[Concerning the passage Rom. 3:28]
1. Man who must be justified is understood to be man, the sinner, who must be freed from his sins.2. For those who are well have no need of a physician [Luke 5:31], just as the righteous do not need a liberator.
3. Therefore it is certain that a man cannot be justified in the sight of God by his own merits.
4. For what should a sinner earn before God by his merits, that is, by his sins or the works of a sinner?
5. Root sin, deadly and truly mortal, is unknown to men in the whole wide world.
6. How much less could they know of the remedy for sin, since they did not know sin, the disease.
7. Not one of all men could think that it was a sin of the world not to believe in Christ Jesus the Crucified.
8. This is original sin born in us after Adam’s fall, and not only something personal but also natural.
9. Not to believe in Christ is to be unbelieving, ignorant, and estranged from God, who promised Christ the Savior.
10. For this reason Paul rightly declares: all are consigned to unbelief, so that God may have mercy upon all.
11. This unbelief brings with it all the other sins, since it is the principal sin against the first commandment.
12. Some scholastics define original sin feebly and almost obscurely as concupiscence. Others define it as the absence of original righteousness which ought to be in us.
13. For a large part of them hold that it is that gross evil of lust on account of original sin; and after remission they call it only a punishment, an infirmity, and tinder.
14. But there are also those who have impiously asserted that natural powers remain undiminished after sin in men as well as in demons.
15. They are more correct who firmly confess that human nature has been corrupted through Adam’s sin.
16. For human nature cannot be understood to be corrupt and untainted at the same time, unless they are speaking of the unimpaired condition of animal powers, which, however, they do not do.
17. Notwithstanding, it is certain enough to the believers that neither animal nor rational powers have been left undiminished.
18. By the same ignorance they have imagined certain works to be neither good nor bad, but neutral or natural.
19. Thereafter they distinguished a gross ignorance, an invincible ignorance which excuses man entirely, etc.
20. These and similar teachings prove that they could not have known either sin or Christ and that they did not understand the decalogue, especially the first table.
21. Nevertheless, sin could be known in some measure from its effects, if reason were not also here too blind and too easily forgetful of reproaches.
22. For it is not probable that nature (which reason imagined to be too good by far) produces so many monstrous evils which the world does daily.
23. It certainly seems reasonable that just as nothing but truth comes from truth, so nothing but good follows from good, or surely fewer evils follow.
24. Now we see, however, how little good and how much evil reigns everywhere in the whole world and that there are many more bad men than good in the world.
25. So it is easy to conclude that in that nature, which according to the judgment of reason is good, there is much more evil than even civic goodness.
26. Also the poets assume that a good man is rare and compare him to a hybrid marvel and another complains of the lack of good men.
27. But the Scriptures which teach us the cause of sin testify that there is no good in man’s nature and that what good is left is nevertheless put to bad use.
28. Therefore, in order that justification may be esteemed as greatly as it can be, sin must be magnified and amplified exceedingly [Rom. 5:20–21].
29. For justification is healing for sin, which slays the whole world eternally and brings it to destruction with its infinite evils.
30. For this reason that divine work of justification is too great to allow any reckoning or consideration of our work or activity to hold here.
31. We must simply at this point say with Paul that we are nothing at all, just as we have been created out of nothing.
32. Indeed, those who look at the appearance of our work or want to be something will never understand the greatness of this divine work.
33. It is by far less certain than that that man could see the splendor of the sun who boasts of the brilliance of rotten wood, when the sun is shining.
Luther, M. (1999). Luther’s works, vol. 34: Career of the Reformer IV. (J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald, & H. T. Lehmann, Eds.) (Vol. 34, pp. 153–157). Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
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