Translator's Note:
The material between square brackets is explanatory in nature and is not part
of Luther's preface. The terms "just, justice, justify" in this piece are
synonymous with the terms "righteous, righteousness, make righteous." Both
sets of English words are common translations of German "gerecht" and related
words. A similar situation exists with the word "faith"; it is synonymous with
"belief." Both words can be used to translate German "Glaube." Thus, "We are
justified by faith" translates the same original German sentence as does "We
are made righteous by belief."
\-----
This letter is truly the most important piece in the New Testament. It is
purest Gospel. It is well worth a Christian's while not only to memorize it
word for word but also to occupy himself with it daily, as though it were the
daily bread of the soul. It is impossible to read or to meditate on this
letter too much or too well. The more one deals with it, the more precious it
becomes and the better it tastes. Therefore I want to carry out my service
and, with this preface, provide an introduction to the letter, insofar as God
gives me the ability, so that every one can gain the fullest possible
understanding of it. Up to now it has been darkened by glosses [explanatory
notes and comments which accompany a text] and by many a useless comment, but
it is in itself a bright light, almost bright enough to illumine the entire
Scripture.
To begin with, we have to become familiar with the vocabulary of the letter
and know what St. Paul means by the words law, sin, grace, faith, justice,
flesh, spirit, etc. Otherwise there is no use in reading it.
You must not understand the word law here in human fashion, i.e., a regulation
about what sort of works must be done or must not be done. That's the way it
is with human laws: you satisfy the demands of the law with works, whether
your heart is in it or not. God judges what is in the depths of the heart.
Therefore his law also makes demands on the depths of the heart and doesn't
let the heart rest content in works; rather it punishes as hypocrisy and lies
all works done apart from the depths of the heart. All human beings are called
liars (Psalm 116), since none of them keeps or can keep God's law from the
depths of the heart. Everyone finds inside himself an aversion to good and a
craving for evil. Where there is no free desire for good, there the heart has
not set itself on God's law. There also sin is surely to be found and the
deserved wrath of God, whether a lot of good works and an honorable life
appear outwardly or not.
Therefore in chapter 2, St. Paul adds that the Jews are all sinners and says
that only the doers of the law are justified in the sight of God. What he is
saying is that no one is a doer of the law by works. On the contrary, he says
to them, "You teach that one should not commit adultery, and you commit
adultery. You judge another in a certain matter and condemn yourselves in that
same matter, because you do the very same thing that you judged in another."
It is as if he were saying, "Outwardly you live quite properly in the works of
the law and judge those who do not live the same way; you know how to teach
everybody. You see the speck in another's eye but do not notice the beam in
your own."
Outwardly you keep the law with works out of fear of punishment or love of
gain. Likewise you do everything without free desire and love of the law; you
act out of aversion and force. You'd rather act otherwise if the law didn't
exist. It follows, then, that you, in the depths of your heart, are an enemy
of the law. What do you mean, therefore, by teaching another not to steal,
when you, in the depths of your heart, are a thief and would be one outwardly
too, if you dared. (Of course, outward work doesn't last long with such
hypocrites.) So then, you teach others but not yourself; you don't even know
what you are teaching. You've never understood the law rightly. Furthermore,
the law increases sin, as St. Paul says in chapter 5. That is because a person
becomes more and more an enemy of the law the more it demands of him what he
can't possibly do.
In chapter 7, St. Paul says, "The law is spiritual." What does that mean? If
the law were physical, then it could be satisfied by works, but since it is
spiritual, no one can satisfy it unless everything he does springs from the
depths of the heart. But no one can give such a heart except the Spirit of
God, who makes the person be like the law, so that he actually conceives a
heartfelt longing for the law and henceforward does everything, not through
fear or coercion, but from a free heart. Such a law is spiritual since it can
only be loved and fulfilled by such a heart and such a spirit. If the Spirit
is not in the heart, then there remain sin, aversion and enmity against the
law, which in itself is good, just and holy.
You must get used to the idea that it is one thing to do the works of the law
and quite another to fulfill it. The works of the law are every thing that a
person does or can do of his own free will and by his own powers to obey the
law. But because in doing such works the heart abhors the law and yet is
forced to obey it, the works are a total loss and are completely useless. That
is what St. Paul means in chapter 3 when he says, "No human being is justified
before God through the works of the law." From this you can see that the
schoolmasters [i.e., the scholastic theologians] and sophists are seducers
when they teach that you can prepare yourself for grace by means of works. How
can anybody prepare himself for good by means of works if he does no good work
except with aversion and constraint in his heart? How can such a work please
God, if it proceeds from an averse and unwilling heart?
But to fulfill the law means to do its work eagerly, lovingly and freely,
without the constraint of the law; it means to live well and in a manner
pleasing to God, as though there were no law or punishment. It is the Holy
Spirit, however, who puts such eagerness of unconstained love into the heart,
as Paul says in chapter 5. But the Spirit is given only in, with, and through
faith in Jesus Christ, as Paul says in his introduction. So, too, faith comes
only through the word of God, the Gospel, that preaches Christ: how he is both
Son of God and man, how he died and rose for our sake. Paul says all this in
chapters 3, 4 and 10.
That is why faith alone makes someone just and fulfills the law; faith it is
that brings the Holy Spirit through the merits of Christ. The Spirit, in turn,
renders the heart glad and free, as the law demands. Then good works proceed
from faith itself. That is what Paul means in chapter 3 when, after he has
thrown out the works of the law, he sounds as though the wants to abolish the
law by faith. No, he says, we uphold the law through faith, i.e. we fulfill it
through faith.
Sin in the Scriptures means not only external works of the body but also all
those movements within us which bestir themselves and move us to do the
external works, namely, the depth of the heart with all its powers. Therefore
the word do should refer to a person's completely falling into sin. No
external work of sin happens, after all, unless a person commit himself to it
completely, body and soul. In particular, the Scriptures see into the heart,
to the root and main source of all sin: unbelief in the depth of the heart.
Thus, even as faith alone makes just and brings the Spirit and the desire to
do good external works, so it is only unbelief which sins and exalts the flesh
and brings desire to do evil external works. That's what happened to Adam and
Eve in Paradise (cf. Genesis 3).
That is why only unbelief is called sin by Christ, as he says in John, chapter
16, "The Spirit will punish the world because of sin, because it does not
believe in me." Furthermore, before good or bad works happen, which are the
good or bad fruits of the heart, there has to be present in the heart either
faith or unbelief, the root, sap and chief power of all sin. That is why, in
the Scriptures, unbelief is called the head of the serpent and of the ancient
dragon which the offspring of the woman, i.e. Christ, must crush, as was
promised to Adam (cf. Genesis 3). Grace and gift differ in that grace actually
denotes God's kindness or favor which he has toward us and by which he is
disposed to pour Christ and the Spirit with his gifts into us, as becomes
clear from chapter 5, where Paul says, "Grace and gift are in Christ, etc."
The gifts and the Spirit increase daily in us, yet they are not complete,
since evil desires and sins remain in us which war against the Spirit, as Paul
says in chapter 7, and in Galations, chapter 5. And Genesis, chapter 3,
proclaims the enmity between the offspring of the woman and that of the
serpent. But grace does do this much: that we are accounted completely just
before God. God's grace is not divided into bits and pieces, as are the gifts,
but grace takes us up completely into God's favor for the sake of Christ, our
intercessor and mediator, so that the gifts may begin their work in us.
In this way, then, you should understand chapter 7, where St. Paul portrays
himself as still a sinner, while in chapter 8 he says that, because of the
incomplete gifts and because of the Spirit, there is nothing damnable in those
who are in Christ. Because our flesh has not been killed, we are still
sinners, but because we believe in Christ and have the beginnings of the
Spirit, God so shows us his favor and mercy, that he neither notices nor
judges such sins. Rather he deals with us according to our belief in Christ
until sin is killed.
Faith is not that human illusion and dream that some people think it is. When
they hear and talk a lot about faith and yet see that no moral improvement and
no good works result from it, they fall into error and say, "Faith is not
enough. You must do works if you want to be virtuous and get to heaven." The
result is that, when they hear the Gospel, they stumble and make for
themselves with their own powers a concept in their hearts which says, "I
believe." This concept they hold to be true faith. But since it is a human
fabrication and thought and not an experience of the heart, it accomplishes
nothing, and there follows no improvement.
Faith is a work of God in us, which changes us and brings us to birth anew
from God (cf. John 1). It kills the old Adam, makes us completely different
people in heart, mind, senses, and all our powers, and brings the Holy Spirit
with it. What a living, creative, active powerful thing is faith! It is
impossible that faith ever stop doing good. Faith doesn't ask whether good
works are to be done, but, before it is asked, it has done them. It is always
active. Whoever doesn't do such works is without faith; he gropes and searches
about him for faith and good works but doesn't know what faith or good works
are. Even so, he chatters on with a great many words about faith and good
works.
Faith is a living, unshakeable confidence in God's grace; it is so certain,
that someone would die a thousand times for it. This kind of trust in and
knowledge of God's grace makes a person joyful, confident, and happy with
regard to God and all creatures. This is what the Holy Spirit does by faith.
Through faith, a person will do good to everyone without coercion, willingly
and happily; he will serve everyone, suffer everything for the love and praise
of God, who has shown him such grace. It is as impossible to separate works
from faith as burning and shining from fire. Therefore be on guard against
your own false ideas and against the chatterers who think they are clever
enough to make judgements about faith and good works but who are in reality
the biggest fools. Ask God to work faith in you; otherwise you will remain
eternally without faith, no matter what you try to do or fabricate.
Now justice is just such a faith. It is called God's justice or that justice
which is valid in God's sight, because it is God who gives it and reckons it
as justice for the sake of Christ our Mediator. It influences a person to give
to everyone what he owes him. Through faith a person becomes sinless and eager
for God's commands. Thus he gives God the honor due him and pays him what he
owes him. He serves people willingly with the means available to him. In this
way he pays everyone his due. Neither nature nor free will nor our own powers
can bring about such a justice, for even as no one can give himself faith, so
too he cannot remove unbelief. How can he then take away even the smallest
sin? Therefore everything which takes place outside faith or in unbelief is
lie, hypocrisy and sin (Romans 14), no matter how smoothly it may seem to go.
You must not understand flesh here as denoting only unchastity or spirit as
denoting only the inner heart. Here St. Paul calls flesh (as does Christ in
John 3) everything born of flesh, i.e. the whole human being with body and
soul, reason and senses, since everything in him tends toward the flesh. That
is why you should know enough to call that person "fleshly" who, without
grace, fabricates, teaches and chatters about high spiritual matters. You can
learn the same thing from Galatians, chapter 5, where St. Paul calls heresy
and hatred works of the flesh. And in Romans, chapter 8, he says that, through
the flesh, the law is weakened. He says this, not of unchastity, but of all
sins, most of all of unbelief, which is the most spiritual of vices.
On the other hand, you should know enough to call that person "spiritual" who
is occupied with the most outward of works as was Christ, when he washed the
feet of the disciples, and Peter, when he steered his boat and fished. So
then, a person is "flesh" who, inwardly and outwardly, lives only to do those
things which are of use to the flesh and to temporal existence. A person is
"spirit" who, inwardly and outwardly, lives only to do those things which are
of use to the spirit and to the life to come.
Unless you understand these words in this way, you will never understand
either this letter of St. Paul or any book of the Scriptures. Be on guard,
therefore against any teacher who uses these words differently, no matter who
he be, whether Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, Origen or anyone else as great as
or greater than they. Now let us turn to the letter itself.
The first duty of a preacher of the Gospel is, through his revealing of the
law and of sin, to rebuke and to turn into sin everything in life that does
not have the Spirit and faith in Christ as its base. [Here and elsewhere in
Luther's preface, as indeed in Romans itself, it is not clear whether "spirit"
has the meaning "Holy Spirit" or "spiritual person," as Luther has previously
defined it.] Thereby he will lead people to a recognition of their miserable
condition, and thus they will become humble and yearn for help. This is what
St. Paul does. He begins in chapter 1 by rebuking the gross sins and unbelief
which are in plain view, as were (and still are) the sins of the pagans, who
live without God's grace. He says that, through the Gospel, God is revealing
his wrath from heaven upon all mankind because of the godless and unjust lives
they live. For, although they know and recognize day by day that there is a
God, yet human nature in itself, without grace, is so evil that it neither
thanks nor honors God. This nature blinds itself and continually falls into
wickedness, even going so far as to commit idolatry and other horrible sins
and vices. It is unashamed of itself and leaves such things unpunished in
others.
In chapter 2, St. Paul extends his rebuke to those who appear outwardly pious
or who sin secretly. Such were the Jews, and such are all hypocrites still,
who live virtuous lives but without eagerness and love; in their heart they
are enemies of God's law and like to judge other people. That's the way with
hypocrites: they think that they are pure but are actually full of greed,
hate, pride and all sorts of filth (cf. Matthew 23). These are they who
despise God's goodness and, by their hardness of heart, heap wrath upon
themselves. Thus Paul explains the law rightly when he lets no one remain
without sin but proclaims the wrath of God to all who want to live virtuously
by nature or by free will. He makes them out to be no better than public
sinners; he says they are hard of heart and unrepentant.
In chapter 3, Paul lumps both secret and public sinners together: the one, he
says, is like the other; all are sinners in the sight of God. Besides, the
Jews had God's word, even though many did not believe in it. But still God's
truth and faith in him are not thereby rendered useless. St. Paul introduces,
as an aside, the saying from Psalm 51, that God remains true to his words.
Then he returns to his topic and proves from Scripture that they are all
sinners and that no one becomes just through the works of the law but that God
gave the law only so that sin might be perceived.
Next St. Paul teaches the right way to be virtuous and to be saved; he says
that they are all sinners, unable to glory in God. They must, however, be
justified through faith in Christ, who has merited this for us by his blood
and has become for us a mercy seat [cf. Exodus 25:17, Leviticus 16:14ff, and
John 2:2] in the presence of God, who forgives us all our previous sins. In so
doing, God proves that it is his justice alone, which he gives through faith,
that helps us, the justice which was at the appointed time revealed through
the Gospel and, previous to that, was witnessed to by the Law and the
Prophets. Therefore the law is set up by faith, but the works of the law,
along with the glory taken in them, are knocked down by faith. [As with the
term "spirit," the word "law" seems to have for Luther, and for St. Paul, two
meanings. Sometimes it means "regulation about what must be done or not done,"
as in the third paragraph of this preface; sometimes it means "the Torah," as
in the previous sentence. And sometimes it seems to have both meanings, as in
what follows.]
In chapters 1 to 3, St. Paul has revealed sin for what it is and has taught
the way of faith which leads to justice. Now in chapter 4 he deals with some
objections and criticisms. He takes up first the one that people raise who, on
hearing that faith make just without works, say, "What? Shouldn't we do any
good works?" Here St. Paul holds up Abraham as an example. He says, "What did
Abraham accomplish with his good works? Were they all good for nothing and
useless?" He concludes that Abraham was made righteous apart from all his
works by faith alone. Even before the "work" of his circumcision, Scripture
praises him as being just on account of faith alone (cf. Genesis 15). Now if
the work of his circumcision did nothing to make him just, a work that God had
commanded him to do and hence a work of obedience, then surely no other good
work can do anything to make a person just. Even as Abraham's circumcision was
an outward sign with which he proved his justice based on faith, so too all
good works are only outward signs which flow from faith and are the fruits of
faith; they prove that the person is already inwardly just in the sight of
God.
St. Paul verifies his teaching on faith in chapter 3 with a powerful example
from Scripture. He calls as witness David, who says in Psalm 32 that a person
becomes just without works but doesn't remain without works once he has become
just. Then Paul extends this example and applies it against all other works of
the law. He concludes that the Jews cannot be Abraham's heirs just because of
their blood relationship to him and still less because of the works of the
law. Rather, they have to inherit Abrahams's faith if they want to be his real
heirs, since it was prior to the Law of Moses and the law of circumcision that
Abraham became just through faith and was called a father of all believers.
St. Paul adds that the law brings about more wrath than grace, because no one
obeys it with love and eagerness. More disgrace than grace come from the works
of the law. Therefore faith alone can obtain the grace promised to Abraham.
Examples like these are written for our sake, that we also should have faith.
In chapter 5, St. Paul comes to the fruits and works of faith, namely: joy,
peace, love for God and for all people; in addition: assurance, steadfastness,
confidence, courage, and hope in sorrow and suffering. All of these follow
where faith is genuine, because of the overflowing good will that God has
shown in Christ: he had him die for us before we could ask him for it, yes,
even while we were still his enemies. Thus we have established that faith,
without any good works, makes just. It does not follow from that, however,
that we should not do good works; rather it means that morally upright works
do not remain lacking. About such works the "works-holy" people know nothing;
they invent for themselves their own works in which are neither peace nor joy
nor assurance nor love nor hope nor steadfastness nor any kind of genuine
Christian works or faith.
Next St. Paul makes a digression, a pleasant little side-trip, and relates
where both sin and justice, death and life come from. He opposes these two:
Adam and Christ. What he wants to say is that Christ, a second Adam, had to
come in order to make us heirs of his justice through a new spiritual birth in
faith, just as the old Adam made us heirs of sin through the old fleshy birth.
St. Paul proves, by this reasoning, that a person cannot help himself by his
works to get from sin to justice any more than he can prevent his own physical
birth. St. Paul also proves that the divine law, which should have been well-
suited, if anything was, for helping people to obtain justice, not only was no
help at all when it did come, but it even increased sin. Evil human nature,
consequently, becomes more hostile to it; the more the law forbids it to
indulge its own desires, the more it wants to. Thus the law makes Christ all
the more necessary and demands more grace to help human nature.
In chapter 6, St. Paul takes up the special work of faith, the struggle which
the spirit wages against the flesh to kill off those sins and desires that
remain after a person has been made just. He teaches us that faith doesn't so
free us from sin that we can be idle, lazy and self-assured, as though there
were no more sin in us. Sin is there, but, because of faith that struggles
against it, God does not reckon sin as deserving damnation. Therefore we have
in our own selves a lifetime of work cut out for us; we have to tame our body,
kill its lusts, force its members to obey the spirit and not the lusts. We
must do this so that we may conform to the death and resurrection of Christ
and complete our Baptism, which signifies a death to sin and a new life of
grace. Our aim is to be completely clean from sin and then to rise bodily with
Christ and live forever.
St. Paul says that we can accomplish all this because we are in grace and not
in the law. He explains that to be "outside the law" is not the same as having
no law and being able to do what you please. No, being "under the law" means
living without grace, surrounded by the works of the law. Then surely sin
reigns by means of the law, since no one is naturally well-disposed toward the
law. That very condition, however, is the greatest sin. But grace makes the
law lovable to us, so there is then no sin any more, and the law is no longer
against us but one with us.
This is true freedom from sin and from the law; St. Paul writes about this for
the rest of the chapter. He says it is a freedom only to do good with
eagerness and to live a good life without the coercion of the law. This
freedom is, therefore, a spiritual freedom which does not suspend the law but
which supplies what the law demands, namely eagerness and love. These silence
the law so that it has no further cause to drive people on and make demands of
them. It's as though you owed something to a moneylender and couldn't pay him.
You could be rid of him in one of two ways: either he would take nothing from
you and would tear up his account book, or a pious man would pay for you and
give you what you needed to satisfy your debt. That's exactly how Christ freed
us from the law. Therefore our freedom is not a wild, fleshy freedom that has
no obligation to do anything. On the contrary, it is a freedom that does a
great deal, indeed everything, yet is free of the law's demands and debts.
In chapter 7, St. Paul confirms the foregoing by an analogy drawn from married
life. When a man dies, the wife is free; the one is free and clear of the
other. It is not the case that the woman may not or should not marry another
man; rather she is now for the first time free to marry someone else. She
could not do this before she was free of her first husband. In the same way,
our conscience is bound to the law so long as our condition is that of the
sinful old man. But when the old man is killed by the spirit, then the
conscience is free, and conscience and law are quit of each other. Not that
conscience should now do nothing; rather, it should now for the first time
truly cling to its second husband, Christ, and bring forth the fruit of life.
Next St. Paul sketches further the nature of sin and the law. It is the law
that makes sin really active and powerful, because the old man gets more and
more hostile to the law since he can't pay the debt demanded by the law. Sin
is his very nature; of himself he can't do otherwise. And so the law is his
death and torture. Now the law is not itself evil; it is our evil nature that
cannot tolerate that the good law should demand good from it. It's like the
case of a sick person, who cannot tolerate that you demand that he run and
jump around and do other things that a healthy person does.
St. Paul concludes here that, if we understand the law properly and comprehend
it in the best possible way, then we will see that its sole function is to
remind us of our sins, to kill us by our sins, and to make us deserving of
eternal wrath. Conscience learns and experiences all this in detail when it
comes face to face with the law. It follows, then, that we must have something
else, over and above the law, which can make a person virtuous and cause him
to be saved. Those, however, who do not understand the law rightly are blind;
they go their way boldly and think they are satisfying the law with works.
They don't know how much the law demands, namely, a free, willing, eager
heart. That is the reason that they don't see Moses rightly before their eyes.
[In both Jewish and Christian teaching, Moses was commonly held to be the
author of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the bible. Cf. the involved
imagery of Moses' face and the veil over it in 2 Corinthians 3:7-18.] For them
he is covered and concealed by the veil.
Then St. Paul shows how spirit and flesh struggle with each other in one
person. He gives himself as an example, so that we may learn how to kill sin
in ourselves. He gives both spirit and flesh the name "law," so that, just as
it is in the nature of divine law to drive a person on and make demands of
him, so too the flesh drives and demands and rages against the spirit and
wants to have its own way. Likewise the spirit drives and demands against the
flesh and wants to have its own way. This feud lasts in us for as long as we
live, in one person more, in another less, depending on whether spirit or
flesh is stronger. Yet the whole human being is both: spirit and flesh. The
human being fights with himself until he becomes completely spiritual.
In chapter 8, St. Paul comforts fighters such as these and tells them that
this flesh will not bring them condemnation. He goes on to show what the
nature of flesh and spirit are. Spirit, he says, comes from Christ, who has
given us his Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit makes us spiritual and restrains the
flesh. The Holy Spirit assures us that we are God's children no matter how
furiously sin may rage within us, so long as we follow the Spirit and struggle
against sin in order to kill it. Because nothing is so effective in deadening
the flesh as the cross and suffering, Paul comforts us in our suffering. He
says that the Spirit, [cf. previous note about the meaning of "spirit."] love
and all creatures will stand by us; the Spirit in us groans and all creatures
long with us that we be freed from the flesh and from sin. Thus we see that
these three chapters, 6, 7 and 8, all deal with the one work of faith, which
is to kill the old Adam and to constrain the flesh.
In chapters 9, 10 and 11, St. Paul teaches us about the eternal providence of
God. It is the original source which determines who would believe and who
wouldn't, who can be set free from sin and who cannot. Such matters have been
taken out of our hands and are put into God's hands so that we might become
virtuous. It is absolutely necessary that it be so, for we are so weak and
unsure of ourselves that, if it depended on us, no human being would be saved.
The devil would overpower all of us. But God is steadfast; his providence will
not fail, and no one can prevent its realization. Therefore we have hope
against sin.
But here we must shut the mouths of those sacriligeous and arrogant spirits
who, mere beginners that they are, bring their reason to bear on this matter
and commence, from their exalted position, to probe the abyss of divine
providence and uselessly trouble themselves about whether they are predestined
or not. These people must surely plunge to their ruin, since they will either
despair or abandon themselves to a life of chance.
You, however, follow the reasoning of this letter in the order in which it is
presented. Fix your attention first of all on Christ and the Gospel, so that
you may recognize your sin and his grace. Then struggle against sin, as
chapters 1-8 have taught you to. Finally, when you have come, in chapter 8,
under the shadow of the cross and suffering, they will teach you, in chapters
9-11, about providence and what a comfort it is. [The context here and in St.
Paul's letter makes it clear that this is the cross and passion, not only of
Christ, but of each Christian.] Apart from suffering, the cross and the pangs
of death, you cannot come to grips with providence without harm to yourself
and secret anger against God. The old Adam must be quite dead before you can
endure this matter and drink this strong wine. Therefore make sure you don't
drink wine while you are still a babe at the breast. There is a proper
measure, time and age for understanding every doctrine.
In chapter 12, St. Paul teaches the true liturgy and makes all Christians
priests, so that they may offer, not money or cattle, as priests do in the
Law, but their own bodies, by putting their desires to death. Next he
describes the outward conduct of Christians whose lives are governed by the
Spirit; he tells how they teach, preach, rule, serve, give, suffer, love, live
and act toward friend, foe and everyone. These are the works that a Christian
does, for, as I have said, faith is not idle.
In chapter 13, St. Paul teaches that one should honor and obey the secular
authorities. He includes this, not because it makes people virtuous in the
sight of God, but because it does insure that the virtuous have outward peace
and protection and that the wicked cannot do evil without fear and in
undisturbed peace. Therefore it is the duty of virtuous people to honor
secular authority, even though they do not, strictly speaking, need it.
Finally, St. Paul sums up everything in love and gathers it all into the
example of Christ: what he has done for us, we must also do and follow after
him.
In chapter 14, St. Paul teaches that one should carefully guide those with
weak conscience and spare them. One shouldn't use Christian freedom to harm
but rather to help the weak. Where that isn't done, there follow dissention
and despising of the Gospel, on which everything else depends. It is better to
give way a little to the weak in faith until they become stronger than to have
the teaching of the Gospel perish completely. This work is a particularly
necessary work of love especially now when people, by eating meat and by other
freedoms, are brashly, boldly and unnecessarily shaking weak consciences which
have not yet come to know the truth.
In chapter 15, St. Paul cites Christ as an example to show that we must also
have patience with the weak, even those who fail by sinning publicly or by
their disgusting morals. We must not cast them aside but must bear with them
until they become better. That is the way Christ treated us and still treats
us every day; he puts up with our vices, our wicked morals and all our
imperfection, and he helps us ceaselessly. Finally Paul prays for the
Christians at Rome; he praises them and commends them to God. He points out
his own office and the message that he preaches. He makes an unobtrusive plea
for a contribution for the poor in Jerusalem. Unalloyed love is the basis of
all he says and does.
The last chapter consists of greetings. But Paul also includes a salutary
warning against human doctrines which are preached alongside the Gospel and
which do a great deal of harm. It's as though he had clearly seen that out of
Rome and through the Romans would come the deceitful, harmful Canons and
Decretals along with the entire brood and swarm of human laws and commands
that is now drowning the whole world and has blotted out this letter and the
whole of the Scriptures, along with the Spirit and faith. Nothing remains but
the idol Belly, and St. Paul depicts those people here as its servants. God
deliver us from them. Amen.
We find in this letter, then, the richest possible teaching about what a
Christian should know: the meaning of law, Gospel, sin, punishment, grace,
faith, justice, Christ, God, good works, love, hope and the cross. We learn
how we are to act toward everyone, toward the virtuous and sinful, toward the
strong and the weak, friend and foe, and toward ourselves. Paul bases
everything firmly on Scripture and proves his points with examples from his
own experience and from the Prophets, so that nothing more could be desired.
Therefore it seems that St. Paul, in writing this letter, wanted to compose a
summary of the whole of Christian and evangelical teaching which would also be
an introduction to the whole Old Testament. Without doubt, whoever takes this
letter to heart possesses the light and power of the Old Testament. Therefore
each and every Christian should make this letter the habitual and constant
object of his study. God grant us his grace to do so. Amen.
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