Paul, Luther, and the Law

Paul, Luther, and the Law:
"How then shall we Live?”

by Perry Toso

One could understand our entire life on this earth as training wheels for our last minute of existence. In that one minute, one will be face to face with whether one’s hope for salvation depends upon personal performance or upon Jesus’ righteousness, alone.  Personal performance is the realm of the Law.  Its demands are always absolute and never achievable.  Therefore, the Law always makes things worse by making adequate righteousness impossible in that moment. 

How then shall we live?  Shall we live, trusting Jesus’ righteousness in our daily practice, or trusting our own righteousness?  The two are absolutely incompatible.  In fact, one type of righteousness will always annihilate the other.  

So the vital challenge for a Christian, now, as well as then, is, by Faith, to live trusting Jesus’ righteousness, and to learn daily, how only that provides the proper assurance of salvation.    

 (Softcover Book; 136 pages)

Author Perry Toso has become convinced that a person’s entire life on earth can be realistically understood as training for facing their last five minutes of existence. In those moments, every ancillary concern is swept away! This will expose what has always been a person’s ground of confidence for the claim that they possess the hope of life eternal. Jesus’ righteousness must be the basis of this hope. However, that truth at the heart of Paul’s and Luther’s teaching is rarely actually preached! In the great majority of preaching, Jesus’ righteousness is combined with human righteousness—a human improvement project directed mostly by the Law. Yet one of these two righteousnesses must absolutely annihilate the other. Only one is left standing. A person’s last five minutes on earth will reveal that Jesus’ righteousness, alone, is the only possible ground of assurance.