PSALM SIXTY-NINE

The psalmist continues, And to afflict My wounded ones, they would tell, or They have added to the grief of My wounds. The wounded of Christ are all His saints, because they carry His cross. Tropologically, they have been wounded by the Word of the Gospel and smitten by the Lord (as their head) according to the flesh. For they mortify themselves, they chastise and afflict themselves perpetually in humility and the fear of God, in poverty and contempt. But this is a merciful and fatherly smiting on the part of God. The Jews, however, not only had no pity on such as were in this way the afflicted, humbled, and wounded of Christ, as was proper, but they persecuted them in addition, adding furthermore that God was persecuting them. So Job says: “Have pity on me, at least you, my friends, because the hand of the Lord has touched me. Why do you, like God, persecute me and glut yourselves with my flesh?” (Job 19:2–22), that is, by tearing me according to the flesh you are filling up your anger. So it is with any one of the saints that, his flesh having been consumed, his bone cleaves to his skin (Job 19:20), namely, through his being crucified and suffering with Christ. Thus they become “the curtains of Solomon” (Song of Sol. 1:5). Therefore killing those who are stricken in their heart is the reason why they cannot be converted and saved (cf. Ps. 109:1 ff.). Yet they might be converted if they would stop. Amos 1:13: “For three transgressions and for four I will not convert him, etc.” Nor can he [be converted], because he sins the sin unto death, namely, three times and four, that is, seven times, which is the number of universality, since they keep on sinning without end, just as the whole time rolls around by seven. The heretics imitate the designs of these people. Instead of having compassion and sympathy with the church, afflicted with evils and crucified with Christ in its sufferings, they further “rip and cut up the pregnant women of Gilead to enlarge their border” (Amos 1:13), and thus pile added grief on the wounded bride of Christ. But those people, too, imitate them who, while they are in sins, presumptuously intrude in holy things, and in general do all who sin knowingly. For in them all the church is afflicted over and above what it suffers according to the flesh. For its number grows less and weakens and is burned up. [And today the popes increase the grief of the Lord’s wounds.] –Martin Luther