Tuesday, October 02, 2007

luther on galatians


"St. Paul wrote this epistle because, after his departure from the Galatian churches, Jewish-Christian fanatics moved in, who perverted Paul's Gospel of man's free justification by faith in Christ Jesus.

The world bears the Gospel a grudge because the Gospel condemns the religious wisdom of the world. Jealous for its own religious views, the world in turn charges the Gospel with being a subversive and licentious doctrine, offensive to God and man, a doctrine to be persecuted as the worst plague on earth.

As a result we have this paradoxical situation: The Gospel supplies the world with the salvation of Jesus Christ, peace of conscience, and every blessing. Just for that the world abhors the Gospel."

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Sweet.

It's getting more and more suprising to me that the world sees the church as legalistic, when it is the only place where freedom can be found.

The very nature of the world is thoroughly legalistic. Just try hurting a friend or an enemy, you'll see how fast rights are invoked.

The church is freedom, peace, and the foretaste of harmony... Yowza!

Brian Ring said...

Amen!