justification on Mercy

Faith is nothing else than trust in the divine mercy promised in Christ…. This trust in the goodwill or mercy of God first calms our hearts and then inflames us to give thanks to God for his mercy so ...

For although faith alone justifies, love is also demanded…. A living faith is that efficacious, burning trust in the mercy of God which never fails to bring forth good fruits.

What can we say, O Lord, to justify ourselves? You shower us with grace upon grace. Your mercies are new every morning. And we find it hard to forgive others. Sometimes we are petty and hold grudges f...

Faith cannot but pour forth from all creatures in most eager service to God as a dutiful son serves a godly father. The efficacy of faith is such that from its fruits it is very evident in whose heart...

​O my all-merciful God and Lord, Jesus Christ, full of pity: Through Your great love You came down and became incarnate in order to save everyone. O Savior, I ask You to save me by Your grace! If You ...

A living faith is that which pours itself out in works.

But we must add at once that the pious will not cease from good works simply because it is impossible to gain any merit by them. Rather, the greater our faith, the more and greater our works…. For sin...

If you are ever in the mood to feel overwhelmed, discouraged, and downright depressed, hail a cab to the corner of Avenue of the Americas and West 44th Street in New York City. There, you’ll find the ...

Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that 'the just shall live by his faith.' Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteo...

One particularly crafty, if not insidious way a “good works” righteousness can seep into our theology is by positioning faith as the pre-eminent work. We must never forget that faith itself is a...

The church is a community that exists because something has happened that makes the entire process of self-justification irrelevant. God’s truth and mercy have appeared in concrete form in Jesus and, ...

A conversation in 1784 between Charles Simeon (a Calvinist and believer in unconditional predestination) and John Wesley (a follower of Arminius, who denied unconditional predestination) can help us u...

The prophet Jeremiah reminds us that when it seems all hope is lost, God is still working toward restoration. Friends, believe the Good News today: through the messiah, the righteous branch, our sins ...

At the beginning to the musical Les Misérables , the lead character Jean Valjean is arrested by the police, with silver he has stolen from a kindly bishop who had given him shelter. Valjean is plainl...

For he grew up before him like a young plant,     and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,     and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised...

Pastor: For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised ...

The more we allow ourselves to personally experience sanctification by faith, the more we also experience healing by faith. These two doctrines walk together. The more the Spirit of God lives and acts...

Brothers and Sisters, be reassured. Your sins are not held against you. By the work of God in Christ, you are forgiven. God “has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the king...

We affirm the good news that this saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He personally bore our sins in His body on the cross, s...

Grace is God’s part, faith ours.

Justification is the great exchange: our sin for Christ's righteousness.

Sisters and brothers, hear the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have als...

Grace is not only needed for the occasion of conversion, the moment we suddenly (or slowly) come to our senses and realize that we are spiritually bankrupt, having nothing to bring to God and everythi...

The Lord says, “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new sp...

Saving faith is an immediate relation to Christ, accepting, receiving, resting upon Him alone, for justification, sanctification, and eternal life by virtue of God's grace.

A prayer for All Saints' Day or the following Sunday. Meant to be prayed in unison. An optional section is provided to make this a confession of sin. Almighty God, we were once helpless and wand...

Holy God We are holy, Not in the sense of any rightness within us, But because we are in a relationship with you, We are holy because you gift that it is so. We are not called to into a division of us...

Romans 6 shines a bright spotlight on the dangerous half-truth, currently fashionable, that ‘God accepts us as we are.’ Will ‘God’s acceptance’ do as a complete grounding of Christian ethics? Emphatic...

Leader: God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Cor 5:21, ESV) People: For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the...

Justified…for what? This passage from Romans 5 sits at the heart of the Protestant doctrine of justification: Paul’s statement that “we are justified by faith” is as clear as we could ask for! The fa...