Article XV. Of Christ alone without Sin.

Christ in the truth of our nature was made like unto us in all things, sin only except, from which he was clearly void, both in his flesh, and in his spirit. He came to be the Lamb without spot, who, by sacrifice of himself once made, should take away the sins of the world; and sin (as Saint John saith) was not in him. But all we the rest, although baptized and born again in Christ, yet offend in many things; and if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

Far from it being the case, as article 14 denied, that the Christian can with heroic effort even exceed what God requires from human beings (and so distribute the excess to others), the fifteenth article puts forward Christ as unique among the race in his sinlessness of life. There is a Christological point made, but also an anthropological one: Christ's supreme obedience and sinlessness is in contrast to the inevitable and ongoing sinfulness of the rest. The danger and vanity of teaching that a saintly life might gain merit enough to please God is terribly grave. Although it is a worthy thing of course to encourage the doing of the things that God wants done, it is of no benefit to the doer of the works in terms of removing the stain of sin and death, to then face God's judgement.

It is self-deceptive: and especially so in the Christian person. St John in his letter writes not only to the non-Christian who might be unaware of the extent of her sinfulness, but also to the Christian who might self-deceive. Being baptised and born anew in Christ looses us from the power of sin and the sentence on sin, but it does not remove our terrible recidivism when it comes to living the righteous life.

Now this seems very pessimistic; and we might add that the Holy Spirit is the Christian's aid in doing righteous things and trying to please God. Do not the Articles themselves, following Scripture, speak of pleasing God in righteous works?

Atonement; life of Jesus.

Article XVI: Of Sin after Baptism

Not every deadly sin willingly committed after Baptism is sin against the Holy Ghost, and unpardonable. Wherefore the grant of repentance is not to be denied to such as fall into sin after Baptism. After we have received the Holy Ghost, we may depart from grace, and fall into sin, and by the grace of God we may arise again, and amend our lives. And therefore they are to be condemned, which say, they can no more sin as long as they live here, or deny the place of forgiveness to such as truly repent.

If previous articles had seemed stern, this teaching reveals in its turn the truly merciful heartbeat of the evangelical gospel. Even serious sin is not an obstacle to the full repentance and forgiveness of the Christian.

There are two common distortions in view here. One is that baptism and receiving the Holy Spirit is a guarantee of a sinless state of life.

Article XIV. Of Works of Supererogation.

Voluntary Works besides, over and above, God's Commandments, which they call Works of Supererogation cannot be taught without arrogancy and impiety: for by them men do declare, that they do not only render unto God as much as they are bound to do, but that they do more for his sake, than of bounden duty is required: whereas Christ saith plainly When ye have done all that are commanded to you, say, We are unprofitable servants.

This article springs directly out of the context of the Reformation, and serves as a further riposte to the religious practices of which the Reformation doctrine of justification was a critique. The idea of supererogatory works is a very ancient one, going back to the Decian persecution of the third century.

In that period, there were examples of great spiritual heroism and endurance, and also terrible exampes of lapsing. It is a problem of community that we don't face a great deal in the contemporary west; but it must have caused a great deal of pain and shame for those involved. Who could blame those who, faced with the terrifying prospect of torture and death, fled or reneged? The hope of those who lapsed and later repented was that they could by some means gain from prospective martyrs - those waiting in prison for their deaths - something of their undoubted credit, and thereby be restored to the Church.

With the spread of monasticism with its emphasis on virginity and other ascetic practices came a further emphasis on spiritual heroism, and the hope that ordinary people could benefit vicariously from the merits of those who exposed themselves to extreme discipline. By the medieval period, the idea of this saintly excess of transferrable good works became linked especially to the practices of selling and granting Indulgences.

We can see here a developing exchange economy of merits. Admiration for the saints of the faith is of itself quite harmless and even beneficial; but once this becomes attached to a view of justification which is based on the accumulation of merits and rewards that God must honour, it becomes a terrible distortion of the gospel of grace.

Article XIII. Of Works before Justification.

Works done before the grace of Christ, and the Inspiration of his Spirit, are not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ; neither do they make men meet to receive grace, or (as the School-authors say) deserve grace of congruity: yea rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, we doubt not but they have the nature of sin.

Article XIII is the mirror-image of Article XII: if good works following faith are, miracle of miracles, pleasing to God, then works proceeding faith, though they may have the appearance of righteousness, are in fact not so. There is no sense in which the performance of acts, which in fact do meet the requirements of some part of the divine law, and which are even for the benefit of others, are of the type that might merit a gracious response.

The problem is the context and manner of the good deed outside of Christ is still impacted by sin, still ultimately skewiff and not oriented to God, however much it is claimed otherwise. Christ is the only channel by which human beings may please God; a righteous relationship with God is necessary to enable the proper orientation and intent and consequence of acts such that they may really be called 'good'.

Not only this, but good works so-called may be a great distraction to the person who does them and prides in them. Pride, in the Augustinian tradition, is the essence of sin: the person who self-justifies is in grave spiritual danger, for, like the Pharisee in the temple, he will make claims and demands on God. This was in the Reformation view the problem with the teaching of the 'school-men', that God meets our good works with a congruous grace that makes good our deficiencies in response.

This sounds very harsh. Surely it is better that the right thing is done than that people are told that even the good they do is actually sinful by nature? It would certainly better to encourage uprightness than to discourage it, whatever the motive. The article is, it must be said, an arrow targetted against the belief that these works have a salvific power: that they are a labour to which God will grant a proper wage. Still, it is a feature of the modern outlook to count belief of very secondary imporatance and to elevate right action. Griffith Thomas cites Alexander Pope's lines:

For creeds and forms let senseless bigots fight,

His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.

Or, as the singer Jewel sang 'in the end, only kindness matters'.

Count me then among the bigots: what this theology diagnoses is the tendency of the human heart to corrupt even the performance of righteous acts. Heaven is not a middle class suburb inhabited by the good.

Article XII. Of Good Works.

Albeit that Good Works, which are the fruits of Faith, and follow after Justification, cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God's judgment; yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively Faith insomuch that by them a lively Faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by the fruit.

The Reformers of course were attacked for the moral licence that seemed to be permitted by the doctrine of justification by faith. Were they not antinomians of the worst kind? Was not the teaching about grace a teaching that allowed for laxity? Was it not in fact the fear of hell that kept society in check? Lest we underestimate the seriousness of the charge, let us flash forward to the Lutheran Copenhagen of Kierkegaard's time, when he inveighled against the sheer deadening nominalism of his fellow church-goers. Was this what justification by faith led to?

Well not if it was understood as its early teachers taught it. Good Works, they asserted, do not emit the power of forgiveness and justification. Even after the fact of justification (understood here as the beginning of the Christian life, though of course Paul uses this language at times to speak of its end), Good Works do not obtain somehow the power to ameliorate our sins or help us in the day of our trial. That is not their function: they are rather the natural outgrowths of a life imbued with the Holy Spirit of God in Jesus Christ himself. They are evidence of the changed nature and quality of the tree.

And they are pleasing and acceptable to God. 'Offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship' says Paul (Rom 12:1). There is a proper and pleasing worship, a right and good and pleasing sacrifice to offer, that we ourselves may offer in Christ. This is not meant as a salvific pleasure - it is the outcome and result of God's own work in the sinner to make her holy, and to draw her into a relationship of righteousness with him.

Ephesians 2:8-10 famously expresses the relationship of faith and works:
8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast. 10For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Our very purpose as new creatures is to do the good works we were made to do (and which were prepared for us). But the ground of our salvation is not these works - it is 'grace through faith'.

And the faith which produces a good crop of good works is indeed a lively faith - a faith which enlivens, and is evidence of life, present and to come. Faith without good works is indeed dead, as James says.

Article XI. Of the Justification of Man.

We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or deservings; Wherefore, that we are justified by Faith only is a most wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort, as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification.

Here we reach a series of statements that are really the centre of gravity for the 39 articles. Given the polemical situation of course this is not surprising. Furthermore, given the statements about the gravity of sin that have just preceded it, justification by faith can really be the only answer. In this teaching, we find at once God's self-vindication and his mercy. He is the just judge, but also the one who justifies the ungodly.

Of course, Jesus in his person and work is the indispensible link: his righteousness being the basis of our being declared right. Although the word 'imputation' isn't used here, it is certainly a concept taught by the article: our being counted righteous is entirely because of Jesus being counted righteous by God. The accusation has been levelled against the doctrine of imputed righteousness that it is a legal fiction (see Bicknell for example). This is perhaps fair - but only if you rip imputation out of the context of other doctrines which support it, such as the work of the Spirit and union with Christ. Imputation is, granted, not the whole story; but that isn't to prove that it isn't part of the story. (We could ask, too, if imputation is scriptural: 2 Cor 5 seems to express it, but this text has been hotly disputed. However, it may be held as an implication of Scripture even if it isn't expressly taught in it.)

Confusion has further reigned since the Reformation on account of the word 'Faith'. To be 'justified by faith' is a slogan in short-hand: more accurately we are justified by grace through faith. Faith is not a replacement work, a merit-claiming thing we possess, a virtue we may excercise which God must honour. Neither is it belief in doctrines: one is not justified by right belief - though orthodox belief is a corollory of justification. Once again, this would mean in some way we were deserving of justification. Clearly this is not what the Reformers took the Bible to mean. Faith - in itself 'not your own, a gift of God' (Eph 2:10) - is unremarkable, quiet stuff. It is a matter of receiving the word of God and in response clinging to it in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is not the ground of our justification, but the means. As the 'Homily on Salvation' (named here as the 'Homily on Justification') puts it:

Faith putteth us from itself, and remitteth or appointeth us unto Christ for to have only HIm remission of our sins or justification. So that our faith in Christ (as it were) saith unto us thus: It is not I that take away your sins, but it is Christ only, and to Him only I send you for that purpose, forsaking therein all your good virtues, words, thoughts and works, and only putting your trust in Christ.

Thus, this doctrine may indeed by called a 'very full comfort'. It would be of no comfort at all if we had to count on our own merits or on some quality within in us. There would be nothing but fear if that were the case.

Postscript: It would be a sorry thing not to note the recent controversy around justification and the new perspective on Paul. On the other hand, it would be impossible to do justice to the issues in a brief comment. Suffice it to say, the helpful thing about recent New Testament studies has been the way in which salvation-history has become the guiding paradigm used to understand Paul, rather than justification abstracted from this. However, I wouldn't see the two as mutually exclusive of one another (though others might); nor would I see the Reformation debates about human nature and the grace of God as now eclipsed by this new emphasis. Quite the opposite: how does God justify the ungodly? how does he include the Gentile in his people? - these questions are both pertinent and both 'resolved' in the propitiatory sacrifice of atonement Jesus made on the cross.

Article X. Of Free-Will.

The condition of Man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith; and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.

This article is somewhat mis-named: it is actually not 'of free will' at all, but 'of bound will'. As with article IX, article X paves the way for the teaching about justification that is to come in the next few articles. The will, it asserts is not free after the fall of Adam. As Paul puts it in Romans 7:18- 19:
... For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing...

The great Augustine had said:

We have no power to do good works without God working that we may have a good will, and co-operating when we have that good will.

These words obviously formed the basis of the second part of this article. The human will is, as Alastair McFadyen puts it, bound to sin. If it was in its created pre-fall state properly described as a 'free' will, then there is no way in which it could be accurately described as such now. Even the turning to God is not something that lies within the capacity of human beings. The human person is not able even to prepare himself for faith. It is not even the case that, as Duns Scotus had taught in the early 14th century, the sincere effort of human beings to do good, however meagre the results, where to be met with a 'congruous grace'.

But also, this was where the Reformation differed sharply not only with the much medieval theology (though notably not with Aquinas) but also with the new learning taking hold in Europe in the 16th century. The famous dispute between Luther and Erasmus was not so much a dispute between the old theology and the new theology, but between two new alternatives with much in common - though of course both had ancient roots. Erasmus' optimism was noble and urbane, but ultimately, as Luther showed, a dangerous fantasy. The soul is curved in on itself; therefore, it will always tend to serve its own ends.

This teaching about the will has contemporary significance in the context of contemporary secular liberalism, which asserts the triumph of the human will and sacralises choice. It is by willing things that we exert control and assert our indentities. Yet, the biblical diagnosis is that our actions, following our intentions, run along very familiar and predictible lines.

But the picture is not all bleak: the human person, with the help of God who 'prevents' us (note the archaic use of 'prevent' in the sense of 'going ahead of') may indeed do good works; may indeed be in the possession of a good will; may even co-operate with God in the accomplishment of good works in abundance. The continual co-operation of the Spirit of God with us in doing the works that are pleasing to God is a significant point against those who pictured God 'getting the ball rolling' in the Christian life and leaving us to get on with it from there. No, we are aided and abetted in doing the things that please Him in every step.