How we feel like doing loving things this time of year...
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The Christmas spirit. How we feel like doing loving things this time of year. No one has to tell us to give presents or to do something for charity. Good just seems to flow. The lesson captures these sentiments in referring to our being zealous for good works (v. 14). Martin Luther well articulates the reason Christians, at our best, have this zeal. It is the zeal that comes from living with Jesus, like married couples have zeal to please each other.
It further follows from this that a Christian man living in this faith has no need of a teacher of good works. We may see this in an everyday example. When a husband and wife really love one another, have pleasure in each other, and thoroughly believe in their love, who teaches them how they are to behave one to another, what they are to do or to do, say or not to say, what they are to think?
Sure, there will be worldly passions and temptations to confront (v. 12). But our marriage to Jesus, Luther says, entails these passions and temptations are no more threatening to faith then being in a bar must inevitably lead to getting drunk or being among a bad crowd entails you will become a murderer (Complete Sermons, Vol. 3/2, p. 129).
It further follows from this that a Christian man living in this faith has no need of a teacher of good works. We may see this in an everyday example. When a husband and wife really love one another, have pleasure in each other, and thoroughly believe in their love, who teaches them how they are to behave one to another, what they are to do or to do, say or not to say, what they are to think?
Sure, there will be worldly passions and temptations to confront (v. 12). But our marriage to Jesus, Luther says, entails these passions and temptations are no more threatening to faith then being in a bar must inevitably lead to getting drunk or being among a bad crowd entails you will become a murderer (Complete Sermons, Vol. 3/2, p. 129).
