decision, in which God does not drop me but accepts me just as I am, just as I am in my self-knowledge, sin for whose corruption his decision intervenes, making good what I have done amiss. Sin is thus a wicked thing which I myself, illumined by his command, must always recognize to be wicked, which I must guard against changing into a good thing, but which, in face of his superior and not arbitrary, but righteous and free good-pleasure, is good before him, which, in his eyes, because he sees me in Christ and not in Adam, is in the symmetry and harmony with his will which I myself could only deny and for which I can only pray: “Forgive our debts” [Matt. 6:12]. Sin that is forgiven for Christ’s sake is sin which stands under the judgment, the judgment of the wrath of God, but which, even as such, as the corrupt decision which it still is in my own eyes, is accepted for God’s sake, not mine, as obedience and righteousness. This is justification. |
I myself never can or should see myself and my work in this new predication. I can and may see the justification of my wicked deeds only in Christ, as an alien righteousness and not my own. This means that I can and may only believe it as my justification. Believing means seeing oneself as one can do only when looking away from self to Christ, to God’s revealed Word in the totality in which it is law and gospel, and, of course, without looking back again as Lot’s wife did [cf. Gen. 19:26], without looking back again to self. To look back is to see only a city that is burning, that is burning down; it is thus to be turned into a pillar of salt. I do not have my justification as I have myself, but as I have God, or concretely, as I have Christ through his Word and Spirit, i.e., as God has me, as he gives himself to me, as he reveals himself to me, as in free and majestic disclosure and condescension he is my God. I have my justification as grace, invisible, hidden, grounded only in God’s good-pleasure, always coming to me and coming into force for me by his resolve. If I had it visibly as I have myself, then I could lay my hand on my work as a good work which I have done and whose goodness is my goodness, and the honor of my justification would be at least God’s honor and mine. The honor of the justification which I have only by faith as invisible grace in spite of my wicked work, the honor of forensic justification, is obviously God’s honor alone. The command comes to me as a revelation of him who alone will have the honor. Thus faith in the forgiveness of sins, in justification, is my Yes to God’s goodness as I completely look away from any past, present, or future goodness of my own, including that of my act of faith. I will not see in the human spontaneity of this act of faith a correlate of what God’s does for me, a merit. Faith is subjection to the sentence imposed on my work, which is the last word of my self-knowledge and which embraces the act of faith too. It is not as though faith were the missing good work, the pure act of obedience that finally comes on the scene. I know of my faith nothing other or better than what I know of the rest of my deeds. Our faith as an act of our own spontaneity is notoriously enmeshed in the corruption of our decision. That my faith is accepted as true faith is something that again I can only believe—believe as I believe in the miracle of the divine mercy. How can it be anything other than a miracle that it is true that through the weak, childish, insincere, and partial faith that we find in ourselves we have the forgiveness of sins and justification? I am justified by faith to the degree that in the darkness of my heart, as which I have also to understand my faith, Christ dwells and is enthroned; to the extent that in him the work of God, the act of the Holy Spirit, takes place. To that extent I am really justified, so that being justified has to mean that against all my knowledge of myself, and as I can know myself only as one who is accused and condemned, I am a doer of the Word. For I do God’s Word to me in the decision of my act when I allow that God is right in face of myself and my deeds, when I cling to the fact that this God who opposes me in his command does not let me fall in my unrighteousness any more than a father does his child, but counts me his even in my unrighteousness, so that both in allowing that God is right and also in clinging to him I affirm his goodness and not my own. In this way my action, my decision, is the doing of his will.
It is perhaps not superfluous to back up this summary of the doctrine of justification with some widely scattered voices of the Christian church from very different historical backgrounds. We begin with two Russian Orthodox theologians: Constantine Aksakov (d. 1860): “Every Christian is sinful as man but his way as that of a Christian is right,” and Alexei Chomiakov (d. 1860): As the church “is conscious of its inner union with the Holy Spirit, it gives thanks for all the good of God who is the only good, ascribing to itself and man nothing but the evil which in him opposes the divine work, for man must be weak in order that God may be strong in his soul” (Östl.Chrt. I, 93 and 168).9 We then turn to Luther
Thus are works forgiven, are without guilt, and are good, not by their own nature, but by the mercy and grace of God because of the faith which trusts on the mercy of God. Therefore we must fear because of the works, but comfort ourselves because of the grace of God.
(EA, 20, 211).10
It is no accident that precisely at this point on our way I need to quote, i.e., to confess that not alone but only in the consensus of the Christian church do I adopt the position I do. Here if anywhere it is appropriate to note again the great caveat with which alone one can present and hear the doctrine of sanctification, i.e., the recollection that in this doctrine we appeal absolutely to the only valid authority, to that which in the thesis at the head of the first chapter we called “the reality of the divine command.” This must speak for itself if we are to speak aright here. If it did not, our most zealous concern to speak aright could achieve only a construct that is weaker than the weakest house of cards. Even more boldly than [when] we spoke of the original electing love of God and the divine uncovering of human transgression, we must here presuppose the mercy of God which does not remove but brackets our human condemnation. We must presuppose the vicarious satisfaction of Christ and his righteousness that is imputed to us. We must take into account the faith which takes with full seriousness that condemnation and accepts the alien righteousness of Christ that is promised to it. We must take into account our own faith in which we can never believe in ourselves but only against ourselves. To take into account the Word and Spirit of God is to take grace into account, as we here do in a particularly pregnant way. As far as we are concerned in relation to grace, it is thus to pray. The Word is God’s Word, the Logos eternally made flesh, yet not on that account given up into our power. And the Spirit is God’s Spirit, blowing where he wills [cf. John 3:8] and not where we will. And the faith which, when it is a matter of hearing the gospel in the command, seems to offer the key to the whole, is not for everybody [cf. 2 Thess. 3:2], not only because even as our own weak and feeble act it is the greatest and most difficult work of all, nor because, seen from outside, it always seems to be an absurd grasping after the impossible, but also and even more so because, as the faith that really justifies, it is no more and no less than the all-decisive event of the love of God which he owes to no one, ⌜and because through it⌝ Christ ⌜is⌝ in us in the Pauline sense of the phrase. |
We can and must remember that grace is assigned to us, that we need no arts or ruses to participate in it and thus to hear and say as truth all that we have said and heard. It is a matter of grace, however, and even though it would make no sense to look about for complicated ways to lay hold of it, this does not imply that we need to use only some simple means but rather that there are no means at all, that it is pure gift, and that as such it comes to us with the full freedom of the giver.
We can and do also remember that we are not alone when we venture to count on the Word and Spirit of God as witnesses to the truth of what has been said and heard. In venturing it we stand with the Christian church, which is none other than the community of justified sinners, of sinners justified in Christ, and in which we do not make the venture in our own name but by command and under promise. The Christian church is the place where we must at any rate make the venture—it remains a venture even when made in obedience—to follow the summons: Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ [cf. Acts 16:31]. The Christian church cannot guarantee what obviously has to be guaranteed here, namely, the sanctifying reality of the divine command itself. Even in the Christian church no one can believe for another, no one can safely lead another past the dark abyss of offense, unbelief, disobedience, and the despair that does not hear the gospel but only the law, which without the gospel is
