By Seth Erlandsson, in Biblicum 4-5/1977. Translated by Julius Buelow. Can you start a brand new church? It’s important to distinguish between a new “church” and a new church organization. [Translator: Sometimes we distinguish between the invisible church, which is all believers of all time, and visible churches, which are outward organizations formed by those

By Stefan Sjöqvist, pastor at St Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Uppsala, Sweden. Article originally published in Biblicum Volume 87:4, 2023. Bible citations from EHV (wartburgproject.com). Translated by Julius Buelow. What do we think of when we hear words like, “You must”; “It is necessary that you”; “you have to”; and “unless you”? We probably

By Pastor Stefan Hedkvist Pastor Hedkvist is pastor of St. Jacob’s Lutheran Church in Piteå in Sweden (https://www.bekannelse.se/pitea/). This article was originally published in Biblicum volume 74:1, 2010. Translated by Julius Buelow. King Solomon authored many proverbs. Concerning proverbs, he says they give wisdom to the simply and knowledge and discretion to the young. That

Personal or Subjective Justification At the same moment a person comes to faith in Jesus or the gospel, that is, when the person trusts in the forgiveness earned by Christ and offered in the gospel, in that very same moment the person is justified before God through that faith. It is a confirmation that justification

Justification by Faith As seen above, the universal, objective justification is a necessary prerequisite for the personal reception of justification (justification by faith). If no justification of all people has taken place through Christ’s complete and vicarious fulfillment of God’s demands, then there is no justification to offer people, to be received by grace through

The Adam-Christ Parallel In Romans 5:12-21, Paul teaches the Adam-Christ parallel. Adam’s disobedience was reckoned to all people. That is why all people have been condemned to death. But now Christ has fulfilled all righteousness, lived without guile, perfectly fulfilled the demands of the law, and all of this on behalf of mankind. Just as

Reconciliation – Justification – Forgiveness of Sins According to Paul, reconciliation and justification are parallel to each other, both accomplished by Christ for our salvation. That is clear from the parallelism in Romans 5, verses 9 and 10: We have now been justified by his blood (v 9a) We were reconciled to God by the

Faith and Its Object Faith cannot exist on its own. It needs to have an object to which it holds, the thing it relies upon. The Christian faith always includes its object: grace in Christ, the atonement for all sins accomplished by Christ’s blood, the righteousness which counts before God. For Luther, faith and Christ

Romans 3:21-31 and the verb dikaioún Paul’s teaching in Romans 3:21-31 is often called the principal source (locus classicus) of the doctrine of justification. Here he uses the verbs dikaioún “justify, absolve, declare righteous” and dikaioústhai “become justified, absolved, be declared righteous”. This verb is a judicial term. It means that God declares as his

Seth Erlandsson This series of articles is an excerpt from XP Media’s book “Rättfärdiggörelsen Genom Tron,” published for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017. This excerpt first appeared in Biblicum 81:1, 2017, pages 3-7. Translated by Julius Buelow. Introduction All sinners need perfect righteousness in order to have fellowship with God and to