Article  XII

OF GOOD WORKS^[1]

Albeit that Good Works, which are the fruits of Faith, and follow after Justification, cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God's Judgement; yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively Faith; insomuch that by them a lively Faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by the fruit.

The teaching of this Article is aimed against the calumny of the Roman Church on the one hand, that the cardinal reformed doctrine of Justification by Faith left no place for Good Works,^[2] and also at the view of some fanatical sects – a view still current today – that belief in Christ’s atoning achievement is all there is to faith; conduct does not matter.  Here the position of our Church is made plain.  Nothing that man may do can contribute anything to his reconciliation to God: the ground on which he is pardoned and brought into harmony with Him, and the divine wrath averted, is Christ’s merit.  ‘Good Works . . . cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God’s Judgement.’  The merit of Christ is an objective fact and altogether independent of our attitude to it.  To believe this is the first step in the exercise of the faith through which the merit of Christ becomes effective unto Justification.  The danger here, and it is a very real one, is to think that faith can be identified with bare intellectual assent to the doctrine of Christ’s merit.  Almost as soon as it was first preached, justification by faith was misunderstood in this way, and St. James had to write his Epistle to correct such mistaken interpretations.  It is easy to say we believe certain facts or statements when we think they are true, especially if they may be neglected as having little interest for us, and with no bearing on our lives.  But the merit of Christ is not a fact of this kind; on the contrary, it is of the deepest concern to us, and belief in it must result in a life of responsive devotion and service to Him whose achievement it is.  Mere intellectual concurrence, as St. James points out, is a faith that the demons could have; they might acknowledge their Conqueror and tremble before Him, but they remain demons;^[3] theirs is a ‘dead’ faith.  As the Article says, Good Works are the fruits of faith and follow justification, and they ‘do spring out necessarily of a true and lively faith’.  According to the standpoint of the New Testament, it would be nonsense to think of having the justifying righteousness which is of God by faith in Christ, apart from possession of the mind or Spirit of Christ that issues in conduct bringing forth the fruits of the Spirit;^[4] the two are properly inseparable.  Christian behaviour is so much the natural outcome of a proper faith that by it ‘a lively faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by the fruit.’  On this both St. Paul and St. James are in full agreement; a saving faith is one that works through love.