“Paul says in Titus 2:14: ‘Christ gave Himself for us, to purify for Himself a people of His own.’
And St. Peter says in 1 Peter 2:9: ‘You are a holy nation, a chosen people, a royal priesthood.’
These are the riches of the boundless mercy of God, which we have received by no merit but by pure grace.”
–Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 21: The Sermon on the Mount and the Magnificat, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 21 (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999), 350.
