Savior, Have faith in Me,” but He said:  “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.”  Paul, likewise teaches that faith and love must cooperate in man, for “faith worketh by love.”  Therefore, “faith in love and love in faith justify,” but not faith alone.  Faith without works is dead and cannot justify.  A live faith is a faith that has works to show as its credentials that it is real faith.  Hence, faith alone does not justify, but faith and works.  Love is the fulfilment of the Law; faith works by love, hence, by the fulfilment of the Law.  Therefore, faith alone does not justify, but faith plus the fulfilment of the Law.  In endless variations Catholic writers thus seek to upset with Scripture Luther’s teaching that man is justified by faith in Christ alone, and that all the righteousness which a sinner can present before God without fear that it will be rejected is a borrowed righteousness, not his own work-righteousness.

We might express a just surprise that Catholics should be offended at the doctrine that the righteousness of Christ is imputed, that is, reckoned or counted, to the sinner as his own.  For, does not their system of indulgences rest on a theory of imputation?  Do they not, by selling from the Treasure of the Church the superabundant merits of Christ and the saints to the sinner who has not a sufficient amount of them, make those merits the sinner’s own by just such a process of imputation?  They surely cannot infuse those merits into the sinner.  But Catholics probably object to the Protestant imputation-teaching because that is too cheap and easy, and because Protestant success has spoiled a lucrative Catholic imputation-business.—­This in passing.  Let the Bible decided [tr. note:  sic] whether Luther was right in teaching justification by faith alone, by faith without works.

What does the Bible say about the condition of natural man after the fall?  It says:  “That which is born of the flesh is flesh,” that is, corrupt (John 3, 6); “The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Gen. 8, 21); “They are all gone aside, they are altogether become filthy:  there is none that doeth good, no, not one” (Ps. 14, 3); “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?  Not one” (Job 14, 4); “There is here no difference; for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Rom. 3, 22. 23).

What does the Bible say about the powers of natural man after the fall in reference to spiritual matters?  It says:  “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God:  for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2, 14); “Ye were dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2, 1); “The carnal mind,” that is, the mind of flesh, the natural mind of man, “is enmity against God” (Rom. 8, 7); “Without Me”—­Jesus is the Speaker—­“ye can do nothing” John 15, 5).

What does the Bible say about the value of man’s works of righteousness performed by his natural powers?  It says:  “We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Is. 64, 6); “A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit” (Matt. 7, 17).