Five Minutes Daily with Luther - October 1

(Reprinted with permission from Five Minutes Daily with Luther: Daily Lessons from the Writings of Martin Luther, by John Theodore Mueller.)

Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, . . . Jude 3-4a.

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This is as much as to say: I need to write to you so that I may remind and admonish you how you should proceed and persevere in the faith, which has already previously been preached to you. In other words, it is necessary that I should admonish you to be on your guard and remain in the right way. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation. For this reason I will remind you (he says) that you might remain in the faith which you have heard, because there is even now a wavering, and already there have come preachers who establish other doctrines besides faith, by which people are led away gently and unsuspectingly from the true way. This we now well understand, since we know that no one is righteous and justified by works of his own, but only through faith in Christ, to the end that he must rely on the work of Christ as his chief good. Wherever anyone secretly introduces anything else other than this doctrine of faith in regard to such orders and works, he leads the people astray, so that they will be condemned along with him.

In vain would boasting reason find
The path to happiness and God;
Her weak directions leave the mind
Bewildered in a doubtful road.

The various forms that men devise,
To shake my faith with treacherous art,
I scorn as vanity and lies,
And bind Thy Gospel to my heart.