WorkMartin Luther

The Freedom of a Christian

Two flatly contradictory sentences about freedom and service, and thirty short sections showing how a Christian can live both.

by Martin Luther45 passages held

German, the original language

Original title: Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen
First published: 1520(aged 37)
Original language: German

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Overview

Karl von Miltitz, a papal envoy who had spent more than a year trying to calm the quarrel over indulgences, met Martin Luther at Lichtenberg in October 1520 and persuaded him to write a conciliatory letter to Pope Leo X. The letter, which blamed the Roman curia rather than Leo himself, went to the pope with this book, published in November in Latin and in German. By then the papal bull listing forty-one of Luther's errors had already reached Wittenberg, and at Miltitz's request the letter was dated 6 September, so that it seemed to predate the bull. The German version opens instead with a short dedication to Hieronymus Mühlpfordt, the town magistrate of Zwickau, whom the town's preacher had commended to Luther as a lover of Scripture. The argument starts from two statements that seem to cancel each other: a Christian is a free lord over all things and subject to nobody, and a Christian is a servant of all things and subject to everybody. Luther reconciles them by dividing the person. The inner, spiritual person is made righteous by faith alone and needs no law and no good work to be free. The outer person still lives in a body and among other people, and so disciplines the one and serves the others — freely, for nothing, as Christ served. Good works never make anyone good; a good person does good works, as a good tree bears good fruit. The last of its thirty sections concludes that a Christian lives not in himself but in Christ through faith and in his neighbour through love. Between 1520 and 1526 the book went through about thirty printings, most of them in German. On 10 December 1520, a month after it appeared, Luther and the students of Wittenberg burned the papal bull.

Key concepts

What are the inner and the outer person?

They are two sides of every Christian. The inner person is the soul, which becomes righteous and free through faith alone. The outer person is the same human being in the body and among other people. Nothing outward, holy clothes or holy places, helps or harms the inner person. The outer person still has work to do: disciplining the body and serving others.

What is a Christian freed from, in this book?

Freed from having to earn God's favour. A Christian who believes is free from sin, from the law's demands and from the need for any work to be made righteous. That freedom is not licence to do nothing. Because nothing has to be earned, a Christian can serve others freely, for nothing, as Christ became a servant though he was free.

What is the difference between commandments and promises?

Luther divides Scripture into these two kinds of word. Commandments say what we ought to do, such as 'you shall have no evil desire', but give no power to do it, so they teach a person his own inability. Promises say what God gives, and they give it: whoever believes them has what the commandments asked for. The commandments empty a person, the promises fill him.

Why should good works be done 'for nothing'?

Because a Christian already has everything through faith, works cannot buy anything more. Done to gain merit, they rest on a false belief; done freely, they serve only the neighbour's need. Luther's model is Christ, who was free yet took on the form of a servant. Each Christian should treat a neighbour in the same way, giving without seeking reward.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Free Lord, Willing Servant

How can a person owe nothing to anyone and still owe everything to everyone? The answer decides whether good works are a price paid or a gift given.

Luther settles the paradox by splitting the person in two. Inwardly, the soul is already free and needs no work; outwardly, a Christian still has a body to discipline and neighbours to serve, and does both for nothing. Works follow from goodness as fruit follows from a sound tree; they never make anyone good, any more than consecrating churches makes a man a bishop. Even rules a free person need not keep, such as Mary's purification, are kept for others' sake, until the Christian lives in Christ through faith and in the neighbour through love.

christian freedom
freedom
spiritual freedom
service
love
charity
good works
asceticism
moral character

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Faith and the Word

If no holy clothing, place or practice does the soul any good, what does? Luther's answer leaves one thing standing: the word of God received in faith.

Scripture, as the book reads it, speaks in two ways. Commandments show people what they ought to do and teach them to despair of doing it; promises then give, in Christ, what the commandments demanded. Faith takes the promise and makes the soul like the word it trusts. It also unites the soul with Christ as a bride with her bridegroom, so that his righteousness becomes hers and her sin his. From that union every Christian becomes king over all things, suffering and death included, and priest before God for others.

faith
justification
salvation
grace
divine promise
word of god
christology
priesthood
righteousness
gospel
sin

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Within this work

passages held: 45
distinct concepts: 72
by passages held, corpus-wide: #667

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “faith” and “good works”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 21 pairings. 50 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
faith	good works	16
faith	justification	16
good works	justification	10
faith	salvation	8
faith	grace	7
faith	love	5
faith	sin	5
good works	salvation	4
grace	justification	4
christian freedom	faith	3
christian freedom	good works	3
good works	grace	3
grace	salvation	3
justification	sin	3
justification	salvation	2
love	salvation	2
love	sin	2
christian freedom	justification	1
christian freedom	love	1
good works	love	1
grace	love	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1517 Ninety-five Theses (Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum)
Where the quarrel began: an academic exercise in Latin, followed within months by the German sermon that carried its argument to lay readers.
LA
1518 Sermon on Indulgences and Grace (Ein Sermon von Ablaß und Gnade)
The German companion to the Latin Ninety-five Theses: the same quarrel over indulgences, taken out of the lecture hall and put to lay readers a few months later.
DE
1520 A Treatise on Good Works (Von den guten Werken)
Published in the spring of 1520 just ahead of the three manifestos of that year, it lays out in plain German the teaching on faith and works that they take for granted.
DE
1520 Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation von des christlichen Standes Besserung)
The first of the three books of 1520 that made the break with Rome public; The Babylonian Captivity of the Church followed in October and The Freedom of a Christian in November.
DE
1520 The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae praeludium)
Of Luther's three treatises of 1520, the one written in Latin for the learned: the appeal to the nobility before it was in German, and The Freedom of a Christian, after it, appeared in both languages.
DE
1520 The Freedom of a Christian (Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen) you are here DE
1522 A Sincere Admonition by Martin Luther to All Christians to Guard Against Insurrection and Rebellion (Eine treue Vermahnung zu allen Christen, sich zu hüten vor Aufruhr und Empörung)
Written in hiding between the Diet of Worms and Luther's return to Wittenberg, in the same winter that he began translating the New Testament into German.
DE
1522 Preface to the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans (Vorrede auf die Epistel S. Paul an die Römer)
A companion to The Freedom of a Christian: the same teaching on faith and works, given this time as a way into the book of the Bible it came from.
DE
1523 Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed (Von weltlicher Obrigkeit, wie weit man ihr Gehorsam schuldig sei)
A sequel that corrects its predecessor: three years after asking princes to reform the church, Luther marks the line beyond which their power over Christians stops.
DE
1529 The Large Catechism (Der Große Katechismus)
Sermons turned into a book: the catechism sermons Luther preached at Wittenberg in 1528, reworked into the fuller of his two catechisms.
DE
1529 The Small Catechism (Kleiner Katechismus)
Published a month after the Large Catechism, it gives the household the words to learn by heart, where the larger book explains them to the preacher.
DE
1530 An Open Letter on Translating (Ein Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen)
Eight years after the September Testament, and four before the complete German Bible, Luther explains how the translation was made and why he would not undo it.
DE

— or open another of their works