Benefits of the Son of God
no. 24
No Longer under the Law
Rev. Brian Kocourek
22) The Twenty fourth
benefit or promise of God to us
concerning His Son is that we are no longer under the Law, and therefore no
longer able to be punished by death. To understand this let’s begin by taking
our text from John 19: 7 The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to
die, because he made himself the Son of God.
Now,
the Jews here in this scene were admitting they were under the law and the law
they were speaking of demanded death for blasphemy. They accused Jesus Christ
the Son of God of Blaspheming God because he claimed to be the Son of God. They
could not understand the relationship between the Father and the Son, and in fact
did not even know that God had a Son. And when Jesus said my Father and I are
One, they did not know what he meant even though he explained to them that the
Father was dwelling in Him. The Jew believing that God is Spirit then could not
understand How He could have a Son that was flesh and bone.. To them this
notion of Sonship was blasphemy because they did not understand the Scriptures
that promised to them that Messiah would be the Son of God.
Now,
in order to understand that we are no longer under this law that is punishable
by death, we must first understand what this law is in order to know what we
are no longer under.
Now,
the Law of Moses is found in the first 5 books of the Bible. Moses had to
deliver the people from bondage as God had Promised He Himself would do. Yet
when God came to Moses He said “I have come down to deliver My people, now you
Moses go and do it, and I will be with you”. So we had a promise of the
presence of God to deliver the people, and a prophet to guide them along the
way. You see, God promised to do nothing unless he reveal it first through His
servants the Prophets. So Moses took the people out with a mighty hand. Not his
hand, but with the hand of God performing all kinds of supernatural acts in order to bring pharaoahs heart to the
place where it could no longer resist the mighty hand of God, and he caved into
Moses demands.
When
Pharaoah’s heart became hardened by the trials and then the lifting of the hardships,
and then trials again and then the trials were lifted, and it was because God was
actually hardening the heart of pharaoh and his people as you would harden
steel. To harden steel you try it in fire, it softens under the fire, and then when
you cool it suddenly with cold water, it becomes harder than before. Then you
heat it again by fire, and then cool it suddenly in water, and you repeat this process over and over again
until that steel becomes so hard that it actually looses any maliableness and
becomes brittle. Then it will be easy to break.
That
is the way God hardens the hearts of the people. Years ago I preached a message
called the hardening process. This was number 82 in the Melchisedec series. In
it I said, “ How does this hardening take place? Brother Branham taught us that
the first time we go through the red light it is the worst, and we feel guilt
knowing we have broken the law. Then with each time we do it, the stigma
becomes less and less until we become so calloused that it no longer means
anything to us. We no longer feel guilt or shame. Then as we repeat the
offenses against God it causes a hardening to take place in our soul as well.
And the habitual doing of those things that we know are not right causes us to
become more and more callus to the still small voice of the Spirit of God in
our soul..
Notice how God hardened the heart of Pharaoh and the Egyptians.
He did it by bringing on a hardship, and then they would cry out for
deliverance and then God would lift that judgment, and they would quickly forget
that temporary judgment because people do not wish to hold onto thoughts that
are not pleasant. And with the repeating
of the process they got a little bit
harder each time a new plague came and went. God repeated the process over
again. They would get soft, and then when the heat was taken off they would
cool back down and become even a little more harder in their soul than before.
God would repeat this process over and over again, until the people were tempered
just the way they were ordained to be, and then the final judgment would take
place.
Just like the refiners fire. The refiner forges the molten
metal in the fire, to soften it until it becomes malleable and moldable, Then
he beats it into the shape he ordains it to be and then quickly cools it, then
He heats it up again and cools it and heats it and cools it until it become very
strong and hardened. We see this spoken of throughout the Scriptures.
I SAMUEL 6:6 Wherefore then
do ye harden your hearts, as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts?
when he had wrought wonderfully among them, did they not let the people go, and
they departed?
PSALMS 95:7 ¶ To day if ye
will hear his voice 8 Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in
the day of temptation in the wilderness: 9 When your fathers tempted me, proved
me, and saw my work. 10 Forty years long was I grieved with this generation,
and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my
ways: 11 Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.
And
even in Jesus day, we read in MARK
Do
you think having the message so available to the people is a good thing? I tell
you that although it is a wonderful thing, it can become your undoing as well.
For it has become so common to the people, that they no longer reverence the
Voice of God to us in this day. Never
let this message become common to you, or you are on your way out of it. Look,
Jesus said, “How be it in vain do they teach for doctrine the commandments of
men. If they worship in vain they are doing it with no thought about it. And in
vain means it is considered worthless.
Speaking of the Queen of the south 60-1127E P:69 Brother Branham said, Jesus said she'll rise in the judgment and condemn
that generation (That's right.) and condemn this generation; for how much more
will she condemn this one than to that one, because look at the much more light
that we've got since that day: death, burial, resurrection, the Holy Ghost
Itself right with us? See what I mean? It's too common. That's what the Holy
Spirit is to the Pentecostal people; It's too common. An old man one time that
lived in the interior, was on his road down to the seashore. And he'd write
books, and he'd often wrote of the sea how beautiful it was. One day on his
road down, he went down to the seashore, and he met an old salt coming from the
sea. And he said, "Where goest thou, my good man?” He said, "Oh, I'm
going to the sea. I've never seen it in my life." And he said, "I
want to see its big briny white waves as they dash. I want to smell the salt
air. I want to hear the cry of the sea gull.” And the old salt stood there and
looked, chewed on his pipe stem a little bit, said, "I was born on it. I
been on it for fifty years. I don't see nothing so thrilling about it,"
and went on. That's it. He was so use to it, it wasn't thrilling to him
anymore.
And after telling the same story in his
sermon Handwriting
on the wall 58-0618 P:32 he
said, “Pentecostal
church, and you all, the rest of you, that's what's the matter with you
tonight. You seen so many things of God till it become too common to you. You
take it too lightly, too lightly. “
Jehovah Jireh 2 60-0802 P:62 .People, I'm telling you, you're Pentecostal people
are seeing so much, and have through your life since you've become children of
God, seen so much of the goodness, and mercy, and glory of God till it's become
too common to you and... It's too common. Until that makes you lose faith. Oh,
you just think there's many people maybe that... You go over the
Christ outside the door 58-0330E P:38 And that's
what's the matter with the Pentecostal church. It's seen the baptism of the
Holy Ghost strike it's people. It's seen them change from streetwalkers to
godly, saintly women. It's seen men come out of... drunkards, alcoholics, and
make preachers and gentlemen. And it's seen the great powers of God, moving and
working in signs and wonders, until it's become so common, till the Pentecostal
church will hardly walk across the street to see the glory of God. It's too common.
But just remember, there's coming a time when you'll go from the east to the
west, from the north to the south, trying to find it, and you won't find it. The
Bible said so. He's so good to us.
And so we see in the first Exodus that Moses came
down from the mountain with just ten simple commandments. These ten commandments
were not laws, but rather commandments for principles used in maintaining a
relationship. God was showing us how to
hold onto and maintain a relationship with Him. And those same ten commandments
are not just to be used for holding onto and maintaining a relationship with
God.
If we practiced those ten commandments or
principles in every relationship we have those relationships would flourish and
never quiver.
The first
commandment of
relationship is, “Thou shalt have no other” and when men or women look to
others to replace what they have with each other, that is when the relationship
begins to dissolve.
The second is that we should never take
that relationship in Vain.
The third is that He said we should
have a day of rest where we do nothing but nourish that relationship with the
one we have the relationship with.
The fourth is that we honor one another
The fifth is that we never kill the
others influence.
And on and on w can go until you realize that God’s
commandments were never given to us as laws, but as a means of Grace to build
and maintain our relationship with Him.
Yet
where did the law of Moses come into the picture? It was after that when he
came down with these commandments or principles for having a relationship with
God and the people turned them down. They turned down the Grace of God and
accepted Moses law. Then it was no longer ten simple principles of Faith to
live by, but became many, many rules and regulations to measure up to.
Everything
we do in life is guided by principles. Brother Branham said in the sermon …
Total deliverance 59-0712 P:9 And that's the
same way it is with the church. When the
church is away from its principles, it can never serve the saints well.
We've got to stay together, got to be unified. We got to be one heart and one
accord. Or we'll never serve God or the people unless we're one heart and one
accord, to stand by the principles of the Bible and the things that God has
said that's right. We must always stand by them.
Hebrews Chapter 7 part 1
57-0915E P:42 And real true
battles are not made with selfish motives. Wars are not fought for money. Wars
are fought for motives, for principles. Men fight war for principles. And when
Abraham went out to get
Now, in the book of Deuteronomy we find
that the very name Deuteronomy means two laws. And Brother Branham said, in the
sermon, God's
chosen place worship 65-0220 P:14 Now, we took this text out of Deuteronomy.
It's a Greek word, which has a compound meanings, or it means "two
laws." The Greek word "Deuteronomy" means "two different
laws." And that's just what God has: two different laws. And one of them
is a law of death, and the other one is a law of Life. God has two laws. To
follow Him, and serve Him, and worship Him is Life; to reject it is death.
There's two laws in God. Now, one of those laws was made--recognized to the
world at
And you must
never forget that where there is law there also is penalties associated with
the breaking of those laws. Now, that is what law is all about…
And you must understand what law is. A law is a standard. It is …
Law
( lô) n. 1. A rule of conduct or a procedure
that is established by either an agreement or authority. (and an agreement is a
covenant) 2. a. Law is the body of rules and
principles governing the affairs of a community and enforced by some authority
or legal system: 3. A set of rules or
principles dealing with a specific area 4.
Something,
such as an order or a dictum, having absolute or unquestioned authority: 5.
The body
of principles or precepts held to express the divine will, especially as
revealed in the Bible: Mosaic Law. b.
The first
five books of the Hebrew Scriptures. 1
So we
see that law is a standard, and when we think of a standard, in terms of law, we
also think in terms of punishment for breaking that standard. Thus law has a punishment.
Amongst the Jews, they had stoning as punishment. Among the Moslems, they like
to cut off things, they cut off the hand that steels, or the tongue that
blasphemes, or the life that does not agree with them and there laws.
Now,
you cannot have laws with double standards. We do not make stop signs that are
good for only certain vehicles and not for others. Laws are made to be carried
out by all, and yet we seem to find so much double standards today. In
Politics, we seem to allow our man to do things that we would not allow the opponents
man to do. In churches the inner circle seems to be able to do things that
those in the outer ranks could never get away with. And yet we all claim to
serve a God that is no respecter of persons. How can that be?
And
so we see that the people have a tendency to turn towards law because Grace
seems to them so foreign and so dependent upon the forgiveness of another, and
that takes it out of the persons control all together. In Isaiah 28 we see at the end time the
people will resort back to law because they can not take the rest that God
brings with Him.
Isaiah 28:9 “Who is it he is trying to teach?
To whom is he explaining his message? To children weaned from their milk, to
those just taken from the breast? 10 For with them it is: Do and do, do and do,
rule on rule, rule on rule; a little here, a little there." 11 Very well
then, with foreign lips and strange tongues (that’s
the
The Moslems have their laws, and the Jews
have theirs, and the Catholics have their mortal sins, and their venial sins,
and the Pentecostals have theirs and even in this Message one Pastor I know
teaches that he has a list of 65 things that the Bride must do in order to make
the Rapture, as though you could work yourself into something that Only God has
the authority to put you in or put you out. But law is attractive to most
people because it is something they can do for themselves, and then they do not
have to be dependent upon another to enter into Heaven. You know, we always
hear that old Americanism, “Why depend on another when you can do it for
yourself and make sure the job gets done”. And so the dependency upon Christ has
gone form their mindset, and has been replaced with another mindset that is
works oriented. Do and Do, Do and Do, Rule on Rule, Rule on rule, a little here
and a little there until they turn backwards, and are taken and snared in their
laws.
The fact is
that the Law is just a school master showing you that you are a sinner. For
without the law, you would not know, nor be aware that you are indeed a sinner.
So then the law makes you aware of your sinful condition, but can not make you
aware of relationship. So law does not
lead to relationship, and neither can it help relationship for it does not speak
of relationship at all.
God's chosen place worship
65-0220 P:15 Now, the law of death was
the commandments given on
Now, there may
be two laws, the “law of sin punishable by death” and the law of Life which has
no punishment. And we know that law is a standard which has boundaries, and
punishment. But the law of sin gives punishment while the law of life has no
punishment, for “there
is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” And that means
there is not only no punishment but there is no judgment either. “Colossians 3: 3 For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in
God.
Why against organized religion
62-1111E P:125 Now, look. God's got to judge the world by something. You cannot have judgment unless you have
first a law. There's got to be something, you got to break something in order to be judged. See? And then
there cannot be judgment, correctly, without penalty. Now, see, you can't have
a law in town that says "five-dollar fine for running a red light,"
and the next, law says, "no, he can go free." See, you can't do that.
So there can't be two laws in existence at one time. And there's one law, one God,
one Book, one Christ. That's all. One faith, one hope. That's all. That's the
Bible: Christ. Notice now in this, if there is to be something added to This,
it's got to be added by men. It can't be no more than... In
other words, the two laws cannot co-exist together. You can not claim to have
the law of Life and yet be under the law of death. They do not coexist
together. If you are under the law then you are not set free by Grace.
Birth pains 65-0124 P:20 So notice in a
seed's birth, the old seed must die before the new one can be born. So
therefore, death is hard any time. So it's painful; it's distressful. Birth is
the same; because you're bringing life into the world, and it's painful. Jesus
said that His Word was a Seed that a sower went forth to sow. (Now, we're all acquainted
with that, and I want to teach this like a Sunday school lesson 'cause it's
Sunday.) Notice, then this Word, being a Seed... But remember the seed is only
bringing forth a new life when it dies. And that's the reason it was so hard
for those Pharisees to understand our Lord Jesus Christ; because they were
under the law. And the law was the Word
of God in seed form. But when the Word was made flesh and become not law,
but grace... Now, grace and law cannot
exist at the same time, 'cause grace is so far above law, law's not even in the
picture. And therefore, it's so hard for the Pharisees to die to their law
so that grace could be born. But it must go. The two laws cannot exist at the
same time. There cannot be a law says that you can run this semaphore, and the
other one says you can run it: one says you can; one says you can't. They... It
has to be one law at a time. Maybe one time you could've went through it;
caution, go through it. But this time it's red: Stop. See? And so there cannot
be two laws exist at the same time.
Now, since the
law had to do with God’s Word, there were also two covenants or promises
between God and Man. Those that choose law have one covenant and those that
Choose life have another promise from God. In the Book of Deuteronomy chapter
28 we see the Two covenants at work and the only difference between the two is
your attitude towards the Voice of God. You receive it and you are blessed in
all your life with abundance of life, and you reject it and you live a life
under a curse.
God's only provided place of
worship 65-1128M P:38 I want you to notice again; there was also two covenants give. One
covenant was given to Adam, which was on conditions like law: "If you will
not touch this, then you will live; but if you touch this, you will die."
That was a law. Then there was another law given to Abraham, which was by
grace, unconditionally: "I have saved you and your seed," after him.
Amen. That is a type of
So, although we
see them both as a covenant, yet the one covenant is between two people and the
other has nothing to do with two people, for it is a passive covenant and not
an active one. It simply states this is what I am going to do for you period. Not,
“if you scratch my back I will scratch
yours,” But I will scratch yours whether you do mine or not”.
Unconditional, which means there are no conditions attached to it, and
therefore it is sovereignly given.
God's provided place of
worship 65-0425 P:12 He also has two covenants. He had a covenant with Adam, the first
man on earth. And that covenant was on
conditions, "If you do so-and-so, I'll do so-and-so." Adam would
had something to do in order to keep this covenant alive before God. He had to
walk in God's ways, keeping all of His Word, not breaking one Word. But then He
made another covenant; that was with Abraham. This covenant was not on
conditions, but was unconditionally. God gave the covenant to Abraham, no
strings tied to it at all: unconditional, not, "I will," "I
have. I've already done it.” And that's
the law that Christians must live by. Is not what we do ourself, but what He
has done for us. Christ has already been sacrificed, not He will be; He has
been. It's a finished product. He lived, died, rose again, ascended into
heaven, has come back in the form of the Holy Ghost. So it's a finished work
with God. Christ, knowing no sin, became my sin; that I might stand in His
place, He took my place. I was in Him at
Jehovah Jireh part 1 62-0705
P:22 Now, there had been two covenants. One of them was the Adam
covenant. God made a covenant with the man, "If you will, I will." And he broke it. Then God made a
covenant with Noah; that was the Noah covenant, and it was broke. Now, He's
making the Abrahamic covenant. And the Abrahamic covenant, according to Genesis
the 12th chapter, it was given unconditionally; therefore, it's eternal,
because it's unconditional. Not "if
you will, I will." He said, "I have. I've already done it." Not
"I will do it"; "I have done it." Oh, that bases faith.
See, not... God's determined to save man. He make a covenant, "If you will,
I will," he'd break it. Another one, "You will, I will," he
broke it. Man can't keep his covenant, so God
saves man by His grace, under a covenant that's unconditional,
unconditional covenant. Oh, my. Never ending, that was all of it; three,
perfect. Adam, Noah, and Abraham. Now, that's the reason we are Abraham's
children, that covenant cannot never end, because it is unconditionally. It
isn't because you do something; it's because God did something. Not because you
chose God; God chose you.
Now a Cov·e·nant is:
1. A binding agreement;.
2. In Law is A formal sealed agreement or contract.
3 In the Bible, God's promise
to the human race.
Martin Luther said
concerning the law, Therefore you must not understand the word law here
in human fashion, is 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, “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."
Now, this is where liberalism has gone to seed. No
one can tell me that liberalism is not a religion. The liberal is the one who
will tell you “judge not lest ye be judged” and so instead of holding to God’s
standard, he has no standard at all lest he be judged by that standard. For in
liberalism is the seed of discrepancy gone amuck. The liberal feels guilt
because of his good fortune while others do not have, so they seek to appease
themselves of their guilt by giving social handouts to those who are lacking,
and yet it is not their own money they are so willing to give to others, but
yours and mine. They tax you and me so they can give to others to appease the
sense of guilt. And so too they hold to no standard because a standard, any
standard they might be found guilty of and to the liberal, guilt of conscience
is the most grueling form of punishment. So to appease their guilt they do away
with all standards that they might have to give an account for one day, and
they elect or select judges that reflect their lack of standards except of
course those standards that would put down any standard that is reflective of God’s
standards.
And so Luther
says, 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. 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.
Paul tells us in Romans 7 "The law is spiritual." And so 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.( Just like William Branham
said, I am free to do whatsoever I want to do. The main thing is that all I
want to do is to please the Lord.) Such
a law is spiritual since it can only be loved and fulfilled by such a heart and
such a spirit. If the Spirit (Gods own Spirit) is not in the
heart, then there remain sin, aversion and enmity against the law, which in
itself is good, just and holy. This
we find in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, that tells us no man can understand the
things of God except the Spirit of God be in him.
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
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 unconstrained 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
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 Galatians’, 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
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 judgments 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
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
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
In chapter 2,
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.
In chapters 1
to 3,
In chapter 5,
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,
This is true
freedom from sin and from the law;
In chapter 7,
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
In chapter 8,
In chapters 9,
10 and 11,
But here we
must shut the mouths of those sacrilegious 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
In chapter 12,
In chapter 13,
In chapter 14,
In chapter 15,
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
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