239 I just love this stuff!

What this world needs is a few more sermons on Justification and Sanctification and how one isn't the other. Without it, sermons on the Christian life just come across as more law.

"Nevertheless, the holiness wrought within a sinner by the indwelling Triune God never becomes the basis for the believer’s justification (Rom. 3:28). Rather, the good works which flow from a believer’s faith are simply a response to the forgiveness of sins won by Christ in history for sinful mankind (Rom. 6:1ff). Far from being in an adversarial relationship with one another, good works rather flow from faith, which alone receives the benefits of Christ’s saving work, as Luther testifies: “Faith and good works well agree and fit together [are inseparably connected]; but it is faith alone, without works, which lays hold of the blessing; and yet it is never and at no time alone” (Cited in the Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, III.41, in Triglotta, 931). Justifying faith, therefore, molds, shapes, and drives the ethical lives of those redeemed by Christ the crucified."

Steve Parks, a 3rd year student at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, is serving an internship in Texas and blogging at http://sceleratissimus-lutheranus.blogspot.com/