A Treatise on Good Works | Page 7

their
particular spheres; especially are they called on to do away with the
rude "gluttony and drunkenness," luxury in clothing, the usurious sale
of rents and the common brothels. This, by divine and human right, is a
part of their enjoined works according to the Fourth Commandment.
Luther, at last, briefly treats of the Second Table of the Commandments,
but in speaking of the works of these Commandments he never forgets
to point out their relation to faith, thus holding fast this fundamental
thought of the book to the end. Faith which does not doubt that God is
gracious, he says, will find it an easy matter to be graciously and
favorably minded toward one's neighbor and to overcome all angry and
wrathful desires. In this faith in God the Spirit will teach us to avoid
unchaste thoughts and thus to keep the Sixth Commandment. When the
heart trusts in the divine favor, it cannot seek after the temporal goods
of others, nor cleave to money, but according to the Seventh
Commandment, will use it with cheerful liberality for the benefit of the
neighbor. Where such confidence is present there is also a courageous,
strong and intrepid heart, which will at all times defend the truth, as the
Eighth Commandment demands, whether neck or coat be at stake,
whether it be against pope or kings. Where such faith is present there is
also strife against the evil lust, as forbidden in the Ninth and Tenth
Commandments, and that even unto death.
3. The Importance of the Work. -- Inquiring now into the importance of
the book, we note that Luther's impression evidently was perfectly
correct, when he wrote to Spalatin, long before its completion -- as
early as March 2 5. -- that he believed it to be better than anything he
had heretofore written. The book, indeed, surpasses all his previous
German writings in volume, as well as all his Latin and German ones in
clearness, richness and the fundamental importance of its content. In
comparison with the prevalent urging of self-elected works of monkish

holiness, which had arisen from a complete misunderstanding of the
so-called evangelical counsels (comp. esp. Matthew 19:16-22) and
which were at that time accepted as self-evident and zealously urged by
the whole church, Luther's argument must have appeared to all
thoughtful and earnest souls as a revelation, when he so clearly
amplified the proposition that only those works are to be regarded as
good works which God has commanded, and that therefore, not the
abandoning of one's earthly calling, but the faithful keeping of the Ten
Commandments in the course of one's calling, is the work which God
requires of us. Over against the wide-spread opinion, as though the will
of God as declared in the Ten Commandments referred only to the
outward work always especially mentioned, Luther's argument must
have called to mind the explanation of the Law, which the Lord had
given in the Sermon on the Mount, when he taught men to recognize
only the extreme point and manifestation of a whole trend of thought in
the work prohibited by the text, and when he directed Christians not to
rest in the keeping of the literal requirement of each Commandment,
but from this point of vantage to inquire into the whole depth and
breadth of God's will -- positively and negatively -- and to do His will
in its full extent as the heart has perceived it. Though this thought may
have been occasionally expressed in the expositions of the Ten
Commandments which appeared at the dawn of the Reformation, still it
had never before been so clearly recognized as the only correct
principle, much less had it been so energetically carried out from
beginning to end, as is done in this treatise. Over against the
deep-rooted view that the works of love must bestow upon faith its
form, its content and its worth before God, it must have appeared as the
dawn of a new era (Galatians 3:22-25) when Luther in this treatise
declared, and with victorious certainty carried out the thought, that it is
true faith which invests the works, even the best and greatest of works,
with their content and worth before God.
This proposition, which Luther here amplifies more clearly than ever
before, demanded nothing less than a breach with the whole of
prevalent religious views, and at that time must have been perceived as
the discovery of a new world, though it was no more than a return to
the clear teaching of the New Testament Scriptures concerning the way

of salvation. This, too, accounts for the fact that in this writing the
accusation is more impressively repelled than before, that the doctrine
of justification by faith alone resulted in moral laxity, and that, on the
other hand,