xvii. 30: 'The times of ignorance God overlooked (winked at); but now

he commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent.' Wisd. xl. 23: 'Thou overlookest (winkest at) the sins of men to the end they may repent.'

[4] This paragraph gives distinctness to a somewhat latent thought in vers. 25, 26. But I feel convinced that this, and nothing else, is the thought.

[5] Verses 5, 25, 26.

[6] Rom. iii. 22.

[7] Phil. iii. 9.

[8] 2 Cor. v. 21.

[9] Rom. ix. 31.

[10] Rom. ii. 5.

[11] Cf. 1 John i. 9: 'Faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins.'

[12] Joseph, the 'righteous' man in Matt. i. 19, is kindly. But his kindliness has still the elements of moral severity. And it must be remembered that in Rom. v. 7 'righteous' is still put in contrast to 'good.'

[13] See Acts ii. 38: 'Be baptized ... unto the remission of your sins.' xxii. 16: 'Be baptized and wash away thy sins.'

[14] Acts xxvi. 18, i.e. forgiveness and fellowship in the consecrated body, the new Israel; cf. xx. 33.

[15] 2 Macc. vii. 37.

[16] 4 Macc. vi. 28, 29.

[17] John xi. 50.

[18] None the less immoral as Caiaphas intended it, because, as St. John perceives, a divine truth uttered itself through his lips (John xi. 51).

[19] John i. 29.

[20] Matt. xxvi. 28; Luke xxii. 19; 1 Cor. xi. 24.

[21] Robertson-Smith, _Religion of the Semites_ (Black, 1889), p. 418.

[22] Ps. l. 21; cf. Eccles. viii. 11.

[23] On some of the difficulties felt about the doctrine of the Atonement, see app. note D.

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DIVISION II. § 2. CHAPTER IV.

_The true seed of Abraham._

St. Paul has been repudiating the principle of justification by works of the law. To those with whom he had been brought up, this was in the highest degree to dishonour the Jewish law, and indeed the principle of divinely-given law at all. But in the last words of the previous chapter he refuses to admit this inference. 'God forbid that we should make law of none effect. Nay, we establish law.'

This idea of the Gospel, rightly understood, establishing the law even while it superseded it, is with St. Paul a very favourite one, and he elaborates it in different ways. Sometimes he shows how the function of the written law, or 'the letter,' is only to awaken the conscience and make men know their sinfulness. It can give men no help in corresponding to the moral requirement which it expresses. Having {156} convicted the conscience of sin, it has done its work, and must yield its place to a more effective spiritual agency. The letter killeth, in order that the Spirit may give life to those whom it has killed. And, on the other hand, the one object of this new spiritual agency, this life-giving Spirit, is to infuse the power of moral obedience, which the law could not give, into men's lives, 'that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk after the Spirit.' In this place, however, St. Paul only alludes to this argument and in the main adopts another. He shows from the Book of the Law, that the father of the faithful, himself the typical instance of a justified man, was justified, not by works which he had done, but simply because he believed; not upon the basis of any law or covenant, but as a man simply and not as a circumcised man; and again, that David, the man after God's own heart, living under the law, would have us rest our hopes of blessedness, not on our merits as having kept the law, but simply on the forgiving bounty of divine grace.

Let us inquire, he says, into the case of Abraham, whom we Jews are proud to own for our national ancestor. What are we to say of him? If Abraham approached God in virtue {157} of his merits in having kept a law, and so was accepted by God because of what he had done of himself, there is something for him to boast of. But this in fact is not his relation to God according to the scripture at all. There--

'merit lives from man to man, But not from man, O Lord, to thee.'

The whole initiation is God's. He simply makes a promise of His own pure goodwill--'Thy seed shall be as the stars of heaven'--and Abraham simply believed Him; and this, and nothing but this, was 'counted to him for righteousness[1].' The two suggested relations of Abraham to God are broadly contrasted and can be generally applied. In the one case you have a compact between God who imposes, and man who accepts, an allotted task with a payment attached to its fulfilment. If the man fulfils it, his payment can be classed as due to him under the compact. In the other case you have nothing done, no claim alleged, but a pure act of God, accepting one of our sinful race, as he is, simply because he takes God at His word. And this is how David also views our relation to God. You find him[2] opening his mouth to tell {158} us what sort of man is truly blessed, truly to be congratulated. And he thinks not of one who claims a reward because of his merit, but of one who has found no comfort or resource except in penitent confession of his sins, and whose sins God has forgiven and has consented to treat as if they did not exist. It is the unmerited act of the divine bounty, it is God justifying the sinful, which is the source of blessedness (vers. 1-8).

Now we go back to the case of Abraham to inquire whether the blessing of divine acceptance was pronounced upon him because he was the head of the chosen race marked out by circumcision--which was, so to speak, the first part of the law. No, it was before he was circumcised. The token of circumcision came afterwards[3], as the seal or external confirmation of what he had already received simply as a believing man; so that he might have for his true sons believers, whether uncircumcised or circumcised, and they might share his acceptance simply by believing God as he believed Him (vers. 9-12).

Plainly when God made Abraham the promise that he should be the heir of the world[4], no law {159} was introduced into the relationship. It was purely a matter of God promising and Abraham taking God at His word. Indeed it could not have been otherwise. Introduce law, and you introduce a compact between God and man which annuls the relationship of God simply promising and man simply believing--a compact which throws a strain on man's independent powers, which they are not able to bear. The one inevitable result of the law is to put man in the position, in which apart from law he cannot find himself, of a defaulter who knows himself, as a defaulter, under the divine wrath. The true relationship leaves matters in the hands of God, who purely promises of His good favour--man simply in faith receiving (vers. 13-16a). This resting everything on God's promise and man's faith gives security for the fulfilment of the promise to 'all the seed.' And the 'seed to whom the promise was made' includes, not only the race chosen later to receive the law, but believers of all races; Abraham being in this sense 'a father of many nations,' as he stands under the eyes of God whom he believed in--God who had power to make His promise good, even by recalling to life again the dead faculties of Abraham's old age, and summoning children {160} which did not yet exist as if they were already there. Here is the point: Abraham believed that God had the power to be as good as His word, in spite of all obvious reasons to the contrary. Therefore he looked the facts steadily in the face--his own and Sarah's great age. But he did not suffer this to weigh in the balance against God's promise. He made quite sure that God would do as He promised, and glorified God by this strong act of faith. This it is that was reckoned to him for righteousness, i.e. this it is that enabled God to accept him as righteous without any consideration of deeds done. And the record of this acceptance is made for our sakes to-day. God is still taking men into the number of the righteous, and He still does it on the same principle. He will reckon us for righteous if we will take Him at His word, and believe in His power to do as He has promised. And in our case He has given us fresh ground for such confident belief; for Jesus, on whom as Lord our hopes rest and who died to make atonement for our sins, He has by His power raised up from the dead, that by faith in Him, dead and yet alive again, we might be taken like Abraham without more ado into the number of the righteous.

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What then shall we say[5] that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, hath found? For if Abraham was justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not toward God. For what saith the scripture? And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh, the 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 reckoneth righteousness apart from works, _saying_,

Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, And whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin.

Is this blessing then pronounced upon the circumcision, or upon the uncircumcision also? for we say, To Abraham his faith was reckoned for righteousness. How then was it reckoned? when he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision: and he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while he was in uncircumcision: that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be in uncircumcision, that righteousness might be reckoned unto them; and the father of circumcision to them who not only are of the circumcision, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham which he had in uncircumcision. For not through the law was the promise to Abraham or to his seed, that he should be heir of the world, but through the righteousness of faith. For if they which are {162} of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise is made of none effect: for the law worketh wrath; but where there is no law, neither is 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 is the father of us all (as it is written, A father of many nations have I made thee) before him whom he believed, _even_ God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth the things that are not, as though they were. Who in hope believed against hope, to the end that he might become a father of many nations, according to that which had been spoken, So shall thy seed be. And without being weakened in faith he considered his own body now as good as dead (he being about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah's womb: yea, looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform. Wherefore also it was reckoned unto him for righteousness. Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was reckoned unto him; but for our sake also, unto whom it shall be reckoned, who believe on him that raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification.

1. No doubt, on the text of Gen. xv. 6, St. Paul is right. It was Abraham's _faith_ that is declared to have been reckoned to his account by God as equivalent to righteousness. But when we get beyond a mere text, is it not, we are inclined to ask, more true to the general {163} spirit of scripture to say, with the author of the First Book of the Maccabees, 'Was not Abraham found faithful in temptation, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness[6]?' or with St. James, 'Was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar? Thou seest that faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect[7].' No doubt certain Rabbis state the principle pedantically when they speak of Abraham having kept the whole Mosaic law by anticipation[8], but is it not true to say that Abraham was accepted by God, and on the whole is represented in the Bible as so accepted, _not_ only because he believed, but also because he 'was found faithful in temptation,' and did good works, or acted as a good man?

Now, if by 'accepted' is meant 'finally accepted,' St. Paul would say this as of Abraham, so of every other accepted man. He must be finally judged and must receive according to his works or character. As we shall see, there is no real discrepancy between St. Paul and St. James on this matter. And St. Paul never disparages 'good works' which are the fruit of {164} faith, only 'works' or 'works of the law' which represent a false attitude of man to God. But the question which he is here asking is, What is the ground of acceptance for a man _at starting_? What is it puts him at starting in the right relation to God? In other words, What is the root of real righteousness? And his answer to this question is, it is only self-surrendering faith which brought Abraham, or which brings any other man, into acceptance.

In giving this answer St. Paul had in view another attitude with which he had been long familiar, and which he calls 'seeking to be justified by works of the law.' It was the attitude of the Jews, especially as they appear in St. John's Gospel. They were proud of their divine law and of belonging to the chosen people, the children of Abraham and Moses. They knew how to make good their standing-ground with God. By keeping the law, as the law had come to be understood among themselves, they could accumulate merits altogether out of proportion to their failures or demerits. They could even be helped by the merits of the old saints[9]. Thus they could {165} stand before God on the basis of a certain engagement or covenant, into which God had entered with His people, and claim their due reward.

This utterly demoralizing attitude--leading as it does to formalism and hypocrisy, or, at the best, unprogressive stagnation--this attitude, which left out of sight all the higher and infinite elements in the Old Testament, was the actual attitude of contemporary Pharisaic Jews. The characteristics with which it endowed them were pride in the law; a sense of personal merit coupled with a contempt for 'sinners of the Gentiles,' or the common 'people which knew not the law'; a self-satisfied stagnation which made them utterly resent the new light of the gospel; a regard for the public opinion of their class, which made them slaves to convention; and moral hollowness and rottenness within. It was because this was their attitude that they rejected the Christ. 'Going about to establish their own righteousness, they did not submit themselves to the righteousness of God.' It was because St. Paul had been brought up in the school of the Pharisees, but had come to perceive its moral rottenness and to accept Jesus as the Christ, that he bases all his {166} doctrine on the substitution of justification by faith for justification by works.

By 'works' or 'works of the law' he means an attitude towards God which left a man largely independent of Him. Under the divine covenant the man of the covenant has a certain task to do, a certain law to keep: that kept, especially in its external requirements as contemporary authority enforces it, he is his own master. He is entitled to resent any further claims upon him. This religious ideal means, as we have seen, pride, stagnation, conventionalism, hypocrisy. And the more it is considered the more unnatural it appears. For

(1) It ignores the fundamental relation of man to God, viz. that, as a creature, he depends absolutely and at every stage on God. He has no initiative in himself. Thus the only attitude towards God which expresses the reality is one in which God is recognized as continually supplying, or promising, or offering, or claiming, and man is continually accepting, or believing, or corresponding, or obeying.

(2) It ignores the ineradicable taint of sin in man, and the accumulated guilt of particular sins. A man may gloss over his inward sinfulness, and cloak and ignore his secret sins; he {167} may live outwardly in high reputation; but if he comes to know himself, he knows himself as a sinner, who depends, at starting, absolutely on God for forgiveness and 'deliverance from coming wrath.'

(3) It is quite contented to leave all mankind, except a small elect body, out of the conditions of acceptance with God.

In substituting 'faith' for works of the law, then, as the principle of justification, St. Paul was really 'returning to nature'; he was realizing facts, and supplying a basis for a morality both progressive and universal. Further, he was true to all the highest teaching of the Old Testament, which continually finds the source and ground of sin and failure in man's independence of God; which is averse to nothing so conspicuously as to substituting external conformity for moral character; which is heavy with the consciousness of sin; which humbly expects a fuller, wider, and richer disclosure of the kingdom of God. Finally, he was true to that deep and summary teaching of our Lord to the Jews, 'This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.' No doubt it may still be said St. Paul argues in an 'uncritical' manner on the basis of a particular {168} text. But in doing this he was doing as his Jewish contemporaries did; and if the particular text is used to prove a real or true principle, who shall complain of it?

2. And now to conciliate St. Paul and St. James. It is a satisfactory task, for the statements which appear so contradictory admit, when they are examined, of an easy harmony.

Let us suppose, what is highly probable, that the report of St. Paul's teaching reached St. James at Jerusalem at second-hand, in a fragmentary and perverted manner--perhaps as illustrated by unfortunate specimens of its influence where it was wilfully misunderstood. 'Men are justified before God by faith without consideration of works.' St. James' holy and beautiful, but no doubt somewhat unphilosophical mind, was alarmed and scandalized. By faith he understood an intellectual quality--the acceptance of the divine truth revealed; and he points out with the simplicity of moral common sense, that never in the Old Testament is right belief represented as the ground of acceptance with God without the right conduct which is its natural sequence. Who can deny that the devils have a 'right belief' in the existence of God? Faith, in fact, without {169} works--orthodox belief without moral obedience--is a lifeless form, a body without spirit[10].

To all this St. Paul would of course have agreed, in St. James' sense of the word faith. In fact, St. James' faith, i.e. bare orthodox belief, is closely akin to, and apt to keep company with, formal ecclesiastical observance, which is part of what St. Paul means by 'works.' Both were characteristic of the Pharisaic Jews. St. Paul and St. James would have been at one in saying, 'There must be life in this dead shell of orthodox belief, if it is to have value with God; and what alone can give it life is the real spirit of moral obedience to the will of the holy and good God'--which is what St. James means by 'works.' The disagreement between them is then, so far, only verbal. But St. Paul goes deeper, into a region where St. James does not follow him, and asks what is the real starting-ground of the truest obedience--the real root of the moral life? And he finds this starting-ground, this fundamental establishment of the right relation to God, in what he called faith; that is, no mere orthodoxy of intellect, but a fundamental relationship of man towards God--the utterly receptive faculty, {170} the profound quality of the self-surrendering will.

3. There is a young philosophical inquirer in Plato's Dialogue of the _Republic_ who is so anxious to get at the ultimate principle of justice, as distinct from its consequences and secondary qualities, that Socrates laughingly tells him he is 'scrubbing and polishing it like a statue.' Now St. Paul has the philosopher's instinct to get at a principle in its pure simplicity. He scrubs faith clean of all extraneous accidents. He is most anxious that we should disengage its activity from all the other closely-interconnected elements in human nature; and so perceive that, whatever a man has been or is in race or conduct or antecedents, once let him exhibit faith, the faith which takes God at His word, and by that very fact and no other, all the obstacles to God's acceptance of him are overcome. The true relation of the man to God is restored in its elementary principle. And nothing but this, however elaborate its apparent performances, can restore the fundamental relationship. It is faith only, and not works, however splendid, which justifies or enables God to take a man, place him amongst the righteous, and work upon and in him. But this elemental {171} act of simply abandoning independence, trampling on pride and taking God at His word, is an act or attitude of the whole man which necessarily (granted that it be not withdrawn) becomes correspondence of the whole being with God, a lifelong obedience, an allegiance and homage of every faculty of will, and emotion, and intellect. 'Faith,' then, as Calvin once said, 'is pregnant with good works, but it justifies before they are brought forth.'

That the rudimentary justifying faith, on which St. Paul is here insisting, is a developing thing, a living and germinating principle, the basis of a life which grows--but always 'from faith to faith,' from one stage of faith to another--will appear clearly enough as we go on. But even here, in this chapter, it appears already that faith is something quite inconsistent with remaining as we are. Faith looks to a divine promise--a promise of astounding change--and believes that God is able to realize it in us. Such was Abraham's faith. Such, we may add, was the faith of those in the Gospels who came to be healed, and to whom it was said, 'According to your faith be it unto you.' Our faith then also must expect and desire some amazing transformation of our human nature, {172} according to a divine promise--nothing less than power out of impotence, life out of death.

And it is from this point of view that the Resurrection is apparently regarded in this chapter, as holding the place it does in the 'scheme' of our justification by faith. We are to believe that God is able to bring life morally out of death. He makes that act of faith possible or easier for us by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This evidence of God's power in the case of Jesus, the person on whom our divine faith is to rest, gives an adequate support and reasonable security to our faith. 'He was designated as the Son of God with power, by the resurrection from the dead,' and thus becomes the natural object for such a faith in the power of God to carry out His promises as is necessary for our justification. This is probably the meaning of the particular words with which the fourth chapter closes--'Who died for our sins (that is, in order that, in virtue of His atoning sacrifice, our sins might be forgiven) and rose again for our justification' (i.e. in order that our faith might have in the risen Lord an adequate object). But of course the relation of faith to the risen Lord is by no means exhausted in this thought.

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4. We Englishmen are possessed with the idea that there is nothing so alien to our characters as the temper of the Pharisees or the doctrine of the merit of good works. But if we can look at the matter below the surface, we can hardly fail to realize that the spirit which St. Paul so mightily repudiates lies in some respects very close to our natural instincts. The Englishman has a standard, of his class, his college, his profession, which it is his pride not to fall short of; but he is intensely alarmed at any claim upon his moral independence over and above this allowed standard; he is inclined to turn his back completely upon the idea of fundamental surrender to the unknown and infinite claim of God; he is contented with himself and his standard, and occupies himself in comparing it favourably with the standards of other classes, or still more of other nations. But what is this spirit but, for good or for evil, the spirit of Pharisaism under a wholly different dress? 'They going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God.' 'How can ye believe which seek glory one of another, and the glory that cometh from the only God ye seek not?' 'They measuring themselves by {174} themselves and comparing themselves amongst themselves are not wise.' Here are typical condemnations of the self-satisfied Pharisaic temper so expressed as to prevent us from supposing that we shall escape condemnation with the Pharisees merely because we do not say long prayers in public places, or distinguish ourselves by a careful ritualism.

[1] Gen. xv. 5, 6.

[2] Ps. xxxii.

[3] Gen. xvii.

[4] None of the promises are verbally to this effect. But this is the substantial outcome of them.

[5] Or 'of Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh' (margin).

[6] 1 Macc. ii. 52; cf. Ecclus. xliv. 20.

[7] James ii. 21, 22.

[8] Cf. S. and H. p. 101.

[9] There is contemporary evidence for this illustration of their position; see _Ephesians_, app. note C.

[10] James ii. 14-26.

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DIVISION III. CHAPTERS V-VIII.

_The accepted life or the moral consequences of justification._

§ 1. CHAPTER V. 1-11.

_The holy confidence of the justified._

Peace is a fundamental spiritual need of the human soul. But the peace that is God's gift comes only through the breaking up of the peace of soul which comes from ignoring God. The Pharisee on the temple steps was at peace when he thanked God that he was not as other men are--at peace in his misplaced pride. The mass of men in heathen Corinth, where St. Paul was writing, were at peace in their sins. And St. Paul has set himself with all his might, as in his preaching generally, so in this particular letter, to break up this false peace of conscience. Like the prophet of old he spurns those who would 'heal the hurt of the daughter of God's {176} people lightly, saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace.' Thus he has been arousing the conscience of Gentiles and Jews equally, and forcing upon them the conviction that their present life is a condemned life, under the doom of a righteous God. But when the conviction is driven home, when the wound is fairly recognized and probed, comes in due course the healing remedy. It lies in the recognition of what God really is--of the sort of character which He is manifesting now in His Son Jesus Christ. For behold! wholly apart from any question of what we are or have been, God is found waiting for us with the offer of His love, which is also the power to accomplish what He offers. It is pardon and new life He offers to us. It is for us simply to take Him at His word, and without any delay or reckoning up of accounts, to be acquitted and accepted for righteous simply because we have believed His word.

The secure ground of peace in the soul, therefore, lies in the frank and severe recognition of our own sinfulness, but also, and even more, in looking away from ourselves and simply fixing our whole consideration on the character of God, who in certain acts has shown His {177} good-will toward us, and His power to make His goodwill effectual. All hope for us starts simply from God and His mind of love toward us. 'Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son.'

Thus we find St. Paul, in the passage we are now to consider, beginning a fresh appeal to believers in Christ on this basis, which he has already made so secure. Seeing, he says, that we have now been accepted simply because we believed, let us enter into that heritage of peace which our Lord Jesus Christ by His redemption has won for us. For what is our present condition? Through His redeeming sacrifice we have received an introduction, at no other cost than that of believing, into a new standing-ground before God, a new state in which the whole atmosphere is one of grace or divine favour. We can therefore enjoy a solid peace in the present based on the sure consideration of the divine goodwill, and we can make it our boast that we have a well-grounded hope of future restoration to that highest fruition of which our nature is capable--fellowship in the divine glory. And while we enjoy these present privileges of ours, let us show that we really value them by making {178} the outward hardships which accompany them a matter of boasting also. For we know that only such hardships, bravely encountered, can give to our characters the quality of steadfastness; and steadfastness through the experience of life makes of us men of approved moral metal; and this process of probation, in which we are tried and not found wanting, again generates hope in us--the same hope in God's love which accompanied the beginning of our justification, only now confirmed in us by our own experience. And this divine hope has nothing treacherous about it[1]. It is grounded on what God has already done. He has already given us His Holy Spirit, and by that gift poured forth His love into our hearts: He would not have done this in order to cheat us at the last.

We can indeed test and measure the mind of God toward us by human comparisons. In our experience of men we might perhaps find some one brave enough even to die for another, if that other was, I do not say merely an upright man, but a good and loveable one. But what is the fact in God's dealings with us? It was {179} when we were sinful and helpless in our sinfulness--nay rather, when we were living in flat antagonism to God--that He proved His own pure love toward us by taking advantage of the divine opportunity to give His Son to die for us. And He, thus dying on our behalf, won for us by the shedding of His blood a reconciliation with God, which lay altogether outside anything which our state naturally suggested. Well then, God would not, so to speak, have gone out of His way to make this beginning, unless He had intended to carry the work through, so as finally to save us out from under the divine wrath, or, in other words, into the divine fellowship. Certainly, accepted as we have been in virtue of Christ's blood-shedding, and thus reconciled to God when our natural state was hostility to Him, we can trust Him, now that He has made us His friends, to accomplish our deliverance, not by any further blood-shedding, but by admitting us into the life of Christ risen from death. But, to end where we began, it is not only the hope of a future deliverance that makes us glad. We also make our boast of our present relation and friendship with God through His Son.

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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 us also rejoice in our tribulations: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, probation; and probation, hope: and hope putteth not to shame; because the love of God hath been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Ghost which was given unto us. For while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: for peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to die. But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from the wrath _of God_ through him. 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; and not only so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.

1. We feel in this passage, and in those which follow, that a great transition is being accomplished, or has been accomplished, in the argument, we hardly know how: the transition from the thought of our preliminary justification or acceptance with God for Christ's sake, to that of our sanctification, or the life consecrated in Christ: the transition from the thought of Christ's work _for us_ to that of Christ's work _in us_: from {181} the gift of acquittal to the gift of the Spirit (ver. 5), and the life of the baptized (vi. 3). St. Paul is not conscious of the transition, as modern theologians or Christians acquainted with theological controversy cannot but be, because the two stages are to his mind absolutely inseparable. Those to whom he wrote had like himself come, with whatever of struggle, to believe in Christ; believing, they had been baptized into Christ, and had received by the laying on of hands the gift of the Holy Ghost. This fellowship in Christ's life, this possession of the Spirit, constituted Christianity. To enjoy these things was to be a Christian. The idea of a Christianity which stopped short of incorporation into Christ, or which claimed this incorporation outside His body which is the Church, and apart from the visible sacramental means of union, did not occur to St. Paul. A Christianity which did not own allegiance to the Church was not in question. But his entire present aim is to convince the heart and reason of Christians that the whole privilege of their new 'state of grace' belongs to them simply in virtue of faith. As he asks the Galatians: 'Received ye the Spirit,' i.e. did ye become Christians, 'by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith?' That is his point. {182} They were not made Christians because they had done anything to deserve it. They were simply helpless sinners, and it was the gratuitous mercy of God which looked upon them and provided a means of forgiveness for them, and justified them or set them upon a new basis of acceptance, without any consideration of what they were or had done, purely and simply because He loved them and meant that the mere spectacle of His unmerited love and bounty should inspire their gratitude and win their hearts. Therefore he lays such emphasis on their initial need of forgiveness: on their helplessness to get rid of their own sins: on their dependence for forgiveness on a sacrifice to which they could contribute nothing: on their being justified by simply receiving in trust the offer of God. But the offer when it is listened to is found to consist in forgiveness indeed--but forgiveness as a step toward new life in the body of Christ. Thus what Christ won for man, what becomes available for each man in virtue of believing the message, is here described as 'our introduction' (rather than 'access') 'into this grace wherein we stand'--an introduction into a spiritual region where God's favour is the prevailing atmosphere, or, to use a later phrase, into 'a state of grace'; a {183} district of security out of which, however, men may fall again by deliberate unfaithfulness, as St. Paul warns the Galatians[2]: 'Ye are severed from Christ, ye who would be justified by the law; ye are fallen away from grace.'

And St. Paul's language does not let us suppose that the whole of what he means by our 'salvation' is included in our preliminary acceptance[3]. That is simply our first introduction into a permanent state. Our 'salvation' is here, as elsewhere, spoken of as equivalent to deliverance from wrath in the day of judgement, which means that our whole moral being has become such as can bear the scrutiny of the divine righteousness and the fellowship of the divine glory.

2. Where the Revised Version above[4] reads 'rejoice,' it is important to remember that the word is that used for the illegitimate 'glorying' or 'boasting' of iii. 27 and iv. 2. Christians have something to boast of, but it is not their own; it is God's gift. Therefore they are especially delighted when God's strength is shown in their weakness, and they will more particularly 'boast of their weaknesses' (cf. 2 Cor. xi. 30).

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3. St. Paul's argument that the Christian hope is fundamentally trustworthy is based, we may notice, on a twofold appeal. First (ver. 5), he appeals to the gift of the Spirit which at a definite time[5] each Christian received, doubtless by the laying on of hands. This gift is in itself an outpouring of the divine love and an 'earnest' of future glory (2 Cor. i. 22, v. 5). No doubt almost all the Christians had more or less intensely _felt_ the reality of the divine love in the indwelling Spirit. But St. Paul lays stress rather on the fact than on the feeling. Secondly (vers. 6 ff.), he appeals to the great redemptive act of God. God had gone out of His way to make a great sacrifice in order to reconcile us when we were enemies, and therefore may be trusted to carry out the preliminary reconciliation into full spiritual deliverance or salvation by Christ's life. The greater effort carries with it the less.

[1] Isa. xxviii. 16: 'He that believeth shall not be put to shame' (Greek version).

[2] Gal. v. 4.

[3] Cf. also p. 310.

[4] verses 2, 3, 11.

[5] The tense is an aorist, 'the Holy Ghost which was given' at a definite past moment; not as in the unrevised Bible 'is given.'

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DIVISION III. § 2. CHAPTER V. 12-21.

_The Second Adam._

St. Paul had spoken, at the end of the passage we have just been reading, of our being 'saved by (or 'in') Christ's life.' And this brings him to what is truly the central point of his theology--the life in Christ by the Spirit: the thought that the glorified Man, with all the power of the divine life at work in Him, though He is hidden from sight, is still perpetuating His life by His Spirit in that society which He has established to be His body. It stands to reason that if real fellowship in the life of Christ is the privilege of the Christian, this must be a greater thing by far than any preparatory gift of acquittal or justification, which indeed has its value simply in virtue of that to which it admits us. St. Paul then loves to contrast the new {186} manhood of believers in Christ, the life in Christ, in all its moral characteristics, with the old manhood, enslaved to sin, as it existed substantially identical in its bondage under the outwardly differing conditions of Gentile and Jewish society. And as that old life of our race had a unity which St. Paul believed was due to a common origin in the first man Adam, so he thought of Christ as a second Adam--the 'last Adam'--a spiritual progenitor from whom was to be derived another human race by spiritual generation with a better unity of its own; or rather a new spiritual progenitor from whom the whole of the old race might gradually derive, by spiritual regeneration, a new life, which should penetrate and spread, and oust the corruption of the old manhood, till the whole was redeemed and ushered into the glory for which it had been originally destined.

And here, in the passage we are now to read, St. Paul develops the thought of the influence of Adam and his sin upon the human race, and draws from it an argument for the deeper and greater influence of the New Man upon the same race, reconstituted under a new head.

Adam's sin--the disobedience of the one man--had a disastrous effect upon his race as a {187} whole. It introduced sin, and through sin its penalty, death; and it passed to all mankind--the penalty, because also the sin. All men sinned in fact, and all died. This can be stated without exception. It is quite true that where there is no special law to instruct men, they may sin ignorantly, and therefore without its being imputed to them as guilt; yet the sin is there all the same, and its presence, before the Mosaic law was given to enlighten men, was marked by the reign of death, even in the case of persons innocent of any actual sin like Adam's. Sin then, as marked by death, exists universally, apart from any knowledge of it or even any actual offence, as the effect of Adam's transgression upon his whole race. But to Adam corresponds in the divine purpose Christ. He is the new head of the race--to transmit the free gift of life, as Adam transmitted the penalty of death. His life was one summary obedience: one perfectly acceptable object to the eyes of God. And there flows from it an abundant river of the good favour of God--which is also the good favour of the man Jesus Christ--and of the gift by which that good favour shows itself, the gift of righteousness extending on into an eternal life. Therefore we may argue {188} _a fortiori_[1] from the influence of Adam to the influence of Christ--[_a fortiori_, because, though God has been, so to speak, constrained to punish us, His whole desire is to do us good; and the method of diffusion which He has allowed to operate for evil, we can be much more sure He will set to work for good][2]. We see the trespass of the one generating universal death, and we are sure that the counter influence of Christ is as universally diffusive and incomparably more powerful. We see the one man's offence appealing to God for judgement and producing a condemned race; but we see, on the other hand, a multitude of sins appealing to the divine compassion to let loose the free gift which shall make for acquittal. If the consequence of the transgression was inevitable, and a reign of death followed, so much more certainly must the divine gift, abundant as it is, bring about the triumph of eternal life. If the one fault diffused itself in universal condemnation, so the one act which meets the divine approval must diffuse itself to produce {189} universally an accepted life. One disobedience made the whole race sinners: one obedience shall make the whole race righteous. The law came in parenthetically to the world of sin and death to let actual sin, like Adam's, have its full and fatal scope. But the greatness of the sin only magnifies still more the greatness of the remedy which divine goodness supplies, that the sovereignty of sin in a world of death might be swallowed up in the sovereignty of divine goodwill working through righteousness unto life eternal through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned:--for until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's transgression, who is a figure of him that was to come. But not as the trespass, so also _is_ the free gift. For if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God, and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound unto the many. And not as through one that sinned, _so_ is the gift: for the judgement _came_ of one unto condemnation, but the free gift _came_ of many trespasses unto justification. For if, by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one; much more shall they that receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, _even_ Jesus Christ. So then as through one trespass _the judgement came_ unto all men to {190} condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness _the free gift came_ unto all men to justification of life. For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous. And the law came in beside, that the trespass might abound; but where sin abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly: that, as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

1. St. Paul in this section, as also in part in his speech at Athens, teaches, as matter which can be assumed and need not be emphasized, that God made 'of one' (Adam) 'every nation of men[3]'; that Adam, by actual transgression of a divine commandment, introduced sin, and with sin death which is its punishment, into the world of man; and that as a result all men sinned. This universal sin he would, no doubt--as in