Should anyone knock at my heart and say, ‘Who lives here?’ I should reply, ‘Not Martin Luther, but the Lord Jesus Christ.’
Here is the truly Christian life, here is faith really working by love, when a man applies himself with joy and love to the works of that freest servitude in which he serves others voluntarily and for nought, himself abundantly satisfied in the fulness and riches of his own faith.
What man, if he were God, would humble himself to lie in the feedbox of a donkey or to hang upon a cross?
Christ is the master; the Scriptures are only the servant.
A dairymaid can milk cows to the glory of God.
Though we be active in the battle, if we are not fighting where the battle is the hottest, we are traitors to the cause.
A preacher should have the skill to teach the unlearned simply roundly, and plainly; for teaching is of more importance than exhorting.
God wants us to pray, and he wants to hear our prayers-not because we are worthy, but because he is merciful.
In human affairs, we accomplish everything through prayer. What has been properly arranged, we keep in order, what has gone amiss we improve or change, what we cannot change and improve we bear, overcoming all trouble and sustaining all by prayer. Against such forces there is no help but prayer.
Some plague the people with too long sermons; for the faculty of listening is a tender thing, and soon becomes weary and satiated.
I more fear what is within me than what comes from without.
Good works are the seals and proofs of faith; for even as a letter must have a seal to strengthen the same, even so faith must have good works.
I frankly confess that even if it were possible I should not wish to have free choice given to me, or to have anything left in my own hands by which I might strive for salvation.
Everything is from God himself, both commandment and fulfillment. He alone commands; he alone fulfills.
There is no wisdom save in truth. Truth is everlasting, but our ideas about truth are changeable. Only a little of the first fruits of wisdom, only a few fragments of the boundless heights, breadths and depths of truth, have I been able to gather.
Faith cannot be inherited or gained by being baptized into a Church. Faith is a matter between the individual and God.
It is impossible to separate works from faith- yea, just as impossible as to separate burning and shining from fire.
A theologian is born by living, nay dying and being damned, not by thinking, reading, or speculating.
Christ took our sins and the sins of the whole world as well as the Father’s wrath on his shoulders, and he has drowned them both in himself so that we are thereby reconciled to God and become completely righteous.
It is the nature of all hypocrites and false prophets to create a conscience where there is none, and to cause conscience to disappear where it does exist.