111. 2. It is impossible to incorporate one person’s goodness into another person. The evidence for this can be seen if it is laid out in the following order. (a) Every one of us is born with evil. (b) We are brought into goodness by going through the process of being regenerated by the Lord. (c) Our regeneration is occasioned by our believing in the Lord and living by his commandments. (d) Therefore one person’s goodness cannot be transferred and incorporated into and credited to another person.

(a) Every one of us is born with evil. The church is well aware of this. The church tradition holds that this evil is something we inherit from Adam; in actual fact, though, it comes from our parents. Each of us derives a particular nature from our parents, which takes the form of certain tendencies. Both experience and reason teach that this is true. Similarities to parents are obvious in the faces, characters, and behaviors of their children and also grandchildren. As a result, families are widely recognizable, and we can even discern certain characteristics of their lower minds. Therefore the evils that the parents have become involved with are passed down to subsequent generations in the form of a tendency to engage in those evils. This is the origin of the evils we are born with.

(b) We are brought into goodness by going through the process of being regenerated by the Lord. The Lord’s words in John 3:3, 5 make it clear that there is a process of regeneration and that if we do not undergo this process we cannot come into heaven. In the Christian world it is impossible to miss that the process of being regenerated is a process of being purified from evils and beginning a new life. Reason is able to see this as well, provided it accepts that every one of us is born with evil, and that evil cannot be washed or wiped away with soap and water as if it were dirt, but can be washed away by our recovery of wisdom.

(c) Our regeneration is occasioned by our believing in the Lord and living by his commandments. For the five principles of regeneration, see §§43, 44 above. The following are taken from that list: We must abstain from doing things that are evil — they belong to the Devil and come from the Devil. We must do things that are good — they belong to God and come from God. We must turn to the Lord so that he can lead us to live this way.

You should all take the time to consider whether goodness could possibly become ours in any other way; and without goodness, we have no salvation.

(d) Therefore one person’s goodness cannot be transferred and incorporated into and credited to another person. It follows from what has just been said that the process of regeneration is what makes our spirits new, and that this process is occasioned by our believing in the Lord and living by his commandments.

Surely everyone can see that this process of being made new can occur only over time, much the way a seed takes root, grows into a tree, and comes to full maturity in stages. People who think differently about the process of being regenerated and made new know nothing about the human condition. They also do not realize that evil and good are complete opposites, and that what is good can only be implanted to the extent that evil has been removed. They are also not aware that as long as we are involved in evil we have an aversion to any goodness that is truly and intrinsically good. Therefore if one person’s goodness were to be transferred and incorporated into another person who was devoted to evil, it would be like throwing a lamb in with a wolf or tying a pearl to a pig’s snout. Clearly, then, it is impossible to incorporate one person’s goodness into another person.

65. Brief Analysis

The only kind of salvation people believe in today is an instantaneous salvation as a result of direct mercy. They say that a verbal statement of faith alone and a confidence expressed by the lungs takes care of everything we need in the way of salvation. There is no need for goodwill (even though in actuality goodwill is what allows verbal faith to become real faith, and allows confidence expressed by the lungs to become confidence felt at heart). If you remove the idea of a cooperation that we undertake seemingly on our own through our exercise of goodwill, then this cooperation that spontaneously and automatically follows faith becomes “a passive activity,” which is a meaningless expression. What more, then, would we need than the following brief, direct statement: “Save me, O God, for the sake of the suffering of your Son. He washed away my sins with his own blood and is bringing me as a pure, just, and holy person before your throne”? If we had not made a statement like this before, even in our final hour before dying it would serve to initiate our justification.

Section 340 in the work Divine Providence, published in Amsterdam in 1764, shows, however, that the concept of instantaneous salvation by direct mercy is the flying fiery serpent in the church today, that it is destroying the religion, that it gives people an unwarranted feeling of security, and that it blames God for our damnation.