Sin's Forgiveness the Church's Foundation

If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, serve you. - Ps. 130:3-4

In these two verses David presents a summary of the entire body of Christian doctrine and the sun which illuminates the church. For when this doctrine stands, the church stands; but when it falls, the church also falls. Therefore I inculcate it the more frequently, for I know that there is nothing the devil desires and labors more energetically to effect than the removal of this knowledge from the sight and the hearts of men. This is the main purposes of all the disturbances he arouses publicly as well as in private life.

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. 515