Martin Luther - Works Quotes

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Everything that is done in the world is done by hope. No merchant or tradesman would set himself to work if he did not hope to reap benefit thereby.

Martin Luther
For it is a horrible blasphemy to imagine that there is any work by which you should presume to pacify God, since you see that there is nothing which is able to pacify Him but this inestimable price, even the death and the blood of the Son of God, one drop of which is more precious than the whole world.

Martin Luther
Good works do not make a good man, but a good man does good works.

Martin Luther
We ought first to know that there are no good works except those which God has commanded, even as there is no sin except that which God has forbidden.

Martin Luther
Being by his faith replaced afresh in paradise and created anew, he (the believer)does not need works for his justification, but that he may not be idle, but that he may exercise his own body and preserve it. His works are to be done freely, with the sole object of pleasing God.

Martin Luther
We refuse to have our conscience bound by any work or law, so that by doing this or that we should be righteous, or leaving this or that undone we should be damned.

Martin Luther
When the devil comes at night to worry me, this is what I say to him: Devil, I have to sleep now. That is God's commandment, for us to work by day and sleep at night. If he keeps on nagging me and trots out my sins, then I answer: Sweet devil, I know the whole list. But I have done even more sin which is not on your list. Write there also that I have shit in my breeches. Hang it around your neck and wipe your mouth on it. Then, if he won't cease to accuse me of sins, I say in contempt: Holy Satan, pray for me. ("Sancte Satane, ora pro me").

Martin Luther
One is not righteous who does much, but the one who, without work, believes much in Christ. The law says, 'Do this,' and it is never done. Grace says, 'Believe in this,' and everything is already done.

Martin Luther
Therefore, when some say good works are forbidden when we preach faith alone, it is as if I said to a sick man: If you had health, you would have the use of your limbs; but without health the works of your limbs are nothing and he wanted to infer that I had forbidden the works of all his limbs.

Martin Luther
I have done nothing; the Word has done and accomplished everything.... I let the Word do its work!

Martin Luther
How great, therefore, the wickedness of human nature is! How many girls there are who prevent conception and kill and expel tender fetuses, although procreation is the work of God.

Martin Luther
If we esteem them too highly, good works can become the greatest idolatry.

Martin Luther
Although the Christian is thus free from all works, he ought in this liberty to empty himself, take upon himself the form of a servant, be made in the likeness of men, be found in human form, and to serve, help and in every way deal with his neighbor as he sees that God through Christ has dealt and still deals with him.

Martin Luther
It is always necessary that the substance or essence of a person be good before there can be any good works and that good works follow and proceed from a person who is already good. Christ says in Matthew 7:18: A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.... The fruit does not make the tree good or bad but the tree itself is what determines the nature of the fruit. In the same way, a person first must be good or bad before doing a good or bad work.

Martin Luther
Great people and champions are special gifts of God, whom He gives and preserves; they do their work, and achieve great actions, not with vain imaginations, or cold and sleepy cogitations, but by motion of God.

Martin Luther
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.

Martin Luther
Many have been deceived by outward appearances and have proceeded to write and teach about good works and how they justify without even mentioning faith. … Wearying themselves with many works, they never come to righteousness.

Martin Luther
In Matthew 12:23 Christ says: Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, as if to say: Let the one who wishes to have good fruit begin by planting a good tree. Therefore, let the person who wishes to do good works being not with the works but with the believing, for this alone makes a person good.

Martin Luther
But know that to serve God is nothing else than to serve your neighbor and do good to him in love, be it a child, wife, servant, enemy, friend....If you do not find yourself among the needy and the poor, where the Gospel shows us Christ, then you may know that your faith is not right, and that you have not yet tasted of Christ's benevolence and work for you.

Martin Luther
God has surely promised His grace to the humbled: that is, to those who mourn over and despair of themselves. But a man cannot be thoroughly humbled till he realizes that his salvation is utterly beyond his own powers, counsels, efforts, will and works, and depends absolutely on the will, counsel, pleasure and work of Another — God alone.

Martin Luther
The first care of every Christian ought to be to lay aside all reliance on works, and strengthen his faith alone more and more, and by it grow in the knowledge, not of works, but of Christ Jesus, who has suffered and risen again for him.

Martin Luther
For all works and things, which are either commanded or forbidden by God and thus have been instituted by the supreme Majesty, are 'musts.' Nevertheless, no one should be dragged to them or away from them by the hair, for I can drive no man to heaven or beat him into it with a club.

Martin Luther
Adam was created righteous, acceptable, and without sin. He had no need from his labor in the garden to be made righteous and acceptable to God. Rather, the Lord gave Adam work in order to cultivate and protect the garden. This would have been the freest of all works because they were done simply to please God and not to obtain righteousness. … The works of the person who trusts God are to be understood in a similar manner. Through faith we are restored to paradise and created anew. We have no need of works in order to be righteous; however, in order to avoid idleness and so that the body might be cared for an disciplined, works are done freely to please God.

Martin Luther
When God contemplates some great work, He begins it by the hand of some poor, weak, human creature, to whom He afterwards gives aid.

Martin Luther
The works of the righteous would be mortal sins if they would not be feared as mortal sins by the righteous themselves out of pious fear of God.

Martin Luther