DLORD 18 - An Imputation of the Lord’s Merit Is Nothing Else Than the Forgiveness of Sins Following Repentance

DLORD 18 [2-3]

. . . an imputation of merit
is a word without meaning,
unless one interprets it to mean
a forgiveness of sins following repentance.
For no attribute of the Lord
can be imputed to a person.

Salvation by the Lord, on the other hand,
can be ascribed to a person after he repents,
that is, after he has seen and acknowledged his sins
and then desisted from them,
doing so in obedience to the Lord.
Salvation is then ascribed to him
in the measure that he is saved,
not by his own merit,
or in consequence of his own righteousness,
but owing to the Lord
who alone fought and overcame the hells,
and who alone also afterward fights for a person
and overcomes the hells for him.

. . . If imputation were possible,
an impenitent and impious person
could impute the Lord’s merit to himself
and think himself justified on that account,
which would be to defile the sacred with the profane
and profane the Lord’s name.
For it would keep
the person’s thought fixed on the Lord
and his will in hell,
and yet the will is the totality of the person.

Faith may be a faith in God,
and it may be a faith in man.
Those people have a faith in God who repent,
whereas those people have a faith in man
who do not repent
and yet still think about imputation.
Faith in God, too, is living faith,
whereas faith in man is a lifeless faith.