Preface to the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans

Overview

About twenty pages, the short introduction Martin Luther wrote for Romans in his German New Testament of 1522, considered the best brief statement of his entire theology. Rather than an ordinary introductory essay, the preface works systematically through the epistle’s key words in turn, law, sin, grace, faith, righteousness, flesh and spirit, delivering a compact statement of Luther’s theology through careful attention to Romans’s own specific vocabulary.

Sin is not just the wrong act but the unbelieving heart behind it; the law cannot cure it and only exposes it; faith is a living, restless confidence that produces good works without being asked. Luther calls Romans the purest gospel and says a Christian should know it by heart. Read aloud in London in 1738, the preface converted John Wesley.

What happens

Defining the key terms. Luther opens by defining the key words of Romans in turn, law, sin, grace, faith, righteousness, flesh and spirit, building his theological argument through careful attention to the epistle’s own specific vocabulary rather than abstract independent exposition.

Redefining sin as the unbelieving heart. Luther argues that sin is not simply the wrong act but the unbelieving heart behind it, relocating the actual theological problem from specific behavior to the underlying disposition that produces sinful action in the first place.

The law’s power only to expose. Building on this redefinition, Luther argues that the law cannot cure sin but only exposes it, since no amount of correct outward behavior touches the actual unbelief driving sinful conduct at its root.

Faith as living, restless confidence. Luther describes faith as a living, restless confidence in God’s grace that produces good works spontaneously and without being asked, locating genuine righteousness entirely outside the law’s reach.

Calling Romans the purest gospel. Luther calls Romans the purest gospel and insists that a Christian should know the epistle by heart, treating this specific biblical text as containing the essential core of Christian theological truth in its most concentrated form.

Converting John Wesley. The preface’s own subsequent history vindicates its power directly: read aloud at a London meeting in 1738, it converted John Wesley, proof that this brief introductory essay could strike readers two centuries later with genuine, immediate theological force.

How to read it

Read the preface’s systematic definition of Romans’s key terms as building a genuine compact theology rather than simply glossing vocabulary; each term Luther defines, sin, law, grace, faith, connects directly to the next, constructing a coherent argument through careful attention to the epistle’s own specific language.

Pay close attention to how the redefinition of sin as the unbelieving heart, rather than simply wrong action, reshapes everything that follows about the law’s actual function; if sin is fundamentally a condition rather than a tally of transgressions, the law can only diagnose rather than cure it.

Notice how the account of faith as living, restless confidence producing spontaneous good works completes the preface’s theological argument, locating genuine righteousness in a disposition the law can never manufacture, only reveal its absence.

Consider the preface’s own subsequent history, converting John Wesley when read aloud two centuries after its composition, as genuine evidence of its continued theological power; this was not merely an introductory essay for a specific translation but a document capable of striking new readers with immediate force.

Read this preface alongside Luther’s own On the Freedom of a Christian, composed for the same broader reforming project, to see how the same core theological commitments, faith’s priority over works, sin’s true location in the heart, receive complementary treatment across these two different but closely related texts.

Questions it raises

• Does Luther’s redefinition of sin as the unbelieving heart rather than specific wrong action adequately account for the genuine moral weight of individual sinful acts, or does this reframing risk making concrete wrongdoing seem secondary to an underlying disposition that is harder to identify or address directly?
• How persuasive is Luther’s claim that the law can only expose sin rather than cure it? Does this argument successfully explain the law’s actual function, or does it understate what sustained moral discipline and effort might accomplish even without addressing the deeper unbelief Luther identifies as sin’s root?
• What does describing faith as living and restless, rather than settled or complete, suggest about how Luther understood the ongoing Christian life? Does this characterization of faith as active and spontaneous distinguish it meaningfully from other accounts of religious belief or trust?
• How should a reader weigh the preface’s own subsequent history, converting John Wesley two centuries after its composition, as evidence for its theological power? Does this later reception validate the text’s original claims, or does it simply demonstrate the text’s rhetorical effectiveness independent of its actual truth?
• Given that this preface was written specifically to introduce Luther’s own German Bible translation, how does this practical, pedagogical purpose shape its content and structure compared to a more purely independent theological treatise might have taken?
• What does calling Romans specifically the purest gospel suggest about how Luther ranked different biblical books relative to each other? Does this specific judgment about one epistle’s theological centrality hold up as a defensible claim, or does it reflect Luther’s own particular theological priorities more than the text’s inherent status?