Fight Doubts of
Your Sonship

If we could hold with certainty that we are in grace, that our sins are forgiven, that we have the Spirit of Christ and are the children of God, then we should certainly be glad and thank God for this inexpressible gift. But because we feel the opposite emotions -- fear, doubt, sadness, etc. -- we do not venture to hold this with certainty. Conscience even considers it a great presumption and pride to arrogate this glory to oneself. That is why this matter is really understood only when it is put into practice, for without experience it is never learned.

Wherefore everyone should accustom himself to hold with certainty that he is in grace and that he personally, together with his works, pleases God. But when he feels himself doubting, let him practice faith, fight against doubt, and labor to recapture certainty, in order that he can say: I know that I am accepted by God and have the Holy Spirit, not for the sake of worthiness or merit on my part, but for the sake of Christ, who subjected Himself to the Law for us and bore the sins of the world. In Him I believe. If I am a sinner and am erring, He is just and cannot err. Then, too, I love to hear, read, sing, and write about Him, and I have no greater desire than to have His Gospel become known to the world and to have many be converted.

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. 428