Hence true faith in Christ is a treasure beyond comparison, which brings with it all salvation and saves from every evil, as Christ says in the last chapter of Mark, "He that believeth and is baptised, shall be saved; but he that believeth not, shall be condemned." [Mark 16:16] This treasure Isaiah beheld and foretold in chapter x, "The Lord shall make an abridged and consuming word upon the land, and the consumption abridged shall overflow with righteousness" [Isa. 10:22]; as if he said, "Faith, which is a brief and perfect fulfilment of the law, shall fill believers with so great righteousness that they shall need nothing more for their righteousness." So also Paul says, Romans x, "With the heart we believe unto righteousness." [Rom. 10:10]
[Sidenote: Faith and Works]
[Sidenote: Commands reveal Weakness]
Should you ask, how it comes that faith alone justifies without works offers us such a treasury of great benefits, when so many works, ceremonies and laws are prescribed in the Scriptures, I answer: First of all, remember what has been said: faith alone, without works, justifies, makes free and saves, as we shall later make still more clear. Here we must point out that all the Scriptures of God are divided into two parts—commands and promises. The commands indeed teach things that are good, but the things taught reveal are not done as soon as taught; for the commands show us what we ought to do, but do not give us the power to do it; they are intended to teach a man to know himself, that through them he may recognize his inability to do good and may despair of his powers. That is why they are called and are the Old Testament. For example: "Thou shalt not covet" [Ex. 20:17] is a command which convicts us all of being sinners, since no one is able to avoid coveting, however much he may struggle against it. Therefore, in order not to covet, and to fulfil the command, a man is compelled to despair of himself, and to seek elsewhere and from some one else the help which he does not ind in himself, as is said in Hosea, "Destruction is thy own, O Israel: thy help is only in Me." [Hos. 13:9] And as we are with this one command, so we are with all; or it is equally impossible or us to keep any one of them.
[Sidenote: Promises give Strength]
But when a man through the commands has learned to know his weakness, and has become troubled as to how he may satisfy the law, since the law must be fulfilled so that not a jot or tittle shall perish, otherwise man will be condemned without hope; then, being truly humbled and reduced to nothing in his own eyes, he finds in himself no means of justification and salvation. Here the second part of the Scriptures stands ready—the promises of God, which declare the glory of God and say, "If you wish to fulfil the law, and not to covet, as the law demands, come, believe in Christ, in Whom grace, righteousness, peace, liberty and all things are promised you; if you believe you shall have all, if you believe not you shall lack all." For what is impossible for you in all the works of the law, many as they are, but all useless, you will accomplish in a short and easy way through faith. For God our Father has made all things depend on faith, so that whoever has faith, shall have all, and whoever has it not, shall have nothing. "For He has concluded all under unbelief, that He might have mercy on all," Romans xi [Rom. 11:32]. Thus the promises of God give what the commands of God ask, and fulfil what the law prescribes, that all things may be of God alone, both the commands and the fulfilling of the commands. He alone commands. He also alone fulfils. Therefore the promises of God belong to the New Testament, nay, they are the New Testament.
And since these promises of God are holy, true, righteous, free and peaceful words, full of all goodness, it comes to pass that the soul which clings to them with a firm faith, is so united with them, nay, altogether taken up into them, that it not only shares in all their power, but is saturated and made drunken with it. For if a touch of Christ healed, how much more will this most tender touch in the spirit, rather this absorbing of the Word, communicate to the soul all things that are the Word's. This, then, is how through faith alone without works the soul is justified by the Word of God, sanctified, made true and peaceful and free, filled with every blessing and made truly a child of God, as John i says, "To them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His Name." [John 1:12]
[Sidenote: Faith Justifies]
From what has been said it is easily seen whence faith has such great power, and why no good work nor all good works together can equal it: no work can cling to the Word of God nor be in the soul; in the soul faith alone and the Word have sway. As the Word is, so it makes the soul, as heated iron glows like fire because of the union of fire with it. It is clear then that a Christian man has in his faith all that he needs, and needs no works to justify him. And if he has no need of works, neither does he need the law; and if he has no need of the law, surely he is free from the law, and it is true, "the law is not made for a righteous man." [1 Tim. 1:9] And this is that Christian liberty, even our faith, which does not indeed cause us to live in idleness or in wickedness, but makes the law and works unnecessary for any man's righteousness and salvation.
[Sidenote: Faith Fulfils the Commands]