forensic it is, the more effective it is!”42 For “the death inflicted by the justifying word which reduces us to nothing is the real death, the true spiritual death, the death of sin, the death of all defiance against the God who ‘will have mercy on whom he will have mercy’ [Rom. 9:15].” God’s Word “is the death knell of the old and the harbinger of the absolutely new.… The unconditional word, the promise, the declaration of justification is that which makes new, that which puts the old to rest and