I am sure that Dr Martin Luther, evidently the founder of the group of denominations to which you belong, invented a passage of holy scripture by adding at least one word to it; the word he added was "alone" and the invented scripture became part of the five slogans of the Protestant revolt. Something about faith alone I am told. Mind you, the phrase "faith alone" does occur one time in the holy scriptures. It is in the verse that tells Christians that "a person is justified by works and not by faith alone", but Dr Luther didn't much care for the letter which contained the phrase that he was, in other circumstances, so enamoured of.
:smirk:
He says, “Here in*it,” in the gospel, “the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, ‘the just shall live by faith.’” A verse taken from the book of Habakkuk in the Old Testament that is cited three times in the New Testament. As Luther would stop short and say, “What does this mean, that there’s this righteousness that is by faith, and from faith to faith? What does it mean that the righteous shall live by faith?” Which again as I said was the thematic verse for the whole exposition of the gospel that Paul sets forth here in the book of Romans. And so, the lights came on for Luther. And he began to understand that what Paul was speaking of here was a righteousness that God in His grace was making available to those who would receive it passively, not those who would achieve it actively, but that would receive it by faith, and by which a person could be reconciled to a holy and righteous*God.
Now there was a linguistic trick that was going on here too. And it was this, that the Latin word for justification that was used at this time in church history was—and it’s the word from which we get the English word*justification—the Latin word*justificare. And it came from the Roman judicial system. And the term*justificare*is made up of the word*justus, which is justice or righteousness, and the verb, the infinitive*facare, which means to make. And so, the Latin fathers understood the doctrine of justification is what happens when God, through the sacraments of the church and elsewhere, make unrighteous people*righteous.
But Luther was looking now at the Greek word that was in the New Testament, not the Latin word. The word*dikaios,*dikaiosune, which didn’t mean to make righteous, but rather to*regard*as righteous, to*count*as righteous, to*declare*as righteous. And this was the moment of awakening for Luther. He said, “You mean, here Paul is not talking about the righteousness by which God Himself is righteous, but a righteousness that God gives freely by His grace to people who don’t have righteousness of their*own.”
And so Luther said, “Woa, you mean the righteousness by which I will be saved, is not mine?” It’s what he called a*justitia alienum, an alien righteousness; a righteousness that belongs properly to somebody else. It’s a righteousness that is*extra nos, outside of us. Namely, the righteousness of Christ. And Luther said, “When I discovered that, I was born again of the Holy Ghost. And the doors of paradise swung open, and I walked*through.”
https://www.ligonier.org/blog/justification-faith-alone-martin-luther-and-romans-117/
Galatians 2:15-21 We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified. But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.
