United States or Poland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A holy life is to be baptized and to believe in Christ, and to subdue the flesh with the Spirit. To feel the lusts of the flesh is not without profit to us. It prevents us from being vain and from being puffed up with the wicked opinion of our own work-righteousness.
God alone is able to deliver us from the world. Let us praise and thank God for His mercy in delivering us from the captivity of Satan, when we were unable to do so by our own strength. Let us confess with Paul that all our work-righteousness is loss and dung. Let us condemn as filthy rags all talk about free will, all religious orders, masses, ceremonies, vows, fastings, and the like.
It should make any person afraid to hear Paul say that those who seek to be justified by the Law, not only deny Christ, but also crucify Him anew. If those who seek to be justified by the Law and its works are crucifiers of Christ, what are they, I like to know, who seek salvation by the filthy rags of their own work-righteousness?
In their folly our opponents rush into the Scriptures, pick out a sentence here and a sentence there about the Law and imagine they know all about it. Their work-righteousness is plain idolatry and blasphemy against God. No wonder they abide under the curse of God.
So much is certain, we persecute no man, neither does our doctrine trouble men. On the contrary, we have the testimony of many good men who thank God on their knees for the consolation that our doctrine has brought them. Like Paul, we are not to blame that the churches have trouble. The fault lies with the Anabaptists and other fanatics. Every teacher of work-righteousness is a trouble-maker.
In endless variations Catholic writers thus seek to upset with Scripture Luther's teaching that man is justified by faith in Christ alone, and that all the righteousness which a sinner can present before God without fear that it will be rejected is a borrowed righteousness, not his own work-righteousness.
Word Of The Day