3. The New Life and Its Activity in Sanctification and Good Works.
new spiritual life as a consequence and effect of faith in the reconciliation brought about by Christ once and for all and completely, Paul Eph. 2:20 teaches by his own example: "What I now live in the flesh" (after having become a believer in Christ), "I live it in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Here the causal relationship between faith in the forgiveness of sins for Christ's sake and new life is clearly expressed. More recent theologians of critical direction, such as Kaftan, Pfleiderer, Holtzmann, see confusion in the apostle Paul also at this point. '135) They cannot find their way around the fact that Paul on the one hand lets justification be a pure actus forensis, through which a merely imputed righteousness (iustitia imputata) comes
destroy"; 6:15: "Should I take the members of Christ and make them members of a fornicator? 2 Cor. 6:16-17.
resurrection; Eph. 4:30: év @ (namely through the indwelling Holy Spirit of God) EogpayioOntE sic HuEpav AmoAvTPHoENs. [Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption’]
about, and on the other hand the same justification is supposed to result in an "ethically real" righteousness of life (iustitia vitae or habitualis). They assume that the apostle had two streams of thoughts that did not fit together, the Roman and the Hellenic, got into one another and mixed up. Pfleiderer speaks of "two streams", "which in Paulinism unite in one bed, but without really coming together inwardly".!!°) Holtzmann also thinks: "In no case is it necessary to prove their original togetherness, as if one was thought with reference to the other. Here Holtzmann passes the same interpretation of a historical fact which he rightly rebukes the modern "positive" theologians when they want to deny the satisfactio vicaria to the Apostle Paul. That Paul thought the purely forensic iustitia fidei as the cause or source of Christian life in all his activities is stated as clearly as possible in the words just quoted: "What I now live in the flesh" (Paul's new life after his conversion), "T live it in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me". Meyer correctly notes that the "in faith" (ev niotet) teaches faith as the source of Christian life, and does not suggest the Roman fides formata. It is not Paul's Christian life that "forms" his faith, but his faith that has as its object Christ's love of reconciliation, especially Christ's devotion to the death of reconciliation, "forms" his Christian life. ''3) — Regarding the causal nexus
voice and tongue, but the voice and tongue was blasphemous at that time, so it could speak nothing but blasphemies and abominations against Christ and his church. After his conversion, he had the same flesh, tongue and voice as before, and there was no change at all; but the voice and tongue did not speak blasphemies anymore, but spiritual words, namely thanksgiving and praise against God, which came from faith and the Holy Spirit. So then, I live in the flesh, but not from and according to the flesh, but in the faith of the Son of God. From this one can understand where this strange and spiritual life comes from, which the natural man does not hear. This life is in the heart through faith, where, after the flesh is killed, Christ reigns with his Holy Spirit, who now sees, hears, speaks, works, suffers and in short does everything in him, even though the flesh resists it. Nor is there any objection to the fact that Scripture calls the Holy Spirit the causa efficiens or impellens of the new life and its individual activities. between justification and the new life, the following is to be noted on the basis of Scripture: Sin does not kill as matter—it is not matter at all—but as guilt before God or as the cause of the divine death sentence that is passed on the transgressors of the divine law, Gen. 2:17. "The greatest of evils is guilt. The cause especially of spiritual death or the death of the soul is the condemnation of the divine law, which all people feel in their conscience because of their sins, and which is not lifted but only intensified by the proclamation of the law. That is why the law says 2 Cor. 3:6: 10 ypdupa amoxtéwve, and Paul testifies about himself Rom. 7:9-10: éy@ 6 aé8avov 10 kai evpéOy Lot fh EvTOAT 1 sic Conv att sic Oavatov. As soon as God now works faith in his judgment of justification, which he procured through Christ's work of reconciliation and proclaims in the Gospel, works in the human heart, and thus writes his divine judgment of justification into the heart in place of his divine condemnation judgment, man comes to life again before God. Therefore 2 Cor. 3:6 from the Gospel: t6 ypapia Cmonotet and Col. 2:12 from all Christians: ovvnyépOnte 610 tic miotEews Tis Evepysias tod Oeod. And just as the spiritual life comes into being in this way through faith in divine justification, so it will also be preserved in those who have already become Christians. Since Christians still sin a great deal every day, and these sins automatically register themselves as guilt in their consciences, the spiritual life of Christians too will only endure in such a way that the record of guilt in their consciences will be erased daily and continuously through faith in the reconciliation that has taken place through Christ. The Apology (Art. XII [V]) very clearly sets out the relationship between the forensic act of justification and the emergence and existence of the spiritual life: "Here [Col 2:14] also there are two parts, the handwriting and the blotting out of the handwriting. The handwriting, however, is conscience, convicting and condemning us. The Law, moreover, is the word which reproves and condemns sins. (Rom. 8:9. 13. 14). The indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the human heart is itself only a consequence of faith, which takes the forgiveness of sins (Gal. 3:2).... Therefore the handwriting which condemns is contrition itself. To blot out the handwriting is to espouse this sentence.... But faith is the new sentence (sententia), which reverses the former sentence and gives peace and life to the heart. For the two chief works of God in men are these, to terrify, and to justify and quicken those who have been terrified. Into these two works all Scripture has been distributed. For as conscience cannot be pacified except by faith, therefore faith alone quickens.!!°*) — What is true of the origin and maintenance of spiritual life in general, is now also true of all the individual activities of the spiritual life in the doing of good. All these activities are described in Scripture as consequens of faith in the forgiveness of sins for Christ's sake, for example: loving God and neighbor (1 Jn 4:19: "Let us love him, for he loved us first"; v. 11: "If God has loved us, we should also love one another"), to walk in love (Eph. 6:2: "Walk in love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself for us"), forgive your neighbor (Eph. 4:32: "Forgive one another, just as God forgave you in Christ"), praise and thank God (Col. 1:12-14: Giving thanks unto the Father... who... hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son, in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins,), persevere in the tribulation and overcome it (Rom. 6:3-11; 8:37: In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us), crucify the flesh with his affections and lusts (Gal. 5:24: Oi tod Xpiotod, who belong to Christ, namely through faith, tiv oGpKa gotadpmoav). Whoever wants to ensure "morality" or sanctification and good works with the Tridentinum by mixing them into justification instead of letting them be merely the consequence of justification, thereby gives a striking proof that his thoughts are outside the Christian sphere. He thereby makes both justification and sanctification and good works impossible. He makes justification impossible because: & Eépyav voLODv od SucatMOroEtat Tica ops Evomtov Geo (Rom. 3:20). He makes sanctification and good works impossible because by rejecting justification sola fide man remains under the law, and by the law the reign of sin
is not broken but only increased.!'°°) Rom. 7:5-6: "Since we were in the flesh" (that is, since we were under the Law, v. 6), "there were here sinful lusts, which were aroused by the Law, strong in indefinite members, to bear fruit to death. But now we have departed from the law and died to it, which held us captive, so that we serve in the new nature of the Spirit and not in the old nature of the letter. Because of the total failure of the law as the cause of sanctification and good works, God has substituted the old covenant of the law for the new covenant of the forgiveness of sins, that is, the forgiveness of sins by faith without the works of the law, as Jer. 31-34 so emphatically testifies. Lex praescribit, evangelium inscribit [The law prescribes, the gospel inscribes]. The law is powerless to fulfill itself, woSevet 516 THC oapKdc, Rom. 8:3. The gospel, on the other hand, does not only carry out itself (by creates faith in itself, Rom. 10:17), but also the law. Hence the apostle's question: Rom. 3:31: Nouov obv katapyodpev S14 Tic mistews; and the answer: LN) yévolto GAAG vOLov iotévopev. In this situation Paul denies the Galatians, who wanted to put the law into justification, spiritual understanding, Gal. 3:1-2: O foolish (&vonto1) Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth? Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? The same judgment applies to all modern theologians who want to understand the reconciling work of Christ and his appropriation by faith not "juridically" but "religious- ethically". As far as their teaching is taken into consideration, they make justification as well as sanctification and good works impossible [We neither observe the Law nor can observe it before we have been reconciled to God, justified, and regenerated]. Apol. 148, 247 [Zrigl. 221, Art. III, 247]: Nec legem prius facimus aut facere possumus, quam reconciliati Deo, iustificati et renati sumus; 110, 8: Non diligitur Deus, nisi postquam apprehendimus fide misericordiam. Ita demum fit obiectum amabile. [Trigl. 157, Art. III, 8