Christ Preserves The Gospel
Frank
Christ brought Luther year after year
toward understanding the real Gospel
as the components came into place.
Christ drove Luther day and night
to understand in Romans 1 verse 17,
the phrase, the righteousness of God,
which is revealed in the Gospel
(Preface to Luther's Latin Works):
For therein is the righteousness of God
revealed from faith to faith: as it is
written, The just shall live by faith.
(Romans 1:17 KJV)
Then Christ gave him the insight that
he needed to understand the phrase,
the righteousness of God, showing him,
the word righteous (just) in that which
follows in the verse, is not of law but
only Gospel: The just shall live by faith.
Christ showed him:
The law and the Gospel are separate.
(Table Talks, WA TR 5, 5518)
Because Christ gave him that insight,
Luther was able to understand that
the righteousness of God there, was
not that by which God judges those
who fall short of it in their efforts to
keep law, as was being supposed
in that day, but rather the righteousness
that Christ showed had as its explanation
this sentence: The just shall live by faith.
(Table Talks, WA TR 5:5553)
That righteousness is given as a free gift
in Jesus Christ by which he justifies us.
(Table Talks, WA TR 5:5347)
Christ by the Holy Spirit showed Luther
by the thought suddenly given to him:
that since the righteous live by faith,
and since the righteousness of God,
that of faith, gives salvation, then
Christ not us, is that righteousness.
Thus Luther realized that Christ
imputes unto us his own
righteousness to justify and save us,
when he gives us faith
to trust him to be our Righteous Substitute.
(Table Talks, WA TR 3:3232)
That same moment, Christ gave Luther
eternal life so that he felt born again as
entering thru open gates to Paradise.
What Luther had never been able to
attain by years of earnest repentance
and striving to be obedient, Christ had
given him in that moment by giving him
faith in Christ to be his Righteous Substitute.
(Preface to Luther's Latin Works)
As Lutheran theology in the Reformation
explained: The term Gospel has two senses:
in the wide sense, it means all doctrine Christ
taught while on earth, both law (repentance)
and Gospel (grace, faith, remission of sins),
(Mark 1:1, 14-15, Luke 24:47, Acts 20:21);
but in the specific sense, Gospel means
not law but only Gospel, that which specifically
gives salvation (justification), Gospel as distinct
from repentance, as when Christ preached
the Gospel, in the wide sense (Mark 1:14), by
telling people to repent and believe the Gospel,
in the specific sense for salvation (Mark 1:15).
The Gospel specific for salvation (justification)
is to be kept with great diligence distinct from
repentance; it is a danger and wrong not to do so
because anyone who trusts in repentance for
salvation rather than in Christ alone to impute
his righteousness unto them will be lost.
(Solid Declaration 5:3-6, 22, 27).
--
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