Timothy J. Wengert > Quotes

“The desire for instruction and the search for truth is now a new and noteworthy crime.”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform

“But the forgiveness of guilt, the heavenly indulgence, does away with the heart’s fear and timidity before God; it makes the conscience lighthearted and merry inwardly13 and reconciles a person with God.”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform

“You see, then, that the whole church is filled with the forgiveness of sins. But there are few who really receive and welcome it.o For they do not believe it and would rather rely upon their own works.”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform

“It follows further that the forgiveness of guilt is not within the province of any human office or authority, be it pope, bishop, priest, or any other. Rather, it depends exclusively upon the word of Christ and your own faith. For Christ did not intend to base our comfort, our salvation, our confidence on human words or deeds but only upon himself, upon his words and deeds.”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform

“The law works the wrath of God, kills, reviles, accuses, judges, and condemns everything that is not in Christ”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform

“They contemplate Christ’s passion properly who look at it with a terrified heart and a despairing conscience.”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform

“But this is completely perverse, namely, to please and enjoy oneself in one’s works, and to worship oneself as an idol.”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform

“Therefore the remedy opposes desire, for it is cured not by satisfying it but by extinguishing it.”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform

“As these were appearing, however, the official bull of excommunication, Exsurge Domini, was being posted throughout German lands, giving Luther sixty days to recant. Instead, on 10 December 1520 Luther burned the bull (and a copy of canon law) outside the Elster Gate in Wittenberg in protest.”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform

“Those,e however, who have been emptied through suffering [cf. Phil. 2:7] no longer do works but know that God works and does all things in them.”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform

“(Nimmer tun ist höchster Buß),”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform

“That person is not righteous who does many works but who, without works, believes much in Christ.”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform

“You throw your sins off of yourself and onto Christ when you firmly believe that his wounds and sufferings are your sins, that he carries and pays for them, as we read in Isa. 53[:6], “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” And St. Peter says [1 Pet. 2:24], “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross.” St. Paul says [2 Cor. 5:21], “For our sake God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” You must completelyn rely on these and similar verses—the more your conscience tortures you, the more you must rely on them. If you do not do that, but presume to still your conscience with your contrition and satisfaction,24 you will never come to peace and in the end will only doubt.”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform

“all the works of the believer are alive and all the works of the unbeliever are dead, evil, and damnable,”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform

“the human moral standpoint itself shares in fallen human hubris.”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform

“Indeed, if pride would cease there would be no sin anywhere.”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform

“just as human doing does not place a demand upon the actions of God, so, too, human gazing on the visible objects of creation and history does not deliver a right conception of the divine.”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform

“It is certain that one must utterly despair of oneself in order to be made fit to receive the grace of Christ.”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform

“For works do not drive out sin, but driving out of sin produces good works.”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform

“For if we allow sin to remain in our conscience and try to deal with it there, or if we look at sin in our heart, it will be much too strong for us and will live on forever. But if we see that it rests on Christ and is overcome by his resurrection, and then boldly believe this, then sin is dead and nullified.”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform

“There is no greater sin than not to believe this article of “the forgiveness of sins” which we pray daily in the [Apostles’] Creed. And this sin is called the sin against the Holy Spirit.”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform

“Terror” or “fright” (erschrecken) work first to destroy a person’s self-centered claims before God, characterized by boasting in works and merits.”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform

“They cannot be humble who do not recognize that they are damnable and stinking sinners.”
― Timothy J. Wengert, The Annotated Luther: The Roots of Reform