Position · 1517

Lutheran Justification

Justification by grace alone through faith alone: God declares the sinner righteous for Christ’s sake, crediting (imputing) Christ’s righteousness to them. Good works follow as fruit, not as a cause.

Martin Luther reached this view in the 1510s while lecturing on the Psalms and Romans, and it became the central issue of the Reformation. The Augsburg Confession (1530, Article IV) gives the classic statement. The believer is, in Luther’s phrase, simul justus et peccator: at the same time righteous and a sinner.