# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1861_S334
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

334 Report on the Law.

leave us Gentiles unentangled with it; just as France pays no heed to the Sachsenspiegel, and yet agrees well enough with it in the natural law, etc. Why then does one hold and teach the Ten Commandments? Answer: Because the natural laws are nowhere so finely and properly set forth as in Moses. Therefore one rightly takes the example from Moses." (Luther's Works, Erlangen Edition, vol. XXIX, pp. 150–157; Walch Edition XX, 203–211.)

So, finally, Luther writes in his "Letter to a Good Friend against the Sabbatarians," from the year 1538: "The third commandment, concerning the Sabbath, on which the Jews so proudly insist, is in itself a common commandment of the whole world; but the particular adornment with which Moses decorates it and assigns it to his people belongs to no one but the Jews alone, in particular — just as in the first commandment no one but the Jews alone are to believe and confess in this special way that the common God of the whole world brought them out of Egypt. For the actual meaning of the third commandment is that we should teach and hear God's word on that day, so that we may sanctify both the day and ourselves; just as, indeed, ever since and down to this very day, Moses and the Prophets have been read and preached among the Jews on the Sabbath day. But where God's word is preached, it follows of itself that, out of necessity, one must at that very hour or time keep still and quiet, and, setting aside all other business, only speak and listen to what God says and teaches us, or speaks with us. Therefore everything depends wholly and entirely on this: that one should sanctify the day, rather than merely rest from work. For God does not say: Thou shalt keep the holy day, or make a Sabbath (that follows of itself), but rather: Thou shalt sanctify the feast day or Sabbath — meaning that far more depends on the sanctifying than on the mere resting. And where one of the two had to be given up, it would be better that the resting, rather than the sanctifying, be given up; since the commandment presses chiefly toward the sanctifying, and does not command the Sabbath for its own sake, but for the sake of the sanctifying. The Jews, however, value the resting more highly (which neither God nor Moses does) — by their own addition — than the sanctifying. That Moses now names the seventh day, and how God created the world in six days, and that therefore they should do no work, that is the temporal adornment by which Moses attaches this commandment to his people in particular for that time. For nowhere before this do we find it written, neither in the time of Abraham nor of the ancient fathers; rather it is a temporal addition and adornment set only upon this people that was led out of Egypt, one that was not meant to remain forever either, any more than the whole law of Moses was. But the sanctifying — that is, teaching and preaching God's word, which is the true, plain, and sole meaning of this commandment — has existed from the beginning and remains for ever and ever throughout the whole world. Therefore the seventh day does not concern us Gentiles at all, nor does it any longer concern even the Jews themselves, except until the Messiah; although nature and necessity compel that, on whatever day or hour God's word is preached, one must, as has been said, be still there, keeping festival or Sabbath