Why do YOU do good works?

The distinction between these two kinds of works is due to the difference between the two kinds of people who make an effort to keep this law and will of God. For as long as human beings are not reborn but do act according to the l and do perform its work because they are commanded, either out of fee of punishment or desire for reward, they are still under the law. St. Paul calls the works of such people works of the law in the strict sense (Rom 2:15;3:20; Gal 2:16;3:2,10), for they are coerced by the law a is the case of slaves, and they are saints of the stripe of Cain.

However, when people are born again through the Spirit of God and set free from the law (that is, liberated from its driving powers and driven by the Spirit of Christ), they live according to the unchanging will of God, as comprehended in the law, and do everything, insofar as they are reborn, from a free and merry spirit. Works of this kind are not, properly speaking, works of the law but works of the Spirit, or, as Paul calls them, "the law of the mind" and "the law of Christ." For such people are "no longer under the law but under grace," as St. Paul says in Romans 8 (7:23; 6:14).

Formula of Concord - Solid Declaration VI.16-17. Translation by Kolb/Wengert. 

--
-Keaton
        <><