Dr. Luther’s Trick and Treat

 Or

Sola Fide as Catholic Truth

 

We are in Allhallowtide, the period long ago set aside by the Church for the remembrance of those who have passed on before us.   It begins on the 31 October, All Hallows’ Eve, so called because on sacred calendars days are counted from evening to evening, not from midnight to midnight as in secular calendars, and 1 November is All Saints Day.   All Hallows’ Eve is also the anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation for it is on that day in 1517 that Dr. Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg.   This was a great trick on the corrupt Roman Patriarch and those who accepted his usurped supreme jurisdiction over the Church because the Ninety-Five Theses were a devastating critique of corrupt practices, like the sale of indulgences, that the Roman Patriarch – at the time it was Leo X – was using to raise funds.   Soon thereafter, Dr. Luther would provide a wonderful treat for Christian souls by hosing down the doctrine of justification, as taught by St. Paul in the New Testament, and washing away all the mud that had accumulated to obscure it so that it could be viewed in all its peace-and-assurance bringing clarity.

 

Dr.  Luther is often quoted as having said that justification is the article on which the Church stands or falls.   If you go looking through the corpus of Dr. Luther’s works for the exact phrase you will not find it, although you will find the idea stated in different words in multiple places, and the earliest attribution of the saying to him is close enough to his own time that there is no good reason to question its authenticity.   Justification, in the quotation, means the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

 

The Roman Church took a rather different view of the doctrine.   In the Council of Trent, which met from 1545 to 1563 to address the Reformation, the Roman Church pronounced an anathema upon justification by faith alone in the fourteenth canon of the Council’s sixth session in 1547, although the doctrine condemned in the canon is worded in such a way as to be unrecognizable as that which Dr. Luther and the other Reformers taught.       Here are the words of the canon:

 

If any one saith, that man is truly absolved from his sins and justified, because that he assuredly believed himself absolved and justified; or, that no one is truly justified but he who believes himself justified; and that, by this faith alone, absolution and justification are effected; let him be anathema.

 

In the doctrine condemned by this canon, the only content identified for this faith is that one is absolved and justified.   If this were the only content of one’s faith, the Roman Church would indeed be right in condemning the idea that such faith by itself absolved and justified one, for that idea would amount to the claim that one can make something be true by believing it.   You find that sort of idea in a lot of fuzzy, pop, New Age, thinking today, but you will look in vain to find it in the writings of Dr. Luther or Zwingle or Calvin or Archbishop Cranmer.  

 

The Reformation article is quite otherwise than the caricature that is condemned in the Roman canon.   In the Reformation article, the Gospel is the content of saving faith.   The Gospel is the Good News about everything God has done for us in Jesus Christ.  We needed a Saviour because of our sins and God gave us a Saviour, the Saviour He had promised from the Fall.   This Saviour is God’s Only-Begotten Son, that is to say, the Son Who is eternally begotten of God the Father, shares the Father’s nature, and so, like the Father and the Holy Ghost, is the One True God.   God gave Him to us in the Incarnation, in which the Son of God came down to Earth from Heaven, and took on our nature through a miracle wrought by the Holy Ghost in which He was conceived and born to the Virgin Mary and so became fully Man while remaining fully God.   Through this miracle, His human nature was not tainted with sin like ours and so He lived out the righteousness God requires of us all but which we are unable to produce because of our sin.   Then, rejected by the leadership of the people into which He had been born, He was condemned in a mock trial, and crucified at the order of a Roman governor who knew Him to be innocent but wished to appease the mob.   He submitted to this meekly in order that He Who had committed no sin, much less a crime, might die the death of a criminal.   Dying that death, He did what only One Who was both God and sinless Man could do, which was take the burden of all the guilt of the sins of the entire world upon Himself and pay for them once and for all.   Having so expiated the sins of the world and remaining sinless in Himself Death had no claim on Him. He entered Death’s Kingdom as Conqueror and rose triumphantly from the Grave before Ascending back to the right hand of the Father.   By doing all of this Jesus effected the salvation of the world on our behalf and the benefits of that salvation are promised in the Gospel to whosoever believes in Him.

 

Note how I worded that last sentence.  If you compare that with what the Roman canon condemns another way in which the canon misrepresents the Reformation doctrine should become clear.   Faith’s role is not to effect our absolution and justification.   That is what Jesus did in the events of the Gospel.   Our faith’s role is to receive absolution, justification, and indeed, all of the salvation that has been given to us freely in our Saviour Jesus.

 

This is where the stress needs to be when talking about faith in respect to salvation – that its role is that of the hand that receives the free gift which God has given us in Jesus Christ.   Unless we are clear that the role of faith in God’s plan of salvation is instrumental, and instrumental on our part – how we receive the gift God has given – as opposed to instrumental on God’s part – how He brings, confers, and bestows the gift of Jesus Christ and His salvation upon us – justification by faith alone does not make sense.  Sola fide is in the ablative case.   It does not mean just “faith alone” but “by faith alone” and what this expression means is that it is by faith alone that we receive the gift of salvation.   It does not mean that faith, by itself, so pleases God that on the intrinsic merits of faith He accepts us despite our plentiful bad works and deficiency in good ones.   It does not mean that the only thing Christianity asks of people is faith or, to put it another way, that Christianity consists only of believing.   It means that the task of faith in the order of salvation – the receiving, on our part, of the free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ – belongs to faith alone, and that nothing else can either substitute for faith or add to faith in the reception of salvation.

 

That this is what Dr. Luther’s article of justification by faith alone means cannot be emphasized enough.   For while the Church of Rome, in whose eyes Dr. Luther had been poking his fingers, was the only ancient Church to pronounce a formal condemnation of the article, none of the other ancient Churches, except our English Church which joined the Reformation, embraced it.   They regarded it as a novelty because the Fathers, doctors, and theologians of the ancient Churches had not been in the habit of using the word “alone” in conjunction with “faith”.   Neither did St. Paul in the Bible.   What was meant by Sola Fide, however, that faith is the only hand we have with which to receive the gift of salvation, was clearly taught in other words by St. Paul.   We shall have more to say about that shortly.   First I wish to observe that just as the Roman Church’s formal condemnation of Sola Fide at the Council of Trent did not condemn Sola Fide as Dr. Luther taught it, that faith is the sole means by which we appropriate to ourselves the gift of salvation, but a weird caricature of it in which belief creates its own reality, so none of the reasons that the other ancient Churches gave for not affirming it speak to what the article actually says.

 

Consider the objection based upon the role of baptism.   At the end of St. Peter’s sermon on the first Whitsunday (the Christian Pentecost) in the second chapter of Acts, the crowd, under heavy conviction of sin, asked the Apostles “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” and received the answer from St. Peter “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.”   Other passages can be pointed to that stress the role of baptism (1 Peter 3:21, Rom. 6:3-6, Mk. 16:16).   These verses, however, do not say that the role of baptism is the same as that of faith, that of a hand receiving a gift.   Nor is that the Catholic – held by all Christians, everywhere, at all times – understanding of the role of baptism.   Baptism is linked by the Scriptures to three distinct aspects of salvation – regeneration or the new birth, our sins being washed away, and our being joined in union with Jesus Christ.   Baptism is not how we receive these salvific blessings, however, but the ordinary means by which God bestows them upon us.    

 

I will try to make the distinction clearer.   God has given us salvation in our Saviour Jesus Christ.    This took place in the events of the Gospel, from the Incarnation to the Ascension, two millennia ago.   For that salvation to be ours, however, two things must happen.  1.  God must bring the salvation He has given us in Jesus to us.  2.   We must appropriate it to ourselves.    Both of these things involve the use of means or instruments.   God uses means to bring the salvation He has given us to us.   We use means to receive it to ourselves.   The means God uses to bring Jesus Christ and His salvation to us are the Church and her ministries of Word and Sacrament.   The means we use to appropriate Jesus Christ and His salvation to us is faith.

 

Baptism is the Sacrament that God ordinarily uses as His means, along with the Ministry of the Word, in bringing the salvation of Jesus Christ to us for the first time.   This is why it is connected specifically to regeneration, cleansing from sin, and union with Christ.  These are the aspects of salvation that are most prominent as the beginning of the Christian life.    Faith is the means by which we appropriate this salvation to ourselves and make it truly ours.   Baptism is the means God ordinarily uses to confer, faith is the means we always use to receive.  

 

A few words are in order here about what is meant by “ordinarily” and “always”.   It should not be surprising that we speak of the means God uses as ordinary but the means we use as absolute.   This merely means that God does not limit Himself to His appointed means, the way He limits us to ours.   What this means in practice with regards to baptism is that someone who hears the Gospel and believes in Jesus Christ will not be damned for lack of baptism.   This is why Jesus in Mark 16:16 promises salvation to those who believe and are baptized, but pronounces damnation only on those who do not believe.   It also means, however, that those who think this an excuse for neglecting baptism, ought to consider the account of Naaman in 2 Kings 5, and particularly verses 10-13.  

 

It is also important to note that while God always brings salvation, and more specifically regeneration, cleansing from sin, and union with Christ, to us in baptism, they are not ours unless we receive them by faith in Jesus Christ.   In the early Church controversies arose about the efficacy of baptism administered by those who had failed to be faithful witnesses in periods of persecution.   The orthodox Fathers, in answering the Novatians and later the Donatists, maintained soundly that the efficacy of the sacrament does not depend on the worthiness of the minister who administers it.  By the time of the Reformation, many in the Roman Church had twisted these arguments into arguments for the mechanical efficacy of the sacrament, that the salvation conferred through it is ours regardless of faith on our part.  The Reformers, rightly, upheld the original intent of the arguments of St. Augustine et al., that the efficacy of the Sacraments as channels of Grace was not overthrown by the sin of the minister, but, also rightly, rejected the mechanical view, and emphasized that Grace conferred is not received, except by faith.   The only benefit that one receives mechanically upon baptism is external, formal, membership in the Church.   To truly be united to her and her Saviour internally and spiritually requires that the Grace conferred in the Sacrament be received by faith in Jesus Christ.

 

Everything just said about baptism also applies to the other Gospel Sacrament, the Lord’s Supper.   Baptism is the Sacrament through which God bestows on us the initial Grace of regeneration, washing of sin, and union with Jesus Christ, the Lord’s Supper is the Sacrament through which God confers the Grace that sustains the new life in Jesus Christ, by feeding the believer with the spiritual food of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ as broken and shed for us on the Cross in His One True Sacrifice.   As with baptism, so with the Lord’s Supper, God uses the Sacrament as a channel to bestow Grace apart from the worthiness of the minister, but we only receive it by faith in Jesus Christ.

 

The orthodox understanding of the Sacraments as the ordinary means of Grace along with the ministry of the Word, therefore, does not conflict with Sola Fide.    The Sacraments and faith are both instrumental means by which the gift of salvation given to us in Jesus Christ becomes ours, but the Sacraments, or more properly the Church in both of her ministries, is the means God has appointed for Himself to bestow the gift upon us, and faith is the means, the only means, God has appointed for us to receive it.

 

Another objection to Sola Fide is on the grounds of the necessity of repentance.   While some answer this objection by pointing out that in the New Testament, at least, the word translated by repent literally means to change your mind, something that must necessarily occur whenever someone believes for the first time, this does not, I think, do justice to the Scriptural teaching on repentance.   Repentance is not just any change of mind but the kind illustrated by the Prodigal Son’s coming to himself and returning to his father.    The right answer to the objection is to say that while the necessity of repentance is certainly taught and emphasized in the Bible this does not mean that repentance does the same thing as faith, that it shares faith’s place in the Order of Salvation.  Note that in the preaching of John the Baptist, as well as St. Peter’s response to the crowd under conviction in Acts 2, repentance is linked with baptism, whereas in the passages that talk about the beginning of Jesus’ preaching ministry repentance is linked with faith.   Just as repentance does not perform the same function as baptism, neither does it perform the same role as faith.   It is linked to both because it performs the essential auxiliary function of breaking down the pride and self-righteousness which otherwise keep sinful human beings from recognizing their need for the salvation given in Christ, conferred in baptism, and received by faith.    Repentance, therefore, is not another hand with which to receive Grace alongside faith.   It can be likened to the act of emptying the hand that it might receive the gift.

 

This brings us back to the most common objection to Sola Fide, the claim that it was novel, invented in the sixteenth century by Dr. Luther.   This is, on the surface, the most plausible of these objections.   Those who make it appeal to both Scripture and tradition.   The appeal to Scripture consists of the argument that the expression “faith alone” appears only once in the Holy Scriptures and that one occurrence is St. James’ denial in the twenty-fourth verse of the second chapter of his Epistle.   The appeal to tradition is basically that the Church Fathers and those who succeeded them down to the sixteenth century did not speak of “faith alone”.   The first point I wish to make in response to this objection is that the important matter is not whether the Scriptures and Church tradition used the expression “faith alone” but whether or not the idea behind those words is contained in the Scriptures and tradition.    Once again, the idea behind Sola Fide, is that salvation is a gift that we have been given in our Saviour Jesus Christ, and that it is only by believing in Him that we receive this gift.    It does not deny to anything else its place in the Order of Salvation, it merely insists that the place assigned to faith is not shared by anything else, and especially not by human works.    When it is clearly understood that this is what the expression means, this seemingly plausible objection becomes nonsense, for this is clearly taught in the Scriptures, and is implicit in the doctrine that salvation is a gift that God has freely given us in Jesus Christ that is very much a part of the tradition of the Church.   Nobody thinks Sola Gratia was a novelty invented in the sixteenth century.

 

That salvation is a gift means that it cannot be by works and works are what Sola Fide explicitly excludes.   This is common sense.   Something that you get by working for it is not a gift.   It is a wage, a payment, a reward.   You are owed it not given it.   Not only is it common sense, it is Scripture.   St. Paul spelled it out for us explicitly in the fourth chapter of his epistle to the Romans:

 

Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. (Rom. 4:4-5)

 

These words make nonsense out of the claim that the only time the Scriptures mention “faith alone” is the denial in James 2;24.   Indeed, since the “alone” in “faith alone” means “and not by works”, Sola Fide is affirmed throughout the New Testament.   Here are a few examples:

 

Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. (Gal. 2:16)

 

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.  (Eph. 2:8-9)

 

Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.  (2 Tim. 1:9)

 

Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; (Tit. 3:5)

 

Consider that last example.   Some try to explain St. Paul away by claiming that when he denied that we are saved by works he was talking only about ceremonial works and not moral works.    In 2 Timothy 1:9, however, it is clearly “works of righteousness” that St. Paul says we are not saved by.   His entire reasoning in Romans 4 that it cannot be by works because otherwise it would be of debt rather than Grace would collapse if it were only ceremonial and rather than moral works that were in view.

 

Once again we need to remember that Sola Fide means that faith does not share its place in the Order of Salvation, the place of the hand that receives the gift, with anything else.   It does not deny to anything else its proper place.   This is true of works as well.   St. Paul identifies for us what the proper place of works is in regards to salvation in the verse that follows immediately after those in the above verses from Ephesians:

 

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

 

The place of works in the Order of Salvation, is not prior to salvation as a cause, but after salvation as an effect.  I recently watched a video in which a clergyman claimed that Sola Fide was the weakest of the Reformation doctrines.   I won’t embarrass him by naming him since he is usually much sounder than this but he spent some time criticizing the idea that works are the evidence of faith, which he seemed to think to be the only role available for works in the Protestant scheme.   Evidence for whom, he asked?   For us?  For God?   Neither is very satisfactory.   Evidence of faith, however, is not the role assigned to works, but fruit of salvation.   As has been pointed out many times in the past it is a matter of getting things in their proper order, identifying the cause and effect.   We do not do good works in order to be saved.   We are saved in order that we might do good works. (1)

 

Aristotle in the third chapter of the second book of his Physics identified four different types of “causes”.   He explained the difference between them with the illustration of a statue.   Its material cause is that from which it is made, bronze, stone, whatever.   Its efficient cause is the sculptor who makes the statue from the material.   Its formal cause is the idea of the statue in the sculptor’s head to which he makes the material conform.   Its final cause is the purpose for which the sculptor makes the statue.   John Calvin in section 17 of Chapter XIV of the third book of his Institutes of Christian Religion borrows these terms and applies them to salvation saying that the efficient cause is “the mercy and free love of the heavenly Father towards us”, that the material cause is “Christ, with the obedience by which he purchased righteousness for us”, and the formal cause as “faith”.   Calvin erred slightly on this last point because he identified the formal cause with the instrumental cause.   Aristotle did not identify the instrumental cause in his Physics but if he had it would have been the hammer and chisel employed by the sculptor in his illustration.   As we have seen, since salvation is a gift, there are two kinds of instrumental causes, the instrument God uses to put the gift of salvation into our hands, the Church and her ministries, and the hand which receives it and is therefore instrumental on the part of the receiver, which is our faith.    What actually corresponds to Aristotle’s formal cause with regards to salvation is God’s eternal design.   It is rather amusing that John Calvin of all people got that wrong.  

Where do works fit into this?

 

Works share the same final cause as salvation.   Of the final cause of salvation, John Calvin says “The Apostle, moreover, declares that the final cause is the demonstration of the divine righteousness and the praise of his goodness.”  A simpler way of putting that would be “the glory of God”.   Numerous verses could be cited in support of the glory of God being the final cause, the end or telos, of salvation, but since this is not really a controversial point, I will reference only 1 Tim. 1:15-17.   Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:16) and St. Peter in his first epistle (chapter 2, verse 12) instruct their hearers/readers to do good works that thereby men would glorify God.   This tells us that the good works of the believer have the same telos as our salvation.   Works are not any kind of cause of our salvation, but our salvation is the material cause of our good works, the final cause of both being the glory of God.

 

St. James does not contradict this.   Earlier in the epistle, long before the controversial passage, he asserts that salvation is a gift:

 

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. (Jas. 1:17-18)

 

It is significant that he does not say this of the salvation and justification of which he writes in the controversial passage in his second chapter.   Nor does the word Grace appear in that passage, unlike the other key terms shared by the passage and the fourth chapter of Romans.   This, and the argument of St. Paul in Romans 4:4-5, indicates that whatever the salvation and justification St. James was talking about is it is not salvation/justification by Grace, justification/salvation as a gift of God.   St. James points further to that conclusion in the very verse that has caused so much difficulty:

 

Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.

 

The word “only” there is an adverb in Greek, modifying “justified”, not an adjective modifying “faith.”   St. James is saying there are two justifications, one by faith, one by works, not that faith and works are two causes of the same justification.   St. Paul himself seals that interpretation as the correct one when he writes:

 

For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God. (Rom. 4:2)

 

That is St. Paul interpreting St. James.   Whatever St. James was talking about when he said Abraham was justified by works it was not justification before God which is a gift by Grace and therefore cannot be of works.

 

The only novelty in Dr. Luther’s article of justification by faith alone, was the wording.   That salvation is a gift that God gives us in Jesus Christ and not something we earn by our works is the plain teaching of the New Testament and it is the teaching of Catholic – belonging to the entire Church everywhere, at all times – tradition as well.   Sola Fide, that we receive this gift to ourselves only by the hand of faith in Jesus Christ, while not usually expressed in Dr. Luther’s wording prior the sixteenth century, is implicit in this Catholic doctrine of Sola Fide.   It is also required by the Catholic concept of good works as the fruit of a faith that works by love.   If the works of love are necessary, it is not the necessity of an imposed condition – do these or salvation is invalidated – because that kind of necessity would eliminate the distinction between the works of love and the works of the law.  Works of love are works of love, because the one who does them does them not in order to obtain God’s favour or out of the fear that he will lose God’s favour if he does not, but because he loves God.   Love cannot be produced by the compulsion of the Law.   That is the entire point of the Law.   Jesus summed up the Law in the commandments to love God and love our neighbour.   That should be regarded as the most sobering and terrifying words that Jesus ever spoke.  They were not words of comfort.   If love of God and love of our neighbour is what the Law demands, and these loves come with qualifications –we are to love God with all that we are, and to love our neighbour as ourselves – then we are in constant violation of the two greatest commandments.   Not one of us has lived up to either of these for a second of our lives.   The works of love that are the fruit of salvation are the fruit of a love that God works in our hearts by His Grace, through the means of the Gospel, which assures us that God in His love has met the demands of the Law for us, both its demands for perfect righteousness and its demands for just punishment of our sin, in Jesus Christ, freeing us to love God, not because the Law demands it, but because he first loved us (1 Jn. 4:19).   Ironically, that which the Roman Council of Trent feared most in Dr. Luther’s doctrine, which, as is obvious from their straw man caricature, was its assuring nature, is precisely what makes Sola Fide so essential to this Catholic truth of faith working by love.   It is only when one is assured through faith that he is secure in the freely given Grace of God in Jesus Christ that one is free to love God because God is so worthy of our love rather than to try and love God under the compulsion of the threats of the Law. 

 

All of this was clearly lost on the Church of Rome at the Council of Tent.    A recent Roman Patriarch, the late Benedict XVI, wrote:

 

For this reason Luther's phrase: "faith alone" is true, if it is not opposed to faith in charity, in love. Faith is looking at Christ, entrusting oneself to Christ, being united to Christ, conformed to Christ, to his life. And the form, the life of Christ, is love; hence to believe is to conform to Christ and to enter into his love. So it is that in the Letter to the Galatians in which he primarily developed his teaching on justification St Paul speaks of faith that works through love (cf. Gal 5: 14).

 

This displayed far more understanding than his predecessors in the sixteenth century.   Such a pity that he was forced from St. Peter’s throne and replaced with the Clown Pretender that currently occupies it.

 

Happy All Hallowtide

(1) It is sometimes said in response to this that salvation is a process not just an event.   More elaborately put, there are three tenses to salvation.  There is salvation past, our being brought into God’s family, united with Jesus Christ, cleansed of past sins, justified, regenerated.   There is salvation present, in which we are progressively conformed into the image of Christ by the sanctifying work of God and in which we are cleansed and forgiven of our ongoing sins.   There is salvation future, in which we are perfected, and brought into the presence of God.   Sometimes this is put more simply as salvation from the guilt of sin (past), power of sin (present), and presence of sin (future).   Or they are just called justification, sanctification, and glorification.   The more simpler the version the more precision is sacrificed.  Justification and sanctification, at least, have past, present, and future aspects to each of them, just as they have both positional and practical aspects, corresponding to the two aspects of our union with Christ (positional = us in Christ, practical = Christ in us).   All of this is valid, but what we have stressed in the main body of this essay, is true of all of it.   Salvation in all of its tenses and aspects, is the gift of God.   All of it was accomplished for us by Jesus Christ in the events of the Gospel.   It is all given to us on the basis of Grace.   The means God has appointed to bring all of it to us is His Church and her ministries of Word and Sacrament.   Faith is always the hand by which we receive it.   None of this changes from salvation past, to salvation present, to salvation future, although the specific Sacramental ministry God uses to bring it to us changes from the not-to-be-repeated baptism of salvation past to the perpetual Lord’s Supper of salvation present.   Those things that have auxiliary roles, like repentance, may vary over the course of the progress of salvation present (the specifics of what repentance calls for depend on the situation).   The basics – salvation is a gift, it was accomplished by Jesus Christ in the events of the Gospel, it is brought to us through the ministry of the Church, we receive it by faith – never change, nor does the fact that our good works are always the fruit of salvation – in all of its aspects and tenses – and never the cause of it in any of its aspects or tenses.   

Advent

It is Advent Sunday, the first day in the liturgical calendar for Western Christians, and the first of the four Sundays of Advent, the period that begins now and ends with the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord and Saviour on Christmas.   It is, like the longer period of Lent that leads up to Easter or Pascha, the Christian Passover celebrating our Lord's Glorious Resurrection, a period for penitence and sober reflection.   I should say, that is what the period of Advent traditionally has been in the Church.   There is now a secular Christmas which falls on the same day as the celebration of the birth of Christ, and with it a secular Advent that is more-or-less the opposite of what Advent is all about in the Church.   Secular Advent comes in a long and a short version.   The short version is that which is evident in the secular version of Advent calendars.   An Advent calendar is the kind where you count down the days to Christmas by opening a door, eating a candy, or some such thing.   Religious Advent calendars begin with Advent Sunday which may, as this year, fall in November (the 27th is the earliest it can fall).   Secular Advent calendars typically begin on December 1st.   That is the short version of secular Advent.   The long version starts when the Christmas decorations go up.   This was remarkably early this year.   I  saw a house in Winnipeg's West End - that is the name of the section of town, not an accurate description of its location - lit up as if they were in competition with Clark Griswold, back in September.

Secular Advent, as stated above, is typically the opposite in tone and spirit to what Advent is supposed to be in the Church.   It is more of an extended version of secular Christmas, with parties and gift-giving and the like, and thus resembles Carnival, the pre-Lent festive season for those of the Roman Communion that corresponds to the more reserved Anglican Shrovetide, more than it does Lent itself.   That is what has been the norm for decades.   It does not look like it will be the case this year.   Grinches all around the world have seized the opportunity of the mass hysteria generated by media hype about the Wuhan bat flu to steal both the secular and the Christian Christmas, taking Advent to boot.   Here in the Dominion of Canada the chief Grinch has been Captain Airhead, who managed to retain his position as Her Majesty's First Minister last year despite being hit by at least three scandals any one of which would have taken down anybody who did not belong to the Canadian equivalent of the Kennedy family, but the provincial premiers, especially our own premier in Manitoba, Brian Pallister,  who cannot seem to make up his mind as to whether he is a rectal orifice or a squirt bottle used to clean the same, has come close to surpassing Captain Airhead in his Grinchiness.   He shut down the small businesses that depend upon the Christmas shopping rush to balance their books for at least a month in that very period, then, when they complained that they were being treated unfairly, instead of doing something that would actually help, ordered the larger stores to seal off everything except food and a few other "essentials", thus giving all the  business in the province for other items to Amazon.   He ordered the Churches to close and seems determined to make those Churches that have insisted upon their constitutionally guaranteed freedom of worship in defiance of his orders into scapegoats for the failure of his restrictions to produce the desired effect of lower case numbers.   I shall, Deus Vult, be addressing that scapegoating at greater length later this week , but note that this unconstitutional and totalitarian ban on in-person Church services includes even drive-in services where everyone remains in their own car in the parking lot and which cannot possibly contribute to the spread of this or any other disease.    He even had the nerve to lecture Lower Canada's premier François Legault over the latter's less Grinchy policy with regards to family gatherings over Christmas.   Sadly, Mr. Legault's response was merely to say that Mr. Pallister did not seem to be aware of the precautions surrounding the Christmas exception in his province, rather than the "va te faire foutre" that the situation seemed to call for.   Mr. Pallister is not content with trying to steal Christmas from Manitobans, he wants to steal it from other Canadians too.

Mr. Pallister, whose inability to think outside the lockdown box when it comes to the bat flu evinces his lack of understanding the meaning or perhaps even of having read Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque of the Read Death, shows by his efforts to steal Christmas that he  has failed to grasp the lesson of Dr. Seuss's story about the Grinch as well.   In the end, despite all the Grinch's efforts, Christmas came "it came just the same".   It is perhaps too much to hope that Mr. Pallister's small heart will grow three sizes when this very thing happens this year.  Denied his annual vacation in Costa Rica because of bat flu travel restrictions he seems determined to make everybody as miserable as he is.   Those who do not understand the purpose of penitential seasons like Advent and Lent might conclude from this that he has restored the original spirit of the period.

They would be wrong, of course, because gloom and misery do not add up to penitence.   Indeed, they are even more a part of despair than they are a part of penitence or repentance.   Despair, you might recall, was in medieval moral theology, the mortal sin opposite to the theological virtue of hope and amounted to the repudiation of the latter.   In its most extreme form it was the belief that one had sinned beyond the capacity of God's grace and mercy and expressed itself in suicide.   The mental anguish that tormented the eighteenth century poet and Olney hymn writer William Cowper in the latter years of his life, from which he received release only shortly before he was allowed to die in the peace of assurance of God's forgiveness, was pretty much the textbook example.   In is a recurring subject throughout Shakespeare, the ending of Romeo and Juliet being the most obvious example although it is expressed best in all that King Lear says after he enters, in the third and last scene of Act V, carrying the dead body of Cordelia, the only one of his daughters, as he realized too late, who had been truly loving, devoted, and loyal.   Despair is so serious a sin because it precludes repentance.   Penitence or repentance, always includes hope.

True penitence or repentance involves a sober reflection upon one's own mortality and that which is ultimately the cause of the dread which the inevitability of one's own death inspires, one's sin.    "It is appointed unto man once to die", St. Paul wrote to the Hebrews, "but after this the judgement."   The Greek word translated repentance is often given the definition "change of mind".   It is, in fact, formed by adding a preposition which when used in compounds has the meaning "again" to a word referring to thought.    The image is of looking upon one's thoughts, words, and deeds of the past and recognizing how far short of God's will, whether expressed in the Ten Commandments or the Greatest and Second Greatest Commandments to which our Lord pointed, we have fallen.   The basic Greek word for sin in the New Testament, the same used by Aristotle in his works of literary/theatrical criticism/theory to denote the "fatal flaw" of a tragic hero, means literally to miss the mark, to fall short of the bull's eye.   This sort of reflection falls short of being repentance, however, and leads to despair, if it is not joined to faith and hope.

This is why seasons of penitence are always seasons which look forward to a faith and hope inspiring event.   Lent looks forward to the remembrance of the events whereby sin and death were defeated, the Crucifixion, in which Our Saviour allowed Himself to be unjustly executed by wicked men, that He might offer Himself up as the One true sacrifice that takes away the sins of the world, and the Resurrection in which His triumph over sin, death, and the very gates of hell, was declared to the world.   Advent looks forward to His birth, and what His birth signifies, the Incarnation, God coming down to earth and becoming man that He might lift man up to God.     Faith rests upon God's revelation of Himself and His love and saving mercy to the world in these events and it is faith which gives birth to hope, which is but faith looking forward, and charity or Christian love, which is but faith in action.   Repentance prepares our hearts to receive God's saving revelation of Himself in faith.

So, denied the shopping, partying, and revelry of secular Advent this year by Satan-possessed politicians and doctors determined to preserve our mere existence by forbidding us to truly live our lives, let us reflect in the true spirit of the season, on our sinfulness and mortality, repent, and embrace in faith and hope the "dawn of redeeming grace", to borrow Dr. Luther's words, in the events remembered at Christmas.   If we do so, Christmas will come just the same despite the efforts of politicians and physicians to prevent it.

Gospel Repentance – a Lenten Meditation

Law and Gospel are Scriptural terms with multiple connotations. Both are the proper designations of portions of holy writ. Law, as the translation of Torah, is the collective name of the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures. Gospel is the genre label of each of the four portraits of the life of Christ by SS. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John with which the distinctly Christian Scriptures begin. Each term is also sometimes used as a shorthand for the Scriptures as a whole, making them in this one usage, synonyms. More often, however, they are used as shorter titles for the Old and New Testaments and the Covenants from which the two major divisions of the Bible get these other names. When used this way, and especially when distinguishing the dominant principle and distinct message of each of the two Covenants, Law and Gospel are generally set in contrast with each other.

The contrasts are myriad but there is one in particular that I wish to reflect upon and that is the difference between repentance under the Gospel and repentance as it was under the Law. Or rather, I wish to focus on one of several differences between Gospel repentance and Law, others of which I have discussed elsewhere.

Before looking at this difference we should briefly observe what is the same about repentance under both Law and Gospel. Repentance is the way appointed for those who have offended God to return to Him and find forgiveness and restoration. Or, perhaps more accurately, it is the attitude which those who have offended God are expected to take in returning and seeking His forgiveness. This was the case under the Law and it has not changed under Gospel. Under both Covenants it is primarily preached to and expected of those who are already members of the Covenant, although there are Old Testament examples of others repenting and the Sacrament of initiation into the Christian Covenant is a ritual which is symbolic of repentance and the washing away of sin.

Under both the Law and the Gospel people are expected to repent of their bad deeds. Under the Law it is only of evil that people are called upon to repent. When the prophets call upon the Israelites to repent and return to their God it is over idolatry, child sacrifice, injustice, and assorted other such wickedness. When Jonah, very much against his will, proclaimed God’s judgement upon the wickedness of Ninevah, it was of that wickedness that they repented. There is even a word play that is not infrequent in the Old Testament in which “repent” and “evil” are used with a double sense – one the one hand they designate the contrition and the sin of the sinner, and on the other the clemency and the averted retribution of God. The end of the third chapter of Jonah is an example of this, at least if you read it in the original Hebrew or a translation that preserves the Hebrew play on words like the Greek Septuagint or the English Authorized Version and avoid the Non Inspired Version which, favourite of evangelicals though it be, does not. When applied to divine retribution ערַ/κᾰκῐ́ᾱ/evil is clearly limited in its sense to destructive effect and does not have the connotation of moral culpability but the figure of speech preserves the common theme that it is “evil” of some sort that is the object of repentance.


Which brings us to the difference. The Gospel calls upon us to repent, not only of our bad deeds, but of our good deeds as well.

Perhaps your initial reaction to that assertion is to ask how on earth it is possible to repent of one’s good deeds. It is an understandable reaction, especially if you have been taught to think of repentance primarily in terms of a kind of self-improvement – turning away from past wrongdoing and starting to do that which is right. Scripturally, however, the essence of repentance is contrition and humility, and behavioural change is merely its fruit. To repent of one’s good deeds is to confess them to be sins, to renounce all claim to divine praise and reward for them, and to seek God’s mercy and grace for them, as well as for one’s overt bad deeds.

St. Paul showed us how it is done in the third chapter of his epistle to the Church at Philippi. After summarizing all of the reasons why he might “have confidence in the flesh” in verses four and five, he wrote “But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ” in verse six and then proceeded in the next verses to use the following much stronger language:

Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.

To count one’s personal righteousness “as dung” surely merits the description repentance of good works.

Another passage in which we are enjoined to take a similar attitude is Luke 17:7-10. In this passage the Lord Jesus Christ uses a parable about an earthly lord and his domestic servant to illustrate to His disciples that they are to regard their service to God as their obligation or duty, i.e., that which they owe God, and not as something done for gratitude or reward. “So likewise ye,” the Lord says, “when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.”

Next, consider the parable that is found at the end of the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 25, beginning at the thirty-first verse. In this famous parable about the Last Judgement, the Lord Jesus says that at His Second Coming He will send His angels to divide the sheep from the goats, placing the sheep on His right hand and the goats on the left, then He will judge the works of each. The same list of works, which has taken on the traditional name of the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy, is gone over twice, and the sheep are bidden to “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” because they performed these works to Christ Himself whereas the goats are told to “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” because they did not perform these works to Christ Himself. When each group is surprised to be told that they had ministered or failed to minister to Christ they are told that their ministry or failure to “the least of these my brethren” is counted as being done or not done to Christ Himself.

This parable has suffered from much misinterpretation over the years due to a superficial reading. The misinterpretation is theological rather than ethical. Obviously, on the ethical level, the parable conveys the simple moral lesson that we ought to perform these works to everyone who needs them, great or small, as best as we are able and is in this regard, similar in meaning to the parable of the Good Samaritan. Theologically, however, legalists of all stripes have regarded this passage as evidence that Christ taught otherwise than St. Paul on the matter of works and justification, despite the abundant testimony to the contrary that can be found in St. John’s Gospel. In this passage, the legalists claim, works are all that is talked about and there is no mention of faith at all. Note what this simplistic and superficial interpretation overlooks.

The sheep are divided from the goats, not by the judgment of their works, but before the judgment of their works. At no point is it suggested that performing the Works of Mercy is what makes the sheep sheep or that failing to so perform is what makes the goats goats. Indeed, to interpret the parable this way goes against the obvious implications of the responses of each group to the judgement. The sheep are surprised to hear their works praised, the goats are surprised to hear of their failure. In the case of the goats what this suggests is that they were self-satisfied and confident that they HAD performed sufficient good works of this type so as to merit eternal reward. Ergo the shock to find their smallest failures being brought into focus and the harsh condemnation that they actually receive.

As for the sheep it suggests that they had done precisely what I have been arguing the Gospel calls us to do – to repent of our good works as well as our bad. They counted the good works that they were surprised to hear praised as loss, they had disavowed any and all claim to praise and reward for their works, and considered themselves, as Christ had commanded, to be “unprofitable servants.” They had renounced all claims to a righteousness of their own works and had placed their faith entirely in the Saviour Whom God had provided to a fallen and sinful world, trusting to His all-sufficient merit alone. For that is where faith is to be found in this parable. It is what makes the difference between the sheep and the goats. Believers and unbelievers alike will be judged on their works, because works are the only basis upon which anyone can be judged. The nature of the judgement is radically different for the two different groups. Those who have placed their faith in the Saviour that God has freely and graciously provided, and who are pardoned for their sins and credited with the righteousness of Christ, find their smallest service praised and rewarded (Matthew 10:42). Their service, if subjected to scrutiny, would not measure up, so God’s acceptance of it and bestowing of praise and reward upon it, is also an act of mercy and grace, on top of His having freely given them salvation in Christ. Those, however, who reject the salvation that God has freely given but seek to establish their own righteousness by works, find their self-righteousness subjected to that scrutiny to which no human works can stand up.

If the need under the Gospel to repent of good works as well as bad has not already been made clear, let us now consider the basic meaning of ἁμαρτία which is the primary word used for “sin” in the New Testament. The branch of theology that considers the doctrine of sin takes its name, hamartiology, from this word and it is also the word used in the classical literary criticism of Aristotle for the “tragic flaw” of the hero in a Greek tragedy. The basic concept suggested by ἁμαρτία is that of missing the mark.

Imagine that you are back in Nottinghamshire in the reign of Richard the Lionheart competing in an archery contest. You have been doing very well and have outshot all your competitors. All of a sudden a last minute challenger shows up. He is wearing a heavy hooded cloak hiding his features because he is the legendary Robin Hood, an outlaw being hunted by the very Sheriff who is hosting the match. Your last shot was just slightly off the bull’s eye. The hooded challenger claims that he can beat you. Allowed to try, Robin hits the bull’s eye smack dab in the centre. The Sheriff rules that you be given another chance and you try again. Your next arrow comes even closer to the bull’s eye than your previous one – but Robin’s is still closer. Then, to rub it in, Robin shoots a second arrow and splits the first having hit the mark perfectly twice in a row. He then proceeds to blow a raspberry, wiggle his thumbs at you, and do an obnoxious victory dance all around you but you aren’t paying any attention too of this. All you can think about is how your shots, of which you had been so proud, don’t look so good anymore compared to his. You were closer than all of the other competitors except Robin – but you had still missed the mark. That’s ἁμαρτία. That is what the New Testament’s primary word for sin means.

If sin is “missing the mark” then our good deeds are to be counted as sins as much as our bad deeds. For however good our deeds may appear to us, or however well we may think we do in comparison with others, they fall far short of the mark for which we ought to be aiming – the perfect righteousness of God as stated in His Commandments and manifested in Jesus Christ. Many who seem to have no problem with confessing that they have sinned by their bad deeds and who would acknowledge that their good deeds fall short of the perfection of God balk at confessing such shortcomings to be sin. The pride that is at the root of the sinfulness of fallen human nature wishes to cling on to something for which it can claim credit, even if it be merely the intention or sincerity of our deeds. The Gospel, however, calls upon us to renounce all claim to merit of our own that we might place our confidence entirely in the all-sufficient merits of Christ.
We are in Lent, the period the Church has assigned since ancient times for penitent reflection in preparation for Passion Week’s commemoration of the events of our salvation, culminating in the celebration of the Resurrection on Easter. This Lent, let us not be satisfied with repenting of our bad deeds, but repent of all of our deeds, even those we are accustomed to think of as g

The Grace of God

For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast – Eph. 2:8-9

God, Who is our Creator and Sovereign Lord, expects and requires many things of us. It is His just right, as our Creator and Sovereign Lord, to expect and require these things of us. First and foremost, He expects us to have faith in Him, to believe what He tells us and to trust Him. It is reasonable and right, that He who is true and does not lie, should expect this of us. Secondly, He expects us to love Him with all of our hearts. This is how He loves us, and it is to His love that we owe every blessing we have ever enjoyed in our lives, those lives, and our very existence. That we should love Him in return is only right. Thirdly, He expects us to obey His commandments. He created us and the world in which we live, He owns us, He is the Master, it is His right to be obeyed. The commandments He gives us are not like the laws of a human tyrant who uses his power for his own gain at the expense of those he rules. The commandments He gives us are few and simple, and are necessary for our own good. He commands us not to murder each other, not to steal each other’s property, not to cheat on our own spouses or with other people’s spouses, not to tell lies about each other, and not to sit around wishing we had what our neighbor has.

Do we meet God’s expectations and requirements?

Sadly, we do not. We have difficulty taking Him at His word, we disbelieve what He says and do not trust Him to take care of us, thinking that we must look out for ourselves rather than rely upon Him. We do evil to each other and then we blame Him for the pain and suffering we have inflicted upon ourselves. We do not love Him wholeheartedly but neglect Him, ignore Him, and think evil of Him. We break His commandments in our hearts and minds, and all too often in our words and deeds as well. In short, we sin.

As sinners, rebels who have rejected His authority and flaunted His laws, God rightly demands that we repent, i.e., that we abandon our bad attitudes, change our mind, turn from our sins to God, bend our knees and necks in submission to His authority, mend our evil ways, making restitution where we have harmed others, humble ourselves, confessing rather than hiding our sins, and meekly ask Him for forgiveness. The repentance God demands from us is a complete repentance, repentance from all our sins not just the ones we consider to be big, serious, or major, repentance from our entire attitude of sinful rebellion. The repentance God requires of us is sincere and true repentance in our hearts, not just a public show of tears. It is to be a repentance of contrition, sorrow for our sinfulness, and not just a repentance of attrition, sorrow for its consequences.

Do we repent completely in this wholehearted and sincere manner?

Alas, our repentance too falls far short of that which the God we have offended is perfectly just in demanding from us who crave His pardon and forgiveness.

If we do not trust God the way we should, if we do not love Him with the love He deserves, if we break His laws rather than obey His commandments and then offer Him what is at best a partial repentance, is there any hope for us who stand under His judgement all our lives and will one day be called before Him to give a final account of everything we have ever thought, said or done?

If we had to depend upon our own efforts to please God then clearly there would be no hope for us. Thankfully, we do not have to depend upon our own efforts. God, the Gospel message declares, has given us a gift, the gift of His Son Jesus Christ. God gave His Son to be our Saviour.

A savior is a person who rescues someone else from a difficulty, hardship, or peril from which they cannot extricate themselves. Imagine you are out on a river in a boat and the boat flips over. You are unable to swim, have neglected to put on your life-saving apparatus, and before you think to grab a hold of it the boat is carried away by the current. Your situation looks hopeless but a man on the bank of the river had seen all this happen and jumps in and swims towards you. He grabs a hold of you, swims to shore, and pulls you out of the water. Had it not been for this man you would have drowned and so he could be rightly called your saviour.

God gave us Jesus to be our Saviour from a peril far worse than drowning. He gave us Jesus to save us from the worst peril possible, our own sinfulness which separates us from God and places us under His condemnation now and for all eternity. It was not by His teachings that Jesus saved us, although He was also our Teacher, because even the best of us falls short of the righteousness contained in His teachings. It was not by His example that Jesus saved us, for none of us lives up to His example. It is by His death that He saved us. Christ’s death was an event could have been our ultimate condemnation. Human beings, blessed with the presence of God’s Son come down from heaven and incarnate as a man, took Him and murdered Him in a brutally cruel manner, by nailing Him to a wooden cross. God, however, used Christ’s crucifixion to accomplish our salvation. It was to die on the cross, that Jesus had come down from heaven in the first place. God placed the sins of the whole world upon Jesus as He hung upon the cross, and Jesus willingly bore those sins for our sake. By doing so, He became the one true sacrifice, the sacrifice which effectively took away the sins of the world. God raised Jesus from the dead, and He ascended into heaven where He is our High Priest, continually pleading the merits of His once-and-for-all sacrifice on our behalf, effectively securing for us pardon for sins, reconciliation with God, justification in the eyes of God, and everlasting life. All of these things are promised to all who believe in Jesus Christ, i.e., who trust Him as the Saviour God has given.

It is in Jesus that we are to trust and it is in Jesus that our hope is to be found.

The New Testament makes it absolutely clear that the salvation which Christ obtained for us by dying for us on the cross is a gift. It comes to us freely in Christ and not in return for our feeble efforts to please God. Our efforts to please God are to be a response of love to the God who has given us this great salvation, not an attempt to pay Him back or earn it. There is a word that is used in the New Testament to express the manner in which God freely gives us salvation. That word is “grace”.

Grace is one of the most important words in the New Testament. St. Paul repeatedly writes that salvation is by grace. What does this word grace mean?

The word that is translated “grace” in the New Testament is the Greek word charis. This is the word from which our English word “charismatic” is derived. The idea of giving or a gift is very much present in this word as in its Greek root. Charismatic, when the word is used in a theological context, points to the concept of spiritual gifts such as those mentioned by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 12. In everyday English when we speak of a leader as being “charismatic” or possessing “charisma” we mean that he has the gift of being able to persuade people to follow him.

A dictionary entry for the word charis in Greek would be very similar to an entry for grace in English. The range of meanings of the two words is very similar and they have been used for synonyms for a very long time because our word grace comes from the Latin word which was used as the equivalent of charis. We often use the word grace in English, to refer to the way a ballet dancer or figure skater seems to generate visual beauty through her movements. One of the meanings of charis was very similar to this. It had the meaning of “that which causes pleasure or delight”, which was its primary meaning in the earliest Greek literature that has come down to us. Thus Homer frequently used the word charis to depict beauty, charm, strength and similar traits which made Achilles and his other heroes attractive. (1)

This is obviously not the meaning that St. Paul intended to convey in the New Testament when he used the word charis to describe the way in which we are saved. Another meaning of charis, as old as the first and which came to be the more usual meaning in later Greek literature, was that of “a kindly disposition towards others” or “favour”, particularly when that favour was expressed in the giving of gifts. A person upon whom a ruler looked kindly and granted permission to be in his presence would be said to be in the ruler’s grace or favour, and it was the word charis that would be used to express this. Charis could refer to the disposition of favour itself, and it could also refer to the gifts given out of that favour, and to the attitude of gratitude or thankfulness on the part of the person who received the gift. (2)

This is the way in which charis is used in passages about salvation in the New Testament. St. Paul uses it, however, in a more limited sense than in earlier Greek literature. Charis, in the sense of the favour of the gods or of human rulers, was a familiar concept to the Greeks but it was not necessarily connected with the idea of being unmerited or undeserved. In fact if one of the Olympian gods or a human king bestowed his charis upon someone, it was usually because that person possessed a quality such as beauty or courage which the god or king admired, i.e., the other kind of charis.

St. Paul and the other New Testament writers limited the meaning of charis to favour which is undeserved or unmerited in his epistles by creating a contrast between charis on the one hand and law and works on the other and by connecting charis with the ideas of love and mercy.

In several epistles St. Paul writes about the contrast between “law” and “grace”, but it is in his epistle to the Church in Rome that he sets forth the contrast in a systematic manner. “Law” refers both to the Mosaic Law, the Covenant God made with Israel at Mt. Sinai and especially the commandments contained in that covenant, and the principle of law. The principle of law is that the law-giving authority issues the rules which those under the law are expected to obey and are held accountable to, that those who obey the rules are considered to be righteous, and those who disobey are judged to be unrighteous and are punished for their trespasses. Works are the efforts of those under a law to meet its requirements.

St. Paul made it clear in his epistle to the Roman church, that law and works cannot make a person righteous in the eyes of God. In the second chapter of Romans, he demonstrated that no one lives up to the standard by which God holds him accountable. The Jews, who received the Law from God, did not live up to it, the Gentiles who did not receive the Law from God, but are held accountable by the law of their conscience, fall short of that law as well. Thus, both Jew and Gentile alike, can only be condemned by the law which is over them and by their works. This indictment of Jew and Gentile proceeds into the third chapter of Romans where it culminates in the declaration that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (v. 23)

St. Paul then went on immediately to say “Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus”. The word translated “freely” is the word dorean, an adverb formed from the Greek word for gift. By using this word with charis in this verse, St. Paul places emphasis upon the fact that the favour of God, by which He has given Christ to redeem us, is freely given and comes from the goodness of God’s heart and not in response to any merit in us.

A few verses after this, in the fourth chapter of Romans, the incompatibility of works and grace is declared:

Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. (vv. 4-5)

In other words, if the state of being justified, of being righteous in the eyes of God, is something which we receive as the result of our works, it is a reward for our behaviour. Grace would have nothing to do with it, because our justification would be our just due under the law. God would owe it to us. Justification in the eyes of God does not come to us in this way. It is freely given in Jesus Christ to all who believe in Him as their Savior.

The other way in which the fact that God’s grace or favour is given freely and not merited or deserved can be seen in the New Testament is in the way the idea of grace is connected with the ideas of love and mercy.

St. John writes frequently about God’s love. In his Gospel he records Jesus saying “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life”. In this most famous of Biblical verses, God’s love is identified as the reason that God gave us His Son. This means that God’s love is the source of His grace. Now the word love can often mean a feeling of affection that arises in one’s heart because of the attractive qualities of the object of one’s love. This is not the case with the love of God. In his first epistle, St. John wrote that “God is love”, i.e., that love is the very essence of His nature. God’s love arises out of His own good nature and not out of some love-worthy quality in us. The word St. John uses for love in the verses cited is agape, a word which was already distinct from other loves such as philia and eros, but which took on a special meaning in the teachings of Jesus, the writings of the New Testament, and the early church. It refers to a kind of goodness of heart in which one is concerned for the well-being of others and willing to give of oneself to see to their well-being.

To Titus, St. Paul wrote “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us” (Tit. 3:5). Mercy or pity, refers to compassion for those who are in need and suffering, and acts taken out of that compassion to alleviate the suffering and meet the need.

God’s grace, love, and mercy are three different aspects of the goodness of God, which compels Him to bestow good gifts upon sinners who do not deserve it, including the gift of our Saviour Jesus Christ, Who took our sins upon Himself, that we might be reconciled to God and justified in His sight.

God’s grace is not an excuse for us to forget about pleasing God by trusting Him, loving Him, obeying Him, and repenting of our sins. “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid.” (Rom. 6:1-2) Our hope and our faith are not to rest, however, in our efforts to please God (3), but in God Himself, in His grace, and in the gift of a Saviour He has given us in His grace, our Lord Jesus Christ.

(1) In Greek mythology, there was a trio of goddesses who were calles the Charites – the Graces. Each of these was a personification of something which was the cause of pleasure or delight. Thalia personified abundance, Euphrosyne personified joy, and Aglaea personified beauty. Note however, that the things they personified were also considered to be divine gifts. The ideas of charis/grace as “that which causes delight or pleasure” and charis/grace as “gift-giving favour” were never entirely separate from each other.

(2) When we refer to the act of thanking God before a meal as “saying grace” we are echoing the use of charis as gratitude.

(3) The word grace, as I explained in the text of this essay, can refer both to the act of giving and to the gift given. The gift of God that saves us in the sense of reconciling us to God, pardoning our sins, and making us righteous in His eyes, is Jesus Christ our Saviour. God has also given, to those who believe in Jesus Christ, the gift of the Holy Spirit by Whom we are united with Christ, partaking through our baptismal union with Him in His death and resurrection life, and with other believers in the body of Christ. The Holy Spirit indwells our hearts and empowers us to live the new life. All of this is part of grace as well. Our faith and our hope of everlasting life and justification must rest in Jesus Christ, what He has done for us on the cross, and His gospel promises. It is Christ and His sacrifice that made it possible for the transforming and sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

The Repentance God Requires

God requires or demand certain things from man. This does not fit with an idea of God that is very popular today. In that concept all God ever does is love and give. Now, God as He has revealed Himself to us in Christ is certainly a God of love and of grace. He is also, however, a God Who requires much of us. Nobody made that clearer than Christ Himself, Who in His Sermon on the Mount explained that formal, outward, conformity to the letter of God’s Law is not enough to meet God’s requirements – He demands that we obey Him internally, in our hearts as well as in our outward actions. God then, loves us and freely gives us His blessings out of His love, but He also requires and demands things from us. There are two possible errors to fall into here. One is to think that God’s love and grace depend upon our meeting His requirements. The other is to think that God’s love and grace negate our obligation to meet His requirements.

What does God require of man?

His first requirement, before all others, is faith, that is that we believe in Him and in His goodness to us. The author of the book of Hebrews tells us “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” If we do not start with faith, we can never please God, we can never meet any of His requirements. In the book of Genesis, the beginning of man’s fall was when the serpent persuaded Eve to disbelieve what God had told her. Unbelief is the first step in sin and disobedience, likewise faith is the first step in obeying God.

Faith is also the means whereby we receive God’s love and grace. It is vitally important that we understand that this is a separate function of faith from faith’s being the first of God’s requirements. God’s love and grace are given to us in Christ. Christ is presented to us, in the preaching of the Gospel and in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, as the Saviour God has freely given us out of the love of His heart. (1) We are promised that whoever believes in Him is cleansed from all sin and justified by His propitiatory sacrifice and possesses in Him everlasting life. When we receive the gift of love and grace God has given us in Christ through faith, we do not receive it because by believing we have met one of God’s requirements. We receive it because that is the only way this freely given gift can be received.

Faith is the only means whereby we can receive God’s gift of love and grace in Jesus Christ. It is not the only thing God requires or demands of us. (2) After faith, God requires that we love and obey Him. Love arises out of faith, and obedience, true obedience, flows out of love.

None of us meets any of these requirements perfectly, or even comes close to it, because we are fallen, sinful creatures. If our salvation were not a free gift, given to us in Christ, and received through faith, but were something we had to obtain by meeting God’s requirements, none of us would ever make it.

There is another requirement God has for man. This is a requirement which takes man’s fallen condition into consideration. Faith, love, and obedience were all required of man before man fell, before man needed the salvation which is freely given him in Christ. The next requirement is one which is there because man has sinned and rebelled against God. It is a requirement that is only ever placed upon sinners, as the proper thing to do once one has sinned.

That requirement is repentance.

What is repentance?

The primary Greek word translated “repentance” in the New Testament is the word metanoia. This word is a compound formed by adding the prefix meta, which in this case means “after”, and the noun nous which refers to the intellect, the faculty of thought. The main verb for “repent” is a virtually identical word, using the verb form of nous, which means to think. The resulting concept is that of “thinking again” or an “after thought”. Metanoia is often defined as a “change of mind”. (3)

Just as the words “salvation” and “save” do not automatically refer to God’s actions to rescue us from sin and condemnation, but can be used with reference to any kind of rescue, such as a fireman who saves a child from a burning house, so the Greek words for repentance and repent can be used in any situation in which someone changes their mind and do not have to refer to the repentance of a sinner.

When these words are used to describe the act God requires from someone who has sinned, they refer to a more specific kind of change of mind - the act of thinking over something you have done, coming to the realization that you should not have done it and that it is has offended God and perhaps other people, asking forgiveness of God and other people, and determining not to repeat this act in the future.

Other Scriptural concepts which are closely connected with the idea of repentance are the concepts of sorrow, confession, brokenness, contrition, and humility.

We often think of repentance in terms of “being sorry”. The emotion of sorrow is related to repentance but it falls short of being repentance. We all know how much easier it is to be sorry over something we have done than to commit ourselves to not doing it again. St. Paul, in his second epistle to the Church in Corinth wrote:

For though I made you sorry with a letter, I do not repent, though I did repent: for I perceive that the same epistle hath made you sorry, though it were but for a season. Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance: for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death. (2 Cor. 7:8-10, bold represents italics in Authorized Version)

In this cunning play on words, St. Paul acknowledges that his previous epistle had made the Corinthians sorry, but he did not repent of that, because their sorrow brought about repentance. Sorrow and repentance are not the same thing, but the right kind of sorrow, godly sorrow, leads to repentance, to a mending of ways. There is both a right and a wrong kind of sorrow.

Dr. Johnson wrote:

The completion and sum of repentance is a change of life. That sorrow which dictates no caution, that fear which does not quicken our escape, that austerity which fails to rectify our affections, are vain and unavailing. But sorrow and tenor must naturally precede reformation: for what other cause can produce it? He, therefore, that feels himself alarmed by his conscience, anxious for the attainment of a better state, and afflicted by the memory of his past faults, may justly conclude that the great work of repentance is begun, and hope by retirement and prayer, the natural and religious means of strengthening his conviction, to impress upon his mind such a sense of the divine presence as may overpower the blandishments of secular delights, and enable him to advance from one degree of holiness to another, till death shall set him free from doubt and contest, misery and temptation. (4)


The idea of confession is the idea of owning up to and acknowledging our sins, rather than trying to hide them and cover them up. The latter comes much easier to us. Note that in Genesis Adam and Eve’s first thought, after sinning, was to cover up their nakedness and to hide from God. Fallen human nature has not changed since.

St. John tells us:

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 Jn. 1:8-9)

Confession here, is placed in opposition to denial and self-deception. The word translated “confess” is another compound word, which combines the word for “same” with the word for “speak”. Its primary meaning is to verbally agree with another person. These verses occur in a context in which St. John is contrasting light and truth with darkness and deception. We walk in the darkness of self-deception when we deny our sinfulness, but if we confess our sins, i.e., if we do not hide from what the light of God’s truth reveals about our sinfulness but openly acknowledge it, God faithfully forgives us. This confession of our sin before God is a key element of repentance.

In Psalm 51, which King David wrote to express his repentance before God over his sin with Bathsheba, he wrote:

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. (v. 17)

In the Scriptures, as in everyday language, “broken” seldom describes a desirable or good thing. The opposite of broken, i.e., being whole is usually connected with that which is desirable and good. This verse is an exception, because it is talking about the state of someone who has already been broken by sin. Before there can be healing, there must be further brokenness. It is human pride which leads us to cover up and hide our sins, rather than to confess them, or worse, to harden our hearts, stiffen our necks, and justify our actions. What is needed is for the sinner’s heart and spirit to be broken in repentance and humility, rather than hardened in pride. This is what David is referring to here.

God demands repentance from all men everywhere (Acts. 17:30) because we have all sinned. In both Testaments, however, it is primarily God’s own people who are called to repentance.

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. (2. Chron. 7:14)

In the Old Testament, there is a cyclical pattern where God’s people turn away from Him to idols and wickedness, God in judgement sends their enemies against them as a scourge, they repent, and then God forgives and restores them.

When Christ came, the message which John the Baptist preached, then Jesus, and then His Apostles when He commissioned and sent them out, was “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”. This message was addressed to those who were God’s people under the Old Covenant. The kingdom of heaven promised by God through the prophets was at hand, in the person of Christ the promised Messiah. This call to repentance was a call for God’s Covenant people to repent of their sins and receive their Messiah.

Through His death and resurrection, Christ took away our sins, and established the New Covenant in which all who believe the Gospel, all who trust Jesus Christ as Saviour, become God’s Covenant people, His Church. All people everywhere are still called to repent, and this call is especially addressed to God’s Church.

The call to repentance is reflected in the liturgy of the Church. The Book of Common Prayer includes the following General Confession in the order for Morning and Evening Prayer:

ALMIGHTY and most merciful Father, We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, We have offended against thy holy laws, We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults. Restore thou them that are penitent; According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesu our Lord. And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake, That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.

The need for a humble, repentant attitude is also stressed in the order for Holy Communion. The Book of Common Prayer is the official order of services for the Anglican Church but it draws on and reflects the historical, traditional, liturgy of the broader Christian Church as well.

We must remember, however, that God’s demand that we repent, calls us to do more than just say the words of Confession in services of public worship. In calling Israel to repent, the prophet Joel called upon them to “rend your heart, and not your garments”. It is in our hearts that true repentance must take place.

As with all other things God demands of us, we will not perfectly meet His requirements in this life. We do not trust Him fully, we do not love Him with our whole hearts, We do not obey Him completely, and alas, our repentance, in contrast to that spoken of by St. Paul, often needs to be repented of. Our sinfulness keeps us from meeting God’s requirements in such a way that could bear up and be seen to be faultless under scrutiny. Thankfully, God has given us a perfect Saviour in Whom to trust, and we are to place our faith in Him rather than in our own efforts to meet God’s requirements.

(1) The sacraments are often called the “means of grace”. This can be misleading. They do not share the role of faith, which is the means of receiving the grace God gives us in Christ. They share the role of preaching, which role is to convey the grace of God in Christ in the Gospel, to those who receive it through faith. They are, indeed, another means of preaching the Gospel. St. Augustine describes the sacraments as the union of the Word and a physical element. The role of the physical element is as a vessel to convey the Word, which makes the Word more real to us, perhaps because it reaches the senses of sight and touch, as well as of hearing.
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(2) This is how we must understand “sola fide” or “faith alone”. It does not mean that faith is the only thing God demands of us. It means that God’s saving grace in Christ comes to us through faith alone. Faith, as the means of receiving salvation, is not a requirement in the sense of a condition. A condition is something which you do in order to obtain something which you receive in exchange for your fulfilling the condition. Grace, by definition, is free, and can have no conditions. Faith is the empty hand that receives the gift. It is a requirement in the sense that it is something which God demands from us as His right. As a requirement in this sense it is the first of many requirements.

(3) Interestingly, the English word looks like it has a similar derivation, the addition of re meaning again, to the French penser meaning “to think”, but this is not in fact its actual etymology.

(4) Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, 110.