Faith is Hard

No article of faith is more difficult to believe than the article which says: I believe the forgiveness of sins.... This article affects us personally and enters into our experience...that is why it is the most difficult article to believe. To be sure, the others are more difficult when we are called upon to speak of them and to comprehend them....

But in this article, I believe the forgiveness of sins, the most difficult thing is not only that we are to speak about this article and to understand it, but also that every one of us is to accept it for himself with certainty. Now since this article enters our soul with greater difficulty than others, and since man is so greatly frightened at hell, at God's wrath and judgment, this article of the forgiveness of sins had to be pictured in the life of Peter that everybody might derive comfort from it.

Source: Quoted in Ewald M. Plass, What Luther Says, A Practical In-home Theology for the Active Christian. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House. 1959 Edition, 10th Printing (1994), p. 518-519.