1977), 5:19 – 22.
Appendix 2
neighbour and serve him: fulfi ll thine offi ce. Th ese are good works indeed, which fl ow out of this faith.8
"Luther believed that faith brought all religious activities along with it. . . . While he had condemned mere legal good works, intended to procure blessedness for the doer, he defended good works arising from faith. Good works are, according to him, the end and aim of faith."9 "For Luther, good works are not determinative of one's relation to God; they follow from faith as day follows night, as good fruit comes from a good tree. Where there are no good works, there is no faith."10 Luther wrote, "If (good) works and love do not blossom forth, it is not genuine faith, the gospel has not yet gained a foothold, and Christ is not yet rightly known."11
Although Luther fought intensely for the truth that we are saved by faith and not by good works, he never wavered from insisting that works are necessary to validate faith. In the preface to his famous commentary on Romans, he wrote:
Faith is not something dreamed, a human illusion, although this is what many people understand by the term. Whenever they see that it is not followed either by an improvement in morals or by good works, while much is still being said about faith, they fall into the error of declaring that faith is not enough, that we must do "works" if we are to become upright and attain salvation. Th e reason is that, when they hear the gospel, they miss the point; in their hearts, and out of their own resources, they conjure up an idea which they call "belief," which they treat as genuine faith. All the same, it is but a human fabrication, an idea without a corresponding experience in the depths of the heart. It is therefore ineff ective and not followed by a better kind of life.
Faith, however, is something that God effects in us. It changes us and we are reborn from God, John 1. Faith puts the old Adam to death and makes us quite different men in heart, in mind, and in all our powers; and it is accompanied by the Holy Spirit. O, when it comes to faith, what a living, creative, active, powerful thing it is. It cannot do other than good at all times. It never waits to ask whether there is some good work to do, rather, before the question is raised, it has done the deed, and keeps on doing it. A man not active in this way is a man without faith. He is
8. John Dillenberger, ed., Martin Luther (New York: Doubleday, 1961), 111 – 12 (emphasis added). 9. Karl Th eime, "Good Works," Th e New Schaff -Herzog Religious Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977), 5:19 – 22. 10. Dillenberger, Martin Luther, xxix. 11. Ibid., 18.