Fifth, that the Gospel excludes all boasting.
Fifth, that the Gospel excludes all boasting.
§ 116. (V) “To exclude all boasting before God is to reprove sins. Yet the Gospel excludes all boasting (Rom. 3:27): ‘Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith.’ Therefore the Gospel reproves sins.”
We respond. In his thorough treatment of this question, Dr. Chemnitz (Loci, part 2, p. 567) says, “By the very fact that the Gospel teaches that no other name is given to people whereby they can be saved except the name of Jesus Christ [Acts 4:12], it shows by antithesis that all things are concluded under sin.”12 We respond very simply that the law of faith excludes boasting not in the same way that the Law excludes it—namely, by accusing people’s sins and by revealing their guilt—but in a particular way, according as it teaches that our justification and salvation are completely free and declares that we are justified by God’s grace alone, because of Christ’s merit alone, by faith alone.