# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1861_S323
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Report on the Law. 323

and would break your resolve, and would so transform your spirit, that you would not leave the dungeon for all the goods of the world, but would beg that the dungeon indeed remain and that you might stay within it, since for you it had now become no dungeon any more, but a paradise. Tell me, which redemption would here be the best? Is it not true that this spiritual one is the best? For in the first you would remain a poor beggar, as before; but in the second you would have a free spirit and everything you wanted. Behold, thus has Christ also redeemed us from the Law spiritually — not by breaking and abolishing the Law, but by so transforming our heart, which before was unwilling under it, doing it so much good and making the Law so lovely to it, that it has no greater delight or joy than in the Law; it would not gladly have a single letter of it fall away." (Luther's Works, Erlangen Edition VII, 289–290; Walch's Edition XII, 343.)

To our whole question Luther thus answers in his "Exposition of the Ten Commandments" on the nineteenth and twentieth chapters of the second Book of Moses, preached at Wittenberg in 1528:

"First it is to be noted that the Ten Commandments do not pertain to us Gentiles and Christians, but to the Jews alone. The text bears witness to this and compels this reading: "'I am the LORD thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.'" This is indeed true and clear enough, that we Gentiles were not brought by God out of Egypt, but only the Jewish people, Israel. Therefore Moses applies the Ten Commandments solely to the people that was brought by God out of Egypt. But that we too likewise recognize, worship, and honor the God whom the Jews honor, who brought them out of Egypt, we have not through Moses or from the written Law, but from other Scriptures and from the law of nature. I say this again in order to guard against the false spirits who wish forcibly to lay Moses upon our neck, to bind us to keep him with all his commandments. This we will not do, nor will we accept him under the very least title, except so far as he agrees with the natural law. We are willing indeed to read him, like any other teacher, freely and without compulsion; but we will not have him as our lawgiver. For we already have law enough beforehand in the New Testament. Therefore we will not have him in our conscience, but will keep that pure for Christ alone. So it is indeed clear that the Ten Commandments were given to the Jews alone, and not to us — in spite of all the fanatical spirits who truthfully say otherwise! Therefore I would once again warn all preachers here. For I see that it is necessary that they learn well the right use of Moses, and leave the [Jewish] people undisturbed with their Moses, and let him hold good no further than as an example, and where he is an evangelist and a prophet. If now a preacher wants to press Moses upon you, ask him whether you too were brought out of Egypt under Moses. If he says no, then say: What business, then, is Moses of mine, since he speaks to the people that was brought out of Egypt? — Look, in the whole of Scripture, at every word of God