Father, and, apart from our own works, justifies and saves us.
Whoever then does not thus confess Christ must be lost; for although
you may know that He is the Son of God, that He died and has risen,
and sits at the right hand of the Father,--still you have not yet
truly known Christ, it is all of no avail to you; but you must know
and believe that He has done it all for your sake, if your faith is
to help you. Therefore that is a vain, senseless doctrine that has
been hitherto preached and taught in the great schools, which have
had no experience of this knowledge, and have only attained to
imagine how the curse afflicted Christ our Lord, and how He sits
above in heaven unemployed, and possesses a joy with Himself; and
thus their hearts remain barren, so that faith cannot live in them.
But Christ does not stand there for Himself, but He is to be preached
that He is ours. For what necessity could there then have been that
He should have come down to earth and have shed His blood? But since
He has been sent into the world, as He says, John iii., "that the
world through Him might be saved." He certainly must have fulfilled
this mission, because He was sent from the Father. For this sending
forth and proceeding from the Father is to be understood not only of
the divine nature, but also of the human nature and of His ministry.
As soon as He was baptized this began, and He has fulfilled it, for
which end He was sent and came into the world, to wit, that He might
preach the truth and obtain it for us, that all who believe on Him
shall be saved. Thus has He revealed Himself, and presented Himself
to our knowledge, and offered us grace.

V. 14. _As obedient children._ That is, conduct yourselves as
obedient children. Obedience in Scripture means faith. But the Pope,
with his high schools and cloisters, has even wrested the word from
us, and falsely rendered what is recorded in Scripture concerning
this obedience, as the passage in I. Kings xv.: "Obedience is better
than sacrifice." For while they perceive that obedience is highly
praised in Scripture, they have usurped the claim of it to
themselves, so that they might blind the people, and that men should
think it was obedience to their stuff of which the Scripture speaks.
Thus they would bring us away from God's word to their lies, and to
the obedience of the devil. Whoever hears the word of God and
believes thereon, is an obedient child of God. Therefore, whatever is
not