Five Minutes a Day with Luther - 05-03-2017

[Five Minutes with Luther]

FIVE MINUTES A DAY WITH LUTHER

** Now available in book form: http://lcmssermons.com/about5mins.php **


May 3

Gal 5:7 You were running well; who hindered you from obeying
the truth?

* * *

Here Paul uses a new figure of speech, in comparing the Christian
life to a course or race. For among the Hebrews to run or to
walk signifies the same as to live or to be active. The
teachers then run when they teach purely, and the hearers or
learners run when they receive the Word with joy, and when the
fruits of the Spirit follow. That which seems to us to be very
slow and scarcely to creep, runs swiftly in God's sight. Again,
that which is to us nothing else but sorrow, mourning, and death,
is before God, joy, mirth, and true happiness. Therefore Christ
says: "Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted"
(Matt 5:4). "Blessed are you who weep now: for you shall laugh"
(Luke 6:21). Paul calls them 'hindered' in this course who fall
away from faith and grace to the Law and works, as it happened to
the Galatians, being misled by the false apostles. These false
apostles brought the Galatians, who ran well at the beginning,
to believe that they erred and went very slowly forward when
Paul was their teacher, and so bewitched them with their false
persuasion, then afterwards, when they had been seduced and
fallen clean away from the truth, they thought themselves to be
in a happy state and that they ran very well. Therefore, Paul
is wont to say that falling away in doctrine comes not from man,
but from the devil, and is perilous. For they that continue in
error are so far from acknowledging their sin, that they
maintain them instead to be high righteousness.

Run the straight race
Through God's good grace,
Lift up thine eyes, and seek His face:
Life with its way before us lies,
Christ is the path, and Christ the prize.

---
Cuda.
aka Pastor Robin Fish
To be Lutheran is to be Christian -- and Vice Versa!

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These daily readings are now available in book form;
read about it at http://lcmssermons.com/about5mins.php.