Osiander: morality and righteousness

Saturday, October 7, 2017
Meditation:
    Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
    —2 Timothy 4:2-4 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Most men dislike a teaching which lays upon them strict moral requirements that check their natural desires. Yet they like to be considered as Christians, and listen willingly to the hypocrites who preach that our righteousness is only that God holds us to be righteous, even if we are bad people, and that our righteousness is without us and not in us, for, according to such teaching, they can be counted as holy people. Woe to those who preach that men of sinful walk can not be considered pious; most are furious when they hear this, as we see and experience, and would like all such preachers to be driven away or even killed; but where that cannot be done, they strengthen their hypocrite preachers with praise, comfort, presents and protection, so that they may go on happily and give no place to the truth, however clear it may be.
    ... Andreas Osiander (1498-1552), [1551] quoted in The Pilgrim Church, E. H. Broadbent, London: Pickering & Inglis, 1931, p. 158-159 (see the book)
    See also 2 Tim. 4:2-4; Zech. 7:11; Matt. 7:15-21; Rom. 3:9; 16:17; 1 Cor. 5:9-11
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, release us from the tyranny that holds Your word to be false. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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