As well as being halloween, today is also Reformation Day – the day we commemorate the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. In 1517 Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany, an act which set into motion the greatest reform in the history of the church.
In honour of Reformation Day, here are 10 quotes by Luther that were penned over 500 years ago, but still ring true today.
1. “If you want to interpret (the Bible) well and confidently, set Christ before you, for He is the man to whom it all applies, every bit of it.”
2. “The believing soul can boast of and glory in, whatever Christ has as though it were its own, and whatever the soul has, Christ claims as his own.”
3. “Learn to know Christ and him crucified. Learn to sing to him, and say, ‘Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, I am your sin. You have taken upon yourself what is mine and given me what is yours. You have become what you were not so that I might become what I was not.’”
4. “God doesn’t need your good works, but your neighbour does.”
5. “When the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: ‘I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is there I shall be also.'”
6. “This is true faith, a living confidence in the goodness of God.”
7. “Who can understand the riches of the glory of this grace? Here this rich and divine bridegroom Christ marries this poor, wicked harlot, redeems her from all her evil, and adorns her with all his goodness. Her sins cannot now destroy her, since they are laid upon Christ and swallowed up by him. And she has that righteousness in Christ, her husband, of which she may boast as of her own and which she can confidently display alongside her sins in the face of death and hell and say, ‘If I have sinned, yet my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned, and all his is mine and all mine is his.’”
8. “I know not the way God leads me, but well do I know my Guide.”
9. “You say that the sins which we commit every day offend God, and therefore we are not saints. To this I reply: Mother love is stronger than the filth and scabbiness on a child, and so the love of God toward us is stronger than the dirt that clings to us.”
10. “The highest of all God’s commands is this, that we ever hold up before our eyes the image of his dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. He must daily be to our hearts the perfect mirror, in which we behold how much God loves us and how well, in his infinite goodness, as a faithful God, he has grandly cared for us in that he gave his dear Son for us. Do not let this mirror and throne of grace be torn away from before your eyes.”
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