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CORNELL
UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
THE GOSPEL
ACCORDING TO
SAINT PAUL
BY
W.
P.
DU
BOSE,
M.A., S.T.D.
The Soteriology
Crown Svo.
of the
New
Testament
The Gospel in
Crown Svo.
the Gospels
to
Saint Paul
THE GOSPEL
ACCORDING TO
SAINT PAUL
BY
m.a., s.t.d.
AUTHOR OP "THE SOTERIOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT," "the ECUMENICAL COUNCILS," "THE GOSPEL IN THE gospels"; PROFESSOR OF EXEGESIS IN THE UNIVEKSITY OF THE SOUTH
CO.
3//S3S0 X
Copyright, 1907
BY
TO
S. P.
D.
IN
TOKEN OP VALUABLE
The
tlie
original of
tliis
book
is in
restrictions in
http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029293176
CONTENTS
I.
Introduction
...
II.
The
The
III.
....
.
IV.
V.
of
God
against Sin
VI.
VII.
VIII.
Righteousness
....
.
The Object
83
97
Clearing
up
of the
Mystery of Righteousness
IX.
Faith of
Abraham
.113
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
...
. .
125
.143
157
Adam
Christian in Christ
.171
187
.
XIV.
Not under
Law,
Sin,
the
Law
XV.
XVI.
XVII.
XVIII.
and Redemption
of Sin in the Flesh
. .
203
219
233
of the Spirit
of the Spirit of the
249
XIX.
Body
261
XX.
XXI.
277
293
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
view, one
In advocating and pressing any particular point is inevitably liable to press it unduly and
of
at
In the quest of
much
of a deter-
The
We may safely rely upon it that our truth will end be accepted and our error corrected. If I had been too much afraid of going wrong I should have made no progress iu growing right; who of us that has really thought or spoken may not say that of himself? For my own part, I have not merely traditionally believed but become personally convinced that there is a truth of the Scriptures and that there is a mind of the Church; and that each of these will take care of itself as against the infinite errors and vagaries of individual thinkers and writers. I have in my mind
truth.
in the
me
security
and
rest
my own
shortcomings or too-far-goings.
3
do
Introduction
and correction of the deeper truth of the Scriptures and the larger wisdom of the Church; and, on the other hand, that,
what
I hold subject to the revision
to
be
my
and my best service to them, to think the thoughts and express the conclusions, as best I may, which best I have found to be to myself their own
interpretation.
The
particular
method which,
after
a lifetime of
meaning of the Gospel of Jesus meaning of Jesus Christ as Himself the immediate Word or Gospel of God, may be brought out by a parallelism or analogy between the independent and very different treatments of St. Paul and St. John. The starting-point, and standpoint all through, of St. John's interpretation of our Lord is best expressed in the words, The Life was manifested. The Life had been manifested first to the outward eye and then to the inward vision of a few; and it was the mission of these few so to declare and present it to all others that they too might know and enter into and share it.
entering into the
Christ, or into the
St.
principle
that
in
every
(dpxrj)is
The
fact
which
fact in
the Life.
That
is
Introduction
itself,
And
it is, if
fact
if
itself;
for truth,
And
this is truest of
what
is
to us the ultimate
and of ourselves, God's truth knowledge of God's truth, is justified of her children. There is the Life human life in all the fulness of its meaning and divine reality. the Life expressed and maniThere is the Truth
truth, the truth of Life
of us.
Wisdom, which
is
fested,
There
is
the
Way:
Life,
human
so,
life
at least,
God's Ufe
in us,
fiat
out of hand, by
It
immediate
with
can come
and
all
strife
human environment
life;
as
it is
and with
is
human
Jesus Christ
is
He
the
own
true
was
true
lived,
way
human
life,
by
meaning, the reason, and the use of all actual human Jn this world none of us can escape its conditions.
conditions, or be saved otherwise than
its
inevitable
tasks.
6
cheer, I have
Introduction
overcome the world. The overcoming was His way and ours: He drank the cup and was baptized with the baptism which we must drink and be baptized withal, if we would be where and what
He
is.
In leading us
all to glory, it
behooved
God
to
make
sufferings
The
point to be
emphasized
is,
was
first
of our Lord.
He
is
in fact to us the
Way
and so
to himself
St.
Thus
as distinguished not
its
only from
mere dreams or shadows; the way of it, as including and involving all its conditions and causes, all its necessary means and processes. Precisely analogously, though not with the
its
falsities,
but from
with his
own more
active
and
much our
Life as our
in
He
regards
salvation
less
the
St.
making rather than in the made product. Paul does indeed see in our Lord Himself a process
is
as
to re-
member
is
human
act of faith
and
Introduction
obedience through which
Life,
7
the
He became
is
man He
act,
is.
and therefore
ourselves.
salvation,
indeed an
life-
becoming
That
that he
who
it
live
by
it,
and
he who
salvation
violates
by
it.
It is
a universal
and necessary
is
life,
blessedness, or
to be
found in nothing
else
than in right
The
ness
is
is
first
is
that righteous-
salvation;
is
righteousness.
Gospel according to
St.
interpret righteousness in
as realized
secondly, to learn
ours.
how
that righteousness
is
to be
made
The method
in a
word
is
this:
it
through the
or becomes
to ourselves in
made
our own in
of faith.
Man
that
is
to say,
and Hfe
of Christ assimilates
Introduction
we
are transformed
to glory, even as
from
To
understand
this new-creative
of the
nature
made
the senses, we ought not to halt at that higher mystery whereby God makes Himself our own through faith.
After
all
there
is
as
much
latter as there is
Faith
is
the
and
activity of
we
realize
even
what we
should
it
think,
believe or
we are; what we love, we are; what we how much truer mean or intend, we are;
and selfhood concentrates itself upon, attaches and gives itself up to through every spiritual faculty and passion of its nature, that, if we not already are, we most assuredly shall be.
be that what our most real
self
if
not indeed
we
is
no other way
of spiritual salvation or
to our
making
salvation,
life
natural a process.
We
Introduction
the world has begun to
will not
9
and
it
make
it,
the discovery,
is
go backward
natural
real
is
in
God's
divine.
way.
The
is
There
other.
break between the natural and the supernatural; the one is only the higher or further
no
We
are the
shall come to see that Adam and Christ same Man; that earth and heaven are one
made a
hell
that nature
easily
Under
the prevalence of
the
modem
is
as
more
shall
we need
neither
greater truth of
saving
is
it is
a truth
made
seen
phenomenon
of a hu-
God
at
any time;
visible in
him only
self-saved. No man hath God be in a man. He will be God in what the man himself is. specie hominis, not Dei. He was
if
in us
and us
in
Himself than as
our
holiness,
and
Ufe.
That was
efiFected for
us ob-
jectively, or as
faith, in the
10
Introduction
person of the Incarnate Word; it is effected subjectively by a power working in us through faith, the power of
That the personal Spirit of God and the personal character and Ufa of God should be ours through faith is as truly natural an operation and result as that nature's breath and Ufe should be ours
the Incarnate Spirit.
specific
Forasmuch then as God was in Christ for the purpose and to the specific end of being to
to
and imparting
righteousness,
our
it
and our
it
follows that
what God wills to reveal, and to accept in Him just I say so much in that as what God wills to bestow. explanation and justification of what will seem to some an undue insistence upon the humanity of our Lord. There will be statements no doubt so one-sided in
themselves
as, if
obscure other no
I hope
alone.
it
the truth.
But
will
be seen and
One such
human
statement I would
make
clear in
down
life
and work
construe
Him
to myself in terms of
humanity.
make
no
difference there
between
is
Him and
us save in the
His sole complete and perfect victory over the world, His
accompHshed task
of uniting
Introduction
so redeeming
for
it
11
from
sin
and death.
That
is
enough
demonstration of our Lord's deity also, enough not alone to enable but to compel the confession
as
me
was
also truly
was as truly more than man as He man. I bow before not only the work
Worker
in Jesus
Word
in of
which are eternally God's Self were truly incarnate His person, and wrought with His hands the creed
creeds.
so far
and repeat the conviction that, as our knowledge and experience can go, noelse in all
I go further
where
God's universe, in
all
His
infinite
and manifold activities, is God so God as in the person and work of Jesus Christ. For in Jesus Christ God is all love, and love of all things is most God.
I might be allowed to use the opportunity to say an
additional
of discussions such
as
let
we
but,
and most
ulation,
of thought and
earliest
and independent thought and specupon the truth as it is in Jesus Christ. They are not times of unthinking and unquestioning acceptance of foregone and foreclosed inquiry and investiThe fact may be condenoned and lamented, gation. but no amount of shutting our own or others' eyes and ears to it vrill make it any the less a fact. The whole truth of Scripture and the whole mind of
speculation, original
the
Church might
surely,
12
what Christianity
necessary truth of
fact,
Introduction
is,
it.
what
What
is
is
the whole
and what
us,
the whole
mind
of
the Church?
Some
them
is fatal
thing as a catholic
and the very reopening any such truth or unity. Are these questions
for those
indeed closed?
are.
They may be
who
say they
But what
and tremendously And they are not going to be closed by in question. any possible amount of mere saying or asserting that they ought to be. A few bewildered and weary souls, to escape doubt and in despair of any self -determining power of truth or life in itself, will from time to time seek, and perhaps find, refuge and rest in the quiet places where they are no longer in question and under the assurance that they are infallibly settled. But there is in fact no such rest for a really living and a
They
and the whole mind of the Church are not dead but live things. The fact of their being alive and forever
obliged to keep themselves alive with a
life
that
is
and agree-
and permanence of form and expression, a quod semper, quod ubique, et quod ab
Introduction
omnibus.
13
The
and
is
tenure of
life.
And
there
of other
thinkers
and
of another age.
The
initial difficulty
is
before us
in the
want
of
and unity with all our might, as a truth of the Scripture and a mind of the Church. We need to have and to spread such a conviction; and the best and only way
to extend the conviction
is
that
we who
share
it
shall
as
much
common
cause of
extension.
There is no real uniiy in which there is not diversity, and in the highest unity there is the utmost diversity. We shall not all agree in the methods or in the infinite details; we shall not all be altogether right; we shall all be wrong in many ways. But for all that, if we are
thoroughly agreed that there
to
is
be known and a mind of the Church to be understood and shared, we shall not fail to accomplish great things towards a necessary and a possible result, the divine
result
of
Christian unity.
In that
spirit,
we
shall
whatever they
errors,
may
be;
and we
ourselves
comings or
14
If
Introduction
we are to work successfully to the common end, we must learn so to work together as that our very faults and falsities shall, through the sympathetic and cooperating correction and amendment of one another,
be
made
to
work together
for the
common
good.
In
ance of the
common
by the higher truth of the Scriptures and the larger wisdom of the Church. The position here taken is, to my mind, independent
to correction of
Church.
true
and criticism, in their meaning and use; and I presume neither to Umit nor to define these. But the fact will always remain
the necessity of both scepticism
that
we
and the Church, and that these are the tribunal of final resort for determining what Christianity is. Human reason and human experience have a great part too to play in the matter, but that is both later and different. It was not theirs to give us Christianity, but it is theirs to pass upon the question whether Christianity as given is not what it claims to be, the whole truth of ourselves, because the whole truth of God in ourselves. Through them we set-to our own
seals that
God
in Christ is true.
experience I
mean not
means
which
really
of those
who know.
The
judges
II
The Gospel
in the
of
God, which
Holy
Scriptures.
Romans
7.
He
We
speak God's wisdom in a mystery, even the wisdom that God foreordained before the worlds unto
our glory.
Corinthians H.
n
THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF THE GOSPEL A GOSPEL, to be such, presupposes all the conditions
necessary to
to
make
it
a gospel.
gospel from
all
God
men
men
the capaci-
which are to be gratified and satisfied by it; and on the part of God, the nature, disposition, and power to communicate the satisfactions which compose it. It is impossible, therefore, for a gospel to be a sudden or unexpected thing. The wants it supphes must have pre-existed, and must
ties,
needs,
and
desires
have developed to the point of preparing an adequate receptivity. And there must have been growing premonition, promise, and expectation of the internal satisfaction
from
its its
it
external source.
The infant is
breast.
not only
sensible of
once expects
needs
The
spiritual
may be
but
it is
man
needs, but to expect their gratification and satisfaction from God. The human soul must not only have called upon God but have received answers from Him
What was
gospel or fulfilment in
17
Him
18
to
Saint Paul
must have been from the beginning of spiritual experience, promise, and expectation of Him. The Gospel as St. Paul knows it presupposes always
premonitions and prophecies of
history of
itself in
the previous
of
Hebrew humanity
humanity from the beginning, and especially His recognition since Abraham.
need not now concern us beyond the
of prophecy.
of the prophets
universal
In the
dis-
and developed prophecy along that line of human history on which spiritual consciousness and experience were most emphasized and developed; but
in
Hebrew
history
itself
there
was recognition
of
prophecy outside
ecy of the world.
itself.
We
Wherever
of the
any measure or
spirit
spirit,
meets and
there
is at
the
demand
there
human
least the
is
even a
is
and prophecy
of
more or
its
We
source.
own
sense of inspiration to
its
proper
inspiration,
all
many
truth
beauty as well as
goodness
is
divine,
all
through
have been in a true sense prophets of the divine. But the abstract or impersonal spirit of truth, of beauty, and
to us
whom
at first
hand
these have
come
The Presuppositions
many who were
strangers
of the Gospel
19
even moralist
that
is
who knew
either
from God or
not the
spirit of
spirit of
God he
God
is
the Spirit
God. If any man have none of His. And the of God. It is no abstract or
of
is
but Himself, in
The man
himself,
magnitude of
of spirit he
is
it
is
manner
When we come
to pass
judgment
upon the man, Julius Csesar or Napoleon Bonaparte or Bacon or Seneca or Voltaire, all accidental differences disappear, and the common standard applies to them and to the least among us. The spirit of the man is the man, and the spirit that he "is of" is what
he
is
We
are not abstractions ourselves, and our real dealings are not with abstract things
truth or beauty or duty
even though
it
be abstract
So God
He is not truth or beauty or goodness, He is HimAnd God Himself is the Spirit He is self, He is God. of; He is what He is to all other beings, and especially
to all other personal beings.
Himself
is
Above
all
other being,
20
to
Saint Paul
relations.
spiritual being is
The
God
as Personal
God
is
That is Himself, and that is what we have to do with when in the most real sense we speak of such
Love.
Inspiration,
we mean
it,
is
any
real
communication
of the Spirit of
God
Himself to the
spirit of
the prophet
is
he through
whom
at first
The prophet
thus
in his
own
man
he
is
to
Godward; he
man
affinity
is
Above
to
all else,
Him who
Godward, but
The
mind
afore
first
Paul as well as in fact, was God's promise by His prophets. The second is expressed in the words "in holy scriptures, or writings." That the
of St.
pre-existence of the
Hebrew
Scriptures
was humanly
and
historically
of the Gospel is clear enough. Our Lord regarded Himself as in a sense the product and fulfilment of the Scriptures; although in a truer sense He re-
garded the Scriptures as promise and product of Himself; as the shadow, though cast before, is nevertheless
consequence and not cause of the substance that
follows after.
But the
whole
The Presuppositions
of the Gospel
21
pre-
was so
pared beforehand in the spiritual history and literature of the Jews that it is suflBciently correct to number
these
among
its
we proceed now
to present.
was a higher development or a product of Judaism, we must nevertheless recognize it as a case in which the effect so manifestly
that Christianity
we may say
appearance in
differentiates
it
it
of
some new
its
from
past as
identified with
it.
When, for example, our Lord Himself, as well as all after Him, insists upon interpreting the whole Old
Testament Scriptures
turn
is
it is
quite legitimate
for Uterary
and
is
on
its
part
Old
it
Testament
Old Testament.
means
as
Indeed
it is
not,
if
we
intend by
Old Testament
much
The
fact
is, it
does so transcend
it
that the
Old Testa-
ment proofs
of the
New
all,
Testament
of natural criticism,
The
New Testament
22
to
Saint Paul
meaning; just as the great fact of the New Testament the events of is the logical and historical sequent of
the Old Testament, and yet transcends the natural order of those events. That the Old Testament did
New
is
That
the
Old
New
of
proved by the fact that criticism cannot find outside it the antecedent conditions which did produce it.
Christianity both
so far as
was not the product of Judaism and, criticism can discover, was the product of
what sense Old Testament as a whole bear witness to, promise and prophecy, the resurrection How, for instance, could Bishop of Jesus Christ?
Now,
does,
and does
Home,
psalm
in
mean not only Christ but Christ's sufferand triumph. His death and His resurrection.'' The answer is that the Psalter is the typical book of
interpreted to
ings
human
its
and
God.
Every
least saint,
every one
who
believes
and prays and receives comfort from God, is in his measure a type and prophecy of the perfect saint, the perfect sanctity which is Jesus Christ Himself, the final
victory of faith,
death to
in
sin,
the eternal
life
is
and
to
God.
The burden
of the
Old Testament
The Presuppositions
the personal Spirit of
of the Gospel
23
to
man
God which
complete
in
Him
through
what we
So
we
each of us can see just in prosee as He saw, with the eyes not of sense
see, as
but of the
spirit,
humanity
were
itself,
full of
Old Testament, but and the whole creation, and God, the truth and meaning of Him. Before
that not alone the
Abraham was,
or
Adam,
or the worlds
He
is,
because
will
He was
their
meaning
in the beginning,
and
be
Old Testament could be a type and prophecy of the risen Christ, to the extent of being on the line and pointing in the direction of Him
still
be far more
Him, and nothing before it could so prefigure the supreme act of His resurrection, as that it could be literally or visibly true to say that the Old Testament ever rose to the height of the truth of the New. It is perfectly plain to see, with one and all the
writers of the
New
much
and
fulfilled
When
mind
24
it
to
Saint Paul
had
than displacing,
to extremes,
which it was replacing rather was but natural that it should run
find true interpretations of
the
new in
And
so, I say,
and explanations of the New Testament taken from the Old are to be treated not as
many
of the proofs
and even the bare language of the latter to the and facts of the former. But is there not something remarkable in the way and extent of the appUcability of the spirit and the letter of the Old Testament to the New, even where the connection is only application and not genuine interpretation ? What other whole history and Kterature is so applicable to a single fact or event which nevertheless so completely transcends, while fulfilling, its meaning ?
ciples,
truths
and one which St. Paul was much more immediately concerned to reckon with than all the others. That is the Law, which the Gospel, mainly
sition of the Gospel,
dis-
and
replacing.
There
will
be
much
to say
upon the
relation of the
Law
to the
There is so much said in St. Paul's presentation of the Gospel of the impotence and conconnection.
sequent superseding of the Law, that we are in danger of forgetting under his seeming disparagement how
The Presuppositions
much he
Gospel
true,
is
is
of the Gospel
25
really
magnifying
it.
The
fact
is
that the
it is
itself is
the
and the only, fulfilling of the Law. The Gospel the power to fulfil the Law. And if there had not
first
been
Law
itself
and
it;
and then
our-
Law
our
fulfilling it in
and then again the experience of actual transgression and the consequent sense of sin, if all this had not gone before, there would have been neither truth in itself nor possible meaning for us in the Gospel The Law, therefore, was the most of Jesus Christ. immediate and essential presupposition of the Gospel; and the Hebrew development of the moral sense and
selves;
Hebrew
and sense
of sin,
There is one other point upon which, before passing from the historical presuppositions of the Gospel, we must touch, and far more briefly than its importance
deserves.
which Hebraism there was not only the end of the Law but the beginning of the Gospel. For the transition from one to the other is that from self -rightbut the
spiritual principle of faith, or holiness;
means that
in
Along with and through experience of the insufficiency of the law as a means
the
receptivity
of
faith.
26
to
is
Saint Paul
of righteousness
there
developed faith or
dependence in
eousness and
God
as the source
is
and power
of right-
life.
Faith
As
it
such, in the
only
among
the Jews.
supernatural object
which
They gave
is
to
God
is
knowing God.
We
must count,
then,
Hebrew
among
the historical
But behind and before all these historical antecedents, mind of St. Paul recognized
in
We
God and
What our
God
does.
Humanity was
which
is
is
the natural
more
end
manity.
The Presuppositions
through Him,
of the Gospel
27
Gospel of the resurrection and eternal life in and is the end and consummation of the whole creation. In Him, or It, we have the revelation
of the mystery or secret of the divine purpose
from the
hidden
beginning.
In
Him
is
made
manifest
the
God, foreordained before the worlds unto our glory. If the rulers of this world had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. The general meaning of glory in this connection is that
of
wisdom
completion of the whole creation in God, to which from the beginning, because in itself and by its divine constitution, it was predestined in man, as man in Christ. Just what the natural predestination of man in Christ is, St. Paul defines to be a predetermination which in the process of fulfilment is an actual
final
determination
unto
sonship
unto God.
Son
as
of
God, that
many
In
brethren.
He is the naturally constituted, heir of all things. Him man comes into his divinely predetermined,
his naturally as well as divinely determined, in-
and
heritance
and in man, as
its
now upon this Pauline philosophy of the meaning of man and the purpose of God as revealed
I touch hghtly
in the
call attention
is
no new or
It is that which.
28
to
Saint Paul
meaning to them
both.
Christ
and
spiritual, creation of
God.
it
It is
its
has
God
Himself,
who
as
Eternal Father
predestined to
fulfil
Himself in a
universal Sonship.
m
THE DEFINITION OF THE GOSPEL
concerning His Son, Who was bom of the seed of The Gospel David according to the flesh, Who was declared to be the Son of God (Gr. determined Son of God) with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead, even Jesus Christ our Lord.
Romans
I. 3, 4.
Ill
Gospel
may be
Him;
or
it
may be
present
we
and
it
as
St.
it
manifests
operation in us.
exposition of
Paul begins
his
most perfect
each
points of view,
and we
of these definitions.
The
of
Epistle to the
Romans opens
with a declaration
to the
and devotion
Gospel
God, which, he says, is concerning, or has to do Son of God. He then expresses his meaning of the Son of God in the following terms: Who was bom of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was declared to be (Gr. determined) the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the
with, the
resurrection of the dead; even Jesus Christ our Lord.
As preparatory
wish to give a brief exegesis, not of any particular passage or passages, but of the whole mind of St. Paul
as to the
which
is
salvation,
is
accord-
32
to
of,
Saint Paul
but
res ipsa
in
it,
and
first
it
for humanity.
in
Him and
itself
out of
life.
and
and death
it,
God and
hohness
and
The
essential
question involved
eternal
life,
is this: Is
is
nature-determined,
or
self-determined,
or
God-determined, in us?
first,
and then
in us
Jesus Christ
in Himself
He is God our Life, just as He is God God our righteousness, etc. That fulness of the life of God first in Jesus Christ and then in humanity through Him is just what makes Him and
humanity.
our holiness,
it
Son of God.
is
But the
life
Christ
in
Him
is
it is
God-wrought
humanity; and
He
Himself
so
passively,
salvatio
salvans
or
salvatio
man saved, evfltos avOpunriys or He the divine grace by which we are saved or the human faith and obedience through which we are saved? Is He God or we in our salvation ? The answer must be that He is both, and just
saving or
Is
ivdvOponro's dc6<s.
God
is
what
We have now,
The Definition
show that while the
of the Gospel
33
human
of
it, it
is
God-
determined
first
without
highest
cannot be God-determined in us
or in Him
distinctive
We
its
and
life,
retain
its
purely
would not be our hfe. Jesus Christ was not man if he had not a human will and
God-determined
freedom.
life
human
ours,
if
And His
holiness, righteousness,
life,
on His
part.
will
own
its
act
which
is
coequally
own
The mystery
existence
of the
harmony
of grace
and freedom
is
and reconciliation of freedom and necessity. But that which is most obscure to reason may be most self-evident to experience, and the fact remains that
the highest act of
of ourselves;
is
God
in us
is
is
and
that which
if it is
nought
if
not
God
in us,
equally nought
and connec-
tion the consideration of a higher personality or a higher sonship in our Lord, to affirm that the imme-
in
Him
of
God
how He Himself
34
as
to
Saint Paul
of
made Son
God.
For the
by which man is made divine was first enacted Him, and He HimseK became Son in the way in in which we must become sons of God. And this brings us back to St. Paul's account of what I must beheve is the genesis or rationale of our Lord's, and our
process
human
sonship to God.
bom
a
of the seed of
David according
He had
human
Him
from Adam.
to the
all
According
to the flesh
means according
common
we
are
limited
by
nature.
What
made
what humanity was Son of God. All through St. Paul, to be in the flesh means to be in ourselves, what we are; to be in the spirit is to be in Christ, what He is. To be in the spirit is to say with the Apostle himself, I live no longer, Christ lives in
words according
or
to the spirit is
became
in
Him
that
is.
me.
in
The
is
how
God.
And
the
way
resur-
the
That
Way
of
mode
or process of
The
principle especially to
is this:
be emphasized
in the
discussion before us
The
35
which
is
Him
may
in humanity,
God and
in terms
We may regard Him as God saving or as man saved. We may describe what took place in Him
man.
not only as what
God
God
HimseK doing for or in us; and on the other hand we may describe it as humanity, in Him as man,
doing for
its
itself in
own
faith in
God's grace in
is
by His act in it, became, was made, and made itself. Son of God. The question of how man, any man, becomes son of God is answered in the person of the universal man, the Son of man. As St. John describes it, the power as well as right, the grace or gift to us, to become sons of God comes to us through One who not only as God brought it down from heaven, but as maji earned and exhibited it here on earth. The faith by which we share it with Him is not only ours in Him the perfect faith through which by a but His in us perfect grace He Himself as man was born, not of
man, but
describes
of God.
And
Hebrews
it
Him
and Perfecter
of God.
which
sanctifies,
which as
all
the sons
realized
The how
in
of this
human
sonship,
first
and revealed
Him
36
tion,
St.
to
Saint Paul
in
The
we must
is is
man
God
begetting,
fully
develop here.
As we were from
we
in
in the tech-
Version).
It is
resurrection
here,
we must
fall
He
no
was
revealed to be only so
the resurrection.
much
of
as
He became
through
wise
The
was
resurrection in itself in
proved or declared
sense.
Him Son
God in
the metaphysical
it,
All that
was
this
actually expressed in
it,
as such,
raised out
of sin and death into the holiness and Hfe of God, become Son of God and partaker of the divine nature by death to itself and a new life in God. What is
" determined
is
Son
of
God
in power, ac-
logical distinction
The Definition
of the Gospel
37
which we make between what God predetermined in thought and determines in act or process. The truth is, that our Ufe above all, our more immediately
divine
life,
our
life in
Christ
whether viewed by us
is
It is
an act
God
and
determination, a hfe of
self-determination, a
divine-human hfe
all
it
God and all we, just as Jesus Christ Himself is not God in some acts and man in others, but equally God and equally man in every act of His human life.
But the
special point to
and of our own life of ourselves in God. In this is not part God and part we, but
in us,
God
re-
mainder of the definition will plainly show, is that the sonship which is the Gospel is precisely to be defined
in
is
Jesus Himself as
it
is
to be defined in us.
He
which we are to be in Him, and in the perfect way in which we are to be His hfe, which is ours, is what it is it in Him. not by mere fact of nature, whether human or divine.
in Himself first everything
Neither was
it
by His own
human
for
nature in which
He
acted had
its
limitations
Him, and to have imported into it the freedom from limitation of the divine nature would have been His life, as truly as ours to contradict and nulhfy it. more perfectly, was a hfe not of nature and only far nor of Himself but of God; a hfe as of perfect faith in God, so of perfect grace from God. He knew better
38
to
is
Saint Paul
is
mine
and
not mine,
My
one.
father worketh
and
my
Father are
When St. Paul goes on to say of Jesus Christ that He was determined Son of God in power, according to
the
spirit, etc.
of that power.
just exactly
that which
the power to
The whole
turns
bids us
and failure of the Law to save us upon our own want of power to be or do what it
inability
not as claim on
to
its
blessing on ours.
sation
came
us children of God.
an end for want of power truly to make The last and greatest of the
to impart the
power necessary
life
new
birth
of the children of
God.
We
operation in us
is
that It
is
the power
It
God
who
believes.
makes no
we connect
in power with
determined or with
Son
of
God.
God
determines us
to sonship by the spirit of holiness which He imparts, by the enabling and victorious power of His Spirit
manifested in our
spirit,
in our
power
to
be
holy.
And
equally
we
are sons of
fact of
which
is
The Definition
of the Gospel
39
nature and so the very essence and matter of divine sonship. As the power of God manifested in our
Lord's
own
resurrection
Him, but a divine operation within Him, manifesting itself in His own power to overcome sin and death and to arise out of the universal condition
humanity before Him into participation in the spirit and Kfe of God, so is the very res of the Gospel for us
of
operation upon
Him
and
ascension.
The development
or determination of sonship in
is
next defined as not according to the flesh but according a natural but a spiritual sonship.
bom in it from below, but re-bom in it from above. This does not militate against the other sense in which we are sons of God by nature. If there were not the basis of a natural relationship and affinity with God, there would be no place or possibility for the actual spiritual relationship with Him into which
are not
We
we
The
nature
is
God
has
for Himself
and we
shall find
no
rest until
made we rest
us
in
Him. But neither in the Christianity of the New Testament nor in the facts of the Christian hfe can I find any more meaning in the so-called natural sonship of man than this, that man is constituted by his nature to become son of God. That not son of God, but is, it is his nature to enter, beyond his nature, and
40
to
Saint Paul
be
bom
is
his sonship.
is
in
him
actual
sonship
If it is to
no matter
how
inchoately,
of the divine
own
sonship,
it is,
I beHeve, be-
is in us all some and above the merely potential interrelation between God and us. But, however that may be, the thing spoken of here is a sonship of man to God, first realized and brought to perfection in Jesus Christ, who thus becomes to us the Spiritual Man, Man in perfect personal relation to the personal God, Son of God, in whom all divine Fatherhood is fulfilled and expressed
The addition in the definition of the next term is most exactly pertinent and significant. We are, or our Lord was, determined Son of God in power, according
to the spirit of holiness.
related part in
The
spirit of
to
And
we may be
nature.
If
tically in its
New
Testament
use, holiness
means a
of God.
disposition,
character,
and nature
The Definition
of the Gospel
41
We
If,
define
what
holiness
is
by
we
are born of
Spirit
is of. is
God
Himself
what God is. God and are sons of of God and are of the And if God is Love,
defining
virtue
is
then
is
holiness,
which
God
ful
it
The Greek
an
ideal,
manhood.
law, with
The Hebrew
ward
universal
is
The
holiness of Christianity
an inward
St.
spirit,
Paul,
of
who is the opposite of legal, the great opponent legalism, has made the legal thing righteousness
But
is
God by His
Spirit, is practically
is
an argu-
ment
no
true righteousness, as
that
is
God.
word
Gospel of
God
which gives
own
conception and
The
The
life
that
actual spiritual
sonship to God,
in us,
is
divine spirit
and
our-
42
selves
to
Saint Paul
God
but
it
death to nature and ourselves and risen life of God, received and and a new given made our own by faith. This will be so constantly
personal,
and
spiritual
with us as
we
we need pursue
is
it
no further
is this:
here.
The
The
Lord was
individual
in
not an
and
of,
performed
It is best
for,
apart from,
and instead
ourselves.
understood and
act in
consummate
God
in
which
and
of
as
actively in
and life of God as St. Paul says. That we might become the righteousness of God in Him (Christ). It is out of death and resurrection that humanity in Christ was, as in itself it must be, determined Son of God in power, according to the spirit of
ness, righteousness,
holiness.
IV
am
it is
the power of
God
to
Jew
first,
and
For therein
as
it is
is
revealed a righteousness of
God by
written,
shall
Uve by
faith.
Romans
I.
16. 17.
If
vrith
God
Him
shalt
man
IV
Rom.
i.
and
clearness the
This he does
bottom
it
in this, that
it
The
Gospel, he says,
the power of
God
unto salvais
vealed a righteousness of
re-
faith.
We
have here an exact statement of all the principal "causes" which both determine and define the thing
under consideration.
Gospel
cause
in us.
is
The
final
human
salvation.
Its efficient
is
God
operating
The
part
is faith.
The
46
tion,
to
Saint Paul
which
suffi-
We
ciently dwelt
as a power,
and we
shall
it.
The words
specially contributed
by the present
defi-
it
on
or
its
human
side,
salvais
and
faith.
The end
work
of the Gospel
the
salvation of
man; and
in
but in God.
eousness: the
And
way
it
there
who
is
is
God
way
his right-
to salvation
the
of faith;
man
believes
unto righteousness.
The
and
righteous shall
live of
and approof
God
as
given or
made
ours in Christ.
But there are some other words of the definitionwhich require a truer understanding. In the first place, the word Gospel itself is too commonly (though
often unavoidably) used in a
way which
is
brings to us
it
hand
The Gospel
of Christ's teaching of
and
life.
The
a com-
is
Word
Himself.
is
God
is
the Speaker,
47
of
men
means.
is
God's
He Word, and He
no mere proclamation
is
to us of a divine righteousness
or Ufe; rather
He
Him
its
but as
God
supreme
glad tidings.
of ours about
The
is
not something
in Christ our
God
or Christ,
it is
God
eternal hfe.
When
take
it
therefore
it is
highest sense
and
interpretation to
mean
and
that in
Word and
which
God.
Gospel,
God
our
is
life.
But
God
we
in
And
have
if
necessarily of
faith, so
His righteousness, on
been of faith.
And
so
it
spirit
over
It is in
He was
come
to us
And
we
shall
be able
48
to
Saint Paul
to illustrate
which the Apostle prays that the eyes of our heart may be enhghtened, that we may know what is the hope of God's calling, what the riches
to the Ephesians in
power
to
He wrought
when He
to
sit at
Him
Him
The
His right hand in heavenly places. of His power to usward who believe
spiritual
greatness
is
manifestly a
God
ing to us the
power
of
of Jesus Christ,
And
this
wrought by God's grace through our faith, is identified in kind with the working of the strength of His might which God wrought in Christ
life
and
in us,
when He
raised
Him from
of
and manifestation
That is, the was the realization a new divine power in humanity
the dead.
spirit to
of the children of
and to attain the Ufe and freeGod. The resurrection of our ours must be, on its human side
God, as on the divine side it was an operation of the power of God, or of grace, in humanity.
49
The saving faith of Christianity is not a vague or general beUef in the wisdom, power, and goodness of
God.
us
is
implicit confi-
finite spirits
but that
is
definite
promise and
a well-defined
specific gift of
God
to
man.
It
comes to us not
human words but in the eternal personal Word of God, who is God Himself in fulfilment of the promise
in
and
Our
faith should
gift.
grace or
The
wholly appropriates to
actually manifested in
itself
God
human
To
is
the eye
its
and
revealed.
It is its
power
nesses
in the spirit to
and
deficiencies
itself in
and
insufficiencies
and shortcomings
will
the self-fulfihnent of
confess with our
God.
that
If,
we
mouth Jesus
God
our
raised
Him
we
and will with our heart believe from the dead, we shall be saved.
see in
If Jesus is
wills,
lives; if
Him
all
that
we ought
if
to,
we
apprehend and appropriate to ourselves all the divine presence and power that Ufted Him, in order that it
50
might
to
Saint Paul
lift us in Him, out of the sin and death of the then not only world into the holiness and life of God, shall we be saved in fact, but are we already saved in
faith.
For
faith in
the
Word
of
God
is
a present
The above
says of our
is
Lord
He was
foreknown indeed
before
end of the times for our sake, who through Him are God, which raised Him from the dead and Him glory; so that our faith and hope might be gave
believers in
in
God.
To be
through
Him
we
we
own
accomplished
and assured salvation from sin and eternal death. So much for the definite meaning and function
Jesus Christ.
It is very true that
of
nothing
is
said in so
many terms
of the death
and
in the definition
we
nevertheless
Paul's teaching
power of God exercised in human salvation is the power of God revealed in Christ's resurrection, and
that the essential truth of that resurrection
is
humanity's
sin
salvation
is
it
can
51
come to him only through a process of self-realization and fulfilment, is the result and condition of his constitution
as
a person.
Personality
is
comes only by
self in
its
self-generation; that
is
which
not of the
the
man
abundant
a
recognition in the
ness,
it
Old Testament.
righteousness
is
only righteous-
was
man
or
a nation.
And
distinctively
not a
of the
The
man
is
the man.
Now
righteousness
is
a matter
of right relations,
law of
it
to its
and the Old Testament brought the highest possible expression when it and letter of it to be to love God
self.
I suggested
instead of the
life.
New
is
Testament
with
There
by
itself
And
it
Jesus
Still
the
word righteousness
carried with
so much we might
have expected the Apostle who was to expose the insufficiency of mere law, even the divine law, for human
salvation, to
eschew
it
52
spirit
to
Saint Paul
And
a
yet, if
we
look deeper,
itself
we may
selection.
as in St. Paul's
its
reason for
seriously
and
and St. Paul's strong declarations that the Gospel comes not to supersede but to fulfil and establish the
law.
is
the law, as
it is
the power
God
in us to
law, constitutes
be what God's law, which is our own and calls upon us to be. Nothing short
life
our salvation.
I spoke in the second chapter of the historical
pline of
disci-
human
a means of
spiritual health
of
and
sin,
life.
By
and the awakening and development of the conwas the most immediate precondition of the sense of need and the possibility of reception of the grace of holiness. But the end of the law is not
sciousness of sin
alone to reveal
is
its
inefficiency.
It
the righteousness
and demands
of us; but
what but
at all?
we know
of righteousness
The law
of righteousness.
itself
It is in the deepest
righteousness;
53
law only as He was Himself the righteousness of the law and the law of righteousness, whereas all so-called laws before Him were only imperfect and impotent human symbols or letters of the law. But not only
does the law alone primarily give us the conception
and knowledge
of righteousness;
it
alone awakens or
and being
righteous.
The
truth
that righteousness
is
life,
and that
but a fact
God
of experience.
And
when
first
righteous-
itself,
blessedness
it is
in itself init
prescribes
and
requires of us.
is
The
Gospel
that
and
us, is
an error so great as
On
be
the power of
it
God
to
in
Him
to help us
only as
He
He
is,
do for ourselves what He did. If we do not know in ourselves the power of His resurrection, of
and
to
54
to
Saint Paul
we do
not know
Him.
is
nothing
it
is
not of ourselves, as
is
righteousness, or hfe can be of ourselves, or ours, that is not of God. Blessedness is above all else an
own
souls,
however true
it is
is
an energy or
activity of
God
in
is
our
as
We
still
much
our
own obedience
to the law, as
it is,
over
and above
that, the
grace or power of
God
why
to attain
that obedience.
We
St.
it is
that
the
is
salvation,
because the
possession of
and
blessedness.
The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against aU ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold down the truth in unrighteousness.
Romans
I. 18.
art
that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another thou condemnest thy-
Romans
make God
n.
1.
What
if
faith
shall their
want
of faith
man
liar.
yea, let
SIN
Perhaps we should have said that the most complete and proper presupposition of the Gospel was the fact, and the universal fact, of sin. And yet, I do not
believe that the coming, or the primary end
tion, of the
sin.
and func-
The
Gospel was conditioned upon the fact of Gospel of the Incarnation means the comI for one, speculatively and not dogmati-
humanity.
cally,
cannot see
how
and development
and
what we
to the
of sin
and
holiness,
of
life
and death.
I cannot see
how
been generated
But
if
completion without
humanity could have attained spiritual sin, and therefore without redemp-
also.
Man
is
essen-
58
tially
to
Saint Paul
incomplete without God, and the relation to God which he needs for his completion is not an immanental
unity and oneness with
dental personal union
God by
and fellowship with God by that is, by the mutual spiritual faith, grace and intercommunion and intercommunication of love and service, which is the life of God, and of all in the
universe
who
life
of
God.
is,
Jesus
human
completion in that
it
He
be, of
God and
man, which is true of all men, but the personal union and fellowship of God and men, which is perfectly true only in Him as at once God and man, and is true in us just in the measure of our knowledge and
participation of
Sin, however,
it is
in
Him.
it
in the world,
there
is
no deliverance from
and and
is
universal,
and
its
consequences
And
divine manifestation
and
What-
ever
may be
we need
thought of
only to
remember
is
that
all
that
is
material
his
is
Gospel
are,
Those
facts
that sin
that sin
an individual
fact, insepis
itself;
it is its
its life,
which
is
holiness; that
humanity
can be or become
itself
The Wrath
salvation from sin
of
59
and the death which is its consequence; that the natural condition of humanity on its spiritual side is a sense, which grows with the growth
of the spiritual consciousness, of
is
want or need, which a prophecy and promise of the divine supply which we call grace, by which we mean the personal knowledge and fellowship of God Himself. These as
in itself
go are the materials on the human side of which the Apostle constructs his conception of the
far as they
Gospel.
To
we
might add that the materials on the other side are, the eternal love-nature and love-purpose of God; the predestination in nature
itself,
as well as in the
in
mind
of
God,
of the
whole creation
man
its
highest part to
spirit,
nature,
realiza-
and
tion
Kfe,
and
and
vital fellowship
Him
in the divine
power
of His
life
as to
make us
actually in
Him
sons of God.
I have given the above preliminary outline of the whole Gospel according to St. Paul only, for the present,
to
of sin in
it.
All evil, as
Kant
says
in substance,
Extract
itself is
evil into
mere
transition or
supreme good.
convert
all
60
to
Saint Paul
blessing.
tion for
spirit
from
sin is
through
its
own
conquest of
but only
holiness,
The conquest cannot be made for it, by it; because in its own conquest alone is its The victory of any its righteousness, its life.
it,
only as
it is
and will be made, its own self-undertaken and selfaccomphshed victory. The power of God to save us actually saves us only as it is made our power to save
ourselves.
To
The wrath
of
from heaven against all ungodUness and unrighteousness of men. In what way There is no better illustration is that wrath revealed ? God, he
than here of
St.
human
things.
experience, that
If,
is
to say, in the
working of
life
shows
:
on what side
He
is, viz.
on
and against unrighteousness; if the agnosticism even of Matthew Arnold can see clearly enough that the power not ourselves in the affairs of men makes for righteousness only and wholly, it was not too much for the more spiritual vision of St. Paul to discern that to say that the Righteous Lord loveth righteousness can mean no more nor less than that He hates unrighteousness. And indeed no terms
the side of righteousness
God
as
actually
human
men
it exists, ift
The Wrath
the world.
St.
of
61
Those
facts
were no
in
doubt at
their darkest
when
dawned
the person of our Lord, and St. Paul saw and described
them
it.
Nevertheless the
facts of the
The material points in the Apostle's sin we may briefly consider. The first is
tial
treatment of
a very essen-
It
might be ex-
and unrighteousness. It is identical with the question still with us of the mutual dependence or independence of moraUty and religion. No one denies the possibilily
or actuahty of
a, relatively,
That
is
not at
all
the
question.
When
essential
it
a social morality
exists,
whatever or
however
its
existence,
or conditions of
in a high degree
in those
tions.
who mentally deny or contradict those condiThe true question is, what would be the morality
if
no such thing as godliness, if man were not really a spiritual and religious being, and were not often, in his better types, actually more reUgious than is consistent with his own theory, or than he knows or thinks himself to be. At any rate it was St. Paul's conviction that man is a spiritual and religious being,
62
to
Saint Paul
and having a capacity and a need for spirituality and religion. His highest and true righteousness is not a mere experimental matter of right relations with things and persons other
than himself, rather
is it
harmony with the spirit and law and, what these include and imply, the Personality and personal meaning and purpose of the universe. Of course that
conviction
is
God
in us
God
own
righteousness.
Book
there
is
and point in the very mode of printing the emphatic words in the Epistle for the Sunday before Advent, as though it were an inscription upon the very
portal of the Church, or the
is
His
name whereby He
Righteousness.
It is
shall
be
The Lord
our
together, godliness
belonged so
thing
but he
St. Paul connects the two words and righteousness, as though they spirit and body of one and the same
explicitly states
the cause.
unto uncleanness.
For
what cause ?
Even
as,
The Wrath
not
fit
of
63
to
of
to have
God in
their
an
is
man And on
always
is
and passions has been responsible for a very and confusion of the world. Superstition and idolatry, fanaticism and spiritual pride and intolerance, have always been recognized by religion itself as quite as possible and actual in the world, and often even more positively pernicious and injurious and hateful, as a mere negative unbelief or disbehef of the facts of the spirit. Much of the immorality which St. Paul so graphically describes was actually associated with so-called religious worship. So that the
affections
lence not so
much
of
no
must remember, however, that the natural and religion, for the untold damage that has been done in the name of religion, the immeasurable harm and hindrance that so-called religion has
proper remedy for false
We
affairs, is
not to be found
an impossible abohtion of
as
it
religion,
lives,
to
true
meaning and
impulses,
function.
of
The bodily
passions,
the
selfish
wrought and still work evil enough surely in the world, and not rather but who dreams of abolishing them
64
to
Saint Paul
to the reason and
of reducing
end
in
In the knowledge of
God
Only
and will knowing Him can we know ourselves, and only in the right knowledge of Him, which is not a mere conceptual or representative but an experimental and
stands,
real
knowledge, can
we have
direction of ourselves
which
is
the
condition
of Tightness or righteousness in
our
lives.
how
the
wrath as well as the approval and favor of God manifests itself in the actual working of things. What
reUgion
recognizes
as
the
divine
sanctions
are
all
The
blessing or
later, but
always sooner or
and
and
it lies
itself
and so
itself
consolidating,
its
and so
fixing
and determining,
within
own
Nor can
For how
is it
poslife
and
should be in
fection
itself
and
in all its
consequences a per-
and blessedness to us, and that the opposite and contradiction of all these should not be a corresponding imperfection and curse? What can God's love and approval of holiness revealed in its inherent blessedness be but His hatred and condemnation of
The Wrath
sin
of
65
its
visible
We
selves,
meaning
for our-
and
it is
no
better.
advantages
and
opportunities
advantages
and that had been Abraham, the Israelites indeed, divine preparations and helps. But what use had they made of their opportunity ? They had rested
and
real,
which they were given. They were Jews outwardly and not inwardly; and their circumcision was outward
in the flesh, in the letter,
is
in
The outcome of the Apostle's profound reflections upon a whole world lying thus in sin; upon the utter
failure of
realize the
collapse
of
the
re-
which was
law;
own
as well as God's
St.
and nature's
Paul's thought
66
upon
to
Saint Paul
one which we might and with which reassure ourwell take to heart Is the selves and revive our drooping faith and hope. righteousness of God dead in the world? No indeed! Let every man be a liar, and God is still true. ^ hat
if
of
man
Shall the
absence of
human
and
will
objects of faith?
gifts are
death.
if
that, the
faith or faithfulness of
God
shall not
be defeated by
God
and
shall
indif-
ference of men.
VI
They
it is
written,
There
is
none
righteous,
to
that what things soever the law saith, it speaketh them that are under the law; that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be brought under the judgment of Giod: because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in His sight: for through the law cometh the knowledge of sin. But now apart from the law a righteousness of God hath been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ unto all them that believe; for there is no distinction; for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God; being justified freely by ffis grace. Romans
Now we know
VI
up to the point in St. Paul's argument where the reason and meaning of the Gospel most clearly appear. The truth and need of righteousness, the recognition of the
claims of righteousness,
the existence of a law of
righteousness, whether speaking in the hearts
sciences of
all
and con-
men
these
somehow do not
make
righteous or to
For, as
fact, righteousness
it
does not
exist.
Where
professes to exist,
is
the most
of unrighteousness.
Where
and regard
its
has produced
fruit
best fruit in
been?
of
but
on
the
and
70
to
Saint Paul
when on
eousness?
it
condition of a
man Was He
to
man
to
be a so-called righteous man and unconscious of the sin that was in him? There is an absolute identity in the point of view of Jesus and of
know
than
St.
Paul on
this point.
The
is
science or knowledge
of the principles
and
The
of
Him whose
the
profoundly
is,
law righteousness is. And the more we know and feel what His righteousness more we know and feel that we need Him as
life
of
it.
This, then,
is St.
exact induction
or generalization
it,
from the
as
world as he saw
and
it is still
There
is
By
That
For
the
the law
is
only can the law do for us; and yet in doing only that,
it
in reality accomplished!
is itself
God
takes
away
from us our righteousness only to give us His own, Himself. The law does not exist merely to exhibit its own weakness and unprofitableness, and in consequence to be discredited and annulled. It exists rather to
create a need, a capacity, a hunger
ness, righteousness, life
so
and
that only
God
Himself can
fill
and
satisfy
it.
Truly,
The
as St. Paul says,
New
Righteousness
is
71
a schoolmaster
to bring us to Christ.
no flesh be justified in God's through law comes knowledge of sin. It is not said here that through law there comes not actual righteousness, but that through law no man is
of
sight; for
From works
before
God
No man
into God's
will
come
it.
own
to
And
if
he
from the claim being recognized, it will be as the one disqualification for the reality to regarded which it pretends. The Gospel of Jesus Christ was
for sinners of every type save the impossible one of
self-righteousness.
carried on
from the mere negative statement under consideration to a positive form of it which gives a new and important Not only will the most step in St. Paul's Gospel. righteous man who comes before God with the claim of his own righteousness not be allowed as such, but the chief of sinners who comes to God with a true sense of his own unrighteousness and a sincere faith in
God's righteousness made
righteous.
his
own
and
upon which is
It is
laid
imposas
much importance
be
to this turn of
it
thought, and
we
shall
72
to
Saint Paul
we go
it.
understand
it,
who went up into the temple to pray and reminded God of his own righteousness was not thereby justified; while the publican who afar off was conscious only of his own sin in the sight of God was, we are told, justified. That cannot mean either that
The
Pharisee
he was recognized as actually being sinless, or that he was by act of God at the time made sinless or righteous.
The term
is
but
it is
it,
and
its later
use.
and
truly
knowing him-
be a sinner, or a transgressor of the law of righteousness, could be justified which meant could
self to
it
must
of
of his, at the
and
unrighteousness.
same time towards his own conscious What was that attitude? There is only one which it could possibly be, and every sinner
at
the
who
in his sin is in any sense or degree justified before God, can be so only on the ground of that one attitude.
It is the attitude
unrighteousness
we
repentance,
and
positively
If
God we
call faith.
The
man
which he
violates,
New
Righteousness
73
of the un-
righteousness which
his violation of
it.
The
is
condi-
the right
attitude or intention of
mind and
present unrighteousness.
It is possible in
any sense to
the nearest
is
In the
initial
moment
of
and the
is
necessarily first
that consciousness of
were not
to the
Where
it
be but the beginning of and what is an infinite process, it is possible and right to accept and treat already as right that which as yet is
even though
only a
first
more
and accepting the simple sense of sin as the beginning of holiness, when he says: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us; if we confess our sin, God is faithful and
justifying
and
to cleanse us
from
all
unrighteousness.
and
entire principle
which
Paul we
justification
by faith. At its fullest and completest that doctrine means this: that the veriest sinner who
74
to
Saint Paul
and
by
faith,
is as truly
on the way and as near to the end of righteousness as is then possible for him, and it is divinely right that his faith should be received and treated as
it is
the righteous-
him
at that stage.
Righteousness in
of holiness
and that prolepsis or pre-vision and apprehension which we call faith. Faith is therefore with divine truth and propriety reckoned or imputed to a
of sin
it is
a necessary moment
The above view is supplemented and completed by God has first promised and now given us
which
is
all
repentance and
faith.
So
as
and so
no excuse
its
them
new
righteousness
It diFers
from the
old
law
consists in
own obedience, and is thus a self-righteousness, and under the law righteousness on our part is the condition of our acceptance with God; the righteousness of faith, on the other hand, begins with only our
our
The
New
Righteousness
75
is
the
and starting-point and earnest of a righteousness of our own: which righteousness, then, is further and fully assured to us by the actual revelation of it to us in Jesus Christ, in whom we see all the presence and power of God in us, and in consequence all the power in ourselves in God, necessary to its actual attainment and possession. It is true, then, that St. Paul's justification by faith is not primarily and immediately a righteousing or making us righteous, but an acceptance of our own sense of unrighteousness and our faith in God's righteousness as being our own; but nevertheless there is a vital and necessary connection between the two things
which has to be taken into the fullest account. The Apostle says that by works of law shall no flesh be Why is it that no man shall be justified before God.
accepted or accounted as righteous through the operaIs it not solely because the law, tion of the law?
is,
incapable of
man's salvation,
which again
is
and personal life, is not to be accomplished through any command on God's part or any obligation on his own to be righteous, but only through the grace and power of God in him to make
potential righteousness
76
to
Saint Paul
him, by enabling him to make himself, righteous ? As the law is not the end but only a means, and a means
which, effectual as far as
the end,
is
it
so the
is
Gospel
itself, too,
however
only
a means, and as such must be interpreted not in itself but by its end. And what is the end of the Gospel?
It is
not that
men
in order to
shall
be so lovingly and graciously taken into God's righteousness and treated as righteous in the beginning
that they shall become, or be
It is the
made
end always that determines the meaning and nature of the thing, and the Gospel is the power of God unto an actual righteousness of men; and only
by the way, or
of sinful
in
men
as not sinful,
and
of
faith
which
is
not
The
point I
upon may be more plainly meaning of the passage before us is that no man is
insisting
:
am
and then that a man is accepted as righteous, or accounted righteous, upon faith in Christ, and apart from any claim of righteousness of his own. But why
of the law;
is
why
he not accepted as righteous through the law, and is he accepted as such through faith ? The answer
is,
to the first
that he
is
as
The
of fact he
is
New
Righteousness
77
of
insistence
or enforcement so far
from imparting hohness only plunges him more and more deeply into sin. Is not the answer to the second question then this that a man is accepted as righteous
:
is his
it
righteous-
and because
the potency
and the promise of his own actual righteousness in and through Jesus Christ ? The law cannot justify a man or pronounce him righteous, because it cannot
make him
so.
The Gospel
is
based
coming righteous viz. knowledge of our own unrighteousness and faith in God's righteousness but upon the only power without ourselves to make us viz. the love and grace and fellowship of righteous God; and all that manifestly expressed and communi:
point
is
that Christianity
constantly in
and indiscriminate goodness of God, apart from or even in spite of what we are or do ourselves. We look for our salvation in God or in Jesus Chr'st and not in
ourselves, as
for us apart
from or other than what we ourselves are and do. We find a weak and selfish satisfaction and comfort in what God is to us, without knowledge or
78
to
Saint Paul
we can and we
know
will
are in
Him.
more blessed
we
can
is
God
Himself.
life
good save as they are our own, and they are our own only in our own possession and exercise of them. It
is
an
a present Gospel, to us
that
God
He
moment
let
of the birth in
we were makes
us good.
But
us beware of stopping
For there
is
no
of
own
goodness.
man Any
only a blessing on
God
is
is.
And
is
let
us
remember,
real good.
is
too,
that
our only
and Hfe of God, it and sacrifice. We have heard it said, I am content to be a sinner saved by grace. In the first place, in its truest and highest sense, to be a sinner
It is the spirit, nature, love, service,
saved
is
to
be one
sinner
is
so no
sin,
longer; to be content to
to be saved
in
no true contentment. To be content to have been a sinner and to be saved by grace, or by God, only, is the highest contentment
still
and
a sinner,
The
of
New
Righteousness
79
which we are capable. It is St. Augustine's bride content to be adorned only with the gifts of her divine
spouse.
we may with
truth
and
an immediate or instan-
taneous attainment of the divine perfection, and even with the consciousness of a still inhering defilement of
sin,
be content
to abide sinners
still,
waiting, without
of faith
is
undue impatience which would be want and an insisting upon sight, for the glory that
the
to
be
For one in that stage and attitude and waiting, it is indeed a present though not
we
God and
we
shall
be
in
God and
is
in fact.
Indeed, in
Paul's immediate
crisis of
this stage
and phase
of the matter
seems to
does
treat
it
He
St.
never really
this,
own mind
passionately in earnest
as already
and completely
fact, of all that
in possession in faith,
though
not yet in
God
has
made
ours in Christ.
deliberately
And
as the
gift to
us in
righteousness,
and substance
not
becoming, but
are righteous
we
80
to
to
Saint Paul
before
We may
as though
come
Him
as
perfectly
by
Him
we were
as complete in
Him
heaven.
Such is the unreserved fulness of divine grace, and the unlimited and unhesitating power and confi-
dence of
human
faith!
But the very and simple fact that our present justifying and justification are called not as in English by different words but in Greek by identical ones righteousing and righteousness, is sufficient evidence
in
potential
and
vn
THE OBJECT OF JUSTIFYING OR SAVING FAITH
The
all
righteousness of
God
(is)
them
redemption that
pitiation,
in Christ Jesus:
faith,
whom God
through
by His blood.
set forth to
be a pro-
vn
THE OBJECT OF JUSTIFYING OR
SAVING FAITH
It being established that righteousness
is
both imterms
or instruit
faith, or in the
the sole
mean
ment
and our
sanctification,
is
and
sanctifies.
There
God through
is is
who
that faith.
more
by God
it is
And
third,
the
is
The above
We will consider these steps of faith in the above order. In the phrase A righteousness of God through faith
of Jesus Christ,
it
Christ
of
it;
is
whether
is
84
to
Saint Paul
and saves
the
us.
There
is
mean
latter,
is
But there
am
solicitous of
own
sake.
Emphati-
works
in us, or
more
and
exactly through
resurrection of our salvation
in us all the
our redemption,
wonders
reconciliation,
is
world by our Lord Himself in consummate fact of His own resurrection, which we must forever contend was not an act of mechanical power exerted upon Him, but an act of spiritual and moral power exerted in Him and by Him, and that humanly. It is then the faith of which Jesus Christ Himself was the supreme subject, the author and finisher or perfecter, that by our sharing it with Him becomes His salvation in us and ours in Him. The
to its victory over the
the
faith
spoken of here
is,
it
is
true,
is
Him
that
human
not
faith in that
human
is
victory over
and redemption
salvation.
itself to
from
sin
and death,
in itself
mean
human
redemption,
our own redemption, wrought in and by Him. When we say The redemption that is in Him, it is again a
85
in the first point of view which, on account of its too long and too great obscuration, I wish especially to bring forward in this exposition of St.
a truth
Paul's teaching.
And
When
power of God unto salvation, I asked where and how that power was manifested, and what it was. When the definition then under discussion went on to say that the Gospel was the power of God unto salvation because therein was revealed a righteousness of God through faith, I
of the Gospel as the
we were speaking
how was
that righteousness of
God
revealed.
And
now
before us,
when
it is
through faith
manifested ?
of
God
I ask the
same
I answer in the
in salvation
that the
power
visibly
God
at
work
was revealed
in the act
and
fact of the
first in
human
salvation actually
and
wrought
The
That
salvation
There was the power to save, because there was the salvation it had wrought. There was the divine power in faith
faith
salvation.
human
victory of
by
faith.
The
and
86
to
Saint Paul
constitute the
righteousness of
God
in
man
in Jesus that
was the
revealed.
He was
God
For Jesus Christ is Himself the Gospel. All that God, whose Word of Love and Life is all our Gospel, has to say, or reveal, or manifest, or in any way communicate or impart to us, is said and done and stands
complete in the
sanctified
human
and
glorified
The
righteousness of
and completely our righteousness as It is as truly a righteousness of human it is God's. faith and obedience, of sin conquered and death suffered and survived, as it is a righteousness of God Himself in it with all His divine power to sanctify and save. The third case is only a repetition of the second except as we recognize a difference between the more general revelation of God's righteousness and the more specific manifestation of it. While all communications
Christ
is
as truly
existent
views
more
as existent only in
Him
than as yet
is
Him.
Manifestation
the
word
St.
as
John
says.
And
when we
87
have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you the
Ufe, the eternal Kfe, that
was with the Father, and was So here when the Apostle speaks
a righteousness having been manifested, not by means that it was manifested in the concrete form of our Lord's own human righteousness. It is precisely parallel and
nature, nor through law, but from God, he
identical
with
St.
Christ as being
bom
How
and
our Lord's
own
individual
human
to our
righteousness was,
it
whole exposition to
We
come now
when
St.
is
in Christ Jesus
he means a redemption only in us and not in Him, some redemption which we have through Him, and
Whatever other and lower meanings redemption may have on the way, its true meaning is that which it has or will
not His
share with Him.
own which we
It is
a redemption to us already
redemption
is,
know by
without
But
that has
no meaning
at all
if it
which actually
We exists, reaUzed and complete, in Jesus Christ. have only to anticipate the whole teaching of the eighth
88
to
Saint Paul
how
is
Redemption
spirit,
a real setting
free.
Though
already free in
power
we we
we
first fruits
surance that
the Spirit of
God and
raised
of Christ were
He who had
up Christ
Jesus
from the dead should quicken also our mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth in us. There is involved the meaning that our partial redemption
which
still
is
when we
flesh with
its
The more general faith in Jesus Christ has then to be specialized and defined into faith in the redemption which is in Him, in Himself as the actual first-fruits
of
share
humanity to God, as well as in Him for us who it with Him. Any one who will now read the
Hebrews
of
how
our
and for us, eternal redemption, will feel, especially in the Greek expression of it, the force of what has been said.
St.
Paul adds to
redemp-
God
not
a mere ex-
89
we might
is
say
much
is
as
He
pression of
it)
of
New
Testament
much accretion in that term of additional meaning. It is very much questioned whether the Apostle in this passage means to represent God as setting forth Jesus
Christ as the true mercy-seat, the meeting place or place
and at-one-ment between God and man, corresponding to the ancient covering of the ark, upon which was the shekinah, the luminous cloud,
of reconciliation
The more
unUmited so as to include
all
possible truth or
points of view.
will
What
is
be brought out
eration.
The
it
will
be remembered,
in general,
nor yet only Jesus Christ as place or instrument of our redemption and at-one-ment with God, but these
more specifically through faith in His blood. The meaning of this tremendous expression is more clearly than anywhere else brought out in the Epistle to the which is thoroughly Pauline in substance Hebrews
90
to
Saint Paul
though not in form. And we may recur to the passage alluded to immediately above. Christ, we are told, having come as the true high priest of humanity, not
with blood of others but with or through His own blood He entered once for all into the hohest place,
having found eternal redemption. What was that blood of His own with which, and only with or by
He found redemption and entered into eternal oneness with God? The blood was Himself, His
which,
human
life,
and
sacrifice, of
com-
pleted hoUness
and righteousness. If the blood of bulls and goats had a certain efficacy of their own, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through
cleanse our conscience,
from dead works to serve the hving God! Now what was the main point of comparison or contrast between the blood offered to God in the
ancient sacrifices and that offered
by our Lord
.'*
in the
others,
sacrifice of
Himself
The
were
effectual, in their
way and
to a certain extent.
They were not perfectly or really so, because it was impossible for them to be anything more than representative, or substitutionary, or vicarious.
Anything only
it
can never
The
sacrifice
Jew
offered
He
91
that,
and
sacrifice.
He knew
and acknowledged
it
by the symbolic
act of offering
up
At
its
a feeling and confession of his own failure and weakness to do what he ought to do, or to be in himself
to be.
If
what he ought
at
and
of inability to be.
and
true
in
go of
was right in God to what point could God's acceptance of it go ? It could only go to the point of accepting the man's sense of not being and will to be for, or instead of, his being. It was only treating him as being what he was not and nothing more. It was putting aside,
far or to
It
sight,
not removing
and moral
condition.
That is still more expressive. must define a thing only by its highest and final meaning, sometimes by a meaning which it only points to afterwards, and does not itself as yet attain. The
sin-offering of the Jews.
We
mean
only,
one or both
of,
two
things.
The
offerer symbolized
by
his offering,
by the death
inflicted
upon the
he deserved
92
to
Saint Paul
sins.
Or
to express
it
more developed language of Christianity, he symboUzed either the death of the old man in him, in and for his sins, or the death of the new man, the But regenerate, risen man in him, to and from sin.
suppose that the sin-oilering did
even could mean
it it all
mean
all
that,
and
to the
man
himself,
do more than mean it? How could it other thing's death, however significant of be what
after all
it it
might
is
and
in the
end
the
man
truly wants,
is
What
would all even God's love and mercy and goodness, and treating him as righteous in his unrighteousness, be to him if after all it was only a fiction, an imputing
to
his
own.
And
of all things in
his
life,
his
blessedness, himself.
When
Jesus Christ
made His
offering to
God,
it
was
By the eternal Spirit that was in Him He up Himself, He gave His life, to God in an act of perfect holiness and righteousness, that is to say, in an act of perfect love, service, and sacrifice. It was, because of that, a w^oZe-bumt-offering, an offering in which nothing is held back, but the entire self is given and used, spent or consumed, in the divine life of obedience. More than that, it was an effectual sin-offering, an offering in which the self of sin is
of Himself.
offered
Jtistifying or
crucified, dead,
Saving Faith
93
and buried thenceforth and forever non-existent and that which takes its place in the person is at once no longer himself and, at the same time, his own inner and truest self, the Christ in him,
the son of
God
Why,
because
none other
could, take
it
away sin? Because it did take away sin; was and is the taking away of sin. Sin was
actually abolished in
Christ, in
whom
in the
itself
humanity died to
and lived to God and so to holiness and righteousness and eternal life. And such is Jesus Christ in Himself, and such is He
to sin, to us, that
and so
pation
the
He
partici-
God with Himself, that we too in Him and with Him can share His death and His resurrection. And so I conclude that the whole work of Jesus
life
of
it
was
not,
It
what every human life should be. He was indeed, but He was not only the one of us who saw the most clearly and realized the most perfectly the meaning of man and the end of
the perfect sample or example of
human
life.
The
doing that
So much
and life are not only and effectuating cause an example but the procuring
94
to
Saint Paul
of ours:
ye shall
live also.
And
not
He is because He
is
effectual
is
example and
itself,
and our
so
in in
God in us our righteousness, is He the power of God Himself in us manifested the actuality of our own resurrection and risen life, the realization of our own spiritual sonship to God
life.
As He
and participation
in
and that
before
is,
in
the sense of
not being, as
all sacrifices
Him
They were
substitutes
all
offerer, as
for his
all
own
act
or sacrifice of himself,
Christ's act, His
and
eternal
life,
VIII
To show His righteousness, because of the passing over of sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God; for the shewing of His righteousness at this present season: that He might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus. Where then is the
glorying?
It
is
excluded.
of faith.
By what manner
of
law? of works?
faith apart
We
man
is
justified
by
from
effect
Do we
then
make
through
God
forbid:
Nay, we
Romans
VIII
Paul
in the passage
still
redemption
or
propitiation as being
not, I
think, so
much a
as simply a final
of
He
now
manifested unto
faith.
all
the nations
it
the
obedience of
Again he describes
all
as
The
all
ages and
now hath it been manifested to His whom God was pleased to make known what
among
the
Gentiles,
which
is
Christ in
us, the
hope of
glory.
And
yet again he
tells
now been
who aboUshed
97
death,
and brought
98
to
Saint Paul
righteousness was
The
human
or effectual, way.
Man
begin-
But the son and heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a bond-servant, though he be lord of all; but is under guardians and stewards until the term appointed of the father. So we also, when we were children, were kept in bondage under the tutelage and discipline of the law. But when the fulness
God.
of the time came,
God
bom
of a
woman, bom under the law, that He might redeem them which were under the law, that we might receive
the adoption of sons.
is,
sons
that
of
Jesus Christ
God
Abba, Father.
if
So we are no Thus
not only
tiny of
is
man
The
Gospel,
in
promise, given to
disannulled by
the
in the objective
may be
99
and
reahties.
To say
that
Abraham was
is
before Moses,
the Gospel
was prior
to the law,
to utter a great
believe
about
Abraham
The end
of
man
is
God and
in the
meaning
and final cause of the universe prior to any of the means or incidents by which that end or destiny is at last attained. In human life the strict and careful discipline and training of childhood by external rule or law is a very necessary incident and means, but it To have learned obedience is is not an end in itself. a necessary thing, but unless obedience has become transmuted into something beyond and above itself, unless the spirit has absorbed and replaced the form, the status and nature of servants has not been exchanged for that of sons. Morality or formal righteousness may indeed be the law of the universe, but that is just precisely and distinctively what real righteousness
is
not.
When we
say that
it is
Love,
we
say that
it is it
not a mere
mode
It
things
and
actions.
man
should be
own
righteousness,
and the
insufficiency of the
own
100
to
Saint Paul
right-
But
the
was not that God should be a Creator of things, or a Lord of wills, but a Father of spirits. We come now nearer down to the argument immediately before us.
in Christ
In the actual
human
redemption
and in the perfect setting forth in His person accomphshed propitiation, or reconciliation, or at-one-ment, wrought by His act and realized in Himself in our humanity, we have the final elucidation or
of the clearing
up up
and life. The thing to be was the difference of God's treatment of unrighteousness under the old covenant and under the new. Under the old the treatment might be expressed by the general term paresis, the operation of which has been already partially described. God, upon condition of a certain necessary disposition on
of the divine righteousness
cleared
first
own
it
offence,
put
it
aside, or covered
it
over, or
it
remembered
it
no more, and
in general treated
as though
had
not been.
forgiveness
sin
The
was that the sinner was conscious of his of it. His acknowledgment of
against righteousness
transgression
ment
is
and claims
first
of righteousness,
the necessary
101
This right attitude was expressed, as has been explained, in the several offerings or sacrifices, all of
which were substitutionary or vicarious. And in just that fact, as I have said, consisted their inefficiency
for the
perfect
or complete ends
of
righteousness.
They were confessions of not being, not sufficient and effectual means of being, righteous. An imperfect and
impotent system like
this, a scheme of righteousness which went only so far as to convince and convict of unrighteousness and fell so far short of producing righteousness, needed explanation. And in the light
and
sufficient
mode
or scheme
which succeeded and replaced it, it found its own explanation. The meaning of it lay in the fact that righteousness by law is only a step or a stage in the progress and attainment of actual or real
righteousness.
tive in its
It is positive in its direction It
but nega-
reach or achievement.
righteous,
demonstrates that
man must be
his
own, but at
by any process
eousing.
of self-righteousness or of self-right-
Any such
sin.
and
spiritual attitude
was as yet, under the old covenant, one only of pity and pardon. His response to man's only possible right consciousness and disposition was the only halfgrace of mercy and forgiveness. The sin that the man would fain put away from himself God put aside.
102
to
Saint Paul
in
and treated
reality
as though
it
put away.
response of the Gospel to the
The
human
is
sense of
actual sin
and unattainable
holiness
and
deliverance.
God
manifests Himself in
as pitier
it,
that
is
and pardoner of
man
from
in his sin,
his sin.
man
He
there seen, in
all
the completeness
as at once
of justifying, sanctifying,
Righteous and
say,
righteousing or Righteouser.
That
is to
He
is
the matter of
own
in
In
Jesus
Christ
God
is
become The Lord our Righteousness. In the phrase which describes God in the Gospel,
it,
in
us as in Himself, there
of
may
how He
is.
is
our righteousness
whether by gracious
The
answer
though by the
insisted
The
is all
point to be
upon
is
He
is
is
righteousness,
if
it is
because
He
He is so to us
in faith.
He
will
be to us so
103
While we are upon the subject of the progressive unfolding of this true principle of the Gospel, it will be in place to trace the connection between the Gospel
in the Gospels
or in
its
more
by
St.
Paul.
germ
of St. Paul's
stated
at
most developed
Gospel
is
distinctly
the
is
repeated at the end of one of them as being the subto the world as the Gospel of Jesus Christ; was actually after the Day of
what was
to
be preached
all
Pentecost so preached by
and preached exclusively or as practically the sole burden of their preaching; and that then finally it was taken up, identically the same, and developed by St. Paul into the complete system which he has given us,
consistent everywhere with
itself,
in his epistles.
is
away
itself
of sin.
The
repentance
sin,
its
a putting away of
or pre-condition of,
last
for,
and greatest although the putting away of sin of the prophets, and was only the last and highest of the demands of the law, yet John's one, reiterated, confession was the impotence and insufficiency alike of him and it, for any real or actual putting away of sin. That was his
104
to
Saint Paul
no symbolizing
constant refrain.
No
preaching of
his,
of the need he preached of the putting away of sin, by the divinely significant rite of baptism, could produce
which is at bottom, mere putting aside or pardoning, the real thing needed. I baptize with water only, he said, and water cannot wash away sin or quicken in the soul the new birth of holiness. That requires something beyond law or prophecy, above the powers of nature
or be
its
and not
its
or the will of
man;
it
the
God
Himself
man.
John the
Baptist's preaching
power of it or the possibility of its realiAs has been more than once said, not only
first
step
in
to
by which we mean the right relation of man is the knowledge and sense or feeling of his own condition, his wants, and above all his own not
God,
only shortcomings or failures but transgressions and
sins;
felt
his sins
but his
sin.
The
prodigal
that,
own attitude towards sin and his own sin. That attitude we express by the word repentance. Applying again
the principle that a thing
it is is
by what
repentance means
105
means
it
away
of sin.
it
it
In the
first
place
it
away by the
sinner himself.
Any
any conferring of only pity or pardon is only, an imperfect or incomplete either repentance
or remission.
And
away
in
God
full
sin only as
He
man
is
in himself putting
if it is
away
his sin.
real
aphesis
act.
neither
in preaching repentance
also.
prophet-
preached faith
which reUgion as yet lacked was in the approaching Kingdom of God about to be added, that all that it
it
sign only
to be. to the
The
circumcision
made with
spirit,
and away sin should be The law abolished for one that could and would. which had hitherto been above and beyond man was by the faith and obedience of Jesus Christ and through the power and operation of the eternal Spirit to be brought down from heaven, or up again from the death to which sin had consigned it, and seated upon its proper throne in the minds and hearts and lives I repeat that in what John preached as of men. prepared for by law, and foreseen and longed for by
the sacrifices that could not take
106
to
Saint Paul
and about to be fulfilled in Jesus Christ viz. the coming of God's own kingdom of holiness, we have the righteousness, and divine Ufe in man exact and complete matter of the whole Gospel. Now just exactly what all the Gospels begin with,
prophets,
:
in St.
Luke, who
is
of the Gospel
Thus
it is
own
from the dead; and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name unto all nations.
Ye
And
behold, I send
my
high.
The meaning
underKes
all
the
human
from the dead, is this: that in these we Him, and by these we shall attain in Him, the death to and from sin, the repentance that is unto that means, that attains, that is the putting away of sin; or, what is the same thing on its positive side, the faith that sees in Christ, and that in Him achieves and attains, the putting on of the holiness, righteousness, and life of God. Once more, what according to John the Baptist was to be the Gospel, what according to St. Luke our Lord declares in His last words is to be preached in His
resurrection
see in
name
with
as being the
Gospel, the
Jerusalem apostles
St.
107
The God
Jesus,
of our fathers
they
Him
did
declared
up
whom
ye slew.
God
exalt
to be a Prince
and a Saviour,
and remission of sins. And we are witnesses of these and so is the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey Him. The distinctive gift of
things;
is, what was accomplished in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the effectual putting away of sin by death to it, and the effectual putting
the Gospel
and power
of
God
in Christ.
How
was
his
Gospel
is,
St.
Paul
if
that,
risen,
For, says
St.
he,
if
Christ
is
not risen,
we
who have
fallen asleep in
Him
have perished.
John's
We
much
and quite independent, declaration of what the Gospel of Christ is. We know, says he, that He was manifested to take away sin. And in Him is no Why was there in Him as man no sin ? Because sin.
And how
it
as
By
resisting
it
unto blood, or
of His
own
is
and power
of
God
through
The power
of
God
thus manifested in
Him
108
to
Saint Paul
all
who
but
sin,
enough to
right
say, but I
it
possible
upon
and
Epistle
later
Hebrews,
is
in
any part
a matter of
arrangement or accommodation,
ported at the close of
developed
doctrine.
The agreement
is
too too
same time
deep and
real.
God, as distinguished from that of the law, St. Paul remarks of it that it excludes all boasting on the part
of
man.
is
human
of
merit
is
is
one not
out of
works but of
as
much
it
fdes
sola.
am
is
not
does
mind
of St. Paul.
He
own works
or labours, nor
those of
109
I,
Yet not
but
the grace of
with me.
I labour also,
he
to
says,
striving
worketh in
me
mightily.
And he
bids us Christians
work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, remembering that it is God who worketh in us both to will and to do. He claims that the sufficiency of his own abundant ministry is of God and not himself, and seeks to exercise it always as though God did so
through him.
I dwell on this not to prove that the
is
Gospel of Christ
works as well as of
any one
interest
to
deny
this,
but in order to
make
occasion to
of infinite
is
and importance, and which I think was in the mind of St. Paul. True Christianity, so far from Umiting or lowering human freedom and personal activity, raises these to the highest pitch, far beyond
the possibiUty of any other system of
It bids
life
or action.
all
things,
faith,
do
all things,
endure
all things.
It raises
our
will,
There
is
and encoureven to ages so high and holy an ambition in him the becoming as God Himself. And yet the more the Christian covets earnestly the best gifts, and is ambiconception of himself, or that engenders
God
110
the
to
Saint Paul
more con-
more he truly
that
is
scious he
all
The
greatness
indeed
all his
the praise of
it is all
Another's.
It is
human
being
meekest and
He who made and established for himself the most unlimited claim. He was what He was and He was everything just because of Himself He was and could do nothing, because He sought not His own glory but only that of Him from and of whom He was. And we can say something like it of St. Paul himself. He was, as we have said, of all the servants of Christ,
in spirit,
was
was not unconscious of all that he had been and had done in the service of his Lord. But if any one ever did, in sincerity and truth, accept for himself all the grace, and give to God all the merit and the glory, of his greatness, it was the great Apostle. One more word before St. Paul has done vsdth his statement of the Gospel: What have we done with the law? Have we made it of none effect through faith? On the contrary, we have established it. Not only have we restored it to its equality with God, by exalting man's standard of obligation to the height of the divine perfection, but we have laid open the way by which man can discharge that obligation by attaining that
perfection.
IX
What
Abraham
believed
God, and
it
was
Now
to
him
reward is not reckoned as of grace, but as of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness. Even as David also pronounceth blessing upon the man, unto
whom God
covered.
sin.
reckoneth
righteousness
apart from
the
works,
saying,
Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are
Blessed
is
the
man
imto
whom
Lord
will
not reckon
was reckoned for righteousness, that he them that believe. For not through the law was the promise to Abraham or to his
his faith
all
To Abraham
ness of faith.
neither
is
he should be heir of the world, but through the righteousFor the law worketh wrath; for where there is no law,
there transgression.
For this cause it is of faith, that it may be according to grace; to the end that the promise may be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham,
who who
is
the father of us
all
before him
whom
quickeneth the dead, and calleth the things that are not as though
they were.
in hope believed against hope. Without being weakened in he considered his own body now as good as dead (he being an hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah's womb; yea, looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed
faith
Who
and being fully assured what He had promised. He was able also to perform. Wherefore it was reckoned unto him for righteousness. Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was reckoned
strong through faith, giving glory to God,
that,
on
also, unto whom it shall be reckoned, who Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. Romans
IV. 3-8,
9, 11, 13,
15-24.
IX
Paul's position
is
was
it is
but that
in principle
the normal
which man can occupy in his personal relation with God. The law itself by the inconsistency of its insistence and its impotence is a witness for the truth and
necessity of that
which has
it insists.
in
it
that
upon which
God
him
especially of
Abraham but
also of David. to
Abraham
believed God,
for righteousness.
He
Now
us analyze and interpret this faith of Abraham. It was primarily a general and practical kind of faith;
113
114
there
to
Saint Paul
no speculative questions or questionings Abraham believed God; he trusted it. and depended upon Him absolutely and without Umit But not only did this faith extend in all or reserve. directions and to all matters, but there are also distinct evidences in it of specialization and particular direction. The indefinite begins to become definite when faith assumes the form of trusting the love and goodness that God is, even when least conscious of any worthiinvolved in
ness or most conscious of every unworthiness of that
and goodness. God accepts that trust and conupon the express and definite on our part, condition of our own right spiritual and moral conObserve that there is a sciousness in the matter. condition and indeed a conditio sine qua non. Why does not the love and goodness of God go to what some conceive to be the more complete limit of blessing us without any condition at all ? Why must there be the absolute condition of repentance and faith on our
love
fidence
part ?
Because
God
spiritual
and moral blessedness which our own nature demands, with which alone law and Gospel have to do, in which our very personality consists, apart from or without our own consciousness and co-operation in the matter. Our own attitude and action towards sin and holiness must be constituents and co-ordinates in the matter of
the blessing, or the blessing cannot
exist.
We
cannot
be freed from
sin save through and by our own putting away our sin, and we cannot be made holy save through our own love and will and activity of holiness. God
The Faith
who has
of
Abraham
115
man
He
as our part,
that imparts
resist and reject not the grace and that longs and strives to impart it: How would I and ye would not. When St. Paul describes Abraham as coining to and being accepted of God, not upon the ground of his
only
we
it;
own
own
righteousness, but
he
is
sight to recognize in
Abraham's sense
sin,
of sin,
and
faith
in of
God
its
notwithstanding his
the
human
condition
impartation.
perhaps,
than to see in
If
God
own
faith,
in Christ that
is
what he
is
and would
ticable
be,
He would
have
known too more perfectly, as all the children of his faith know just in proportion to the perfection of their
faith,
who
are
sinners
is
which we
it is
when we
are
no
as
who
yet have only the sense of their sin and faith in His
righteousness, not only the necessary condition, but
all
116
to
Saint Paul
righteousness in Christ.
David's
the
the blessedness of
and his sins covered, to whom the Lord will not impute or reckon sin, is thoroughly evangelical or on the Une of the But he does not see perfect salvation through Christ. all the way to the full end actually accomplished in
iniquities are forgiven
man whose
Christ.
by him
paresis
which
St.
Paul
by grace before its final triumph in Christ, but I freely admit that the word in itself does not necessarily mean anything more than
describes as the hmit attained
New
Testament
it
restricted
meaning.
gift of remission in
man's acceptance of
But I hold that imphcit in God's Jesus Christ, and equally so in it, there is involved and included,
initial
St.
Paul's,
when he
own
over sin
and its accomplishment in Christ actual freedom from sin in and through Him.
divine purpose
I
am
not so
much concerned
of
fact
and meaning
Abraham's
faith as I
am
in St.
The Faith
tle's desire is
of
Abraham
it.
117
The Apos-
not so
much
New
Testament Hteral proof and confirmation of the it is to find in the Old Testament language and ideas and illustrations with which to express and explain
Old, as
the independent and indisputable facts of the
And
New. what an extent the entire texture of the Old Testament lends itself to this use, is capable of being applied to events which
it is,
almost as
much
fulfil
as they transcend
its
meaning.
faith in
and
first,
altogether practical
and not
speculative.
it
Faith in
God
and
is
not so
much
achievement of character.
The more
one's whole
mind
are
will,
and
life,
exalted to unity
spiritual
and
and
trust
Him who
the Reality of
them
Abraham is the type of those who are great enough in themselves to know that God is and that He is the end and reward of all who seek and find Him. But immediately, as we saw, St. Paul specializes or defines Abraham's faith as being in God who accepts
and
that
justifies
is,
118
to
Saint Paul
knowing and feeling himself to be, ungodly and unrighteous, and coming notwithstanding to Him who, just because He is love and grace, is the fountain and source of all righteousness. There is no faith so true and strong as that which brings us to God in and in spite of, and even because
on the ground of
of,
our
sins.
Abraham's
attaches
faith,
It
itself to
is
hope, which
its
own
more or
less
The promise
its
God
before and
made
is
to
Abraham, or made
of
the
subject-matter
both Testaments.
What
tion
is
fulfilment
Assuredly
it is
and assurance
as righteous.
all,
God
is
faithful
and
free to justify
him
So much of
justification
and
salva-
tion is not
Here,
Abraham's faith to that and fills out the whole great truth
God's
gift of
to
Abraham
is
the promise
made
the history of
shall inherit
that through
it all
races
The Faith
receive
of
Abraham
blessing
119
and
blessed-
full
and final
ness of
God
We
and inspiration
that, all
of the indestructible
Hebrew
conviction
kingdoms of the world shall become the Kingdom of God. Now this promise was made to Abraham
through his seed; and the promise was deferred until
it
was
as impossible for
Abraham
to beget as
for
of
way,
and the seed was given. The proto-fulfilment in Isaac was itself a life out of death: for, in him. There sprang of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of heaven in multitude, and as the sand which is by the seashore innumerable. Abraham became physically the father of many nations. But that is not what St. Paul had chiefly in mind. As Aristotle was said to be the master of them that think or know, so Abraham
is
still
the father of
all
who
believe.
His spiritual
before
the father of us
all
Him whom He
believed;
first
to him,
did
God
so manifest Himself to
Abraham ?
120
to
Saint Paul
did beget and Sarah did conceive and bear the promised
seed.
itself
in their
own power
to fulfil
It
was
in
and through
to produce,
them
that
God
power
in
them
bom
of
them but
God
in them.
proto-fulfilment in Isaac
and the
real fulfilment in
made
to faith in the
we
will
now
All the
and destiny
of
man. The interpretation of one such promise, which will do for all, may be studied in the second chapter of There is a promise made the Epistle to the Hebrews. though for a time made lower than the to man that, angels, he shall be exalted above them and to the head
of God's creation.
Now
as yet
we
but
we do
see
it
most completely
of
fulfilled in
One Man,
reprefor
Him
all.
as
head and
bringing
and forerunner
It pleased
God,
and through
salvation.
whom
are
all things, in
(first)
many
The
promises are
first in
made
the Son of
all
through
Him
who
The Faith
So the promise made
to faith in general;
it is
of
Abraham
is
121
to
Abraham
a promise made
it is
who
are the
children
and
made not
to
Abraham's seeds, meaning many, but to his seed, meaning one, that is, Christ; but then he goes on immediately to say that as
many
seed,
of us as are Christ's, or in
Christ, are
Abraham's
and
promise.
What
then,
coming down
made
.''
Christ
There
is
to the question,
mode
In the
first
our humanity
the dead, a
we have that which is a quickening of new birth from the dead loins and the
womb of our unassisted humanity. That which was bom into the world in His person was bom of the world, and yet was not bom of the world but of God He was and yet was not son of man, in the world. in that He was son preeminently of God, and son of man only as Son of God in man. And in the second
barren
place, to
if we look away from Who Christ is in Himself What He is in us, the lesson from Abraham's faith
intelligible to us.
Jesus Christ
is is
God God
and
life;
He
life.
The
right-
eousness
bom
in
Him
is
a righteousness
122
to
Saint Paul
It is ours,
in us.
And
is
God
it
which
ness
is
ourselves also
as divine as
divine.
It is just precisely
is,
divine-human as our
in fact not ourselves
is
Lord Himself
but
because
it
He
in us.
Our
child
indeed of ourselves,
only what
we
ourselves are
it is
it
of
God in us to will and to do, and so to be. The righteousness of God looked at in this way
the
is
power and the promise and so the certitude it is the same faith viewed as grown to fruition, God wholly in us and we wholly in God unto the attainment of an actual comof our future righteousness, but plete righteousness of
God
God
in ourselves.
St.
We
see
Paul
to
is
how Abraham's
as
all
by
trans-
we
and will through faith in God's word, more perfect Word of God, which is Jesus Christ Himself, see and find all our common humanity raised from the death of its ovim unrighteousness, and impotence for righteousness, into the divine power for righteousness which is through the indwellflesh
too, in the
own
ing of
God
Being therefore justified by faith, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; through whom also we have had our access by faith into this grace wherein we stand; and let us rejoice in
of
so,
but
let
us also
rejoice in
tience;
and
probation; and
probation,
God
Romans V.
1-5.
We come now to
before God.
describe
more
is
practically
and par-
As
that status
represented as
havng
described as
ritual
it is
what
extent, or whether,
we
are
still
to
be
bound
in the expression of
obsolete phraseology
and
circle of ideas.
answer
we
are going to
make
just
yet,
now
I
of
To
go no further as
sacrifice
am
which
it
To
begin with,
it
although it has been and still is undergoing the refining and purifying treatment to which all human thought and feeling needs to be continuously subject, yet all
future progress in the matter can be only in the direction of its better understanding
125
and
fuller appropria-
126
tion.
to
Saint Paul
finally
ought to be
decided
that
we
by the universal and eternal truth of it reahzed in the life and death of Christ, and not going to bring that
truth
down
to
fit
into the
little
system of Jewish, or
In other words,
we
shall
its
by
itself,
or in
make
it.
use
and not
to
One other principle of method or procedure I wish make plain. As humanity will never be known
its
exposition in Jesus
in
be known except
and universal terms of our humanity. To understand our Lord in any act or situation of human life it is necessary to understand what is the
most
essential
human
attitude or action in
would say that what Jesus Christ did in our humanity in order to be our salvation was just precisely what humanity needed of itself to be and to do in order to be saved. We
that situation.
And
so in general I
exactly express or explain any act of His, and so the supreme and decisive act, when we say that humanity did it in His person, and that it was just precisely what humanity needed to do in order to its own redemption
and completion. In His person humanity righted itself with God, redeemed itself from sin, raised itself from death. And how did it do so ? As alone, in the nature
127
by undergoing that
transition,
and
it
could do
change or
was
salvation.
It
own
to pass
from
sin
into
life,
and
it
could do
an attainment of
life.
The
of Jesus Christ
was
in act
and
God and
holiness
and
Of
all.
course
it
was so
is
actually to Himself
it
so for
How
all,
it
potentially,
actually so for
is
which the exposition lies before us. Up to the present point I would answer to any question of how we are
saved by the death or the blood or the
sacrifice of
Two
a
little
more
attention.
It
which
us
sin
Salvation for Him, as for all humanity needs. demanded that conflict with sin and conquest of which was preeminently His experience and His
achievement.
sible either as
Salvation for
Him
as for us
was impos-
128
of His
to
Saint Paul
of
The power
must
human
obedience unto
blood
He
redemption.
or offering
That
is
to say,
up
of Himself
He eternally found
or attained
His true
Self.
is this
:
The
Chris-
tianity, it
may be
said, does
indicated
by the death
so sure of
and
its
Are we
that?
Of
course a thing
is
highest
and by
its
highest.
We
Jesus Christ.
In His death
and resurrection we are defining repentance and faith, the right human attitude towards sin and holiness, at their limit, carried to their very end. But sooner or later, if we are to be saved to the end, have not we all to know sin to the very end and holiness to the very
end,
sin
its
death,
life ?
and holiness
knowing
its
nothing
less
nor lower
us a death
and holiness as
life in holiness.
hfe, as will be in
to sin
and a
The above being understood as the ground upon which we stand, the sure basis of our present and
129
what ought to be our subjective personal and feeling in the relation in which it places us with God: Being therefore justified by faith, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; through whom also we have had our access by faith into this grace wherein we stand; and let us rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but let
clearness
attitude
The
first
immediate
It is necessary to
make a distinction between this present peace and what we may term real peace, if it be only for the purpose of taking in the gift of God in its entirety, its
end as well as its beginning and progress. We can have or enjoy real peace only as we are in that state
or condition
mere
state or condition
sonal activity
which alone
the accom-
paniment and the expression. To one who is ill and about to die it would bring great present peace to know that he was brought into possession of certain cure and so of assured recovery and health. But the real
peace to the sick
man
is
health
itself,
of
it is,
in
least,
ure,
The
patient
may
find in his
130
to
Saint Paul
his possession
and so
God and
it
holiness
peace so far as
goes,
and
is
and
final
glorification
justification.
When
St.
mean
is still it
and
it
us in saying that
we
are saved.
distinction
between them,
if
we
is
now
as well as
what
it
If the worst
sinner at this
moment
spiritual
in the
an immediate
apprehension of the
meaning
all
of Christian baptism,
what
it is
that
is
made
ours
of spiritual
tremendous
131
But
of real righteous-
be!
little would it by actual participation there could indeed be but a drop from the infinite ocean but on the other hand, by the reception of faith and hope, or of anticipatory appropriation, it can be all his in a moment. He may in one ecstatic sweep of vision behold all God become human, his own, righteousness and life. In that one happy moment, or in the longer happy moment of his whole earthly life of faith and hope, it is not his own paltry attainment of personal righteousness or life with which God credits him. Rather is it all that his faith takes in and appropriates to itself of the infinite and eternal righteousness
own, how
Of
;
of
God
all
Himself.
gift to
who
is
God's
promise and
us of His
own
is
divine righteousness,
of Jesus Christ,
who
to, is
as
it
were put
who by a
and appropriates Him to himself. The place, therefore, which we are enjoined now to have and enjoy is what I should call the anticipatory
true faith accepts
peace of a perfect
in ourselves to
faith.
upon the
upon the
real peace.
assurance that
in Christ,
all
and through Him are to be realized in us. Meantime we do not wait for their full realization in
132
to
Saint Paul
at peace with
and be
to ourselves, as
He
imputes to
and
He
are
to us
not yet
in ourselves,
rest the
but
in Jesus Christ.
we
In proportion as
we
with God upon real grounds to be found in ourselves, will our relations with Him, our peace, be weak and
low and
all
fluctuating.
In proportion as
we
rest
it
upon
in
what our
that
faith
is
infinite
He
and we are
is
in
Him
now be
may be
future in
its
existence in us but
hope or assurance of future glory: Let us know and enjoy now the peace of being on terms of the most
unrestricted access to
let
us
did
final
know that these terms could not exist if they not mean and look forward and lead up to the
and full glory of a real spiritual oneness with God, no longer existing only in Another for us, but in ourselves in The Other. The expression Glory of God, as that which we are exhorted to rejoice in the hope
of,
that
we
give
completed, as sanctification
participation,
glory begun.
It is full
no longer only
and pur-
and completion
of that blessedness,
no longer
133
all
now,
our
own through
Christ in us.
And
much
at peace with
to be as
actually
upon which
and
which
it
consists.
We may
is
be
so,
Christ,
we may
what
hope that we
shall
be in
ourselves
that
now we
are only in
Him.
But now
shall
we
the relation to
God
real participation
and
identity
.''
that
it
may pass
to be effected or accomplished to
How
Christ for us
become Christ
imputed
same righteousness
?
imparted?
How,
in a word,
is
Let
me
pause for a
moment
to
we
are
now
talking about.
am
not
we know.
is
Here or elsewhere
tically
life
with
its
means or ends
is
prac-
the same.
The
am
can
wherever I am,
if
but be
my
sole
am
to
be
134
to
Saint Paul
My
glory or
my
heaven
is
me
I
now.
And
or
know
not,
way
means
of attaining or securing
worth
or anywhere
else.
The great value of what St. Paul may be expressed in this truth that
:
has
now
to tell us
the only
way from
faith to fruition,
to
what we
shall attain
from what we believe in and aim at and be, from life in Christ for
is
us to the
life
of Christ in us,
the
way
of suffering.
The many
only as the
salvation,
sons of
God
One
was
brought
by
is,
being
of
made
the
is
perfect
tritest
through sufferings.
This
course,
common
St.
that in
Paul's treatment of
than
of the matter.
wont to see into the reason or philosophy Even Christians are in the habit of speaking of the existence of trial and suffering and of evil in general as a mystery of which we can have no
are
we
we may
is
it is
But
St.
Paul's philosophy
not
good
to us,
by the power
Rather
is it
135
is
is
won
is
against,
if it
victory over,
an opposite
ill.
Pleasure,
is
not
at least de-
Virtue or true
manhood
its
is
every inch of
it
not
merely
Jesus
denial
won by but
was
of
as
and annulment
its
opposite, sin, as
itself
was
through a
of
life
God.
We
we might
conceive of a
spiritual,
in the
world as
it is.
St.
we
which to express the philosophy of pain, temptation, and trial, not merely as existing and as what we have to hve in spite of, but as necessary to us and what we have to live by means of. It is a vindication or justification of the fact that the divinest as well as
most
human
act,
had
to
and suffering. and circumstances of our own existence, in which all the most extreme contrasts and contradictions meet and contend, and for which there is no possible explanation but that it
the most inconceivable humiliation,
It is
an interpretation of the
facts
136
is
to
Saint Paul
life.
we rejoice in the hope of our future glory, then must we rejoice likewise in the necessary steps or means
peace
by which that glory is to be achieved, in all the passive and active experiences through which it is to be won.
It is
what Christ
of the
in themselves
may be
end attained by them, but that every trial endured and act performed in and for Christ enters
and forms a part of the glory that is His and that thus becomes ours. Christ already in us by faith the hope of glory becomes Christ in us in fact the substance and reality of glory, only in the enduring with His power of survival and in the acting with His assurance and certainty of achievement and attainment.
constituently into
we
what
He
He
and
endured, in what
He
did and
how He
same things in the same way, same things in and with the self-same grace and power. That was the glory of Christ and that is the only sharing in His glory which
rejoice in enduring the
in accomplishing the
we have warrant
hope
of.
Let us
more passive
137
such a survival
itself
of,
whatever
may
the
and
power over evil can be nothing else than dependence in and the power of the opposite and opposing good. There is no hatred of the devil but the love of God, and there is no power over evil but the power of good. The next term expresses yet more clearly the reflex effect in and upon ourselves of the right withstanding of the evil without ourselves. The right reaction upon
our environment will produce within ourselves a quality,
settled character,
scarcely
be expressed by any
word
is
at our
it
com-
mand.
designates
reached than
it
the result
itself
of the process.
Indeed
does not
express so much.
The
not one
mere
one of true
determining or making.
in
in
and through
How may we
138
to
Saint Paul
of having
met
all
the conditions,
tests,
and
trials of hfe,
and
of
upon them,
acted as
ical
that
is,
upon and
we
ought.
This
of the word used here and generally to describe the true and right effect upon and in us of the divine disciphne of Ufe. Now, says St. Paul, when we have thus endured, and been thus disciplined and proved, or in the process of being thus disciplined and proved, hope is wrought in us. Faith is of something in God, hope is of something in ourselves. We have faith in what God is to us and in us, we have hope in what we shall become in God. It is only in the stress and trial of our own
actual becoming,
it is
God
hope
is.
them
above
as
all
we know
hope.
we cannot know
this
And
it
cannot merely
as well
be
defeated
or
because what
as faithful
God
has promised
and
we have
Stattis of the
Christian Believer
itself is
139
as indestructible
satisfying
shall
which we
and sufficient, the one only thing in not come to permanent spiritual and
intellectual confusion.
moral as well as
More
specifically,
Hope maketh
is
God
shed abroad
is
given
unto
us.
God
But,
constantly
if
sensible
and
receptive.
this love of
God
is
by the Holy Ghost not only imparting but imparted, we may be sure that it will be in us a love of God of which we shall be the subjects as well as the objects, a love with which we shall ourselves love as well as be loved. For after all we are really blessed and saved not so much in that which we have freely received as in that which we as freely give. God for us and to us
is
only as
God
in us.
XI
Through
whom
we
also
grace wherein
stand.
access
by
For through
Father.
Ephesians
Him.
Him we
II. 18.
In
whom we
faith in
Ephesians HI.
Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God; being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit. Forasmuch then as Christ
suffered in the flesh,
arm ye
same mind;
for
longer should live in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the wiU of
God.
Pkter hi.
18,
and
4, 1, 2.
Much more
then, being
by His blood, shaU we be saved from the wrath of God through For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. Romans V. 8, 10.
Him.
XI
WISH
and
especially of
some typical and use of words, the words most characteristic of and
I will select
order of his
own argument.
He speaks of our access to God through Jesus Christ Through whom we have had our access by faith into this grace wherein we stand. He says elsewhere, too. Through Him we both (Jew and Gentile) have our
access in one Spirit unto the Father.
And
in
again, In
whom we
Peter
there
is is
confidence
The
essential positions,
and
light
one passage
in
it
of this access.
to
:
a bringing
He
might bring us
God.
Now
let
what
all
this bringing us to
For
after
and nothing
144
else,
to
it
Saint Paul
helps us to under-
stand
It certainly is
and on the other extreme it cannot ultimately mean anything short of the most real spiritual or personal bringing. In fact, distance from God is both constituted and measured by sin, and conversely approach It is our sin that separates us to Him by holiness. from Him and our holiness that approximates us to Him. We are approximated by becoming assimilated. And Jesus Christ brought us to God, or reconciled us to God, or at-one-d us with God, in the first instance, by actually bringing us our nature, our Ufe, our
selves,
in
His
into person
God, and so abolishing the enmity and annihilating the distance between us. How did He do this? By the personal act of His own human holiness. In that
act He, in Himself
first,
He was
not, as
the act by
all in
Him.
Neither did
or in the nature
Him
for us,
and by us
in
possible,
and
of
way in which alone human holiness by union through faith of God with Himself Himself with God; and so He opened and way
Him.
of holiness not for Himself alone
established a
but for
all in
if
145
(in
we hold
our confidence
Him)
More
definitely,
according to
St.
Peter,
we were
brought to
by the act which he describes as a being put to death in the flesh and being quickened That death in the flesh and life in the in the spirit. spirit is, as we shall more and more see, St. Paul's formula for both what was accomplished in our Lord and is to be accomplished in us if we are to know in Him the full reality of our salvation. Whether St. Peter here uses the words in the full sense of St. Paul may be a question. He certainly seems to include that sense when, a little farther on, he says Forasmuch then
in Christ
:
God
arm ye
also yourselves
sin; that
ye no longer should
flesh to the lusts of best, I repeat again
men, but
God.
We
and resurwhat needs to take place in ourselves in the completing and completeness of our stand and attitude against sin and for God and His holiness and righteousness. When I say that our bringing to God by and in
and
rection
when we
interpret
it
in terms of
its
God
by personal assimilation with Him, I am so far from affirming that the word implies or expresses all this in the three passages quoted from St. Paul himself, that
146
to
Saint Paul
what
I wish to
does not do so
is
just
Our
access to
God
in the sense in
which he means
it is
very
The
the key to
St.
The
interall
pretation which I
difficulties is as follows:
itself
There is no discrepancy in the meaning of the thing under discussion; the differences are all in our
The
thing
itself,
our
it is
nothing more
nor
less
from
sin, resurrection
from death.
And
all
these can
else
be nowhere
re ipsa
else for
all
than these in
be
God
proposes to us
as the
We
is
what
and
see ourselves.
and in that For He is God's promise and fulfilment and revelation to us of us all. The end of God's Gospel to us all and every one is all that Jesus Christ
glorified,
us. But, if we do not we do see One crowned One we are bidden of God to
147
And He
is
to us the
Way
as well as the
Truth and the Life. He is the revelation to us not only of the end but of the process or means of our salvation. He was perfected as we need to be perfected, and we can be perfected only as He was, through the action upon us of the world as it is and the manner and character of our own reaction with and upon and against it. Now it was St. Paul's peculiar mission and function to represent the obligations and claims of faith. The essence of spiritual action is to know and believe God. When our Lord said, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God shall man live, He meant, Man shall not live by sense alone, by nature alone, or himself alone, but by Him of whom all these and all else are but signs and outward expressions. Jesus Christ Himself differed from all others and all things else in that He alone was the direct, immediate Word Itself or Personal manifestation and expression To believe Him was in a peculiar and absoof God. As St. John expressed it. lute sense to believe God. Not to beUeve Him was directly and absolutely to make God a har. Now vsdth St. Paul as much as with St. John, Jesus Christ was at once God's word and
reality
of ourselves,
What God
faith
vsdll
so
says
life.
A
is
true
and
right
He
we and we
are
He
ia
sight of
148
to
Saint Paul
in the sight of
be
for
what is faith but a taking God at His word, and seeing and meaning as He sees and means ?
Of
is
course, then,
God treats us
and
is
as being
in us.
all
that Christ
for us
and
to us
to
be
And
us,
taking
ourselves as
God
Him
God
shall
make
but
is
deeply content to
come
to
Him
for
what
He
will take
this
It is this
immediate access,
and upon Jesus Christ alone as our ground of acceptance and of loving filial union and communion with God, that
constitutes
what
St.
Paul describes as
this
state of
grace in which
we
stand.
thing.
When God
it is
or
our
own
not only
reckoned or accounted
is
Christ's
risen,
His humanity.
We
Him, and
so,
Not only
but the
we
what we
are in
process
and
and falls in with the other terms, in Theology says that to righteous or
in tenses of
must be used
We
we
are
149
But Church
how
does
St.
at Corinth
at that time a specially advanced body in actual spiritual attainment as those who had been and were sanctified in Christ Jesus and so were called to be or to become holy. That is to say, they were called or treated as being holy in Christ Jesus, and at the same time were recognized as not being and called to become holy in themselves. This illustrates what I have said about its being a matter
not
Paul look at
it ?
He describes
the
When
shall
is
real
and
is
complete
we
we
viewed as
one of
and apart as yet from any actual sanctification through Him, His holiness, as His righteousness and everything else that is humanly His, is accounted or reckoned or treated as ours and consequently spoken of as being completed. The more modem complete distinction of justification and sancfaith only,
tification
is
At the same time it is useful if not and only needs to be guarded and underThe different points of view represented by stood. the terms cannot but be kept in mind, and as a matter of fact run all the way through the argument immethought.
necessary,
diately before us.
may be
The
love of
all
God which
is
and
cause of
constitutes
150
to
Saint Paul
relied
may be
love of
it,
upon
for
God
antedates
If when we were ungodly it on our part. and unrighteous, helpless subjects and slaves of our
sins,
God
own
grace, apart
from any
then and
God
He
receives us
relationship
filial
if all this
so, can or will He fail us in what remains, the task and attainment of our actual salvation ? The distinction is kept up between our salvation in faith and our salvation in fact, and the argument is that if God so gave Christ objectively to our faith He may be trusted to give Him subjectively in our Uves. Whether objec-
be
tively,
lives,
our
do not
as
own
all
We
in
believe in
Him
at
all if
we do not beUeve
Him
Justification
and
two things
on our part
to
it.
The
thing
is
151
part are,
(l)
that
apprehended
and
appropriated to ourselves by
ness;
complete-
upon which God accepts and treats us as actually possessing it; this is what is meant by our justification, or our status of present peace and fellowship with God; and (2) that righteousness, which is Jesus Christ Himself, through the constant association and participation of faith with Him, gradually but actually imparting Himself to us so as to become to us not only a righteousness in which we believe but one which at least we begin to possess; this is what in process or progress we call our sanctification, and when it is completed it will be our glory or glorification.
Seeing, says St. Paul, that prior to anything whatever
God
all
that
was involved
been thus
through
justified in
Him
from wrath?
in another
we were enemies we were reconciled to how much more having been thus reconciled shall we be saved in His life? In these two ways of stating it we have, first, the objecttive relation to Christ and consequent status with God
way. If when
God by
expressed in the terms justified and reconciled. That means that God accepts Christ as our righteousness
or as our reconciliation or at-one-ment with Himself,
152
to
Saint Paul
as at one with
accepts Christ as
Him and as righteous. In this God what He actually and literally is,
humanity actually
righteous;
wholly at
at one with Himself and actually and He accepts us as in faith and hope one with Him and become righteous, because
we
be actually
so.
We We
here
to say
death or blood;
is
enough
meaning
The and the life He Uves It could not be said that in His is a life to God. death our sins are dead, if there were not sufficient
that in Christ's death our sins are dead.
death
He
sin,
to
Neither
could
we
in fact there
may
actually
become our death and His Ufe our hfe. have to learn more of as we proceed.
This way we
Him,
is,
in St. Paul's
two ways of
stating
it,
Him
These two mous or equivalent. To be vrith St. Paul, as I hope more to be saved from what may
saved in His hfe.
the natural consequences of
saved from wrath means and more clearly to show, as truly be described as sin as they are, from the
153
by him
of view, represented
To
say
sinneth
of sin
it
shall die, or to
and death, as cause and consequence, as a law may be equally truly the language of scientific fact and the expression of divine action. Of course something depends upon what we shall see to be St. Paul's meaning of death. Read again the latter half of the first chapter of this Epistle to the Romans, to see that
the penalty of sin
is sin itself; its
curse
is
that
it
breeds
more and more of itself, and the death and hell to which it is condemned are nothing but itself multiplied and left to itself. Consequently I say that to be saved
from wrath
fife; it is
itself,
is
to
in the life
itself also.
which as death
death
XII
ADAM
As through one man sin entered into the world, and death through for until and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned: the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed where there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not siimed after the likeness of Adam's transgression who is a figure of Him that was to come. So then as through one trespass the Judgment came unto all men
sin;
came unto
all
men
to justification of
life.
many were made sinners, even so through one shall the many be made righteous. And
might abound; but where
came
abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly: that, as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness
unto eternal
life
Romans V. 12-14
and 18-21.
xn
THE FIRST AND THE LAST ADAM
It is not essential to St. Paul's truth or argument what he thought or what we may think of his illustrations as historical facts. All we want of them is what of pertinence or of help there may be in them as illustrations.
His object
is
means of them. It is the something that concerns us, and not the symbol or parable or example
thing by
it.
We
ourselves within
tradi-
and natural
fact
which
we once thought part of our religious faith, and have made for ourselves the oft-repeated discovery that the
removal of the things that are shaken does not involve
the change of those that
may
not be shaken.
that he used
It is
them
in
expression
and
cannot
change. I will endeavour to confine myself to what of permanent and unchangeable truth is expressed for us
in the
The
now
is
our
158
to
Saint Paul
The
was the Hfelong and death-completed one of His conquest of sin, or, viewed on its positive side, the
resurrection-completed one of His victory of holiness
and
life.
The
question
all ?
is,
how can
be the act of us
this is
The
How
all,
is it
the act of us
so that
all
but that
He Himself
one with us
that, not
all;
and each
of us can speak
and
we
ought
How
all ?
in
a word
and
This
is
itself,
is
a resemblance
may be
it.
of help to us in apprehending
or in explaining
holiness
We
and our
life
let
our death, or
how
they come.
here,
by
spoken
of, as vital to
The
death
is
is,
and the
life
is
St.
Now,
the Last
Adam
159
come?
man.
and
sins,
and
dies as one
we
call this
fall, because not sin and death but and hfe are its true law and liberty and blessedness, then humanity fell or is fallen as one man. Let us call that one Adam, Man, Humanity. Then we say that, in Adam all fell, all sin, all die. It makes no difference whether we say that his act was the act of all, or that, because the act of all was in fact one, we merely express that fact by representing it as his
act or condition a
holiness
act.
The
in
its
truth
is
simply
is
this, that
our sin in
its
origin
and
universaHty
sin,
Humanity's
pants of
It
it.
and
partici-
would remove
V. 12,
several difficulties
and not
argument
at all
if,
in
Rom.
we should
entered entered
And when he
Paul meant was in what he said. He continues. For until the law sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed when there is no Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until law. Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the Let us put all this likeness of Adam's transgression.
ask, not as yet
St.
sinned, I
men,
how much
how much
of truth there
160
to
Saint Paul
Since
Adam,
that
is,
since
sin
sin
And
consequences
or in
who had
not them-
selves, or personally,
committed
sin.
sin in
actually
do not
Paul expresses
when and
sin.
is,
where there
sin
is
is
no law; that
the matter of
is
But
the
not imputed
sin.
when
there
no law; that
form of
or that
It is the
to sin,
sin
is
makes
itself;
sin sinful.
it is
We
informed, until
knows or underbe
it is
to
it
to
sinful
it is
sinful; to
not,
not
sinful.
But
it, it is
the same in
might
call
When
until
St.
Paul says
(that
that.
Moses
is,
pose
that
we
is
take death to
mere law of nature but only what is consequence of sin. As a matter of fact, do not the effects of sin
who
are innocent of
the Last
it
Adam
161
or
who
are ignorant of
?
formally sinful
As
would veiy much Hghten up St. Paul's whole teaching and thought if we assumed that generally he does not mean by death the physical change, but only the spiritual quality and consequences which sin has attached
to
it.
What
else
does he
mean when he
sting of death
is sin.
becomes a blissful and blessed change, a birth or an awakening to something higher and better. Now it is the office of the law to inform sin in both ways or senses. It makes sin sinful in the very act of
sense.
It
its
When
he knows the
law whether
sinfulness.
in nature or in
and recognizes its sanctions and obligations, then he knows sin as sin and becomes not only materially but
formally or really sinful.
I say really, because sin as
such
it is
is
known
That
and
sin is not
is
as sin
as such,
in the
when there is nothing that reveals it to him and also that God does not regard it as sin
such.
itself
makes
though
But
still,
to repeat
said,
the act in
it
or in the matter of
sin of the
sinful even
be not the
man, and
its effects
are
162
to
Saint Paul
a fact that
sin
it is
who have
not
been guilty of
simile as
sin of their
St. Paul's
we can
see
and
There
say,
if
is
a transgression or a
fall of
of
which we may
fall of all,
fall
of
all is
One
common
and moral catastrophe involves us all, so that not only without exception do the innocent share with the guilty the actual effects and penalties of sin, but sooner or later all share the sin and the
spiritual
guilt itself.
We
than
it
actually goes,
it
further
than
we
goes.
Neither do I
mean
thought or science
But
the thing
had and
to
all in
it
a particular time,
it is
pressed from
some
some of the transient aspects of the time. There are contrasts as well as comparisons between the ways in which we stand related to the act and person of Adam on the one side and those of Christ on the other. It would make our treatment unnecessarily difficult if I
St.
Paul
his
which we can
all
the Last
Adam
The
great
163
all-
be brought out by the comparison is this All that can be compressed and expressed in that one term The Fall of Man is potentially reversed by
more that is meant by the Resurrection or RedempMan. By the fall let us understand only what we know to be spiritual matter of fact within our own experience: our universal subjection to the power and penalties of sin; death viewed not as an event and a
the
tion of
and the curse belonging not to the thing but to what sin has made it, just as what we
come
to
mean not
it
converts
there are,
fall
sensuous experience.
and tangibly into even our just what the fall has been the death and a general or universal act and fact
visibly
Now
is
in reversal.
All that
happened to man as Adam or to man in Adam is reversed or undone by what man has done as Christ or by what man has done in Christ. The Resuricction or Redemption means: the power of sin over us destroyed; the entail of death broken; the
sin in the flesh replaced
bondage of
by the freedom of the spirit This general result of the of life in Christ Jesus. work of Jesus Christ as the author and representative
of
human
redemption, as
Adam
fall, is
164
more
to
Saint Paul
we have
been considering.
As
the
fall
was as a
single act
it is
tion in consequence of
a single universal
in
and
fact.
The
Adam
left
us in a state of
Ungodand unrighteousness reigned supreme, and the wrath of God was revealed as a just judgment upon them in the self-inflicted penalties they brought upon themselves. The law came in with all its awful sanctions and demands, not with the expectation or the effect of working a cure, but only more and more to reveal and intensify the situation and so to prepare for the one only effectual remedy and help. That remedy came in Jesus Christ, and was manifested and
spiritual, moral,
liness
proclaimed as including in
consequences
all
Him
who were
its
involved in Adam's
As
a state of universal
a proclamaand status of universal justification or acquittal, based upon the sole necessary condition of a proper sense of our sin and death in Adam and of our holiness, righteousness, and hfe in Jesus Christ. The proper sense of the one is repentance and of the other is faith. These two spiritual attitudes, by the grace of God working through them, will of themselves work
reversal begins with
tion in us the death to sin
condemnation, so
and the
life
to
God which
is is
the
an
The
First
and
the Last
Adam
165
God and an
invitation to
own
all
Christ's or that
is
that so
making
it
our
own
and hope
will
it
be to
make
upon
it
fact.
How
is
will
do
only touched
which
will
chapters.
The
further developed
Our
Whether
how much
that
another matter;
relation with
may be the case with Adam also is we are certainly not now in personal
same way
Christ.
a personal Adam in anything like the which we are so with a Uving and personal We might make out a case in order to push
in
it
can be
made
upon
if
any such
there
race,
is
forcing.
There
is,
however, a generic
We
are
all in
the
as an individual.
We
its
have participated
fortunes,
have shared
all
It is
behind
it
that lives in us
acts in us through
is
most that
we
in
Our
relation to Christ
certainly analogous,
however far
it
may be from
being identical.
We
are
Adam
naturally
necessarily per-
sonally;
we
are in
personally.
We
share what
we
are in
Adam
quite
166
to
Saint Paul
share
consciousness and
self in
We
sary to
all
know Adam
that
Adam
is.
Adam
is
in us as an
sort,
impersonal nature.
just precisely
St.
Something of
is
this
is
though
what
hard to define,
contained in
Paul's distinction:
The
spirit.
The
it
soul
is
although
may
as in
man become
personal.
So we
But
human
soul.
the spirit
is
essentially
through freeing
raising itself
itself
from
sin
and was
raised in
the act of us
to
in
it
but to Him.
in
Him
and
because
He
is
in us in
and
and
initial act
Him
will
be accounted by us
as
the Last
Adam
167
The one act of righteousness was Imputed to all men for righteousness, because the one man's obedience or righteousness was to make the many men
righteous.
The way
of here
in
is
it
spoken
fact that
was as
own
righteousness that
He redeemed and
as a
mere
XIII
What shall we say then ? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may God forbid. We who died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein ? Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into
abound ?
Christ Jesus were baptized into His death
fore with
?
We were
buried there-
Him
from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him by the likeness of TTis death, we shall be also by the likeness of His resurrection; knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no
raised
is
justified
from
But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also hve with Him; knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more hath dominion over Him. For the death that
He died, He died
unto God.
Even
imto sin once: but the Ufe that He Uveth, He liveth so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin
in Christ Jesus.
God
xin
THE CHRISTIAN
Our
IN CHRIST
He
in
of His once
performed for
us,
that
It is true that in
consequence
of that act
It is only as the act of Christ becomes not only imputatively our act through faith, but also really our act
That Christ died for us is everything to us if it means our dying with Him; it is less than nothing at all to us if His death and ours. He and we, are not, or are
not to be, so conjoined.
Christ did for us and the
fatal
halt.
The
co-crucifixion,
and
conthe
Now how
are
we
to
apprehend
this
is
ourselves,
and
what
172
shall
to
Saint Paul
and end
In order that
we may
it
will
be necessary to
reflect
St.
The death
that
He
It
Now
what
part,
mere physical
sonal act.
fact;
it
must be a moral,
spiritual, per-
St.
and construe by St.Paul himself and by St. Peter, we will remember, speaks
spirit. Now the more more we know that we were not brought to God by the mere fact of Christ's having been put to death in the body and having Uved again after the body, or in a resurrection body. But St. Peter himself makes it plain for us by going on to say
we
the
To
go no
the
mind
of our
bodily expression of
its
ments that
main point and the essential thing. Moreover, and what is of more consequence still, the mind of Christ in the matter is that which ought to be
is
the
173
of humanity
is
mind
is its is
He
divine repre-
What
that right
:
mind
hath
died
or,
in the
sin.
hmit of suffering
further expHcated
suffering,
and humanity from sin. The thing to be the meaning and character of that
of that death.
and consequently
Jesus Christ
them
all;
which
He
could be only
through a
human
The
sin-
be a painless experience.
condition,
overcome without
The
Scriptures do not
only directly state that our Lord's immunity from sin was a painful victory over sin, that He was perfected by means of the things He suffered and through sucthey no less distinctly cessful suffering of the things, testify that there was that in Him which He needed to deny, to mortify, to crucify; He had to resist unto blood striving against sin; He had to call as we with strong crying and tears upon Him that was able to save from death, and was heard for His godly faith
and
fear;
He
bitter
174
to
Saint Paul
His
human
and
the
subjection to the
human
condi-
tions of holiness
we have
now
sin
before
us
comprehensive
statement
that
of
Christ's death
was the
man
whose death in Him and in us is a'ike the condition and the very act and fact of all human salvation and
life.
It will
He
He
no
less
and
possibilities of sin
human
and righteousness
of
and causes
Just as
human
sinfulness
and unrighteousness.
its
is
the explanation
and account
it
of our
human
Lord's
of sin
own human
subjection to
in
all
these circumstances
is
the
account of
alone our
human holiness. If our holiness must be own victory over our conditions as to sin, as
a yielding to and being subjected by those
our sin
is
of
become our must have been just the reverse and the reversal what our own had been it was a not yielding to or
:
175
a victory
Peter's words,
are sinful
we might
The
flesh
which
is
its
us the
it
rest,
was
actually
without sin in
jection
Him
because in
He
and abolished that sin. He did this, moreover, precisely as we must do it, not by the will of the flesh or by the will of man not even by the will of His own matchless manhood but by that grace which is the power of God working in us through faith to the overcoming of sin in the production of holiness. But St. Paul's choice of a word carries us further than
St.
Peter's.
According to the
latter,
to
have died in
means it, is to have ceased from sin. We only conjecture when we undertake to say how much further his meaning goes than simply that of
the flesh, as he
physical death.
I have carried
it
Paul's
language
is
less
open
is
to uncertainty.
justified
He
says that
from
sin.
The
death
which
is
must with much more explicit or expressed necessity be a distinctively spiritual and moral death. The ground and meaning of that netification
from
sin
176
cessity
to
Saint Paul
will
to understand.
It is impossible that
we
which can be
can
a ground
justifica-
justify
our
St.
The
is
even
Paul can
it is
preach
justification of
which
I say
that
means, taking
that
When
God
is
cannot do a thing I
mean simply
He
what
absurd or
who through
the law
neither
God be
justified.
He who however
sinful
comes
to
sin
and the beginning of a love and want of holiness can be justified, because he has arrived at the point of
becoming, not worthy or deserving, but susceptible
it.
of
Now
faith,
whether
it
be the
initial justification
with
and
177
From
the beginning
must mean and in the end it must be that which in its totality and completion cannot be expressed otherwise than as a death to sin and a new life in and to God. There is the sin and the sinner in every one of us to be resisted unto extinction, to be denied, mortified, There is, potential if not actual, in every crucified.
one of us a
firmed,
spirit,
a nature, a
life
of hohness, a personal
and brought
to perfection.
There
is
no
justi-
which
sanctification itself
from
which mean from the beginning the death to sin and The definition of any thing whatever
that which defines
its
it
not in
its
process or progress
alone but in
end or completeness.
is
it is
The
death and
because
human
of
all justification
brought to perfection
that but
condition
is,
re-
it is
the
He
true
of
it
though
is
it
be as yet only
as though already
dead to
his
He
and truer sense of having brought it to the actual reality of an accomplished and finished death to sin
178
and
to
Saint Paul
to
God,
will
know
and the
glory
much
Christ's
and not
his
own
he
who
who
sin
has died
of
but been
his sin.
St.
Paul had
If
then and
our salvation
is
we
are already
upon
is it
God upon
faith
rest
a natural disposition in us to
though
were
all.
If
we
are saved
we
are
and we have only to go on believing that we are saved, and continuing otherwise as we are. The
saved,
general
answer to
all
such mental
fallacies
is
the
more than a mere logical distinction between a grace of God which is objective to and for us and one which is subjective in and with us. There is no Christ for us really separate or separable from Christ in us. Baptism into His death and resurrection for us is nothing except as it is also and equally baptism into our own dying and rising with Him. We must not conceive of the possibility of any real difference in the things, however it may be possible or even necessary to separate them
insistence
upon an obhteration
of anything
in thought.
The
root principle of
it all is
179
Our
cannot
be things without us; they are determined and constituted solely by ourselves and our personal activities.
Not my
really
I only
only
my
true,
and
self.
It is impossible to
under-
stand
St.
his conception of
God, as
Adam is
ourselves in nature.
man
of heaven.
of the earthy,
we
shall
For that which is bom of the flesh is flesh, and that which is bom of the spirit is spirit. As we are one with Adam, and what he is, by fact of nature; so by God's grace, which
image of the heavenly.
we one
to
He
is,
by act
of spirit.
The
we
shall
Baptism has
distinction
to
do with
it.
And
for as
He
and
as our own.
Christianity to
has occurred to
180
to
Saint Paul
if
me
us
we could
really
that
it
means,
possess for
and in ourselves all that Christ is as our righteousness and our salvation. Baptism doth represent unto us to be made hke unto our our profession, which is Saviour Christ; that as He died and rose again for us, so should we who are baptized die from sin and rise
repre-
does
much more
It
is
St.
Paul.
God's
own
and
profession;
Spirit
into the
life
consequently a
burial with Christ not only into His death but into a
power
of His living.
we can
what He
is
to us
in
Him;
represen-
They
are
it
be cast and to be given shape. They are God's specific and distinctive Word to us of Himour faith
is
to
self in us and ourselves in Him in Christ. But let us remember what a Word of God is. It not only means, but in itself and to faith is, what it means. If the
181
mean
and
to ourselves.
It is only the
Word
to say,
means but
God.
is
what
is
it
means; that
of
we
made members
is
only a similar
to
which it is the sign; that what we offer to God in it and receive from God in it is not a memory or memorial only of Christ, but is Christ Himself ahke the object of our faith and the substance of our hfe. As a word of man cannot do more than represent, a word of God on the contrary cannot do less than be. That which from any one else could not be more than figurative, from God cannot be only figurative. Suppose that all Christians could and would in the truest and best sense simply and sincerely take God at His word; that their
of
faith could
word
makes them.
know
by the power
all
of
God
in
Him
the truth
and so
? Would not now too much lost to the Christian Church, much sought after outside her pale, be at once ?
restored to her
Men want
a Gospel which
is
indeed
the power of
to
God
unto salvation.
know
first
what
182
to
Saint Paul
them
in
no doubt that
believe
it is
from God.
Why
it
in the
Church?
not because
believe in
we do not
God?
Not
that
we do not
to believe in
Him
means anything at all to us as the Word of God, He means God in us as in Him, He means God our own actual righteousness and our own actual hfe. If Baptism means anything at all to us, it means the oneness of Christ with ourselves and of ourselves with Christ. It means the reahty of Christ's death as ours and of ours in Him, the reality of His resurrection as ours and of ours with Him. If it means all this, how much of all this is it with us and in us? Why the immense difference and distance between what our Christianity is and what Christianity means? Is not the fault all, not in what God is to us in Christ, but in the response which our faith makes to Him in Christ?
Now
that
if
we
God
at His
Word
is
ourselves in Christ
what are we
one
may
individually
tianity to be,
and of himself conceive Chrisbut what our Lord Himself has given
to
life.
This
is
what
St.
Paul
sets
Baptism
means
to
him but
is
to
him
183
own, which
the dead.
which actually makes what is Christ's his is in him too the very power and reahty
and
Christ's resurrection
from
chapter his
its
XIV
Are ye ignorant, brethren, how that the law hath dominion over a so long as he livethP For the woman that hath a husband is bound by law to the husband while he liveth; but if the husband die she is discharged from the law of the husband. So then if, while the husband Uveth, she be joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress, but if the husband die, she is free from the law, so that she Wherefore, is no adulteress, though she be joined to another man. my brethren, ye also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ; that ye shovdd be joined to another, even to Him who was raised from the dead, that we might bring forth fruit unto God. For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were through the law, wrought in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that wherein we were holden; so that we serve in newness of the spirit, and not
man
XIV
possible,
and
if
so,
how
is it
And
him
the law to a
man
is
of that obligation,
of what he ought
it.
upon him
not only
what we ought
it
to be,
it,
emphasizes
must be our own. It is our own conscious, voluntary, and actual being ourselves that constitutes us persons and that attaches any value or worth to our being such. There is no better place to insist upon this highest and purest conception of law than in the part of the Apostle's argument that Elsewhere and in certain conneclies just before us. tions St. Paul speaks of the law in lower and more
partial senses, as Jewish, ritual, or ceremonial, formal
or Uteral,
universal.
etc.
but here
it is
And
indeed with
187
Paul there
is
but one
188
law
to
Saint Paul
of
the
persons.
There are many more or less partial aspects, mental, ritual, moral forms of law forms but at bottom or in themselves all these mean one and the same thing, and it is only our misuse or perversions of them that rob them of the deeper understanding and higher respect that properly belong to them. There is no single aspect, or form, or even letter of law that our Lord Himself and St. Paul after
expressions,
is
mean what
all
law means
right
But here
we
loose
from
all partial
How
is it
we
shall
own
more
own
it is
true
and
right self?
and the
purity
it is conceived by us in its highest and truth, and in the inviolabihty of its absolute claim upon us that is the author of our curse and the minister of our death. It and it alone is the
That which
in
itself, if fulfilled, is
the most
and constituent of life, cannot but be, if unfulfilled, the cause and condition of death. And this is the more so the more distinctively the Ufe and death in question are personal, spiritual, moral; that is to say, the more consciously.
Not Under
freely, feelingly, the
the
life
Law
or death
is
189
but the
law of
mode
about to
elucidated
may we
ourselves,
of
all
its
fatal
consequences,
The duahty
more or less latent or patent in every moral personality which the argument before us now begins to unfold is
neither an invention nor a discovery of St. Paul.
It
way
human
nature and
human
It exists in
So
far, therefore,
from being
no
less of
hohness; for
it is
and character in us at all. St. Paul's distinction between the natural and the spiritual man in us is not one in itself
possibility of
of sinfulness or holiness.
If there
spiritual
man we
in us.
because the
organ of holiness, or of
But if
is
be incapable of
man
fault
The
original
not
the
but
fact
of nature or of
what we
call
190
to
Saint Paul
natural man, what St. John calls the will of the flesh
is
deficiency or insufficiency.
flesh,
we
ideals.
It
was not
us.
itself
be able to make
They
might
selves,
all
nor
final.
One
But we do do
so,
and
cannot but do so; and so far from any even true theory
or conception of the deficiency or insufficiency of our
own powers
of of
human human
inability
and
to higher conceptions
If there is
and
sense
it is
obligation.
is
paradox
in this,
a paradox which
because
The
Christian explanation
it is
is
deficient
made
be more
can be
than
it
can become of
we
only through
our
own
wills,
yet
we can be any
however paradoxical
may
Not Under
because
it
the
Law
191
does,
coexist
Let
it
what
whatever
is
essential to the
and our spirituality, or our transcendence of our nature and ourselves through union with God in Christ, that God has made possible, whether or no it
is
so in itself or
we can
sinful
see
it
to
be
so.
Nature,
of
the flesh,
by
St.
Paul as
spoken
It is
with us
now
not
God.
there
spiritual
is
But as within every natural man there is a man, potential or actual; so in every sinner
a
saint, in possibility if
not in actuality.
And
spiritual sensation
less
and perception,
may be and
within
is
him
in
more or
holy.
men
and
of sinful
and
For
as there
is
the possibility of
God
in him, so let
of the actuality of
God
in
is
the reality of
human
life,
is
not a choice,
192
to
Saint Paul
life of
And
the one
one
self
men
in each
one of
us.
There
are
whom
two
lives of
two men,
one or other of
other.
whom must
and
This
is
so universally
is
so
much
And
all
that
human life, that our Lord man if He were an exception to He was any such exception is the
thing of
things
tenour of
him.
New
He was
and
life.
human
signifi-
As
it is
man
to
know
himself except
him
to himself
to
be known by us except in exact terms of ourselves as revealed in Him. To know Christ as the spiritual man must be identical with knowing the meaning and
truth of our
own
spiritual
or
way
of spiritual
manhood
Not Under
precisely
the
Law
193
what we must go through, must suffer and do and become, in order to be spiritual men; what He went through and accompUshed in becoming what He
is, is
what humanity needs to go through with and accomplish in becoming like Him. This mutual interpretation of ourselves by Christ and of Christ by ourselves is the simplest key to the understanding of our salvation in Him. When we say that He was that in our common humanity, the being which was its justification, its sanctification, and its glorification, its redemption, completion, and perfection, we have said enough to satisfy all possible conceptions both of His person and His work; and we have at the same time so expressed it in terms of ourselves and in
in exact terms
language of our
rience
own
ideal
but
reahzable
expe-
and
He becomes
to
own salvation, behuman life and destiny. We may proceed now to St. Paul's illustration of the point for which we have been preparing, the crucial
us the comprehensible truth of our
own
law.
The
law,
we
are re-
man
as long as he lives.
How
can a
man
tion, or
be divested of
How
can
it
cease to be his
do
so.^"
How
him and
calls
him
and
life
not
194
to
Saint Paul
accept the
fails to
If
obedience and
and
fulfilment
condition, constituent,
by himself of his law is the and content of life and blesseddisobedience, non-realization,
how can
made anything
else to
How may
man
stand
his
own
and
violated
law?
is
The
only possible
way
The
knowledge of sin is the only beginning of salvation. The knowledge of sin as sin is a moral and not only an intellectual conception; it is an attitude not only of
the
mind but
of the affections
spect to
it; it is
a hatred of
sin.
no hatred
of sin that
The
sole
lies
and indispensable
in the only right
that
condition of
human
salvation
man
makers and the make-up of his heaven or his hell. God and Heaven are a Spirit, a Law, a Life; the Devil and Hell cannot be done away with, as at least symbols
of an indisputable actuality,
counter
spirit
and
law, not of
life
but of death.
Now
Not Under
present condition
is
the
Law
man
is
195
in his
whose beginning
repentance
is
the putting
away
of sin,
God
is
that
whose beginning
fulfilment
Christ.
is
is
the "
God
and we
in
God "
to
of Jesus
their
How
away
are
these beginnings
attain
how
is
repentance to be an actual
faith to
putting
of sin,
and
be indeed the
life
and
holiness of Christ?
The law
lives.
man
as long as he
who
Only death can release him from it. A woman married to a husband is bound by the law of her union and oneness with him as long as the husband is alive. Only the death of the husband could release her from that bond and justify her in uniting herself with another man. In our first or natural manhood we are indissolubly united with and under the law of the natural man. It is only in him, subject to all his conditions, bound by his natural necessities and his
is
all
or can live
fulfil
human
our law
lives.
is
The moral
human
obligation to obey or
all
the conditions of
itself life,
Obedience to
death.
it
is
in
and
violation of
When we
say
of that law,
it is
release us cannot
it
therefore devolves
is.
upon
The death
of the
196
first
to
Saint Paul
husband is the deatt in us of the natural man; and the natural man is regarded in his special and
What
is
that relait
both in what
Is
is
it
actually
it
he Uving
said but
in
is
not
only
shall
true that.
it?
Kve in and by
one alternative,
impossible that
he must die by
shall
but the
it is
But, while
we
be saved
is
in the Kfe, or in
by
the
be saved by
its
way
obligainto
suppose that
has so brought us
its
consequences,
prevision of
it
and
hohness with
its
in
and hfe, if the law should go no further, will it not have already put us upon the road and created in us the necessary condition of salvation ? But suppose it should have gone further, have gone as far as it can, and have accomplished its perfect work; suppose that under the discipline and experience of the law we shall have been brought to the extremest knowledge of the
Not Under
our natural powers and
the
Law
;
197
shall
possibilities
how then
we
shall
we
have
reached?
To
have come
to the
end
of ourselves
and
full
made
own
it and by it and found death, does not this bring us fairly up to that death of the old man, the death in ourselves, which is the one
to
human
and redemption? To have learned the lesson the law was commissioned to teach; to have been brought to the point nature and ourselves were predestined to reach; to have been thus prepared for God's
Him,
life
this is the
own eternally predetermined activity way in which the law, not through
its
in
its
but through
its
part in
bringing us Kfe.
What we mean,
the
first
then,
by the death
:
of the old
man,
in
husband
selves, or
in us, is this
As long
as
we were
our old
our
own
by
it.
selves,
we were under
the
live
either to
by our law or
to die
That
is
to say,
we were
and conelse
realizing, fulfilling
of experiencing
and
suffering
the
more and worse than merely having failed in and lost these. For moral failure or loss is something different from mere natural failure
penalties of something
198
to
Saint Paul
It is
or loss;
failure
condemnation and a
The death
it
of the old
man
in us
and
our
loss in
full
him; but
Fellowship or
participation in the death of Jesus Christ, the realization within ourselves of the
meaning and
reality of
of
His death,
the old
is
is
mere
nature,
It
man
or
Adam,
the
first
husband, the
flesh.
of
activi-
of the spirit.
The impotence
it is
or
deadness
selves.
of our-
Consequently,
made
conscious in Christ
The
to
it
gives
The
conscious-
and sense
is
of being sinful
;
is
an experience of the
death
itself for
Jesus
with,
all
life
higher than
itself;
but
all
Not Under
in
the
Law
199
His human immunity from the sin of the flesh it. was purchased only by that perfect sense of the sin
which I have described as being such a death sequence of as to be a death to and from it.
of
He
felt
humanity;
it
He
dying with
death.
by so dying
That death and resurrection of Jesus Christ was an humanity but of humanity. If our faith can meet and answer to God's grace; if we can
act not only in
see in the act of
God
in us,
Him
that with
union with
buried.
It is
we
full
him we have
felt
way
to
what we were in him, which the death to and from what we were
in
As
new husband
and
rightful
only
if
the old
life
husband
in
end, so we
his
death as death.
But
if
we have
known
the
of
meaning of
man
200
sin,
to
Saint Paul
we no
of the law.
We
its
condemnation
in
or subject to
suffered the
Have we not
sins,
and from our death ? We have died in the old man and the old life of the law and of sin and death, and we are aUve now in the new man which is Christ and which is hohness and eternal life.
and been
XV
LAW,
SIN,
AND REDEMPTION
What
beit, I
shall
we say then?
sin,
God
forbid.
Howsin,
known
ner of
Thou
man-
be unto death.
righteous
The commandment, which was unto life, this 1 found to The law is holy, and the commandment holy and
forbid.
and good.
unto
the
me ? God
Did then that which is good become death But sin, that it might be shown to be sin,
through that which is good; that through might become exceeding sinful. For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I know not: for not what I would, that do I practise; but what 1 hate, that I do. But if what I would not, that I do, I consent unto the law that it is good. So now it is no more I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in me. For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me, but to do that which is good is not. For the good which I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I practise. But if what I would not, that I do, it is no more I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in me. I find then the law, that, to me who would do good, evil is present. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our
by working death to
me
commandment
sin
Lord.
XV
LAW, SIN,
In
is
AND REDEMPTION
most
clearly his conception
all St.
of the law
and
its
operation in
human
life.
As we
have
said,
it is
and even sometimes with opprobrium; but in the main with St. Paul as it is with our Lord; the trouble
is
The law
its
or at any rate
We
can con-
the
will,
Only one
of these several
forms of good do
we
And
we
:
listen to
is
real
good
there
by which I mean the person, and the properly per goodness, which manifests sonal activity and
life
is
The good
of the will
itself
On
the other
hand, goodness
it is
204
to
Saint Paul
This
radical
or blessedness of
and
life.
two words good and goodness is a subconscious indication of the oneness and inseparaThere is nothing in consciousness bility of the things.
connection of the
so egoistic or individual as the sense of that primary
thing which
is
we
call
It
all pleasures
What
good passes
first
simply and easily the word word goodness, and yet what a double chasm yawns between the two things ? In the
into the
How
place goodness
is
and
loss of
it.
It is
to purest altruism,
of ourlife of
And
and
reveals
verifies itself as
the good
not only
in
good of the
will; that
is,
not only as
its
rightness or
its
righteousness, but as
its
is
truest pleasure,
happiness
or blessedness. so
This
much of the law itself as of its matter or content. The law itself might be conceived as having passed
first
good.
It quickly,
rule
205
It
and encroachments
itself in
life,
of the individual.
next manifests
and protection
of
weak by the
strong.
Among Greek
peoples the
and to a certain extent ethical or moral. With the Hebrews and the more truly developed religious consciousness and life, the law was the expression of the
will
in all
more
particu-
of
men
as a law of righteousness.
With
more
It is
all
distinctly
spiritual in
not only
personal
the rule or
mode
and of
and harmony with it. The law is not a code or a mode, but a spirit and a life. There is all the difference between law and Hfe that there was between the tables of stone and the Spirit of Jesus, or between the prophets commanding, condemning, and announcing death, and the Lord proclaiming liberty and imparting hfe. Now there is not one of these
acting in union
stages or forms of
law that
is
sary in
its
not taken up
and included
universal
Take,
indi-
of our
own
The only good as such we can know at all is our own immediate good; if we did not know that, how could we know the good
vidual
good and
egoistic pleasure.
206
to
Saint Paul
of another, or of
or of
God ?
Christianity requires
of us to love others as
we
love ourselves,
to us.
and
to
do
to
all
them
as
It builds
We
must
when we have
truly
done
then in goodness
It
we
is
own
highest good.
of
God and
man
is
goodness.
Chris-
life.
That law thus in its supreme and universal sense was in the mind of St. Paul is easy enough to prove m
the passage at present before us.
The
but
its
is
law, he says,
life
was found by me
it
to be unto death;
life;
in itself
is
is life;
actual
effect
in
me
death.
The law
holy,
and
it is
the the
commandment
occasion
if
holy, righteous,
I should not
be
sinful.
carnal, sold
under
so
my
flesh I
am
the subject of
my
true law of
holiness
and
life,
that,
on the contrary, I
am
as
much
has
market
in
is
to the master
who
bought him.
condition,
Even
higher
if
207
If
we do not
as yet
sonality of
God
it
in us, yet
do not know
to
so
know it as the spirit and perwe may know it as the ideal, and worth of ourselves. Or, if we high as that, we may know it as the
good
to ourselves, to others,
and
we may
know our law, we know that it is only an expression of what we ought to be or do, and not at all of what we actually are. Not at all what we would be are we; on the contrary, we are very much what we would not be. We consent then to the law; we recognize
and acknowledge
authority;
desire the law; I
after the
it, admit its claims and confess its more than that, I approve, admire, and
may
he
which
not,
his
lies
who
does not
who would
and enjoy
fulfil
if
could, be his
most perfect
.''
self
most
?
complete blessedness
Everything but
the
the law
thing that
is
of the law!
And why
do I not?
flesh; for in
The
difficulty is
in me, in myself, in
in
my
my natural condition, my flesh are one; in the old man or the first husband I am nothing but he and know nothing but him. Though with my reason
mere nature or
and under the law alone, I and
I
may apprehend a
and with
its
in him,
my
may
desire
attempt
realization, yet in
my
flesh I discover
know
full well
208
to
Saint Paul
true
to
to that higher
will.
consider.
What
in
is sin,
and what
is
it
ourselves
it
individually
or
personally?
To
begin
with,
is
in its
in us as one
man,
in
As
in the race so in
to the
the individual
not, in
We
or material of
in us all prior to
any consciousness
and therefore prior to any personal own; but that, since sin is essentially a personal thing, and cannot properly be said to exist outside of the consciousness and the will, that which within these would be sin, vnthout these is not so and cannot be so accounted. St. Paul declared, as we saw, that sin was universal in the world in its ravages and its natural consequences before the law even, in those therefore to whom it could not be imputed as sin, because in them it was antecedent to knowledge or
or knowledge of
it
part in
of our
will.
How
is
is
As
sin
it
that
is
innocence of
alive once;
it
St.
state, I
was
very joyous
life,
was the
of
an animal,
or
at best of a child,
is
and not that of a man. The plea sometimes made for primitive or immature races
209
be
left in their
Not
and
that
much
less
as a universal
all
races
and
and so
in innocence of sin?
There
is
state, then,
we ought
however
to be.
When
it
and
in
else it
comes,
comes
to us
;
always as a law,
then
and
was
sin
comes to
its
birth in us
that which
was
Before, sin
alive;
now
sin is
is none the less in us still was dead, or dormant, and I Not that alive and I am dead.
I at once realize
my
condition as death;
we speak
seem
of
at the
is
beginning.
no deliverance from
The law
difference
is
all; it
may appear
very
differently to us
is
and
itself
not in and our apprehensions of it upon us; and just in proportion and in its as we have been brought by it out of the innocence of mere ignorance, do we see and know that the issues of
in us
claims
it
life
or death.
210
to
Saint Paul
Was
us? but
the occasion
be
not the
in
bom
in
cause certainly,
right,
of sin;
it
came, in revealing
ception
and ideal of holiness, to uncover the meaning and actuality of sin; by showing the way of life, to awaken the consciousness and quicken the sense of
death.
Everything
life
that
belongs
to
or
constitutes
human
originates in the
moment
If his
in
man.
animal or
moment, his reason and his will, as his own and himself, come to birth and begin The end of the law is the evolution of to live in it. selfhood or personality. Formal freedom, choice, dehappiness or
life
dies in that
manhood and
own hands
or death,
all
creations of the
grow
in
us with
its
clearer revelations
us.
and
is
higher
claims and
demands upon
is
Nature
good, but
come only
for
their action in or
reaction upon things, and not in upon him. Those things are best him which, however difficult or painful or trying,
in his
own
or just because they are so, call out the truest, strongest,
211
power
from himself.
Viewing
sin as the
against us the
onistic to
directly antag-
fronts
our nature and destiny; and remembering that as surely as our own sinfulness and
us
affects
and
its activity in and upon do our holiness and life come in and through or from our meeting, overcoming, and putting
so surely
away from us, it may well appear that the law has conferred upon us, not indeed the highest boon that
it it is
inadequate to bestow
benefit,
in
For the
of
knowledge of
only way,
holiness, as the
if
conquest of sin
of holiness.
St.
The two
we awake
find
it
upon which
Paul here dwells are First, that, when through the law
to or
come
it
we
already existent.
it,
the form of
of
it.
but
We
That is, we have and transgressed the law of true and right being and living, long before the doing so was our own, or the sin of it was our sin. In that sense and to that extent we may say that sin is in us but not of us. When we come into moral being, when our own action begins, and our quality or character is ready to differentiate itself into good or bad, that in
212
to
is
Saint Paul
ready at hand.
reaction with
is
to
do so
whether we
will
it
by
is
rejecting
a word,
in
ourselves become
reactions with
all
is
This relation to
vital dealing
sin,
as
something
with which
we become
and yet as something not essentially ourand which therefore in putting away we do not
is
The
is this:
That
Sin,
so far
of itself putting an
end to
sinful.
sin, it
aggravates
and
therefore innocently,
nothing in comparison
guiltily.
The
errors
and excesses
of
mere nature,
of animals
minimum
of self-consciousness, are
to
On
the
213
where
made
the most
of,
is
the exceeding
most
its
most
Where
its
nism to most
most
Not only this, but the law where most sincerely intended and most earnestly insisted upon has another even more hateful reflex tendency and It tends inevitably to the production and effect. Modern England like ancient cultivation of hypocrisy. Judaea, the home of the moral law and of the moral
prevails.
may make
out a
and and worse still for its constitutional hypocrisy, but is the law to be condemed because in its war against sin it makes sin not only theoretically but actually blacker and more sinful ? Would it be better, then, to go back from the moral to the natural, to give up the law and take again to the instincts and impulses? At any rate St. Paul's conviction was that the end as the effect of the law was
for its uglier immorality refined
sensuality,
to reveal sin
it,
London
by developing
it,
to expose
its
it
extinction
by showing by making
it
it
and exhibiting
in
214
its
to
Saint Paul
true nature
in knowledge and
experience.
What, then,
treatment,
sin
is,
word
?
of anticipation of fuller
is, first,
is
redemption
It
to
sin
is
and to feel it for what and death and hell are all synonymous terms.
it is.
It is to
is
ourselves.
our
own by
taking
it
into ourit
And
it
as
it
it
is
into
ourselves, so
may be made
go so far
putting
out of ourselves.
may men
of ourselves
at least as this
Of
the two
we
identify our-
selves ?
Paul recognized as we
may an
inner
man
of
within himself
who was
he confessed
an outer man, of
whom
he says
or
rather,
in
whom he says of himself: The law is spiritual, but am carnal, sold under sin. In me, that is, in my
dwelleth no good thing.
flesh,
For I
delight in the
law of law
sin
St.
God
in
my
is
after the inward man; but I see a different members, warring against the law of my
me
into captivity
of
which
in
my
members.
above
Law,
Sin,
and Redemption
decide
it.
215
we
This
him,
what
St.
Paul does.
He
and
identifies himself
and takes
and repudiates the That which I do I know not; I deeds of the was doing it before I knew, and I do it now not with but against my will; for not what I would that do I, but what I hate that I do. But if what I would not,
flesh.
law that
it is
good;
and then
me.
In
with the
it is
not I that do
divided
self,
it,
my
self
sin.
in
and
and does
act or fact
from the
it
can at
least repudiate
and disclaim
will or
first
my
love or
meaning.
cannot
effect
husband a
This
is
do so a mensa
et toro.
law, but
and so
far is
For
is
impossible for
We
sin
self.
cannot too
from a
man and from God without myself. God cannot put away
sin
With the
if
nothing
not
own
acts.
And
there
is
but
it is
216
to
Saint Paul
its
is
divorced, only in
divorced.
own death
There
death,
is
in that
from which
it is
Blessed be
God through
sin,
from
but there
is
Through Him we have been enabled to know and feel sin for what it is so to know and feel it for what it is, as, in knowing the death it is, to enter into the fellowship of Christ's death and to know the power and reality of His resurrection.
XVI
What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin
(or,
condemned
re-
spirit.
Romans VIII.
fulfilled in us,
who walk
3, 4.
XVI
In Christ Jesus
tion of sin;
we
and because we are no longer under its we are no longer under power and dominion. In our faith we see ourselves
as
God
in
us.
It is the function
and
it.
But we must see Him, if we would see ourselves in Him; as per contra we must see ourselves in Him, if we would see Him. We must see Christ and ourselves mutually and identically dead for and from sin, and alive to and with God. Grace and faith must reaUze themselves each in the other, and become one in the act, as God
our Christianity to see ourselves in Christ.
and
man
Before
in Christ
we enter we must
on the
subject.
We
may do
220
to
Saint Paul
before us,
What
it
the law
through the
Ukeness of sinful
was weak His own Son in the God, sending flesh, and as an offering for sin,
condemned
the law might be fulfilled in us, the flesh but after the
spirit.
do?
to
could do was
transgression.
else.
It
this,
nor do anything
fact.
This
not an arbitrary
if
fiat
but a necessary
is life,
To make
a natural
holiness
or to intervene between
it is, is
no
less
What
self,
is
it
man
in him-
The
law
is
unable to present
man righteous,
is
or to justify
him before
justify
God, because
righteous.
If
it
it
him, him.
it
What
Son
condemned
sin
fulfilled in us.
There are here several very great questions, not all of which are to be considered quite yet. Greatest of all
221
what or
greatest
whom we
mean by His
own
Son.
Next
now and
leave the
first
for separate
and
fuller
discussion.
let
we can take
own
Son.
We
Lord's having
come
the longest and most careful upon the language and the matter of the
From
New
came
Testament, I
am
Lord
but
like
trinal difficulty,
is
meaning of
I should
much
or, if
rather
meet the
real difficulty
so,
I cannot fairly
do
then face
squarely.
Like
" like
New Testament
mean hke
do not mean
they
When
of
men.
He
the
same
When He was
His temptations
tempted in
all
we
are,
were not in some points only and not in others like our
affect
222
we
to
Saint Paul
He
is
overcame them.
the
difference
And, humanly
in
speaking,
that
all
mere nature or condition; they can be only in what are or do in the nature or the condition. In the identical nature and condition in which all we the
we
rest
and
condition,
overcame
it
and
in
and
conse-
His own utter and absolute sinlessness or was just the essence of aU Christianity, but that sinlessness, I can never tire of repeating, was no mere fact of His nature, human or divine, it was His work in our nature, the work of our salvation. And that it might be a work in our nature, it was necessary
it
it is,
in
which
the
or speak
it is sin-
mean
that
ful,
that through
which we are
flesh
sinful.
The
He
was
not sinful in
was
the de-
At the same time He Himself was holy in the flesh only by not being in the flesh; that is to say, by dying in it and to it, and Hving in and to God. This is the critical and crucial act in Him which requires fuller explanation, at the same time that
struction of sin in the flesh.
it
will
full
understanding.
223
said to have
in the like-
The
but
Greek expression
legitimately
expanded into as an
the meaning of
Christ
it
that.
Jesus
was indeed, in the most perfect sense, an offering a yet wider sense
it is
right
had
is
if
to
do with
sin.
is
This
mainly
if
man
in the world
is
mainly
not
sin.
A man
sist
is
For
surfirst,
much
sin
met and
mounted.
as a fact or
falling
away from
and with
it
us,
resisting,
and
finally crucifying
in our-
and, so far as
it.
ourselves in
law of nature;
law of God;
and
life
of
God;
in
manhood is acquired
224
in to
to
Saint Paul
itself
overcoming
opposite,
of
its
and
is
is
not
antecedent
and independent
opposite.
work
of the world,
which
manity.
The
is
He must
all,
needs
be about
the busi-
human
and
Ufe.
With
Him
trial;
as with us the
most
characteristic
distinctive
condition of
human
and
this
evil, natural,
or
sin.
It is rational,
into
sin.
As
it.
Him
to sin
and
with
Him
to
God.
own death
to sin could
by physical death.
It
must
have consisted
act in
essentially in
which
sin
by
its spiritual
opposite.
enough
what holiness
is.
or character, what
we
Condemnation
sonal relation with
activities
of
225
God.
is
of
is
through
which
Hope, through which we are what we are in God; and Love, which is what God is to and in us and what we are in Him. But if faith, hope, and love are the activities of the spirit
to us;
God
what He
faith,
life, what and love? hope, and love prosper and triumph
over
essential attributes
and
in
and activities of the spirit as manifested human life and under human conditions. It was
the perfection of
love; it
human
of
faith,
human
hope, and
human
and
spirit
nature and
God
in us.
and we
has been any consistent principle or philosophy method of interpretation which we have been pursuing, it must be found in the following particulars The whole work of Jesus Christ in humanity must be
in the expressible,
it,
whether or no we
in terms of distinctively
rience,
human
and
effort
may succeed in expressing human activity and expeand attainment, human predestiJesus
it
nation
realization.
Christ
accomplished
to accomplish
humanity
in
Him
226
to
Saint Paul
of
and become.
Christ
is
activity.
means
doing in
But God
and God does in what that is, must be as perfectly expressible in terms of us as of Him. That is all the mystery or the truth of Jesus Christ; He is perfect God in man only as He is perfect man in God. His atonement was God's at-one-ing Himself with man in and through the
responsive act of
in us only
man
accomplished only
What He
do
He
we do we
natural
and through Him. He manifests Himself so in creation, and equally only so in spiritual
creation.
in ourselves;
or in
God is naturally in us immanentally or He is spiritually in us transcendentally Christ; in either case. He is in us as, and in the
in which,
we
are in Him.
In Jesus
God
is
perfectly in
perfectly in
other.
activity, His
sin,
we
must must
We
227
and
all
our condition.
He
as
God has done in us and He as man has done in God that which would constitute in us and does constitute in Him our salvation, precisely as we should have to do it, and should do it, in working out our own Let us follow ourselves then, as far as we salvation.
can, in
of our
Him, and
own
salvation.
Him
in terms of ourselves
knew
describing
He
are
its
and process
all
the limitations
of our nature;
tried its
He knew
inability
to
go or reach beyond
He knew
flesh.
that
we
is
which
is
flesh
He
experienced
the will
impotence of the
human
will,
ments of manhood.
rience
He
He
said, I
can of
myself do nothing.
More and
at
make
human
to transcend our
sin
human
us.
inability
that overcomes
line of
He overcome
it ?
Only on the
it,
our
own only
love
possible
overcoming
228
to
Saint Paul
us in Him.
its
natural limitations;
inabilities
our
He
not only
knew
regards
actual condition.
He
took
upon Him its universal actual condition of subjection to sin and death. He knew in Himself that the humanity
He took part, which He shared with all us the was under the actual curse of sin and death. By no mere fiction of imputing or reckoning or accounting, but in most blessed actuahty and fact. He took our sin, our curse, our death, upon Him. As man our Lord was subject with us all to sin and death, and as man He could no more have saved Himself from sin and death than we can. As man, God sent Him and He came into the world to reveal and impart to us a divine salvation in which like Him as man we as men might be saved. Jesus Christ was not saved by any difference of nature from ours; nor from any difference of actual condition from ours. He was uttermost saved to the uttermost by knowing to the
in
which
rest,
in
God; not
knew in Himself, as in all the humanity with which He made Himself one, that what we call the flesh, human nature by actual condiand
in love.
Jesus Christ
tion,
was
sinful
in the sense,
and only
in the sense,
229
was unable
in
and
it
sinful.
More
exactly,
flesh,
was
no one in the
No
one more than Jesus experienced and felt the fact that for the flesh that was in Himself there was nothing to be done but
in
it
resist,
it
to
off
die
flesh
and so from it. It was our own old man, the of sin, the whole body of sin, with all its curse
it,
upon
that
He
and
it.
by His death under and from Let us come back to the words of the text of
and
close with
this
chapter,
sent His
God
is
own Son
That means
identically,
no more and no
St.
less,
what
men.
Him
who knew no
behalf,
that
sin God made to be sin for us, or in our we might become the righteousness of
But
in the flesh
He
He
found the
flesh.
He
took upon
Him
its
in
it its
subjection
:
I say
subjection
that
does not
mean
;
or involve or imply
His
subjection.
was the breaking of that He was sinless. How so? Jesus Christ had come for or about sin, and as an offering or sacrifice for sin. That which He offered up in sacrifice to God, that which He carried back with Him to God from His divine mission
the contrary. His taking
subjection in the flesh of our sinfulness
On
230
to
to
Saint Paul
dead
in its old
in His person
and alive to God in the spirit. In that act God condemned sin in the flesh, but He condemned it how? By bringing humanity itself to condemn it in itself, by bringing humanity to die in itself to itself, and to Uve in and to Him. It was the woman's seed, after all, that bruised It was humanity in Christ that the serpent's head. condemned and abolished sin. Our Lord took our flesh of sin only that in it He might accompUsh that death to sin which is our own and only salvation from sin. And so the Apostle goes on to say: He condemned
self
us,
who walk
(in
we
are
now
alive).
XVII
is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death. Romans VIII. 1, 2.
There
Jesus.
XVII
point on
positive
human
salvation.
There
is
in Christ,
There
is
an objectis
even prior to
faith,
which
indeed
the condition
and content of
faith; for
how
shall
we
?
realize or actualize
by
is
faith
fact, it
in
God's
which comes
first
and
consists in
His placing us
is
Our
act of faith
only the
be apprehended and
In the truest
Baptism may be
passive
or
acceptive
being adopted.
The
act
and
truth of Christian
234
to
Saint Paul
Not only
faith,
is
which
already
Paul holds,
is
But
be better understood
gress but in
if
we
by what
not in
its
proin
completion.
The complete
being
Christ
of Christ in us.
The
of of
its
branch
the vine
best understood in
be complete
spiritual
Him, we come to study the law of manhood. St. Paul calls it The law of the
in
He
might equally
well
life
There may be
life,
this difference:
The law
of the
Spirit of
or
The law
of all
of
life,
the Spirit
of the
life
of the spirit
especially
The law
as, in
The Law
of the Spirit
235
we
is
mean more immediately and emphatically the spirit as our own. But what is our own spirit but the organ
of the universal
the
own
spirit in
Him ?
we mean
itself,
By
the
thing's
activity,
how
its
mode
of the
it
acts
or operates
when
it is
true to
or to
appointed
nature
and function.
the what of the
The
spirit
any
more than
we can
and
all
life.
What
we can
is
do,
that
we need
to do, in
both cases,
to define the
mode
is
phenom-
and
in doing so
we
are stating
it is
its
law.
The
revealed in actual
manifested in an accom-
human
of
mode
men.
Or, putting
Christ,
is
and
with the
the essential
236
spirit,
to
Saint Paul
the
life
it is
of the
Spirit of
God
in us, so
of our spirit in
God.
communicable
uality in
to all beings
participation
disposition
I
am
St.
Paul
gives
an exhaustive as well as exact inventory of the proper activities or functions of the human spirit under the
familiar terms.
faith
Faith,
perfect
would
perfectly relate
of
man
to the life of
all
cause of
perfection in himself.
perfect hope
would furnish the necessary subjective condition of man's adequate or complete self-comprehension and self-realization in God. A perfect love would contribute all the substance, or matter, or content of the
entire life of
God
in
entire life of
man
in
God.
The
perfection of
God
in
the object of hope; and, in the third place, not alone the perfect being of
himself in God,
perfection in
but,
God
by consequence of
that, the
essentially
is
man
of that
which
is
most
all
in
is
God
of
that
most
what
outside
more than
life
this
the true
of the spirit of
man!
The Law
What has been
all
of the Spirit
237
and somewhat
mystically, of faith,
spirit of
man
is
not only
more
more
scientific
common
experience.
And
is
There
no
disposition in general to
of us recognize
and
and success
in action
tion
of,
and
In
we
are dis-
it
to the extent of
life, it is
a secondary
matter what
But,
view,
we beheve; the point is, how we believe it. when again we look at the matter in its largest
no one surely
will
deny that
it is
more
effective
life
for life to
and
delusive.
And
surely, too, to
have
a perfect faith in
in the world, as to the true
and
to
work with
possible convic-
238
to
Saint Paul
ing, sympathizing,
and so his life and co-operating attitude and relation with the truth and beauty and goodness of things I think we should cease from trying to as they are. prove the unprovable, and take to knowing the entirely knowable fact that the universe in which we
are
is
a personal universe.
The
the mere elements or rudiments of matter and mechanism, but the highest activities of
sjpirit
and
Ufe.
Like
everything
itself at its
else,
the universe
itself is
to be defined by
highest
and not
at
its
lowest, not
by
its
The
ultimate
of the
good
which
is
of goodness, or love.
Now,
faith as
Romans.
We
We
and
superficial
of the things of
for all
who
all
who
The Law
victory
of the Spirit
239
for
those
to
Quite
faith,
and power of such a feeling, if not knowing, ourselves upon such terms of amity Such a with the world with which we have all to do.
one must feel the advantage
faith in itself,
apart
the best
in the spiritual
of a world
and fact! More important to us than even the power and advantage that comes from faith in the truth of things, is that which comes from the truth and reality and
kingdom
of actual objective spiritual reality
actual operation in us of the things of faith.
As
we need
The
need to be brought
known.
If
will
240
of the
to
Saint Paul
same kind. But the kingdom of God is made up altogether of what we ourselves are; not of what things are to us or in their action upon us, but of what
we
are to things
and
It is
own
attitude towards
and
relations
The
It is
revelation of
God
in Christ
is
a revelation of
all
man, but of everything in man. We see God, all truth, all beauty, all good and goodness, Him, in man and that is all we see. No more
nothing
to
in
in
is
God
Him, in the quality and character of His manhood and consummate personality. These
of the life of the spirit itself can never
things
to
be proved
it.
They cannot
When
know and
after
testify that I
St.
John
Him
is
says.
known
here
of the
seen and
unto you,
reality of things
or world of
spirit. Knowing beyond all peradventure and with the only immediate certainty possible for
man
the certainty of
fact,
his
own
interior personahty
spirit,
we may
infer
and
deduce connections of
it
and natural
but
moment we do
so
we
The Law
loyally to
of the
Spint
241
knowledge.
man
is
sole
judge in things
with the
clusion.
autonomy
of natural observation
and con-
Let us
sum up
in Christ.
perfect being of
God
is
in
man,
not
an immanental
being in
him which
as true of one
man
as another
and through
This
is
Him
the
nature.
or
kingdom of God within us, and by us from within as it is unprovable undisprovable to us from without. The Life that
as verifiable
is
life
as
we do share
it,
as
perfect participation in
I
speak that I do
know and
have
seen.
is
the revela-
and reaUzation
Christianity
the highest
we have in him of ourselves in God. reveals God not merely as love, but in
As
the supreme perfection and bless-
perfect Father.
edness of
God
consists in
what He
is,
in the unsurpass-
His divine selfhood or personality, so the supreme activity of God in the world which He has
able limit of
242
to
Saint Paul
To
even
God
Himself, or
Love
itself,
is
capable.
So
God
and
is
Himself.
It
is
love ivSuxOeroi
love inherent
love
but in
another, the
7rpo<j>opiK6i
it is
and
action.
Sonship
in
itself
self-reproduced,
no longer
whom
unity.
The
eternal
divine in
Christ becomes
human
em-
through Him.
creation of
It extends
and imparts
itself to
which
it is
To know
know
our-
and
in Christ to
God and heirs of His own eternal life, is indeed to know ourselves with a knowledge that transcends all human science and of which faith is the only possible human vehicle or expression. The
difference
is
extended
is
and grace; sonship is the father love in its object what we might
We
The Law
speak, therefore,
of the Spirit
243
and the
other for
what God
in us.
in itself,
disposition
ia divine
is
As the
the third
to
faith in Christ
might
Or,
may be
put
it
in the other
way, as the
the third
may be named
is
This word
or fellowship.
in the
is
God and man are and there is nothing, not even a mediator, between them. So I object to the words communion and fellowship simply as not going all the way of that unity of God and man in Christ which is the truth of the Holy Ghost. The truth of the Spirit of God is the truth of the spirit of man. The koinonia is not real or complete so long as the
not of one but of two; whereas
not two but one in Christ,
spirits
are two
ness only as the eternal, personal Spirit of actual personal spirit of the
in its
the
beginnings
man. We have it at all, and growth, only to the extent to of God has become our own spirit.
God
is
us or within us
244
to
Saint Paul
and as himand the spirit he
in himself
is
that
is,
in
what he himself
of in God.
the truth of
in
The truths of faith, then, are these three God Himself in us, the truth of ourselves
of the perfected not merely
God
to the principle of
more
briefly
and part of hope from those of faith because the meaning of the one has been too much lost in the overshadowing light
of the other.
infinite not-
just
has been
made
too
much a doing
humanity from without, and too little the doing of humanity from within. It is a waiting upon other powers to take the place of our own and
for
if
not independently
and passive
part
Nothing
is
more necessary
is
for our
is
Christianity than to
make
for,
it
no
in,
which
God works
actual identity
and to do in the matter mere co-operation but only in with our own working out every jot
in us to will
and
tittle
of our
own
salvation,
in us.
As
faith is not
The Law
enough in
itself
of the Spirit
245
hope
is
real
power only
in
and
essential truth of
object.
is
hope
The only proper object and end of Christian what we ourselves may be and do and become
God.
for
We
do indeed
in us
disit
and
God in God is
Christ, but
and we
in
say,
but only to
God
in
tilings
things
and do
all
all
things.
that
God
is all
and
for us, so to
hope that
in
response
we can be
things to
and
for
God.
We
do
and
desires to
and
the glory
We
is
enter
the
in
end that
assured to us
St.
if
heaven
is
is perfect.
be for
us,
there
all
if
his faith;
God
for us,
and
What then?
?
Why,
God
is
for us then
What
In
Him
or defeat us in
Him ?
more than conquerors through Him that loved us. There is his hope a hope assuredly not in all things done
that can possibly befall us
we
are already
246
to
Saint Paul
things to be done in
The permanent,
between
Is
it
very
much
real
supposed
knowledge
indeed of
is
and
love of
what
He
is.
a theoretical inquiry
practical fact
a and import
serious question
more
not
man who
having faith in
God
is
to
it,
or
the
man who,
God
zealous in His cause, does not love nor live the Thing
that alone
is ?
is
God
either in
Himself or in us
necessary to
tianity so
insist,
as St. Paul for Christ and Christhat not a true faith in the
much
insists,
and function
is
of the
spirit,
the truth of
God
and of
XVIII
of the flesh;
spirit.
For the
mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the spirit is life and peace: because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the
it
be:
are in
none of BUs.
any man
XVIII
SPIRIT
spirit's activity,
and
own
spirit in
God, may
I return
we
profess to be following.
mind of the spirit which the The mind life and peace.
upon
which
first
St.
the
the reahty of
an objective
he had
the
in
fact of a con-
Jesus
Christ.
When
of
just before
summed up
shall
wretched
the
man
that I
am! who
?
body of
this
death
deHver
me
out of
attitude
and
feeling
God
through Jesus
is
The new
spiritual status
accepted
in
an
act or fact
solely in the
before
God
250
to
Saint Paul
The second
point in the
mind
of the spirit
is
neces-
redemption
wrought in our
act of Jesus
question
common humanity by the individual The truth of the relation in may be expressed as follows: The act of
Christ.
is
and
really
an
rep-
act of
God
wrought in humanity; and conversely the act of selfredemption accomplished by our Lord in His humanity
is
in
God
that
is
fellow-
act
of redemption to us,
and
of us to
is,
accord-
Baptism
is
an act of
God
relating us to Christ
It not
and
to
it
and His
say,
life
is
God
our
life
to
God.
is
This, one
might
only representative.
is
make
it
reality in ourselves.
The Mind
Christ but
of the Spirit
251
Him
crucified,
Christ's
life is
own death
to
to sin, as Christ's
own
is
risen
God.
The
substance of Christianity
indeed
to realize
our baptism.
of the spirit cannot but recognize
rate
two two widely separated stages of meaning, in that word to realize. In its entirety, and in its fulness of meaning even here, it means to bring
senses, or at
The mind
any
to reality or to
make
real.
What
a truth
it
is
that
we
realize ourselves,
in Jesus Christ!
What
is
gives to faith to
know
that
that there
positively
no
is
Word
to us;
is
God's
Word
to us,
which
Christ Himself,
full of
not
only as full of
meaning, but as
only as full of
power or
it
potentiality,
of
actuahty or reality to us
and
make
in the
it,
or wiU suffer
to be !
things
and
fife
of the spirit
to
with us precisely
our
faith.
Our
faith
is
the
There would be no
impossibility
faith.
But
human
faculty
is
thing of
We might be made
like
we could know Christ in a moment or a day. But to know Christ is to know ourselves and sin, and God and holiness. To realize, then,
Christ in
would be to bring to
252
reality
to
Saint Paul
Christ,
God's grace to us in
to sin
and
life
to
God; nothing
all true
itself
But
and
we
fall
tion,
not in the
To know
know
oneself
is
not necessarily to
is
unto perfection.
himself,
little
There
as
of his
none of us
self.
himself,
knows but
whole
So any one
may
not only
life is
know
little
may know
of either
that his
may know
very
that
is
to be
known
Christ or himself.
It is not
a spiritual impossibility,
or even difficulty, to
know
this
much;
life
from
spiritual
death to spiritual
has to be an attitude on our part towards sin whose meaning and end can be nothing less than a death of
it
side
is
is;
and that Jesus Christ is not only God's revelation to us but God's realization in us of all that He is in Him-
The Mind
self.
of the Spirit
253
that repentance
Him?
Is
it
not, that
we
see in
Him
a divine
grace
and power of repentance unto the death to sin, and of faith unto the life of hoHness ? What do we mean when we speak of Him as the Baptizer with the
Holy Ghost?
and hve His
an eternity
this
Is
it
not that
we
are baptized in
Him
to
and power to die His death to sin holiness and God ? What though
to being perfect as our
may
its
truth to
Father in heaven
is
perfect, to
like
Him,
knowing Christ as He
may we
that shall
the perfect
faith,
day?
this
forereaching power of
to see the
makes
end!
of.
WThat
if
we had
its
and enjoyment of
it is
gifts
On
the contrary
desire
attainment of
in other
words
it
is
only as
it
has
an end of So
faith
and hope,
last
end
itself
can become to us at
it
one of
is
He
is,
is
254
to
Saint Paul
in Christ
Him; and
is
in the
confident faith of
man
whatever
may
predicable
God's
Word
to faith
and God's
working
in
and through
spirit,
nature
there be light,
The mind of the spirit rests upon an act of life which has been accomplished before it and for it, and which carries in it not only the full meaning but the efficient potentiality and the ultimate realization and reality of its own actual life in God.
The
relation of the
is
human
Christ
one primarily of
It is the privilege
and province of
the
life
God
revealed in
of
There is nothing that can intervene between the spirit and that fact, except the spirit's own want of faith in
it.
Where
it
in
own
finite limitation
from
where
finitude to infinity.
it
rests
it.
upon
fact
and its need of growth But faith is already fact, however at present above and
beyond
We
we
are
partakers of Christ,
we
hope steadfast unto the end. But the mind of the spirit is no mere quiescent or acquiescent state; it is no resting still and satisfied in a condition of objective
salvation, a salvation for or instead of its own.
It is
itself.
It
is.
The Mind
as the
of the Spirit
^55
Apostle describes
it,
us of the
life
of the spirit.
and the life of God in the spirit of man has a great and endless task before it, nothing less than to know Christ and be like Him, perfect as
thing in the world,
God Himself
is
perfect.
However inchoate and imperfect the present Ufe of the spirit, it is already not only life but peace, when it knows that it is working straight along the Unes as
well of the perfect truth of itself as of the eternal truth
of
God.
Faith, as
we have
seen,
is
greatest greatest
power when it rests in that which is itself the power to the truest ends of life. And not only
is
such a
the power of
unto human salvaAnd human salvation is nothing else or less than living the life of God and working the work of God. It may be very pertinently asked. What is the hfe of
tion.
flesh
using
it
we may, not
in
its
acquired bad
but as
says.
St.
when he
the faith of
Himself for
now Kve in the flesh I live in the Son of God who loved me and gave me. I think we may illustrate how we
The
may hve the Kfe of the spirit without vsdthdrawing from the flesh, or from the world, in their truer and normal
sense,
or without taking
Is
refuge in
so-called
other-
worldUness.
there
that in
Lord's
demand
things
we
256
to
Saint Paul
that then
God's kingdom and righteousness, and in His promise There all things else shall be added to us ?
are in every act in the flesh or in the world, in their
two parts
the act
itself
and the
the
man
in the act.
Now
what
human
is of.
activity the
spirit,
the
man
himself, or
and
character, he
Can any
other greatness or
its
not being
it?
a right
act, or for
the
man
being unrighteous in
So far from hfe in the spirit, while we are where and as we are, meaning a hfe of abstraction from life in the flesh and in the world, I hold that any such life
is
for us as inconceivable as
it is
impossible.
flesh
Life in
the spirit
means
abstraction
from the
and the
man
himself.
To go
we
are
constituted
and placed
in the
much
and
spiritual
attitude,
perience and knowledge can yet go, our present relation to the flesh
is
hohness or our
life
of the spirit, as
the cause or
The Mind
How
life
of the Spirit
257
will
and peace
we
consider
life
how
life
in the
is sin
death.
That
in the flesh
does not
mean that the flesh in itself is sinful. This may be made clear by an analogy. Men of modem scientific mind speak of what we have called original
sin as
and what
denotes,
man
is
inherits as the
itself evil.
not in
On
the contrary,
it
is
which to
make
makes a
use he
man
makes of identically the same material. Just the same appetites, desires, affections, and passions which controlled by freedom and conformed to reason make the man and invest him with all his virtues, not so controlled and conformed keep him back in the life of his brute ancestry and constitute what we call
his bestiality.
Our
that
we
are
first
we do
to the
not
and freedom
of the
animal nature.
Quite in
human
life.
As our natural
manhood
to
consists in
so the spiritual
258
to
Saint Paul
living in ourselves, in
human
The
God
is
into which in
Christ
we
are admitted.
natural
manhood which
no more
sinful
we
preceded
it.
We
do not say that the flesh, in the manhood, is sinful, but only that
be
sinless.
no
man
can in the
is
flesh
However
blameless
an animal
man who
abides in his
and however necessary and high a thing man may be and in the exercise of his human endowments and powers, the man who remains in these and will not go up higher into personal union and alliance with the divine and universal Source of all holiness, righteousness, and eternal life, condemns himself to Kve in a lower world of sin and death. The mind of the
in himself
flesh is death, for the simple reason that the things
and that constitute Hfe are not in or of come from beyond or above it. The soul that knows nothing of faith or prayer or grace, of that union and communion with God which becomes visible to us and participable by us in Christ, of the holiness which is God's own Spirit and nature and breath of life in us, knows not all that of which, as the knowing is in itself life and peace, so the not knowing is of itself sin and death. To know God is
that
for
make
life
as to serve
Him
is
free-
dom.
XIX
BODY
And
raised
if
Christ
is
in you, the
body
is
spirit is life
because of righteousness.
dead because of sin; but the But if the Spirit of Him that
up Jesus from
He
that raised
up
Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies
So
then, brethren,
we
if by the spirit ye For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of Grod and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified with
flesh: for if
Him.
to be
For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy compared with the glory that shall be revealed to usward. For For the creation was subjected to
vanity, not of
hope that the from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only so, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, io mt, the redemption of our body. Romans VIU.
will,
own
who
subjected
it,
in
10-23.
XIX
you, the
life
body
is
dead because of
sin,
but the
it
spirit is
because of righteousness;
and ends
thus.
We who
ourselves
we
to wit,
the redemption
However
hension
real
spiritual appre-
Christ,
new divine
of the spirit
is
not
i'pso facto
A man
may be
of the
full
of
an
initial faith,
God and new life of his own spiritual self; he may have so appropriated to himself the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ as to be before God justified through Him; and still he not only may but will long be aware
are the signs
and
that the
new
he
life
of his spirit
is
On
the
in proportion to his
262
to
Saint Paul
however the
him may be
him
is still
dead because
if
of
the Spirit of
Him
you.
shall
He
that
up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in raised up Christ Jesus from the dead
We
promise has a
application than
life
now and
here.
Taken
up
it is
shall be taken
And
taken in
its
means
is is
man
we
Adam, was
predestined and
destined to be
which
man
is still
With regard
will also
Christ
is
in us spiritually
He He
who has
in
life
Him,
it is
to be
This would is the Spirit of God and of Christ. seem to indicate that the promise to the body is, primarily at least, not that of mere physical continuance
The Redemption
of life after
of the
Body
life
263
here
and more
revealed
of the
life
spirit.
that the
of
God
faith
and communicated
to us in Christ, into
man may
call justification, shall by and slower process, which we shall have to describe as sanctification, become the life of the body And the body thus sanctified or spiritualized also.
another
will
any physical
change or
progress to ensue in
intimately associated
has preceded
and induced
There
is
may
assist
our
There
in our
itself
it
animal nature,
it
exercise in
and upon
of the higher
human
and moralized. According and the free personal will are or constitute the man, as such, or as differentiated from his lower, vegetable and animal, natures. There is a
nature
may be
rationalized
to Aristotle
the reason
pure or intellectual,
itself
dianoetic,
see
be
by means of which we and know things as they are and as they ought to and this pure virtue of the reason we may call
rational faculty,
the
Wisdom.
virtue
But there
is
its
is
al-
though that
and
passions, to
which
it
264
to
Saint Paul
So
not only
is
the reason
free will,
said,
a strong and
has become, as I
and moralized, or made virtuous. Such a man has not by the continuous exercise of his reason and will to make or keep himself moral or virtuous. The animal in him has itself become so, and is so of itself. And that process is the making of the man.
The animal
nature
is
himself,
As
it is
the function of
us.
The
man
sees
and knows
things
as they are
and ought
man
is
actually
upon
his
appetites,
is
desires,
affections,
passions.
The
reason
and
as
it is
It is
the
man
in proportion as
it
and
and
passions, for
man
The
poet,
meaning of the spiritual in us is well expressed by the whose language we take the liberty of extending
or generalizing a
little:
we know
The Redemption
not how; ourselves
of the
Body
265
God's.
are ours to
make them
Through reason and freedom we become ourselves and our own. Through the Spirit and our own spirits we make ourselves and our own God's; and
so
that
make God our own and ourselves. we shall become ourselves; but it
It is necessary
is
then no
less
necessary that
we
man
sees
God
is
in himself
Christ
to
him God
his righteousness,
is
God
his
life.
the man,
may
God.
spirit of the
man is
is,
the
is
man;
is;
the reason
in
the
man
the
man
What the
the
spirit of
the
man
sees
the
man
man
himself in Christ,
God
pure reason.
it
is
only
The
holds Christ in
and upon the nature and the life is not a real faith. And what is the nature or the life of man ? Is it not all the animal and the natural or what St. Paul calls the psychical in him ? We know nothing of a purely or abstractly spiritual manhood. The spiritual man is a spiritual man, not a spiritual
impress Christ to
something
else.
He
is
266
animal
to
Saint Paul
constitution
by the indwelling and sanctifying Spirit of God and of Christ, and in them of ourselves. If God in Christ is truly in our faith, and so in our
become
spirit,
then
He
will
all
the
motions and
activities of
our natural
lives.
It is not
and apart from our bodies and bodily lives that we are spiritual men; it is only by becoming holy in and through these that we act by act and step by step become spiritual men. Our bodies, parts, and passions are still the stuff out of which we shape and fashion ourselves. Saints and sinners are made, by opposite processes, out of the same material. Whatever our future bodies are to be, the part which the Holy Spirit has to perform in determining them takes place largely here, and it
in being holy outside
consists in the daily discipline of spiritualizing our
lives,
human
Christ,
selves.
We
may
who
shall fashion
tion, that
it
working whereby
He
is
able to
subject
all
anew
not a
We
spiritual
men
men and
just as
we
are at the
may
pull
spiritual is not
The Redemption
to
of the
Body
267
sever itself
by
scission
itself
own higher
activities
members of Christ
and life. Our bodies, too, are and temples of the Holy Ghost.
life is
to
compose the
strifes
it
Whether a man shall be animal, and human; whether a man will or rational and be natural and earthly and of himself only, or spiritual, these are not merely quesof God, and divine also, tions, they are the essential and determining issues of human nature, life, and destiny. Man is made to be ever going up higher, taking with him his whole self
free
abnormal, or
sinful.
The
natural, the
the
and the them consists only in their non-subjection to spirit. There is no spiritual step, no new breath of
no participation of the
life
the Spirit,
of
God, no access
of holiness,
that does
or sacrifice of the
our natural
selves.
As
for us at all
the interest of
literally
There
is
no
268 The
to
Saint Paul
man is not whether the spiritman do not coexist and strive for
this,
the
strife.
Of many,
on the
us hope, there
is
no doubt
of their being
right side.
God knoweth
them that are His, and we are encouraged to beUeve knows many more than are visible to us. Of many,
alas, there is too
much
doubt, or too
little
doubt, on
that
very selves a
other.
If
man must
we
it
are in doubt,
God
knows, and as
it is
with us so
we
To
is
be on the
to be in the
If
according to the
die,
flesh,
because
we
we are in the flesh or are living wc are, the Apostle says, going to
he speaks of
is
the
life
only in the
on the conand by the Spirit of God, subduing the flesh or the body, and when necessary mortifying its evil deeds and extirpating its sinful lusts,
spirit
Spirit of
God.
If,
trary,
then
we
shall live,
because
it is
and accomplishes
itself.
To
If
it
be ever so
little
in the spirit
must mean
earnest
to be
all.
it is all.
The
is
God
in us
is
and pledge
of the whole.
The
first
word
of the Spirit to us
The
The Redemption
Spirit
of the
Body
we
and
269
are
children of
God.
is
The
eariiest consciousness
a cry
utter-
Abba, Father!
know
of
all it is
going to
God
in the
Thank God, we have not to wait to mean and to involve to be son end in order to be already sons of God
It is
in the
very beginning.
God
become sons of God; if, on the contrary, we had to become in order to be, we should never be sons of God. For it is a far and a long cry from the Abba, Father of our infancy in Christ to our maturity in Him, from the small beginthat
we
are enabled to
But
if
we
are children,
we
shall
be
heirs.
All that
we
All
are in faith
only
we
shall
be no
now only means to us it shall completely The inheritance which now is Christ's only, but shall be no less ours also when we shall have learned to know Him as He is and been made like Him, it is
that sonship
be to us.
ourselves or
shall
what we ourselves
fact in us,
when God
has wrought in
Him
shall
He
in
Him
from the dead, our forerunFor observe carefully the condition upon
so be that
God and
with
if
we
suffer
Him.
270
As
to
Saint Paul
means of our being glorified with Him, we are to remember that it is only in the light of our Lord's own sufferings, and of the new meaning and virtue He gives them, that they are spoken of as they are in the Gospel. As the sufferings of Christ abound unto us, even so our comfort also
the conditions but the
aboundeth through
selves,
Christ.
and by no means
so,
means
of exaltation.
Only
in one
made
way or event do they become or when they are used by God and
difficult
are they
received
by ourselves
purpose.
The
if
human
life
human
life.
than once
said, so far as
our
own
one are
identi-
and sin, are opposite attitudes and actions towards the same things, and it is only in relation with the things which occasion them that, for us at least, they can
originate
or
exist.
If
there
were no occasion
for
be no courage.
If
there
were no powerful
means.
To
and we should not know what holiness Christ, and to the spiritual man, all the
The Redemption
experiences of
life,
of the
Body
all,
271
are
which
is
The
so-called
is
is
in the world
the
it is
the true
good
of the world.
is
For good,
evil.
spiritual,
moral, or personal,
the overcoming of
We shall
learn for
strength,
not
ourselves, until
life,
we
comfort of
all its
sufferings of Christ.
The
The
affliction
is
seems
moment which
exceedingly
only as, with our
that are seen,
working for
an eternal weight of
Lord,
we
That is to say, as we are seeing deep into the meaning and looking far to the end of human experience. For
but at things that are not seen.
the Apostle
goes on to say
God.
The
creation here
what we
call nature,
meaning primarily
We
ourselves,
which have
wit, the
even
we
ourselves groan
our adoption, to
Our
waits
upon the
body
too, the
admis-
272
to
Saint Paul
sion of all our natural selves into the liberty of the holi-
and life of God. Christ in faith, or in the spiritual man, waits upon and is only complete in Christ in meaning by fruition or fact, in the natural man, the natural man all that is essential and permanent in our natural selves, the reason made right and the will become free, the desires all purified and the affections refined and sanctified. For I repeat that we shall be no longer ourselves or men, if to be spiritual means to cease to be natural, and is not rather the spiritualizing or divinizing and so the glorifying or spiritually perfecting of the natural, which is ourselves. The natural in us, our nature, became subject to vanity not of itself but through us, or by our act. Sin
ness
But sin immediately and deeply involves the nature or the body, because while it is not of these it is in and through them. They are the sole means and instruments of it, and reap the corruption and curse of it. The promise and the hope is that as the body or nature was subjected to sin and
the nature but of the person.
made
so
the instrument of
to
it,
not of
itself
or
its
own
will,
by being subdued
it
servant of holiness
and made the instrument and shall be delivered from the bond-
age of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God. That is the burden of the Apostle's
earnest exhortation to us. Let not sin therefore reign
in
lusts
members unto
sin as
The Redemption
of the
Body
273
is
humanity
is
to
nature in general.
the
The whole
natural order
but
spiritual order
which
it
exists
in order to
Even what we
the seeming sin of nature, exists not for itself but for
spiritual
itself,
of which
we
in
good would be impossible in a world which there was nothing of natural evil; that is, of
Spiritual
call
what we
natural
evil,
if
is
often the
truest spiritual
all
good,
spiritual
good.
not only
suppose ought to
but what one would then and would be the case none in semblance. Would there then be any virtue or any righteousness? And if it is answered that there must
evil in fact
no
if
then
is
the evil
in
and a very
But
reaUty there
nothing
evil
but spiritual
evil,
with ourselves.
because
and
it
will
become
all
good.
As long as
we
are sinners,
is
274
to
Saint Paul
when we change
becomes not one
it
life.
nature and
liberty of the
XX
THE PROCESS OF DIVINE GRACE
By hope were we saved: but hope that is seen is not hope: for who hopeth for that which he seeth ? But if we hope for that which we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.
In hke manner the
not
Spirit also helpeth
we know
that
how
to pray as
we
and He
He maketh
God. For
that love
God
all
things
work
together for
them
He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren: and whom He foreordained, them He also called: and whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He
whom He
foreknew,
also glorified.
What
for us
then shall
?
against us
all,
we say to these things ? If God is for us, who is He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things ?
anything to the charge of God's elect ?
is
it is
Who
shall lay
God
liat
justifieth;
who
he that
shall
condenm?
was raised from the dead, who is at the right God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or anguish, or
died, yea rather, that
hand
of
sword ?
these
Even
as
we
are killed
all
Nay, in
we were things we
Him
For I
am
nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the
life,
love of
God, which
is
Romans VIU.
24-39.
XX
THE PROCESS OF DIVINE GRACE
We cannot know the Spirit of God otherwise than in
ourselves, as
our
own
spirit,
know the
is
and character
first
of His humanity.
We
at
evidence or expression of
Spirit
Holy
which
is
the spirit
God
as realized
and revealed
to us in
and the
it
final
consummation of
fact.
needs to exist in
Every-
meaning into reality, potentiaUty into Because we are in a sense rational and free by nature, we have in another sense to become rational and free by act and character. The having been made sons of God does not absolve us from the
life is
to convert
actuality.
lifelong
task of becoming, or
making
ourselves, sons
of
God.
The
selves in
us to realize, but
we
shall never
be ourselves
278
to
Saint Paul
The process of realizing our sonship to God, through the grace of God working with us both objectively and subjectively, is portrayed in the chapter we are studying.
On
is first
we were apprehended by
by faith all that fact. However clear
in us
real
and real
just in proportion as
and
indeed we at once
and consummation of our sonship, to We have entered upon the rightfully difficult task of making our bodies as well as our spirits members of Christ and temples of that is to say, of becoming, through the Holy Ghost,
the realizing
wit, the
all
a difficult and a painful task, and the pain are a necessary We become persons at all, we part of the process. attain all the virtue, the holiness, the glory and the blessedness, of personality, only through pain and
of
God.
It is rightly
because the
difficulty
difficulty.
St.
necessity,
He
we
all
does not
shall only
be
glorified
with Christ as
we know
is
here
how
He
not worthy
be revealed
which
are for a
moment
more
The Process
exceeding
are here
of
of
Divine Grace
As long
279
as
and
we
we
we
are being
We
we
see,
by
sight.
But
if
really believe in
and hope
for
which we cannot
it.
then can
we with
patience
wait for
us, the
and hope
to
the
as
immediate next
We
will
not
what
But the darkness that is so dark to us is no darkness with God. The soul of the believer is sometimes in heaven and sometimes in hell, but it is as safe in one as in the other If I go down into hell,
groanings.
:
behold.
Thou
The
not
all
point
is
that the
it
process of
goes
our redemption
on by methods not
all
or always understood by
ourselves.
selves
We
farthest off,
and
farthest
ourselves nearest.
God
we
see only
however unintelligible to us
after
all,
clear to
Him
whose,
of our
are
all
the
salvation.
God, to prepare
it
and purpose
280
to
Saint Paul
concerning
The
and admitted into the eternal meaning and purpose of God and itself, all things else must of necessity work
with
it
for good.
From
the
all
work together
for
eternal
And first of all there is the great objective fact God Himself eternally and infinitely for it and with From the eternity of the past stands first on our it. side the fact of the divine foreknowledge. The creation
them.
of
of which
Man
is
from and
equally for
dom was
Whom God
or
foreknew them
Their end
He
was
also
foreordained
clear before
predestinated.
as
Him
as their beginning
much
We
are
chance.
no more objects than we were products of Human personality is too great and precious
mined purpose, without a destiny commensurate with its acquired and inherent possibilities and promises.
Jesus Christ
is
and end
of
human personality.
The Process
of
Divine Grace
also
281
Whom God
foreknew.
He
foreordained to be
He
is
in
Himself
and revelation of the divine sonship is the meaning and proper destination of us all, which the heavenly pattern shown us in the mount after which our common humanity is to be builded into the
tabernacle of the eternal divine presence
and indwelling.
is
sonship
realized.
is
the
new birth; through it alone first-born among many brethren, and through is He the it alone can they share His new birth and life. Whom God thus foreknew and foreordained, them He also called. There is a deep significance in the fact of the divine call as a necessary moment in the proIt is the reference of the cess of human salvation.
necessary baptism of that
himself.
to the action upon it of the man must needs come to us as a divine invitation or call; it must needs be subject to our own acceptance. Our part, however secondary and sub-
matter of eternal
life
Salvation
is
mining factor.
But both
St.
and
With
a call
Paul Christianity
is
in every
call
moment
call
upon our-
selves.
to
be an apostle,
no
official
except
saint. As there is no personal sanctity such as comes from God, that to which God
be a
is
apostleship so there
282
calls
to
Saint Paul
and appoints or admits us. But equally there is none for us which we do not ourselves accept and
assume.
those in
filled,
The
whom
God
to Ufe or
office
which they
are called.
There
is
no word of God,
is
in the strict or
addressed to intelligence
The
is
complete word of
call,
is
God
to us, because
it is
character,
life,
destiny.
How
ill,
all
these
may be
for
good or
may be
fact remains.
Every true
and a
call in respect to
which
how we
and
hear.
illustration of this,
that our
Lord
it.
is
He was
called
God
to
We
He
glorified
high
priest,
but
that
His glorification
honour and exaltation of our humanity was indeed His own act and achievement. But, if we
may
The Process
but the act of
of
Divine Grace
283
God
in
Him.
ment in our nature of the perfection of holiness and life was an act only possible for even Him in our
nature
of God, and, and perfectly It was humanity's supreme act, in obeyed the call. Him, of perfect faith and perfect obedience the act which it at once was made and made itself one with by
first
because
He was
called to
it
secondly,
because
He
perfectly heard
God.
The
call of
God
to us in Jesus Christ
is
call first to
mate and
to
final.
status or relation
God which
Paul describes as
this
grace wherein
we
he
says,
faith,
The
truth
which
St.
Paul's
by
own use warrants us in designating justification the first being that faith turns upon two points
God's act of
completion in
ourselves
so redeemed
and completed
is
Jesus
Christ.
and
gives
Him.
What
true of us in Christ,
it
who
of
is
the truth
of us all, is to
in ourselves.
us as though
The immediate
that
284
to
Saint Paul
where our
are to
God
in
whom
we
He
Or
God
He who
We are
God only what we have first made ourselves, but what God has by His own grace first made us in Christ, that we are thereby in Him enabled to make
not to
ourselves.
We
and
righteous
through being
so,
made and
is
treated as such.
Of
all
that
is
Christ or
Christ's
we have
As
divine
we have
know
that
it is
ours and
it is
mine,
we
all
that
He Him-
has or
is is
As whom God
He justifies,
knows
so
whom He justifies
call that is
He
glorifies.
St Paul
where the
in
fact
and
in
ourselves
God.
True
The Process
justification
of
Divine Grace
285
Sanctification is the
justification
making ours
all
has
made
ours in potentiality.
that
becoming in ourselves
Christ.
in
God
has
made
us in
That which once for all was made ours and us Him we need time and process to appropriate and
Salvation can operate in us only
convert to ourselves.
and and
all
desires,
life.
The law
of the action of
these requires
to offer
that time
human life as it is. Our actual experience is just what we need to become all ourselves in Christ, and our actual environment is just what we
to human
experience in
There
is
a divine
fitness
all
that our
Him
who were
perfected in
Paul
is
Him. moments
in the
and so he speaks not of our sanctification But it is an old and true interpretation of the words as used by him to define sanctification as glory begun, or in progress, and glory
finished terms,
The whole
and
drama of
human
spiritual
destiny as realized
may Longam
expositionem hominis
286
to
Saint Paul
in se recapitulat.
is
Him
What, then,
Ught that
consistent
shall
we
The new
God
a connected and scheme having for its end the spiritual evolution and destination of humanity. If God be for us, who or what can be against us? Instructed and enUsted in the divine meaning and purpose of things, there can be nothing that does not definitely and positively work with us and for us. The need is that we be so instructed and enlisted. And the prime
difficulty is
mode
of
human
exaltation,
the mystery of
wisdom and
human
Christ,
how can we
account for
that
He who
is
the
life
and the
all,
human
That
God
spares us nothing of
is the supreme act and and wisdom. That there is no real good but personal good, the good of personality, and that, for us at least, there is no personal.
The Process
spiritual
of
Divine Grace
is
287
and survival of
that
is
our
human life and destiny. For Lord to have been spared the least of all He endured and overcame, would have been to abridge by
just so
much
attainment
and
And
it
for
Him
because
it is
whom He
is
the
The answer
Christ, is the
answer for us of
questions of the no
human
Ufe.
The
means on our part the faith and the grace that can endure all and overcome all. Without the former we should never attain the latter, and
it is
is
and measure of our human exaltation. He His Son, and through not sparing glorified and exalted Him, how shall He not, in and with Him, by the selfsame process of unsparing love, bestow upon us all real, spiritual, and eternal good? Jesus Christ is the only and the all-sufficient theodicy. In Him all meanings are revealed, and all divine means
and
that spared not
justified.
Who
What if God
in His love
takes sinners,
and the
The answer
is
God
in His sovereign
288
to
Saint Paul
more
of His
in the
choice justifies
whom He
own
will;
He
reveals
His
who
exigency of their
is sufficient,
new
rela-
become
their righteousness
and
their hfe,
He is therefore He
of
Jesus
One
There
their
of the eternal
is
and
infinite
grace of
God
in Jesus Christ.
earthly expe-
something instead of
assurance
from Him; that in His temptations we shall know His power and victory; that having suffered with Him in
The Process
His death
in
of
Divine Grace
up and
reign with
289
we may be
\^^lo or
raised
Him
The
His
life,
what
shall separate us
from the
love of
God which
is
is in
Lord ?
promise
salvation
and
XXI
XXI
pre-existence
and the
deity of our
it
Lord
there can be
no question.
The
and
all
conviction of
own and
His
in
own
the
of oneness with
God
I
words.
My
and
my
Taken
it is
alone, this
may
affirm nothing
spirit
and
activity
But
on the direct
of
line of
a deeper
the
life
and consciousness
all
Gospel in the
New
Testament.
in the
It is
contained in the
formula so
common
mouth
of St. Paul,
Grace to
God our Father and the Lord Here and always God and Christ are common
act of divine
and
identified in the
reconciliation
each
is
John's or
St.
Paul's or
St.
294
to
Saint Paul
God
their
any particular
It fills all
their thoughts or
words
things; the
of the universe.
He
new
is
God
in energy or actuahty, in
or higher creation.
They go to God
Their Lord
is
are in
Him, and He
in
them
as only
God
fies
can be.
in the fact
The
of
His
human
univer-
saUty.
The
expression
in
need of
fuller explanation
Our Lord was a man as real and actual as any other in all that constitutes human nature or that makes up human life and experience. The only difference in His case, on the human side, was one
and
justification.
of personal
action, in
identical conditions,
man.
This
is
the holiness.
The Christ
the righteousness, the life,
of Saint
not of one
all
Paul
man
just as
295
but of
all
men.
is
become
men.
are
men,
in
Adam
all sin
was not only one but and and so from death. humanity
all
As
all
Adam we
alive,
we By
made
from
I
sin
Christ's
humanity
mean a
capable,
now
risen,
God and
and
so.
sharing with
the divinity
Him
and
of perfect love,
eternal
life.
which
is
holiness
righteousness
are,
how
they are
and supreme
fact of hu-
The life has been manifested and is with us. By that we mean the divine-human life of Jesus Christ;
manity.
and that
one
so,
life is in
man but
then
the universal
of
all
men.
If this
be
He
can be nothing
less
than
God our
holiness,
He
is
New
For no individual human men. I have someTestament representation of Jesus Christ somewhat as
to all
is
The
place
all
life
of Jesus Christ
in the
New
:
Testament
In the
first
it is
in
what ours would be if it were completed according to its divine idea. Under
points like unto ours, or
this
head
it
is
human terms
place,
in
In the second
the
life
of our
Lord
is
296
tively
to
Saint Paul
live,
ye shall
of
life
He He is
to us all
who
believe.
We
see,
brought to bear
upon humanity in Him, the divine causes and conditions which are alone productive of eternal life; and
we
are
made
to experience in ourselves in
Him
the
and ponder the description (Eph. i. 19, 20) of the exceeding greatness of the power of God to usward
who
which
is
He wrought
when He
Him from
the dead.
Jesus Christ
merely causally or virtually but really and personally our Life; and we cannot overstate or overvalue the
sense or extent in which that
is true.
Christ
is
always
him up
into Himself
life.
and making
It is
not too
is
much
not
man
but
is
the higher
there
is
self of
every man.
So that
I of
no
exaggeration in his.
lives in
No
am
And
dead
When
we
also
Christ
who
is
our
life
appear with
Him
in glory.
Christ in us
is
the hope,
The Christ
as
of Saint
Paul
297
He
will
means our
the
self-realization
Let us consider a
One
says, "
You
lay great
stress
upon the view that our Lord was not a man, I find this a difficult conception; does it but man. mean that humanity has a concrete real existence apart from the individual persons who are human, and that If this be this Universal becomes visible in Christ?
so,
does
it
now
generally held
is
"
The
humanity
can
personality is
a divine one.
all
It is
only
God
in
all.
it
that
make
it
applicable to
St.
or the truth of
And
is
since,
according to
Paul,
it is
to us
and makes
less
that
His
Christ can
be to us nothing
belongs to
It is
than divine.
The
concrete universal of
in Jesus Christ
God
in
humanity.
particular
God
all;
so
in
man may
and
But, to go further
may we not
in the
is
be found
New
He
the eternal
man
as the end
and
heir of
all.
In
298
to
Saint Paul
that sense
He
of the earth, in
humanity from before the foundation the Man from Heaven, the Son of man,
is
all
ity is to
to itself
first
final
cause
cause as well as
may
say a single
of the act of
God, but
Godhead.
is
at the
same time
Him
in the
We
God, but that He is the Logos or Word or Son of No one can enter into the meaning and truth of Christ and Christianity and admit that our Lord is anything less than God. Yet we cannot but feel
God.
the difference and the choice between saying that
Christ
is
God
qualifiedly, that
is
He
is
is
the Logos or
o 6eos.
Word
6c6i,
but
He He
not
The
divine
Word
God,
can a
less
absolutely
or
exclusively
Monarchian or Sabellian
After
all
sense.
humanness
it is
life
and experiences,
less insisted
upon.
"
This
may
best be realized
of
and considered
in a
concrete
instance
actual
:
experience.
One
says,
My
difficulty is as follows
The agony
in the
Garden
The Christ
and the cry of
forsaken
of Saint
Paul
299
My
God,
to
my
me? seem
show
Lord was
will,
as
personally distinct
are; that
was
be capable of losing
lose
its
We might
language of Ps.
to
of dereliction seems
Word
in
which the
upon God
sufferer
commend my
There
is
spirit."
real
one.
no doubt that we have here expressed a very difficulty; perhaps an insoluble one, the insoluble But let us see what it means or implies. If the
was
it
or
how
else shall
we
explain it?
If
we
in
words
and do we want to be able, to construe these experiences of our Lord into some other, non-human experiences ? If this was His last and probably greatest temptation, would we wish
question,
would we then be
able,
to
prove that
like as
being
He was not here, too, tempted in all points we are? What would there be to gain in the able to feel that this was not a really human
and
victory,
temptation
victory, in fine, in
300
in
to
Saint Paul
world?
we be
able
life
more satisfactorily to construe the meaning and the cross of Jesus Christ ?
Yet, assuming, as
tions
of the
we must,
we
is
not
He
the
Word
of
God
humanity,
God
self-fulfilled
and
self-fulfilling in
all;
the
and on the other hand, too, a human personality which alone can be the real and perfect expression of God humanly self-reaKzed and manifested ? We find ourselves under a necessity of seeing in Jesus Christ from beginning to end an act of God in nature and in humanity. In Him God comes to us and is in us, and we come to God and are in Him; all that humanity is in Him is the work of God in humanity, and our part in that work is only what He does and is in us. And at the same time we are under an equal necessity of recognizing in our Lord as in ourselves a human activity the freest and most personal possible, the most determinative and constitutive of our own very selves. The time may
come when we
paradox
or
shall
better state to
ourselves this
seeming contradiction, and better too perhaps adapt and fit ourselves to its acceptance; it
can never come when we shall be able either to solve
it
or to reject
it.
The Christ
Is not, for us in the very
of Saint
Paul
SOI
expressed
difficulty already
word Incarnation; a difficulty which the most of us evade by simply not taking the word seriously, in the fulness and reality of its meaning? In the instance we have been analyzing, what do we
see
common
who was
human,
The
fact,
we
hesitate to accept
it
as a possibility.
correlate
it
Unable
to
construe
to our
it
minds or
it
in thought,
we
either reject
altogether or evade
It
is
by half or seeming
acceptances.
as,
for example, the actuality of human freedom in the The fact of face of a universal cosmical necessity. the personal Divine and the personally human at once
in the
God and
ourselves.
As we
to the
end the
that, at least in
His relation
God
God
God.
only in
and completely revealed to us as Jesus Christ; and equally, that we are our
is
fully
realized
and completed
302
to
Saint Paul
contradictions
necessary
and
seeming
can I
However
from
ties,
life's
and all higher life of ourselves. and all similar attempts, may be
our
diflBcul-
we must not
We
must,
if
only,
upon the opposite and complementary terms of our Lord's deity and His humanity, untU we can better correlate them in our minds and approve their coexistent and equal truth to our reason. Here I leave my exposition of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as St. Paul sees it in Him and knows it in himself. According to St. Paul, as according to St. John and according to the whole mind of the New Testament, Christianity recognizes and accepts in Jesus Christ, not alone the manifestation and revelation, but the communication of God's own divine righteousness and eternal hfe. The Gospel is not merely a truth, it is a power and an activity. He who is in Jesus Christ
hold on to and
is
and causes which made Jesus Christ Himself humanly what He was. Those forces or causes are on one side divine, and constitute all that we express by the general term grace. Grace covers all that God
forces
Himself
is
or does in us,
all
that
we
experience as His
spirit.
They
are on
we
The Christ
see,
of Saint
Paul
303
human
He
is
the divine as
human, God
synthesis of
which
tion
is
our salvation.
The mystery
of the Incarna-
may be permanently a
is
the
all others.
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of
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per Volume.
By
mail, {0.96.
The purpose of the writers of this Series is to present in a clear and attractive tray the responsibilities and opportunities of the Clergy of to-day, and to offer snch practical guidance, in regard both to aims and to methods, as experience may have shown to be valuable. It is hoped that the Series, while primarily intended for those who are already face to face with the duties and .problems of the ministerial office, may be of interest and assistance also to others who are considering the question of entering into Holy Orders.
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young and
their
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; ;
Quarterly Jieview,
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By
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FOREIGN BIISSIONS.
By
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. .
Handbooks
ASMITAGE
continued.
By
the
Very Rev.
J.
KOBiifSON, D.D., Dean of Westminster. " The little book on the Gospels, 'which the new Dean of Westminster hae recently published, is one to be warmly commended alike to clergy and laity. Any intelligent person who takes the trouble to work through this little volume of 150 pages will be rewarded bj gaining from It as clear a view of the synoptic problem as is possible without prolonged and independent study of the sources." TTie Pilot (liondon).
A CHRISTIAN APOLOGETIC. By
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PASTORAL VISITATION.
"This
By
T. B. Stbokg,
DJ)., Dean of Christ Church. " This is a valuable and timely book, small in bulk, but weighty both in style and substance. . The Dean's essay is an admirable one, and is well . calculated to clear men's minds in regard to questions of very far-reaching importance. Its calm tone, and its clear and penetrating thought are alike characteristic of the author, and give a peculiar distinction to everything he writes." Guardian.
Eight
Eev. W. E. Collins, D.D., Bishop of Gibraltar. " We think that this is one of the best things on historical method that has ever been written. We are sure that it is the best we have ever read. . Wo nope that the book will be widely used ; it ought to be given to all undergraduates reading for historical honours." Athenaeum.
. .
By
the Rev. P. N.
Waggett, M.A.,
of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, Cowley. " The main result of this remarkable book is to present the clergy, for whom It is intended primarily (but we hope by no means entirely, for it should appeal even more forcibly to the other camp, to the professors than to the preachers), with a point of view." Church Times.
By
the Right
Bishop Teatman-Biggs knows what he 13 writing about he has packed into a small space all that most people could desire to learn and he has treated it with sense and soberness, though never with dullness." CftMrcA 0/ Ireland Oazette.
;
HuYSHB Yeatman-Biqgs,
CHURCH MUSIC.
Bishop of Croydon.
INTEMPERANCE. By
ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS.
By the Rev. "W. Foxley Noreis, M.A., Eector of Bamsley, and Hon. Canon of Wakefield.
Rev.
Clement
F. Rogers,
M.A.
Mary Eedclifte,
J. P.
Maud,
Bristol.
tIClje
Edited by the Kev. W. C. E. Nbwbolt, M.A.. Canon and Chancellor of St. Paul's ; and the Kev. .Darwkll Stone, M.A.. Librarian of the Puaey Hoiue. Oxford. Price, $1.40 net per Volume. By mail, $1.80
RELIGION.
By the
Rev.
W. C.
Chancellor of
St. Paul's.
" The Oxford lAbrary of Practical Theology makes a good beginning with Canon Newbolt's volume on religion. The publishers have spared no pains In maang the appearance of the volume as attractive as possible. The binding, type, and general 'get up of the volume just Issued leave nothing to
.
'
be desired." Guajdian.
HOLY BAPTISM.
By
the
Kev.
Dakwbll
Stone,
M.A.,
"Fevr hooka on Baptism contain more thoughtful and useful Instruction on the rite, and we give Mr. Stone's effort our highest approval. It might well be mide a text-book for candidates for the dlaconate, or at least In theological
colleges.
for thougliful
laymen
It is also
C. A.
Hall, D.D.,
They will
find it to be a storehouse of material for their instruction, aud quite the beat treatise that we have on the subject it treats. It is thoroughly practical, and
wanted." Cfuordion.
of St.
John
Baptist's College,
"Mr. Pullan's book will no doubt have, as It deserves to have, a large number of readers, and they will gain a great deal from the perusal of it. It may be certainly recommended to the ordinary laymen as by far the best book on the
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Pilot (London).
J. Knox Littlb, M.A., Canon of Worcester. "Canon Knox Little has given us a most exhaustive treatise on Holy Matrimony written in his best and happiest style, and giving ample proofs of wide research and deep study of the various subjects, and the essential characteristics of Christian marriage. We would strongly advise the clergy to place this work upon their shelves as a book of reference, while it forms a complete manual of instruction to aid them in the preparation of addresses on the subject." Church Bells.
.
.
THE INCARNATION. By
the Rev. H. V.
S.
Eck, M.A.,
Eector of St. Matthew's, Bethnal Green. "The teaching is sound, and the book may be placed with confidence in the hands of candidates for Orders of intelligent and educated lay people who desire fuller instruction on the central doctrines of the Faith than can be provided in sermons." dtta/rdian.
D.D.,
formerly Bishop of Nassau. welcome Bishop Churton's book as an anthoritative exposition of the modem High Church view of Missions. It is good for us all to understand It, thereby we shall be saved alike from unlnstructed admiration and indiscriminate denunciation." Church Missionary Iivtelligencer.
PRAYER.
By
Worlledge, M.A.,
;
Canon and Chancellor of Truro. " We do not know of any book about prayer which Is equally useful and we anticipate that it will be a standard work for, at any rate, a considerable time."Pilot.
continued.
By the Rev. W. B. Tbeveltan, M.A., Vicar of St. Matthew's, Westminster. extremely useful contribution to a 41fficult and Important subject, and we are confident it will rank high in the series to which it belongs.
SUWDAY.
"An
Guardian.
By
I.AN, ilJ^, Fellow of St. John Baptist's College, Oxford. %* Thu booh contains an account of the origin 0/ Ji^piscopacy, the three Creeds, the Ancient Western lAturgies and other institutions of the Church, fecial attev/tion is also given to the earty history of Sacramental Confession a-nd to the principle of Authority in the Church of England.
BOOKS OF DEVOTION.
Canon and Treasurer of
By
the Rev.
Chaeles Bodington,
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HOLY ORDERS.
By the Rev. A. R. Whitham, M.A., Principal of Culham College, Abingdon. " For the educated layman who wishes to know what the Church is teaching about the minstry, and what the relation of the laity to it really is, this is the best book with which we have met." Pilot (London).
We
afford
By the Rev. W. C. E. Newbolt, M.A., Canon and Chancellor of St. Paul's. think the book should be in the possession of every teacher who can it, and in every Church Library for the benefit of those who cannot.
By
the Rev.
Daewell
Stone,
The book meets a distinct want, and is Indispensable to all (and surely they are very many) who desire to nave a concise and well-balanced summary of the different opinions which have been held with regard to the Holy Communion from the earliest days of the Church." Oijord Diocesan
Magazine.
By the Rev. Beknaed Reynolds, M.A., Prebendary of St. Paul's. is needed is a bright and sensibly written book which will suggest topics for consideration and the way in which a Christian should view them. The book before us fulfils these conditions. It is stimulating and suggestive, and that is exactly what is wanted." Guordjan.
"
CHURCH WORK.
What
By
the Rev.
W. H.
Augustine's, Hull.
Spaeeow-
Walter Howard Frere, M.A., of the Community of the Resurrection. the Rev. Leighton Pullan, M.A., FelJohn
Baptist's College, Oxford.
volumes in peepaeation. Daewell Stone, M.A. OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. By the Very Rev. Henet Wage, D.D., Dean of Canterbury.
THE
BIBLE.
By
the Rev.
CO.,
New
York
'
.1
;.>M
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'"P'4:'('n'''^'^''':^',
:Hl!'i'''''lii!;!ii!ill;'
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"