afraid of all my works, because I know that thou wilt not spare him who fails" (Job 9:28). In order, then, not to despair, they invoke God's mercy in Christ and thus they are heard.
This is the wisdom which is hidden in a mystery (I Cor. 2:7); this is the truth. For just as God and his counsel are unknown to us, so also is our unrighteousness. For it totally depends on him and his counsel. As it says in Ps. 51:6: 'Tor, behold, thou hast loved truth" (i.e., true righteousness in contrast to a figurative and law-conforming one which depicts it as in a sign but is not the truth). But how can I know this? "The uncertain and hidden things of thy wisdom thou hast made manifest to me" (Ps. 51:6), i.e., this I know that only an inner righteousness pleases thee and that thou lovest it because it is the fullness of truth. I know it, then, because thou hast given me wisdom that is in hiddenness in order that I may know.
Consequently, because of the fact that we cannot fulfill the commandment of God and thus are always deservedly unrighteous, there is nothing left to us but that we ever fear the judgment and pray for the remission of unrighteousness or, rather, for its nonimputation. As it says in Ps. 2:11: "Serve the Lord" (which can be done only with gladness and with joy. But because this cannot be perfectly accomplished, therefore) "with fear"; serve him gladly with fear and "rejoice in him" (because of his mercy) "with trembling," on account of your sin that deserves to be condemned in judgment.
This blessedness, then, does it remain in the circumcision only, or in the uncircumcision also? For we say that unto Abraham faith was reputed to righteousness. How, then, was it reputed? When he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision. And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of faith, which he had, being uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all them that believe, being uncircumcised, that unto them also it may be reputed to righteousness, and might be the father of circumcision; not to them only that are of the circumcision, but to them also that follow the steps of the faithful that is in the uncircumcision of our father
Abraham. For not through the law was the promise to Abraham, or to his seed, that he should be heir to the world, but through the righteousness of faith. (Rom. 4:9-13.)
Again he shows that righteousness does not come from the law but from faith, according to what both bring forth and deserve.
For they have deserved the opposite: the law, the wrath of God and the loss of the promise; faith, however, deserves grace and the fulfillment of the promise. In other words: if you do not believe the Scripture and the example it sets forth, believe at least your own experience. For by the law you have deserved the devastating wrath of God, but by faith, grace and the possession of the whole world.
So also Abraham received the promise not through the law but through faith—as you do also who are his seed.
For the law works wrath. (Rom. 4:15.) This is the outer effect of the law: it works wrath. That is to say: if it remains valid (as it needs must do if faith is lacking) and is not fulfilled, then those to whom it is given deserve God's wrath.
Blessed Augustine writes in the nineteenth chapter of On the Spirit and the Letter:** "It was not by its own fault that the law was not fulfilled, but by the fault of the prudence of the flesh. This fault had to be pointed out by the law in order that it might be healed by grace." Consequently, it works wrath, i.e., if it is not fulfilled, it shows God's wrath to those who failed to take his wrath into account. Hence, not the law is evil, but those to whom
34 Augustine, De spir. et lit., 19,34.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS it is given. To them it works wrath as it works salvation to those who believe, though, in this case, it is, strictly speaking, not the law but grace which brings this about. So then, if the fulfillment of the promise could come through the law which works wrath, the promise would not be a promise but, rather, a threat. Thus the promise would be abolished and with it faith too.
For if they who are of the seed be heirs, faith is made void.
Here the apostle shows that faith is made void in another way than by the invalidation of the promise through the wrath of the law, namely, through trust in the seed of the flesh. For if physical descent would suffice to make us righteous and worthy of the promise, faith would not be necessary. For if this were so, why, then, was it that, by his faith, Abraham was justified and counted worthy of the promises? Why was not he, too, justified because of his physical descent? Then faith would be vain and vain also everything that is written about it. People who can be justified by their physical descent and by the law have no need of faith, as the Jews in fact think. But just the opposite is the case: they are damned through their trust in physical descent and the law.
For the promise that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham or his seed through the law (Rom. 4:13), i.e., by the righteousness and the works of the law. The apostle does not use the term "the righteousness of the law/' but he says simply and without qualification "the law/1 because it is actually not righteousness. Yet that he means ''righteousness'' when he says "law" is shown by the contrast with which he continues: by the righteousness of faith, for it would have been sufficient if also here he had said: "but by faith." But in view of the fact that the righteousness of the law is nothing, he rightly speaks only of "the law."
This passage confirms what he said earlier, namely, that Abraham had the righteousness of faith before he was circumcised and that, therefore, as it was promised to him, the Gentiles can follow him in this faith as children follow their father. This promise certainly was given to him on account of his faith and not through the law.
Having here connected the law and physical descent, he says of both that they do not suffice for anyone to obtain the fulfillment of the promise.
Hence, the two following sentences: Faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect (Rom. 4:14), can be understood conjunctively as well as separately. If they are understood conjunctively, as referring to one another and implying one another (as we have stated in the Gloss35), they mean the following: For the promise was not to Abraham either through the seed or through the law, etc., for if it were through physical descent or through the law, etc., faith and the promise would cease. But if one reads the sentence that faith would cease on account of a reliance on physical descent as if it implied the conclusion that, therefore, also the promise would cease on account of a reliance on the law, because "the law works wrath," one breaks up the text and makes it confusing. Read in the proper order, it must be understood as follows: The promise that they should be the heirs of the world was not given to Abraham and his seed by the law and by virtue of physical descent but by the righteousness of faith. For if they are heirs by virtue of the law and physical descent, faith is made void and the promise made of none effect. 'Tor the law works wrath/* But because "to be the seed" and "to have the law" is the same and because both refer to one and the same people, he uses now one and then the other form of expression.
But if one takes them separately, so that the first phrase is related to the preceding one and the second one to that which follows upon it, the meaning would be this: If seed and physical generation suffice to make a man righteous and worthy to inherit the world, it follows that faith is not necessary for justification and for the acquisition of such worthiness, for one who is righteous and worthy does not need to be made righteous and worthy.
But this is apparently false, for precisely the opposite actually happens: It is spiritual generation that comes from faith which makes men righteous and worthy of the promise, and it suffices.
But physical generation does not suffice at all; indeed, it is void; the believers are now the heirs, and the people of the seed are disinherited, as it says in Ps. 127:2 f.: "When he shall give sleep to his beloved, behold the inheritance of the Lord are children, the reward, the fruit of the womb," and in John 1:13: "Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of 85 Luther's interlinear gloss reads as follows (WA 56, 44, 11 ff.): "For if those
[Abraham's] children, who are of his seed, only according to the flesh, of course, be heirs, possessors, namely, of the promise that is to be fulfilled, so that they possess the whole world, faith is made void, for then faith is made unnecessary, and it suffices that they are the children of his flesh. If they can become heirs by the seed (physical descent), what need is there of faith?
The promise is made of none effect, i.e., it is abolished; it does not need to be fulfilled; and it is not fulfilled, and, therefore, it does not need to be believed/'
The marginal gloss contains this comment on the last sentence (WA 56, 45, 15 f.): "For faith and the promise belong together [quia fides et promissio sunt relatival; if the promise ceases, faith also ceases; and if the promise is taken away, faith too is taken away, and conversely."
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS men, but of God." And likewise in John 3:5: "You must be born again from water and the spirit/' And in Ps. 22:30 f.: "A seed that serves him shall be declared to the Lord." And in Ps. 45:16:
"Instead of your fathers, sons are born to you," etc. Thus the proposition is proved (that physical descent does not entitle anyone to inherit the world and that, instead, physical generation was made void in order that the importance of a generation from faith be established in opposition to those who seek to render faith void in order to establish the importance of physical descent); hence, it follows that the promise, too, would be made of none effect by the law exactly as faith is by the reliance on physical generation. For "the law works wrath," etc., as is shown by the passage: for where no law is, there is no transgression; in other words: it is the violation of the law which works wrath, but this would not be so if there were no law.
The statement that the law works wrath must be understood indirectly. For, strictly speaking, it is the violation of the law that works wrath and renders the promise of none effect. But this could not happen if there were no law. As long, namely, as the law is without faith to fulfill it, it convicts all of sin and proves them guilty and therefore unworthy of the promise, nay, rather, worthy of God's wrath and destruction, and thus it turns the promise into a threat. At any rate, it is the occasion that all this can happen and befall man, i.e., that one knows that all this will happen and come to pass, as the apostle says above: "By the law comes the knowledge of sin" (Rom. 3:20). For whosoever has the law without faith and grace certainly sees that he is a sinner who is worthy of the wrath of God; therefore, the promise is made of none effect to him.
Therefore it is of faith, that according to grace the promise might be firm to all the seed, not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all (as it is written: I have made you a father of many nations) before God, whom he believed. (Rom. 4:16-17.)
This "before God," etc., is not to be found in the Hebrew Bible, but it can be elicited from the text if one considers rightly in what respect Abraham was made a father of many nations. I ask: Was he their father according to the flesh or according to the spirit?
He cannot be the father of many nations according to the flesh, because, again and again, there were people who did not descend from him. But, nevertheless, he was given the promise that he would be their father.
But if one objects and says that all nations will be destroyed so that only his descendants may rule the earth, he would be the father of only one nation and not of many.
Again, if all nations would be reduced to servitude, he would no longer be their father and the nations no longer his children but his slaves and he the lord of the nations; instead of fatherly care, there would prevail oppression and violence. And yet, the Jews blandly think that such a rule by oppression is promised to them and they wait for it in foolish hope. The only remaining conclusion to which we are driven is that he was given the promise to be their father "before God" and in his sight and in spirit.
If one objects again and says that he would then be their father by virtue of an office and in name only, just as Naaman, the Syrian, was called father by his servants (II Kings 5:13) and the princes of the peoples are called patres patriae, we reply and say that this would amount to a disparagement of the glory of the promise, because such a fatherhood is temporal and vicarious (and can fall to several and therefore not to Abraham alone, etc.); moreover, it is not perpetual, just as these official fathers are fathers only for the time of their reign.
But if the objector would persist in his impudence and say that he must be a father in the sense in which he is and was the father of the nations that descended from his second wife Keturah, then one must give the same reply as to the first objection and say that most nations had nothing to do with them and, indeed, were much more numerous than they. Because of these peoples, therefore, he would still not be a father of "many nations" but, rather, "of a few." And not even the Jews interpret the promise and await its fulfillment only with respect to these peoples. So, therefore, that inheritance is now actualized in Christ. He is the King and Lord of the nations. He has affirmed them for himself by a better victory than that by which the Jews long ago triumphed over the nation of Canaan. For he kills them spiritually with the sword of the word (Heb. 4:12) by making the ungodly godly and thus establishing his rule over them, even in their own land and possessions.
Who quickens the dead, and calls those things that are not, as those that are. (Rom. 4:i7.)36 36 The marginal gloss reads (WA 56, 46 f., 24 ff.): "These words are an incentive to faith. Abraham might have said: Behold, the inheritance that was promised to me can be given to me neither now while I live, nor after my death. For when I am dead and my children will obtain the inheritance, then it is not I but they who will have possession of it, although he gave
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS This may be historically true, but we must spiritually interpret it as a confirmation of the foregoing, i.e., the nations will be your children, and even though they are not yet, and are far from becoming, your children, nevertheless the Lord has power to raise them up and to call them so that they may become and be yours.
As John the Baptist says in Luke 3:8: "Do not say: We have Abraham for our father, for God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham." And so it strengthens the faith of Abraham and confirms the promise of God that he is told that he can become the father of many nations, if not by his own strength, then by the power of God, etc.
Who against hope believed in hope, that he might be made the father of many nations, according to that which was said to him:
So shall thy seed be. And he was not weak in faith; neither did he consider his own body now dead, whereas he was almost a hundred years old, nor the dead womb of Sara. In the promise also of God he staggered not by distrust, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God. (Rom. 4:18-20.)
First of all, "hope" signifies something that is naturally hoped for. The hope that is here spoken of was not of this kind. But secondly, it signifies something that is supernaturally hoped for.
In both cases, hope must be understood as what one hopes for but not as the power of hoping.
This suggests beautifully the difference between ordinary human hope and Christian hope. For human hope is not against hope but in accordance with what is hoped for, i.e., it is directed to what can readily become possible. For men do not hope where the opposite of what they hope for rises before their eyes, but where either something like it becomes evident or where there is a certainty that it will be realized. And so this hope is negative rather than positive, i.e., relying on what has begun to happen, one anticipates the realization of what one hopes for; then at length one hopes that nothing will prevent the realization of what one hopes for. Consequently, this hope wants to be certain and informed with respect to that which supports it, but with respect to what goes against it, it must remain uncertain.
By contrast, Christian hope is certain of what goes against it.
For it knows that, as long as one hopes, what one hopes for must come about or cannot remain unrealized. For nobody can impede the promise saying: 'to you and thy seed after you' [Gen. 17:7]. But if the inheritance is given to me while I live, then my whole seed will be able to possess it. And thus it always seems as if the promises of God contradicted one another and as if they were impossible for the wisdom of the flesh."
God. But with respect to its support, it is very uncertain, because it has no sure guarantee on which it can rely, but everything is deeply hidden and the opposite of what one hopes for stands before one's eyes. Hence, it is a positive rather than a negative hope.
In this passage, the apostle speaks in favor of both kinds: first, in so far as what supports hope is concerned, when he says that Abraham, not being weak in faith, considered not his own body now dead, when he was about a hundred years old, and secondly, as far as what denies hope is concerned, when he writes that he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief,37 most fully knowing that whatsoever he has promised, he is also able to perform (Rom. 4:si).38 The positive militates against faith and hope because it can be seen, but the negative militates against them from within. The latter is the tendency of the heart to be so weak and inconstant as to be incapable of faith, while the former is represented by all that stands over against faith.
But was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God. (Rom. 4:20.) What is implied in this is that, as the believer by his faith glorifies God, so, conversely, the unbeliever dishonors God by his lack of faith. First John 5:10: "He that believes not his Son has made God a liar, because he has not believed in the witness that God has borne concerning his Son." The believer thus makes God truthful and himself a liar. For he disbelieves his own mind as something false in order to believe the word of God as the truth, even though it goes utterly against all he thinks in his own mind.
As it was said above in ch. 3:4 of this letter: "That thou mayest be justified in thy words/' etc. "Let God be true and every man a 3 7 In the marginal gloss, Luther comments as follows (WA
"There are two factors that make faith something arduous and difficult.
First, it is the evidence 'of things not seen* [Heb. 11:1], indeed, of things that are opposite to what one sees, as if they could not possibly happen in view of the fact that all nature declares that they cannot be. When one has overcome this difficulty, a second and still greater one arises, namely, the anxious fear of the heart that God may change in his counsel and do something else. The first difficulty concerns the power of God and the second one his truth. Behind both his power and his truth, inwardly as well as outwardly, there is God's immutability."
3 8 In the marginal gloss, Luther remarks on this passage (WA 56, 48, 25 ff.):
"Num. 23:19: 'God is not man, that he should lie, nor as the son of man, that he should be changed. Has he said then, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill?' But man oftentimes does not keep his word (because he does not have the power to live up to it but is changeable) even against his own will, for he cannot do what he promised when something that exceeds his power intervenes and prevents him from doing so. But this cannot happen in God."
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS liar," let him disbelieve in himself and believe God. Thus he will become a liar and God will be made truthful. This is why Blessed
Augustine says39 that one worships God by faith, hope, and love.
And, according to a saying that is often quoted,40 one offends God directly by the three vices of faithlessness, despair, and hatred.
And therefore it was reputed to him for righteousness. Now it is not written only for him that it was reputed to him for righteousness, but also for us, to whom it shall be reputed, if we believe in him that raised up Jesus Christ, our Lord, from the dead, who was delivered up for our sins and rose again for our justification.
Christ's death is the death of sin, and his resurrection is the life of righteousness. For by his death he has offered satisfaction for our sins, and, by his resurrection, he has affirmed righteousness for us. And so his death does not merely signify but it effects the remission of our sins as a most sufficient satisfaction. And his resurrection is not only the sign41 of our righteousness, but, because it effects it in us if we believe it, also its cause. (Heb. 5:9.) But about this later.42 All this the Scholastic theologians call one single mutation: the expulsion of sin and the infusion of grace.43
39 Augustine, Enchiridion, 40 One put "theological vices" over against the "theological virtues." Cf. Duns Scotus, II Sent., d. 43; G. Bid, II Sent,, d. 43, q. un.
41 Lit., "sacrament."
42 Cf. the exposition of Rom. 5:9 ff. and ch. 6:3 ff.
43 Duns Scotus says expressly "una mutatio realis" (IV Sent., d. 16, q. 2, n. b; IV Sent, d. 1, q. 6). Cf. also Ockham, IV Sent, q. 3D and U ff.; Pierre d'Ailly, IV Sent, q. 3G.
ROMANS, CHAPTER FIVE1 Being justified therefore by faith, let us have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Rom. 5:1.)
This peace, of which all the prophets sing, is a spiritual peace.
This is why he says: "peace with God." It is prefigured in every peace which, in olden times, was given to the Children of Israel.
(It is nothing else than a quiet conscience and trust in God, just as, conversely, an unquiet conscience and mistrust in God mean spiritual disturbance. As Hosea says: "They sow the wind and shall reap the whirlwind" [Hos. 8:7]. For, according to Ps. 1:4, the penalty of a restless conscience is to be "like the chaff which the wind drives away.")
For this reason Christ is called Solomon2 and the Prince of Peace. (Isa. 9:6.) Ephesians 2:14: "He is our peace, who has made both one." "And coming, he preached peace to you that were afar off, and peace to them that were nigh." (Eph. 2:17.) And John
16:33: "That in me you may have peace; in the world you have tribulation." Carnal peace is something else. It is spoken of in Matt. 10:34: "I am not come to send peace but the sword" (in contrast to carnal disturbance and temporal quietness). Hence, the word of Ps. 72:7: "In his days shall righteousness flourish and abundance of peace" must by no means be understood, as many think,3 with reference to the temporal peace which prevailed under Augustus, but of this spiritual peace "with God." iNote in Gloss (WA 56, 49, i7ff.): "In this chapter, the apostle speaks with very great joy and gladness. In the entire Scripture, there is hardly a text that equals this chapter, at least not in expression. For it describes most clearly the nature and extent of God's grace and mercy toward us."
^Solomon, i.e., "paciftcus" (cf. I Chron. 22:9: "He shall be called Peaceable").
3 This exegesis is mentioned by Lyra, for example.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS But it must be noted how the apostle bases the spiritual peace on righteousness. Therefore, he says first: "being justified by faith" and then only "we have peace." In the same way, "righteousness" precedes "peace" in the word of Ps. 85:10: "Righteousness and peace have kissed each other." So also in the passage: "In his days shall righteousness flourish, and abundance of peace." (Ps. 72:7.)
It is due to the perversity of men that they seek peace first and then righteousness; consequently, they find no peace. In view of this, the words of the apostle suggest a fine contrast:
A righteous man has peace with God but distress in the world because he lives in the spirit/'
"An unrighteous man has peace with the world but distress and tribulation with God, because he lives in the flesh."
"But just as the Spirit is eternal, so the peace of the righteous and the tribulation of the unrighteous will be eternal"
"And just as the flesh is temporal, so the tribulation of the righteous and the peace of the unrighteous will be temporal"
Hence, Isa. 57:21 and 48:22: "There is no peace, says the Lord, to the wicked," spiritually, of course, for otherwise the wicked certainly have peace. Psalm 73:3: "Because I had a zeal on occasion of the wicked, seeing the prosperity of sinners." Psalm 28:3: "That speak peace with the neighbor, but evil" (i.e., not peace but disturbance and restlessness in relation to God) "is in their hearts."
By whom also we have access through faith into this grace, wherein we stand, and glory in the hope of the glory of the sons of God. (Rom. 5:2.)
Very instructively the apostle connects these two: "through Christ" and "through faith," just as he did before when he said:
"Being justified by faith through our Lord Jesus Christ." The first is directed against the presumptuousness of those who believe that they can have access to God without Christ, as if it were sufficient for them to have believed. So they want to come to God by faith alone, not through Christ but past Christ, as if they no longer needed Christ after having received the grace of justification. So there are nowadays many who fashion from the works of faith works of the law and the letter, when, for example, after having received faith by baptism and penance, they want to become acceptable to God only in and with their own persons without Christ. But both are necessary: on the one hand, one must have faith and, on the other hand, one must, at the same time, always have Christ as the mediator in this kind of faith. Hence, it says in Ps. 91:1: "He that dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of God in heaven." Faith makes the dwelling, but Christ