Building an Eternal House
"I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide."
JOHN 15:16
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Building an Eternal House
To support or protect a poor, pious pastor is an act that makes no show and looks like a small thing. . .. Meanwhile my pastor, who does not glitter, is practicing the virtue that increases God's kingdom, fills heaven with saints, plunders hell, robs the devil, wards off death, represses sin, instructs and comforts every man in the world according to his station in life, preserves peace and unity, raises fine young folk, and plants all kinds of virtue in the people. In a word, he is making a new world! He builds not a poor, temporary house, but an eternal and beautiful Paradise, in which God Himself is glad to dwell. A pious prince or lord who supports or protects such a pastor can have a part in all this. Indeed, this whole work and all the fruits of it are his, as though he had done it all himself, because without his protection and support the pastor could not abide. Therefore no mountain of gold or silver in a land can be compared with this treasure.
From Commentary on Psalm 82 (Luther's Works 13:52-53)
JOHN 15:16
+
Building an Eternal House
To support or protect a poor, pious pastor is an act that makes no show and looks like a small thing. . .. Meanwhile my pastor, who does not glitter, is practicing the virtue that increases God's kingdom, fills heaven with saints, plunders hell, robs the devil, wards off death, represses sin, instructs and comforts every man in the world according to his station in life, preserves peace and unity, raises fine young folk, and plants all kinds of virtue in the people. In a word, he is making a new world! He builds not a poor, temporary house, but an eternal and beautiful Paradise, in which God Himself is glad to dwell. A pious prince or lord who supports or protects such a pastor can have a part in all this. Indeed, this whole work and all the fruits of it are his, as though he had done it all himself, because without his protection and support the pastor could not abide. Therefore no mountain of gold or silver in a land can be compared with this treasure.
From Commentary on Psalm 82 (Luther's Works 13:52-53)
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