Luther on the Christian Life Quotes

“The task of the preacher, therefore, is to take the Bible and to do two things in every sermon: destroy self-righteousness and point hearers toward the alien, external righteousness of Christ.”
― Carl R. Trueman, Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom

“The law says, ‘do this,’ and it is never done. Grace says, ‘believe in this,’ and everything is already done.”
― Carl R. Trueman, Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom

“Theology masters the man; the man is never to master the theology.”
― Carl R. Trueman, Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom

“If God’s words determine reality, then of all the things a pastor does, speaking the words of God to the congregation is the most important.”
― Carl R. Trueman, Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom

“As humans are at once both righteous and sinful, so human existence is at once both heartbreaking and hilarious.”
― Carl R. Trueman, Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom

“We must hold firmly to the conviction that God gives no one his Spirit or grace except through or with the external Word.”
― Carl R. Trueman, Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom

“Thus, divine love, by contrast, is not reactive but creative: God does not find that which is lovely and then move out in love toward it; something is made lovely by the fact that God first sets his love upon it. He does not look at sinful human beings and see among the mass of people some who are intrinsically more righteous or holy than others and thus find himself attracted to them. Rather, the lesson of the cross is that God chooses that which is unlovely and repulsive, unrighteous and with no redeeming quality, and lavishes his saving love in Christ upon it.”
― Carl R. Trueman, Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom

“We may live in an age when everything has to be “radical” and “revolutionary.” For Luther the most radical thing one could do was to learn the basics of the faith with the simple trust of a little child.”
― Carl R. Trueman, Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom

“Word and sacrament define the task of the pastoral office in simple, beautiful, and powerful terms.”
― Carl R. Trueman, Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom

“the person whose life is falling apart and who is thus tempted to despair needs to know Christ, and knowing Christ requires knowing who he is and what he has done. In”
― Carl R. Trueman, Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom

“Thus, he is to show people that all their righteousness is as filthy rags and as reliable a leaning post as a spider’s web; and that, counterintuitive and countercultural as it may be, true righteousness, mercy, and grace are to be found in the filthy and broken corpse of a man condemned as a criminal to hang on a cross. This is the preaching of law and gospel, and it carries with it transformative power.”
― Carl R. Trueman, Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom

“the Christian as a Christian has a power that is to be conceived of in cross-shaped terms, and the church, as the body of believers, is also to see its power and its role in a spiritual manner.”
― Carl R. Trueman, Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom

“Our godlike self-understanding, however, keeps colliding with the facts of death and of the fallen finiteness of this world.”
― Carl R. Trueman, Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom

“If the young Luther had, like the British soldiers of 1914, assumed that the conflict would all be over by Christmas, the later Luther knew that the struggle was actually going to last until the end of time—and that that was much further into the future than he had ever imagined in even his worst nightmares.”
― Carl R. Trueman, Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom