Simul justus et peccator is incredibly good news that explains how a holy God can relate to sinners like us.

For Cranmer, assurance of salvation is essential for the Christian life. The medieval Church had no such notion of assurance. Catholics were to face the future with a sober uncertainty about their fate, striving to lead a godly life in a constant state of both hope and fear. For Cranmer, however, only assurance makes clear the true, unconditional love of God for humanity, and only this assurance begins to birth in believers the power to love God more than sin. How? Gratitude - the gratitude that can only come from the assurance of salvation.

The 16th century Protestants understood the Christian gospel to simply say that we do nothing; God does everything. We add nothing to the sufficiency of God’s saving work, not even our faith. “Just lift your sorry heads and look at the bronze serpent held high in the crowd of sick and dying people and you will be saved” (Nu 21:6-9)! Five hundred years ago, when they began to read the Bible, the original ad fontes source, they quickly discovered the Bible’s central teaching: justification by faith. What this means, of course, is justification by Grace received by faith.