Sunday, March 7, 2021

Martin Luther's Fifty Inconveniences

FIFTY INCONVENIENCES

That arise out of Man's own Righteousness proceeding of Works, 

gathered out of this Epistle to the Galatians.1

 

by MARTIN LUTHER.


CHAPTER I.

1. To bring men from the calling of Grace.

2. To receive another Gospel.

3. To trouble the Minds of the Faithful.

4. To pervert the Gospel of Christ.

5. To be accursed.

6. To obey Human Traditions.

7. To please Man.

8. Not to be the Servant of Christ.

9. To build upon Men, and not upon God.

10. That the most excellent righteousness of the Law is nothing.

11. To destroy the Church of God.


CHAPTER II.

12. To teach a Man to be justified by Works, is to teach to be justified by impossibility.

13. To make the Righteous in Christ Sinners.

14. To make Christ a Minister of Sin.

15. To build up Sin again when it is destroyed.

16. To be made a Transgressor.

17. To reject the Grace of God.

18. To judge that Christ died in vain.


CHAPTER III.

19. To become foolish Galatians.

20. To be bewitched.

21. Not to hear the truth.

22. To crucify Christ again.

23. To hold that the Spirit is received by Works.

24. To forsake the Spirit and to end in the Flesh.

25. To be under the Curse.

26. To set the Testament of Men above the Testament of God.

27. To make Sin to abound.

28. To be shut under Sin.

29. To serve beggarly Ceremonies.


CHAPTER IV.

30. That the Gospel is preached in vain.

31. That all is vain whatsoever the Faithful do, work, or suffer.

32. To be made a Servant and the Son of the Bond-woman.

33. To be cast out with the Son of the Bond-woman, from the inheritance.

34. That Christ profiteth nothing.

35. That we are Debtors to fulfil the whole Law.


CHAPTER V.

36. To be separate from Christ.

37. To fall from Grace.

38. To be hindered from the good course of well-doing.

39. That this persuasion of the Doctrine of Works cometh not of God.

40. To have the leaven of Corruption.

41. The judgment remaineth for him who teacheth this Doctrine.

42. To bite and consume one another.

43. That this Doctrine is accounted among the works of the Flesh.


CHAPTER VI.

44. To think thyself to be something when thou art nothing.

45. To glory in others rather than in God.

46. Carnally to please the carnally-minded.

47. To hate the persecution of the Cross.

48. Not to keep the Law itself.

49. To glory in the Master and Teacher of carnal things.

50. That nothing profiteth, and whatsoever a Man doth is vain.


Reference:

1 Martin Luther, A Commentary on Saint Paul's Epistle to the Galatians (London: 1833), p. lxxxvi.

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