8. Faith comes to us through hearing, when we believe that the teachings divinely revealed to us are true and when we trust in God’s promises. Faith is the beginning of human salvation, and the foundation and root of all justification. Without faith, it is impossible to please God and to come into the company of his children. Our justification takes place through faith, hope, and goodwill. Unless hope and goodwill are added to faith, it is dead rather than living and does not unite us to Christ.

We need to cooperate in this process. We have the power to move either closer to or farther away from [Christ]; if we did not, nothing could be granted to us, because we would be like a lifeless body.

Our openness to being justified renews us; this renewal takes place as Christ’s merit is applied to us, as the result of our own cooperation. Therefore we get credit for the works that we do; yet because they are done as a result of grace and through the Holy Spirit, and because Christ alone has earned merit, the rewards God gives us are his own gifts within us. Therefore none of us can attribute anything of merit to ourselves.

92. Brief Analysis

“Cutting those days short” means bringing the modern-day church to an end and establishing a new church. As mentioned before, Matthew 24 is about the successive states of decline and corruption within the Christian church leading up to its close and end, and about the Lord’s Coming, which happens after that.

The reason why no flesh would be saved if those days were not cut short is that the faith of the modern-day church is based on the idea of three gods, and no one who has that idea can get into heaven. Therefore no one with that faith can get into heaven either, because the idea of three gods is present in every detail of it. For another thing, that faith contains within itself no life from acts of goodwill. As I have shown in §§47– 50 above, it is incapable of being united to goodwill or producing any fruit in the form of good works.

There are two things that build a heaven within us: truths that lead to faith and good actions that come from goodwill. Truths that lead to faith bring us the presence of the Lord and show us the way to heaven. Good actions that come from goodwill give us a partnership with the Lord and bring us into heaven. There we are each brought into a light that accords with how much desire we have for what is true, and into a warmth that accords with how much desire we have for what is good. Faith in its essence is a desire for what is true, and goodwill in its essence is a desire for what is good. The church is a marriage between faith and goodwill; see §48 above. And heaven and the church are united. Faith, goodwill, and heaven (as I have demonstrated fully in the preceding pages) do not exist in the churches that are built on faith alone.