# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1861_S331
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Report on the Law. 331

Spiritual work of this commandment, which comprehends the whole nature of man. This Sabbath Christ prefigured for us in the grave; there he kept the Sabbath rightly; there he lies in rest and festival, abstaining from all works. He does not see, he does not hear, he does not sleep, he does not wake, he does not eat, he does not drink, he does not build, he moves neither tongue nor veins, neither hand nor foot, he does not stand, so he does not walk either. Whoever now wants to keep the true spiritual Sabbath must be wholly dead with Christ. Nor will anyone keep it rightly unless he is truly dead. But we begin to keep the true Sabbath here when our old Adam ceases from all his works, reason, will, desires, and lust, all of which are to die and cease in the true Sabbath. And everything that is in us is to be godly, as Paul says in the second chapter to the Galatians: I am dead to the law through the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ, etc. (This Sabbath, however, is at last only truly kept when we have died.) Therefore these are the true works of the true Sabbath, which proceed from faith, in obedience to and at the command of God; there God then works the true Sabbath. Therefore God also held so strictly and severely to the Sabbath in the Old Testament, whereby this spiritual Sabbath was signified. For everything happened as a figure, Col. 2. The old Jewish Sabbath was only a shadow as against the true Sabbath of Christians; therefore God also had stoned the man who gathered wood on the Sabbath, as stands written in the fourth Book of Moses, chapter 15. "But this happened for our sake, that we might indeed take pains to attend to our observance, and undertake or establish nothing without God's word or against God's (word), but that whatever we do, we do it at God's command. This addition (to the fourth commandment), where he says: That thy days may be long in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, also gives an indication that the Ten Commandments were given to the Jews alone, and not to the Gentiles. For he speaks here to those to whom the land of Canaan was promised." (See Luther's Works, Erlangen Edition, vol. XXXVI, pp. 32–101; Halle Edition III, 1546 f.)

Further, Luther writes in his tract "Against the Heavenly Prophets, concerning Images and the Sacrament," from the end of the year 1524 and the beginning of the year 1525: "Well then, let us go to the true foundation, and say that these teachers of sin and Mosaic prophets should leave us unentangled with Moses; we will neither look at Moses nor listen to him. How does that please you, dear fanatical spirits? And let us say further that all such Mosaic teachers deny the gospel, drive out Christ, and abolish the whole New Testament. I now speak as a Christian and for Christians. For Moses was given to the Jewish people alone, and does not concern us Gentiles and Christians at all. We have our own gospel and New Testament: if they can prove from it that images are to be abolished, we will gladly follow them. But if they want to make Jews out of us by way of Moses, we will not put up with it. What do you think? What will come of this? What will come of it is that one will see how these fanatical spirits understand nothing in Scripture