Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T00:59:06.381Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Justification by Faith in Protestant Thought1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Extract

It is appropriate to begin this presentation with an extended citation from Luther, where this founder of ‘Protestant thought’ develops what he means by ‘justification by faith’. We read in the Large Commentary to the Galatians:

Faith lays hold upon Christ and has Him present, enclosing Him as the ring encloses the precious stone which is set in it. And he who is found to have laid hold upon Christ with such a faith and have Him in his heart, God counts for righteous. This is the reason or the merit through which we receive the forgiveness of sins and righteousness. Because you believe in Me, says God, and because your faith lays hold upon Christ, whom I have given to you to be your Justifier and Saviour, therefore be thou righteous… And it is altogether necessary that God accepts us or counts us as righteous, first because we are not yet in this life wholly righteous, rather in this life sin always remains in the flesh. This sin remaining in the flesh God purges from us. Further we are also sometimes abandoned by the Holy Spirit and fall into sin, like Peter, David and other saints. But then we may always fall back upon this doctrine, that our sins are covered and that God will not impute them unto us (Rom. 4.7f).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1956

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 374 note 2 W.A. 40:I, 233.17–234, 21.

page 379 note 1 W.A. 40:I, 173, 19–23.

page 379 note 2 W.A. 40:I, 164, 19–28.

page 381 note 1 W.A. 30:I, 213, 12—214, 6.

page 381 note 2 W.A. 30:I, 381, 6–8.

page 382 note 1 Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, 2nd ed., 1952, p. 998.Google Scholar

page 383 note 1 W.A. 30:I, 390,4–391,3.

page 383 note 2 W.A. 40:I, 233,17–19.

page 383 note 3 See, for example, W.A. 2, 748,6–26 (a sermon on holy communion from 1519).