The Salvation of Man
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Title
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C



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A ‘lively’ faith, as opposed to the barren ‘dead’ faith which St. James describes, passes inevitably into a process of sanctification through the good life.  By their Baptism into Christ believers have died to their sinful past, and have risen with Him to a new life of righteousness.  Once they yielded their members ‘to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity’, but now they are to present them ‘as servants to righteousness unto sanctification’.[1]   Christians were formerly darkness, but are become ‘light in the Lord’, and ought to ‘walk as children of light’, which has its fruit ‘in all goodness and righteousness and truth’.[2]  Christ ‘gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto Himself a people for His own possession, zealous of good works’.[3]

Good Works are ‘pleasing and acceptable to God’ because of their relation to Christ.  They are done by those who are ‘in Christ’,[4] who have His mind and live by His Spirit.[5]  St. Paul prays for the saints in Christ at Philippi that they may be ‘filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are through Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God’;[6] behaviour becoming to believers is ‘well‑pleasing unto the Lord’;[7] to suffer patiently for righteousness’ sake after Christ’s example is ‘acceptable with God’.[8]

 

 

Article  XIII

OF WORKS BEFORE JUSTIFICATION[9]

Works done before the grace of Christ, and the Inspiration of His Spirit, are not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ, neither do they make men meet to receive grace, or (as the School‑authors say) deserve grace of congruity; yea, rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, we doubt not but they have the nature of sin.

 

The presupposition of the teaching of this Article is the severe contrast which is drawn in the New Testament and primitive Christianity between the state of the world outside Christ and the order of thing under the New Covenant founded by Him.  ‘The whole world lieth in the evil one,’ says St. John;[10] the purpose of redemption is that men might be delivered ‘out of this present evil world’.[11]  Until Christ’s coming mankind was in darkness, but now ‘the darkness is passing away and the true light already shineth’.[12]  By the Incarnation the original act of creation is repeated; God has commanded His light to shine in Christ on the chaotic darkness of the world.[13]

 


[1]Rom. 6:19.

[2]Eph. 5:8 f.

[3]Tit. 2:14; cf. Eph. 5:9; Phil. 1:11.

[4]Jn. 15:4 f.

[5]1 Cor. 2:16; Gal. 5:25.

[6]Phil. 1:11.

[7]Eph. 5:9.

[8]1 Pet. 2:19 f.

[9]This Article seems to have been composed by the English Reformers as one of the Forty-two Articles of 1553, for it has no close parallel elsewhere.  The title is derived from an early draft in which the first clause ran: ‘Works that are done before Justification’.

[10]1 Jn. 5:19.

[11]Gal. 1:4.

[12]1 Jn. 2:8.

[13]2 Cor. 4:6.
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