Without Work
Via On Being a Theologian of the Cross, pp. 103-107.
We have arrived not at the other pier of the great arch spanning the way from the law of God to the love of God. Theses 25-28 set forth the life raised from the death spoken of at the conclusion of the proof for thesis 24. With that death the way has been cleared for God’s work in us. Every other road, every other possibility, has been examined and rejected. The old self has the sickness unto death. There is no cure. Death is the end.
Thesis 25. He is not righteous who works much, but he who, without work, believes much in Christ.
What is asserted here is precisely that God simply is not interested in works issuing out of the self’s concern for its own righteousness. “Whatever is not of faith is sin.” Only those who believe much in Christ are righteous before God, period. It always seems incredible to us, but getting used to that fact is what it means to die and be raised to newness of life in Christ, to be born anew. Only then will works that can be called “good” begin to be done. Good works, works done for the neighbor without calculation or claim, can begin when the Old Adam is put to death and the new appears.
Luther’s proof is simply a bald assertion of the righteousness of faith based on passages from Romans. This, he remarks, is quite contrary to what we learn from Aristotle. “For the righteousness of God is not acquired by means of acts frequently repeated, as Aristotle taught, but it is imparted by faith, for ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live’ (Rom. 1[:17]) and ‘Man believes with his heart and so is justified’ (Rom. 10[:10]).” We don’t get the bit of this unless we recall just what this reference to Aristotle means. Aristotle held that we acquire righteousness by doing righteous deeds, just as we acquire skills by practicing:
Anything that we have to learn to do we learn by the actual doing of it: people become builders by building and instrumentalists by playing instruments. Similarly we become just by performing just acts, temperate by performing temperate ones, brave by performing brave ones. This view is supported by what happens in city states. Legislators make their citizens good by habituation; this is the intention of every legislator, and those who do not carry it out fail of their object.
As we have seen throughout the Disputation, however, it could hardly be otherwise. Works performed on the premise that one was going to become righteous thereby are not good to begin with. They defend us against the goodness of God. They are done not for the neighbor but fo the glory of the self. Works that can be called good, however, flow from righteousness as from an overflowing vessel, not into it as an empty one waiting to be filled. The cross has reversed everything. The foolishness of God in the cross is wiser than the wisdom of the world. The righteousness of God that avails before God is a being claimed by the crucified and resurrected Christ. It is not like accomplishing something but like dying and coming to life. It is not like earning something but more like falling in love. It is not the attainment of a long-sought goal, the arrival at the end of the process, but the beginning of something absolutely new, something never before heard of or entertained.
Luther … wants to make absolutely certain that there be no confusion between the righteousness of faith and the works that indeed follow. The works are in no way to be understood as the believer’s own, but God’s. The one justified by faith becomes Christ’s vessel and instrument.
Thus Rom. 3[:20] states, “no human being will be justified in His sight by works of the law,” and, “For we hold that man is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Rom. 3[:28]). In other words, works contribute nothing to justification. Therefore he knows that works he does by such faith are not his but God’s. For this reason he does not seek to become justifies or glorified through them, but seeks God. His justification by faith in Christ is sufficient to him. Christ is his wisdom, righteousness, etc., as 1 Cor. 1[:30] has it, that he himself may be Christ’s vessel and instrument.
Good works are God’s work in the believer. They are something totally other than “works of law.”
