"Lutheran ethics is, then, ethics of faith. It can never depart from this center into laws or faithlessness. As faith-centered ethics it does not need to regard worthiness (for the sake of salvation). If it did, it would not be the expression of the free Christian. The man who seeks “worthiness” seeks the nonexistent and thus is a fool and un-free. If he seeks to do God’s will, he is not seeking consequences; they will come. Consequences come without distortion of faith; quest for worthiness inevitably distorts faith and freedom.
For Luther justification was prior to love, which he described as the effect and fruit of faith, the Spirit, and justification; it was not an arbitrary ornament. Thus Lutheran ethics was born in faith. But faith-ethics does not remain idle. ‘The assertion that the just shall live by faith means also that by faith the just shall live,’ writes Lutheran ethicist Joseph Sittler. 'Love is the function of faith horizontally just as prayer is the function of faith vertically.'"
ACCENTS IN LUTHER’S THEOLOGY
Essays in Commemoration of the 450th Anniversary of the Reformation
Pgs. 223-224
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