This continues from Part L03 (Table of Contents in Part L01) in a series on the instruction of the Law by C. F. W. Walther and Martin Luther. — Now Walther lays out what is left of the Law when the Ten Commandments, as given to the Jews alone, are voided for Christians. — From Lehre und Wehre, vol. 7 (Nov. 1861), p. 322 ff.::
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I. What part of the Law now binds everyone in the New Testament?5. What belongs to the natural law in the holy Ten Commandments? To love God and neighbor… and "whatever you want men to do to you, do that to them".6. True, believing Christians, … are no longer under the Law, …but …have become a law to themselves through faith and the new birth, and therefore keep and fulfill the law not as a law, but out of the impulse of their new nature in free love, not because they ought to, but because they want to.
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What Luther says on the true contents of the Ten Commandments and Christian freedom:
- “Christ Himself also summarizes all the prophets and laws in this natural law, Matt. 7:12: Do to others as you would have them do to you.”
- “…if it were not naturally written in the heart, one would have to teach and preach the law for a long time before the conscience would accept it: it must also find and feel it in itself, otherwise no one would have a conscience.”
- “…it is more important to keep the day holy than to celebrate it.” (On the Third Commandment)
- “…thus Christ has also delivered us spiritually from the Law; not breaking and doing away with the Law, but transforming our heart, which before was unwillingly under it, doing it so much good, and making the law so sweet that it has no greater pleasure nor joy than in the law”
- A Christian “gladly helps and benefits everyone where he can, out of a free heart, before he even thinks of the law”
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In the next Part L05, Walther digs deeper into what it means, and does not mean, to love your neighbor.
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