Complete Luther Library

160 D. Martin Luther's Disputation on the Law and Justification. *)

Volume 19 from the one-column St. Louis Edition English DOCX texts, reformatted for mobile reading on Last Christian Ministries.

Source text used with permission from Back to Luther.

Volume 19

160 D. Martin Luther's Disputation on the Law and Justification. *)

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Translated from Latin.

Blessed is he who walks as he would like.

Accordingly, no one is blessed except the one who has his air in the law of the Lord.

3. no man takes pleasure in the law of works except through the law of faith.

4 He errs who does not distinguish the law of faith from the law of works, or yours, which is in the members.

(5) Likewise, he who makes no distinction between divine law and human law errs.

6. to expel violence with violence goes on according to human laws.

The divine law, on the other hand, commands that one should also leave the coat to the one who takes the skirt.

8. human law, if it does not coincide with the divine law, is unjust.

9 The divine law resolves all people under sin.

(10) But it does not follow that God has commanded impossible things.

(11) For what was impossible under the law of works has become possible through the law of faith.

(12) So the yoke of the Lord is easy and his burden is light.

Since we are justified by faith, it follows that the sacraments cannot be effective in any other way than through faith in Christ.

14 This faith is necessary so that what happens in the sacrament has this effect [of justification]. 2)

(15) Neither are we justified in any other way than by the death of what is ours and by the cross.

Therefore, to Christ alone be the glory, to us the shame.

2) That is, faith belongs to the word of God and the promise in the sacrament.

*) This disputation is found in the Thesensammlungen of 1538 and 1558; then in the Latin Wittenberg edition, Dom. I, col. 371; in the Jena (1579), Dom. I, col. 488 and in the Erlangen, oxp. var. srx., vol. IV, p. 332. Also in Löscher, Reformations-Acta, vol. Ill, 949. We have translated according to the Jenaer.

1418 L. v.". iv, 3N f. X. Luther's Writings on Law and Faith 2c. W. xix, 1723 f. 1419