He approached the lectures on the Epistle to the Romans in the conviction that, in this Epistle, he would find the sanction of his earlier efforts against the self-righteous and “holy-by-works,” against whom his peculiar mysticism had still further prejudiced him. From the very outset he interprets the great Apostolic document on the calling of the heathen and the Jews to salvation as directed exclusively against those who, according to him, were imperilling the Church; against those who (whether in his own Order or in Christendom generally) laid stress on the importance of works, on the duty of fulfilling observances and the merit of exercises of virtue for gaining heaven, and who were unmindful of the righteousness which Christ gives us. This is not the place to point out how Paul is speaking in quite another sense, against those Jewish Christians who still adhered to the works of the Mosaic Law, of the merely relative value of works, of the liberty which Christianity imparts and of the saving power of faith. Luther, however, in the very first lines, tells the “holy-by-works” that the whole purpose of the Epistle to the Romans is a driving back and rooting out of the wisdom and righteousness of the flesh. Among the heathen and the Jews were to be found those who, though “devoted in their hearts to virtue,” yet had not suppressed all self-satisfaction in the same, and looked upon themselves as “righteous and good men”; in the Church, according to Paul, all self-righteousness and wisdom must be torn out of the affections, and self-complacency. God willed to save us not by our own righteousness but by an extraneous righteousness (“_non per domesticam sed per extraneam iustitiam vult salvare_”), viz. by the imputed righteousness of Christ, and, owing to the exterior righteousness which Christ gives (“_externa quæ ex Christo in nobis est iustitia_”), there can be no boasting, nor must there be “any depression on account of the sufferings and trials which come to us from Christ.”[495] “Christ’s righteousness and His gifts,” he says, “shine in the true Christian.... If any man possesses natural and spiritual advantages, yet this is not considered by God as being his wisdom, righteousness and goodness (‘_non ideo coram Deo talis reputatur_’), rather, he must wait in humility, as though he possessed nothing, for the pure mercy of God, to see whether He will look upon him as righteous and wise. God only does this if he humbles himself deeply. We must learn to regard spiritual possessions and works of righteousness as worthless for obtaining the righteousness of Christ, we must renounce the idea that these have any value in God’s sight and merit a reward, otherwise we shall not be saved” (“_opera iusta velint nihil reputare_,” etc.).[496]