LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2001, Page 427

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

ADDITIONAL THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS AND REPORTS—OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT 427

judgment and are incapable of turning by themselves to God to
seek deliverance, of meriting their justification before God, or of
attaining salvation by their own abilities. Justification takes place
solely by God’s grace. Because Catholics and Lutherans confess
this together, it is true to say:

20. When Catholics say that persons “cooperate” in preparing
for and accepting justification by consenting to God’s justifying
action, they see such personal consent as itself an effect of grace,
not as an action arising from innate human abilities.

21. According to Lutheran teaching, human beings are inca-
pable of cooperating in their salvation, because as sinners they ac-
tively oppose God and his saving action. Lutherans do not deny
that a person can reject the working of grace. When they emphasize
that a person can only receive (mere passive) justification, they
mean thereby to exclude any possibility of contributing to one’s
own justification, but do not deny that believers are fully involved
personally in their faith, which is effected by God’s Word.

4.2 Justification as Forgiveness of Sins and Making Righteous

22. We confess together that God forgives sin by grace and at
the same time frees human beings from sin’s enslaving power and
imparts the gift of new life in Christ. When persons come by faith
to share in Christ, God no longer imputes to them their sin and
through the Holy Spirit effects in them an active love. These two
aspects of God’s gracious action are not to be separated, for per-
sons are by faith united with Christ, who in his person is our right-
eousness (1 Corinthians 1:30): both the forgiveness of sin and the
saving presence of God himself. Because Catholics and Lutherans
confess this together, it is true to say that:

23. When Lutherans emphasize that the righteousness of Christ
is our righteousness, their intention is above all to insist that the
sinner is granted righteousness before God in Christ through the
declaration of forgiveness and that only in union with Christ is
one’s life renewed. When they stress that God’s grace is forgiving
love (“the favor of God’”’(12)), they do not thereby deny the renewal
of the Christian’s life. They intend rather to express that justifica-
tion remains free from human cooperation and is not dependent on
the life-renewing effects of grace in human beings.

24. When Catholics emphasize the renewal of the interior per-
son through the reception of grace imparted as a gift to the be-
liever,(13) they wish to insist that God’s forgiving grace always
brings with it a gift of new life, which in the Holy Spirit becomes
effective in active love. They do not thereby deny that God’s gift of
grace in justification remains independent of human cooperation
[cf. Sources, section 4.2].

4.3 Justification by Faith and through Grace

25. We confess together that sinners are justified by faith in the
saving action of God in Christ. By the action of the Holy Spirit in
Baptism, they are granted the gift of salvation, which lays the basis
for the whole Christian life. They place their trust in God’s gra-
cious promise by justifying faith, which includes hope in God and
love for him. Such a faith is active in love and thus the Christian
cannot and should not remain without works. But whatever in the
justified precedes or follows the free gift of faith is neither the basis
of justification nor merits it.

26. According to Lutheran understanding, God justifies sinners
in faith alone (sola fide). In faith they place their trust wholly in
their Creator and Redeemer and thus live in communion with him.
God himself effects faith as he brings forth such trust by his cre-
ative Word. Because God’s act is a new creation, it affects all di-
mensions of the person and leads to a life in hope and love. In the
doctrine of “justification by faith alone,” a distinction but not a sep-
aration is made between justification itself and the renewal of one’s
way of life that necessarily follows from justification and without
which faith does not exist. Thereby the basis is indicated from

which the renewal of life proceeds, for it comes forth from the love
of God imparted to the person in justification. Justification and re-
newal are joined in Christ, who is present in faith.

27. The Catholic understanding also sees faith as fundamental
in justification. For without faith, no justification can take place.
Persons are justified through Baptism as hearers of the Word and
believers in it. The justification of sinners is forgiveness of sins and
being made righteous by justifying grace, which makes us children
of God. In justification the righteous receive from Christ faith,
hope, and love and are thereby taken into communion with
him.(14) This new personal relation to God is grounded totally on
God’s graciousness and remains constantly dependent on the
salvific and creative working of this gracious God, who remains
true to himself, so that one can rely upon him. Thus justifying grace
never becomes a human possession to which one could appeal over
against God. While Catholic teaching emphasizes the renewal of
life by justifying grace, this renewal in faith, hope, and love is al-
ways dependent on God’s unfathomable grace and contributes
nothing to justification about which one could boast before God
(Rom. 3:27). [See Sources, section 4.3.]

4.4 The Justified as Sinner

28. We confess together that in Baptism the Holy Spirit unites
one with Christ, justifies, and truly renews the person. But the jus-
tified must all through life constantly look to God’s unconditional
justifying grace. They also are continuously exposed to the power
of sin still pressing its attacks (cf. Rom. 6:12—14) and are not ex-
empt from a lifelong struggle against the contradiction to God
within the selfish desires of the old Adam (cf. Galatians 5:16; Rom.
7:7-10). The justified also must ask God daily for forgiveness as in
the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:12; 1 John 1:9), are ever again called
to conversion and penance, and are ever again granted forgiveness.

29. Lutherans understand this condition of the Christian as a
being “at the same time righteous and sinner.” Believers are totally
righteous, in that God forgives their sins through Word and Sacra-
ment and grants the righteousness of Christ which they appropriate
in faith. In Christ, they are made just before God. Looking at them-
selves through the law, however, they recognize that they remain
also totally sinners. Sin still lives in them (1 John 1:8; Rom. 7:17,
20), for they repeatedly turn to false gods and do not love God with
that undivided love which God requires as their Creator (Deuteron-
omy 6:5; Matthew 22:36—-40 pr.). This contradiction to God is as
such truly sin. Nevertheless, the enslaving power of sin is broken
on the basis of the merit of Christ. It no longer is a sin that “rules”
the Christian for it is itself “ruled” by Christ with whom the justi-
fied are bound in faith. In this life, then, Christians can in part lead
a just life. Despite sin, the Christian is no longer separated from
God, because in the daily return to Baptism, the person who has
been born anew by Baptism and the Holy Spirit has this sin for-
given. Thus this sin no longer brings damnation and eternal
death.(15) Thus, when Lutherans say that justified persons are also
sinners and that their opposition to God is truly sin, they do not
deny that, despite this sin, they are not separated from God and that
this sin is a “ruled” sin. In these affirmations, they are in agreement
with Roman Catholics, despite the difference in understanding sin
in the justified.

30. Catholics hold that the grace of Jesus Christ imparted in
Baptism takes away all that is sin “in the proper sense” and that is
“worthy of damnation” (Rom. 8:1).(16) There does, however, re-
main in the person an inclination (concupiscence) which comes
from sin and presses toward sin. Since, according to Catholic con-
viction, human sin always involves a personal element and since
this element is lacking in this inclination, Catholics do not see this
inclination as sin in an authentic sense. They do not thereby deny
that this inclination does not correspond to God's original design
for humanity and that it is objectively in contradiction to God and

2001 Convention Workbook