Martin Luther on Extent of the atonement
Universal — for all, applied on faith
And He alone is the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world... and God has laid upon Him the iniquities of us all.
THE POSITION
Luther consistently speaks of Christ dying for the world and never restricts the object. The Smalcald Articles' chief article names him "the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world," and the 1522 Ascension Day sermon says that to believe the resurrection is to believe "that Christ has taken upon his head our sins and the sins of the whole world, also the wrath of the Father, and thus drowned them both in himself" (§10). The efficacy is tied to faith laying hold of the promise, not to a prior limitation of whom the death was for.
29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
5 OTHERS HOLD THIS
ABOUT THIS FIGURE
Augustinian friar whose protest over indulgences opened the Reformation, and the theologian for whom justification by faith and the bondage of the will are the whole of the gospel. This entry rests on his own writings only — The Bondage of the Will (1525), the Smalcald Articles (1537), the Large and Small Catechisms (1529), Concerning Christian Liberty (1520), the Heidelberg Disputation (1518), the Church Postil and his biblical prefaces — and deliberately excludes the Augsburg Confession and the Formula of Concord, which are not his.
Cite this page
"Martin Luther on Extent of the atonement", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/luther/atonement-extent (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/luther/atonement-extent).