We must continue to “look upon such works as merely preparatory, just as all works of righteousness performed in grace, prepare in their turn for an increase of justification, according to Apoc. xxii. 11.”[535] “Only so can we be saved, namely, by repenting that we are laden with sin and are living in sin, and by imploring of God our deliverance.[536] He also, in other passages, emphasises the fact that works are necessary for justification as its preparation: “We must do works in order to obtain justification (‘opera pro iustificatione quærenda’), works of grace and faith; they confirm the desire for justification and the fulfilment of the law, but we may not think that we are justified by them.” “Rather, true believers spend their whole life in seeking justification ... whoever seeks it with the heart and by works, is without doubt already justified in God’s sight.”[537] Towards the end of the Commentary he describes in emphatic words, which will be quoted below, the humility and sighing which should bring about justification.
We need not here specify how far the demand for individual effort is here a reminiscence of his Catholic training, or more particularly due to the school of Occam. It is an undoubted fact that Occamism and pseudo-mysticism are here rubbing shoulders, and that Luther himself is aware of the incongruity.[538]
7. Appropriation of the righteousness of Christ by humility—Neither “Faith only” nor assurance of Salvation
Luther’s words, quoted above, where he says that Christ fulfilled the law for us, He made His righteousness ours and our sins His (see above, p. 95 f.), show that he applied in the fullest manner the theory of imputation to justification. Man remains a sinner, but the sin is not imputed to him, he is accounted righteous by the imputing to him of what is quite alien to him, viz. the righteousness of Christ. Thus he is at one and the same time the friend and the enemy of God.[539]
The verb “to justify” as used in Holy Scripture the author of the Commentary on Romans simply takes to mean “to account as righteous,” or “to declare righteous.” Thus he says: “The doers of the law (according to Rom. ii. 13) are justified, i.e. they are accounted righteous. In Psalm cxlii. we read: ‘In Thy sight no man living shall be justified,’ i.e. be accounted righteous.... The Pharisee in the Temple wished to ‘justify himself’ (Luke x. 29), i.e. to declare his justification.”[540]
“Whoever seeks peace in his righteousness, seeks it in the flesh.” “Christ only is righteousness and truth, and in Him all is given us in order that by Him we may be righteous and true and escape eternal damnation.”[541] “This justification takes place (according to Paul) outside of works of the law, i.e. without works which are outside of faith and grace, that is, which come from the law, which forces by fear and attracts by temporal promises. The Apostle calls those only works of faith which proceed from the spirit of freedom through the love of God, and these can only be done by the man who is justified by faith. The works of the law however do not help towards justification, but are rather a hindrance because they prevent a man from looking upon himself as unrighteous and in need of justification.”[542]
“Christ, according to the Apostle, has become our righteousness (1 Cor. i. 30), i.e. all the good that we possess is exterior, it is Christ’s. It is only in us by faith and hope in Him.” “Our fulness and our righteousness is outside of us, within we are empty and poor.... The pious know that sin alone dwells in them, but that this is covered over and not imputed on account of Christ.... The beauty of Christ conceals our hideousness.”[543]
“There is in this system,” says Denifle, in his description of it, “no question of the expulsion of sin. The sinner ... casts himself in his sinful condition on Christ without any means of his own, he hides himself under the wings of the hen and comforts himself with the idea: Christ has done everything in place of me, all my works would be merely sin ... Luther did not perceive what a grievous wrong he was doing to God by this theory. It entirely suppresses the inward grace of God which raises a man up again, penetrates to the depths of his soul and purifies and fills it with supernatural strength. The organic process of justification thus shrinks into a purely mechanical shifting of the scenery.” To this Denifle opposes the statement of Holy Scripture: “That man by a living faith is implanted in Christ as the sapling is grafted on to the olive tree, or the branch on the vine, so that there must be an interior change, an ennobling, and thus a new life.”[544]
Luther says, “we are outwardly righteous because we are justified, not by our works, but only by the reputation of God; but His reputation is not inwardly within us, and is not within our power.” “Solum Deo reputante sumus iusti, ergo non nobis viventibus vel operantibus; quare intrinsece et ex nobis impii semper.”[545]
The connection between “reputation” as above and Occam’s theory of acceptation is unmistakable.