“These blessings are offered unto us through the Holy Spirit, in the promises of the Gospel; and faith is the only medium through which we apprehend and receive them, and apply and appropriate them to ourselves. This faith is a gift of God, through which we rightly acknowledge Christ, our Redeemer, in the Word of the Gospel, and confide in him, that, namely, for the sake of his obedience alone, we have forgiveness of sins through grace, are reputed of God the Father as righteous and just, and are eternally saved. Accordingly, these propositions are equivalent, and regarded as one and the same, when Paul, Rom. 3:28, says: ‘That a man is justified by faith;’ or, Rom. 4:5, that ‘faith is counted’ unto us ‘for righteousness;’ and when he says, that ‘by the obedience of one’ mediator, Christ, ‘shall many be made righteous;’ or, that ‘by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men, unto justification of life,’ Rom. 5:18–19. For faith justifies us, not because it is a work of great value and an eminent virtue, but because it apprehends and receives the merit of Christ in the promise of the holy Gospel; for this merit must be applied and appropriated unto ourselves through faith, if we shall be justified by it. Hence that righteousness, which is imputed to faith, or to believers, before God, through grace alone, is the obedience, the sufferings, and the resurrection of Christ, by which he has rendered complete satisfaction unto the law for us, and made expiation for our sins” (Formula of Concord, Full Declaration, III, Henkel p. 632-633).