This accusation continues to roll around. Here, for example, or here.
The source of the trouble is this quotation from the Table Talks:
“Christ was an adulterer for the first time with the woman at the well, for it was said, ‘Nobody knows what he’s doing with her’ [John 4:27]. Again [he was an adulterer] with Magdalene, and still again with the adulterous woman in John 8 [:2–11], whom he let off so easily. So the good Christ had to become an adulterer before he died.”
Luther’s Work, 54:154
The accusers of Luther imagine that he was saying that Jesus committed a sinful act of fornication with the woman at the well. This fits into the broader anti-Luther rhetoric which understands the Reformation as motivated by Luther’s out-of-control libido.
I talk about this in this video:
Here’s the argument unfolded…
1
The most basic reading of Luther demonstrates his respect for the 6th Commandment.
Consider the Small Catechism:
The Sixth Commandment: You shall not commit adultery.
Martin Luther, Small Catechism (link)
What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we lead a sexually pure and decent life in what we say and do, and husband and wife love and honor each other.
Or the Large Catechism:
But because among us there is such a shameful mess and the very dregs of all vice and lewdness, this commandment is directed also against all manner of unchastity, whatever it may be called; and not only is the external act forbidden, but also every kind of cause, incitement, and means, so that the heart, the lips, and the whole body may be chaste and afford no opportunity, help, or persuasion to inchastity.
Martin Luther, Large Catechism, Ten Commandments, 202-203 (link)
2
The moral perfection of Jesus is bound up to the doctrine of justification. It is Jesus’ perfect keep of the law of God that He gives to us in the Gospel. If Jesus commits sin He cannot be the Savior. This, in large part, is the drama of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness.
And Christ surely felt this temptation, for he was no stock nor stone; although he was and remained pure and without sin, as we cannot do.
Sermon for Invocavit (link)
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Luther clearly taught that Jesus was without sin.
Christ… is entirely without sin and the Head of the righteous, who owes no debt to the Law at all and needs no instruction as to what He should do, who already does all things even more abundantly than the Law directs.
Luhter’s Works 27.231
Or…
Since my Lord served me even though He was not obliged to do so, and since He sacrificed life and limb for me, why would I refuse to serve Him in return? He was completely pure and without sin. Yet He humbled Himself so deeply, shed His blood for me, and died to blot out my sins.
Luther’s Works 30.85
Or…
No one fulfills the Law except Christ. For no living man is justified before God, because his heart is always weak toward the good and prone toward evil. He does not love righteousness without in some way also loving iniquity. But Christ “loves righteousness and hates wickedness” (Ps. 45:7).
Luther’s Works 25.247
4
What, then, could Luther possibly be talking about when he refers to Jesus becoming an adulterer?
There are two answers, and they belong together.
4.1
First, in a more sexually careful culture than our own, for a man and a woman to be alone together is itself a scandalous act.
In our reading of the Gospels we see that there were three times when Jesus was alone with women, and all three of these women where adulteresses. These are the three instances Luther mentions in the Table Talk quotation: the Samaritan woman at the well, Mary Magdelene, and the woman caught in adultery. Luther refers to this when he notes the disciples’ astonishment when they see Jesus talking to the woman (see John 4:27).
4.2
But, second, there is a more important theological point.
Paul writes:
For our sake He [God the Father] made Him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
2 Corinthians 5:21
Jesus was made sin for us. Jesus is the Lamb of God who carries away the sin of the world (John 1:29).
Jesus became a curse.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.”
Galatians 3:13
This understanding of the imputation of sin to the perfect Christ and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to sinners is the theological clarity that Luther was able to recover.
Consider, then, Luther’s comments on Galatians 3:13:
Paul guarded his words carefully and spoke precisely. And here again a distinction must be made; Paul’s words clearly show this. For he does not say that Christ became a curse on His own account, but that He became a curse “for us.” Thus the whole emphasis is on the phrase “for us.” For Christ is innocent so far as His own Person is concerned; therefore He should not have been hanged from the tree. But because, according to the Law, every thief should have been hanged, therefore, according to the Law of Moses, Christ Himself should have been hanged; for He bore the person of a sinner and a thief—and not of one but of all sinners and thieves. For we are sinners and thieves, and therefore we are worthy of death and eternal damnation. But Christ took all our sins upon Himself, and for them He died on the cross. Therefore it was appropriate for Him to become a thief and, as Isaiah says (53:12), to be “numbered among the thieves.”
And all the prophets saw this, that Christ was to become the greatest thief, murderer, adulterer, robber, desecrator, blasphemer, etc., there has ever been anywhere in the world. He is not acting in His own Person now. Now He is not the Son of God, born of the Virgin. But He is a sinner, who has and bears the sin of Paul, the former blasphemer, persecutor, and assaulter; of Peter, who denied Christ; of David, who was an adulterer and a murderer, and who caused the Gentiles to blaspheme the name of the Lord (Rom. 2:24). In short, He has and bears all the sins of all men in His body—not in the sense that He has committed them but in the sense that He took these sins, committed by us, upon His own body, in order to make satisfaction for them with His own blood.
Martin Luther, On Galatians 3:13 (Luther’s Works 26:277)
This should settle it. Jesus is bearing our sins, our shame, our death, the accusations of the Law, not according to His Person (He never sinned) but according to His office (where He was accused of being a sinner and carried our sins for us).
This is the heart of the Gospel. We are sinners, guilty of breaking the law because we have broken the law. Christ is righteous, perfectly holy in every way. But our sin and guilt is imputed to Him, and His righteousness and perfection is imputed to us. God be praised!
Jesus is willing to be numbered with transgressors, to be numbered with us, to save us from the wrath of God.
It is, of course, true that Christ is the purest of persons; but this is not the place to stop. For you do not yet have Christ, even though you know that He is God and man. You truly have Him only when you believe that this altogether pure and innocent Person has been granted to you by the Father as your High Priest and Redeemer, yes, as your Slave. Putting off His innocence and holiness and putting on your sinful person, He bore your sin, death, and curse; He became a sacrifice and a curse for you, in order thus to set you free from the curse of the Law.
Martin Luther, On Galatians 3:13 (Luther’s Works 27.288)
Far from blasphemy, Luther’s understanding of the death of Jesus pushes us the profound comfort of the Gospel, that in Christ we become the righteousness of God.
PrBW
5
Here’s the entirety of Luther’s commentary on Galatians 3:13. This is glorious stuff:
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written: Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree.
Here again Jerome and the sophists who followed him are distressed. They most miserably lacerate this passage, which is filled to overflowing with comfort; and they strive anxiously with what they think is godly zeal not to permit the insult of being called a curse or an execration to come to Christ. Therefore they evade this statement this way: “Paul was not speaking in earnest here.” Thus they said, in a way that was as reprehensible as it was wicked, that Scripture, whose passages do not contradict themselves, does contradict itself in Paul. They show this as follows: “The statement from Moses that Paul cites here does not speak about Christ. In addition, the universal expression ‘everyone’ that Paul has is not added in Moses. Furthermore, Paul omits the phrase ‘by God,’ which occurs in Moses. In short, it is obvious enough that Moses is speaking about a criminal or a thief who has deserved the cross by his wicked deeds, as Scripture testifies clearly in Deut. 21:22–23.” Therefore they ask how this sentence can be applied to Christ, that He is accursed by God and hanged on a tree, since He is not a criminal or a thief but righteous and holy. Perhaps this may impress the inexperienced; for they suppose that the sophists are speaking in a way that is not only subtle but also very pious, and that they are defending the honor of Christ and are religiously admonishing all Christians not to suppose wickedly that Christ was a curse. Therefore it must be determined what Paul’s intent and meaning are.
Paul guarded his words carefully and spoke precisely. And here again a distinction must be made; Paul’s words clearly show this. For he does not say that Christ became a curse on His own account, but that He became a curse “for us.” Thus the whole emphasis is on the phrase “for us.” For Christ is innocent so far as His own Person is concerned; therefore He should not have been hanged from the tree. But because, according to the Law, every thief should have been hanged, therefore, according to the Law of Moses, Christ Himself should have been hanged; for He bore the person of a sinner and a thief—and not of one but of all sinners and thieves. For we are sinners and thieves, and therefore we are worthy of death and eternal damnation. But Christ took all our sins upon Himself, and for them He died on the cross. Therefore it was appropriate for Him to become a thief and, as Isaiah says (53:12), to be “numbered among the thieves.”
And all the prophets saw this, that Christ was to become the greatest thief, murderer, adulterer, robber, desecrator, blasphemer, etc., there has ever been anywhere in the world. He is not acting in His own Person now. Now He is not the Son of God, born of the Virgin. But He is a sinner, who has and bears the sin of Paul, the former blasphemer, persecutor, and assaulter; of Peter, who denied Christ; of David, who was an adulterer and a murderer, and who caused the Gentiles to blaspheme the name of the Lord (Rom. 2:24). In short, He has and bears all the sins of all men in His body—not in the sense that He has committed them but in the sense that He took these sins, committed by us, upon His own body, in order to make satisfaction for them with His own blood. Therefore this general Law of Moses included Him, although He was innocent so far as His own Person was concerned; for it found Him among sinners and thieves. Thus a magistrate regards someone as a criminal and punishes him if he catches him among thieves, even though the man has never committed anything evil or worthy of death. Christ was not only found among sinners; but of His own free will and by the will of the Father He wanted to be an associate of sinners, having assumed the flesh and blood of those who were sinners and thieves and who were immersed in all sorts of sin. Therefore when the Law found Him among thieves, it condemned and executed Him as a thief.
This knowledge of Christ and most delightful comfort, that Christ became a curse for us to set us free from the curse of the Law—of this the sophists deprive us when they segregate Christ from sins and from sinners and set Him forth to us only as an example to be imitated. In this way they make Christ not only useless to us but also a judge and a tyrant who is angry because of our sins and who damns sinners. But just as Christ is wrapped up in our flesh and blood, so we must wrap Him and know Him to be wrapped up in our sins, our curse, our death, and everything evil.
“But it is highly absurd and insulting to call the Son of God a sinner and a curse!” If you want to deny that He is a sinner and a curse, then deny also that He suffered, was crucified, and died. For it is no less absurd to say, as our Creed confesses and prays, that the Son of God was crucified and underwent the torments of sin and death than it is to say that He is a sinner or a curse. But if it is not absurd to confess and believe that Christ was crucified among thieves, then it is not absurd to say as well that He was a curse and a sinner of sinners. Surely these words of Paul are not without purpose: “Christ became a curse for us” and “For our sake God made Christ to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).
In the same way John the Baptist called Christ “the Lamb of God” (John 1:29). He is, of course, innocent, because He is the Lamb of God without spot or blemish. But because He bears the sins of the world, His innocence is pressed down with the sins and the guilt of the entire world. Whatever sins I, you, and all of us have committed or may commit in the future, they are as much Christ’s own as if He Himself had committed them. In short, our sin must be Christ’s own sin, or we shall perish eternally. The wicked sophists have obscured this true knowledge of Christ which Paul and the prophets have handed down to us.
Is. 53:6 speaks the same way about Christ. It says: “God has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” These words must not be diluted but must be left in their precise and serious sense. For God is not joking in the words of the prophet; He is speaking seriously and out of great love, namely, that this Lamb of God, Christ, should bear the iniquity of us all. But what does it mean to “bear”? The sophists reply: “To be punished.” Good. But why is Christ punished? Is it not because He has sin and bears sin? That Christ has sin is the testimony of the Holy Spirit in the Psalms. Thus in Ps. 40:12 we read: “My iniquities have overtaken Me”; in Ps. 41:4: “I said: ‘O Lord, be gracious to Me; heal Me, for I have sinned against Thee!’ ”; and in Ps. 69:5: “O God, Thou knowest My folly; the wrongs I have done are not hidden from Thee.” In these psalms the Holy Spirit is speaking in the Person of Christ and testifying in clear words that He has sinned or has sins. These testimonies of the psalms are not the words of an innocent one; they are the words of the suffering Christ, who undertook to bear the person of all sinners and therefore was made guilty of the sins of the entire world.
Therefore Christ not only was crucified and died, but by divine love sin was laid upon Him. When sin was laid upon Him, the Law came and said: “Let every sinner die! And therefore, Christ, if You want to reply that You are guilty and that You bear the punishment, you must bear the sin and the curse as well.” Therefore Paul correctly applies to Christ this general Law from Moses: “Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree.” Christ hung on a tree; therefore Christ is a curse of God.
And this is our highest comfort, to clothe and wrap Christ this way in my sins, your sins, and the sins of the entire world, and in this way to behold Him bearing all our sins. When He is beheld this way, He easily removes all the fanatical opinions of our opponents about justification by works.
For the papists dream about a kind of faith “formed by love.” Through this they want to remove sins and be justified. This is clearly to unwrap Christ and to unclothe Him from our sins, to make Him innocent, to burden and overwhelm ourselves with our own sins, and to behold them, not in Christ but in ourselves. This is to abolish Christ and make Him useless. For if it is true that we abolish sins by the works of the Law and by love, then Christ does not take them away, but we do. But if He is truly the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, who became a curse for us, and who was wrapped in our sins, it necessarily follows that we cannot be justified and take away sins through love. For God has laid our sins, not upon us but upon Christ, His Son. If they are taken away by Him, then they cannot be taken away by us. All Scripture says this, and we confess and pray the same thing in the Creed when we say: “I believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who suffered, was crucified, and died for us.”
This is the most joyous of all doctrines and the one that contains the most comfort. It teaches that we have the indescribable and inestimable mercy and love of God. When the merciful Father saw that we were being oppressed through the Law, that we were being held under a curse, and that we could not be liberated from it by anything, He sent His Son into the world, heaped all the sins of all men upon Him, and said to Him: “Be Peter the denier; Paul the persecutor, blasphemer, and assaulter; David the adulterer; the sinner who ate the apple in Paradise; the thief on the cross. In short, be the person of all men, the one who has committed the sins of all men. And see to it that You pay and make satisfaction for them.” Now the Law comes and says: “I find Him a sinner, who takes upon Himself the sins of all men. I do not see any other sins than those in Him. Therefore let Him die on the cross!” And so it attacks Him and kills Him. By this deed the whole world is purged and expiated from all sins, and thus it is set free from death and from every evil. But when sin and death have been abolished by this one man, God does not want to see anything else in the whole world, especially if it were to believe, except sheer cleansing and righteousness. And if any remnants of sin were to remain, still for the sake of Christ, the shining Sun, God would not notice them.
This is how we must magnify the doctrine of Christian righteousness in opposition to the righteousness of the Law and of works, even though there is no voice or eloquence that can properly understand, much less express, its greatness. Therefore the argument that Paul presents here is the most powerful and the highest of all against all the righteousness of the flesh; for it contains this invincible and irrefutable antithesis: If the sins of the entire world are on that one man, Jesus Christ, then they are not on the world. But if they are not on Him, then they are still on the world. Again, if Christ Himself is made guilty of all the sins that we have all committed, then we are absolved from all sins, not through ourselves or through our own works or merits but through Him. But if He is innocent and does not carry our sins, then we carry them and shall die and be damned in them. “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen.” (1 Cor. 15:57.)
Now let us see how two such extremely contrary things come together in this Person. Not only my sins and yours, but the sins of the entire world, past, present, and future, attack Him, try to damn Him, and do in fact damn Him. But because in the same Person, who is the highest, the greatest, and the only sinner, there is also eternal and invincible righteousness, therefore these two converge: the highest, the greatest, and the only sin; and the highest, the greatest, and the only righteousness. Here one of them must yield and be conquered, since they come together and collide with such a powerful impact. Thus the sin of the entire world attacks righteousness with the greatest possible impact and fury. What happens? Righteousness is eternal, immortal, and invincible. Sin, too, is a very powerful and cruel tyrant, dominating and ruling over the whole world, capturing and enslaving all men. In short, sin is a great and powerful god who devours the whole human race, all the learned, holy, powerful, wise, and unlearned men. He, I say, attacks Christ and wants to devour Him as he has devoured all the rest. But he does not see that He is a Person of invincible and eternal righteousness.
In this duel, therefore, it is necessary for sin to be conquered and killed, and for righteousness to prevail and live. Thus in Christ all sin is conquered, killed, and buried; and righteousness remains the victor and the ruler eternally.
Thus also death, which is the almighty empress of the entire world, killing kings, princes, and all men in general, clashes against life with full force and is about to conquer it and swallow it; and what it attempts, it accomplishes. But because life was immortal, it emerged victorious when it had been conquered, conquering and killing death in turn. About this wondrous duel the church beautifully sings: “It was a great and dreadful strife when death with life contended.” The Prince of life, who died, is alive and reigns. Through Christ, therefore, death is conquered and abolished in the whole world, so that now it is nothing but a picture of death. Now that its sting is lost, it can no longer harm believers in Christ, who has become the death of death, as Hosea sings (13:14): “O death, I shall be your death!”
Thus the curse, which is divine wrath against the whole world, has the same conflict with the blessing, that is, with the eternal grace and mercy of God in Christ. Therefore the curse clashes with the blessing and wants to damn it and annihilate it. But it cannot. For the blessing is divine and eternal, and therefore the curse must yield to it. For if the blessing in Christ could be conquered, then God Himself would be conquered. But this is impossible. Therefore Christ, who is the divine Power, Righteousness, Blessing, Grace, and Life, conquers and destroys these monsters—sin, death, and the curse—without weapons or battle, in His own body and in Himself, as Paul enjoys saying (Col. 2:15): “He disarmed the principalities and powers, triumphing over them in Him.” Therefore they can no longer harm the believers.
This circumstance, “in Himself,” makes the duel more amazing and outstanding; for it shows that such great things were to be achieved in the one and only Person of Christ—namely, that the curse, sin, and death were to be destroyed, and that the blessing, righteousness, and life were to replace them—and that through Him the whole creation was to be renewed. If you look at this Person, therefore, you see sin, death, the wrath of God, hell, the devil, and all evils conquered and put to death. To the extent that Christ rules by His grace in the hearts of the faithful, there is no sin or death or curse. But where Christ is not known, there these things remain. And so all who do not believe lack this blessing and this victory. “For this,” as John says, “is our victory, faith” (1 John 5:4).
This is the chief doctrine of the Christian faith. The sophists have completely obliterated it, and today the fanatics are obscuring it once more. Here you see how necessary it is to believe and confess the doctrine of the divinity of Christ. When Arius denied this, it was necessary also for him to deny the doctrine of redemption. For to conquer the sin of the world, death, the curse, and the wrath of God in Himself—this is the work, not of any creature but of the divine power. Therefore it was necessary that He who was to conquer these in Himself should be true God by nature. For in opposition to this mighty power—sin, death, and the curse—which of itself reigns in the whole world and in the entire creation, it is necessary to set an even higher power, which cannot be found and does not exist apart from the divine power.
Therefore to abolish sin, to destroy death, to remove the curse in Himself, to grant righteousness, to bring life to light (2 Tim. 1:10), and to bring the blessing in Himself, that is, to annihilate these things and to create those—all these are works solely of the divine power. Since Scripture attributes all these to Christ, therefore He Himself is Life, Righteousness, and Blessing, that is, God by nature and in essence. Hence those who deny the divinity of Christ lose all Christianity and become Gentiles and Turks through and through.
As I often warn, therefore, the doctrine of justification must be learned diligently. For in it are included all the other doctrines of our faith; and if it is sound, all the others are sound as well. Therefore when we teach that men are justified through Christ and that Christ is the Victor over sin, death, and the eternal curse, we are testifying at the same time that He is God by nature.
From this it is evident enough how horribly blind and wicked the papists were when they taught that these fierce and mighty tyrants—sin, death, and the curse—who swallow up the whole human race, are to be conquered, not by the righteousness of the divine Law (which, even though it is just, good, and holy, cannot do anything but subject one to a curse) but by the righteousness of human works, such as fasts, pilgrimages, rosaries, vows, etc. But, I ask you, who has ever been found who conquered sin, death, etc., if he was equipped with this armor? In Eph. 6:13 ff. Paul describes a far different armor to be used against these savage beasts. By putting us, naked and without the armor of God, up against these invincible and almighty tyrants, these blind men and leaders of the blind (Matt. 15:14) have not only handed us over to them to be devoured but have also made us ten times greater and worse sinners than murderers or harlots. For it belongs exclusively to the divine power to destroy sin and abolish death, to create righteousness and grant life.
This divine power they have attributed to our own works, saying: “If you do this or that work, you will conquer sin, death, and the wrath of God.” In this way they have made us true God by nature! Here the papists, under the Christian name, have shown themselves to be seven times greater idolaters than the Gentiles. What happens to them is what happens to the sow, which “is washed only to wallow in the mire” (2 Peter 2:22). And, as Christ says (Luke 11:24–26), after a man has fallen from faith, the evil spirit returns to the house from which he was expelled and brings along seven other spirits more evil than himself and dwells there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.
With gratitude and with a sure confidence, therefore, let us accept this doctrine, so sweet and so filled with comfort, which teaches that Christ became a curse for us, that is, a sinner worthy of the wrath of God; that He clothed Himself in our person, laid our sins upon His own shoulders, and said: “I have committed the sins that all men have committed.”
Therefore He truly became accursed according to the Law, not for Himself but, as Paul says, ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν. For unless He had taken upon Himself my sins, your sins, and the sins of the entire world, the Law would have had no right over Him, since it condemns only sinners and holds only them under a curse. Therefore He could neither have become a curse nor have died, since the cause of the curse and of death is sin, of which He was innocent. But because He took upon Himself our sins, not by compulsion but of His own free will, it was right for Him to bear the punishment and the wrath of God—not for His own Person, which was righteous and invincible and therefore could not become guilty, but for our person.
By this fortunate exchange with us He took upon Himself our sinful person and granted us His innocent and victorious Person. Clothed and dressed in this, we are freed from the curse of the Law, because Christ Himself voluntarily became a curse for us, saying: “For My own Person of humanity and divinity I am blessed, and I am in need of nothing whatever. But I shall empty Myself (Phil. 2:7); I shall assume your clothing and mask; and in this I shall walk about and suffer death, in order to set you free from death.” Therefore when, inside our mask, He was carrying the sin of the whole world, He was captured, He suffered, He was crucified, He died; and for us He became a curse. But because He was a divine and eternal Person, it was impossible for death to hold Him.
Therefore He arose from death on the third day, and now He lives eternally; nor can sin, death, and our mask be found in Him any longer; but there is sheer righteousness, life, and eternal blessing.
We must look at this image and take hold of it with a firm faith. He who does this has the innocence and the victory of Christ, no matter how great a sinner he is. But this cannot be grasped by loving will; it can be grasped only by reason illumined by faith. Therefore we are justified by faith alone, because faith alone grasps this victory of Christ. To the extent that you believe this, to that extent you have it. If you believe that sin, death, and the curse have been abolished, they have been abolished, because Christ conquered and overcame them in Himself; and He wants us to believe that just as in His Person there is no longer the mask of the sinner or any vestige of death, so this is no longer in our person, since He has done everything for us.
Therefore if sin makes you anxious, and if death terrifies you, just think that this is an empty specter and an illusion of the devil—which is what it surely is. For in fact there is no sin any longer, no curse, no death, and no devil, because Christ has conquered and abolished all these. Accordingly, the victory of Christ is utterly certain; the defects lie not in the fact itself, which is completely true, but in our incredulity. It is difficult for reason to believe such inestimable blessings. In addition, the devil and the sectarians—the former with his flaming darts (Eph. 6:16), the latter with their perverse and wicked doctrine—are bent on this one thing: to obscure this doctrine and take it away from us. It is above all for this doctrine, on which we insist so diligently, that we bear the hate and persecution of Satan and of the world. For Satan feels the power and the results of this doctrine.
Now that Christ reigns, there is in fact no more sin, death, or curse—this we confess every day in the Apostles’ Creed when we say: “I believe in the holy church.” This is plainly nothing else than if we were to say: “I believe that there is no sin and no death in the church. For believers in Christ are not sinners and are not sentenced to death but are altogether holy and righteous, lords over sin and death who live eternally.” But it is faith alone that discerns this, because we say: “I believe in the holy church.” If you consult your reason and your eyes, you will judge differently. For in devout people you will see many things that offend you; you will see them fall now and again, see them sin, or be weak in faith, or be troubled by a bad temper, envy, or other evil emotions. “Therefore the church is not holy.” I deny the conclusion that you draw. If I look at my own person or at that of my neighbor, the church will never be holy. But if I look at Christ, who is the Propitiator and Cleanser of the church, then it is completely holy; for He bore the sins of the entire world.
Therefore where sins are noticed and felt, there they really are not present. For, according to the theology of Paul, there is no more sin, no more death, and no more curse in the world, but only in Christ, who is the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, and who became a curse in order to set us free from the curse. On the other hand, according to philosophy and reason, sin, death, etc., are not present anywhere except in the world, in the flesh, and in sinners. For the theology of the sophists is unable to consider sin any other way except metaphysically, that is: “A quality clings to a substance or a subject. Therefore just as color clings to a wall, so sin clings to the world, to the flesh, or to the conscience. Therefore it must be washed away by some opposing motivations, namely, by love.” But the true theology teaches that there is no more sin in the world, because Christ, on whom, according to Is. 53:6, the Father has laid the sins of the entire world, has conquered, destroyed, and killed it in His own body. Having died to sin once, He has truly been raised from the dead and will not die any more (Rom. 6:9). Therefore wherever there is faith in Christ, there sin has in fact been abolished, put to death, and buried. But where there is no faith in Christ, there sin remains. And although there are still remnants of sin in the saints because they do not believe perfectly, nevertheless these remnants are dead; for on account of faith in Christ they are not imputed.
Therefore this is an important and powerful argument that Paul is presenting here against the righteousness of works: “Neither the Law nor works redeem from the curse, but only Christ.” Therefore I implore you for God’s sake to distinguish Christ from the Law and to pay diligent attention to how Paul is speaking and to what he is saying. “It is necessary,” he says, “that all who do not keep the Law be under a curse.” But no one keeps the Law. Therefore the first proposition is true, namely, that all men are under a curse. Then he adds a second proposition: “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us.” Therefore the Law and works do not redeem from the curse. On the contrary, they drag us down and subject us to the curse. Therefore love, which, according to the sophists, “informs” faith, not only does not redeem from the curse but forces and wraps us into it even more.
But just as Christ is something different from the Law and from the works of the Law, so the redemption of Christ is altogether different from my merit based on works of the Law; for it had to be Christ Himself who redeemed us from the curse of the Law. Therefore whoever does not take hold of Christ by faith remains under the curse. Not even the sophists are so stupid as to say that Christ is our work or our love, for Christ is something altogether different from a work that we do. No papist, no matter how insane he is, will have the audacity to say that the alms he grants to someone in need or the obedience that a monk yields is a Christ. For Christ is God and man, “conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, etc.” Now about Him Paul says that He became a curse for us to redeem us from the curse of the Law. Therefore the Law, works, love, vows, etc., do not redeem; they only wrap one in the curse and make it even heavier. Therefore the more we have performed works, the less able we are to know and to grasp Christ.
But Christ is grasped, not by the Law or by works but by a reason or an intellect that has been illumined by faith. And this grasping of Christ through faith is truly the “speculative life,” about which the sophists chatter a great deal without knowing what they are saying. The speculation by which Christ is grasped is not the foolish imagination of the sophists and monks about marvelous things beyond them; it is a theological, faithful, and divine consideration of the serpent hanging from the pole, that is, of Christ hanging on the cross for my sins, for your sins, and for the sins of the entire world (John 3:14–15). Hence it is evident that faith alone justifies. But once we have been justified by faith, we enter the active life. In this way the sophists could have made a correct distinction between the contemplative and the active life, if they had called the former Gospel and the latter Law; that is, if they had taught that the speculative life should be included and directed by the Word of God and that in it nothing else is to be looked at except the Word of the Gospel, but that the active life should be sought from the Law, which does not grasp Christ but exercises itself in works of love toward one’s neighbor.
And so this text is clear, that all men, even the apostles or prophets or patriarchs, would have remained under the curse if Christ had not put Himself in opposition to sin, death, the curse of the Law, and the wrath and judgment of God, and if He had not overcome them in His own body; for those savage monsters could not be overcome by any human power. Now Christ is not the Law, He is not a work of the Law, He is not an “elicited act”; but He is a divine and human Person who took sin, the condemnation of the Law, and death upon Himself, not for Himself but for us. Therefore the whole emphasis is on the phrase ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν.
Therefore we should not imagine Christ as an innocent and private person who is holy and righteous only for Himself; this is what the sophists and nearly all the fathers, Jerome and others, have done. It is, of course, true that Christ is the purest of persons; but this is not the place to stop. For you do not yet have Christ, even though you know that He is God and man. You truly have Him only when you believe that this altogether pure and innocent Person has been granted to you by the Father as your High Priest and Redeemer, yes, as your Slave. Putting off His innocence and holiness and putting on your sinful person, He bore your sin, death, and curse; He became a sacrifice and a curse for you, in order thus to set you free from the curse of the Law.
You see, then, with what a completely apostolic spirit Paul treats this serious argument about the blessing and the curse, when he not only subjects Christ to the curse but even says that He became a curse. Thus he calls Him “sin” in 2 Cor. 5:21 when he says: “For our sake God made Him to be sin who knew no sin.” Although these statements could be correctly expounded by saying that Christ became a “curse,” that is, a sacrifice for the curse, or “sin,” that is, a sacrifice for sin; nevertheless, it is more pleasing if the precise meaning of the terms is preserved for the sake of greater emphasis. For when a sinner really comes to a knowledge of himself, he feels himself to be a sinner not only concretely or adjectivally but abstractly and substantively. That is, he seems to himself to be not only miserable but misery itself; not only a sinner, and an accursed one, but sin and the curse itself. Thus in Latin, when we want a strong way to say that someone is a criminal, we call him a “crime.” It is something awful to bear sin, the wrath of God, the curse, and death. Therefore a man who feels these things in earnest really becomes sin, death, and the curse itself.
Thus Paul treats this topic in a truly apostolic way, because no sophist or legalist or Jew or fanatic or anyone else speaks this way. Who would dare quote this passage from Moses, “Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree,” and apply it to Christ Himself? By the same principle by which Paul applied this sentence, “Cursed be everyone, etc.,” to Christ, we can apply not only all of Deut. 27 but all collected curses of the Mosaic Law to Christ. For just as Christ for His own Person is innocent of this general Law, so He is of all others. And just as for us He violated this general Law and was hanged on the tree as a criminal, a blasphemer, a parricide, and a traitor, so He violated all other laws as well. For all the curses of the Law were gathered together in Him, and therefore He bore and sustained them in His own body for us. Consequently, He was not only accursed; but He became a curse for us.
This is really the apostolic way to interpret the Scriptures. For without the Holy Spirit a man cannot speak this way; that is, he cannot include the entire Law in one word and gather it all at once in Christ, and, on the other hand, include all the promises of Scripture and say that these are fulfilled in Christ once and for all. Therefore this argument is apostolic and very powerful, based as it is, not on one passage in the Law but on all the laws; and Paul relies heavily on it.
You see here with what diligence Paul read the Scriptures and how carefully he weighed and considered the individual words of this passage (Gen. 22:18): “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” First he argues as follows from the term “bless”: “If the blessing is to come upon all nations, then all nations are under the curse—even the Jews, who have the Law of Moses.” And he quotes evidence from Scripture by which he proves that the Jews, who are under the Law, are under the curse: “Cursed be everyone who does not abide, etc.”
Next Paul diligently weighs the words “all nations,” on the basis of which he argues as follows: “The blessing pertains not only to the Jews but also to all the nations of the entire world. But if it pertains to all nations, it is impossible for it to come through the Law of Moses, since no nations except the Jews had this. Moreover, although the Jews had the Law, still the blessing did not come to them through it; on the contrary, the more they tried to keep it, the more subject they became to the curse of the Law. Therefore there has to be another righteousness, one that far surpasses the righteousness of the Law; through it the blessing comes not only to the Jews but also to all nations in the whole world.”
Finally Paul explains the phrase “in your offspring” as follows: “A certain man was to be born of the offspring of Abraham. I mean Christ, through whom the blessing was to come upon all nations. Since Christ was to bless all nations, whom He found to be accursed, He Himself had to remove the curse from them. But He could not remove it through the Law, because the curse is only increased by this. So what did He do? He attached Himself to those who were accursed, assuming their flesh and blood; and thus He interposed Himself as the Mediator between God and men. He said: ‘Although I am flesh and blood and live among those who are accursed, nevertheless I am the blessed One through whom all men are to be blessed.’ Thus He joined God and man in one Person. And being joined with us who were accursed, He became a curse for us; and He concealed His blessing in our sin, death, and curse, which condemned and killed Him. But because He was the Son of God, He could not be held by them. He conquered them and triumphed over them. He took along with Him whatever clung to the flesh that He had assumed for our sake. Therefore all who cling to this flesh are blessed and are delivered from the curse.”
Undoubtedly Paul treated these things at great length in the presence of the Galatians. For this is the proper task of the apostles: to illuminate the work and the glory of Christ and to strengthen and comfort troubled consciences. For the rest, when those who know no other righteousness than that of the Law fail to hear what one ought to do or ought not to do, but hear only that Christ, the Son of God, has assumed our flesh and joined Himself to the accursed in order to bless all nations this way—they either understand none of this or understand it in a purely physical way. They are preoccupied with other thoughts and with fantastic imaginings. Therefore these things are nothing but riddles to them. Even for us, who have the first fruits of the Spirit (Rom. 8:23), it is impossible to understand and to believe fully, because all this is so contradictory to human reason.
In short, all evils were to flood over us, as they will flood over the wicked eternally. But Christ, who became guilty of all laws, curses, sins, and evils for us, stepped in between; He took upon Himself and abolished all our evils, which were supposed to oppress and torment us eternally. They overwhelmed Him once, for a brief time, and flooded in over His head, as in Ps. 88:7 and 16 the prophet laments in Christ’s name when he says: “Thy wrath lies heavy upon Me, and Thou dost overwhelm Me with all Thy waves” and: “Thy wrath has swept over Me; Thy dread assaults destroy Me.” Being delivered in this way from these eternal terrors and torments by Christ, we shall enjoy eternal and indescribable peace and joy, provided that we believe this.
These are the adorable mysteries of Scripture, the true cabala, which even Moses disclosed rather obscurely in a few places; which the prophets and apostles knew and handed down from hand to hand to their posterity; and in which, though it was still in the future, the prophets rejoiced more than we do, even though it has now been revealed.
Martin Luther, On Galatians 3:13 (Luther’s Works 27.276-291)
EDIT: As I find more related quotations, I’ll drop them here.
But in what manner or way has Christ redeemed us? The manner was as follows: He was born under the Law. When Christ came, He found us all captive under guardians and trustees, that is, confined and constrained under the Law. What did He do? He Himself is Lord of the Law; therefore the Law has no jurisdiction over Him and cannot accuse Him, because He is the Son of God. He who was not under the Law subjected Himself voluntarily to the Law. The Law did everything to Him that it did to us. It accused us and terrified us. It subjected us to sin, death, and the wrath of God; and it condemned us with its judgment. And it had a right to do all this, for we have all sinned. But Christ “committed no sin, and no guile was found on His lips” (1 Peter 2:22). Therefore he owed nothing to the Law. And yet against Him—so holy, righteous, and blessed—the Law raged as much as it does against us accursed and condemned sinners, and even more fiercely. It accused Him of blasphemy and sedition; it found Him guilty in the sight of God of all the sins of the entire world; finally it so saddened and frightened Him that He sweat blood (Luke 22:44); and eventually it sentenced Him to death, even death on a cross (Phil. 2:8).
Martin Luther, Great Galatians 4:4 (LW 26.369-370), added 12/29/2019, BW
