Deadly Self-Salvation

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 20, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 37.

Deadly Self-Salvation.

The Sunday School Times says: "A thoughtful missionary in India who has sought to take up the most sympathetic attitude toward the religious ideas of India has recently written of his entire despair of men when once the idea of salvation by merit has possessed them. It is an idea absolutely deadly. The peculiar doctrine which has passed into Europe under Luther's name, said J. A. Froude, is known as Justification by Faith. . . . As originally proclaimed by Luther it contained the deepest of moral truths. It expressed what was, and is, and must be, in one language or another, to the end of time, the conviction of every generous-minded man. It must be so because only love so great as to be utterly undeserved can save us, doing in us the work of purification, of humiliation, of new creation and ennoblement, of invigoration and development which is Christian salvation."

The only power which can save is that of the Gospel of God in Christ Jesus.