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Location:
6425 Jefferson Rd. For
directions, click here.
Until
that time, Mr. Wesley, a young
Anglican priest, had been trying to
earn God's favor by various works of
piety. This
experience, during a prayer
gathering on a meeting house on
Aldersgate Street in London,
radically altered his thinking and
transformed Wesley from a largely
ineffective clergyman into a
modern-day apostle. Below
is an excerpt from Luther's
preface. To
understand Paul's letter, we have
understand what he means by the words
law and faith. When
he writes of "law," he does not mean a
regulation about what sort of works
must be done or must not be done.
That's the way it is with human laws:
you satisfy the demands of the law with
works, whether your heart is in it or
not. But
God judges what is in the depths of the
heart. Therefore his law also makes
demands on the depths of the heart and
doesn't let the heart rest content in
works; rather it punishes as hypocrisy
and lies all works not from the depths
of the heart. In
chapter 7, St. Paul says, "The law is
spiritual." What does that mean? If the
law were physical, then it could be
satisfied by works, but since it is
spiritual, no one can satisfy it unless
everything he does springs from the
depths of the heart. No
one can give such a heart except the
Spirit of God, who makes the person be
like the law, so that he actually
conceives a heartfelt longing for the
law and henceforward does everything,
not through fear or coercion, but from
a free heart. It is
the Holy Spirit, who puts such
eagerness of unconstrained love into
the heart, as Paul says in chapter 5.
But the Spirit is given only in, with,
and through faith in Jesus Christ, as
Paul says in his
introduction. That
is why faith alone makes someone just
and fulfills the law; faith it is that
brings the Holy Spirit through the
merits of Christ. The Spirit, in turn,
renders the heart glad and free, as the
law demands. Then good works proceed
from faith itself. Faith
is a work of God in us, which changes
us and brings us to birth anew from God
(cf. John 1). It kills the old Adam,
makes us completely different people in
heart, mind, senses, and all our
powers, and brings the Holy Spirit with
it. What a living, creative, active
powerful thing is faith! Faith
is a living, unshakable confidence in
God's grace; it is so certain, that
someone would die a thousand times for
it. This kind of trust in and knowledge
of God's grace makes a person joyful,
confident, and happy with regard to God
and all creatures. This is what the
Holy Spirit does by faith. Through
faith, a person will do good to
everyone without coercion, willingly
and happily; he will serve everyone,
suffer everything for the love and
praise of God, who has shown him such
grace. Ask God to work faith in you;
otherwise you will remain eternally
without faith, no matter what you try
to do or fabricate.
Gateway
Church gathers
for worship
Sundays
at 10:30 a.m.
(Hwy. 129) in Athens,
Georgia.
Ministry
of the
Word:
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Gateway
Today
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OUR
SPIRITUAL
HERITAGE
From
Gateway
Today
The
e-magazine of
Gateway Church
SPRING
2005
Faith
is God's work in us
It
is an unshakable confidence in God's
grace
On
May 24, 1738, John Wesley, who
became the founder of the Methodist
movement, had a life-changing
experience of God's grace while
listening to someone read from
Martin Luther's Preface to the
Book of Romans.
Only
the God can do this
Abridged
from a translation by Andrew Thornton,
OSB, for the Saint Anselm College
Humanities Program. Translation ©
1983 by Saint Anselm Abbey.