Our Good Deeds Justify Us Not « The Reformed Reader

Antichrist turneth the roots of the tree upward.  He maketh the goodness of God the branches and our goodness the roots.  -- William Tyndale

Dr. Scott Clark over at the Heidelblog posted this link to the Reformed Reader.  I decided to post it since it clearly has a link to the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, Article XII:

“Our blind disputers will say, if our good deeds justify us not, if God look not on our good deeds neither regard them nor love us the better for them what need we to do good works?”

“I answer God looketh on our good deeds and loveth them, yet loveth us not for their sakes.  God loveth us first in Christ of his goodness and mercy, and poureth his Spirit into us, and giveth us power to do good deeds.  And because he loveth us, he loveth our good deeds: yea because he loveth us, he forgiveth us our evil deeds which we do of frailty and not of purpose or of the nonce.  Our good deeds do but testify only that we are justified and beloved.”

“For except we were beloved and had God’s Spirit we could neither do nor yet consent unto any good deed.  Antichrist turneth the roots of the tree upward.  He maketh the goodness of God the branches and our goodness the roots.  We must be first good after Antichrist’s doctrine, and move God and compel him to be good again for our goodness’ sake: so must God’s goodness spring out of our goodness.  Nay verily God’s goodness is the root of all goodness and our goodness, if we have any, springeth out of his goodness.”  William Tyndale, The Obedience of a Christian Man.

Article XII of the Thirty-Nine Articles says:  

XII. Of Good Works.   ALBEIT that good works, which are the fruits of faith and follow after justification, cannot put away our sins and endure the severity of God's judgement, yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively faith, insomuch that by them a lively faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by the fruit.

It seems likely to me that Tyndale's theology had some influence on the English Reformers, including Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who composed the original Forty-Two Articles of Religion which were edited to Thirty-Nine Articles in 1571.

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See also:  William Tyndale.