Article 7: Faith God’s Gift

But all who genuinely believe and are delivered and saved by Christ’s death from their sins and from destruction receive this favor solely from God’s grace—which he owes to no one—given to them in Christ from eternity.

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Since our race has fallen in Adam, and we are sinful by nature, we can do nothing on our own to come to faith in Christ. Indeed, we cannot even do anything to prepare ourselves to come to faith apart from a prior act of God on our behalf (calling and regeneration). The Canons remind us yet again that faith does not arise because fallen sinners have the power, desire, or the ability to believe the gospel when it is preached to them.

The Scriptures repeatedly tell us that faith is a gift from God. In fact, faith only arises within when the Holy Spirit creates it in the human heart through the preaching of the gospel. As Luther once pointed out, God creates faith in the heart, just like he created the world from nothing. Unless and until God does this, we gladly remain unbelievers.

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