The adherents of the sects always utter some words from which their doubting spirit becomes manifest: \u2018I hope I\u2019m godly,\u2019 \u2018I hope I\u2019m righteous.\u2019 The Christian, on the other hand, says, \u2018I do what I can. What I don\u2019t get done the suffering of Christ will pay for me. I\u2019m saved in Christ. Nobody shall take this confidence from me. Jesus is my Savior.\u2019 There\u2019s nothing else by which our God and our conscience may be put at rest. Those who put their trust not in Christ but in their own righteousness are always in doubt. \u201cWhen [as a monk] I had prayed, and said my mass, I was very presumptuous. I didn\u2019t see the scoundrel behind it all because I didn\u2019t put my trust in God but in my own righteousness, and I didn\u2019t thank God for the sacrament but expected him to thank me and be glad that I had sacrificed his Son to him. – Luther writings<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cary – To find God in this way is to see the point of the doctrine of the Trinity differently from Augustine. Instead of an invitation to spiritual ascent, purifying the mind in order to see God in his eternal being, the point is that believing in the baby in Mary\u2019s lap and the man on the cross, as given to us in the Gospel, is nothing less than knowing the eternal God in person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Union with Christ – <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The self-giving of God has the effect that a Christian becomes, as Luther says, “full of God.” Luther’s view of salvation includes ideas of participation in God and divinization that are usually better known from the writings of the first centuries of the church or from the Orthodox tradition. The Reformer argues quite often for a notion of theosis and underlines it as a central part of his doctrine of justification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally, I take to myself the Blessed Sacrament, when I eat his body and drink his blood as a sign that I am rid of my sins and God has freed me from all my frailties; and in order to make me sure of this, he gives me his body to eat and his blood to drink, so that I shall not and cannot doubt that I have a gracious God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Luther Basic Theological Writings<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
And other quotes The adherents of the sects always utter some words from which their doubting spirit becomes manifest: \u2018I hope I\u2019m godly,\u2019 \u2018I hope I\u2019m righteous.\u2019 The Christian, on the other hand, says, \u2018I<\/p>\n