My Goosey Sis

reminded me yesterday of this beautiful passage from Dr. Luther:

After Baptism there still remains much of the old Adam.  For, as we have often said, sin is forgiven in baptism, but we are not yet altogether clean, as is shown in the parable of the Good Samaritan, who carried the man wounded by robbers to an inn.  He did not take care of him in such a way that he healed him at once, but rather bound up his wounds and poured on oil.  The man who fell among robbers suffered two injuries.  First, everything that he had was taken from him, he was robbed; the second, he was wounded, so that he was half-dead and would have died, if the Samaritan had not come to him.  Adam fell among the robbers and implanted sin in us all.  If Christ, the Samaritan, had not come, we should all have had to die.  He it is who binds our wounds, carries us into the church, is now healing us.  So we are now fully under the Physician's care.  The sin, it is true, is wholly forgiven, but it has not been wholly purged.  If the Holy Spirit is not ruling men, they become corrupt again; but the Holy Spirit must cleanse the wounds daily.  Therefore this life is a hospital; the sin has really been forgiven, but it has not yet been healed.

That was from his last sermon preached in the town of Wittenberg in 1546.  You can read the whole of it in AE 51:375.