Works of Martin Luther, with Introductions and Notes · Martin Luther
THE SUPERNAL EVIL, OR THE EVIL ABOVE US
Finally, let us lift up our hearts, and ascend with the Bride into the mountain of myrrh. [Song of Sol. 4:6] This is Jesus Christ the Crucified, Head of all saints, and Prince of all sufferers; of Whom many have written many things, and all all things, as it is meet.[29] His memory is commended to the Bride, when it is said, "Set Me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm." [Song of Sol. 8:6] The blood of this Lamb, signed upon the threshold, wards off the destroying angel. [Ex. 12:7, 13] By Him is the Bride praised, because "the hair of her head is as the king's purple"; [Song of Sol. 7:5] that is, her meditation glows red with the remembrance of the Passion of Christ. This is that tree which Moses was commanded to cast into the waters of Marah (that is, the bitterness of suffering), and they were made sweet. [Ex. 15:23 ff.] There is nothing that this Passion cannot sweeten, not even death itself; as the Bride saith, "His lips are lilies, dropping sweet-smelling myrrh." [Song of So. 5:13] What resemblance is there between lips and lilies, since lips are red and lilies white? But she says this in a mystery, signifying that the words of Christ are most fair and pure, and that there is in them naught of blood-red bitterness or guile; nevertheless, in them He drops precious and chosen myrrh, that is, the bitterness of death. These most pure lips and sweet have power to make the bitterest death sweet and fair and bright and dear,--death that, like precious myrrh, removes at once all of sin's corruption.
How does this come to pass? When, forsooth, you hear that Jesus Christ, God's Son, hath, by His most holy touch, consecrated and hallowed all sufferings, even death itself, hath blessed the curse, glorified shame, and enriched poverty, so that death has been made a door to life, curse a fount of blessing, and shame the mother of glory: how can you then be so hard and ungrateful as not to long for and to love all manner of sufferings, now that they have been touched by Christ's most pure and holy flesh and blood, and made unto you holy, harmless, wholesome, blessed, and full of joy? For if Christ, by the touch of His most innocent flesh, has hallowed all waters unto baptism, yea, and every creature besides; how much more has He, by the same contact of His most innocent flesh and blood, hallowed every form of death, all suffering and loss, every curse and shame, unto the baptism of the Spirit, or the baptism of blood![30] Even as He saith of this same baptism of His Passion, in Luke xii, "I have a baptism to be baptised with; and how am I straitened until it be accomplished!" [Luke 12:50] Behold, how He is straitened, how He pants and thirsts, to sanctify suffering and death, and make them things to be loved! For He sees how we stand in fear of suffering. He marks how we tremble and shrink from death. And so, like a godly pastor or faithful physician, He hastens to set bounds to this our evil, and is impatient to die and by His contact to commend suffering and death unto us. So that the death of a Christian is henceforth to be regarded as the brazen serpent of Moses, [Num. 21:8] which indeed hath in all things the appearance of a serpent, yet is quite without life, without motion, without venom, without sting.
Even so the righteous seem, in the sight of the unwise, to die; but they are in peace. We resemble them that die, nor is the outward appearance of our dying unlike that of others; but the thing itself is different, because for us death is dead. In like manner all our sufferings are like the sufferings of other men; but it is only in the appearance. In reality our sufferings are the beginning of our freedom from suffering, as our death is the beginning of our life. This is that which Christ saith in John viii, "If a man keep my saying he shall never see death." [John 8:51] How shall he not see it? Because when he dies, he begins to live, and so he cannot see death for the life that he sees. For here the night shines as the day; [Ps. 139:12] since the life that breaks upon him is brighter far than departing death. These things are assured to all who believe in Christ, to the unbelieving they are not.
If we have learned, in the foregoing images, beneath us and above us, to bear our evils with patience, surely in this last, lifted above and out of ourselves, caught up unto Christ, and made superior to all evils, we ought not only to bear with them, but to love them, desire them, and seek them out. Whoever is yet far from this state of mind, for him the Passion of Christ has little value; as it is with those who use the sign and arms of Christ[33] to ward off evils and death, that so they may neither suffer pain nor endure death, which is altogether contrary to the cross and death of Christ. Hence, in this image, whatever evils we may have to bear must be swallowed up and consumed, so that they shall not only cause us no pain, but even delight us; if indeed this image find its way into our heart, and fix itself in the inmost affections of our mind. The second part also consists of seven images, answering to the first; the first representing the internal blessing, the second the future blessing, the third the past blessing, the fourth the infernal blessing, the fifth the blessing on the left hand, the sixth the blessing on the right hand, and the seventh the supernal blessing.
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