ROMANS, CHAPTER THIRTEEN Therefore, he that resists the power resists the ordinance of God.
And they that resist purchase to themselves damnation. For princes are not a terror to the good work but to the evil. Will you, then, not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and you shall have praise from the same. For he is God's minister to you for good.
But if you do that which is evily be afraid, for he bears not the sword in vain. For he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that does evil. Wherefore be subject of necessity, not only for wrath, but also for conscience9 sake. For therefore also you pay tribute. For they are the ministers of God, serving for this purpose. Render, therefore, to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor. Owe no man anything save that you love one another. For he that loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. (Rom. 13:1-8.)
Why does he say "every soul" and not "every man"? Has he a hidden meaning in mind? Perhaps he intends to say thereby that the submission to the higher powers must be sincere and come from the heart. Another reason why he speaks in this way is that the soul is in between the body and the spirit. He wants to point out, therefore, that a believer is exalted once for all above all things and yet is subject to all things. Just as Christ does, he bears two forms in himself, for he is a dual being.3 For, according to the Spirit, he is lord of all things. And all things "work together for good to the saints" (Rom. 8:28); also, as it says in I Cor. 3:22: "All things are yours whether it be the world, or life, or death." By faith the believer makes all these things subject to himself in the sense that he does not let himself be affected by them in any way and does not put his trust in them but compels them to serve him toward his glory and salvation. To serve God means to rule in this manner and to exercise the spiritual reign of which it is written in Rev. 5:10: "Thou has made us to our God a Kingdom, and we shall reign on the earth."
Now, there is no better way to triumph over the world and to subject it to spiritual rule than to despise it. But nowadays this spiritual Kingdom is so little known that there prevails the almost unanimous opinion that the temporal things that have been given to the church are spiritual ones. And so the spiritual rulers regard only these as important and exercise their government in them, except that they still administer jurisdiction, fulminate their dereading: 'The powers that are, are ordered of God/ i.e., because there are powers, they are ordered as they are by God alone. It is the same as to say,
'There is no power but from God.' Therefore, whatever powers exist and flourish, exist and flourish because God has ordered them."
3 "Gemellus" = twin-born.
LUTHER! LECTURES ON ROMANS crees, and hold the power of the keys, but with much less care and zeal than they expend on these "spiritual," i.e., temporal, concerns of theirs.
The spirit of believers, therefore, is not or cannot be subject to anyone, but it is raised up with Christ in God and it has all these things under its feet. The symbolical representation of this is the woman of Rev. 12:1 who has the moon, i.e., temporal things, under her feet.
The "soul" is the same as man's spirit, but in so far as it is alive and active and occupied with the visible world and temporal things, it must "be subject to every human creature for God's sake" (I Peter 2:13). By being thus subject it obeys God and wills what he wills; thus it overcomes even now the temporal world.
Now let me digress a little.
One cannot but be amazed at the impenetrable darkness that prevails in our age. Nowadays nothing is more annoying to the spiritual rulers, i.e., these extravagant spendthrifts of the goods of the earth,4 than a violation of the church's liberties and of its rights, privileges, and properties. They are quick to fulminate verdicts of excommunication against any whom they suspect of doing this and to proclaim them heretics, and they even have the astonishing audacity to label them publicly as enemies of God and the church and of the apostles Peter and Paul. Meanwhile, they are in no way troubled by the thought whether they themselves at least are God's friends or whether they might not be worse enemies of his than those they condemn. To such an extent they have come to identify obedience and faith with their custody, enlargement, and defense of temporal goods.
You may be guilty of pride and wantonness, you may be greedy and contentious, you may be given to anger and ingratitude and perhaps even call your own the whole catalogue of vices which the apostle lays down in I Tim. 3:1 ff.,5 indeed all these vices of yours may cry to high heaven, yet you are a very good Christian if only you protect the rights and liberties of the church. But if you disregard them, you are no longer a faithful son and friend of the church.
Furthermore, the secular princes have bestowed rich properties upon the church and they have endowed her leaders with many privileges. Yet consider this remarkable fact: in the apostolic age, the priests paid taxes and were subject to the higher powers despite the fact that they were then most deserving of everyone's good will and favor. But today, when the life they lead is everything but a * "Voragines amplissimae rerum temporalium"
6 Luther writes "II Tim. 3."
ROMANS, CHAPTER THIRTEEN life worthy of the priesthood, they nevertheless enjoy rights of special privilege. Are they then entitled to have what their early predecessors should have received as their desert but did not obtain?6 And can the accomplishment of their predecessors take the place of what they themselves should accomplish? What a strange exchange this is! The leaders of the early church labored and earned their reward but did not receive it; now their successors enjoy this reward without having earned it by an effort of their own! I do not say that these rights are evil, but what I say is that rights that once only good men were entitled to are nowadays bestowed upon men that are evil and godless.
No wonder that laymen hate the clerics! (We all complain nowadays that the laymen are hostile to the clerics but we do not ask why this is so. Why, in times past, were they not hostile to the apostles and saints when these led them on into poverty, suffering, and death, and caused them to fall victim to all the evils of this life?) If someone says: You clerics were given privileges of law and rich benefices because of the duties of your office in accordance with the rule: Beneficium propter officium? then they immediately reply by pointing to the murmuring of their prayers, and this is all they have to say. The duties of the priests consist in the observance of the canonical hours, including those that are perfunctorily mumbled and, indeed, those from which they are suspended and excused by special dispensation. Yet the apostle's description of priestly duties does not contain even a mention of prayer. And no one even thinks of translating into reality what he does say they are.
So then, as the priests, so the reward; as the office, so the benefice.8 Clerics who are only the shadows of what they ought to be should get only the shadow of a reward. They are priests only in appearance; what they possess in the form of property should therefore also be proportionate only in appearance. How much more honest and right it would be if a man who wants to enjoy priestly privileges were to prove himself a good priest! And if he should not want to be a good priest, he should not contentiously insist upon his right inasmuch as he knows in his conscience that he does not deserve it in the sight of God. But if he demands it, insists upon it, and wants to lay hold of it, what else should he then receive but what he deserves?
The lawyers complain that it is a very bad thing not to execute • "An, quod Hits debebatur, isti possident." t This was the legal principle on which all endowments of the church were based.
8 "Quales sacerdotes, talis et merces, quale officium, tale et beneficium."
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS a last will and testament. But is there a priest nowadays who lives up to what the founders of endowments wanted done? Can it be that they are safe and cannot be interfered with because the founders failed to leave an instrument that states what they wanted done? Granted that the church is obliged to make provision for priests that are poor, not in return for the prayers they say but gratis, what about those who are insatiable in their greed for riches?
The Jews were destroyed when they did not want to be subject to the Romans; and the same happened to them under Nebuchadnezzar. Yet all the time they babbled exactly as we do now: "We are the servants of God in heaven" (Ezra 5:11); we do not need to be the servants of men. What this actually amounts to is that neither God nor men are being served. So it is also with us. We do not serve God, neither do we want to serve men, though men have freed us from the service we owe to them in order that we should serve God. Up to now, the laymen were ignorant; they could easily be talked into believing anything; and they did not understand what was happening, though they did not like it and were sore about it, and rightly so. But now, lo and behold, they certainly begin to fathom the mysteries of our wickedness9 and to show some discernment about our duties. Therefore, unless we prove ourselves to them once more as true clerics, so that they are forced to believe in what we really are and take it seriously, we shall discover in the end that we can no longer deceive ourselves about our rights and privileges,
I am not sure, but I am inclined to think that the secular powers fulfill their office better and more happily than the ecclesiastical ones do. They are strict in punishing thefts and murders, except in so far as they let themselves be corrupted by insidious rights.
But the ecclesiastical rulers! Except for the fact that they inflict excessive punishment upon all who seize the liberty, properties, and rights of the church, they foster rather than punish extravagance, greed, prodigality, and strife (so that it would be much safer if the temporal affairs also of the clergy were placed under the control of the secular rulers). Moreover, not only do they not prevent untrained, dull, and unfit persons from entering sacred offices, they even let them advance to higher positions! Knowingly, fully aware of what they are doing and with their eyes open, they ruin the church through these pestiferous men whom they have elevated to high positions—and yet they impose judgment on those who encroach upon their property and to whom they themselves offer ample opportunity for attack by the manner in which • "Mysteriainiquitatis nostrae."
ROMANS, CHAPTER THIRTEEN they themselves invite hatred rather than friendliness. And if their attackers commit such a great sin by infringing upon their rights, how gravely do they themselves sin who, by the appearance of evil
(I Thess. 5:22), indeed by the actuality of evil deeds done in defiance of the apostle, give so much occasion for attack!
And if there is no excuse, certainly for Christians, to let an occasion tempt them to do an evil deed, how can one find an excuse for those who knowingly, willfully, and needlessly offer a provocation and occasion of this kind? So then, the whited walls sit there and judge (Acts 23:3) the transgressors according to their laws while they themselves are the ungodliest transgressors. They are not one whit concerned about how they themselves might become blameless but only how they can rebuke others. They are strict taskmasters of the righteousness of others but the gravediggers of their own!10 If they, too, had to live in fear of others, how much more cautiously would they handle their affairs!
For example, here is this bishop who proceeds to execute the canon law and he harasses a whole city because of this disgusting affair.11 Why can he get away with this? Because there is the tradition among men that the churches must not be profaned. Moreover, if he really wanted to carry out God's commandments, he would not even have to leave his own house. This particular action of his is not evil, but what is happening is that gnats are being strained out as one swallows a camel (Matt. 23:24).
The good Lord lets this and other transgressions happen in order to remind the bishops of the duties of their office and of the evangelical commandments. But they pay no attention to God's warning in connection with this affair; they burn with eagerness in their haste to inflict punishment and penance upon others and call them Pharaonic and Satanic or by even worse names than these—and all this only because they found a mote in their brother's eye and because they do not see the beam in their own eye
(Matt. 7:3). Thus they themselves are as Pharaonic and Satanic and monstrous as Behemoth12 but to an incomparably greater degree than others.
Would God that the time comes when laws of this sort will be 1(> "lustitiae alienae exactores, suae propriae vero pessundatores."
11 Luther is thinking here of a notorious case that kept the city of Strassburg aroused. Hepp von Kirchberg, a canon of St. Thomas, had kidnaped the daughter of a Strassburg citizen. The city appealed to the bishop, demanding that the clergyman be put on trial. But the criminal had gone to Rome in the meantime and succeeded in persuading the Curia to issue a citation against three members of the City Council of Strassburg. Thus the city was placed in the position of the defendant. Cf. Ficker, p. 479, n. 11.
12 "Pharaonici, Satanici, Bfhemotici."
LUTHER! LECTURES ON ROMANS done away with and destroyed together with those who keep them intact as if they were holy!13 Take, for example, this one: That soul is dead which profaned sacred stones with the touch of a finger! But that soul is not dead which bursts with ambition but is without faith, and yet curses, judges, and condemns that other one!
I earnestly wish that no one would imitate me in what I say here because my distress compels me and my office requires that I do so. For a teaching is understood best if one sees its relevance to present conditions of life. At the same time, I must perform my duty as a teacher who holds his office by apostolic authority.14 It is my duty to speak up whenever I see that something is done that is not right, even in higher places.
Consider this, for example: The Venetians committed a very grave offense against Julius II by abolishing small contributions to the church; and he recovered them for the church, earning a great merit thereby, by slaughtering and ruining a great many Christians. But the disgraceful utter corruption of the entire Curia and the monstrous collection of filth that can be found there, full of all sorts of prodigality, waste, and extravagance; greed, intrigue and sacrilege—this is no sin, of course. Blessed Bernard is therefore rightly sarcastic in saying in the fourth book of On Consideration:15 "Is it not strange that the bishops have more than enough people available to whom they can entrust souls, but they cannot find anyone whom they can put in charge of their trivial secular affairs? They are obviously men of excellent judgment: to the least significant things they devote great care, but to highly important problems they pay little or no attention."
But enough of this. We must go back to the apostle.
I was saying that man is made up of body, soul, and spirit, the soul being the middle of the two others. The body is subject to the political power, but only with the ready consent of the soul and at the command of the spirit which is lord over everything.
Here one can raise the following question: Why, then, does the apostle say in Gal. 5:13: "You have been called unto liberty, only make not liberty an occasion to the flesh"? And in ch. 2 of the same letter: "False brethren came in privately to spy out our liberty that they might bring us back into servitude." (Gal. 2:14.) And in another passage: "All things are lawful to me, but I will not be brought under the power of any man." (I Cor. 6:12.) And in I Cor. 7:23: "You are bought with a price; be not made bondslaves to men." One can cite many passages of his letters in which he
!3 "Cum suis cultoribus"
14 "Simul quia authoritate apostolicae officio docendi fungor."
15 Cf. Bernard of Clairvaux, De consideratione, IV, 6.
ROMANS, CHAPTER THIRTEEN upholds liberty and rejects servitude. Yes, in I Cv?r. 9:19 £•, he goes so far as to say: "Whereas I was free from ail men, I made myself the servant of all that I might gain the more; and to the Jews I became as a Jew that I might gain Jews." And, a little farther on, he says: "I became all things to all men that I might save all." Now what shall we say to this? How do these statements agree with one another?
The answer is this: Just as the apostle has become all things to all men, so he also speaks to everyone in his own terms. Hence, he must necessarily become equivocal when he uses the words "liberty" and "servitude." When he addresses those that are slaves but freemen according to the law of nations,16 he employs the appropriate terminology, as for example, where, in I Cor. 7:21 and in almost all his letters, he commands the slaves to obey their masters, adding that if they can, they may become free. But he has something else in mind in I Cor. 6:12 where he says: "All things are lawful to me, but I will not be brought under the power of any man," and in ch. 7:23 of the same letter, where he writes: "You were bought with a price; do not become the servants of men."
These and similar passages deal with servitude in a metaphorical sense. What the apostle says here is this: A person loses his liberty if he engages with others in temporal matters and business transactions. He must stay with his business partners and clients and, if he wants to be honest, he must fulfill the mutual business obligations. Thus people of this sort are somehow one another's prisoners. Completely occupied with temporal affairs, they cannot devote attention to God.
There is still another kind of servitude and this he calls the best of all: "By love serve one another" (Gal. 5:13). It is this servitude he has in mind when he says that though he was free, he made himself the servant of all. This servitude is greatest freedom, because it needs nothing and takes nothing but is giving and outgoing.
Hence, it is truly the best liberty, the liberty that is characteristic of Christian men. This is also what he has in mind when he writes in this chapter of the letter before us: "Owe no man anything but that you love one another" (Rom. 13:8). This, then, is the good kind of spiritual servitude: all things serve them that have it and all things work together for good to them, but they themselves are the servants of none, for, as I have stated, they are in need of none.
A fourth kind of servitude is equally spiritual, but it is a very bad kind. The apostle fights against it on behalf of the Christians with all his might. It is nothing else but to be subject to the law and all its burdens, i.e., to believe that outward works of the law
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS are necessary for salvation. People who are disposed to believe this remain unfree and will never be saved. For they are in the service of the law, and the law rules over them because of this foolish belief and conscience of theirs. All who want to be saved in some other way than by faith in Christ17 are of this mind. Their greatest concern is how they can satisfy the law by the number of their good works and their deeds of righteousness. To be sure, the apostle and also spiritual men did and still do such works, not because they have to do them but because they want to do them; one need not do them but one may do them. Those hypocrites, however, are so bound up with these good works, as if they were necessary to salvation, that therefore they do them because they feel they must do them and not because they want to. They would rather that they were not necessary and yet it seems to them that they are. This servitude is nowadays pretty general.
In the light of this we can readily understand, on reading the book of Acts, why the apostle wanted to purify himself (Acts
21:26) and why he circumcised Timothy (Acts 16:3), though he was preaching everywhere the opposite of this. For anything outward is free to those who are in the Spirit.
But the apostle does not raise the question of liberty with respect to secular power. And, indeed, it does not embody that spiritual kind of servitude which we have just dealt with, inasmuch as it pertains to all men in the world; but this is not the case with respect to the works of the law.
For you shall not commit adultery; You shall not kill; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is comprised in this word:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The love of our neighbor works no evil. Love therefore is the fulfilling of the law. (Rom.
The commandment: "Love your neighbor as yourself (Matt.
19:19) or, as it is formulated in Lev. 19:18: "Love your friend as yourself" can be understood in a twofold way.
First, one can take it to mean that both are commanded: we shall love our neighbor and ourselves as well. But another way to understand it is that it commands us to love only our neighbor and this according to the example of our love for ourselves. This is the better interpretation, for because of the defect of his nature, man loves himself above everything else, he seeks himself in everything, and loves everything for his own sake, even when he loves his neighbor or his friend, for he seeks only his own therein.
17 "Per fidem Christi."
ROMANS, CHAPTER THIRTEEN This commandment, therefore, is very profound, and everyone must carefully examine and test himself by it. For by the phrase
"as yourself" every kind of simulated love is ruled out. Hence, he that loves his neighbor on account of his money honor learning favor power comfort and would not love him if he were poor lowly ignorant hateful dependent uncouth would obviously have a hypocritical love for him.
For, having his own advantage in mind, he does not love him as he is but he loves what he has and owns, and therefore he does not love himself "as himself," for he that loves himself loves himself also if he is poor, dull, and a complete nonentity.18 For who is so useless that he hates himself? However, nobody is such a nonentity that he does not love himself, and the love he has for others is not like the love he has for himself.
Hence, this commandment demands something of us that is most difficult to accomplish as we can see if we consider it thoroughly.
Nobody wants to be robbed, harmed, murdered, to have his marriage broken by adultery, to be lied to, to suffer through perjury, and have somebody else covet what he owns. But if he is not so disposed that he does not want his neighbor to suffer these wrongs either, he is already guilty of transgressing this commandment. Hence, this commandment includes the saying of Matt. 7:12: "All things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you also to them. For this is the Law and the Prophets." From a superficial point of view and taken in general terms, this rule may seem rather scanty, yet if we apply it to particular cases, we can gather from it an unlimited measure of salutary instruction and we can obtain from it most dependable guidance for everything.
But that people do not observe it and that they violate it innumerable times, even in ignorance, and, indeed, that people break it who do not think that they do so—all this stems from the fact that they do not apply this standard to their actual conduct but that they are satisfied with their good intention. For example: the rich provide the priests with large funds for the building of churches and memorials. But if they would put themselves in the place of the poor and then ask themselves the question whether they would not want that they, rather than the churches, be given is "Penitus nihil"
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS these gifts, they would easily know from themselves what they should do.
In a similar way, our prince and our bishop compete with each other in the traffic of relics.19 Each wants the other to yield to him, yet both persist in what they are doing, carefully observing the show of piety, and neither yields to the other.
Likewise, the Observants20 fight against one another for the sake of God, but they pay no attention to the commandment of love.
Now he that wants to take this commandment seriously and wants to apply it must not depend on "acts elicited" from within himself, but he must refer the works, words, and thoughts of his whole life to this commandment as to a rule, and he must always ask himself with respect to his neighbor: "What do I want him to do for me?" With this before him, he will immediately treat his neighbor in the same way. Then all wrangling, mutual disparagement, and discussion will cease at once and there will be there the whole host of virtues, indeed, every grace, every kind of holiness will be there, and, as he says here, "the fulfilling of the law."
This is how Moses taught the Children of Israel (Deut. 6:4 ff.):
"These words which I command you this day shall be in your heart, and you shall tell them to your children and you shall meditate upon them sitting in your house, and walking on your journey, sleeping and singing/1 And then he goes on to say: "And you
19 Frederick the Wise was greatly interested in increasing the collection of relics in the Church of All Saints in Wittenberg. Albrecht von Brandenburg, archbishop of Halle (when Luther wrote this, he was already also archbishop of Mainz, besides being the bishop of Halberstadt), similarly acquired ever new relics for the cathedral-chapter at Halle. (Cf. Ficker, p.
20 Luther may think here of his own experience in the Augustinian cloister at Erfurt. The monks there were "Observants/' i.e., they advocated and practiced strict observance of the monastic rule, and they demanded that the entire Order do the same. As general vicar of the Augustinians in the Province of Saxony, John von Staupitz, Luther's teacher, predecessor (in the professorship at Wittenberg), and friend, had attempted to effect a reconciliation between the "observant" and "lax" cloisters in his charge.
But he failed. The majority of the Erfurt Convent refused any compromise and persisted in their exclusivist position. They were opposed by a minority of other "Observants" (of whom Luther was one) who were ready to support
Staupitz in the interest of unity. But, as Luther makes plain in many passages of these lectures, they also wanted to comply, fulfilling their monastic vow, with the requirement of obedience to the superiors. In this connection, it should be stated that Luther's criticisms of wrong Christian attitudes (pride, self-righteousness, nonconformity, stubbornness, and spite) as well as his constructive exposition of justification are not properly understood, unless one sees them against the background of his monastic experiences, concerns, and struggles.
ROMANS, CHAPTER THIRTEEN shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be and shall move between your eyes. And you shall write them in the entry and on the doors of your house." Moses does not want us to wear
Pharisaical phylacteries,21 but by saying: "These words shall become a sign in your hand/' he means that we must do all our works as this commandment directs us to do them. "To have them before the eyes" means that all our thoughts must be guided by these words; and "They shall be written on the doors and the entry" means that all our senses and especially our tongue must be guided and directed by these words.
He that would do this would learn thoroughly to know his faults and to humble himself before God and fear him; otherwise, he would remain secure and holy in his own eyes. For example, he would discover himself not only as quite often indolent in helping his neighbor (though, regarding himself, he would find that he would want everyone to be affectionate, loving, and kindly disposed toward him) but also as an enemy and false brother toward his brethren, indeed, a slanderer and a person full of all kinds of sin.
We can say, then, that the apostle expresses the substance of this commandment when he says in Phil. 2:4: "Each one not considering the things that are his own, but those that are other men's" and in I Cor. 13:5: "Love seeks not its own," i.e., it causes man to deny himself and to affirm his neighbor, to put on affection for others and to put off affection for himself, to place himself in the position of his neighbor and then to judge what he would want him to do to himself and what he himself and others could do to him. Thus he will find by this infallible teaching what he must do. But if he disregards this teaching, the commandments will increase many times in number and he will not reach his goal.
As often as he desires and asks blessings only for himself, whether they be physical or spiritual (and he has a way to see to it that his wishes are fulfilled and perfectly so), he becomes entangled in faults by this wish, for he owes the same also to others; and then he finds that he does not want to do this to others. Or else he may hate himself and not desire anything good from others and then he on his part will not owe anything to others. And why is this so?
Because he that is dead is righteous.22 Do you see now how profound and far-reaching this commandment is?
And that knowing the season; that it is now the hour for us to rise from sleep. (Rom. 13:11.) In I Cor. 15:34, it says: "Awake, you righteous, and sin not/'
21 "Non vult Moses, ut Pharisaica philacteria faciamus."
22 "Quia, qui mortuus est, iustus est" (cf. Rom. 6:7).
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS and in Eph. 5:14: "Rise, you that sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall enlighten you/' There can be no doubt that in these words, as also in this passage before us, the apostle speaks of that spiritual sleep in which the spirit is asleep when it lives in sins and is resting. From such a sleep Christ, too, arouses us many times in the Gospel as he commands us to be watchful (Matt.
We should note that the apostle does not speak of those that are dead in the sins of unbelief or of believers who have fallen into mortal sin, but of Christians who are listless in what they are doing and have fallen fast asleep because they feel so secure. What he wants them to do is that they go forward but solicitously so. As it says in Micah 6:8: "I will show you, O man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you: Verily, to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk solicitous with your God/* For it is those who are not solicitous and not watchful from fear that are the ones who make a beginning but do not progress and put their hand to the plow and look back (Luke 9:62); they have the appearance of godliness but deny the power thereof (II Tim. 3:5); with their body they go out from Egypt and with their heart they go back to it; feeling secure and without the fear of God, they go their way, hardened, irreverent,23 bereft of feeling. Blessed Bernard says with respect to them:24 "He that does not incessantly hasten to do penance says thereby that he does not need to repent/'
If he does not need to repent, he is also not in need of mercy; and if he does not need mercy, he does not need salvation. But this is possible only for one who is without sin, like God and the angels.
Therefore the apostle speaks the right word when he admonishes the Christians that they should arise, even though, if they had not already risen, they would not be Christians. However, to stand still on God's way means to go backward, and to go forward means ever to begin anew.25 (Hence, the Preacher does not say: When a man has gone forward but "when a man has done, then he shall begin" [Ecclus. 18:7].) Thus Saint Arsenius asked God in his daily prayer: "Help me, O Lord, that I may begin to live to thee."26 And, certainly, just as the apostle said of knowledge that "if any man think that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know" (I Cor. 8:2), so we must also conclude with 24 Cf. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermo II in vigilia nativitatis Domini
25 "Stare in via Dei, hoc est retrocedere, et proficere, hoc est semper de novo incipere."
26 Vitae Patrum, Verba seniorum} III, 190, V, 15, 5. (PL 73, 801, 953.) ROMANS, CHAPTER THIRTEEN respect to the several individual virtues: he that thinks he has already apprehended and made a beginning does not yet know how he ought to begin.
Nowadays people of this kind can be found in surprisingly large numbers. They practice the repentance Christ calls for in the form of temporal and external works and when they have done these, they regard themselves as righteous. This is why it happens so often that when a confession is made in this spirit it results in the ruin of this wretched trust in oneself, because it does not take away what in their presumptuousness they think it should take away.
The word "sleep" is used in the Scriptures in several senses. In the first place, it denotes physical sleep, as in John 11:11: "Our friend Lazarus sleeps." And in the Old Testament, especially in the books of Kings and Chronicles, it is often said: "He slept with his fathers" (I Kings 2:10; 11:43, etc.; II Chron. 9:31; 12:16, etc.).
In the second place, it is used to denote a spiritual sleep, and this in two senses. First, in a good sense, as in Ps. 127:2: "He shall give sleep to his beloved," and in Ps. 68:13: "If you sleep among the midst of the lots," etc. And in the Song of Solomon, the bride says: "I sleep, and my heart watches" (S. of Sol. 5:2). To sleep in this way means: not to pay attention to earthly goods and to regard them as mere show and shadow rather than as real things, because one is concerned for things that are eternal, and one sees these with the heart when it is wide awake by the light of faith.
Hence, sleepers of this kind are asleep in temporal affairs and they deal indifferently with them.
In the third place, the word is used to denote a spiritual sleep that is bad and the opposite of the one just mentioned. First Thessalonians 5:6 f. speaks about it as follows: "Therefore let us not sleep as others do, but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep, sleep in the night; and they that are drunk, are drunk in the night." Here the word "night" denotes the spiritual night that is evil, as in Ps. 76:5: "They have slept their sleep, and all the men of riches have found nothing in their hands." "To sleep" in this sense means to pay no attention to eternal goods and to despise them. Sleepers of this sort act indifferently toward eternal goods because they are concerned only about temporal things, and these they see with a desire that is always awake. And so they are the opposite of the sleepers of whom we spoke before: what is night to these is day to the others, and what is waking to the latter is sleep to the former, and conversely. Just as their goods conflict with one another, so do also their attitudes of mind and hence also the people themselves. (One could say briefly that they are the sleep
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS of nature, of grace, and of guilt, but such a distinction is somewhat obscure.) The threefold distinction made in the Scripture about sleep is characteristic also of the way it speaks of night and day; indeed, it is characteristic of almost all the other metaphorical forms of expression it employs.
For example, spiritual day is faith and spiritual night is unbelief. Conversely, faith is night and unbelief is day, as in Ps. 19:2:
"Day to day utters speech, and night to night knowledge," i.e., the carnal27 man utters knowledge to the prudent; the fool of God utters speech to the fools among men, and one who is wise in Christ utters knowledge to the worldly wise. In the passage before us, the apostle, therefore, obviously does not speak of physical sleep or of the darkness and the night that one experiences with the senses.
Of them he speaks farther down where he says: "Not in chambering and in impurities/' i.e., in sleep and lust, and these are certainly done in the night.
The works of darkness, then, are the works of them that are asleep in the spirit, and this in the bad sense, i.e., the works o£ them that are asleep in the lusts of the world. Moreover, these works of darkness are not merely such as are commonly regarded as evil, but also such as are regarded as good but in fact are evil because of their inner darkness, i.e., because they are not done in a faith that is awake.
For now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.
The night is passed, and the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. (Rom.
What the apostle means by this he states in II Cor. 6:1-2 as follows: "And we helping do exhort you that you do not receive the grace of God in vain. For he says: In an accepted time have I heard thee, and in the day of salvation have I helped thee. [Isa.
49:8.] Behold now is the acceptable time; behold now is the day of salvation." What here, in the letter to the Romans, the apostle briefly touches upon in passing, he there works out in much greater detail, particularly as he fully describes what he means by the armor of light and the works of darkness. He says: "Giving no offense to any man that our ministry be not blamed, but in all things let us exhibit ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in fastings." (II Cor. 6:3 ft.) Then, farther on, he says:
"by the armor of righteousness on the right and on the left," etc.
(II Cor. 6:7). What here, in the passage before us, is "the armor of 27 Luther says "spiritual," but this is obviously a writing mistake.
ROMANS, CHAPTER THIRTEEN light" is there "the armor of righteousness"; hence righteousness and light are the same.
Let us walk honestly, as in the day:28 not in reveling and drunkenness.29 (Rom. 13:13.) As Graecari (to live in the Greek fashion) comes from Graecus, so comissari (to revel) comes, it seems, from homos. Now the Greek word "kdmos" means "banquet" or, rather, the luxury of a banquet and the lavish and wasteful preparation and celebration of a banquet. Indeed, the god of drunkenness is called Comus and his feast has the same name. In this the Greeks are superior to the Germans and to the whole world in that they spent so much time in reveling and drunkenness that they even fashioned a god for these as if this were the profitable thing to do.
What the apostle teaches here in a negative way he explains in positive fashion in II Cor. 6:4 ff. He wants us to devote ourselves to fastings and temperance and sobriety. And, indeed, a reader of historical books, or of Blessed Jerome at least, will find that the six vices of which the apostle speaks here in this part of the letter were not merely numerous in Rome at that time, but that they held sway over the city to the point of tyrannizing it—read Suetonius' Lives of the Caesarsl—so that even the heathen Juvenal exclaimed:30 "A fiercer enemy, namely profligacy, has settled among us and takes vengeance upon a defeated world."
The apostle therefore wants to frighten the faithful away so that they do not yield to these wild examples that godless Rome gives.
Also Blessed Peter did not pass over in silence the riotousness of this city (I Peter 4:4); he is not satisfied to call it riotousness but he speaks of a "confusion of riotousness" or a collection of filth.
Indeed, because of this, he does not hesitate to call this city a Babylon, in view of the fact that everything there is disorderly, also according to the testimony of Catullus:31 "Everything goes, and wrong is mixed with evil ravings," so that it appears that, when it was at the point of the utmost extreme of riotousness, the city cried to heaven and called for either the apostles, and the foremost among them at that, or a punishment similar to that of Sodom and Gomorrah. Hence, it says in I Peter 4:3 f.: "For the time past is sufficient to have fulfilled the will of the Gentiles, for them who 28 In the marginal gloss, Luther writes (WA 56, 128, 18): "This is the text from which ['ex quo'] Blessed Augustine was converted." (Cf. Augustine,
29 Vulgate, "non in comessationibus"
30 Juvenal, Satyrae, VI, 292: "Sevior hostis luxuria incubuit victumque ulcis* citur orbem." si Catullus, Propertius, LXIV, 406.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS have walked in riotousness, lusts, excess of wine, revelings, banquetings, and unlawful worshiping of idols; wherein they think it strange that you ran not with them into the same confusion of riotousness, speaking evil of you/'
And in II Peter 2:13, it is written: "counting for a pleasure the delights of a day of32 stains and spots, disporting themselves to excess, rioting in their feasts with you." So it is again today: Rome has reverted to its former ways and draws almost the whole world under the sway of its example. If only the Rome of today does not exceed the ancient city in a greater extravagance of luxury, so that the presence of the apostles may again appear to be required, but now with greater necessityl Would that they come as friends before they must enter as judges!
We must note in passing that "luxuria" ("wantonness'*) must here not be understood to mean "lust" ("libido") but "reveling" or "immoderate profligacy," in the sense of the Greek words
"asotia" and "asotos"
Attacking the same vice in I Tim., chs. 2 and 3 and also in Titus, chs. 1 and 2, the apostle commands that the bishop, the deacons, the man, the elders, the young men and women, should be sober, and to all of them he forbids drunkenness and reveling as though these were a pestilence. Thus, if we compare these passages with the one that is here before us, we gain a correct understanding of the apostle; here he indicates what he does not want and there he shows what he wants.
Not in chambering and unchastities. (Rom. 13:13.) This means that they should be watchful and chaste. This is the same commandment of chastity and vigilance which, in the aforementioned passages, he gives chiefly to the bishop and then also to the elders and others.
This is indeed a fitting sequence. For reveling and drunkenness foment unchastity, or, as the Greek text says, lasciviousness.33
Hence, the holy fathers34 declared that he that wants to serve God must conquer above all the vice of gluttony. Just as it is the foremost of all vices, so it is also the one that is most difficult to overcome. If it is not extirpated, it makes the soul dull for divine things, even if it does not lead to chambering and licentiousness, as sometimes happens in the case of older men. Hence, fasting is
32 The Vulgate Luther had before him read "coinquinationis" rather than 33 This is Erasmus' translation.
84 Cf. John Cassian, De coenob. inst. lib., V, 1 ff.; Collationes patrum, 2 ff.
ROMANS, CHAPTER THIRTEEN one of the strongest weapons of Christian people, but gluttony is a most effective contrivance35 in the hands of the devil. But you can find all this amply discussed in the writings of the saints.
Not in contention and emulation. (Rom. 13:13.) In the foregoing the apostle instructs man with respect to himself: he should be temperate, watchful, and chaste. But here he instructs him with respect to his neighbor: they should live with one another in peace, amity, and love. Throughout all his letters, he enjoins this most emphatically just as he did in the preceding chapter. In I Tim. 2:8 he says: "I will, therefore, that men pray in every place, lifting up pure hands, without anger and controversy." And in the third chapter of the same letter (I Tim. 3:3) and in Titus 1:7 he commands the bishop that he should not be a striker. According to the interpretation of Blessed Jerome,36 this means that he should not have a sharp tongue. He therefore wants Christians to be mild, kindly, considerate toward one another.
A "contention" is a gladiatorial combat that is fought with many words ("to contend" means "to fight with words"), in which each of the two contenders wants to be considered as truthful, right, and able to the point that he disapproves of everything else; it is a fight in which neither of the two yields to the other.
"Emulation" is a very broad term. "To emulate" means "to follow" and "to pursue." And just as one can take the terms "I pursue something" or "I follow something" in a good or a bad sense, so one can understand also the word "I emulate" in this way. Now
"to emulate" does not quite mean "to imitate" but, rather, to pursue something in such a way that one reaches it, or gets hold of it, or surpasses it. It does not only express the mere following after something but also the attempt to surpass it. So then, he that emulates in the good sense of the word is one who imitates his teacher or whoever is his example in such a way that he tries to outdo him, which one does not do if he merely imitates someone. And he that emulates in the bad sense of the word is one who tries to overcome the one he contends with, or as we say in common speech, he wants to have the last word or to get in the last dig; in short, he wants to overcome evil with evil. If the other does or says something bad, he tries to do or say something worse. So then, emulation is the sister or maidservant of contention. Hence, we say
"aemulus" and "aemula" ("rival") and we use these words either as nouns or adjectives.
35 "Machina diaboli."
86 Cf. Jerome, Gomm. in ep, ad Tit. 1:7.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS But by this the use of this word is not exhausted, even though it may suffice for this passage. For God is called "Zelotes" and "emulator" (Ex. 20:5; 34:14): he is a jealous God. And the apostle says: "I emulate you with the emulation of God" (II Cor. 11:2), which means: "I am jealous of you with the jealousy of God." And in the Song of Solomon "emulation" (jealousy) is called "hard as hell," and this cannot be taken to refer, so it would seem, to a mutual contention.
Now, it is because everyone who emulates another wants to be the only one to realize what he contends for with the other that the husband competes against the adulterer, and God against the idol, and the wife against the adulteress or mistress, so that just as the husband wants to be the only one to possess his wife and therefore tries to keep another away from her, so God wants to be the only God, and so the apostle was jealous of the Corinthians because he alone wanted to be their teacher ahead of the rest of the apostles, begrudging others this glory, but with a holy envy.
For he feared that their mind might be corrupted by the craftiness of the devil, even though he had betrothed them to Christ. He certainly feared the false apostles. Consequently, emulation, in the sense of jealousy, encloses the good one loves and thereby it excludes the sharing of it with someone else and, because of this, it is also a kind of hatred for the one who wants to share it and does not want to leave it to anyone for himself alone.
So then, jealousy hates and loves at the same time. Sometimes the object of jealousy is what one loves, sometimes it is that which one hates. Thus we say: "A husband is jealous of his wife," but we also say: "He is jealous of the adulterer," but the first way of speaking is the more appropriate one. In this sense, the apostle says in I Cor. i2:3i:37 "Be jealous for the better gifts."
Emulation as jealousy is loving envy or envious love; it is love and envy mixed together, bitter love as well as loving bitterness,38 just as repentance is sweet sorrow and sorrowful sweetness. For the sweetness of his love makes the jealous person lively and willing, but the bitterness of his hatred makes him unwilling.
However, the term "emulation" is not always used in the sense of "jealousy" which is its proper meaning; quite often it stands for the mental effort by which one tries to surpass someone else and to maintain the advantage one has gained over him, but without hating him, as, for example, in I Cor. 10:22, which says: "Do we emulate the Lord?" i.e., Are we trying to surpass the Lord and to outdo him? Are we stronger than he?
37 Luther writes "I Cor. 14" (the word here is emulamini).
38 "Amarus amor et amorosus amaror"
ROMANS, CHAPTER THIRTEEN But put you on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in its lusts. (Rom. 13:14.)
I.e., lest evil desires39 arise, but make good provision for its necessities and according to its necessities. The apostle wants to say that we should not favor or cherish the flesh, lest evil desires arise. For as Hugh of St. Victor40 rightly says: "He that cherishes the flesh nourishes an enemy" and, on the other hand: "He that destroys the flesh kills a friend of his." One must not destroy the flesh but the vices of the flesh, i.e., its evil desires. Proverbs 29:21:
"He that nourishes his servant delicately shall find him stubborn/'
89 "Concupiscentias."
40 According to Ficker (p. 491, n. 27), these sayings cannot be found in the writings of Hugh of St. Victor, but he gives a reference to Gregory, Horn, in Ezech., II, 7: "Sometimes our flesh is a helper in a good deed and sometimes it is a seducer to an evil one. If, therefore, we give it more than we should, we nourish an enemy. But if we do not serve its needs as we should, we kill a fellow citizen [civem]"
ROMANS, CHAPTER FOURTEEN1 Now him that is weak in faith take unto you, not in dispute about thoughts. For one believes that he may eat all things; but he that is weak, let him eat herbs. Let him not that eats despise him that eats not; and him that eats not, let not him judge him that eats. For God has taken him to him. Who are you that judge another man's servant? To his own lord he stands and falls. And he shall stand, for God is able to make him stand. For one judges be1 Luther's marginal gloss reads as follows (WA 56, 129, 8 ff.): "In this chapter the apostle commands two things: first, that the strong and the weak in faith should not despise and judge one another, and, secondly, that the stronger ones should not give offense to the weak, as he says below: 'But judge this rather that you put not a stumbling block or a scandal in your brother's way/ This teaching is occasioned by the fact that, in the old law, many foods were forbidden and this was a symbol of what was to come. The weak and simple in faith, therefore, who could not understand that the symbol was no longer in force and that all things had become clean, or who believed that certain kinds of food could not be eaten because of their common use, these should be tolerated and not despised. On the other hand, those who had a clear understanding should not be condemned as if they did evil because they ate anything. About this question there arose then a very great controversy. The first church council was held about it
(Acts 15:6 ff.); indeed, even Peter was rebuked by Paul on the same matter "In all his letters, the apostle deals with this subject in opposition to the false apostles of Jewish extraction who taught that it was necessary to salvation that one observe these laws. For example, in I Tim. 1:7 he speaks of them as 'understanding neither the things they say, nor whereof they affirm.' And, in Titus 1:10, he calls them 'deceivers of minds.' But, elsewhere, he says of himself, 'I have become a Jew to the Jews and a Gentile to the Gentiles,' etc. [I Cor. 9:20-21].
"Meat offered to idols became a similar occasion for controversy to believers of Gentile origin, as one can plainly see on reading chapters 8 to 10 of I Corinthians. 'Whatever is sold in the shambles, eat' (I Cor. 10:25)."