By Schubert Ogden
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I find it significant -– and equally characteristic -– that, for all of his insistence that "the mass is directed toward the feeding and strengthening of faith," Luther can also say, "by means of the sacrament, all self-seeking love is rooted out and gives place to that which seeks the common good of all" and "the sacrament has no blessing and significance unless love grows daily and so changes a person that he is made one with all others" (LW, 35: 91, 67, 58).
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The reason for this, of course, is that faith and love for Luther are inseparable, notwithstanding the priority of the first to the second. Thus, in his discussion of the sacrament of penance, he says -- again, characteristically -- "in the sacrament we let faith be the chief thing, the legacy through which one may attain the grace of God. After that we can do a lot of good \[works\] -- to the glory of God alone and to the benefit of our fellow-men, and not in order that we might depend upon that as sufficient to pay for our sin. For God gives us his grace freely and without cost; so we should also serve him freely and without cost" (_LW_, 35: 17). |
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