The Gospel Seminar

"Luther Quotations": #6B

In TGS Blog #6A  I wrote the following:

"Regarding this matter of justification, should you add any effort of your own to the effort of Christ then you have perverted the true gospel and then Christ and his work "will be of no value to you at all" (Galatians 5;2).
Abandon now and forever any effort on your part toward justification with God, and trust Christ completely and alone to accomplish completely, alone and forever your justfication in the sight of the Father.
This is the TRUE gospel of Christ!"

Illustration of this Gospel:
Imagine a man wants to paint his bedroom an unusual color of white. This color, in order for it to work correctly, must be perfectly pure white paint. Any sort of blemish at all in this can of special white paint makes the paint completely ineffective (unusable and destructive to the walls) because it is not entirely special (100%) pure white paint.
Continue to imagine the man brings the special can of paint home from the store and proceeds to open it carefully as to not get any dirt in the paint. He then takes the wooden paint stir (received from the paint store) and stirs the paint.
He then begins to apply the paint to the walls but discovers immediately that the paint does not stick to the wall. In addition, the the paint causes the drywall to disitegrate every place the paint is applied to the wall.

Question: What went wrong? Do you know?
Answer: The moment the man put the wooded spoon in the can of paint wooden dust particles (invisible to the naked eye) were also added to the paint thus making the paint unusable and destructive to the wall. Why? Because the paint was only effective if it was kept entirely pure. And, though wood dust only made the paint .0001 % impure, that .0001 % was enough to ruin the perfect purity and effectiveness of the entire can of paint. That .0001% defiled the whole batch of white paint making it no longer effective.

Gospel application:
The can of perfect white paint represents the perfect life and record of Jesus Christ. He only is the perfect righteousness of God "without blemish or defect" (I Peter 1;19).
Our own individual records are only sinful and filthy (Isaiah 64;6) in the sight of God. To add anything of our filth (good/filthy works and bad/filthy works) to Christ's effort is to make Christ's efforts no longer pure. In other words, those people who believe that to be saved/justified through Christ (perfect work) in addition to their good (still sinful) efforts have perverted the gospel and made Christ and his work "of no value" (Galatians 5;2). By adding your impure works to the work of Christ you have "alienated (yourself) from Christ, you have fallen away from grace" (Galatians 5; 4). By adding to the perfect work of Christ you have turned to a different gospel.

"Abandon now and forever any effort on your part toward justification with God, and trust Christ completely and alone to accomplish completely, alone and forever your justification in the sight of the Father."


Luther;
"...(Gentiles and Jews) attain the glory and dignity of being the people of God (JUSTIFIED) without circumcision and without works of the law (MY OBEDIENT EFFORTS)- that is, by grace and faith in Christ alone....The truth of the gospel is that our righteousness (PERFECT JUSTIFICATION) comes by faith (IN CHRIST) alone without the works of the law (ON MY BEHALF)."