chapter 5

, Luther says: "In the fifth chapter Paul comes to speak of the

fruits and works of faith, such as peace, joy, love of God and all men, and in addition to these, security, boldness, cheerfulness, courage and hope amid tribulations and suffering. All these effects follow where there is genuine faith, because of the superabundant blessing which God has conferred upon us in Christ by causing Him to die for us before we could pray that He might do this, yea, while we were yet His enemies. Accordingly, we conclude that faith justifies without works of any kind, and yet it does not follow that we must not do any good works. Genuine good works cannot fail to flow from faith,--works of which the self-righteous know nothing, and in the place of which they invent their own works, in which there is neither peace, joy, security, love, hope, boldness, nor any other of the characteristics of a genuine Christian work and faith." In his Preface to Romans, Luther meets a somewhat different objection to faith: Christians, after they have begun to believe, still discover sin in themselves, and on account of this imagine that faith alone cannot save them. There must be something done in addition to believing to insure their salvation. In replying to this scruple, Luther has given a classical description of the quality and power of faith. This description serves to blast the Catholic charge that Luther's easy way of justifying the sinner leads to increased sinning. Luther says: "Faith is not the human notion and dream which some regard as faith. When they observe that no improvement of life nor any good works flow from faith even where people hear and talk much about faith, they fall into this error that they declare: faith is not sufficient, you must do works if you wish to become godly and be saved. The reason is, these people, when they hear the Gospel, hurriedly formulate by their own powers a thought in their heart which asserts: I believe. This thought they regard as genuine faith. However, as their faith is but a human figment and idea that never reaches the bottom of the heart, it is inert and effects no improvement. Genuine faith, however, is a divine work in us by which we are changed and born anew of God. (John 1, 13.) It slays the old Adam, and makes us entirely new men in our heart, mind, ideas, and all our powers. It brings us the Holy Spirit. Oh, this faith is a lively, active, busy, mighty thing! It is impossible for faith not to be active without ceasing. Faith does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the question has been asked, it has accomplished good works; yea, it is always engaged in doing good works. Whoever does not do such good works is void of faith; he gropes and mopes about, looking for faith and good works, but knows neither what faith nor what good works are, though he may prate and babble ever so much about faith and good works."

There has never been a time when the Gospel and the grace of God have not been wrested to wicked purposes by insincere men, hypocrites, and bold spirits. For this reason God has instructed Christians: "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you." (Matt. 7, 6.) The danger of misapplied grace is a present-day danger in every evangelical community. Earnest Christian ministers and laymen strive with this misapplication wherever they discover it. Can they do any more?

Rome will say: Why do you not do as we do in our Church? We do not preach the Gospel in such a reckless fashion, we make men work for their salvation. Rome would abolish or considerably limit the preaching of free and abundant grace to the sinner. We recoil from this suggestion because it makes the entire work of Christ of none effect, and wipes out the grandest portions of our Bible. If every abuse of something that is good must be stopped by abolishing the proper use, then let us give up eating because some make gluttons of themselves; drinking, because some are drunkards; wearing clothes, because there is much vanity in dresses; marriage, because some marriages are shamefully conducted, etc., etc.

The Roman Church does not operate on evangelical principles. Does it succeed better in cultivating true holiness among its members by its system of penances and its teaching of the meritoriousness of men's acts of piety? Catholics say to us sneeringly: It is easy to have faith; it is very convenient, when you wish to indulge, or have indulged, some passion, to remember that there is grace for forgiveness. But is any great difficulty connected with going through a penance that the priest has imposed, buying a wax candle, reciting sixteen Paternosters and ten Ave Marias, and then sitting down and saying to yourself: "Good boy! you've done it, you have squared your account again with the Almighty"? What sanctifying virtue lies in abstaining from beefsteak on Friday? Rome nowhere has improved men by her mechanical piety. What she has accomplished was made possible by the fear of purgatorial torments, by slavish dread of her mysterious powers, by ambition and bigotry. We would not exchange our abused treasures for her system of workmongery.

But the Catholic charge of tendencies to lawlessness that are said to be contained in. Luther's teaching of faith without works are more serious. Luther is cited by them as declaring that one may commit innumerable sins, and they will not harm one as long as one keeps on believing in the grace of forgiveness. It is true, Luther has spoken words to this effect, and that, on quite a number of occasions. Worse than that, what Luther has said is actually true. As a matter of fact, no sin can deprive the believer of salvation. There is only one sin that ultimately damns, final impenitence and unbelief, by which is understood the rejection of the atonement which Christ offered for the sins of the world. That atonement is actually the full satisfaction rendered to our Judge for all the sins which we have done, are doing, and will be doing till the end of our lives. For the person that dies a perfect saint, sinless and impeccable, is still to be born. The comfort that I derive from my Redeemer to-day will be my comfort to-morrow, that will be my only prop and stay in my dying hour. I shall need Him every hour. This is a perfectly Christian thought. St. John writes: "My little children, these things write I unto you that ye sin not. And if any man sin,"-- mark this well: "If any man sin," though he ought not to sin,--what does the apostle say to him? He does not say: Then you are damned! or: It will require so many fasts, masses, and candles to restore you! but this is what he says: "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous; and He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." (1 John 2, 1. 2.) John, then, must be included in the Catholic indictment of Luther. Luther would not have been a preacher of the genuine and full Gospel if he had not declared the impossibility of any sin or any number of sins depriving a believer of salvation.

But if the Catholics mean to say that Luther's evangelical declaration means that no believer can fall from grace by sinning, that he may sin and remain in a state of grace,--that is simply slander. Luther holds, indeed, that a person does not cease to be a Christian by every slip and fault, but he insists that no dereliction of duty, no deviation from the rule of godly living can be treated with indifference. It must be repented of, God's forgiveness must be sought, and only in this way will the Holy Spirit again be bestowed on the sinner. God may bear awhile with a Christian who has fallen into sin, but the backslider has no pleasant time with his God while he stays a backslider. This being a question of every-day, practical Christianity, Luther frequently touches this subject in his sermons, both in the Church Postil, the House Postil, and in his occasional sermons. Luther's Catholic critics could disabuse their mind about the tendencies to lawlessness in Luther's teaching if they would look up references such as these: 9, 730. 1456 f.; 11, 1790; 12, 448. 433; 13, 394; 6, 294. 1604. In one of these references (9, 1456) Luther comments on 1 John 3, 6: "Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not; whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known Him," as follows: "'Seeing' and 'knowing' in the phraseology of John is as much as believing. `That every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on Him, may have everlasting life' (John 6, 40). 'This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.' Accordingly, he that sins does not believe in Him; for faith and sin cannot coexist. We may fall, but we may not cling to sin. The kingdom of Christ is a kingdom of righteousness, not of sin." In the Smalcald Articles Luther says: "But if certain sectarists would arise, some of whom are perhaps already present, and in the time of the insurrection of the peasants came to my view, holding that all those who have once received the Spirit or the forgiveness of sins, or have become believers, even though they would afterwards sin, would still remain in the faith, and sin would not injure them, and cry thus: 'Do whatever you please; if you believe, it is all nothing; faith blots out all sins,' etc. They say, besides, that if any one sins after he has received faith and the Spirit, he never truly had the Spirit and faith. I have seen and heard of many men so insane, and I fear that such a devil is still remaining in some. If, therefore, I say, such persons would hereafter also arise, it is necessary to know and teach that if saints who still have and feel original sin, and also daily repent and strive with it, fall in some way into manifest sins, as David into adultery, murder, and blasphemy, they cast out faith and the Holy Ghost. For the Holy Ghost does not permit sin to have dominion, to gain the upper hand so as to be completed, but represses and restrains it so that it must not do what it wishes. But if it do what it wishes, the Holy Ghost and faith are not there present. For St. John says (1. Ep. 3, 9): 'Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin, . . . and he cannot sin.' And yet that is also the truth which the same St. John says (1. Ep. 1, 8): 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.'" (Part III, Art. 3, §§ 42-45; p. 329.) The Lutheran Church has received this statement of Luther into her confessional writings. This is the Luther of whom a modern Catholic critic says: "This thought of the all-forgiving nature of faith so dominated his mind that it excluded the notion of contrition, penance, good works, or effort on the part of the believer, and thus his teaching destroyed root and branch the whole idea of human culpability and responsibility for the breaking of the Commandments."

It is amazing boldness in Catholics to prefer this charge against Luther, when they themselves teach a worse doctrine than they impute to Luther. The Council of Trent in its Sixth Session, Canon 15, also in its Sixteenth Session, Canon 15, Coster in his Enchiridion, in the chapter on Faith, p. 178, Bellarminus on Justification,