No matter what other false doctrines [fanatical sects] may teach, they all have this great error in common: They do not rely solely on Christ and His Word, but chiefly on something that takes place within themselves. As a rule, they imagine that all is well with them because they have turned from their former ways. As if that were a guarantee of reaching heaven! No—we should not look back to our conversion for assurance. Rather, we must go to our Savior again and again—every day—as though we never had been converted. My former conversion would be of no benefit to me if I became secure in my sins. I must return to the mercy seat every day, otherwise I would make my former conversion my savior, and not Christ, because I would be relying on it. That would be horrible, for at the end of the day that would mean that I would make myself my own savior.
C.F.W. Walther, Law and Gospel: How to Read and Apply the Bible,
(trans. Christian C. Tiews; St Louis: Concordia, 2010), 225.
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