Spiritual Righteousness: “Ah, how large a part of righteousness it is to want to be righteous!” [W-T 1, NO. 956]
Sacraments: “In short, if God were to bid you pick up a wisp of straw or to pull out a feather—with the command, order, and promise that thereby you should have forgiveness of all sins, His grace, and eternal life—should you not accept this offer and love and praise it with all joy and thankfulness? And should you not consider that wisp of straw or that feather a higher and holier possession than heaven and earth and love it more than them?” [SL 16, 2296]
Sadness: “In Scripture melancholy is nothing but sadness incarnate and thorns of the devil by which we are troubled here and there. This is why sadness is diligently checked in Scripture. Therefore God says: Believe in Me, ‘cast thy burden upon the Lord’ (Psalm 55:22). Do not be sad. Let Me take care of you. Use Me and My creatures, and you will be glad.” [SL 22, 1942, No. 1242]
Sadness: “Sad thoughts can be averted only by faith in Christ. This is also the best way again to lift people out of such thoughts.” [W-T 1, No. 520]
Saints: “They are not called saints because they are
without sin or have become saintly through works. On the contrary, they themselves, with all
their works, are nothing but condemned sinners.
But they become holy through a foreign holiness, namely, through that of
the Lord Christ, which is given them by faith and thus becomes their own. This faith is so strong and powerful that it
covers and wipes away all sins and shortcomings that remain in flesh and blood. I have often said that the
Saints: “I am glad and thank God that He has given me in superabundant measure what I once asked for as a monk. I have seen, not one saint but many, in fact, numberless true saints, not the sophisticated sort but the kind Christ and the apostles depict and describe. And by the grace of God I am one of them; for I am baptized and believe that Christ, my Lord, has redeemed me from sins by His death and has given me an eternal righteousness and holiness…
Let us now learn
from Holy Scriptures that all believers in Christ are saints.” [SL 9, 700]
Galatians 5:19
Salvation: “Such
knowledge and faith make a joyous heart which can say with certainty and
assurance: I am no longer conscious of
any sins, for all of them lie on the shoulders of Christ, and they surely
cannot lie on Him and on us at the same time.”
[SL 7, 698f.] Matt. 3:13-17
Salvation: “We should not seek even our salvation through His name if it does not redound to His glory.” [SL 3, 1194]
Sects: “Heretics are useful. We do not know how good it is for us to have adversaries. If there had been no Cerinthus, John would never have written his Gospel. Cerinthus attacked the person of Christ. Then John had to write [the great truths of that book].” [W-T 5, No. 5525]
Selfishness: “Many
folk are not happy unless they have done harm or see that their fellow man is
faring poorly. They are like that
venomous animals, the salamander, which is so cold that it can live and sustain
itself even in fire. In like manner,
these folk live and become fat on the harm done to other people. There you have the precious brood of the
devil, the touchy Mr. Envy, who is sorry to see that someone is doing well and
would gladly lose one of his eyes to keep his neighbor from having any eyes at
all!” [SL 11, 857] John 16:16-23
Self-righteousness:
“By nature all people have it in common: papists, Jews, Mohammedans, heretics,
etc. They cannot rise any higher than
the Pharisee in the Gospel (Luke 18:11f.).
They do not know Christian righteousness or the righteousness of
faith. For natural man does not perceive
the things that are of God… This is why there is no difference whatever between
a papist, a Jew, a Turk, a heretic, etc.”
[SL 9, 520f.] Gal. 4:8-9
Self-righteousness:
“For fully twenty years I myself have now preached and practiced
this with studying and writing.
Therefore I should, in fairness, have come out of it. Yet I always feel the old, tenacious, vile
habit. I want to haggle with God and
bring something along so that He has to give me His grace in return for my
holiness. It just does not seem right to
me that I should rely so entirely on nothing but grace. And yet it should and cannot be
otherwise. The mercy seat alone must
have value and permanence, for God Himself has set it up. Without it no man will come before God.” [SL 9, 910]
1 Tim. 1:3-11
Serving others: “Therefore
it is not without reason that the Scriptures describe so few kings and rulers
who were godly men… There is among men no creator who would make something out
of nothing, although that is what
Serving others: “God
takes the form of a Christian and says:
‘My poor apostle and Christian, who has nothing, comes to you. This apostle or preacher has the name ‘I.’ Now, my friend, if you want to give and show
courtesy to Me in heaven, then do it to Me here on earth; I do not need it
above. But do not let your preacher or
chaplain suffer need. Help to further My
kingdom, look to your neighbor and to your brother who is in want and suffers
need, and refresh him so that he does not suffer hunger and thirst…” [SL 7, 2136]
John 4:6-7
Sickness: “It is true, a good diet is the best medicine if one can succeed in hitting the right one. But to live on medicine is to live in misery.” [W-T 3, No. 3801]
Sin: “Creation
no doubt is good, and good is the blessing of fruitfulness; but because of sin
they are so corrupted that married people cannot enjoy them without
shame.” [SL 1, 127f.] Gen. 2:16-17
Sin: “We are
not sinners because we commit sin—now this one, now that one—but we commit
these acts because we are sinners before we do so.” [SL 5, 534]
Psalm 51:5
Sin: “The true
priestly office is properly discharged when we offer to God that wicked rogue,
that corrupt old ass: our old
Adam.” [SL 9, 1014] 1 Peter 2:5
Sin: “For
ourselves we ought to weep because we are corrupted to such an appalling degree
through sin and so severe a sentence and judgment faces us. But one sees no one with moist eyes, and it
happens that people are the more secure and the happier, the deeper they are
sticking in the mire of sins and that… they find joy, delight, and life in
having many opportunities to sin. A
miser can never have enough of coveting…
The same thing happens in the case of other sins too—in the case of
anger, unchasteness, jealousness, arrogance.”
[SL 13a, 441] Luke 23:26-31
Sin: “We
should actually fear that we have sinned where we have not sinned, and we
should be perfected by a hatred of sin and a love of God so great that we fear
the sins which we commit unconsciously, nay, that we fear as sin what is no
sin.” [SL 4, 558] Psalm 7
Sin: “Get used
to exercising possession of your right.
Then you will see how hard it is.
We are in truth kings over these evils and lords over all the benefits
that are in Christ, and we all wear golden crowns—but all this only by faith,
which struggles against the opposite outward appearance. So nothing is more difficult than this
spiritual pride that is in Christ. Would
that we might learn this spiritual pride perfectly and exercise it.” [SL 5, 425]
Psalm 45:9
Sin: “Such is the grace and power of God that sin, which has brought death, is driven out by its own work, that is, by death.” [SL 10, 2122]
Society: “A
housefather who rules his home in the fear of God, training his little children
and his servants in the right way, is in a blessed and holy station of
life. And a woman who takes care of
children by giving them food and drink, wiping and bathing them, need not ask
for a holier and godlier position in life… Insofar as they do believe in
Christ, even their sweeping the rooms or wiping shoes pleases God far more than
all the praying, fasting, celebrating of Mass, and whatever else monks boast of
as noble services to God.” [SL 13a,
157f.] John 2:1-11
Society: “
Sunday: “Nature
teaches and demands that the mass of people, manservants and maidservants, who
have been tending to their work and trade throughout the week, retire for a day
in order to rest and have recreation.
Secondly, and most especially, we observe holy days that we may improve
the time and opportunity on such days of rest (since we cannot do so at other
times) to attend divine service, to come
together to hear, and treat of, God’s Word, and then to praise God, to sing,
and to pray… However, our celebration
should not be so narrowly legalistic as to prohibit incidental and unavoidable
work.” [SL 10, 46f.]
Talebearing: “When
defamers come together, their entertainment consists in taking someone, placing
him in their midst, and taking turns at tearing him apart with their teeth, as
dogs tear the cadaver of a horse in the field… For shame, for shame! What a horrid monster a defamer is!” [SL 10, 951]
Talents: “The
more exalted your gifts are, the more shamefully they are perverted if you make
an idol of them. It is as if you poured
poison into a precious wine.” [SL 7, 588] Matt. 7:1
Teachers: “I
would briefly say that a diligent and pious schoolteacher or master or whoever
the person is who faithfully trains and teaches boys can never be sufficiently
rewarded and repaid with any money, as even the heathen Aristotle says. Yet this work is shamefully despised among us
as if it were nothing whatever… For I know that next to the ministry this work
is the most useful, the greatest, and the best.
In fact, I do not know which of the two is the better; for it is hard to
tame old dogs and to make old rascals pious.
Yet this is the task at which the preacher must labor and often labor in
vain. But one can bend and train young
trees more easily even though some of them break in the process.” [SL 10, 454]
Temporal Possessions:
“It was extreme blindness and the most shameful ignorance to
transfer vices that lie in man to the creatures, which are good by themselves
and God’s gifts. For we must
differentiate between possessions and him who possesses them. Possessions are as God made them; but man,
the possessor, is not as God created him.
Therefore the fault lies not in the possession but in the possessor.” [SL 1, 829f.]
Gen. 13:2
Temporal Possessions:
“In short, stealing is the commonest craft and the largest guild on
earth. If you look at the world today in
all its vocations, you find it nothing but a big, wide barn full of big
thieves… They sit in chairs, are styled
great lords and honorable, pious citizens.
They rob and steal under the cloak of honesty.” [SL 10, 69f.]
Exodus 20:15