More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Started reading
January 2, 2022
A person may have despised the grace of God for fifty years and may be burdened with millions of sins, abominable sins; finally he collapses and cries: “God be merciful to me, a sinner!” and God receives him. But this truth must not be wantonly abused.
The Spirit is not obtained except by simple trust in God’s Word. Even when void of any feeling, the person who declares: “God has said so, therefore I shall believe it,” will find that the Holy Spirit has entered his heart, filling it with His peace and joy.
But the movement was brought to a halt at the discussion of the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. For
“Yours is a different spirit from ours”?
For no creature has the right to declare something a sin which God has not declared such. Anything that God has neither commanded nor forbidden is a matter of liberty.
“The Office of the Keys is the peculiar church power which Christ has given to His Church on earth, to forgive the sins of penitent sinners unto them and to retain the sins of the impenitent so long as they do not repent.” Mark this phrase: “peculiar church power”!
“In a case of necessity even a layman absolves and becomes the minister and pastor of another, as Augustine narrates the story of two Christians in a ship, one of whom baptized the catechumen, who after baptism then absolved the baptizer.”
There is nothing more to do. You are only to believe all that has been done for you, and you will be relieved.”
it is not a question of what man must do, but what has been done by Christ.
When a priest absolves, this power of forgiving sins has been vested in him by virtue of his priestly ordination and his having been anointed with chrism.
“Thy sins are forgiven thee,” are tantamount to God’s pronouncing those words.
Among the fanatical sects many spend their lives in a state of despair because they do not “feel” what they would like to feel and finally pass away in their despair and are lost.
We are not to think that the Fifth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer proves that to obtain forgiveness we must first pray for it. The object of this petition is not to show that there is no forgiveness until we pray for it, but to remind us of the fact that it lies ready for us and that this fact is to strengthen our faith.
The entire Papacy is built up on the teaching that grace is infused into men by some secret operation and that it is obtained by contrition, confession, and satisfaction. If you ask them what absolution and the Keys effect, they tell you that it is an external ordinance observed in the Church.
for they all, without exception, teach that forgiveness of sins must be obtained by praying, struggling, and wrestling with God until one feels the soothing sensation that grace has been infused into him.
According to the Pope’s teaching the sinner seeking absolution must do three things, and what is worst, faith is not one of these requisites. The people are told merely to be contrite, crushed, and to confess.
Anywhere and everywhere all things cry to us: “You are redeemed; your sins are forgiven; heaven is thrown open to you. Oh, believe it, do believe it, and you have this bliss.”
Instances of this can be observed in Germany. The churches of rationalists are empty, but every church whose pulpit is occupied by one who preaches with the manifestation of the Spirit and of power, is filled.
Alas! there are other preachers, who, while they are believers, preach in such high-flown language that it passes the comprehension of the people.
Not only must we proclaim the truth, we must also speak a language so simple that a peasant listening outside of the sanctuary can understand it and feel himself drawn into the church.
Baptism, absolution, preaching, and the Sacrament are not to be despised, but in them forgiveness of sin is to be sought and obtained.
namely, that men are to struggle until they can say, “Now I feel that I have obtained grace.” That is an awful doctrine, much more harmful than most men imagine.
You cannot infer from your feelings or from the divine blessings showered upon you that God has forgiven you;
He has promised us forgiveness of our sins; if we believe that, we have it. But people will not believe this.
The statement, repeated after the Pope, that sins are forgiven when a minister makes a statement to that effect, but not when a layman does so, is simply awful.
He does not propose to forgive and remit sins for your sake, but for His own sake, from pure grace, by means of the keys.
a person who refuses to believe that he has been released and that his sins have been forgiven will find out in due time how surely his sins had been forgiven him in this present time while he refused to believe it.
Luther is right also in advising men not to inquire at all about the quality and sufficiency of their contrition.
The right procedure is not to base the validity of absolution on our own contrition, but to make our contrition rest on our absolution.
As to the so-called “inner forgiveness” on which fanatics insist as being a matter of chief importance, they never know whether theirs is really the inner,
What Luther says about a King’s gift of a castle to a subject must be applied to absolution. In that act God really offers forgiveness to all, even to unbelievers and scorners of a gift which they think cannot be real because brought to them by a man like themselves. These deluded people do not consider that it is God Himself, not man, that does the forgiving.
in other words, when they are told to keep on praying and struggling until they feel that God has received them into grace.”
According to God’s Word any person who has never felt the testimony of the Spirit that he is the child of God is spiritually dead. He can offer no testimony in his favor and does wrong by considering himself a Christian nevertheless.
Note, then, that our statement that no one must base his salvation and his state of grace on his feeling does not mean that he can be a good Christian without having experienced any feeling in regard to religious matters.
