----------------------------------------------Love and Faith by Dr. Martin Luther, 1483-1546--------------------------------------------------
Translated by Frank Hale Excerpted from: "Fastenpostille 1525, Matt. 8:1 ff" D. MARTIN LUTHERS WERKE. KRITISCHE GESAMMTAUSGABE 17. Band., Zweite Abteilung, (Weimar: Hermann Boehlau Nachfolger, 1927), p. 74, line 20 to p. 75, line 12.May 1995

Furthermore, here is the example of love for the one learned in Christ toward the leper. Because there you see how love made Him a servant, that He might help the poor freely and without any return; he sought neither profit nor honor from it, but only the
benefit of the poor and the honor of God the Father. That is why He also commanded him, that he should tell it to no one, so that
it would be a truely pure work of free and good love. That is, as I have often said, In the way that faith makes us lords, love makes us servants, even that through faith we become Gods and partakers of the Divine nature and name, as Psalm 81 says, "I
have said, you are Gods, and all children of the most high." Yet through love we all become like the poorest one. Through faith we
lack nothing and have abundance. Through love we serve everyone. Through faith we receive good things from God above. Through love we distribute them to a neighbor. Just as Christ lacked nothing according to Divinity, but according to humanity served everyone, according to their need. We have spoken of this often enough, that we also then through faith must be born to be God's children and gods, lords and kings, just as Christ was born of the Father in eternity, a true God. And furthermore, through love we reach out to abundantly help those nearby, just as Christ became man to help us all. And Christ is God in the same way, not through merit of work done before, nor through what He earned as a man; but He was the same from birth, without any work, and earlier, before He was man. Thus we also have the divine sonship, that is the forgiving of our sins and that death and hell cannot harm, not earned through work or love, but without work and before love, through the faith in the gospel received out of grace. And as Christ first of all, being eternal God, became man to serve us, so we should likewise do good and love our neightbor, if we are already devout, without sin, enlivened, blessed and childred of God. That is from the first example of the leper.