bored has left a new comment on your post "LutherQuest Denizen Has a Question about UOJ and L...":
Mr. Schumacher, please leave the passive aggressive tone by the side of the road. If you want to suggest that Luther supports UOJ, then say it in a way befitting a man and be ready to argue with fact and logically cogent sentences.
You wrote:
"You teach that the faith necessary for forgiveness is a trusting in the promise of God that He will forgive, for the sake of Christ’s atoning work, when we come to faith."
Not in least. The faith prescribed in the New Testament is not this complicated doubled-back loop-d'-loop dervish that theologians want to make it. Scripture does not tell us that we need to "have faith in the future realization of forgiveness that God states that he promises to bestow upon those who do not reject the truth, namely those who believe in blah blah" etc.. Satan, I suspect, spends more time squaring off on the shoulders of theologians than anywhere else, and with great glee leads them to over-complicate the message. It is not some hocus pocus formula.
What Scripture teaches is simple. Believe that Jesus Christ is the perfect and complete substitute for every man's sin-infested hide--and His righteousness is substituted for any man's wretchedness when the Holy Spirit works faith in that man's heart. Every believer should take comfort (not license) in knowing that, though he will certainly sin daily until he dies, God sees Christ, (complete righteousness) in the Faithful man and does not hold his sins against him. If a man regularly receives the blessings God has prepared for his Faithful, The Word and Sacrament, the Holy Spirit will arm him with the wisdom and strength to do what he is free in Christ to do: sin less. (But in this, the Holy Spirit is the actor.)
Of course, the simple message of Scripture all falls to pieces when you start teaching that God forgave everybody apart from the influence of the Holy Spirit and the Word. Mr. Schumacher, I hope you consider leaving the theologians aside for awhile and just read the Word without any lens to filter it. Then I will be curious to know if you think that God declares all people righteous irrespective of faith.
