13. Particular teachings from the Formula of Concord concerning the fruits of faith:

(a) The difference between the works of the law and the works of the Spirit must be most diligently noted. The works that the reborn do with a free and joyful spirit are not works of the law but works of the Spirit; they are the fruits of faith. Such people are no longer under the law but under grace (pages 589, 590, 721, 722).

(b) Good works are the fruits of repentance (page 12).

(c) Through faith, the reborn receive a new life, new desires, and new works; these come from the faith that exists in repentance (page 134).

(d) After this conversion and justification, our minds and eventually even our intellects begin to be renewed. Then our will is not idle in the daily exercise of repentance (pages 582, 673, 700).

(e) We need to practice repentance both from original sin and from our own actual sins (page 321; appendix, page 159).

(f) This repentance endures among Christians until death because it struggles with the sin that remains in the flesh throughout life (page 327).

(g) The law of the Ten Commandments must take hold in us and then increase more and more (pages 85, 86).

(h) Although the reborn are indeed liberated from the curse of the law, they should daily practice the law of the Lord (page 718).

(i) The reborn are never without the law, and at the same time they are not under the law; they live according to the law of the Lord (page 722).

(j) For those who are reborn, the law must be the norm of their religious practice (pages 596, 717; appendix, page 156).

(k) The reborn do good works not by coercion but spontaneously and freely, as if they knew of no commandment, had heard no threat, and were expecting no reward (pages 596, 701).

(l) The faith the reborn have is constantly engaged in doing good works. Whoever does not do such works is an unbeliever. Where faith exists, there good works are being done (page 701).

(m) Goodwill and worthy fruits follow faith and regeneration (pages 121, 122, 171, 188, 692).

(n) Faith and good works fit beautifully together and are inseparably connected. But it is faith alone that lays hold of the blessing, apart from works, and yet it is never, ever alone. As a result, faith without works is dead (pages 692, 693).

(o) After a person has been justified by faith, there then exists a true, living faith that works through love. Good works always follow justifying faith and are certainly found with it. Faith is never alone but is always accompanied by love and hope (page 586).

(p) We say that if good works do not follow, then faith is false and not true (page 336).

(q) It is impossible to separate good works from faith, quite as impossible as to separate heat and light from fire (page 701).

(r) Because the old Adam still continues to hang on in their nature, the reborn need not only the law’s daily instruction and admonition, its warning and threatening; often they also need its punishments. They are reproved and restrained by the Holy Spirit through the law (pages 719, 720, 721).

(s) The reborn still have to struggle with the old Adam. The flesh, which is still a part of them, needs to be forced into obedience through admonitions, threats, and blows, since the renewal of life through faith merely begins in this lifetime (pages 595, 596, 724).

(t) The battle of the flesh against the Spirit continues even in the elect and truly reborn (pages 675, 679).

(u) Christ announces that our sins will be forgiven because of our good works. He says this for three reasons: because our good works follow our being reconciled to God; because good fruits ought of necessity to follow [our repentance]; and because our good works are signs of his promise to us (pages 116, 117).

(v) There is no saving faith in those who lack goodwill. Love is a fruit that certainly and necessarily results from true faith (page 688).

(w) Good works are necessary for a host of reasons, but we are not to count on meriting [grace] through them (pages 11, 17, 64, 95, 133, 589, 590, 702; appendix, page 172).

(x) With the new powers and gifts the reborn have received, they should cooperate with the Holy Spirit, but in a particular way (pages 582, 583, 674, 675; appendix, page 144).

(y) In the Belgic Confession, which was officially adopted at the Synod of Dort, we read the following:

It is impossible for this holy faith to be unfruitful in us — faith works through love. These works, as they proceed from the good root of faith, are good and acceptable in the sight of God, like the fruit of a good tree. We are indebted to God for the good works we do, but he is not indebted to us on their account, since it is he who produces them in us. (Belgic Confession [24])

23. The Council of Trent has the following to say in regard to the faith that makes us just: The perpetual consent of the Catholic Church has been that 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; see §5 a above. The same document also says that faith comes from hearing the Word of God; see §§4 d, [8].

As you can fully see from statements given above in §§4, 5, 7, and 8, that Roman Catholic council united faith and goodwill or faith and good works. The Protestant churches, named for the founders mentioned above, separated faith and goodwill or good works, however, and declared that the ingredient that actually saves us is faith and not goodwill or good works; they separated the two so as to differentiate themselves from Roman Catholics with regard to goodwill and faith, since these two are the essential characteristics of the church. I have heard this assertion a number of times from the founders of the Protestant churches themselves.

I have also heard from them that they reinforced this separation [of faith and goodwill] with arguments such as the following: On our own, none of us can do the type of good things that contribute to our salvation; we cannot fulfill the law either. They also separated faith and goodwill to prevent our own sense of merit (which arises from doing good works) from becoming part of our faith.

From the statements presented from the Formula of Concord in §12 above it is clear that the points just made were the origins and purposes behind the Protestant denial that good actions and goodwill play any role in our acquisition of faith and therefore of salvation. The following are among the statements presented there: Faith actually does not make us just if it has been formed through acts of goodwill, although Catholics say it does; see §12 b. For many reasons we must reject the proposition that good works are necessary for our salvation. One reason is that Papists adopted these views in support of a bad cause; see §12 h. People ought to reject the decree of the Council of Trent [and whatever else is used to support the opinion] that our good works preserve and maintain our salvation and faith; see §12 m. Not to mention many other such statements in the Formula of Concord.

In the following sections [§§24– 27] you will see that Protestants do in fact unite faith and goodwill and attribute to them a shared power to save; the only difference between the Protestant and the Roman Catholic views concerns how our good works come into existence.