# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1861_S365
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Report on the Law. 365

On this Luther writes in the Church Postil, on the Gospel for the Sunday after Christmas Day: "If a man is to become spiritual and receive faith, it is necessary for him first to be under the Law; because without the Law no one recognizes for himself what he lacks, and whoever does not know himself does not seek grace. But when the Law comes, it demands so much that the man must feel and confess that he is unable; then he must despair of himself and, humbled, sigh for God's grace." (Luther's Works, Erlangen Edition X, 283, 284; Walch's Edition XI, 369.)

So Luther further writes in his "Writing against the Antinomians" of the year 1539: "Where would one learn what Christ is, what he has done for us, if we were not supposed to know what the Law is (which he fulfilled for us) or what sin is, for which he has made full satisfaction? And even if we could do without the Law for ourselves and tear it out of our hearts (which is impossible anyway), we would still have to preach it for Christ's sake (as indeed happens and must happen), so that one would know what he had done and suffered for us. For who could know what Christ is, and why Christ suffered for us, if no one were to know what sin or Law is? Therefore the Law must still be preached wherever one wishes to preach Christ. Even if one did not wish to use the word 'Law,' the conscience is nevertheless terrified through the Law all the same, when the preaching says that Christ has had to fulfill the Law for us at so dear a cost, Matthew 5:17, Galatians 3:13; why then would one want to abolish what cannot be abolished, and is in fact strengthened all the more deeply by the attempt to abolish it? For the Law terrifies far more dreadfully when I hear that Christ, God's Son, has had to bear the very same thing for me, than if it had been preached to us, apart from Christ and without such a great torment of the Son of God, by mere threats alone. For in the Son of God I see, as in the very deed itself, the wrath of God which the Law shows me only in words and in feeble works." (See Luther's Works, Erlangen Edition XXXII, 7, 8; Walch's Edition XX, 2022, 2023.)

3. Finally the Law must also be preached to those who have already become true Christians, and indeed for this reason: that even the believing, enlightened, reborn Christian, who is therefore of course willing toward all that is good, is not yet fully enlightened and renewed, but still has the old Adam, that is, flesh and blood, and therefore still needs the Law's instruction, indeed its terror and constraint; as we see that throughout the whole of Holy Scripture the Law is preached to Christians as well.

On this Luther writes in his fifth Disputation "against the Antinomians" of the year 1539: "The Law rules over man as long as he lives. But he is freed from the Law when he dies. It is therefore necessary that man die if he is to be freed from the Law. Now if the Law rules over man as long as he lives, then sin also rules over him as long as he lives.