bankrupt and without
resource, and no works it can accomplish will avail. Redemption from
such subjective conditions must be a free gift or nothing, and grace
through Christ's accomplished sacrifice is such a gift.

"God," says Luther, "is the God of the humble, the miserable, the
oppressed, and the desperate, and of those that are brought even to
nothing; and his nature is to give sight to the blind, to comfort the
broken-hearted, to justify sinners, to save the very desperate and
damned. Now that pernicious and pestilent opinion of man's own
righteousness, which will not be a sinner, unclean, miserable, and
damnable, but righteous and holy, suffereth not God to come to his own
natural and proper work. Therefore God must take this maul in hand
(the law, I mean) to beat in pieces and bring to nothing this beast
with her vain confidence, that she may so learn at length by her own
misery that she is utterly forlorn and damned. But here lieth the
difficulty, that when a man is terrified and cast down, he is so little
able to raise himself up again and say, 'Now I am bruised and afflicted
enough; now is the time of grace; now is the time to hear Christ.' The
foolishness of man's heart is so great that then he rather seeketh to
himself more laws to satisfy his conscience. 'If I live,' saith he, 'I
will amend my life: I will do this, I will do that.' But here, except
thou do the quite contrary, except thou send Moses away with his law,
and in these terrors and this anguish lay hold upon Christ who died for
thy sins, look for no salvation. Thy cowl, thy shaven crown, thy
chastity, thy obedience, thy poverty, thy works, thy merits? what
shall all these do? what shall the law of Moses avail? If I, wretched
and damnable sinner, through works or merits could have loved the Son
of God, and so come to him, what needed he to deliver himself for me?
If I, being a wretch and damned sinner, could be redeemed by any other
price, what needed the Son of God to be given? But because there was
no other price, therefore he delivered neither sheep, ox, gold, nor
silver, but even God himself, entirely and wholly 'for me,' even 'for
me,' I say, a miserable, wretched sinner. Now, therefore, I take
comfort and apply this to MYSELF.

And this manner of applying is the very true force and power of faith.
For he died NOT to justify the righteous, but the UN-righteous, and to
make THEM the children of God."[131]

[131] Commentary on G