DAY 19- 3/19/17 FAITH ALONE- WHAT THIS
DENIES
For by grace you are saved through faith and this not of yourselves so that no one can boast.
For by grace you are saved through faith and this not of yourselves so that no one can boast.
All your righteousness is as filthy rags.
Isaiah 64:6
Thoughts: Faith alone means that all good is secondary. It is not that we are good and so God gives us faith. It is not that we do some good and our faith pulls us up making us righteous the rest of the way. It is faith alone- by itself that brings us salvation. If anything was of ourselves we could brag and boast about it. But in heaven we lay our crowns before the throne.
Penance- the idea that we can make up for our bad; doing good deeds to some how help ourselves or even another in their salvation is somehow wrong. There were some who believed we could pray another into heaven. We cannot pass our faith onto another- it is their faith that saves them. The Latin church criticized this idea saying that this degrades good works so that people will not try to be good. But we do good not because we need to go to heaven, but out of gratitude to God. Luther is purported to have said , we sin in our best deeds as well as our worst. Bad motives affect even the good we do. Calvin said, “The human heart has so many crannie where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood lurks, is so decked out with deceiving hypocrisy, that it often dupes itself.” (Inst. 3.2.10)
Prayer: Lord, help me to appreciate that any good I do is not of me.
Thoughts: Faith alone means that all good is secondary. It is not that we are good and so God gives us faith. It is not that we do some good and our faith pulls us up making us righteous the rest of the way. It is faith alone- by itself that brings us salvation. If anything was of ourselves we could brag and boast about it. But in heaven we lay our crowns before the throne.
Penance- the idea that we can make up for our bad; doing good deeds to some how help ourselves or even another in their salvation is somehow wrong. There were some who believed we could pray another into heaven. We cannot pass our faith onto another- it is their faith that saves them. The Latin church criticized this idea saying that this degrades good works so that people will not try to be good. But we do good not because we need to go to heaven, but out of gratitude to God. Luther is purported to have said , we sin in our best deeds as well as our worst. Bad motives affect even the good we do. Calvin said, “The human heart has so many crannie where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood lurks, is so decked out with deceiving hypocrisy, that it often dupes itself.” (Inst. 3.2.10)
Prayer: Lord, help me to appreciate that any good I do is not of me.
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