“On His shoulders, not on mine” by Martin Luther

“When the devil accuses us and says: ‘You are a sinner; therefore you are damned,” then we can answer him and say: ‘Because you say that I am a sinner, therefore I shall be righteous and be saved.’

‘No,” says the devil, ‘you will be damned.’

‘No,’ I say, ‘for I take refuge in Christ, who has given Himself for my sins. Therefore, Satan, you will not prevail against me as you try to frighten me by showing me the magnitude of my sins and to plunge me into anguish, loss of faith, despair, hatred, contempt of God, and blasphemy. In fact, when you say that I am a sinner, you provide me with armor and weapons against yourself, so that I may slit your throat with your own sword and trample you underfoot. You yourself are preaching the glory of God to me; for you are reminding me, a miserable and condemned sinner, of the fatherly love of God, who ‘so loved the world that He gave His only Son.’ (John 3:16). You are reminding me of the blessing of Christ my Redeemer. On His shoulders, not on mine, lie all my sins. For ‘the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all,’ and ‘for the transgressions of His people He was stricken’ (Isa. 53:6, 8). Therefore when you say that I am a sinner, you do not frighten me; but you bring me immense consolation.”

–Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 26: Lectures on Galatians, 1535, Chapters 1-4, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999), 26: 36–37. Luther is commenting on Galatians 1:4.