"If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true, not a pretended grace; if grace is true you must bear a true, not a pretended, sin. God does not save pretended sinners. Be a sinner and sin mightily, but believe more mightily, and rejoice in Christ, who is victor over sin, death, and the world. We must sin so long as we are what we are; this life is not the dwelling place of righteousness, but we look, says Peter, for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. It is enough that by the riches of God's glory we have come to know the Lamb that taketh away the sin of the world. From Him no sin will tear us, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day. Is it so small a purchase-price, think you, that was paid for our sins with so great a Lamb? Pray mightily, for you are a mighty sinner." --Martin Luther to Phillip Melanchthon, Luther's Correspondence, ed. Preserved Smith.
"You cast your sins from yourself and onto Christ when you firmly believe that his wounds and sufferings are your sins, to be borne and paid for him, as we read in Isaiah 53:6, "The lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.' St. Peter says, "in his body has he borne our sins on the wood of the cross' (1 Pet. 2:24). St. Paul says, 'God has made him a sinner for us, so that through him we would be made just' (2 Cor. 5:21). You must stake everything on these and similar verses. The more your conscience torments you, the more tenaciously you must cling to them. If you do not do that, but presume to still your conscience with your contrition and penance, you will never obtain peace of mind, but will have to despair in the end. If we allow sin to remain in our conscience and try to deal with it there, or if we look at sin in our heart, it will be much too strong for us and will live on forever. But if we behold it resting on Christ and [see it] overcome by his resurrection, and then boldly believe this, even it is dead and nullified." --Martin Luther, "A Meditation on Christ's Passion," in Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy Lull.
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to be sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one—not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safely in the casket or the coffin of your selfishness. But, in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, unredeemable. The only place outside heaven where you can be safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell.
