Luther’s Works, Volume 76
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
The new translation of the Church Postil follows the last edition of Luther’s life, from 1540–1544, and includes Luther’s often-extensive revisions to his own work, with significant variant readings from earlier editions translated in the footnotes. This volume of Martin Luther’s Church Postil includes the sermons on the Epistle and Gospel readings from New Year through Holy Week, plus “Meditation on the Holy Suffering of Christ” and “Sermon on Confession and the Sacrament.” The appendix contains Luther’s prefaces to earlier editions of the Church Postil. All the sermons include footnotes indicating Luther’s edits over the course of his life, all rendered in clear, lucid English. This edition includes careful, explanatory introductions and footnotes as well as cross-references and a table showing where Luther’s sermons can be found in the German originals. The volume is also fully indexed.
Top Highlights
“have no greater terror than from sin and death; yet God can comfort us in” (Page 195)
“We must all go into death and die, but a Christian does not taste or see death; that is, he does not sense it, he is not terrified of it, and goes into it calmly and quietly, as if he were falling asleep, and yet he does not die.4 But a godless person senses it and is horrified of it forever. Thus ‘to taste death’ can mean the power and might or bitterness of death; indeed, it is eternal death and hell.” (Page 412)
“But the excess practiced at our time is not eating and drinking, but gorging and guzzling, carousing and boozing. They act as if it were a mark of skill or of strength to do a lot of gorging and guzzling, in which people do not seek to become cheerful but to be raving drunk. But these are pigs, not people. Christ would not give wine to them nor come to them. So also their clothing is not selected for the wedding, but for their own show and ostentation, as if those were the best and the strongest who wore gold and silver and pearls and used up much silk and other cloth, which even donkeys and sticks could do.” (Page 241)
“She does not say, ‘Dear Son, make us some wine,’ but ‘They have no wine’ [John 2:3]. Thus she only touches on His kindness, for which she completely relied on Him. It is as if she would say: ‘He is so good and gracious that He does not need my request; I will only point out to Him what is lacking, and then He will of Himself do more than was asked.’ That is the way faith thinks and pictures God’s kindness, and does not doubt that it is so; therefore, it dares to ask and present its need.” (Pages 242–243)
- Title: Luther’s Works, Volume 76
- Author: Martin Luther
- Series: Luther’s Works
- Volume: 76
- Publisher: Concordia Publishing House
- Print Publication Date: 2013
- Logos Release Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Church year sermons › Early works to 1800; Bible. N.T. › Sermons--Early works to 1800; Bible. N.T. › Gospels--Sermons--Early works to 1800
- ISBNs: 9780758628176, 075862817X
- Resource ID: LLS:LW76
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-10-07T22:16:41Z
Martin Luther (1483–1546), one of the most significant figures in Western history, was a key figure in the Protestant Reformation. Over the course of his life, Luther was a monk, a priest, a professor of biblical literature, a Reformer, a husband, and a father.
Luther is most noted for his Ninety-Five Theses (1517), in which he argued that indulgences were not acts of penance which could replace true repentance. His refusal to retract all his writings, demanded by Pope Leo X in 1520 and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms in 1521, resulted in his excommunication by the pope and condemnation as an outlaw by the emperor.
Luther has been both praised and vilified for what he preached and wrote. Luther’s translation of the Christian Bible into the vernacular greatly influenced the church. His works continue to impact all Christians and animate the movement that bears his name. Luther’s Works (55 vols.) contains many of Luther’s writings, including commentaries, sermons, and lectures.