Free from the Law of Works
Via The Righteousness of Faith According to Luther, pp. 66-67
From the point of view of the righteousness of faith, the imposters and anti-Christian rivals who preach the righteousness of the law are easily recognized. The righteousness of the law has nothing to do with the fact that a person intends to be able to come near to God with good works, even if this primitive idea is fundamentally th notion of heathen sacrifice that is rooted by nature in everyone’s blood. Rather, it is a deeper and more profound shackle by which the person is imprisoned in a ring of law and of sin, even though the ideal of perfection shines in on him in his prison and holds him upright. It is what Luther calls the “necessitas operum” (the necessity of works) that binds him in works of necessity. The person himself seeks constantly to find the identity of his being in his works, for ‘if you are good’ then ‘you must show it’! And the person knows deep in his heart that he lives and strives, is happy and crestfallen, depending upon whether his works succeed or not.
If these chains that are forged from works and that imprison me could be broken from the inside (that is by my nature), and if my conscience could be freed from the “judgment of my works,” (in which not my works, but God’s would be counted for me) and if I were able to decide the verdict on my life–then I would indeed be free! Then this law, this cycle of “I” and works and conscience would indeed be broken and I could confront the works that wait for me, knowing that God’s judgment supports me, with the confidence of a master who commands his slaves. Then I would act with the greatest freedom and confidence, knowing that no work that I do can decide my fate, my salvation, or my righteousness before God. That is precisely the heavenly gift that Luther finds in the New Righteousness; the freedom of the children of God who do work simply that it may be done, but who do not need to do any work at all in order to know that they live by God’s grace.