Cfw Walther Quotes

If the teaching of Christ were a law, it would not be a gospel {glad tiding}, but a sad tiding.

Now, properly speaking, grace is never in a person’s heart, but in God’s heart. First a person must believe. After that he may feel. Feeling proceeds from faith—not faith from feeling.

A true Lutheran relies on God’s Word and would not worry about it even if the whole world mocked and despised him for it. He does not consider the world an authority in religious matters. He rests his faith on higher authority:

I hope you have had spiritual experiences that have taught you that the only source of comfort when you are afflicted is the Word of God. Only it assures you of your salvation.

We see that the law was not reveal to us to put a notion into our heads that we could become righteous by it, but to teach us that we are completely unable to fulfill the law. Then we will know what a sweet message-what a glorious doctrine-the gospel is and move receive it with exuberant joy.

Galatians 3:11–12 ... a precious text! A person becomes righteous in the sight of God by faith alone. What conclusion can we draw from this? The law cannot make any person righteous because it has nothing to say about justifying and saving faith. That information is found only in the Gospel. In other words, the law has nothing to say about grace.

For the doctrine of the Gospel that man is made righteous in the sight of God and saved by nothing but the pure grace of God, through the merits of Jesus Christ, is, as everybody knows, the most important doctrine, the marrow and substance of Christian teaching. Wherever this doctrine is not proclaimed, there is no Christ, no Gospel, no salvation; there men perish, and for such people it has been in vain that the Son of God has come into the world.

the sinless, impeccable Christ, at the end of His sojurn among men, suffered death, which no one has to undergo except sinners; for death is the wages of sin. There is only one explanation of the death of the incarnate Son of God - it is substitutive, or vicarious, just like His life under the Law. Jesus died the death which sinners had deserved to die, and by His redeeming love, God purposes to regard the death of His Son as the death which He would have to inflict upon every sinner for breaking the Law.

Here is where most preachers make their mistake. They are afraid that by preaching the gospel too clearly, it will be their fault if people lapse into sin. They imagine that the gospel is food for the carnal-minded. True enough, to many the gospel does become the smell of death unto death, but that is not the fault of the Gospel. That happens only because men do not accept—do not believe—the Gospel. Faith is not merely thinking, "I believe." Your whole heart must be seized by the gospel and come to rest in it. When that happens, you are transformed and cannot help but love and serve God.

thetically

Every religion contains portions of the law. In fact, some unbelievers, by their knowledge of the law, have advanced so far that they realize that their souls need to be cleansed, that their thoughts and desires need to be purified. But only in the Christian religion will you find the Gospel. Other religions do not contain even a speck of it.

The main thing to tell a person when you explain how to become righteous is to announce to him for free grace of God, concealing nothing, saying none other than what God says in the Gospel. Build a fence around Mount Sinai, but not around Golgotha, because at Golgotha all God's wrath was appeased.

The Gospel does not say, "you must do good works." Rather, it fashions us into human beings, into creatures who cannot help serve God and fellow human beings. Without a doubt, a precious effect!

...according to God's Word, we should not give a singe drop of evangelical consolation to those who are still living in sin. ON THE OTHER HAND, we should not address the slightest threat or rebuke to the broken hearted--but only promises delivering consolation and grace, forgiveness of sin and righteousness. Life and salvation.

God has willed, is now willing, and will never cease willing, that man shall not sin. Sin

Sin is lawlessness and constitutes the doer thereof a rebel against the righteous rule of His sovereign Lord.

In God, holiness and righteousness are the characteristics of the one Sublime, Sovereign Being, to whom no one can issue a command or lay down a law. In

Precision in matters of Christian doctrine is a hallmark of confessional Lutheranism, all for the sake of the Gospel.

From century to century, from nation to nation, millions and ever new millions have with one voice confessed and still confess today: if this Child had not been born, we would be completely lost.

Now, of all doctrines the foremost and most important is the doctrine of justification. However, immediately following upon it, as second in importance, is this, how Law and Gospel are to be divided.