Welcome to the Thinking Fellows podcast.

I'm the producer, Caleb Keith, and I'm joined by our hosts, Dr. Rod Rosenblatt, Scott Keith, and Adam Francisco.

Follow these great minds as they answer pressing questions about theology, history, and apologetics.

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Welcome to the Thinking Fellows. This week, we're transitioning from a couple of the other episodes that we've done recently into what Lutherans would probably refer to as a fruit of faith. That is good works. This is often a difficult topic for Lutherans, or at least Lutherans are perceived as not liking this topic, avoiding it, perhaps even talking negatively about it.

We're more often talking about why good works aren't a piece of salvation than we are about why good works are necessary.

That's for sure.

So we'd like to start off here. I'm going to place a question

to a couple of the hosts here. I'm joined. This is producer Caleb. I've got a little more of a voice

on this episode, but I'm joined as always by Dr. Rod Rosenblot, Scott Keith, and Adam Francisco.

And so here I'm going to just whoever wants to answer, go ahead.

But what is the place of good works if it's not justification?

If we're talking about good works as absolutely not a piece of our justification,

what role does it serve?

Well, I think that Melanchthon says it pretty succinctly in the Augsburg Confession when he says,

you have to understand when you read Lutheran Confessions, they use the term a lot.

Also, they teach.

What it's being referred to there are evangelical churches at the time.

So he says, also they teach that this faith is bound to bring forth good fruits.

And that is necessary to do good

works commanded by God because of God's will but that we should not rely on these works to merit

justification before God. In other words, that they're necessary, but they're necessary in a very

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