If someone could believe with a certain and constant faith, and could understand the magnitude of it all, that he is the son and heir of God, he could regard all the power and wealth of all the kingdoms of the world as filth and refuse in comparison with his heavenly inheritance. Whatever the world has that is sublime and glorious would make him sick. And the greater the pomp and glory of the world is, the more detestable it would be to him. In other words, whatever the world admires and exalts most, that is foul and worthless in his eyes. For what is the whole world with its power, wealth, and glory in comparison with God, whose heir and son he is? He also desires anxiously to depart with Paul and to be with Christ (Phil. 1:23). Nothing more delightful could happen to him than a premature death, which he would embrace as the most joyous peace; for he would know that it is the end of all his evils and that through it he comes into his inheritance. In fact, a man who believed this completely would not go on living very long but would soon be consumed by his overwhelming joy.

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, vol. 26 (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999), 392–93.

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