These concepts, however, never entered the minds of any apostle, as
their letters make obvious. This separation and division was introduced
into the Christian church when the one God was partitioned into three
persons and each was allotted equal divinity.
The next part of this chapter will illustrate that there is no faith with-
out goodwill or goodwill without faith, and that neither of them has life
except from the Lord. Here the following points need to be demon-
strated in order to pave the way:
a. We are able to acquire faith for ourselves.
b. The same is true of goodwill.
c. The same is also true of the life within each of them.
d. Nevertheless, no faith, no goodwill, and none of the life within
faith or goodwill comes from ourselves; instead they come from the
Lord alone.
(a) We are able to acquire faith for ourselves.This was shown in the 356
third part of this chapter above, §§ 343 – 348. This is also clear from the fact
that faith in its essence is truth and any of us can acquire truths for our-
selves from the Word. As we acquire truths and love them, we begin to
acquire faith.
Furthermore, if we were unable to acquire faith for ourselves, all the
passages in the Word that command faith would be pointless. For example,
we read that it is the Father’s will for us to believe in the Son. Those who
believe in him have eternal life. Those who do not believe will not see life
[John 3 : 36 ; 6 : 40 ]. We also read that Jesus will send the Comforter, who is
going “to convict the world of sin” because it did not believe in him [John
16 : 8 , 9 ], not to mention many other passages listed above in §§ 337 , 338.
For another thing, all the apostles preached faith, specifically a faith
in the Lord God our Savior Jesus Christ. What would be the point of all
this if we were supposed to stand waiting for something to flow in, with
our arms hanging down as if we were statues with movable limbs? In that
case our limbs, unable to move themselves into a position to receive
faith, might be moved from within toward something that was not faith.
Yet this is what is taught by the modern-day orthodoxy in the Chris-
tian world that separated from the Catholics:
As far as goodness is concerned, we are so totally corrupt and dead that
after the fall but before regeneration not even a spark of spiritual force
remains extant in our nature that would enable us to prepare ourselves
for the grace of God, or to take it if it were offered, or to be open to his§356 faith 425