WorkMartin Luther

Preface to the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans

A few pages written to stand in front of Paul's letter in Luther's German New Testament, which John Wesley heard read aloud in London two centuries later.

by Martin Luther28 passages held

German, the original language

Original title: Vorrede auf die Epistel S. Paul an die Römer
First published: 1522(aged 39)
Original language: German

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Overview

On the evening of 24 May 1738 John Wesley, an Anglican clergyman who would go on to found Methodism, went to a religious meeting in Aldersgate Street in London where someone was reading this preface aloud, and at about a quarter to nine felt an assurance that he trusted in Christ alone, which he recorded in his journal. The text he heard had been written more than two centuries earlier as a reader's guide. Luther had translated the New Testament from Greek at the Wartburg in eleven weeks during the winter of 1521–22, revised it with Philipp Melanchthon, and published it in Wittenberg in September 1522 with prefaces to its books. Romans, Luther says, is the chief part of the New Testament and the purest gospel, a letter a Christian should know by heart and use daily as bread for the soul; the commentators have buried it in glosses. The reader's first task is to learn Paul's vocabulary — law, sin, grace, faith, righteousness, flesh, spirit — because Paul does not use those words as everyone else does. The law, for instance, is kept only from the heart, so whoever does what it says from fear of punishment, and would rather do otherwise, has not kept it. Faith is not the human notion people mistake for it, a notion that leaves their lives unchanged. It is a living, daring confidence in God's grace, and it does good works before anyone asks whether works are needed; works can no more be separated from faith than burning and shining from fire. The preface then walks through Paul's argument chapter by chapter. The September Testament ran to between three and five thousand copies, and a second edition had to be printed by December.

Key concepts

What does 'law' mean in Luther's reading of Paul?

The law is God's demand on the heart, not a list of deeds to perform or avoid. Human laws are satisfied by outward works, but God judges the ground of the heart, so his law is kept only when it is done gladly. Someone who obeys from fear of punishment, and would rather do otherwise, has in Paul's sense broken it. That is why the law cannot be fulfilled without the Spirit.

What is sin, according to the Preface to Romans?

Sin is not only the outward deed but the whole movement of the heart that drives a person to it. Luther says no outward sin happens unless the person goes into it with body and soul. Its root is unbelief: the heart's failure to trust God. Every other sin grows from that root, which is why only faith, not effort, can deal with it.

How are grace and gift different?

Grace is God's favour towards us, which he holds in himself. Gifts are what that favour pours into us: Christ and the Spirit with their powers. The gifts grow daily and remain incomplete, since evil desires are still there. Grace does not grow by degrees. It covers the whole person at once, for Christ's sake, so a believer counts as fully righteous while still being made righteous.

What does Paul mean by 'flesh' and 'spirit'?

Flesh is not just sexual desire, and spirit is not just the inner life. In Luther's reading, flesh means the whole human being, body and soul, reason and senses, insofar as everything in us seeks itself. So even the most spiritual-seeming thinking can be fleshly. Spirit means a person, inside and out, moved by the Holy Spirit, even when doing ordinary physical work.

Themes of the book

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

Paul's Words, Read from the Heart

What happens to law, sin, grace and faith when they are measured by the heart instead of by outward conduct? Luther thinks a reader who misses the shift misreads all of Romans.

A reader's guide, not a treatise, the preface teaches a vocabulary before it walks through the letter. God judges the ground of the heart, so a law obeyed from fear of punishment is not kept at all. Sin means the whole person moving towards the deed, and its root is unbelief. Grace is God's favour, distinct from the gifts it pours in, and flesh means the whole human being, reason included. Faith is a living, daring confidence that does good works before anyone asks whether works are needed.

law
sin
grace
faith
justification
human nature
good works
conscience
hypocrisy
sanctification
inner conflict
moral psychology
gospel

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 28
distinct concepts: 56
by passages held, corpus-wide: #741

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 “grace”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 6 concepts, joined by 15 pairings. 18 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
faith	grace	8
grace	law	8
law	sin	8
faith	justification	5
faith	law	5
grace	sin	5
grace	justification	4
human nature	law	4
human nature	sin	4
justification	law	4
faith	sin	3
justification	sin	3
grace	human nature	2
faith	human nature	1
human nature	justification	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)
Meant as a peace offering to the pope, the third of Luther's treatises of 1520 turns from the institutions of the church to the life of a single believer.
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) you are here 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