{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_32673/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_32673","id":"gutenberg_32673","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32673","summary":null,"tags":["Bible. Romans -- Commentaries","Category: Religion/Spirituality"],"text":"Produced by Al Haines\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n_St. Paul's_\n\n_Epistle to the Romans_\n\n\n_A Practical Exposition_\n\n\n\nBY THE\n\nRIGHT REV. CHARLES GORE, D.D.\n\nLORD BISHOP OF WORCESTER\n\n\n\nVOL. I\n\n(CHAPTERS I-VIII)\n\n\n\nLONDON\n\nJOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.\n\n1902\n\n\n\n\n  FIRST EDITION .  _February_, 1899.\n  _Reprinted . . . . . March_, 1900.\n  _Reprinted . . . September_, 1900.\n  _Reprinted . . . . October_, 1902.\n\n\n\nOXFORD\n\nHORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY\n\n\n\n\n{v}\n\nPREFACE\n\nA good excuse is needed for adding to the large number of excellent\ncommentaries on the Epistle to the Romans which already exist.  But I\nthink there is such an excuse.  These commentaries are not of the sort\nwhich readers who are educated but not scholarly find it easy to\nmaster; so that in fact this epistle is at the present day very much\nmisunderstood or ignored by such people.  And again, partly owing to\nits interpretation at the period of the Reformation and by some\nEvangelicals of later date, it is still practically to a great extent\nviewed with discomfort and neglected by those who most value the name\nof Catholic.  My excuse, then, for adding to the expositions of the\nRomans lies in these facts.  One who is necessarily immersed in the\npractical work of the Christian ministry, and is yet struggling to keep\nhimself in some sense in line with biblical scholarship, if his life\ninvolves special disadvantages, may yet hope to be useful in\ninterpreting to ordinary Christians {vi} the results of the scholars.\nAnd I am persuaded that it requires one who enters thoroughly into the\nspirit of churchmanship, or the obligation of the one body, to\ninterpret with any completeness the mind of St. Paul.\n\nThis volume has practically no more connexion with lectures delivered\nin Westminster Abbey last Lent, than is implied in its being an\nexposition of the same epistle by the same person.\n\nThe method of exposition in this volume is the same as that pursued in\nits predecessor on the Epistle to the Ephesians.  After a general\nintroduction, each section of the Revised Version is taken, or in some\ncases two sections are taken together, and prefaced by an analysis or\nparaphrase, as seems most useful, and followed by further explanation\nof the main ideas or phrases which each section contains.\n\nThe 'appended notes' I have been obliged to defer to the end of the\nsecond volume--which, I hope, will appear within a year--with a view of\napproximately equalizing the size of the two volumes.\n\nCHARLES GORE.\n\nWESTMINSTER ABBEY,\n  _Conversion of St. Paul_, 1899.\n\n\n\n\n{vii}\n\nTABLE OF CONTENTS\n\n                                                                  PAGE\nINTRODUCTION.\n\n     (i) Origin and circumstances of the epistle . . . . . . . .     1\n    (ii) 'Justification by works' or 'by faith'  . . . . . . . .     6\n   (iii) Justification, sanctification, and Church membership  .    25\n    (iv) St. Paul's doctrine and modern spiritual needs  . . . .    41\n\n\nTHE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS.\n\nCHAPTER\n\n    I.   1-7  SALUTATION  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   46\n        8-17  INTRODUCTION  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   53\n\n\nDIVISION I  _Universality of sin and condemnation_ . . . . . . .    63\n\n       18-32 Sec. 1 Judgement on the Gentile world  . . . . . . . .    66\n   II.       Sec. 2 Judgement on the Jews . . . . . . . . . . . . .    87\n  III.   1-8 Sec. 3 Jewish objections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   114\n        9-20 Sec. 4 Sin and condemnation universal  . . . . . . . .   121\n\n\nDIVISION II  _Justification by faith only_.\n\n       21-31 Sec. 1 Christ our propitiation . . . . . . . . . . . .   130\n   IV.       Sec. 2 The true seed of Abraham  . . . . . . . . . . .   155\n\n\n{viii}\n\nDIVISION III  _The accepted life or the moral consequences\n              of justification_.\n\n    V.  1-11 Sec.  1 The holy confidence of the justified . . . . .   175\n       12-21 Sec.  2 The second Adam  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   185\n\n   VI.  1-14 Sec.  3 The Christian life a living by dying . . . . .   204\n       15-23 Sec.  4 The perfect freedom in God's service . . . . .   225\n\n  VII.   1-6 Sec.  5 Freedom from the law by union with Christ  . .   236\n        7-25 Sec.  6 The function and failure of the law  . . . . .   245\n\n VIII.  1-11 Sec.  7 Life in the Spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   271\n       12-17 Sec.  8 The life of sonship  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   288\n       18-30 Sec.  9 The hope of the creation . . . . . . . . . . .   298\n       31-39 Sec. 10 Christian assurance  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   321\n\n\n\n\n{1}\n\nTHE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS\n\n\n_Introduction._\n\ni.\n\nSt. Paul's great Epistle to the Romans was written, as may be quite\nconfidently asserted, from Corinth, during the second visit to Greece\nrecorded in the Acts[1], i.e. in the beginning of the year commonly\nreckoned 58, but perhaps more correctly 56 A.D.--the year following the\nwriting of the Epistles to the Corinthians.  The reasons for this\nconfident statement, and indeed for all that needs to be said about the\ncircumstances under which St. Paul wrote and the conditions of\nChristianity at Rome, become apparent chiefly in connexion with the\nlater parts of the epistle which are not included in this volume.  They\n{2} shall therefore be omitted here, and we will content ourselves for\nthe moment with a very brief statement of the results in which scholars\nare now finding, as it would seem, final agreement.\n\nThe existence of Christians at Rome was due not to any apostolic\nfounding, for no apostle appears yet to have visited Rome, but to the\nsort of 'quiet and fortuitous filtration[2]' of Christians from various\nparts of the empire to its great centre which must naturally have taken\nplace; for from all quarters there was a tendency to Rome.  'Some from\nPalestine, some from Corinth, some from Ephesus and other parts of\nProconsular Asia, possibly some from Tarsus, and more from the Syrian\nAntioch, there was in the first instance, as we may believe, nothing\nconcerted in their going; but when once they arrived in the metropolis,\nthe freemasonry common among Christians would soon make them known to\neach other, and they would form, not exactly an organized Church'--that\nmay well have been the result of the later presence of St. Paul and St.\nPeter--'but such a fortuitous assemblage of Christians as was {3} only\nwaiting for the advent of an apostle to constitute one[3].'  Among this\nassemblage of Christians it appears evident from St. Paul's language[4]\nthat there must have been Jews as well as Gentiles; but the dominant\ncharacter of the church was Gentile[5].  It is perhaps only putting\nthis in another way to say that there would have been among the Roman\nChristians elements of hostility to St. Paul and his teaching, but\nChristianity as St. Paul taught it would have been in the ascendant.\nAnd probably St. Paul's special informants about affairs there would\nhave been his special friends, Prisca and Aquila[6].\n\nThe character of the epistle written to these Christians of the capital\nis marked.  It has beyond any other of St. Paul's epistles the\ncharacter of an ordered theological treatise.  Of course it assumes the\nexistence of accepted Christian principles--the rudimentary instruction\nor Christian 'tradition'--in the minds of those to whom it was\naddressed[7].  But it takes certain of these principles of the\nChristian {4} religion and develops them systematically and\nargumentatively; though again, it must be explained, the argument is\nvery far from being barely logical, but is full of the deepest feeling,\nshowing itself in passages of memorable eloquence which live in the\nhearts of all of us.\n\nWhy this particular epistle should have this character of a systematic\ntreatise is not hard to see.  St. Paul was reaching the end of his\ngreat controversy for the catholicity of the Gospel, against the\nJudaizers--that is, for the equal position of Gentiles and Jews in the\nChurch, and against the obligation upon the Gentiles of circumcision\nand the ceremonial law.  That controversy was the occasion of the\napostolic conference at Jerusalem, which is described both by St. Luke\nin the Acts[8] and, from the point of view of St. Paul's own 'apology,'\nin the Epistle to the Galatians[9].  It is felt at its whitest heat in\nthat intensely concentrated and passionate epistle.  But by the time\nthat the Epistle to the Romans came to be written the controversy was\nquieting down.  The victory of Catholicism over Judaism was as good as\nwon.  The great principle of justification by faith, not by works of\nthe law, had developed itself lucidly {5} and clearly in St. Paul's\nmind, and flowed out in our epistle in an ordered sequence of thought,\nrich, profound, and mature.\n\nAnd there were special reasons why it should have been expressed in\nwriting at this moment, and to the Roman Christians.  Though the heat\nof the conflict inside the Church was over, the fierce hostility of\nmany of the Jews, both within and without the Church, to St. Paul\npersonally was by no means past.  Now St. Paul was on his way up to\nJerusalem with the money collected in the Gentile churches for the poor\nbrethren there.  He attached great importance to this expression of\nGentile goodwill, and almost more importance to its acceptance at his\nhands by the Jerusalem Christians[10].  It was to be a link of mutual,\npractical love to bind the divergent elements in the Church together.\nBut he felt, and as experience showed rightly, that his enterprise\nwould be attended with great peril to his life.  This epistle\ntherefore, like his speech at Miletus, has something of the character\nof 'last words[11].'  He is in writing it committing to the future the\nfruits of his labours, so far as they can be expressed in a doctrine,\nat a moment when he feels that their continuance is being {6} seriously\nimperilled.  And this summary of his life's teaching in its most\ncharacteristic aspect is most fitly addressed to the Christians of the\ngreat city which was the centre of the then world.  St. Paul already\nconceived of Christianity as, in prospect at least, the religion of the\nempire.  It was vastly important, therefore, that the capital should\nknow it and hold it in its full glory and richness.  He himself, if he\nescaped safe through the visit to Jerusalem, was bent on immediately\ngoing thither and securing this great end by his personal ministry[12].\nBut he could not depend on the future.  He must seize the golden\nmoment--buying up the opportunity at least by a letter.\n\nThis, in very brief words, is an account of the circumstances and\nconditions under which the Epistle to the Romans was written, and it\nmust suffice for the moment till some of the details are presented to\nus in its later chapters.\n\n\nii.\n\nThere are men of whom it is especially true that their teaching is the\noutcome of their own {7} personal experience.  If a man's teaching is\nto have any real force this must be in a measure true in any case.  But\nin some men the personal experience has set an exceptionally strong\nimpress upon the intellectual convictions, and so upon the teaching.\nSuch men--otherwise very different from one another--are Augustine,\nDante, Luther, Bunyan, Newman.  Such an one was St. Paul.  His\nintellectual theory is on fire with the emotions bred of a personal\nexperience, both bitter and sweet, but always intense.  And if there is\nprofessedly more of autobiography in the Epistle to the Galatians, yet\nin fact we know St. Paul's interior life, both before and after his\n'conversion,' so far as we know it at all, mainly through the\ngeneralized account of it in the Epistle to the Romans.  For the\ndoctrine of justification by faith, not by works of the law, developed\nin this epistle, is the record of his personal experience reduced to a\ngeneral principle.  St. Paul had, on the lines of his Pharisaic\neducation, in the first half of his life zealously sought to be\njustified by works, and had found out his mistake.\n\nWhat is the real meaning of this phrase?  Ordinarily we Englishmen find\nit natural to appropriate St. James' 'common sense' language {8} about\njustification rather than St. Paul's[13], and say that faith is surely\nof no moral value without works or good actions, and that we can be\njustified by nothing else except our conduct.  Or if the Pharisees are\npointed to with their rigid ecclesiastical observances as types of men\nseeking to be justified before God by the merits of their works, then,\nin this sense of works, we feel that the idea of justification by such\nmeans, apart from deeper moral effort, is one which has passed out of\nour horizon.  Yet if we get to the moral essence of the Pharisaic idea,\nwe may still find it lying very close at hand to us, even though we do\nnot know what a phylactery means, and are at a safe distance from\nfasting twice in the week, or giving tithes of all that we acquire.  A\nwell-to-do Englishman, of whatever class, has a strong sense of\nrespectability.  He has a code of duty and honour which he is at pains\nto observe.  A soldier, a gentleman, a woman of fashion, a peasant's\nwife, a schoolboy, and an undergraduate, representing not more than the\naverage moral levels of their different classes, will all of them make\nreally great sacrifices to fulfil the requirements of their respective\ncodes.  Their conscience requires {9} this of them, and they would be\nmiserable in falling short of it.  But their conscience is also limited\nto it.  They resent the claim of a progressive morality.  Conscientious\nwithin the region of the traditional and the expected, they are often\nalmost impenetrable to light from beyond.  They are nervously afraid of\nthe very idea of subjecting their life to a fundamental revision in the\nlight of Christ's claim, or to the idea of surrender to the divine\nlight wherever it may lead.  But this frame of mind--conscientiousness\nwithin a limited and well-established area accepted by public opinion,\ncoupled with resentment at whatever completer and diviner claim may\ninterfere to disconcert one's self-satisfaction, and bid one begin\nafresh on a truer basis--is that very attempt to be justified by works\nwhich appeared in the case of the Pharisees, only dressed in very\ndifferent guise to that in which the conditions of modern England\nclothe it.\n\nFor the Pharisees of the Gospels were the later representatives of the\nHasidaeans, i.e. Chasidim or 'pious' folk, whom we hear of in the Books\nof Maccabees[14].  The later religious development of Israel lay along\nthe lines of {10} rigid reverence for the law.  In days then of general\nlaxity and a general prevalence of Greek customs, these pious\nIsraelites united themselves to promote the devout observance of their\nlaw.  Their relation to Maccabaean heroes and rulers varied, as\nreligious or political motives were uppermost in the Maccabaean house.\nThey themselves pursued one consistent aim.  They came to be known as\nthe Pharisees, the separated or the separatists, the party who kept\naloof from everything common or unclean.  As such they represented the\nreligious nation in its later development.  They had the bulk of the\npeople, and especially the women, with them.  They had consequently, as\nJosephus tells us, an irresistible influence upon public affairs, and\nespecially upon religious affairs, and they held the social position\nbefitting the legitimate religious leaders of God's own people.\n\nThis position, with its accompanying reputation, they doubtless\ndeserved by their zeal for the law, and for the 'traditions of the\nfathers' which hedged about or interpreted the law.  But according to\nthe solemn witness of Christ and St. Paul, a disastrous lowering of the\nbest moral standard of the Old Testament scriptures had taken place\namong them.  The Mosaic law was, {11} of course, a matter mainly of\noutward observance, and therefore would become a matter of rigid social\nrequirement within the area of such a body as the Pharisees.  Nowhere\ndoes public opinion act more strongly than in a close religious circle.\nBut the social requirement according to tradition came to be\nsubstituted for that deeper spiritual relation of the 'holy nation' and\nthe individuals composing it to God and His will, which is the real\nmoral essence of the Old Testament.  'How can ye believe,' our Lord\nsaid to them, 'which receive glory one of another, and the glory that\ncometh from the only God ye seek not[15]?'  This is the central moral\nweakness of the Pharisaic position.  A social or ecclesiastical\ntradition had taken the place of the will of God.  This social\ntradition was rigid and stern in respect of the 'tradition of the\nelders,' but it did not revise itself constantly or at all in the light\nof the mind of God, and therefore its moral standard became debased.\nIt 'made void the word of God because of the tradition.'  It 'tithed\nmint and anise and cummin, and left undone the weightier matters of the\nlaw, judgement, and mercy, and faith.'  It 'strained out the gnat, and\nswallowed the camel[16].'  It {12} came to be almost purely external\nand consistent with even the grossest spiritual hypocrisy, as both St.\nPaul and our Lord Himself assure us.  Above all, it was completely\nsatisfied with itself.  'We have Abraham to our Father.'  'I thank thee\nthat I am not as other men are.'  That is the characteristic tone of\nPharisees and of all who, however unlike them otherwise, are living by\na strong social standard and priding themselves on belonging to a\nrespectable and dignified class.  This it is that St. Paul calls\nseeking to be justified or commended to God by 'works' or 'works of the\nlaw'--not, we must observe, 'good works,' such as are the fruit of a\nright disposition towards God, of which St. Paul never spoke with any\ndisparagement.\n\nIt is the characteristic of the Pharisaic attitude that a man holds by\na strict code enforced by the public opinion of his church or circle; a\ncode which he diligently and even painfully obeys.  But it is\ncharacteristic of this attitude also that it resents new light, and\ntacitly claims independence even of God, provided that 'the law' is\nkept or the accepted standard maintained.  Thus the Pharisees resented\nthe Christ, when renewing the voice of the old prophets, without\nrespect of persons, He exposed the {13} moral weaknesses of these\nreligious leaders, and bade them, in effect, begin again and think\nafresh what God's will really meant: when He warned them that the one\nunpardonable sin is to be self-satisfied in one's own eyes, and to\nrepudiate as an impertinent intruder the fresh divine light.  The story\nis very familiar.  They resented and rejected the Christ because He\nmade the unlimited divine claim upon them: because He spoke to them as\nGod to the human soul, and not as the representative of 'the\ntradition.'  'Seeking to establish their own righteousness, they did\nnot subject themselves to the righteousness of God[17].'\n\nNow we understand what it is to seek to be justified by works.  It is\nto have a social or ecclesiastical code, and to claim acceptance in\nGod's sight because we perform it, meanwhile making 'the law' under\nwhich we act, believed to be divine, a substitute for the living and\npersonal God, and resenting any fresh and immediate claim of God on the\nhuman soul.\n\nIn this mixture of subservience and independence, of religious humility\nand human pride, Saul of Tarsus had been brought up 'at the feet of\nGamaliel in Jerusalem.'  His was not {14} one of those slack\nconsciences which enable men to take the lowest line which respectable\npublic opinion will allow.  In every ecclesiastical system the strict\nlaw comes to be mitigated by various dispensations and\ncompensations--generally substitutions of the easier ceremonial for the\nharder moral requirement.  But young Saul no doubt took the law in its\nfullest sense as the thing to be kept, with all its accompanying\ntraditions.  So taken, it constituted no doubt what St. Peter calls\nit[18]--an intolerable yoke.  A strict Jew must have had a very\ndifficult life of it.  But it was not this yoke of specific outward\nrequirements that staggered St. Paul.  What he found crushing was the\ninward claim--'Thou shall not covet[19].'  He who had determined to\nappear before God at the last with a clear record as one who had kept\nthe law, found himself confronted by an inner and searching claim of\nthe divine righteousness, to which no blamelessness in outward conduct\nenabled him to correspond.  He could not help feeling himself a sinner\nin the eye of God; and the sacrificial system plainly gave his\nconscience no relief at all.  He does not even allude to it in this\nconnexion.  Meanwhile, as he moved {15} about in Jewish society of the\nempire at Tarsus and elsewhere, he found that it required no spiritual\nmicroscope to discover that the law in many of its plainest moral\ninjunctions was in fact not being observed at all.  He seemed to see\nthat instead of the law being really the means of justification, it in\neffect put 'the righteous nation' simply in the position of condemned\nsinners, and himself among them, as fully as if they were simply\nwithout a divinely given law, like the 'sinners of the Gentiles.'\n\nWe know well how, when the way of God had been learnt more perfectly,\nthis earlier moral experience of the effect of the law on himself and\nothers worked itself out in St. Paul's mind into a deep theory of the\nfunction, not of 'the law' only, that is the Mosaic law, but of law\naltogether--of 'the letter' of any body of external enactments.  Law,\nhe found, could enlighten the conscience, but it could never reach deep\nenough to the springs of will to strengthen and purify them.  God must\nbecome more intimate to man than any external law can make Him.  A law\nof ordinances can only be a preparatory discipline, intended by the\nvery falsity of the assumption on which it is based to teach men that\nthey are not what they fancied themselves.  {16} They fancied\nthemselves beings sufficiently independent to stand on their own basis\nand enter into a covenant with God, to make a compact with Him to\nobserve a law and to abide by the result.  It is the function of such a\ncompact as between independent parties to convince men that any such\nrelation between God, the Creator and Giver, and man, the creature and\nsimply the receiver--still more between God the Holy and man the\ndefiled and weakened--is simply contrary to fundamental facts[20].\n\nAs yet, however, St. Paul was only rendered miserable by his experience\nunder the law.  To feel himself a sinner alienated from God was a\nprofound humiliation to his spiritual pride.  He was fired no doubt by\nthe lofty ideal of the righteous nation, standing before God in virtue\nof its righteousness, of its performance of the divine law, and\ntherefore making its claim on God to vindicate it before the whole\nworld.  He threw himself zealously into rigid observance: only,\nhowever, to find himself humiliated and perplexed.\n\nMeanwhile, he was becoming conscious of the {17} claim of Jesus of\nNazareth to be the Christ.  Under what conditions that claim began to\nconfront him we do not in the least know.  But he must have known in\nthe period before his conversion that the severest attack on the\nspiritual position of the Pharisees ever delivered had been delivered\nby Him who claimed to be the Christ; that the Pharisees in consequence\nhad thrown all their influence into the rejection of His claim, and if\nthey had not been the most direct instruments of His death, yet had\nencouraged and sanctioned it.  Thus the more dissatisfied he became in\nhis own conscience, the more zealous he grew for the Pharisaic\nposition, and the more fanatical, therefore, against the followers of\nthe crucified Jesus.  At what point it began to dawn upon his\nconscience that perhaps Jesus was right and not the Pharisees; that\nperhaps it was in His teaching that his own restless heart was to find\nrepose, we can only wonder.  Some struggle such as this dawning\nconsciousness would involve he certainly passed through.  'It was hard\nfor him to kick against the goad[21].'  At last, and at a definite\nmoment, God 'triumphed over him' in Christ, and he gave in his {18}\nallegiance to Jesus as the Christ on the road to Damascus.  Many a man\nhas thus after a struggle surrendered to God at discretion: many a man\nhas shown the will, as Faber calls it,\n\n          'to lose my will in His,\n  And by that loss be free.'\n\n\nBut to no man can it ever have involved a completer sacrifice of his\nown pride and prejudice--of his own personal comfort and safety--than\nit did to St. Paul: and, therefore, in no man did it ever involve a\nvaster increase of spiritual illumination.  Hitherto he had stood on\nthe basis which his pride in his religious position gave him and,\nstarting thence, had sought to erect the spiritual fabric of a life\nacceptable to God.  But the more he had known of God and the more he\nhad struggled, the less satisfied he had become.  God seemed to be in\nno other attitude towards him than that of a dissatisfied taskmaster.\nNow he had surrendered at discretion into God's hands.  He had no\nposition of his own to maintain.  He had put himself in God's hands.\nIn His sight he was content to be treated as a sinner, just like one of\nthe Gentiles--to be forgiven of His pure and unmerited love, and of His\npure and unmerited love endued with a spiritual power for which {19} he\ncould take no credit to himself, for it was simply a gift.  Once more,\nhe had henceforth no prejudices and recognized no limitation on what he\nmight be required to bear or do.  His life was handed over to be\ncontrolled from above.  Thus when St. Paul sets justification by faith\nand faith only in opposition to justification by works of the law, he\nis contrasting two different attitudes towards God and duty, which in\nthe two halves of his own sharply sundered life he had himself\nconspicuously represented.  The contrast may be expressed perhaps in\nfour ways.\n\n1.  The man under the law of works is mainly concerned about external\nconduct and observances--the making clean of the outside of the cup and\nthe platter: the man of faith is concerned almost altogether with the\nrelation of his heart to God at the springs of action.  Faith is a\ndisposition of the heart which indeed results in a certain kind of\noutward conduct, but which has its value already, prior to the outward\nconduct, because of what it inwardly is.  Faith, as Calvin said,\npregnant with good works, justifies before they are brought forth.\nThis distinction between faith and works underlies St. Paul's teaching\nin parts, but is never very prominent.  {20} It accounts, however, for\nSt. Paul's shrinking from any insistence upon outward observances in\nthe Church, such as do not necessarily convey any spiritual meaning or\npower.  'Why,' he cries to the Colossians, 'do ye subject yourselves to\nordinances; handle not, nor taste, nor touch (all which things are to\nperish with the using), after the precepts and doctrines of men?[22]'\n\n2.  Inasmuch as 'the law' was a national thing, so 'works of the law'\nwere a supposed means of justification confined to Israel, and an\noccasion of contempt for other nations.  Faith, on the other hand, the\nmere capacity to feel our own wants and to take God at His word, is a\nuniversal quality and belongs, or may belong, to all men.  Thus\njustification by faith is opposed to justification by works of the law,\nas the universal or catholic to the merely Jewish or national, and in\nthis aspect the contrast occupies a great place in St. Paul's thought\nand teaching.\n\n3.  But it is not in the things it is occupied about, or in the range\nof its activity, that faith is most centrally contrasted with works.\nIt is in the attitude of man towards God which it represents.  The\n'worker' for justification always {21} retains his own independence\ntowards God.  He works upon the basis of a definite covenant by which\nGod is bound as well as himself.  He has the right to resent additional\nclaims.  Faith, on the other hand, means an entire abandonment of\nindependence.  It is self-committal, self-surrender.  'I know him whom\nI have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to guard that which\nI have committed unto him against that day[23].'  The man of faith\nthrows all the responsibility for life on God, and says simply and\ncontinually, 'Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.'\n\nIt is of the utmost importance to notice that this is the only attitude\nof man towards God which corresponds with the ultimate facts of human\nnature, as science and philosophy are bound to represent them.  Man is,\nin fact, an absolutely dependent being, physically and spiritually.\nHis virtue must lie, not in originativeness, but in correspondence.\nSupposing him a free agent in God's universe, his freedom can only\nconsist in a power to correspond with divine forces and laws\nintelligently and voluntarily; or on the other hand to disturb the\ndivine order of creation in a measure by {22} wilfulness and sin.  Now\nfaith is simply the faculty of loving correspondence with God.\n'Justification by faith' is the only conception of justification which\nis possible in the light of the root facts of human nature.  But of\ncourse the practical appeal of this conclusion to the heart and will is\nimmensely increased, if men can be shown to have acted as if they were\nindependent and to have found it a failure; if life lived in\nindependence of God, with God as it were withdrawn from the actual\nscene of life to its far-off horizon, is found to have resulted in\nhavoc, weakness and despair.  So, in fact, St. Paul's doctrine of the\ntrue means of justification is based on an appeal, not so much to the\nultimate constitution of our human nature as to the experienced results\nof our independence of God, to the facts of sin, whether among Gentiles\nor Jews.\n\n4.  Finally, the principle of justification by faith is contrasted with\nthat of justification by works of the law in the view which it involves\nof the character of God.  The law, as St. Paul interprets it, views God\nas a lord and taskmaster.  Faith presents Him as the Father of our\nspirits, always waiting upon us with His eternal, unchangeable love;\nbearing with us; {23} dealing with us even on a false basis which by\nour sins we have forced upon Him, in order to bring us to a recognition\nof the true; anyway acting or withholding action, if by any means we\ncan be won to recognize His true character and our true life.\n\nThese are the broad contrasts between the alternative methods of\njustification by faith or by 'works of the law.'  The law, and the\nattitude towards God which the law suggested, are, in St. Paul's view,\nthe main characteristic of the Old Testament.  This is a point of view\nwhich we should expect in one trained by the Pharisees.  We may\npossibly feel that St. Paul tends to identify with the Old Testament as\na whole one particular element in it which specially characterized one\nparticular period.  But at least the element was there, and occupied\nthere a highly important place in the whole development; and if St.\nPaul in his idealizing manner sometimes speaks as if it was the whole\nof the older covenant, as if he had forgotten all the teaching of\nprophet and psalmist, yet he is not really forgetful.  Law is to him\nthe characteristic of the old covenant.  But behind the law God's\ndealings with Abraham are for ever in his imagination witnessing\nagainst the law's {24} limitation, and a similar witness is kept up all\nalong: so that St. Paul can take out of one of the books of Moses his\nvery central statement of the principle of faith[24].\n\nIn what has just been said justifying faith has been treated as if it\nwere simply, as it is really, faith in God; whereas in St. Paul's\nlanguage the object of justifying faith is constantly 'Jesus[25].'  The\nexplanation of this is that in Jesus Christ God has manifested His\ncharacter as Father, and has come near to men, 'reconciling the world\nunto Himself,' by the atonement wrought through His incarnate Son, and\ngiving conspicuous evidence of His saving power by raising Him from the\ndead[26].  Thus, if Jesus is the proximate object of justifying faith,\nit is Jesus as manifesting the Father, Jesus as God incarnate; and St.\nPeter is strictly interpreting St. Paul when he represents the object\nof Christ's sacrifice and resurrection in the phrase, 'that your faith\nand hope might be in God[27].'  The faith of the Christian is the old\nfaith of Abraham and Habakkuk, the faith in the Lord {25} Jehovah only\nnow made manifest in a new and completer manner, in a more intimate\nrelation to human life, and with a more winning appeal to the human\nheart.\n\n\niii.\n\nNow that we have gained a general idea of what St. Paul meant by\njustification by faith, as opposed to justification by works of law, we\nare in a position to deal with a number of questions which have been\nfamous in ecclesiastical history.  Does justification mean being made\nrighteous, or being reckoned for righteous? if it means the latter, how\ncan God reckon us as being what in fact we are not?  Again, what is the\nrelation of this justification to sanctification? are these two stages,\nof which the first is over before the second can begin?  Again, what is\nthe relation of justification to Church membership? is justification a\npurely individual process or fact, of which membership in the Church\nor, what comes to the same thing, reception of the sacraments, is a\nmerely secondary and strictly unessential consequence?\n\nThe answers to these questions are all connected with one another.\nJustification, to begin with, is a judicial or, as it is called,\n'forensic' {26} word.  It expresses the verdict of acquittal.  The use\nof the word in the Bible made this quite indisputable[28].  Thus God\njustifies whenever He refuses to condemn--when, whatever may have been\nour sins, He ignores them, and therefore positively admits us into the\naccepted people.  And He declares His willingness to do this simply\nbecause a man believes in Jesus Christ.  Let a man believe, or take God\nin Jesus Christ at His gracious word, and the value of this act of\ntrust or allegiance is such that God reckons it for righteousness, and\nadmits a man into the accepted people, as if he were already fit for\nsuch fellowship in his actual habits or character.  There is\n'imputation' here, but it is the right sort of imputation.  It is\ndealing with us not as we are, nor exactly as we are not, but as we are\nbecoming in virtue of a new attachment under which our life has passed:\nand this, as the engrossing modern conception of development makes it\neasy for us to perceive, is the only true and profound way of regarding\nanything.  Not the standard already reached, but the movement,\ndirection, or vitality is the important matter.  Faith, then, is\n'reckoned for righteousness' because it puts us upon the right {27}\nbasis and in the right relation to God; and therefore is a root out of\nwhich, provided it continues to subsist, all righteousness can\nhealthily grow; whereas the most brilliant efforts or 'works' on a\nwrong basis may have neither sound root nor principle of progress in\nthem.  To believe in Jesus is to have the root of the matter in\noneself.  Therefore, when a man first believes, God can ignore all his\nprevious life, and deal with him simply on the new basis, in hope.  Of\ncourse this preliminary acquittal or acceptance is provisional.  As the\nservant[29] who had been forgiven his debts found them rolled back upon\nhim when he behaved in a manner utterly inconsistent with the position\nof a forgiven man, so our preliminary justification may be promptly\ncancelled by our future conduct if we behave as one who has 'forgotten\nthe cleansing from his old sins[30].'  The prodigal son, after he has\nbeen welcomed home, may go back again to the 'far country.'  But it\nremains the fact:--of such infinite value and fruitfulness is faith in\nGod, as He has shown Himself in Jesus, that when a man first\nbelieves--aye, whenever, over and over again, he returns to believe--he\nis in God's sight on a new basis, however dark be the {28} background\nof his previous sins; and he can be dealt with simply on the new basis,\naccording to the movement of the Father's heart of love which his faith\nhas set free.\n\nNow the justifying faith of the conscience-stricken sinner, whose case\nSt. Paul always has in the foreground of his imagination, means first\nof all and most obviously that he consciously takes God at His word as\nbeing ready to forgive his sins, and accept him for Jesus' sake in whom\nhe believes.  It is belief in God as forgiving, or in Jesus as--he does\nnot stop to inquire how--obtaining and giving him forgiveness.  And St.\nPaul laid great stress on this simple acceptance of the gift of pardon,\nas the gate of the new life and the first act of faith, because the\nreadiness to be treated as a sinner and merely forgiven in spite 'f our\nsins is, as he knew full well in his own case, the final overthrow of\nspiritual pride.  But this simple 'reliance on the merits of Christ,'\nand acceptance of forgiveness at His hands and for His sake, is a\nprofound movement of the heart--of the spring of human actions--which\ninvolves much more than appears.  Luther was hopelessly wrong and\nunlike St. Paul when he isolated this mere reliance on another's\nmerits, and, setting it apart from all {29} deeper movement of will or\nlove, would have it, and it only, concerned with our justification.  To\nSt. Paul even the first movement of faith is a surrender of\nindependence, and a recognition in intellect, and much more in will, of\nthe lordship of Jesus.  It is, in other words, a change of allegiance,\nand this is the important thing about it.  And the absolved man, in\nthanking God for his forgiveness, finds himself, as it were, inevitably\nand without any fresh act, embarked on a new service.  If he does not\nfind this, he is not a man of faith at all.  Faith is so deep a\nprinciple that, though it shows itself first as the mere acceptance of\nan undeserved boon from the divine bounty, it involves such hanging\nupon God as necessarily enlists the will to choose and serve Him, the\nintellect to know and worship Him with a growing perception as He is\nrevealed in Jesus, and the affections to desire and love Him.  The life\nof justification thus proceeds 'from faith to faith'--from faith in\nChrist 'for us' to faith in Christ 'in us.'  The justified man,\naccepted into the 'body of Christ' by baptism and made a participator\nof the life of Christ, receives the continual gifts of the divine\nbounty in their appointed channels, and his faith exercising its\nnatural {30} faculty of correspondence, absorbs and appropriates the\ndivine gifts--intellectually, so that the eyes of the understanding are\nopened in increasing knowledge--practically, so that 'Christ dwells in\nthe heart by faith,' and it is no longer the bare human self which\nlives, but Christ which lives in the renewed man, with a continual\ndisplay of moral power.\n\nThe first justification or acceptance is therefore a preliminary step:\nit is acceptance for admission into the divine household, or city of\nGod, or life in Christ.  It is a means to an end, and that end the\nfellowship of Christ, and continually developing assimilation to Him.\nDoes this mean, then, that justification and sanctification are\nprocesses following the one on the other, of which the former is over\nbefore the latter begins?  Such a statement must be repudiated so far\nas its latter clause is concerned.  You cannot thus logically sever a\nvital process.  They are two parts of one vital process; and the man\nwho is not on the way to being made like Christ (however far off it he\nmay be at the moment) is by that very fact shown to be not in a state\nof justification or acceptance with God.  At any stage of spiritual\nlife there must be movement in order to make forgiveness {31} possible.\nGrant this however and it becomes true that justification, as meaning\nacquittal, is a preliminary to sanctification, that is, the being made\nlike Christ.  The having our 'heart set at liberty' is a preliminary to\n'running the way of God's commandments.'  But even so we must recognize\nthat St. Paul never exactly uses this language.  When he describes the\nstages of God's dealings with the soul he passes from justification to\nglorification, or (final) deliverance from sin and wrath[31].  Or, on\none occasion, he mentions sanctification before justification[32].\n\nThis is in part accounted for by the fact that the word translated\n'sanctify' or 'sanctification' means rather 'consecrate' (as to\npriesthood) or 'consecration.'  And though this consecration involves\n'sanctity' (in our sense) because of the character of God to whom we\nare dedicated, yet it may precede it; and we are in fact consecrated\nand hallowed at the moment when we are accepted into the 'priestly\nbody' and anointed with the divine unction[33].  This exact meaning of\nthe term sanctification in part accounts for St. Paul not speaking of\nsanctification and justification as successive stages of the spiritual\nlife.  When he {32} is speaking about justification he is answering the\nquestion, What is the attitude of the human soul towards God which sets\nGod free, so to speak, to accept it and work upon it?  And the answer\nis, The attitude of faith.  When he speaks of sanctification, or rather\nconsecration, he is answering the implied question, How is the\nindividual to be thought of when he has been admitted by baptism into\nthe Christian community?  And the answer is, He is to be thought of as\nconsecrated, or as sharing the life of a consecrated people[34].  St.\nPaul's language in one place would suggest that if 'justification'\nqualifies for admission into the life in Christ, the result of this\nadmission is again a justification, not now merely of our persons, but\nof our whole moral being--a 'justification of life[35].'  But this is,\nat least, not his usual use of the word.\n\nAnd now we approach the question of the relation of our individual\njustification to membership in the Church and all that goes with that.\nTo put the question in a rough controversial way--Is the Epistle to the\nRomans, as it has been {33} frequently held to be, a thoroughly\nProtestant work?\n\nThe Prophet Ezekiel first clearly discerned and expressed the truth\nthat the new covenant of God with man must be based upon the conversion\nof individual wills and hearts.  So it was realized.  The basis of the\nChurch was a profound movement of individual faith and love and\nallegiance, in the apostles and first disciples.  And that on which it\nis based is that by which it must progress--the real assent and\ncorrespondence of individual wills and hearts.  They that receive the\ntestimony must set to their seals that God is true.  Thus one cannot\npossibly exaggerate the importance in Christianity of the individual\nspiritual life, or of individual conversion and faith, if he does not\nisolate it.  He cannot possibly exaggerate the stress laid in the\nEpistle to the Romans on individual faith and its results, if he does\nnot forget its context.  But what is meant by this proviso?  This\nsimply.  St. Paul, in his doctrine of justification by faith, is\ndescribing the basis of the new covenant of God with man which is, as\ntruly as the old, a covenant with a community, an Israel of God.  The\nfaith which justifies, therefore, means the faith which qualifies for\nthe community as truly {34} as it admits into the favour of God.  The\nvery evidence that God accepts the first movement of faith is that the\nbelieving man is admitted by baptism into the body of Christ.  The idea\nof a faith in Jesus which does not seek admission into 'the body,' or\ndisparages it even while it accepts it, does not even present itself to\nSt. Paul's mind.  A faith which is content to remain outside Christ is\nno faith at all, and the act of being 'baptized into Christ' is an act\nby which 'in one spirit we are baptized into one body.'  Again, the\nconception impressed upon the institution of the Eucharist is that\nChrist's atoning sacrifice is the basis of a new covenant with a\nsociety which is to share His life[36].\n\nElsewhere St. Paul expresses this by saying that what Christ bought for\nHimself was a Church, a new Israel[37].  What His sacrifice purchased\nwas a new _community_.  There is the less necessity to insist upon this\ntruth because it is now being very generally perceived.  The most\npowerful influence in recent German Protestant theology is that of\nAlbrecht Ritschl, and through him the truth has come back, through\nunexpected channels, that the object {35} of the sacrificial death of\nChrist, and therefore of the divine justification, is not the\nindividual but the Church[38]; or, if we may venture to modify the\nphrase, the object of divine justification is the individual only as\nbecoming and remaining (so far as His will is concerned) a member of\nthe Church.  In fact, 'justification' may be rendered, without any\nfalse idea being attached to it, 'acceptance for membership in the\nsacred people, the Israel of God.'  And where any one has become a\nmember of the Church without even the rudimentary faith which can\nrender him acceptable in God's sight, there the awakening of such faith\nis the condition of profitable or 'saving' membership.\n\nFrom this point of view it is not difficult to see the relation of our\nepistle, broadly, to Protestantism and Catholicism.  Protestantism was\na reaction against one-sided ecclesiasticism.  The Church is the\nhousehold of God, the home of His people.  She guides and disciplines\ntheir souls.  She feeds them with the bread of life.  But her\nrepresentatives may suffer her to lose the spiritual characteristics of\nthe new covenant {36} and fall back upon those of the old.  She may\ncome to be characterized by a mere authoritativeness.  The spirit of\n'the law of ordinances' may come to prevail again.  The sacraments may\nbe treated as charms; or, in other words, all moral and spiritual\nrequirement may be summed up in mere obedience, or in doing this and\nthat.  So, in fact, it happened to a great extent in the popular\nmediaeval system; and Protestantism was a reaction.  It was a reaction\nbased on truth, as Luther seemed to himself to re-discover it in the\nepistles to the Romans and the Galatians.  But the reaction broke up\nthe communion of Christians.  It thus impaired the sense of the one\nbody, and very often resulted in obliterating the perception of any\nobligation to the visible body of Christ at all.  It became\nindividualist, and disparaged the sacraments which are at once both the\noutward means of union with Christ and the bonds of cohesion for His\nbody, the Church.  But as we now look back upon the matter, we can see\nas clearly as it is possible to see anything, that both mediaeval\nCatholicism and Lutheran Protestantism (or modern English\nProtestantism) represent one-sided developments in which thoughtful men\ncannot permanently acquiesce.  The preliminary justifying {37} faith of\nthe individual does but warrant his admission into the body of Christ,\nthe divine society, by baptism.  And once admitted into the body, and\ninstructed in her tradition, faith finds its function intellectually in\nmeditating upon and appropriating the full meaning of the mystery of\nGod, and spiritually in appropriating and digesting the powers of that\ndivine and human life into which baptism admits us, and in which the\nsacramental feast and sacrifice continually makes us anew\nparticipators.  The Church with its sacramental gifts, and the personal\nfaith of the converted heart, are no more to be set in antithesis than\nfood and digestion, or the 'virtue which went out of Christ' and the\nfaith in Him which made men whole.  The sacraments certainly do not\nsave us without conversion and faith, and faith which leaves us\nvoluntarily isolated from the visible communion of the one body is not\nwhat St. Paul meant by 'justifying faith.'\n\n'Ah, yet consider it again!' is what we are continually tempted to\nexclaim to some of our modern controversialists who appear to be still\nrepeating the watchwords of the sixteenth century.  For in fact the\nfamous controversial positions of the period of the Reformation were\n{38} intensely one-sided, and have been antiquated by completer and\nmaturer study--not least in the matter of justification.\n\nThus Calvin's position on the subject was based upon and permeated by a\nconception of God as predestinating and creating and internally\nconstraining some men to eternal life, and equally predestinating and\ncreating and abandoning other men, without possibility of recovery, to\neternal misery.  Such a conception is utterly abhorrent to modern\nconsciences: and we shall have occasion to observe with how little\nreason any conception of God predestinating man to eternal misery has\nbeen attributed to St. Paul[39].\n\nLuther again, who identified himself, as no other teacher has ever\ndone, with St. Paul's epistles of justification, was so zealous to\nseparate the faith in virtue of which God justifies us from all idea of\nmerit, that he represented it as a bare acceptance of the divine offer\nwithout any moral quality at all--a bare believing ourselves to be\nsaved, without any moral reason in it.  Thus, accepting an existing\nscholastic distinction between an 'informed' faith, i.e. a faith\nensouled {39} by love, and a 'formless' or bare faith, he held the\nfaith on account of which God justifies us to be rigidly of the\nformless kind; and while fully recognizing the richer sort of faith as\nthe God-given quality of those already justified, declared that it had\nnothing to do with their justification.  But this conception of two\nseparate sorts of faith, of which only the loveless sort, that involves\nno moral worth, has to do with our acceptance with God, is not only a\nhigh road to moral laxity or antinomianism, but is also utterly alien\nto the spirit of St. Paul, in whom the whole life of faith is one and\ncontinuous[40].  It could only have arisen at a particular moment of\ntheological controversy which is past and gone.  And the same must be\nsaid of the allied doctrine of the total depravity of our fallen\nnature, which drove men to violent misinterpretations alike of\nscripture and of their moral instincts.\n\nAnd what of the Tridentine theology?  No doubt in its general view of\nour fallen human nature it is far more reasonable and Pauline than the\nLutheran; and it is also truer to St. Paul in laying the main stress on\na divine righteousness {40} actually imparted to us, and not on\nChrist's merits imputed and not imparted; or, in other words, in\nrecognizing that forgiveness is only a prelude to the development of a\nnew life of holiness.  But on the other hand it puts itself hopelessly\nout of relation to St. Paul's language and thought by interpreting\njustification as the being made righteous, and accordingly speaking of\nbaptism as the instrument by which we are justified, whereas to St.\nPaul justification means our preliminary acceptance without regard to\nwhat we have been, and the initial faith which enables men to be thus\naccepted would normally, in those he is thinking about, have preceded\nbaptism, as in his own case, or that of Cornelius, or of the eunuch.\nWho can doubt that the faith of St. Paul's conversion is what enabled\nGod to accept him, though it remained for him, as for other men, to\n'wash away his sins' by being 'baptized into Christ[41]?'\n\nMay we not truly say that deeper and maturer study of St. Paul has for\nus undercut and antiquated the theological standing-grounds of the {41}\nsixteenth century, and substituted for them something both truer,\ncompleter, and freer?\n\n\niv.\n\nIt only remains to make more emphatic what has been already suggested,\nthat the Pauline doctrine of justification is of much more than\nantiquarian interest.  We do not, as has been already shown, get rid of\nthe 'danger of thinking to be saved by works' because we are not, like\nthe Pharisees, abandoned to ecclesiastical observances.  All moral\ncodes or standards, sanctioned by a society or class and involving no\nmore than a limited liability, come under the moral category of 'works\nof a law.'  They all are apt to leave men as independent of God as the\nPharisees, and as resentful of the fuller light.  The late Master of\nBalliol expresses a characteristic opinion that the notions of 'legal\nrighteousness,' or of 'the pride of human nature,' or 'the tendency to\nrebel against the will of God, or to attach an undue value to good\nworks[42],' are 'fictions as applied to our own time[43].'  But {42}\nthis is surely lamentably untrue.  Men all round us dread the idea of\ncommitting themselves to God.  They do not know how far it will carry\nthem.  They are like would-be soldiers who should refuse to enlist till\nthey had had some assurance as to the extremest risk that their service\nmight involve.  Thus, because they cannot get this assurance, they will\nmake no beginning of the life of real faith.  They live by a limited\ncode which retains their independence for them.  If they are also\necclesiastically minded, the 'legal righteousness' always involved in\nthis sort of morality becomes even outwardly more like that of the\nPharisees, and it is not very uncommon among churchmen.  But the whole\nhabit of mind, inside or outside the area of professed churchmanship,\nhas its root in what is properly and profoundly human pride and the\nfalse clinging to independence of God.  This 'pride of life' seems to\nbe almost more dangerous and, in fact, disastrous than even 'the lust\nof the flesh and the lust of the eyes.'  Thus if we can only get St.\nPaul's doctrine of the necessity of faith rightly understood, there is\nno teaching more necessary for these times.\n\nAnd, on the other hand, where men are really ready to follow the light\nand do God's will, they {43} need--they need exceedingly for the good\nof the whole body--to realize St. Paul's teaching about justification,\nthat is, about God's constant attitude towards men, in order to obtain\nthat peace which is meant to be, not the far-off goal of Christian\nlife, but its basis and foundation.  When a person is continuously\napprehensive and excited about his spiritual state, he is not in the\ntemper of mind in which he can best serve God or work out his own or\nother men's salvation.  'Peace must go before as well as follow after;\na peace, too, not to be found in the necessity of law (as philosophy\nhas sometimes held), but in the sense of the love of God to His\ncreatures.  He has no right to this peace, and yet he has it.'  In\nthese words of the same writer whom we just now were obliged to\ncriticize we may find a simple expression of the truth.  'Wherefore,\nbeing accepted of God simply because we take Him at His word, let us\nhave and hold peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ[44].'  Then\nwe can throw ourselves without embarrassments into the life of love and\nsacrifice, the life which has the love of God in Christ for its motive,\nand reflects it among men.\n\nNo doubt we must admit that St. Paul's {44} doctrine of justification\nhas not been generally appreciated in the Church--the fact is strange,\nbut it is indisputable.  No doubt also we must admit that those who\nhave chiefly been identified with it have often even disastrously\ndistorted it.  No doubt, as a result both of this neglect and of this\ndistortion, the ordinary religious Englishman of the present day is\ndisposed to pass it by as having little meaning for him.  Nevertheless\nit remains true that no revival of religion can ever attain to any\nripeness or richness unless this central doctrine of St. Paul's gospel\nresumes its central place with us also.  For, as St. Paul preached it,\nit means this above all else--personal devotion to Jesus Christ as our\nredeemer.  This personal devotion begins by accepting from Him the\nunmerited boon of forgiveness of our sins, and (what is only the other\nside of such forgiveness) inheritance in the consecrated body.  But the\nconsciousness of what we have received from Christ, and the price it\ncost Him to put it at our disposal, gives to the whole subsequent life\nthe character of a devotion based on gratitude.  This is the Christian\nlife according to St. Paul--personal devotion to Christ and personal\nservice based on gratitude for what He has done for us.  'For the love\nof Christ {45} constraineth us; because we thus judge, that one died\nfor all, therefore all died; and He died for all, that they which live\nshould no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who for their sakes\ndied and rose again.'\n\n\n\n[1] Acts xx. 23.\n\n[2] Hort's _Prolegomena to Romans and Ephesians_ (Macmillan, 1895), p.\n9.\n\n[3] Sanday and Headlam's _Commentary_ (T. & T. Clark, 1895), p. xxviii.\nThis commentary is henceforth referred to as S. & H.\n\n[4] See Rom. ii. 17; iii. 9, &c.\n\n[5] See Rom. i. 13; xi. 13-32; xv. 14-21.\n\n[6] Rom. xvi. 3.\n\n[7] See Rom. vi. 17, and remarks p. 234; cf. S. & H., p. xli.\n\n[8] Acts xv. 1-35.\n\n[9] Gal. ii. 1-10.\n\n[10] Rom. xv. 25-32.\n\n[11] Hort, l.c., p. 44.\n\n[12] Rom. i. 10, 11; xv. 22-24.\n\n[13] On the relation between the two, see later, p. 168.\n\n[14] 1 Macc. ii. 42; vii. 13 ff.\n\n[15] John v. 44.\n\n[16] Matt. xv. 6; xxiii. 23.\n\n[17] Rom. x. 3.\n\n[18] Acts xv. 10.\n\n[19] Rom. vii. 7.\n\n[20] See the argument of Gal. iii. 15-22.  'God is one' in a sense\nwhich excludes the idea of any relatively independent contracting party\nover against Him.\n\n[21] Acts xxvi. 14.\n\n[22] Col. ii. 20-22.\n\n[23] 2 Tim. i. 12.\n\n[24] Rom. x. 5-8.\n\n[25] Cf. iii. 22, 26, &c.\n\n[26] 2 Cor. v. 19; Rom. iv. 25.\n\n[27] 1 Pet. i. 21.  It is of course the case that the name God in the\nNew Testament is _generally_ reserved for the Father, though the proper\ndivinity of Son and Spirit is constantly implied.\n\n[28] See below, p. 124.\n\n[29] Matt. xviii. 23-35.\n\n[30] 2 Pet. i. 9.\n\n[31] Rom. v. 9-11.\n\n[32] 1 Cor. vi. 11.\n\n[33] Cf. Hort, _First Ep. of Peter_ (Macmillan, 1898), p. 70.\n\n[34] It is noticeable that St. Paul never uses the verb translated 'to\nbe sanctified' of persons in the present tense.  It always describes an\nalready existing state rather than a process.\n\n[35] Rom. v. 18, but cf. later, p. 202.\n\n[36] Hort, l.c., p. 24.\n\n[37] Eph. v. 25; Tit. ii. 14; cf. Acts xx. 28.\n\n[38] Ritschl, _Rechtfertigung und Versoehnung_, ii. p. 217 ff.  Cf. S. &\nH., p. 122; and Orr, _Ritschlian Theology_ (Hodder and Stoughton, 1898)\np. 169 ff.\n\n[39] The subject comes forward especially in connexion with chapters\nix-xi.\n\n[40] I know that any brief statement about Luther's doctrine may be\ndisputed, for his own statements vary considerably.  But I think the\ntendency of his teaching is fairly represented above.\n\n[41] 'Acceptance' is already acquittal; but only in view of the new\nlife of the body of Christ which is to emancipate man from the power of\nsin.  Thus it is only as incorporated into Christ that he finds his\nformer sin 'put away.'  'I believe in one baptism for the remission of\nsins.'\n\n[42] He should say, if he would represent St. Paul, 'works,' not 'good\nworks.'\n\n[43] Essay on 'Righteousness by Faith,' in _Epistles of St. Paul_\n(Murray, 1894), vol. ii. p. 264.  The whole essay is very\ncharacteristic and very interesting, but not very Pauline.\n\n[44] Rom. v. 1.\n\n\n\n\n{46}\n\nTHE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS\n\n\nCHAPTER I. 1-7.\n\n_Salutation._\n\nIt was the custom in the days of the Romans to begin a letter with a\nbrief indication from whom it came and to whom it was addressed, in the\nform of a complimentary salutation, thus--to take an example from the\nNew Testament--'Claudius Lysias unto the most excellent governor Felix,\ngreeting[1].'  We are familiar in our day with the like forms for\nbeginning and ending letters, serving the same purpose and generally no\nother.  St. Paul then accepts the epistolary form of his day, but pours\ninto it an increasing wealth of personal meaning[2].  Thus in this\nplace the necessary address--'Paul the apostle {47} to the believers in\nJesus Christ which are in Rome, greeting'--is expanded into a\nsalutation extraordinarily full of meaning, explaining (1) who it is\nwho writes the letter; (2) with what justification; (3) to whom; and\n(4) with what greeting.\n\n(1) It is Paul who is writing, and he describes himself both personally\nand officially.  Personally, since the day when he surrendered himself\non the road to Damascus, he has been 'the slave of Jesus Christ,' bound\nin all things to do His will, and exulting all the time in the moral\nliberty which that bondage gave him.  Officially, he has received a\ncommission and an office equal to that of the older apostles in the\nkingdom of Christ: he has been 'called to be an apostle, separated to\nproclaim the good tidings of God.'\n\n(2) It is then this glorious commission that justifies his writing.\nThese good tidings of God are the fulfilment of an age-long promise for\nwhich the world had been waiting.  Of ancient days there were\n'prophets,' men commissioned to speak for God, whose writings remained\nafter them and are held in highest reverence as 'holy scriptures.'\nThese men foretold good days from God that were to come to His people\nin the {48} coming of the divinely anointed king, the Christ.  And now\nthey are come.  God has sent to redeem men not a servant, but His own\nSon.  True, He came as man among men: as one of the royal house of\nDavid, the house from which the Christ was promised; yet simply man in\noutward nature and appearance, or 'according to the flesh.'  But\nbesides that ordinary seeming manhood, there was in Him something\nhigher--a sacred spiritual nature.  And this higher nature it was that\nfinally determined the estimate in which He was to be held.  If\n'according to the flesh' He was a man of David's house, according to\nthis 'spirit of holiness' He was decisively designated by God's own act\nas Son of God in miraculous power, and that especially when He was made\nthe example of a resurrection from the dead.  Thenceforth 'Jesus' of\nNazareth is 'Christ' and 'the Lord' of Christians.  It is He through\nwhom St. Paul and his fellows received the outpouring of the divine\nbounty for their own lives, and their apostolic commission on behalf of\nthe name of Christ to bring all the nations of the earth to the\nobedience of faith.  And this commission extends as far as the Roman\nChristians and justifies St. Paul in writing to them.\n\n{49}\n\n(3) To all the Christians at Rome, then, 'called to be saints,' i.e.\ncalled into the consecrated body and to the consecrated life, St. Paul\nis writing.  He does not say 'to the church which is at Rome,' as in\nthe other epistles of this date he writes 'to the church at Corinth'\nand to 'the churches of Galatia.'  And though this might be accidental,\nyet probably it is due to the fact that St. Paul thought of the Roman\nChristians as individuals who, many of them, had been converted\nelsewhere and for various reasons had come to be living at Rome; so\nthat in fact they had hardly yet attained the consistency of a single\nordered church.\n\n(4) And to these Christians he gives his greeting by wishing for them\nthose gifts which may be taken as summing up the blessings of Christ\nabout which this epistle is to say so much--'grace,' which is God's\nlove to us in actual operation, and 'peace,' which is the state of mind\nof one who realizes God's love--from the Father and the Son.  This\nbenediction is, however, but a Christian form of that of Aaron, 'The\nLord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: the\nLord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace[3].'\n\n\n{50}\n\nPaul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called _to be_ an apostle, separated\nunto the gospel of God, which he promised afore by his prophets in the\nholy scriptures, concerning his Son, who was born of the seed of David\naccording to the flesh, who was declared _to be_ the Son of God with\npower, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the\ndead; _even_ Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we received grace and\napostleship, unto obedience of faith among all the nations, for his\nname's sake: among whom are ye also, called _to be_ Jesus Christ's: to\nall that are in Rome, beloved of God, called _to be_ saints: Grace to\nyou and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.\n\n\nThere is, I believe, nothing in the above analysis which is not implied\nat least in the original language of this salutation.  And it is a\nremarkable summary of the grounds of St. Paul's Christian belief, more\nexact and explicit than the 'Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the\ndead, of the seed of David, according to my gospel[4].'  There are some\npoints in it which require further notice:--\n\n1.  The use of 'spirit of holiness' in connexion with Christ (in ver.\n4).  Here it is put in antithesis to 'the flesh,' i.e. Christ as He\nappeared to the outward eye in His natural manhood; and describes,\nvaguely and without further definition, the higher nature of which,\nbehind {51} His visible manhood, men became conscious[5].  Elsewhere\n'spirit' is more exactly used to describe (1) the human spirit in us or\nin Christ[6]; (2) disembodied persons or angels or devils[7]; (3) the\nHoly Ghost[8]; (4) the being of God[9]; (5) generally what has will and\nconsciousness, as opposed to the merely external, the 'flesh' or the\n'letter[10].'  Sometimes, as in 2 Cor. iii. 17, it is hard to feel sure\nabout the exact shade of meaning.\n\n2.  We have here, in a very brief compass, St. Paul's conception of\n'Christian evidences.'  He begins from Christ, 'according to the\nflesh.'  'And why,' asks Chrysostom, 'did he not begin from the higher\nside?  Because Matthew also, Luke and Mark, begin from the lower.  One\nwho would lead others upwards must begin from below.  And this was in\nfact the divine method.  First they saw Him (Christ) as man on the\nearth, and then perceived Him to be God.'  It was, in other words,\nthrough the {52} experience of His manhood that they arrived at His\nGodhead.  And the evidence of His divine sonship was in part\nmiraculous; but it was not mere miracle.  It was miracle 'according to\na spirit of holiness.'  It was miracle filled with spiritual and moral\nmeaning.  It was a resurrection vindicating perfect righteousness.\n\n3.  The phrase 'the resurrection of the dead' is translated more\nexactly by Wiclif 'agenrisynge of dead _men_!  Christ's resurrection is\nthe great example of what is to be general.\n\n4.  The obedience of faith exactly describes the human faculty as it\nshowed itself in St. Paul himself at his conversion.  With him to\nbelieve was, without any possibility of question, to obey Him whom he\nbelieved, and St. Paul knows no faith which does not involve a like\nobedience; cf. xv. 18; xvi. 26; 1 Pet. i. 2.\n\n\n\n[1] Acts xxiii. 26.\n\n[2] The salutation of the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, the\nearliest epistle, is the most nearly formal.  Those to the Romans and\nto Titus are the fullest and richest.\n\n[3] Num. vi. 25, 26; see Hort, _First Ep. of Peter_, p. 25.\n\n[4] 2 Tim. ii. 8.\n\n[5] Cf. 1 Tim. iii. 16, 'justified in the spirit,' where the use is\napproximately the same.\n\n[6] See 1 Thess. v. 23; 1 Cor. v. 5; James ii. 26; Matt. v. 3; xxvi.\n41; 1 Pet. iii. 18; Mark viii. 12.\n\n[7] Luke xxiv. 39; Heb. xii. 23; i. 14; Matt. viii. 16, &c.\n\n[8] Matt. iii. 16; Luke x. 21, R.V. &c.\n\n[9] John iv. 24.\n\n[10] John vi. 63; Rom. ii. 29; 2 Cor. iii. 6.\n\n\n\n\n{53}\n\nCHAPTER I. 8-17.\n\n_St. Paul's introduction._\n\nThe salutation is immediately followed by a passage in which St. Paul\nintroduces himself specially to the Christians at Rome.  He had a\ndelicate task to perform.  The Roman Christians had been gathered\nprobably from many parts of the empire, because Rome was the centre of\nall the world's movements, and adherents of whatever was going on in\nthe empire were sure by force of circumstances to find their way to\nRome.  Thus, though no apostle had yet preached at Rome, Christians had\ngathered there.  Many of them had not seen St. Paul's face.  But they\nhad heard of him, no doubt, in Jewish circles as a very dangerous man\nwho was upheaving and subverting established traditions and principles.\nHe was a man to be looked at askance.  He must introduce himself\ntherefore carefully.  It was of the greatest importance {54} to him,\nthe Apostle of the Gentiles, that he should gain full recognition among\nthese Christians at Rome, the centre of the Gentile world.  We observe\nthen in this introduction what a gentleman, if I may say so, in the\nvery deepest sense of the term, St. Paul shows himself to be.  He\nspeaks indeed with an admirable mixture of tact and candour.  We can\nhardly conceive any better address in a delicate situation than this\naddress of St. Paul with which he makes his approach to the Roman\nChristians.\n\nHe begins with what is pleasant for them to hear, namely, that the\nreport of their faith throughout all the world is a good one.  'I thank\nmy God through Jesus Christ for you all that your faith is proclaimed\nthroughout the whole world.'  Then he goes on to add, as is usual in\nhis introductions, that he continually prays for them.  It was a remark\nof General Gordon's that it makes a great difference in our feeling\ntowards a stranger if before we meet him we have prayed for him.  And\nwe may with equal truth say that it makes a great difference in the\nfeelings of others towards us if they have reason to believe that we\nhave prayed for them.  St. Paul therefore gives himself this advantage.\nHe says, 'God is my witness, whom I worship in my {55} spirit in the\ngospel of his Son, how unceasingly I make mention of you always in my\nprayers.'  Then he goes on to tell them that he not only prays for\ntheir welfare, but prays that he may have the advantage of seeing them\nface to face and knowing them.  And here he puts his desire to see them\non the true ground.  He wants to visit them because he has something of\nthe utmost value to give them--that he may 'impart unto them some\nspiritual gift.'\n\nWhatever may be the exact nature of the 'spiritual gift' St. Paul is\nthinking of, it is clearly something for which his bodily presence is\nnecessary.  There is some divine power which he as an apostle can\ncommunicate to them only when he comes among them.  In this sense he\nmeans that 'when he comes to them he will come in the fulness of the\nblessing of Christ[1].'  He implies that the Roman Christians needed\nhim and must wait for him to supply their deficiencies.  But we observe\nthat with beautiful tact he at once balances this assertion of a divine\npower entrusted to him for their good, by representing his own need of\nthem.  He does not speak _de haut en bas_ as if he had everything to\ngive and nothing to receive.  {56} No: as the people depend on the\napostle for spiritual gifts, so he depends on the people for spiritual\nencouragement.  He must live by the experience of their spiritual\ngrowth.  'I desire,' he says, 'to come to you that I may impart unto\nyou some spiritual gift, to the end that ye may be established' (built\nup and made strong in the faith).  And then he interprets:--that is 'in\norder that I with you may be encouraged[2] among you, each of us by the\nother's faith, both yours and mine.'\n\nThen he goes on to tell them why he in particular is bound to come to\nthem, though hitherto he had been hindered by circumstances.  It is\nbecause he is 'a debtor.'  St. Paul was the Apostle, not of the Jews,\nbut of the Gentiles.  Therefore he is in debt to all the Gentiles till\nhe has given them the gospel, and more particularly to the centre of\nthe Gentile world, to Rome.  And he would owe no man anything.  He\nwould have no unsatisfied creditors.  He will pay his debt therefore to\nthe Roman Christians.  'I am a debtor,' he says, 'both to Greeks and to\nbarbarians'--that is to all the Gentiles, whether they were of Greek\nrace or not.  And {57} the Greeks were so identified with civilization\nor education that this leads him on to say, 'I am a debtor both to the\neducated and to the uneducated.'  This general debt includes Rome.  It\nwas natural to include the dwellers at Rome under the head of Greeks,\nfor it was through the medium of Greek that St. Paul made his appeal to\nthem.  And, in fact, the Christians at Rome were, for the first two\nhundred and fifty years or more of the Church's life, a Greek-speaking\npeople--a Greek colony in the Latin city.  Only towards the end of the\nthird century did the Roman Church become latinized in language and\nspirit.  St. Paul then is a debtor to these Greek-speaking dwellers at\nRome.  'So as much as in me is I am ready to preach the gospel to you\nalso that are in Rome.'\n\nBut the name of Rome was, as he thought of it, a name of awe.  It\nbrought in upon his mind the tremendous undertaking that lay before him\nand before the Christian Church as they found themselves confronted\nwith this vast imperial organization, which might at any time lay its\niron hand upon them to stop their progress.  Therefore he adds that,\neven in view of Rome, he has courage in his heart: 'for I am not\nashamed of the gospel,' even under the shadow {58} of the mighty name,\nand though it was 'to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks\nfoolishness.'  And why?  Because he knows what the gospel means.  It is\nnot mere words; it is a power.  It is a 'power of God,' a divine force,\nwhich, like the wind, bloweth where it listeth, and which nothing can\nstop.  It is a power of God.  It is a power of God 'unto salvation,' a\npower that is to work men's deliverance, and that in the deepest sense.\nRoman emperors not very long after St. Paul's time are commemorated in\npublic inscriptions as 'saviours of the world[3].'  That is in the\nsense of maintaining peace and civil order.  But Christ's salvation was\nof a deeper sort.  It was salvation from the bondage of sin, a\nsalvation which enabled people to be truly and eternally free.  It is a\npower of God unto salvation, and that 'to every one that believeth,' on\nthe mere basis of the simple willingness to take God at His word; 'to\nthe Jew first and also to the Greek.'  'For'--and here St. Paul reaches\nthe great text of his whole epistle--'therein' (that is, in the gospel)\n'is disclosed,' or revealed here and now in the world, {59} 'a\nrighteousness of God.'  By this phrase it will appear that he means\nboth a righteousness which is God's own, and also a righteousness which\nGod gives to men; for the gift of God is real moral and spiritual\nfellowship with His own life.  This is what is now offered to men.  A\nrighteousness of God is revealed, starting from faith and at every\nstage moving on upon the support of faith, 'a righteousness of God by\nfaith unto faith'; and that not in repudiation of the old covenant, but\nin fulfilment of its vital principle: 'as it is written.'  For the\nwords of Habakkuk may be interpreted to express the central spirit of\nthe Old Testament--'the righteous shall live by faith[4].'\n\n\nFirst, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all that your faith\nis proclaimed throughout the whole world.  For God is my witness, whom\nI serve in my spirit in the gospel of his Son, how unceasingly I make\nmention of you, always in my prayers making request, if by any means\nnow at length I may be prospered by the will of God to come unto you.\nFor I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift,\nto the end ye may be established; that is, that I with you may be\ncomforted in you, each of us by the other's faith, both yours and mine.\nAnd I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed\nto come unto you (and was hindered hitherto), that I might have some\nfruit in you also, even {60} as in the rest of the Gentiles.  I am\ndebtor both to Greeks and to Barbarians, both to the wise and to the\nfoolish.  So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to\nyou also that are in Rome.  For I am not ashamed of the gospel: for it\nis the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the\nJew first, and also to the Greek.  For therein is revealed a\nrighteousness of God by faith unto faith: as it is written, But the\nrighteous shall live by faith.\n\n\n1.  Origen's comment on the words 'through Jesus Christ' (at the\nbeginning of this section) is very interesting.  'To give God thanks is\nto offer a sacrifice of praise, and therefore he adds \"through Jesus\nChrist,\" as through the great high priest.'  Indeed, the doctrine of\nthe high priesthood of Christ, if it is not mentioned in St. Paul's own\nepistles, is implied there from the first.\n\n2.  St. Paul, we notice, expresses his intention to come to Rome with\nreserve, 'if by any means by the will of God' ... 'so much as lies in\nme.'  And this reserve was no matter of mere words.  He was going up to\nJerusalem with an offering of money, about which he felt the greatest\nanxiety, and he knew not how he would be received, or what would befall\nhim[5].\n\n3.  It is not possible to decide what sort of {61} 'spiritual gift' St.\nPaul is thinking of.  We know that as an apostle he was qualified to\nimpart the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands, and that certain\n'gifts' frequently accompanied His inward presence.  Thus, 'when Paul\nhad laid his hands upon some men at Ephesus, the Holy Ghost came on\nthem; and they spake with tongues and prophesied.'  We know, further,\nthat the Corinthian Church, whence St. Paul was writing this letter,\nwas specially rich in 'spiritual gifts,' such as 'tongues and\nprophecy.'  On the other hand, the Roman Christians had not yet\nreceived an apostolic visit and they may have been lacking in such\nendowments, while the reception of them would be calculated to\nencourage them and strengthen their faith.\n\nIt is possible, therefore, that he refers to a gift of this kind, and\nthe exact language he uses certainly suggests some definite endowment,\nfor the bestowal of which his bodily presence was necessary.  The\nthought of the miraculous power working through him, 'the power of\nsigns and wonders, the power of the Holy Ghost[6],' was not far from\nhis mind when he wrote this epistle.\n\nOrigen's comment on this passage also is {62} interesting.  'First of\nall we ought to learn that it is an apostolic work to long to see our\nbrethren, but for no other reason than that we may confer on them\nsomething in the way of a spiritual gift if we can, and if we cannot,\nthat we may receive in the same kind from them.  Otherwise, the longing\nto go about among the brethren is not to be approved.'\n\n\nWe cannot doubt, I think, that when St. Paul's letter was read at Rome\nthis introduction, so full of tact, would have given him access to many\nhearts inclined at starting to be prejudiced against him.\n\n\n\n[1] Rom. xv. 29.\n\n[2] 'To encourage' and 'encouragement' are probably the best words to\ntranslate what in our Bible is rendered by 'comfort.'\n\n[3] Hadrian and Trajan: see _C.I.G._ vol. ii. p. 1068, No. 2349 m.;\nvol. iii. p. 170, No. 4339, p. 191, No. 4380.  These references I owe\nto Mr. H. W. B. Joseph, of New College.\n\n[4] Hab. ii. 4; cf. app. note A on meanings of the word 'faith.'\n\n[5] Rom. xv. 25 ff.; Acts xx. 22.\n\n[6] Rom. xv. 19.\n\n\n\n\n{63}\n\nDIVISION I.  (CHAPTERS I. 18-III. 20.)\n\n_The universality of sin and condemnation._\n\nSt. Paul has enunciated his great thesis.  There has arrived into the\nworld a new and divine force making for man's fullest salvation: the\ndisclosure of a real fellowship in the moral being of God, which is\nopen to all men, Jew and Gentile equally, on the simple terms of taking\nGod at His word.  This word of good tidings St. Paul is to expand and\njustify in his epistle; but first he must pause and explain its\nantecedents.  Why was such a disclosure needed at this moment of the\nworld's history?  Why has St. Paul spoken of 'salvation,' or why does\nhe elsewhere speak of 'redemption,' instead of expressing such ideas as\nare most popular among ourselves to-day--development or progress?  It\nis because, to St. Paul's mind, man as he is is held in a bondage which\nhe ought to find intolerable, and the first step to freedom lies in the\nrecognition of this.  Again, why does St. Paul {64} lay such emphasis\non faith, mere faith, only faith--why is he to insist so zealously on\nthe exclusion of any merit or independent power on man's part?  It is\nnot only because faith, the faculty of mere reception and\ncorrespondence, represents the normal and rational relation of man to\nGod, his Creator, Sustainer, Father.  It is also, and with special\nemphasis, because there has been a great revolt, a great assertion of\nfalse independence on man's part; and what is needed first of all is\nthe submission of the rebel, or much rather the return of the prodigal\nson, simply to throw himself on the mercy of his Father and acknowledge\nhis utter dependence upon Him for the forgiveness of his disloyalty and\nhis outrages, as well as for the fellowship which he seeks in the\ndivine life.  The fuller statement therefore of St. Paul's gospel must\nbe postponed to the uncloaking of what man is without it.  The note of\nseverity must be struck before the message of joy.  We must be brought\nto acknowledge ourselves to be not men only, but corrupt men--men under\nthe divine wrath--doomed men powerless to deliver ourselves, and ready\ntherefore to welcome in simple gratitude the large offer of God's\nliberal and almost unconditional love.\n\n{65}\n\nIt is to produce this acknowledgement that St. Paul now addresses\nhimself.  This argument of the first part of the epistle is a very\nsimple one.  It elucidates two plain propositions:--\n\n1.  that the wrath of God is, and is necessarily according to eternal\nand unalterable principles of moral government, and in the case of\nevery man without any possibility of exception, upon sin.\n\n2.  that all men, Jews and Gentiles, are held in sin, and therefore lie\nunder the divine wrath.\n\nThus St. Paul immediately follows up his initial statement of the\nrevelation of a divine righteousness with the assertion of another\n'revelation' made plain to the consciences of men.  'The wrath of God\nis being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and\nunrighteousness of men,' and he proceeds to demonstrate the prevalence\nof sin first of all in the heathen world and to lay bare its meaning.\n\n\n\n\n{66}\n\nDIVISION I.  Sec. I.  (CHAPTER I. 18-32).\n\n_Judgement on the Gentile world._\n\nBefore we read this passage certain points should be plain to our minds.\n\n1.  By sin St. Paul means essentially wilfulness--wilful disobedience.\nThere is such a thing as an inheritance of moral weakness or perversity\nwhich passes to men without their fault and without their knowledge.\nThis, the real existence of which hardly any one can deny, is what is\ncalled original sin; and later on we shall find St. Paul speaking of\nit.  But it is not what is most properly called sin.  God is absolutely\nequitable.  'Sin is not reckoned' as sin in His sight, apart from\nknowledge and will.  Sin, most properly speaking, begins and ends where\nwilful disobedience begins and ends.  St. Paul on this matter is\ncompletely at one with St. John {67} when he makes sin and lawlessness\nidentical as realities in the world.  'Sin is lawlessness[1].'  And we\ncannot even make a beginning of advance along St. Paul's line of\nthought till we recognize the real existence of sin as something\ndifferent in kind from ignorance or weakness or lack of development,\nand as an incomparably greater evil than those.  Sin is the created\nwill setting itself against the divine will.  It is, as a state or an\nact, the refusal of God.  And the recognition of the awful existence of\nthis refusal of God is the main clue to understanding the miseries of\nthe present world.\n\n2.  Sin therefore, involving as it does _wilful_ disobedience, can only\nbe spoken of as prevalent over the heathen world because, not merely\none chosen race, but all men in general have had the opportunity of the\nknowledge of God.  St. Paul indeed elsewhere modifies the general\nassertion of the fact which he makes in this place, by broadly\nrecognizing that there are states of human existence which are low in\ntheir moral standard, but are rendered comparatively guiltless by the\nabsence of moral knowledge--states of life where sin exists but is not\nreckoned {68} as sin[2].  For 'sin,' he says, 'is not reckoned' as sin\nwhere there is no enlightening law and no consequent condemnation of\nconscience.  But in this passage, looking at humanity in general, he\nasserts, like the author of the Book of Wisdom or the perhaps\ncontemporary Jewish author of the Apocalypse of Baruch[3], that all men\nhave had the opportunity of knowing God from His works in nature, and\nthat their present state is the result of a wilful refusal of Him.\nThey are 'without excuse.'  The sources of the natural knowledge of God\nare indeed twofold, for there is the moral conscience, individual and\nsocial, of which St. Paul speaks later; but here it is the evidence of\nnature alone of which St. Paul speaks: the witness of the creatures to\n'the {69} invisible things' or attributes of their creator, that is to\nsay, to His power and (generally) His divinity.\n\n3.  Assuming then the opportunity of the knowledge of God as lying\nbehind human records, St. Paul traces the history of sin.  It had its\nroots in the refusal of the human will to recognize God and give Him\nthe homage of gratitude and service due to Him.  Men 'held down the\ntruth in unrighteousness,' that is, restrained it from having free\ncourse in their hearts and in the world because of the painful moral\nobligations which it involves.  Knowing God, they refused to\nacknowledge Him with thankfulness or 'give Him the glory.'  Rather they\nwould themselves 'be as gods.'  They 'refused to have God in their\nknowledge.'  Then from this root in the rebel will sin passed to the\nobscuring of the understanding, as is shown in the ridiculous\naberrations of idolatry.  'They became vain in their reasonings, and\ntheir senseless heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise,'\nthe nations in their worship showed themselves fools.  Idolatry had\nlong ago appeared simply ridiculous to Isaiah: he pointed the finger of\nscorn at the idolaters.  'They know not,' he cried, 'neither do they\n{70} consider: the Lord hath shut their eyes that they cannot see, and\ntheir hearts that they cannot understand.  And none calleth to mind,\nneither is there knowledge nor understanding to say, I have burned part\nof the wood in the fire; yea, also I have baked bread upon the coals\nthereof; I have roasted flesh and eaten it: and shall I make the\nresidue thereof an abomination? shall I fall down to the stock of a\ntree?  He feedeth on ashes: a deceived heart hath turned him aside,\nthat he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my\nright hand[4]?'  Isaiah's language and thought had been elaborated and\ndeveloped in the Book of Wisdom[5], and St. Paul appropriates it.  To\nmistake creatures for the Creator, or to think of the glorious and\nspiritual God as if He were in the form of the corruptible body of man\nor beast or bird or reptile--so St. Paul alludes to the man worship of\nGreece and the animal worship of Egypt--is simple blindness and folly;\nblindness and folly in which St. Paul sees the just punishment of {71}\nthe rebellious will in the region of the intellect.  But it has another\npunishment in the region of the appetites or passions.  As men\ndeliberately 'repudiated' the knowledge and obedience of God, God\n'repudiated' men in penal retribution.  He gave them up to become vile\nin their own eyes and to find out their impotence to control their own\nlusts.  They ran riot even in all sorts of unnatural and lawless ways,\nso that the world became full of sins of all kinds; sins against God\nand sins against man; antisocial sins of all sorts, the sins which\ndestroy the state and friendship and commerce and the home: and at the\nlast the very ideal of righteousness had come to be lost.  St. Paul, we\nnotice, makes the lowest moral stage of all to consist, not in merely\ndoing these wicked things, but in abandoning all distaste for\nthem--consenting unrestrainedly to those who do them; and this\nprofoundly true remark explains the moral impotence of much that is\nfrom other points of view excellent in Greek literature.\n\n4.  For the punishment of all this sin St. Paul is not content to look\nto the 'day of judgement,' though that is to be the final and\ncharacteristic expression of divine wrath, and that 'day of wrath' he\nstill probably anticipated in the more {72} immediate future; but he\nsees already in the actual world of human society as he knows it the\nmanifold evidence of the divine wrath here and now.  Men are receiving\nin themselves the fitting reward of their perversity.  Their life has\nfound its own punishment.  The divine wrath is actually disclosed in\nthe facts of experience.  'Look,' St. Paul seems to say, 'at the way\nmen are living, and ask yourselves if there is any interpretation but\none of the facts you see.  There is but one conclusion possible.  God\nhas condemned and is showing His wrath on the human nature which He\nmade.'  Just in the same way in an earlier epistle St. Paul speaks of\nthe Jews, even before the destruction of Jerusalem, as already judged,\nalready the subject of the divine wrath[6].  And God's method of\njudgement is this.  The punishment lies in the natural consequences of\nthe lawless actions.  The wages of sin is also its fruit[7].  And\nfurther, this punishment of sin involves the increased liability to sin\nagain.  One sin 'gives us over' to another, as one good action\nfacilitates another.  This idea was familiar to Jewish teachers.  Among\nthe 'sayings of the Fathers' we find, 'Every fulfilment of duty is\nrewarded by another, {73} and every transgression is punished by\nanother[8].'  St. Paul, in fact, in this chapter, may be said to be\nconcentrating for the Christian Church all that is best and deepest in\nthe moral philosophy of Judaism.\n\nNow we are in a position to read the first section of St. Paul's\nargument without perhaps finding any single idea to the interpretation\nof which we have not a clue.\n\n\nFor the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness\nand unrighteousness of men, who hold down the truth in unrighteousness;\nbecause that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God\nmanifested it unto them.  For the invisible things of him since the\ncreation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the\nthings that are made, _even_ his everlasting power and divinity; that\nthey may be without excuse: because that, knowing God, they glorified\nhim not as God, neither gave thanks; but became vain in their\nreasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened.  Professing\nthemselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the\nincorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and\nof birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.\n\nWherefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto\nuncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonoured among themselves:\nfor that they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and\nserved the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever.\nAmen.\n\n{74}\n\nFor this cause God gave them up unto vile passions: for their women\nchanged the natural use into that which is against nature: and likewise\nalso the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their\nlust one toward another, men with men working unseemliness, and\nreceiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was due.\n\nAnd even as they refused to have God in _their_ knowledge, God gave\nthem up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not\nfitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness,\ncovetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit,\nmalignity; whisperers, backbiters, hateful to God, insolent, haughty,\nboastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without\nunderstanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection,\nunmerciful: who, knowing the ordinance of God, that they which practise\nsuch things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but also consent\nwith them that practise them.\n\n\n1.  Perhaps the first question which arises in our minds when reading\nthis passage is, whether St. Paul's general account of the heathen\nworld is not unjustifiably severe.  Does he not paint it too black?  In\nfact, the account he gives coincides with the account given by other\nJews of the Gentile world as in their experience they found it; and\nthis, we must remember, means the Gentile world of the great cities of\nthe empire.  They thought, as they moved about the world and saw what\nthey could not but {75} see, that God had forsaken the Gentiles because\nthey refused to acknowledge His law.  There was sin enough in Israel,\nbut it was remediable.  The sin of the Gentiles was irremediable.  God\nhad forsaken them[9].  This last idea is of course one entirely alien\nto St. Paul's mind.  To him all God's judgements, at least in this\nworld, have one intention--to awaken men to recognize the truth and to\nstir them to conversion, 'that he may have mercy upon all.'  But\notherwise St. Paul's view of the Gentile world, as he experienced it in\nthe cities of mixed Greek and Asiatic population of the Roman Empire,\nand especially in the notoriously wicked Corinth where he was\nwriting[10], was the ordinary Jewish view.  And a contemporary Stoic\nphilosopher, who wrote at Ephesus under the name of Heracleitus, gives\na picture of society in that city fully as black[11].\n\nAt the same time, if we are to be fair, we must recognize that the\naccount, while true, is not complete.  The Gentile life was not without\nits 'salt.'  There was a great deal of virtue, both domestic and\nphilosophical, in the {76} empire--more perhaps in the country, of\nwhich St. Paul knew little, than in the towns.  And the existence of\nthis salt he acknowledges when, in the second chapter of this epistle,\nhe speaks of Gentiles which have no revealed law but do by nature the\nthings of law, being a law unto themselves, and having the effect of\nthe law written in their hearts, and a witnessing conscience,\nindividual and social, to help them[12]: and again, when he intimates\nthat there is an uncircumcision which puts the circumcision to shame by\nkeeping the law[13].  But it is not St. Paul's way to exactly correlate\nthe different aspects of his subject as a modern writer would do.  He\nis a prophet and preacher, not a formally systematic writer.  It is\nenough for him that the sin which he is describing is a reality: that\nits tendencies are what he describes them to be: that, whatever other\ncounter tendency there may be, sin is so dominant in the world that its\nresults are as he represents them, and that the conscience and\nexperience of those to whom he writes will respond to his indictment.\n\nNor, if we give its metaphorical meaning to 'idolatry,' is there a word\nwhich St. Paul says in this chapter which would not be true of our {77}\nmodern civilization in London or Paris or New York.  With us indeed\nChristianity has been sufficiently vigorous to provide a counteracting\nforce, of infinitely stronger power than existed in the Roman world, to\nresist corruption.  The agencies of divine strength and recovery, the\ncentres of health and light, are infinitely more numerous, stronger,\nmore constant, more progressive.  But the world of sin is still what it\nwas: and always there lies upon it the same stamp of the divine\ncondemnation.  We look around on the life of our city, with its selfish\nand disgusting lusts, with its drunkenness, with its enervating luxury,\nwith its selfish wealth, with its reckless and immoral gambling, with\nits dishonest commerce, with its grasping avarice so neglectful of the\nlives of those whom it makes its instruments: we look round, I say, not\non the whole life, but on the sinful life of our city, and we see what\nhuman nature is plainly meant not to be, either in its characteristics\nor in its miserable issues.  And by the interval between what we see\nlife to be and what we know it was meant to be, we can measure the\nreality of the divine judgement.  The facts press upon us the truth\nwhich St. Paul would teach.  The sinful life is a condemned life.  Here\nis an {78} actual disclosure of the wrath of God upon all\nunrighteousness and sin.\n\n2.  But what will 'science' say to St. Paul's account of human\ndegeneracy and degradation?  Does not St. Paul seem to talk, as\nmoralists in general have been disposed to talk, as if the course of\nthe world's history had been a downward course? and is not this the\nreligious view? and is it not directly opposed to the scientific view\nof a gradual process of development and advance?  This is a very common\nform of question to suggest itself to our minds.  And the answer to it\nappears to be this[14]:--The biblical view of the world is not by any\nmeans that as a whole it has gone from bad to worse.  It recognizes\nperiods and areas of degradation, and suggests periods and areas of\nstagnation.  And this is what anthropology and history equally suggest.\nBut its main concern is with the history of one particular line of\nhuman advancement under divine guidance through Abraham and Moses and\nprophets and kings, through Christ and His Church: an advancement which\nis to be finally world-wide, and even more than world-wide, in its\neffects.  Other lines of progress in civilization and knowledge {79}\nthe Bible recognizes but is not largely concerned with.  But it is in\nits general effect thoroughly in accord with science, which suggests\nnot general and equable advance over the whole region of humanity, but\nadvance in special departments along the line of select races,\ncontinually impeded in its progress by counter tendencies, by periods\nand areas of degradation, and still more of stagnation[15].  Science,\nindeed, utters no word of promise at all as to the ultimate result of\nall this evolution[16].  It is faith, of whatsoever sort, not science,\nthat can make us optimistic as to the issue of human history.\n\nBut no doubt the Bible does throughout postulate the existence of sin;\nand it claims that sin everywhere, and from the first, has been a cause\nof degradation in the individual and the race.  Now here is the real\npoint at issue in the relations of religion and science.  The {80} main\nquestion is not about human origins or a primaeval fall.  It is simply\non the comparatively easy field of actual human existence.  Is human\nfreedom--freedom within limits to choose and act--a reality?  Can man\ntherefore misuse this freedom to do what he need not have done and\nought not to have done?  And has he, in fact, constantly been doing\nmorally wrong things, wilfully and knowingly, which he need not have\ndone?  Does, therefore, the area of human history present at every\nstage a result or product which human wilfulness and lawlessness, that\nis, sin, has contributed to spoil and to degrade below its natural\nlevel?  Now it is this--the real existence of countless human actions\nwhich need not have been and ought not to have been--which contemporary\nscience, with a necessitarian bias, is largely occupied in denying.\nGranted the reality within limits--limits which have no doubt often\nbeen grossly exaggerated, but granted the reality within due limits--of\nhuman freedom, and therefore the possibility and reality of actual sin\nand guilt and degradation which need not have been, I do not believe\nthere remains any serious conflict in the moral region between religion\nand science.  The conflict, I say, is continually {81} being taken back\ninto the region of original sin or the original fall.  But this is a\nquite secondary area of debate, in which I believe there can be no\nserious disagreement, if there is agreement in the primary area of\nactual human sin.  The universal moral consciousness and common sense\nof man bears witness to the fact that we can do and do do what we ought\nand need not.  It recognizes, moreover, the moral truth of St. Paul's\nidea that this lawlessness of the will has its perverting effects on\nthe intelligence and on the passions.  The human conscience then\nresponds to St. Paul's account of the origin and history of human sin,\nand of its fruits both in the individual and in society.  And if\npsychological science is inclined to deny the very existence of any\nfaculty of free choice such as makes sin possible, it will be found on\nexamination to be going very far beyond what it can prove.  For the\nreality of guilt and sin, and the degradation which results from it, we\nhave the human consciousness; against it we have no positive evidence:\nnothing in fact but the habitual unwillingness of specialist science,\nphysical or theological, to recognize its limits.\n\n3.  St. Paul finds the root of sin in the refusal {82} of man in\ngeneral to recognize God.  He asserts that they might have known Him,\nor rather did know Him, but declined to act on that knowledge.  Now it\nis noticeable that he does not ascribe this knowledge of God, which he\ndeclares to have been possible to man everywhere, to an original\nrevelation, nor even in this place to the moral conscience, but to the\nevidence of nature.  In this, as in his ridicule of idolatry, he is in\naccordance, not only with Jewish thought, but with contemporary Greek\nphilosophy.  The argument from design had become habitual in the\nschools, having been stated first of all with transparent simplicity by\nXenophon in his account of the reasoning of Socrates.  St. Paul then\nfinds in this instinctive inference from nature up to nature's God, 'a\ntestimony of the soul naturally Christian.'  He is able, at Lystra and\nAthens, to assume that men will respond to it.\n\nIt is another question, into which St. Paul does not specifically\nenter, how far back in human history the appreciation of this reasoning\ngoes.  But it is worth noticing that among our contemporary\ninvestigators of the history of religion, some at least of the most\nacute have been coming back to what we may call a modified {83} form of\nthe doctrine of an original monotheism[17].  They think that even\nsavage religions generally bear traces, that are plainly independent,\nof a belief in one great and mostly good God; and that there is no\nevidence that this higher belief was developed out of the lower belief\nin manifold spirits of more ambiguous characters.  They see no reason\nto suppose that the higher belief has been gradually arrived at within\nany period into which the human mind can penetrate with its\ninvestigations or its well-grounded conjectures.  Humanity appears to\nthem to have been haunted from its origins with this belief in the one\nGod; and they regard all the higher religious movements as attempts not\nso much to arrive at, as to retain hold on, a belief which is\ncontinually in danger of being overlaid and forgotten.  It does not\nappear that anthropological science is at all likely to disprove such a\nview which on the other hand has a great deal of evidence to justify\nit.  At least, the {84} evidences of deterioration in the history of\nreligion are manifold and conspicuous.  The lowest view of God and man\nis not by any means always the oldest.  And the recognition of such\nfacts is quite consonant with the doctrine of the evolution of religion\nin its more reasonable forms.\n\nMeanwhile, every one is in sufficient harmony with St. Paul's argument\nwho recognizes the universal facts of sin and guilt and needless moral\ndeterioration among men; and who recognizes also that the secret of sin\nis the wilful refusal on men's part to know God as they might have\nknown Him, and obey Him as they might have obeyed Him.\n\n4.  Besides these difficult questions, we should mark what is both\nplain and instructive, that St. Paul regards man as necessarily living\neither above himself or below himself.  Man's true nature is to be in\ndependence upon God.  Therein is his true liberty and dignity of\nsonship.  When he tries to be independent, to be his own master simply,\nhe loses the true principle of self-government and becomes the victim\nof his own passions.  God 'gave men up,' handed them over as slaves to\ndishonouring passions.  This theory of human nature is intimately bound\nup with all St. Paul's {85} teaching about grace and redemption, and we\nshall hear more of it.\n\n5.  We shall do well to notice, finally, one consequence which follows\nfrom recognizing that the lowest stage of moral degradation lies, not\nmerely in doing what is wrong, but in having ceased to disapprove of\nit.  That is to say, the lowest moral stage carries with it a complete\nloss of ideal, or absence of the standard of right and wrong; and this\nlowest stage is anticipated before it is reached.  It follows,\ntherefore, and we must not forget it, that the actual conscience of the\nindividual, or of the society, at any particular moment affords no\nadequate standard of right and wrong.  The moral conscience, like the\nintelligence in general, requires enlightenment.  It supplies no\ntrustworthy information, except so far as we are at pains to keep it\nenlightened.  More than this, its capacity to keep us admonished\ndepends on our habitually observing its injunctions.  To disobey\nconscience is to dull it, and finally to make it obdurate and\ninsensitive.  The absence of conscientious objection to a particular\ncourse of action may therefore be due either to our having neglected to\nenlighten our conscience or to having refused to obey it.  The duty of\nan {86} individual to himself is not only to obey his conscience, but\nalso take pains to enlighten it.  And the duty of the individual to\nsociety is to make continual efforts to keep the corporate conscience\nup to standard.\n\n\n\n[1] 1 John iii. 4.  The Greek phrase implies exactly that all sin is\nlawlessness, and all lawlessness is sin.\n\n[2] Rom. v. 13, 14.\n\n[3] Cf. Wisd. xiii. 1-9: 'For verily all men by nature were but vain\nwho had no perception of God, and from the good things that are seen\nthey gained not power to know him that is, neither by giving heed to\nthe works did they recognize the artificer....  For from the greatness\nof the beauty even of created things in like proportion does man form\nthe image of their first maker....  But again even they are not to be\nexcused.  For if they had power to know so much ... how is it that they\ndid not sooner find the Sovereign Lord of these his works?' Apoc. Bar.\nliv. 17, 18: 'From time to time ye have rejected the understanding of\nthe Most High.  For his works have not taught you, nor has the skill of\nhis creation which is at all times persuaded you.'\n\n[4] Isa. xliv. 18-20.\n\n[5] Wisd. xi. 15; xiii, xiv, xv.  St. Paul's debt to the Book of Wisdom\nis apparent (1) in the kinds of idols he mentions; (2) in the way in\nwhich the thought of idolatry leads on to that of uncleanness and\nsexual immorality; and (3) in the idea of retribution by the natural\nlaw of results.\n\n\n[6] 1 Thess. ii. 16.\n\n[7] Butler's _Analogy_, part i. ch. 2.\n\n[8] _Pirqe Aboth_, iv. 2 (cited by S. and H.).\n\n[9] S. and H. p. 49.\n\n[10] He implies, as Dr. Farrar points out, 1 Cor. v. 9-10, that pure\nsociety did not exist in Corinth.\n\n[11] See my _Ephesians_, pp. 91, 92, 255.\n\n[12] Rom. ii. 13-15.\n\n[13] Rom. ii. 26.\n\n[14] See also app. note E on physical science and the fall.\n\n[15] Cf. F. B. Jevons, _Introd. to the Hist. of Religion_ (Methuen),\npp. 394, 395: 'Everywhere it is the many who lapse: the few who hold\nright on.  The progressive peoples of the earth are in a minority.'\n'Though evolution is universal, progress is exceptional.'\n\n[16] Cf. Huxley, _Evolution and Ethics_ (Romanes Lecture, 1893,\nMacmillan), p. 36: 'The theory of evolution encourages no millennial\nanticipations.  If, for millions of years, our globe has taken the\nupward road, yet, some time, the summit will be reached, and the\ndownward route will be commenced.'\n\n[17] The allusion is to (1) Jevons (_op. cit._ cap. xxv), who seems to\nthink some 'amorphous' form of monotheism may very probably lie behind\ntotemism.  He strongly repudiates the notion that the lower form is\nnecessarily the older.  (2) Andrew Lang, _Making of Religion_\n(Longmans, 1898), chaps. ix and xv.  Cp. also Orr's _Christian view of\nGod and the World_ (Elliot, 1893), pp. 212 ff., and notes E, F, G.\n\n\n\n\n{87}\n\nDIVISION I.  Sec. 2.  CHAPTER II. 1-29.\n\n_Judgement on the Jews._\n\nSt. Paul in his judgement of the Gentile world is but repeating, with\nmore of moral discernment, what he would have learned in his Jewish\ntraining.  But the strict Jews who had taught St. Paul, though some\namong them must have been good men, ready to enter into the deeply\npenitential spirit of their psalmists and prophets, do not seem as a\nrule to have liked to think of their own people as liable to divine\ncondemnation.  They chose to suppose that the Gentile world alone was\nthe area upon which divine vengeance would light, while the Jews were\nto appear as the instruments of God's judgements, or at least\nthemselves exempt from them.  They had forgotten all the superabundant\nwarnings against such a spirit which the prophets from Amos to John the\nBaptist had let fall.  This frame of mind--censorious when {88} it\nlooks without, lenient to the point of blindness when it looks\nwithin--sometimes appears when one thinks of things in the abstract as\nalmost impossible, in the form at least in which St. Paul here proceeds\nto attribute it to the Jews.  We can hardly believe that any\nresponsible beings could be so blind as St. Paul implies that his pious\nfellow-countrymen were.  But it needs only experience to convince us\nthat even in its grosser forms this frame of mind is extraordinarily\ncommon in individuals, in nations, and in churches.  Certainly the\nnation of England is not, and the representatives of religious England\ntoo often are not, exempt from the common failing.  And in the case of\nthe Jews we have also the witness of our Lord.  He represents the\nreligious Jewish world as honeycombed with hypocrisy of a plain and\ngross sort.  They are to Him very types of the men who behold the mote\nthat is in their brother's eye, but consider not the beam that is in\ntheir own eyes.  St. Paul's witness then is only the same as the\nChrist's.\n\nHere then St. Paul turns abruptly upon a Jew who may be supposed to\nhave been listening to the indictment of the Gentiles with expressions\nof sympathy, and bids him look {89} within and recognize that the Jew\nalso falls under the same indictment and on the same grounds.  And he\nproceeds sternly to cut away any possible ground of confidence which he\nmight derive from the thought that he had 'Abraham to his father.'\nGod's judgement is directed by an absolutely impartial 'truth' or\nestimate of the facts in their inner reality.  If in any particular\ncase of persistent sin His judgement seems to linger, it is not that He\nhas forgotten or will overlook; it is only that He is merciful and\nforbearing, and gives long space for repentance[1].  But, meanwhile, if\nthe opportunity is not taken, if the heart is hard and impenitent, a\nstore is being laid up against the offender in the place of judgement,\nwhich will break out in the great day in manifested wrath.  God's\nprinciple of judgement is absolutely free from partiality.  There are\nmen {90} who have steadily in view the true aim of human life, its\nimperishable glory, its final and permanent honour, and, therefore,\npreferring eternal to temporal things, patiently go on doing good; they\nmay be Jews or Greeks, but in either case indifferently, the reward\nthat they have sought will be theirs with the accompaniment of inward\npeace.  There are other men who are contentious, and refusing the\nleading of the truth, make themselves servants to unrighteousness.\nThey may be Jews or Gentiles, but the divine wrath, showing itself in\noutward suffering and inward anguish, will be upon them all equally.\nFor God judges men impartially in the light of their opportunities.\nThose who have the advantage of a revealed law shall be judged and\nacquitted according as they have, not listened to it merely, but obeyed\nit.  For a law known and not kept, so far from commending us to God, is\nbut the instrument of our judgement.  And those who have not this\nadvantage are yet not without an inward light in the natural moral\nconsciousness of mankind.  Those who have sinned against this light\nshall find nothing else was needed to bring them to their ruin.  And\nthose, on the other hand, who by its help keep the moral law in effect,\nwithout {91} any assistance from a revealed law, are their own law for\nthemselves.  They have the law in its practical result written in their\nhearts as their conduct shows, and their natural conscience bears its\naccompanying witness.  For conscience, both individual and social,\nreflecting on all human actions to condemn, or, more rarely, to acquit,\nanticipates the final divine judgement which, as St. Paul continually\nannounces, it will be the office of Jesus the Christ to pass unerringly\nupon things secret as well as open in the 'day of the Lord.'\n\nThe specially revealed law on which the Jew relied, which it is his\nboast to have received from God, and in virtue of which he could\nrightly claim to have a knowledge of divine things which other men had\nnot, and to be the teacher of the nations, the interpreter to other men\nof the divine will--this law finds its first application to those\nthemselves to whom it is given.  How can they preach the commandments,\nwhether it be the eighth or the seventh or the second that is in\nquestion, so long as they have so bad a reputation for keeping them?\nThey cannot deny that as of old, so now, their moral conduct causes the\nheathen to blaspheme their religion, instead of {92} being drawn\ntowards it.  To have received circumcision in physical fact is of no\nprofit at all, unless it be accompanied by the obedience of which the\nmark in the flesh is but the symbol.  Disobedience is in God's sight\nuncircumcision.  And where the obedience is, God will reckon it as if\nthe symbol were there also.  The morally obedient Gentile will sit in\njudgement on the morally disobedient Jew.  For that is the divine\nprinciple.  God everywhere and always looks to the spiritual reality as\nit is seated in heart and will, and is satisfied never by outward\ndistinctions.  Jew (Judah) means 'praise.'  But if the Jew is to merit\nhis name, he must not be satisfied with the applause of men.  He must\ncommend himself to God who sees the heart.\n\n\nWherefore thou art without excuse, O man, whosoever thou art that\njudgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for\nthou that judgest dost practise the same things.  And we know that the\njudgement of God is according to truth against them that practise such\nthings.  And reckonest thou this, O man, who judgest them that practise\nsuch things, and doest the same, that thou shall escape the judgement\nof God?  Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance\nand longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to\nrepentance? but after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up\nfor thyself wrath in the {93} day of wrath and revelation of the\nrighteous judgement of God; who will render to every man according to\nhis works: to them that by patience in well-doing seek for glory and\nhonour and incorruption, eternal life: but unto them that are factious,\nand obey not the truth, but obey unrighteousness, _shall be_ wrath and\nindignation, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that\nworketh evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Greek; but glory and\nhonour and peace to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and\nalso to the Greek: for there is no respect of persons with God.  For as\nmany as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as\nmany as have sinned under law shall be judged by law; for not the\nhearers of a law are just before God, but the doers of a law shall be\njustified: for when Gentiles which have no law do by nature the things\nof the law, these, having no law, are a law unto themselves; in that\nthey shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience\nbearing witness therewith[2], and their thoughts one with another\naccusing or else excusing _them_; in the day when God shall judge the\nsecrets of men, according to my gospel, by Jesus Christ.\n\nBut if thou bearest the name of a Jew, and restest upon the law, and\ngloriest in God, and knowest his will, and approvest the things that\nare excellent, being instructed out of the law, and art confident that\nthou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them that are in\ndarkness, a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of babes, having in the\nlaw the form of knowledge and of the truth; thou therefore that\nteachest another, teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man\nshould not steal, dost thou steal?  {94} thou that sayest a man should\nnot commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest\nidols, dost thou rob temples? thou who gloriest in the law, through thy\ntransgression of the law dishonourest thou God?  For the name of God is\nblasphemed among the Gentiles because of you, even as it is written.\nFor circumcision indeed profiteth, if thou be a doer of the law: but if\nthou be a transgressor of the law, thy circumcision is become\nuncircumcision.  If therefore the uncircumcision keep the ordinances of\nthe law, shall not his uncircumcision be reckoned for circumcision? and\nshall not the uncircumcision which is by nature, if it fulfil the law,\njudge thee, who with the letter and circumcision art a transgressor of\nthe law?  For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that\ncircumcision, which is outward in the flesh: but he is a Jew, which is\none inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, not\nin the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.\n\n\n1.  As at the end of the first chapter we asked whether St. Paul was\nfair to the Gentile world, so now we ask whether he is fair to those of\nhis own race whose religious tendencies he had known so well from\ninside.  And the answer again is that he undoubtedly represents aright\nthe dominant tendency and temper among them.  The prophets had always\nhad to fight against the natural but false idea of divine election,\nwhich held the Jewish race secure in the favour of Jehovah, simply\nbecause He was their God and they were His people.  They bring to bear\n{95} all the activities of an inspired intelligence and heart to make\ntheir fellow-countrymen perceive that they are only secure in God's\nfavour so long as they are like Him in character.  Now down to the\nperiod of the Captivity, the prophets could also denounce the people\nbecause they were constantly false to Jehovah in matters of worship as\nwell as of morality.  After the Captivity, however, the tendency to\nidolatry is gone for ever.  After the Maccabean period the exclusive\nand legitimate worship of Jehovah becomes a matter of passionate\nenthusiasm in the Jewish race.  Henceforth therefore their danger from\nthe false idea of election passes into a new phase.  We must be in the\nfavour of God, they now could plead, because we have Abraham to our\nfather, and because we keep to the worship of our God with an\nirreproachable zeal for His law.  Against this sort of strengthened\npleading John the Baptist, the last of the prophets, aims his bare\nmoral teaching.  God's wrath is just about to fall upon His people he\ndeclares, because it lacks in real moral righteousness.  Repent ye, be\nchanged, get you a new heart--is his one word of preaching.  This\nkeynote passes intensified into the teachings and the denunciations of\nChrist.  Nothing {96} more surely stamps the narrative of 'the woman\ntaken in adultery' as historically genuine[3], than its profound truth\nto the moral attitude of Christ in face of Scribes and Pharisees.  The\npoint of His reply to their trial question is that they who would\nenforce a divine law, and thus stand for God before the world, must\nthemselves be morally sound.  'He that is without sin among you, let\nhim first cast a stone at her.'  It is moral conformity, not merely\northodoxy, which qualifies us to act for God.  It is then precisely\nthis attitude of Christ towards the Jews zealous for the law, which St.\nPaul is reproducing in the passage which we have just read.\n\nHe suggests also in its last words--where he is playing on the meaning\nof the name of Judah--another deep element in Christ's depreciation of\nthe religious spirit of the Jews.  Their religion was a matter of\npublic opinion--with all the stagnancy which belongs to the public\nopinion of a compact society--not a matter which lived with ever fresh\nlife in the inner relation of the conscience to God.  'How can ye\nbelieve which receive glory one of another, and the glory which cometh\nfrom the only God ye seek not?' {97} St. Paul then is certainly right\nin his estimate of Jewish religion.  One indeed who describes with as\nvivid reality as he does the pride of a Jew in his religious\nprivileges--one who had all the reason that Saul of Tarsus had for\nknowing what it was to feel this emotion from within--could hardly have\nbeen wrong in his estimate of its weaknesses.\n\nAnd if the particular moral defects which St. Paul attributes to the\nreligious Jew are surprisingly grave--theft, adultery, and\ntemple-robbery--here too what he says out of his own experience is\nconfirmed from other quarters.  Avarice was a notorious sin of Jews.\nOur Lord accuses the Scribes of 'devouring widows' houses[4]' under\ncloak of religion, and denounces the Pharisees also for leaving their\noutwardly purified cups and platters inwardly full of 'extortion.'  It\nis only a subtler form of theft that He alludes to when He denounces\nthem for sanctioning the practice of dedicating property as a 'corban'\nto the purposes of religion in order to evade the righteous claims of\nparents.  The story of Susanna, the brief but stern words of our Lord\nabout the seventh commandment in His Sermon on the Mount, and His {98}\nsignificant language on the occasion already alluded to of the woman\ntaken in adultery, interpret St. Paul's language as to sins of the\nflesh.  And the language of the town clerk at Ephesus in exculpating\nSt. Paul and his company, suggests that 'temple-robbery' was a not\nunfamiliar imputation upon Jews.  It appears that with all their horror\nof idols--and though everything connected with an idol was expressly\ndeclared to be 'an abomination,' unless it had been already desecrated\nby Gentiles[5]--they could not always resist the opportunity of\nappropriating the rich stores of the temples.  The 'religious' Scribes\nand Pharisees (though not of course the best of them) were, in fact, as\na body truly hypocrites, as our Lord summarily said they were.\n\nAnd there lies in the moral failure of the Jews a very much needed\nwarning to us nineteenth-century Christians against censoriousness.\n'Judging' occupies so large a part in our ordinary conversation.  In\nthe religious world, we condemn so freely--Romanists, Dissenters, those\nwho are of a different party to ourselves: in the social world--those\nof a different class, those who employ us, or whom we employ, {99}\nthose whom in any way we do not like or who go contrary to us.  We are\nalways judging.  But to judge, we are taught, is a great\nresponsibility.  With what judgement we judge, we shall be judged.  It\nis of the utmost consequence that before we judge others we should have\njudged ourselves.  And to have done that truthfully has a tendency to\nmake us charitable in our estimate of others, because we are deeply\nconscious of our own need of merciful and lenient consideration.\n\n2.  What St. Paul teaches about the moral consciousness, and\npossibility of moral goodness, among the Gentiles has not a Jewish\nsound at all.  The Jewish teachers generally would not have admitted\nany goodness acceptable to God in the heathen world.  In fact, St. Paul\nis here, as in his speech at Athens, accepting the principle of a\nuniversal presence and operation of God in the human heart, outside the\nlimit of any special revelation, and he accepts it in terms largely\nderived from current Stoic philosophy.\n\nThe Stoics, arising when the Greek city life was decaying, contemplated\nman as an individual, and undertook to show him how to lead a good\nlife.  A good life means a 'life according {100} to nature,' or\n'according to reason': the reason of the individual being a part of the\nuniversal reason or God.  And as a help in living according to reason,\nthe Stoics laid stress upon the conscience in each man, i.e. a faculty\nlying behind his ordinary surface self, passing judgement according to\nreason upon his actions, and 'making cowards of us all,' inasmuch as we\nall do wrong.\n\n'No one,' said Seneca, St. Paul's contemporary, 'will be found who can\nacquit himself; and any man calling himself innocent has regard to the\nhuman witness, not to his own conscience.'  He quotes an 'admirable\nsaying of Epicurus,' 'The beginning of safety is the knowledge of sin.'\nHe inculcates the duty of strict self-examination, and tells us how he\nperformed it himself at night: 'when the light is removed, and my wife,\nwho is by this time aware of my practice, is now silent, I pass the\nwhole of my day under examination.'  Then he 'opens out his conscience\nto the gods.'  And this conscience is to every man a sort of inward\nGod[6].  It is in fact the representative in each man of the universal,\nimmutable, and divine moral law, the {101} law of nature, in conformity\nwith which is the only true freedom and citizenship of the world.  'For\nthis' (the world of the moral order), said another contemporary of St.\nPaul, also a philosopher, 'is the common home of all, and its law is no\nwritten document (letter), but God.  And if a man transgresses what the\nlaw imposes, he will be impious; or rather he will not dare transgress,\nfor he could not escape.  Justice has many furies, watch-dogs for\nsins[7].'  There is in Cicero's _Republic_ a magnificent expression of\nthe principle of the law of nature: 'There is a true law which is right\nreason, agreeable to nature, diffused among all men, constant, eternal,\nwhich calls us to duty by its injunctions, and by its prohibitions\ndeters us from wrong; which upon the good lays neither injunction nor\nprohibition in vain; while for the bad, neither its injunctions nor its\nprohibitions avail at all.  This law admits neither of addition nor\nsubtraction nor abrogation.  The vote of neither senate nor people can\ndischarge us from our obligation to it.  We are not to look for some\nother person to expound or interpret it; nor will there be one law for\nRome and another for Athens, nor {102} one at this date and another\nlater on; but one law shall embrace all races over all time, eternal\nand immortal; and there shall be hereby one common master and commander\nof all--God, who originated this law and proposed it and arbitrates\nconcerning it; and if any one obeys it not, he shall play false to\nhimself and shall do despite to the nature of man, and by this very\nfact shall pay the greatest penalties, even if he should escape all\nelse that is reckoned punishment.'  It is of interest to notice that\nthe words cited by St. Paul before the Areopagus[8], 'We are also God's\noffspring,' occur in a hymn of the Stoic Cleanthes, full of the thought\nof man's relation through his reason to the universal and divine law.\n\nOf this type of thought and language then St. Paul avails himself, in\nspite of the immense differences which disclose themselves below the\nsurface between the Stoic and the Christian ideas of God.  He avails\nhimself of Stoic phraseology about men being God's offspring in his\nspeech at Athens, as being in accordance with what he, the Christian\napostle, had to teach.  And here he adopts in substance the Stoic\nlanguage with regard to conscience.  As by inference from {103} nature\nall men can know of God's power and divine attributes, so, St. Paul\nsays, from the witness of conscience they may know the principles of\nHis moral government[9].  St. Paul, however, rightly refuses to be\nsatisfied with the individual conscience.  The social judgement--the\nsocial verdicts of condemnation or acquittal continually being\npassed--co-operate with it to anticipate the judgements of God.  And in\nvirtue of the inward light of reason, and the conscience[10] both\nindividual and social, he held that men who lie outside the region of\nspecial revelation can possess the moral law in effect in their hearts,\nand, it is implied, can keep it.\n\nSt. Paul is mainly occupied in this epistle in contrasting the\nChristian Church, as a region where spiritual power is given in\nresponse to faith to enable a man to fulfil the divine law, both with\nthe heathen world, plunged in moral wickedness, and with the Jewish\nChurch in its failure to attain to divine righteousness by the law of\nworks--of which more hereafter.  {104} But there were among the Jews\ntrue sons of Abraham: and there were among the Gentiles good men\nacceptable to God, like righteous Job.  St. Paul does not theorize\nabout this.  But there is at least no reason to deny that he would have\ndeclared these righteous men to be justified by faith and sanctified by\ngrace, i.e. justified by that degree of truthful correspondence with\nGod which was possible for them; and kept in harmony with the will of\nGod by His Spirit.  There is no reason to believe that St. Paul would\nnot have admitted some action of faith and grace among the\nnon-christian Gentiles, as he undoubtedly does among the prae-christian\nJews who lived under or before the law.  When he says of the good\nheathen that they do '_by nature_ the things contained in the law,' he\nuses the expression not as equivalent to 'by their own unassisted\npowers, without the help of God,' but simply to mean 'without the help\nof any special revelation[11].'\n\n{105}\n\nUniversally then, according to St. Paul, two sources of the knowledge\nof God exist; nature, with its evidences of the divine power and other\nsimilar attributes, and conscience, with its witness to divine\nrighteousness.  And, though the sciences of nature and man have grown\nsince St. Paul's day past recognition, nothing (we may boldly say) has\nreally weakened either element of this double witness.  It is, and\nremains true, that the only reasonable argument from the universal\norder of nature is to a universal reason or mind: and that the method\nby which the moral conscience may be believed to have developed out of\n'animal intelligence,' makes no difference as to the cogency of its\nwitness to a divine righteousness, in response to which alone it could\nhave developed as in fact it has done.  It is worth notice also before\nwe leave this part of our subject, that St. Paul's line of thought\naffords a true explanation of the double fact that, on the one hand,\nthe actual moral standards with which the conscience of different\nindividuals, races, and generations is satisfied, greatly varies; and,\non the other hand, that all the standards tend towards unity in a\ncommon idea of righteousness.  The tendency towards unity St. Paul\nwould attribute to the divine righteousness {106} which lies behind\nconscience and which it exists to reflect.  The variations would be due\nto the different degrees of development reached; or still more to the\ndifferent degrees of faithfulness or unfaithfulness, attention or\ninattention, with which the conscience of the race or the individual\nhas responded to the light.  The conscience, like the speculative\nreason, is an instrument for coming to the truth; but an instrument\ncapable of every variety of racial or individual error or obtuseness.\n\n3.  It appears clearly enough in this chapter, that St. Paul's\ndoctrines of free grace and justification by faith must be grossly and\ncarelessly misconceived unless they are viewed upon a deep background\nof what we commonly call 'natural religion,' that is (practically) the\nreligion that appeals straight off to the conscience of almost all\nhonest and civilized men.  It is 'natural religion' to believe that God\nwill judge men with absolute power and insight and impartiality\naccording to their conduct and their characters: that there can be no\n'making believe,' no substitute for a good character, and no escaping\nwith a bad one.  The prophets are full of this principle.  Our Lord\nreasserts it.  It is emphasized by St. James, whose plain {107} point\nis that we are justified not by right belief (which is what he means by\n'faith'), but by a good life.  But no one could assert the principle\nmore simply and absolutely as the basis of all his special evangelical\nteaching than St. Paul.  And whatever is true about free grace and\njustification by faith only, is true because, and only because, this\nfree grace and this justifying faith are necessary means or steps\ntowards the realization of actual righteousness.  So St. Paul states\nit--'that the requirement of the (divine) law might be fulfilled in us\nwho walk[12]' according to the principles of the 'gospel of the grace\nof God.'  The doctrine of grace is rooted and based upon the truths of\nnatural religion, and leads up to their realization.  It has been then\na most perilous mistake when missionaries have preached the doctrines\nof grace and redemption in regions where there had been no preparatory\ntraining in natural religion--in the truth of the unity and power and\nmoral character of God: of the reality of our responsibility towards\nHim: of His inexorable holiness: of His inaccessibility to any kind of\nbribe or attempt to find some substitute for moral obedience.  Men must\nhave known what {108} it is to tremble in the recesses of their being\n'as guilty men surprised' before God's awful righteousness; to\n'tremble,' like Felix, at the message of 'righteousness, temperance,\nand judgement to come,' before they can safely learn the lesson of His\ngrace and pardon.\n\nAnd there are two minor elements in natural religion, as commonly\nunderstood, for which St. Paul here makes himself responsible.  It has\nbeen generally understood that all men instinctively desire their own\nhappiness, and that this is natural and right; and that as we should\nreasonably prefer our more permanent and deeper good to what is only\ntransitory and superficial, so we should strive for the happiness and\nsatisfaction which is eternal--the eternal reward, which only the stern\npursuit of virtue can obtain for us.  This deep desire for our own\nsubstantial happiness our Lord sanctions and continually suggests as a\nprincipal motive for right living.  The love of others does not\nannihilate it.  'Thou shalt love thy neighbour _as thyself_.'  So then\nSt. Paul also, following his Master, recognizes it as lying at the\nheart of what is right and true in mankind, that we should 'seek' for\nourselves 'glory, honour, and incorruption'--the glory and honour which\nabide {109} eternally.  It is plain that he would have us pay no heed\nto that truly unnatural modern altruism which would disparage and\ndepreciate this motive of a right self-love, and which would treat the\ndesire for eternal happiness, and fear of eternal loss, as a base and\nunworthy element in religion.  No doubt it is not the only motive.  It\nis not even the characteristically Christian motive.  But it is a\nnatural and legitimate motive all the same.  It is an inextinguishable\nconsciousness in us that we were meant for blessedness.\n\nBut, once more, the only true happiness is moral happiness: it is a\n'glory and honour' springing out of the man's character and belonging\nto it: it is a happiness that is in this sense deserved.  True, the\nservant of God in heaven will always feel that what he is receiving is\ninfinitely beyond his deserts, and that his deserts are what God has\nwrought in him, not he himself.  None the less the reward springs out\nof and belongs to what God has actually made him to be.  Heaven is not\na happy place in such a sense that we could be made happy by being 'put\nthere' by an arbitrary fiat of God.  It is fellowship with God, the\nAll-holy; and God's holiness is intolerable, it is 'devouring fire and\n{110} everlasting burnings,' to those who are not morally like Him.\nHere lies the reason why a heaven is not possible to moral beings\nwithout the accompanying possibilities of a hell.  For the moral\npossibility of acquiring the holy character involves the opposite moral\npossibility: and it does not lie in the moral nature of things that the\nbad character should receive anything except what it deserves--the\n'indignation and wrath' which God, because He is God, must express\ntowards the sinful, wilful character, and which to the character itself\nmeans 'tribulation and anguish.'  This, St. Paul says positively, must\nbe the lot of 'every soul of man that doeth evil.'  It is this\ninevitably two-sided law that a large part of the kindly-disposed world\nto-day are trying to get rid of, or to forget, on its severe and dark\nside.  But it is in fact a law that works even more necessarily and\ninexorably than physical laws, inasmuch as it is the expression of\nGod's necessary moral being.  God cannot 'let us off' the punishment of\nour sins, which is only their inevitable fruit.  Nor does He disclose\nto us any necessary limit to the ruin which we may work in our being.\nThis stern principle of natural religion is taken up into, and indeed\nintensified in, the gospel.  {111} St. Paul, however, neither here nor\nelsewhere uses 'immortality' to describe the future state of those whom\nGod condemns.  He uses it only of God and of those who enjoy the vision\nof God.  The 'immortality of the soul'--the idea that every soul as\nsuch necessarily and consciously exists to all eternity--is an idea\nwhich the language of Scripture does not seem to warrant.\n\n4.  There are also two less prominent points in the second chapter that\nwe must not entirely pass over.\n\nSt. Paul, we should find, if we were to investigate the matter, is\nwholly true in his interpretation of the Old Testament in general.  He\ninterprets its spirit and meaning with perfect insight.  But he is not\nalways what we should call critically exact, any more than the other\ninterpreters of his day, in his use of particular texts.  Thus, in this\nchapter he gives to some words of Isaiah[13] a meaning which is indeed\nto be found elsewhere in the prophets[14], but does not really belong\nto the original of this particular passage.  Isaiah is saying that\nGod's name is being blasphemed _by the oppressors of {112}\nIsrael_--'Continually all day long my name is blasphemed.'  But the\nGreek version of the Bible inserted the words 'through you' (the\nJews[15]); and St. Paul interprets this insertion to mean that it was\nthe moral inconsistency of the chosen people themselves which caused\nGod's name to be blasphemed.  Perhaps the fact that he uses the formula\nof quotation 'as it is written' after the words referred to, is a sign\nthat he had employed the words in his own sense before he became\nconscious that they were in fact a quotation.  But in any case he shows\nno anxiety to follow critically the original meaning of a particular\npassage which he cites.\n\nAt the end of this passage occurs the antithesis familiar in modern\nlanguage of 'the letter and the spirit.'  In its modern sense it is\nused as equivalent to the literal and the metaphorical, or the definite\nand the vague.  But this is not at all its sense in St. Paul.  With him\n'the letter' means the written law, and 'spirit' means, in this\nconnexion, what we may broadly describe as vital moral energy.  Thus,\n{113} in its most characteristic use with St. Paul, the antithesis\ndistinguishes the mere external information as to God's will, which was\nall the written law ('the letter') could give the Jews, from the\nactivity of the Holy Spirit or the spiritual power of moral freedom\nwhich, through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we enjoy under the gospel.\nIn this passage the antithesis is similar, but not the same.  It\ncontrasts the merely physical state of circumcision according to the\nwritten law--'with the letter and circumcision' means 'having the\nwritten law and being accordingly circumcised'--with what the Old\nTestament had called 'the circumcised heart,' i.e. the really obedient\nwill or 'spirit' which may exist independently of the outward rite.\n'Spirit,' we observe, may refer to the activity of either the Holy\nSpirit of God, or of the human will, or of both without discrimination.\n\n\n\n[1] Cf. Eccles. viii. 11: 'Because sentence against an evil work is not\nexecuted speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is emboldened\nto do evil.'  Ps. x. 11: 'He saith in his heart, God hath forgotten.'\nWisd. xi. 23: 'Thou overlookest the sins of men to the end they may\nrepent.'  Ecclus. v. 4: 'Say not, I sinned, and what happened unto me?\nFor the Lord is longsuffering.' 2 Pet. iii. 9: 'The Lord is not slack\nconcerning his promise, as some count slackness; but is longsuffering\nto youward, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should\ncome to repentance.' Cf. also Isa. lvii. 11.\n\n[2] Or rather 'their own conscience bearing witness with them and, in\ntheir mutual relations, their reflections accusing or even excusing\nthem.'\n\n[3] It is certainly misplaced as it stands (John vii. 53-viii. 11).\n\n[4] Mark xii. 40; Luke xx. 47; Matt. xxiii. 25.\n\n[5] Cf. S. and H. _in loc._\n\n[6] See for Seneca, Lightfoot, _Philippians_, 'St. Paul and Seneca,'\npp. 278-280.\n\n[7] See _Pseudo-Heracleitus_, Letter ix, p. 91 (Bernays).\n\n[8] Acts xvii. 28.\n\n[9] See Rom. i. 32 as well as Rom. ii. 14.\n\n[10] 'Conscience,' as used by St. Paul's contemporaries and by himself,\nis not a repository for positive moral guidance, but rather a faculty\nfor reflecting upon our own already accomplished actions.  See further,\napp. note B, on the idea of conscience.\n\n[11] See on this subject _Life and Letters of Dr. Hort_ (Macmillan),\nvol. ii. p. 337: 'Faith itself, not being an intellectual assent to\npropositions, but an attitude of heart and mind, is present in a more\nor less rudimentary state in every upward effort or aspiration of man.'\nAlso Gibson, _Thirty-Nine Articles_ (Methuen), ii. p. 420.\n\n[12] Rom. viii. 4.\n\n[13] Isa. lii. 5.\n\n[14] See in Ezek. xxxvi. 22: 'My holy name, which ye have profaned\namong the nations, whither ye went.'\n\n[15] Dr. Gifford suggests that the LXX was subsequently modified by St.\nPaul's citation (as in the next chapter, iii. 10-18), instead of his\ncitation being moulded by the LXX.  Is there any evidence in support of\nthis view?\n\n\n\n\n{114}\n\nDIVISION I.  Sec. 3.  CHAPTER III. 1-8.\n\n_Jewish objections._\n\nThis passage is interesting as showing us, what is more often the case\nthan appears on the surface, that St. Paul has in mind as he reasons\nthe familiar objections of an opponent--his own objections, perhaps in\npart, before he was a Christian.  St. Paul, that is to say, very\nfrequently writes controversially, and argues _ad hominem_: and his own\nreasoning is only rightly understood when we have clearly in view what\nhe is opposing.  It of course very frequently happens in literature\ngenerally that a saying is completely misunderstood, because that with\nwhich it is contrasted is overlooked.  Thus, John the Baptist's advice\nto the soldiers to 'be content with their wages' is commonly\ninterpreted to mean--'Be satisfied with your wages {115} as they are,\nand do not ask for more.'  This might have been good advice or bad\nadvice to give to the soldiers, but it is not John the Baptist's.  He\nmeans, 'Be satisfied with your pay and do not supplement it by robbery\nand unauthorized exaction.'  Here then the implied contrast is\nnecessary to enable us to interpret aright the positive advice.\nSimilarly in the case of St. Paul, his doctrine of the absoluteness of\nthe divine election, as stated later in this epistle[1], has been\nmisunderstood, because it has been supposed that he is asserting the\ndivine absoluteness as against the claim of man to moral freedom, and\nto equitable judgement in accordance with responsibility.  But in fact\nthis is what he is indirectly vindicating.  What he is arguing against\nis the claim of the Jews that God was bound to their race.  It is\nagainst this claim--this immoral claim to perpetual privilege on the\npart of one race, however they might behave--that St. Paul exalts the\nabsolute freedom of God to choose or reject as He sees fit.  It is of\ngreat importance then, especially with a writer so frequently\ncontroversial as St. Paul, to watch continually to see which is the\nphase of thought or feeling that {116} he is opposing.  Frequently, as\nI say, it hardly appears on the surface of St. Paul's writing that he\nreally has a definite opponent in view.  Sometimes, as in the passage\nnow to be considered, it becomes apparent, and the argument is best\nexhibited in the form of a dialogue (though to let the dialogue appear\nclearly, missing links have to be supplied) thus--\n\n_Jewish Objector._  But if all this is true--if Jews are no better off\nthan Gentiles--of what use is it to be a Jew?  What is the value of our\ncircumcision and the position into which it initiates us?  (ver. 1)\n\n_St. Paul._  Its value is manifold.  To take one point first[2], it\nlies in the fact that the oracles of God--His teaching and\npromises--were entrusted to our race (ver. 2).\n\n_J. O._  But if God thus of old gave special promises to us as His\nspecial people, and if now we are simply like the heathen under His\nwrath, the conclusion is that He has been false to His promises\n(argument implied in ver. 3).\n\n_S. P._  No: that is not to be thought of.  It is not God who has\nplayed false, it is man: it is our race.  The Jews refused to believe:\nnot however all of them, but some.  If there is {117} a trial between\nGod and His people as to which has been true, it is God who must be\nvindicated as the Psalmist says[3] (vers. 3, 4).\n\n_J. O._  But if, as your teaching proves, all our unrighteousness is\nmade to serve as a background on which God makes His righteousness all\nthe more evident--that is enough.  Our wrong-doing serves its purpose\nin this way.  God has no right both to use our wrong-doing for His own\npurposes, and then, besides this, to visit His wrath upon us (ver. 5a).\n\n_S. P._  Such thoughts our human nature suggests (ver. 5b).  But we\nknow they are false.  God is the judge of the world, and His action\nnecessarily supplies the standard of all judicial righteousness (ver.\n6).\n\nJ. O.  But do consider my point.  If the result of my playing false to\nGod is that His fidelity is only thrown into higher relief and the\nwhole process ministers to His glory, why am I, the unconscious\ninstrument of His glory, treated as an offender? and why should I not\nresolve to go on freely doing wrong (as you yourself are sometimes\naccused of teaching), so as to give God more abundant opportunities to\noverrule my action for the greater good?  (vers. 7, 8a.)\n\n{118}\n\n_S. P._  A man stands justly condemned in the very using of such an\nargument (ver. 8b).\n\n\nWhat advantage then hath the Jew? or what is the profit of\ncircumcision?  Much every way: first of all, that they were intrusted\nwith the oracles of God.  For what if some were without faith? shall\ntheir want of faith make of none effect the faithfulness of God?  God\nforbid: yea, let God be found true, but every man a liar; as it is\nwritten,\n\nThat thou mightest be justified in thy words,\n\nAnd mightest prevail when thou comest into judgement.  But if our\nunrighteousness commendeth the righteousness of God, what shall we say?\nIs God unrighteous who visiteth with wrath?  (I speak after the manner\nof men.)  God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world?  But if\nthe truth of God through my lie abounded unto his glory, why am I also\nstill judged as a sinner? and why not (as we be slanderously reported,\nand as some affirm that we say), Let us do evil, that good may come?\nwhose condemnation is just.\n\n\nWhat is of interest here is to notice that St. Paul reproduces the\nargument of his Jewish opponent with great sympathetic force.  It had\nclearly been weighed in his own mind.  It was urged, no doubt, against\nhis own teaching, that it gave an excuse for sinning by suggesting that\nthe greatness of the sin only glorified the super-abundant greatness of\nthe pardoning love.  It is only too probable that some of his followers\nwere persuaded by some such argument or acted as {119} if they were.\nThus St. Paul states it with vigour, but thereby only makes all the\nmore apparent the meagreness of his reply.  Not that the argument is\nsuch as makes reply difficult.  In a slightly different form St. Paul\ndeals with it elaborately in chapters ix-xi.  But here he clearly\ntreats it as contemptible when its true character has once been\ndisclosed.  And why?  Because it is professedly an explanation of the\nways of God with man, which is at the same time an excuse for\nimmorality.  It is an intellectual exercise at the expense of\nconscience.  And St. Paul shows, by the very contempt with which he\ntreats it, that a man who will play false with his conscience, and then\nproceed to find intellectual justifications, is not to be met in the\nintellectual region at all.  He has been condemned already.\n\nSt. Paul then, we find, will not argue with one who reasons at the\nexpense of his conscience; and this is an important principle.  When\nthe intellect is acting purely, it must be free, and must be dealt with\nseriously on its own ground.  But the conscience must be followed first\nof all.  Its light is clearer than the light of intellect, and must be\nleft supreme.  Whatever be the bewilderment of my intellect, I am\nself-condemned, {120} God-condemned, if I play false to the moral\nlight.  And arguments to the contrary, however clever-sounding or\nphilosophical, are in fact sophistry.  There is, we must confess, a\ngood deal of such sophistry to-day in the use of arguments drawn from\nthe current philosophy of necessitarianism and the idea of heredity.\n\n\n\n[1] Chapters ix-xi.\n\n[2] The points are resumed in ix. 1.\n\n[3] Ps. xxxii.\n\n\n\n\n{121}\n\nDIVISION I.  Sec. 4.  CHAPTER III. 9-20.\n\n_Sin and condemnation universal._\n\nAt this point the direct argument with an opponent is dropped; and St.\nPaul restates what he has so far been occupied in proving.  It is not\nthat Jews are in a worse position than Gentiles.  It is that all\ntogether are involved in the same moral failure.  To deepen the\nimpression that this is a true statement, St. Paul culls from various\npsalms and from Isaiah a series of passages describing a general state\nof depravity, moral blindness, apathy, failure, unprofitableness,\nfalsity, hatred, and outrage against God and man.  These utterances of\nthe book of 'the law' (here used for the Old Testament scriptures\ngenerally) are meant for those first to whom this law belonged.  They\ncondemn Jews as well as Gentiles.  They show all equally to be under\n{122} divine judgement.  They prove that if the written law could teach\nmen God's will, it could not, by the works that it enjoined, enable him\nto satisfy God.  It had its function only in teaching him to know his\nsinfulness by contrast to his plainly declared duty.  The conclusion is\nthen that all men, Jews and Gentiles alike, are involved in sin, are\nunder the wrath of a holy God, and are in utter need of a deliverance\nwhich they are incapable of procuring for themselves.\n\n\nWhat then? are we in worse case than they?  No, in no wise: for we\nbefore laid to the charge both of Jews and Greeks, that they are all\nunder sin; as it is written,\n\n  There is none righteous, no, not one;\n  There is none that understandeth,\n  There is none that seeketh after God;\n  They have all turned aside, they are together become unprofitable;\n  There is none that doeth good, no, not so much as one:\n  Their throat is an open sepulchre;\n  With their tongues they have used deceit:\n  The poison of asps is under their lips:\n  Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:\n  Their feet are swift to shed blood;\n  Destruction and misery are in their ways;\n  And the way of peace have they not known:\n  There is no fear of God before their eyes.\n\nNow we know that what things soever the law saith, it speaketh to them\nthat are under the law; that every {123} mouth may be stopped, and all\nthe world may be brought under the judgement of God: because by the\nworks of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for through\nthe law _cometh_ the knowledge of sin.\n\n\n1.  The 'Scripture proof' which St. Paul here offers of universal human\ncorruption is, according to a recognized Hebrew practice, made up by\nstringing together a number of separate texts,--Ps. xiv. 1-3, v. 9,\ncxl. 3, x. 7, Isa. lix. 7, 8, Ps. xxxvi. 1.  They represent the\nimpression made by human wickedness upon the righteous observer.  The\nestimate covers Israel as well as, indirectly, the world at large[1].\nIt is thus an authoritative rebuke to Jewish self-complacency.  It is\nas if an English preacher were to rebuke similar self-complacency in\nEnglishmen by a collection of passages from standard English\nauthorities, in which our nation was judged, in common with others, in\na manner most humiliating to its pride.  It is this, though, inasmuch\nas the psalmists and prophets were and are believed to have spoken\nunder the inspiration of the Spirit of God, it is also something more.\n\nIt is well known that, as the quotations in {124} the New Testament\nhave frequently affected the Greek text of the Old, so here this\nconglomerate of quotations came to be attached altogether to Ps. xiv in\nsome Greek MSS., increasing it by four verses.  Thence they passed into\nthe later Latin Vulgate.  Thence into Coverdale's Bible and into the\nGreat Bible, and so into the Prayer Book version of the Psalms.  But\nour present Bible version remains true to the Hebrew original.\n\n2.  'To be justified,' in ver. 20, means to be acquitted, or proved\nrighteous, or reckoned righteous in the trial before God.  This, and\nnot to _make_ righteous, is the meaning of the word 'to justify,' both\nin the Old and New Testament and elsewhere.  There is scarcely an\nexception.  It is a forensic word, that is, a word derived from\nprocesses of law, and it describes the favourable verdict after a\ntrial.  It is used of vindicating God's character to His people[2], or\nof vindicating one's own character; of God's judicial acceptance of men\nor men's judicial acceptance of one another[3].  And so far as real\nrighteousness is necessary for judicial {125} acquittal, the word\nimplies real righteousness, but it does not primarily mean it.\n\n3.  Here we find briefly stated St. Paul's apparently wholly original\nview of 'the law,' as given simply to enlighten the conscience by\nkeeping men informed as to their duty, without supplying them with any\nmoral assistance in performing it.  Thus the ultimate aim of the law\nwas to make man know his own sinfulness; to convince him that his\nattempted independence was a failure, and that he could not save\nhimself; and so to prepare him to cry out for the gift of grace, and to\nwelcome it when it was given.  'The law was given,' as St. Augustine is\nfond of saying, 'that grace might be sought, and grace was given that\nthe law might be kept.'  This antithesis is thoroughly after St. Paul's\nmind.\n\n\nThis first division of our epistle gives us as a whole a great deal to\nthink about.  There are, we may say, two spiritual evils conspicuous\nto-day.  People with consciences in any degree awakened are apt to be\nnervous, anxious, despondent, complaining, sullen.  The second division\nof our epistle supplies the antidote to this error by consolidating the\nawakened conscience in divine peace.  But there is another, {126} and\nperhaps more conspicuous, spiritual evil of our day which this first\ndivision is calculated to meet--the habit of excusing oneself--the\nabsence of the sense of sin.\n\n  Hold thou the good: define it well:\n    For fear divine philosophy\n    Should push beyond her mark, and be\n  Procuress to the lords of hell.\n\nBecause philosophy and science have been bringing into prominence the\ninfluence of heredity and physical environment on character, we use\nthis consideration, and often with little enough knowledge of real\nscience, to obliterate the sense of sin.  We are apt to regard sin as\nit appears in the world at large as a result of ignorance, or social\nconditions--as in one way or another a form of misfortune.  And so\nviewing it in the world, we view it in ourselves.  We make excuses for\nourselves.  We have largely lost the sense that sin is wilfulness; that\nit is an inexcusable offence against God; that it does, and necessarily\ndoes, bring us under God's indignation; that necessarily, because God\nis what He is, the consequences of sin in this life, and much more\nbeyond this life, are inconceivably terrible.  It is this sense of sin\nthat St. Paul must help to restore in us.  We must believe {127} that\nGod is holy, and we must learn to tremble under His necessary holiness,\nbefore we can in any right sense realize that He is loving.  We must\nlearn once again to be really penitent; to confess our sins in general\nand in particular with utter humiliation; to expect the divine\njudgement upon them; to use with reality the stern language about sin\nof the Bible and the Prayer Book.  And learning this for ourselves with\nregard to our own personal sins, we must learn also to feel, like\nDaniel, what our church and nation deserve in God's sight.  We must\nconfess our own sins and the sins of church and nation[4]--aye, of the\nhuman race.  Only through such a restoration of evangelical severity\ncan there be a restoration of evangelical joy.  The deepened sense of\npersonal sin is the needful step to spiritual progress.  Certainly no\nmore in our case than in that of the Jews will orthodoxy, or ritual\naccuracy, or frequent services, or superior education, or philanthropic\nzeal, be accepted as a substitute for moral severity, for the spirit of\npenitence and the readiness for penance.  Let us judge ourselves,\nbrethren, that we be not judged of the Lord.\n\nAnd it is all-important what our standard of {128} judgement is.  The\nJews failed because they judged themselves by a mainly external and\ntherefore easy standard.  So do most respectable Englishmen.  We are\nsatisfied if we do nothing discreditable.  But the religious sense of\nsin, as it is experienced by the psalmists, or St. Paul, or Luther, or\nJohn Keble, arises from the intense perception of a personal relation\nto the All-Holy.  The 'falling short,' or rather 'experienced need[5],'\nof which St. Paul goes on to speak, is the experienced need of\nsomething very lofty, to which it is possible for men to be quite\ninsensible--'the glory of God.'  God's divine brightness, the eternal\nlight, streams forth into nature.  'The whole earth is full of His\nglory.'  Man also in his natural and moral being is meant to have\nfellowship with God.  He is meant for the divine glory also.  It is in\nproportion as he realizes what he was meant for, and becomes conscious\nin himself of a capacity for God, that his present actual pollution and\nsinfulness becomes a reality to his consciousness.  It is in the light\nof God, {129} and in aspiration after the glory of God, that the sense\nof sin really awakens.  'Thou requirest truth in the inward parts,'\nsays the Psalmist.  'Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned.'  'If\nthou, Lord, shouldst be extreme to mark what is done amiss, Lord, who\nmay abide it?'[6]\n\n\n\n[1] Dr. King (The Psalms in Three Collections, &c.: Cambridge, 1898)\nhas remarked that Ps. xiv. 1-3 closely resembles the general\ncondemnation of 'all flesh upon the earth' in Gen. vi. 5, 12.\n\n[2] Cf. above ver. 4, from Ps. xxxii.\n\n[3] See Ps. li. 4; Job xxxii. 2; Prov. xvii. 15; Isa. v. 23; Matt. xi.\n19; Luke vii. 29; x. 29; xvi. 15.\n\n[4] Cf. Dan. ix. 4-20.\n\n[5] The word for 'fall short' in ver. 23 is a 'middle' verb, and\napparently implies not only failure in point of fact, but conscious\nfailure.  Thus in Luke xv. 14, the prodigal son begins to _feel_ his\ndestitution (middle).  But in Matt. xix. 20, the rich young man asks,\n'What, as a matter of fact, is wanting to me' (active)?  See Gifford,\nor S. and H. _in loc._\n\n[6] Cf. app. note C, on recent reactions from the teaching about hell.\n\n\n\n\n{130}\n\nDIVISION II.  CHAPTERS III. 21-IV. 25.\n\n_Justification by faith only._\n\nSec. 1. (III. 21-31.)\n\n_Christ our propitiation._\n\nNow we have been brought to recognize the true state of the case as\nbetween ourselves and God--the facts about ourselves as we are in God's\nsight.  We were meant for fellowship in the divine glory.  'The glory\nof God,' says an old Father, 'is the living man: the life of man is the\nvision of God.'  But, meant for fellowship in the divine glory, we have\nfallen short of it and have come to appreciate our failure.  We have\nsinned, and that universally and wilfully.  We are such that God cannot\naccept us as we are: the 'day of His appearing' could be for us but a\n'day of wrath.'  And in this dire situation we are helpless.  We can\nsupply no remedy.  'Can the Ethiopian change his {131} skin, or the\nleopard his spots?  Then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do\nevil[1].'  But to acknowledge this--to abandon the claim so dear to the\nhuman heart, that we can be independent and manage our own life\nsuccessfully: to repudiate all our false pride, and to come before God\nall of us on the same level, confessing our failure and our sin--this\nis to let man's necessity be God's opportunity, and to open the\nflood-gates of the divine righteousness.  God is righteous in all the\nrichest meaning of that word, and that righteousness of His He is now\nextending to us and giving us admittance into it.  And this He does\npurely and simply as His gift.  On His side it is pure and gratuitous\ngiving, on our side simple and unmeritorious receiving.  We contribute\nnothing.  No distinctions are admitted between those inside the law and\nthose outside it.  The gift is quite apart from the law, though law and\nprophets bore witness to it.  No questions are admitted as to what we\nhave done or what we have left undone.  Purely and simply out of the\nfreedom of His love, who is our Creator and our Father, now, when a\nbitter experience has taught us again our true attitude towards Him, He\noffers us {132} admission into His righteousness, all on the same\nlevel, if we will simply believe in Jesus Christ His Son, that is, take\nHim at His word and believe His promises (vers. 21-24).\n\nAnd what is this offer?  It is, first of all, what befits the captives\nof sin: it is redemption.  God, who of old bought His people out of\ncaptivity in Egypt, without any co-operation of theirs, by a pure act\nof His power, has now again, without any co-operation of ours, but by a\nmanifestation this time of self-sacrificing love, in the person of\nJesus Christ, bought our freedom from sin.  And this redemption He\noffers to us first of all in the form which befits sinners conscious of\nsin and guilt, as the mere gift of forgiveness, the mere power to break\nwith the past, the mere right to stand and face the future with a clean\nrecord.  For as the brazen serpent was lifted up before the eyes of\nrebellious Israel, bitten of the fiery serpents, and those who looked\nunto it lived, so upon the open stage of history God set forth Jesus\nChrist shedding His life-blood--obedient, that is, to God and\nrighteousness unto death, even the death of the cross.  And this\nsacrificial shedding of the life-blood of the Son of God--to which we\n{133} contributed nothing[2]--is accepted by the Father as\npropitiatory, that is, as something which enables Him to show His true\ncharacter of righteousness, and to acquit or accept among the\nrighteous, irrespective of what he has done or been, every one who has\nfaith in Jesus (vers. 24-26).\n\nAnd why (we in our age are disposed to ask) did not God simply declare\nHis forgiveness? why this roundabout method of a propitiatory\nsacrifice?  It was (St. Paul's language suggests) to prove or vindicate\nHis righteousness, which means both holiness and mercy.  All the long\nages past of the times of ignorance, God had been 'overlooking' or\n'passing over' sins in His forbearance, never 'suffering His whole\ndispleasure to arise,' but allowing all nations to walk in their own\nways and to find out their own mistakes and helplessness[3].  The\nresult of their being thus left to themselves was that men did indeed\nbecome conscious of their misery {134} and need, but also came to\nentertain all sorts of slack or unworthy ideas about God.  A mere\ndeclaration of forgiveness might have left men with an impression of an\neasy-going or 'good-natured' God who would make light of sin.  But the\nawful burden laid upon Jesus on account of human sin, the awful\nsacrifice of His life which He readily offered, restores the sterner\nelement to our thoughts about God, just at that crisis or opportunity\nin the divine dealings, when by God's declaration of free forgiveness\nwe are made to feel His love.  God does forgive us, but it costs Him\nmuch.  And no one who under these conditions comes and takes at the\nhand of Jesus the gift of pardon can fail to receive with it the awful\nimpression of the divine holiness and of the severity of the divine\nrequirements.  All the former 'passing over of the sins done aforetime'\nwas made morally possible because God had in view that 'now at the\npresent season,' or opportunity, He would 'show,' or prove, His whole\nrighteousness, and be before men's eyes the righteous being that He is\nin fact (righteous rather than merely 'just'); and be able, without the\ndanger of a great misunderstanding, to give His righteousness full\nscope by admitting into {135} it, by a pure act of pardon, every one\nwho comes simply taking Jesus at His word[4].\n\nHere then there is no room for pride or glorying.  It is utterly\nexcluded because there is here no consideration of human merit.  It is\na pure and unmerited boon of the divine bounty bestowed, without\nreference to any law known or observed, simply on those who, utterly\nconfessing their need, accept in faith the offer of love.  Again there\nis no reference to any chosen race.  Jew and Gentile, circumcision and\nuncircumcision, are all in the same case.  All have the same need.  God\nis the same, with the same offer, for all alike.  He will accept the\nJew because he believes, and He will accept the Gentile with no other\nequipment but his faith.  Yet this principle of faith involves no\nrepudiation of the principle of law; rather, it realizes the very end\nwhich law was intended to serve (vers. 27-31).\n\n\nBut now apart from the law a righteousness of God hath been manifested,\nbeing witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of\nGod through faith in Jesus Christ unto all them that believe; for there\n{136} is no distinction; for all have sinned, and fall short of the\nglory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the\nredemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God set forth _to be_ a\npropitiation, through faith, by his blood, to shew his righteousness,\nbecause of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the\nforbearance of God; for the shewing, _I say_, of his righteousness at\nthis present season: that he might himself be just, and the justifier\nof him that hath faith in Jesus.  Where then is the glorying?  It is\nexcluded.  By what manner of law? of works?  Nay: but by a law of\nfaith.  We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from\nthe works of the law.  Or is God _the God_ of Jews only? is he not _the\nGod_ of Gentiles also?  Yea, of Gentiles also: if so be that God is\none, and he shall justify the circumcision by faith, and the\nuncircumcision through faith.  Do we then make the law of none effect\nthrough faith?  God forbid: nay, we establish the law.\n\n\ni.\n\nFor our understanding of this famous passage a good deal depends on our\nfixing, as exactly as possible, what the 'righteousness of God' here\nspoken of means.  Beyond all question it means in part God's own moral\ncharacter.  This is quite certain, as in the Bible generally, so in\nthis very chapter[5].  But it is also certain that God's character is,\nespecially in this epistle, viewed as revealed to us in such a sense\nthat we can take hold of it and become identified with it.  {137} Thus\n(especially in i. 17) _human_ faith is spoken of as the starting-point\nor region for revealing divine righteousness.  It extends to and\nembraces the believers[6].  It is a righteousness communicated to us\nfrom God on the basis of faith[7].  The 'righteousness of God' is what\nwe men are to become[8].  This transition of meaning from what God is\nin Himself to what we are by the gift of God is of course thoroughly\nnatural.  The grand idea of the Bible is that of a moral fellowship\nbetween man and God.  The grand idea of the New Testament is, further,\nthat of a disclosure and communication to us of the divine life.\n\nAnd what is this moral quality described by 'righteousness' which\nbelongs to God and is communicated to us?  Righteousness is a term\nbelonging primarily to man.  A righteous man, in the Old Testament, is\none who fulfils all that is expected of him, one who is\nblameless--towards man, but especially towards God.  But if God expects\nsuch and such conduct in men it is because of what He Himself is.  His\nrequirements express His character.  God Himself therefore is believed\nto be righteous, incorruptibly and awfully righteous.  But a great\n{138} strain is put upon this belief in the 'wild and irregular scene'\nof this world, the Governor of which appears so often indifferent to\nthe sufferings of His most faithful servants.  Thus the righteous cry\nout to God to vindicate Himself, and God's righteousness is, in the Old\nTestament, largely identified with God's vindication of His own\ncharacter by righteous acts or judgements accomplished in the past or\nexpected in the future; acts of such a character as that in them the\nwicked and insolent are put to confusion, and the meek and holy\njustified and exalted.  Such righteous judgement is expected to\ncharacterize the kingdom of the Christ.  Of course, in the general\nlowering of moral ideals among the Pharisaic Jews, the idea of\nrighteousness suffered with all else.  The righteous came to mean those\nwho strictly keep the outward Jewish law; and God's righteousness was\nidentified with His expected vindication of those who keep the law,\ni.e. the pious Jew, at the coming of the Messiah[9].  Our Lord, and His\ndisciples after Him, were engaged in nothing so much as in deepening\nthe idea of righteousness again.  Especially it is something much more\nthan the mere observance of outward ordinances.  {139} It was, in fact,\nthe fundamental error of the Jews to confuse the two.  Righteousness in\nman must be real likeness to God, and God's righteousness is His holy\ncharacter which He is now once more manifesting in the gospel of His\nSon; a character which is still shown in acts of justice[10], in\npunishing the wicked and rewarding the righteous, but which manifests\nitself also more especially as love, and by gracious promises of\nforgiveness and acceptance[11].  Thus, in Rom. i. 17, 18, the present\n'revelation of divine righteousness' is a gracious manifestation which\nis put in contrast to the 'revelation of divine wrath,' the place of\nwhich it is intended to take.  And yet, though the quality of mercy is\nmade emphatic, it is not isolated.  God's righteousness is not mere\ngood nature.  It would not be rightly revealed by any mere ignoring or\npassing over of sin.  God's mercy is inseparable from His holiness, and\nHis righteousness includes both[12].  It needed the severe requirement\nof the atoning sacrifice, as well as {140} the free gift of forgiveness\nand new life, to prove or exhibit it.\n\nAnd if God's righteousness shows itself first of all in a simple act of\njustification of sinners--in simply forgiving men or pronouncing them\nrighteous, irrespective of what they are in themselves at the moment,\nif only they will take God at His word--three points have to be borne\nin mind.  First, that the mere offer of forgiveness is put in the\nforefront because this readiness on our part to be treated as helpless\nsinners is the annihilation of the one great obstacle to our\nreconciliation with God--the proud independence which led the Jews, and\nhas led men since their day, to resent being dealt with by mere mercy,\nand to want to justify themselves.  If the Christian character is to\ngrow aright, it must have its root in an utter acknowledgement that we\nowe to God our power even to make a beginning in His service: that we\ncan run the way of His commandments, because, and only because, He by\nHis own act has set our hearts at liberty.\n\n  Just as I am, without one plea\n  But that Thy blood was shed for me,\n  And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,\n      O Lamb of God, I come!\n\n{141}\n\nTo many really good Christians this sort of language has come to have\nan unreal sound because they have been surfeited with it, and because\nit has been associated with a very one-sided Christianity.  But, for\nall that, the moral necessity remains that we should dig out of its\nlast refuges the claim of human independence, if the Christian\ncharacter is to grow healthily.  In other words, the only root of\nChristian thankfulness and progress is the recognition that our\nspiritual life rests at its basis on a pure act of the divine bounty in\naccomplishing our redemption from sin and giving us the forgiveness of\nall our sins.\n\nSecondly, it must be borne in mind that our forgiveness through the\nsacrifice is only the first step towards fellowship with God.  It is\nonly the removal of the preliminary obstacle which guilt had raised\nagainst actual admittance into the life of God.  The language of the\nNew Testament refuses to allow us to separate the forgiveness of our\nsins from our admission into the 'body of Christ' by baptism[13], or,\nin other words, our incorporation into the life of the redeemed people,\nthe new Israel.  For the faith {142} which accepts forgiveness is the\nsame identical quality which corresponds with all the later movement of\nthe new life.  God's free gift of grace is not forgiveness only, but\nforgiveness and new life; it is 'forgiveness of sins and an inheritance\namong them that are sanctified by faith that is in Christ[14].'  St.\nPaul does not contemplate, or contemplates only to repudiate, a faith\nwhich accepts forgiveness and stops there--indifferent to actual\nholiness or baptismal incorporation.  For it would be no real faith at\nall.  The preliminary justification or acquittal is simply and solely\nto serve as a basis for the life of consecration and glory.  The stages\nof justification and sanctification are separable in idea but not in\nfact.  The refusal to proceed from the threshold of the acquittal into\nthe palace of the new life would expel even from the threshold; even as\nthe failure of the unthankful servant to behave as one should behave\nwho has been excused the debt he could not pay, cancelled all his\nacquittal and left him with the weight of the old debt rolled back upon\nhim to his destruction.\n\nLastly, and in one word, it must never be left out of sight that even\nthe initial movement of {143} faith, the taking Christ at His word and\nbelieving His promises, involves the element of moral allegiance.  His\ngracious person and character attract even while the boon is being\naccepted, and a new motive enters into life.  Justifying faith at its\nvery root is a faith which yields allegiance to its object.\n\n\nii.\n\nTo a Jew, and to almost all races when St. Paul wrote, the idea of an\nexpiatory sacrifice for sin seemed natural and obvious.  But for the\nspecial Christian doctrine of expiation the basis is to be found in the\nmemorable chapter liii of the 'later Isaiah.'  That great prophet of\nthe captivity is assuring Israel of their restoration to their own\nland.  This restoration is to follow on the due punishment of her\nsins--'She hath received of the Lord's hands double for all her sins.'\nAnd the restored people is to be, before all else, a righteous\npeople--'all righteous'--a people of God's favour, because they are\nliving according to God.  But there is so much sin still remaining in\nthem as to make it necessary that the new life of the recovered people\nshould be based on a great act of {144} propitiation.  The Righteous\nServant of Jehovah, who is, at starting, the idealized people itself,\nbut who comes to be represented as an individual acting for the people\nwhile repudiated by them, offers his life a willing sacrifice for their\nsins.  The chastisement of their iniquities falls on him, and he\naccepts the burden, and is obedient unto death.  Dying he makes his\nsoul a guilt offering: and, living through death exalted and powerful,\nhe becomes an intercessor accepted with God, the head of a new seed\nwhom he 'justifies' before God by the intimate knowledge of God's mind\nand character which in his voluntary humiliation he has won.  This\nwonderful prophetic picture represents a vast advance in moral teaching\non what had gone before.  It is not only that the self-sacrifice of a\nperfect human will is substituted for the animal victims to which the\nenlightened conscience of God's people already refused to allow any\nreal efficacy; but also that the idea of propitiation is put in a\ncontext where it is made plain that it can only be the prelude to a\nstate of actual righteousness in those who are to be justified by it.\nIt occurs as part of the answer to the question, not--How is Israel to\nescape punishment? but, How is Israel to {145} become the really\nrighteous nation, living in the likeness of God?\n\nIn the later books of the Maccabees we have this idea of the expiatory\nsacrifice and intercession of the ideal Israelite still retained, but\ndegraded, probably under Greek influences.  'And I, as my brethren,'\nsays the Maccabean martyr, 'give up both body and soul for the laws of\nour fathers, calling upon God that he may speedily become gracious to\nthe nation ... and that in me and my brethren may be stayed the wrath\nof the Almighty, which hath been justly brought upon our whole\nrace[15].'  'Be propitious to my race,' prays Eleazar, in another\nAlexandrian version of the story, 'being satisfied with our punishment\non their behalf.  Make my blood a propitiation for them, and receive my\nlife as a substitute for theirs[16].'  These passages are on a lower\nmoral level than Isaiah's, because in them the prominent idea of\npropitiation is that it is a means of procuring from God exemption from\nfurther punishment, not a step to the restoration to holiness.  The\nidea both of what God desires and of what man desires is lower.  And\nindeed all conceptions of propitiation may be distinguished into true\n{146} or false, according as righteousness or exemption from punishment\nis the end which is specially in view.\n\nThus when we pass on into the New Testament we find in Caiaphas'\nsaying, 'It is expedient for you that one man should die for the\npeople, and that the whole nation perish not[17],' the typical\nexpression of the quite immoral notion[18] of the forcible sacrifice of\nan innocent person in order to exempt a guilty race from punishment.\nIn our Lord's teaching, on the other hand, we find the doctrine of\natonement raised to its highest moral power.  As the Forerunner had\nrevived the teaching of the later Isaiah by pointing to Him as 'the\nLamb of God who taketh away (i.e. taketh up and expiateth) the sin of\nthe world[19],' so Christ Himself spoke unmistakeably of the new\ncovenant which He came to inaugurate, as to be based upon the\nsacrificial offering of His body and the outpouring of His blood[20]:\nspoke also of 'the remission of sins' as the benefit to be expected\n{147} from His expiation.  But no teacher in the world ever made it so\nplain that God can be satisfied with nothing that any other can do for\nus--with nothing but actual likeness to Him in ourselves.  No teacher\never made it so plain that what we are to desire is not to be let off\npunishment, but to be actually freed from sin.  He left no room for\ndoubt that only by following His steps, even to the cross and surrender\nof our lives, can we share His fellowship.  The very life which is\noffered in sacrifice to lay the foundation of the new covenant is a\nlife or spirit which we are to share.  We are to eat and drink His\nsacrificed flesh and blood--the blood which is the life--and so to be\none with Him and He with us.  He sacrificed Himself, in other words, in\norder to make possible, through His life and Spirit, a new covenanted\nsociety, in which men should have perfect fellowship with God and with\none another.  He did not reject the idea of a propitiation won for man\nby His vicarious sacrifice--the truth is far from that--but He keeps it\nin inseparable connexion with the life which is to be based upon it;\nand in the eucharist He brought back the idea of sacrifice to what had\nbeen its starting-point in all primitive usages.  'The one point,' says\n{148} Professor Robertson-Smith, 'that comes out clear and strong (from\nthe examination of ancient sacrificial customs), is that the\nfundamental idea of ancient sacrifice is sacramental communion, and\nthat all atoning rites are ultimately to be regarded as owing their\nefficacy to a communication of divine life to the worshipper, and to\nthe establishment or confirmation of a living bond between them and\ntheir God[21].'\n\nStill Christ's sacrifice of propitiation, to which we contribute\nnothing, in which we do not share, remains a necessary prelude to the\nestablishment of the new life.  It is in virtue of this that we are\njustified and accepted and allowed to start afresh.  This fact the New\nTestament in general takes for granted, and offers no explanation of\nit; as indeed the human heart has in general accepted the benefit in\nall thankfulness and asked no questions.  But the speculative modern\nintellect has found a difficulty in the matter--in the matter at least\nas commonly represented--and we have noticed that a suggestion of\nexplanation is made by St. Paul in this passage.  God had long gone on\n'passing over' sin all over the world in loving forbearance, bearing\nwith all men's sinfulness, {149} till they had thoroughly learnt the\nlesson of their own need of God and inability to save themselves.  But\nthis very forbearance rendered God's character liable to complete\nmisunderstanding.  He might have been supposed to be kind indeed, but\nindifferent to sin.  'These things hast thou done and I kept silence:\nthou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself[22].'\nThus the severity manifested in the claim of the 'righteous Father'\nupon the Son of Man, His claim of an obedience unto the shedding of His\nblood, and the ready response to His claim on the part of the Son of\nMan gladly rendering up His life in homage to the Father--these taken\ntogether, the claim of the Father and the sacrifice of the Son,\nvindicated within the area of the Christian faith the true character of\nGod, and forced the believer in Jesus to hold the severity and the love\nin their inseparable unity as making up the divine righteousness.\n\nDoes not this thought open at least an intelligible vista into the\nmystery of the Atonement?  Christ is the Son of Man.  He is to\ninaugurate the true manhood.  But first He must deal with the manhood\nthat has gone {150} astray, and make an act of reparation to the Father\nfor all the outrage that our sins have done Him.  Thus in contrast to\nall our self-pleasing, self-indulgence, self-excusing, in contrast to\nall our clamorous insolence towards God and indifference to His laws,\nwe behold the Son of Man recognizing the Father's strict requirements,\nand lifting before His eyes, in the name of the manhood which He\nrepresents, the great reparation of an unshrinking obedience and\nloyalty unto death.  The Father spared not His only Son the natural\nconsequences of obedience in a world of sin.  The Son spared not\nHimself, but shed His blood--the 'blood which is the life'--at the\nFather's will.  This is the one full, perfect, and sufficient\nsacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.\nIt is the sacrifice offered in the power of nothing less than 'eternal\nspirit.'  Henceforth, then, no man can come to God in faith in Jesus,\nin the faith which even at its root is moral allegiance, and think\nlightly either of God's holiness or of his own or others' sin.  God\nforgives him his sin, but it cost Him much to forgive it.  The Cross is\nthe measure of the antipathy between God and sin.\n\nAnd it is well to notice how the great {151} thought of this passage is\nmade intelligible to the ordinary English reader again, only by the\nRevised Version.  In the old Bible the word signifying 'passing over'\nof sins is translated 'remission'--the very thing with which it is in\nfact contrasted.  It is not an exaggeration to say that, in this and\nvery many places of the epistles, the Revised Version for the first\ntime renders the thought of the apostles again intelligible to the\nEnglish reader.  And if the Revised Version is not popular, as the\nbooksellers tell us it is not, this is, I fear, only a sign that the\nmajority of English Christians do not really care to _understand_ the\nmeaning of the message with which, as a matter of words, they are so\nfamiliar.\n\n\niii.\n\nThe metaphor of 'redemption' and the metaphor of 'propitiation'\ncomplete and check one another.  As in the parables it is only the\nexact point of comparison between the earthly and the heavenly which\ncan be pressed for the spiritual lesson, so it is with these\nmetaphorical words, which are in fact parables compressed.  The word\n'redemption' is meant to suggest a price paid by God, or by Christ, for\nour being {152} made free; it is the price of the Son's death.  He\n'gives His life a ransom for many.'  The word 'propitiation' again is\nmeant to suggest that the offering of the life in sacrifice was the\nmeans to win for us forgiveness from God.  So far, both metaphorical\nwords have their clear and harmonious meaning.  But in old days the\nmetaphor of redemption was worked out by Origen and others beyond the\nexact point of the original suggestion.  The price, they argued, must\nhave been paid to the enemy who held us captive; i.e. Christ's life was\noffered as a price to the devil in order that his claim might be\nsatisfied and we might be justly set free.  But this extension of the\nscope of the metaphor is wholly alien to the New Testament.  On the\nother hand, the idea of propitiation has suggested at many periods the\nhorrible notion that the Son wrung from the angry Father the pardon\nwhich He was unwilling to give.  Such a notion is again wholly alien to\nthe New Testament.  But in fact the two metaphors are mutually\ncorrective; and each tends to exclude the misuse of the other.  The\nidea that Christ offered anything to the devil is corrected by the\nnotion inherent in the phrase 'propitiation (of the Father).'  What the\nSon offered was a sacrifice {153} directed to the Father only.  On the\nother hand, the idea that the mind of the Father needed to be changed\ntowards us, is corrected by the suggestion inherent in the other\nmetaphor of redemption; for it is He who, because He loved us, gave up\nHis own Son to buy us out of the slavery of sin.  Each metaphor\nsuggests a single idea--each complementary of the other, and corrective\nof its misuse--and both combine to tell us of the one inseparable love\nof the Father and the Son, uniting in a sacrificial act which is\nascribed to both, to redeem us from the tyranny of sin and to set the\npardoning love free to work upon us, without obscuring the true\nhatefulness of sin or the true character of God.\n\n\nIf, especially recently, the doctrine of the atonement[23] has involved\nintellectual difficulty, on the other hand it has proved itself, as the\npopular Christian literature of all ages sufficiently shows, widely and\ndeeply welcome to the human heart.  This wide welcome which it has\nreceived shows that it contains a deep truth.  And from this point of\nview, from the point of view of our practical spiritual needs, we do\nwell to meditate {154} much and deeply upon this doctrine.  We can\ndepend upon it, that if we are to go on patiently doing good in a world\nlike this, so full of disappointments and anxieties and moral failures\nand torturing scruples, we must have peace at the heart.  And this is\nwhat the really evangelical doctrine is capable of giving us.  It bids\nus continually look out of ourselves up to God, and assures us that His\nlove, manifested in the sacrifice of His Son, is there continually,\nunchangeably.  It is there, waiting till first we turn to Him, to give\nus the assurance of entire absolution and admission into the divine\nfellowship, wholly irrespective of what we have been or done; and it is\nthere continually, however often we fall, with the same large and\nliberal hand to pour out continual forgivenesses, and never wearies of\nrestoring us again and again to the solid foundation of the peace and\ngrace which are by Jesus Christ.  We are not meant to be miserably\nanxious or morbidly introspective.  We must confess our sins, and that\nwith exactness, without self-sparing, without self-excusing, in utter\nhumility and truth; but 'if we confess our sins, he is faithful and\njust to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all\nunrighteousness.'\n\n\n\n[1] Jer. xiii. 33.\n\n[2] Except the sins which slew Him.\n\n[3] I have combined this passage with the illustrative passages in St.\nPaul's speeches to the heathen.  Acts xiv. 16: 'Who in the generations\ngone by suffered all the nations to walk in their own ways.'  Acts\nxvii. 30: 'The times of ignorance God overlooked (winked at); but now\nhe commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent.'  Wisd. xl.\n23: 'Thou overlookest (winkest at) the sins of men to the end they may\nrepent.'\n\n[4] This paragraph gives distinctness to a somewhat latent thought in\nvers. 25, 26.  But I feel convinced that this, and nothing else, is the\nthought.\n\n[5] Verses 5, 25, 26.\n\n[6] Rom. iii. 22.\n\n[7] Phil. iii. 9.\n\n[8] 2 Cor. v. 21.\n\n[9] Rom. ix.  31.\n\n[10] Rom. ii. 5.\n\n[11] Cf. 1 John i. 9: 'Faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins.'\n\n[12] Joseph, the 'righteous' man in Matt. i. 19, is kindly.  But his\nkindliness has still the elements of moral severity.  And it must be\nremembered that in Rom. v. 7 'righteous' is still put in contrast to\n'good.'\n\n[13] See Acts ii. 38: 'Be baptized ... unto the remission of your\nsins.'  xxii. 16: 'Be baptized and wash away thy sins.'\n\n[14] Acts xxvi. 18, i.e. forgiveness and fellowship in the consecrated\nbody, the new Israel; cf. xx. 33.\n\n[15] 2 Macc. vii. 37.\n\n[16] 4 Macc. vi. 28, 29.\n\n[17] John xi. 50.\n\n[18] None the less immoral as Caiaphas intended it, because, as St.\nJohn perceives, a divine truth uttered itself through his lips (John\nxi. 51).\n\n[19] John i. 29.\n\n[20] Matt. xxvi. 28; Luke xxii. 19; 1 Cor. xi. 24.\n\n[21] Robertson-Smith, _Religion of the Semites_ (Black, 1889), p. 418.\n\n[22] Ps. l. 21; cf. Eccles. viii. 11.\n\n[23] On some of the difficulties felt about the doctrine of the\nAtonement, see app. note D.\n\n\n\n\n{155}\n\nDIVISION II.  Sec. 2.  CHAPTER IV.\n\n_The true seed of Abraham._\n\nSt. Paul has been repudiating the principle of justification by works\nof the law.  To those with whom he had been brought up, this was in the\nhighest degree to dishonour the Jewish law, and indeed the principle of\ndivinely-given law at all.  But in the last words of the previous\nchapter he refuses to admit this inference.  'God forbid that we should\nmake law of none effect.  Nay, we establish law.'\n\nThis idea of the Gospel, rightly understood, establishing the law even\nwhile it superseded it, is with St. Paul a very favourite one, and he\nelaborates it in different ways.  Sometimes he shows how the function\nof the written law, or 'the letter,' is only to awaken the conscience\nand make men know their sinfulness.  It can give men no help in\ncorresponding to the moral requirement which it expresses.  Having\n{156} convicted the conscience of sin, it has done its work, and must\nyield its place to a more effective spiritual agency.  The letter\nkilleth, in order that the Spirit may give life to those whom it has\nkilled.  And, on the other hand, the one object of this new spiritual\nagency, this life-giving Spirit, is to infuse the power of moral\nobedience, which the law could not give, into men's lives, 'that the\nrequirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk after the\nSpirit.'  In this place, however, St. Paul only alludes to this\nargument and in the main adopts another.  He shows from the Book of the\nLaw, that the father of the faithful, himself the typical instance of a\njustified man, was justified, not by works which he had done, but\nsimply because he believed; not upon the basis of any law or covenant,\nbut as a man simply and not as a circumcised man; and again, that\nDavid, the man after God's own heart, living under the law, would have\nus rest our hopes of blessedness, not on our merits as having kept the\nlaw, but simply on the forgiving bounty of divine grace.\n\nLet us inquire, he says, into the case of Abraham, whom we Jews are\nproud to own for our national ancestor.  What are we to say of him?  If\nAbraham approached God in virtue {157} of his merits in having kept a\nlaw, and so was accepted by God because of what he had done of himself,\nthere is something for him to boast of.  But this in fact is not his\nrelation to God according to the scripture at all.  There--\n\n        'merit lives from man to man,\n  But not from man, O Lord, to thee.'\n\nThe whole initiation is God's.  He simply makes a promise of His own\npure goodwill--'Thy seed shall be as the stars of heaven'--and Abraham\nsimply believed Him; and this, and nothing but this, was 'counted to\nhim for righteousness[1].'  The two suggested relations of Abraham to\nGod are broadly contrasted and can be generally applied.  In the one\ncase you have a compact between God who imposes, and man who accepts,\nan allotted task with a payment attached to its fulfilment.  If the man\nfulfils it, his payment can be classed as due to him under the compact.\nIn the other case you have nothing done, no claim alleged, but a pure\nact of God, accepting one of our sinful race, as he is, simply because\nhe takes God at His word.  And this is how David also views our\nrelation to God.  You find him[2] opening his mouth to tell {158} us\nwhat sort of man is truly blessed, truly to be congratulated.  And he\nthinks not of one who claims a reward because of his merit, but of one\nwho has found no comfort or resource except in penitent confession of\nhis sins, and whose sins God has forgiven and has consented to treat as\nif they did not exist.  It is the unmerited act of the divine bounty,\nit is God justifying the sinful, which is the source of blessedness\n(vers. 1-8).\n\nNow we go back to the case of Abraham to inquire whether the blessing\nof divine acceptance was pronounced upon him because he was the head of\nthe chosen race marked out by circumcision--which was, so to speak, the\nfirst part of the law.  No, it was before he was circumcised.  The\ntoken of circumcision came afterwards[3], as the seal or external\nconfirmation of what he had already received simply as a believing man;\nso that he might have for his true sons believers, whether\nuncircumcised or circumcised, and they might share his acceptance\nsimply by believing God as he believed Him (vers. 9-12).\n\nPlainly when God made Abraham the promise that he should be the heir of\nthe world[4], no law {159} was introduced into the relationship.  It\nwas purely a matter of God promising and Abraham taking God at His\nword.  Indeed it could not have been otherwise.  Introduce law, and you\nintroduce a compact between God and man which annuls the relationship\nof God simply promising and man simply believing--a compact which\nthrows a strain on man's independent powers, which they are not able to\nbear.  The one inevitable result of the law is to put man in the\nposition, in which apart from law he cannot find himself, of a\ndefaulter who knows himself, as a defaulter, under the divine wrath.\nThe true relationship leaves matters in the hands of God, who purely\npromises of His good favour--man simply in faith receiving (vers.\n13-16a).  This resting everything on God's promise and man's faith\ngives security for the fulfilment of the promise to 'all the seed.'\nAnd the 'seed to whom the promise was made' includes, not only the race\nchosen later to receive the law, but believers of all races; Abraham\nbeing in this sense 'a father of many nations,' as he stands under the\neyes of God whom he believed in--God who had power to make His promise\ngood, even by recalling to life again the dead faculties of Abraham's\nold age, and summoning children {160} which did not yet exist as if\nthey were already there.  Here is the point: Abraham believed that God\nhad the power to be as good as His word, in spite of all obvious\nreasons to the contrary.  Therefore he looked the facts steadily in the\nface--his own and Sarah's great age.  But he did not suffer this to\nweigh in the balance against God's promise.  He made quite sure that\nGod would do as He promised, and glorified God by this strong act of\nfaith.  This it is that was reckoned to him for righteousness, i.e.\nthis it is that enabled God to accept him as righteous without any\nconsideration of deeds done.  And the record of this acceptance is made\nfor our sakes to-day.  God is still taking men into the number of the\nrighteous, and He still does it on the same principle.  He will reckon\nus for righteous if we will take Him at His word, and believe in His\npower to do as He has promised.  And in our case He has given us fresh\nground for such confident belief; for Jesus, on whom as Lord our hopes\nrest and who died to make atonement for our sins, He has by His power\nraised up from the dead, that by faith in Him, dead and yet alive\nagain, we might be taken like Abraham without more ado into the number\nof the righteous.\n\n{161}\n\nWhat then shall we say[5] that Abraham, our forefather according to the\nflesh, hath found?  For if Abraham was justified by works, he hath\nwhereof to glory; but not toward God.  For what saith the scripture?\nAnd Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for\nrighteousness.  Now to him that worketh, the reward is not reckoned as\nof grace, but as of debt.  But to him that worketh not, but believeth\non him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for\nrighteousness.  Even as David also pronounceth blessing upon the man,\nunto whom God reckoneth righteousness apart from works, _saying_,\n\n  Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven,\n  And whose sins are covered.\n  Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin.\n\nIs this blessing then pronounced upon the circumcision, or upon the\nuncircumcision also? for we say, To Abraham his faith was reckoned for\nrighteousness.  How then was it reckoned? when he was in circumcision,\nor in uncircumcision?  Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision: and\nhe received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of\nthe faith which he had while he was in uncircumcision: that he might be\nthe father of all them that believe, though they be in uncircumcision,\nthat righteousness might be reckoned unto them; and the father of\ncircumcision to them who not only are of the circumcision, but who also\nwalk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham which he had in\nuncircumcision.  For not through the law was the promise to Abraham or\nto his seed, that he should be heir of the world, but through the\nrighteousness of faith.  For if they which are {162} of the law be\nheirs, faith is made void, and the promise is made of none effect: for\nthe law worketh wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there\ntransgression.  For this cause _it is_ of faith, that _it may be_\naccording to grace; to the end that the promise may be sure to all the\nseed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is\nof the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all (as it is written,\nA father of many nations have I made thee) before him whom he believed,\n_even_ God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth the things that are\nnot, as though they were.  Who in hope believed against hope, to the\nend that he might become a father of many nations, according to that\nwhich had been spoken, So shall thy seed be.  And without being\nweakened in faith he considered his own body now as good as dead (he\nbeing about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah's womb:\nyea, looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief,\nbut waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, and being fully\nassured that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.\nWherefore also it was reckoned unto him for righteousness.  Now it was\nnot written for his sake alone, that it was reckoned unto him; but for\nour sake also, unto whom it shall be reckoned, who believe on him that\nraised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up for our\ntrespasses, and was raised for our justification.\n\n\n1.  No doubt, on the text of Gen. xv. 6, St. Paul is right.  It was\nAbraham's _faith_ that is declared to have been reckoned to his account\nby God as equivalent to righteousness.  But when we get beyond a mere\ntext, is it not, we are inclined to ask, more true to the general {163}\nspirit of scripture to say, with the author of the First Book of the\nMaccabees, 'Was not Abraham found faithful in temptation, and it was\nreckoned unto him for righteousness[6]?' or with St. James, 'Was not\nAbraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his\nson upon the altar?  Thou seest that faith wrought with his works, and\nby works was faith made perfect[7].'  No doubt certain Rabbis state the\nprinciple pedantically when they speak of Abraham having kept the whole\nMosaic law by anticipation[8], but is it not true to say that Abraham\nwas accepted by God, and on the whole is represented in the Bible as so\naccepted, _not_ only because he believed, but also because he 'was\nfound faithful in temptation,' and did good works, or acted as a good\nman?\n\nNow, if by 'accepted' is meant 'finally accepted,' St. Paul would say\nthis as of Abraham, so of every other accepted man.  He must be finally\njudged and must receive according to his works or character.  As we\nshall see, there is no real discrepancy between St. Paul and St. James\non this matter.  And St. Paul never disparages 'good works' which are\nthe fruit of {164} faith, only 'works' or 'works of the law' which\nrepresent a false attitude of man to God.  But the question which he is\nhere asking is, What is the ground of acceptance for a man _at\nstarting_?  What is it puts him at starting in the right relation to\nGod?  In other words, What is the root of real righteousness?  And his\nanswer to this question is, it is only self-surrendering faith which\nbrought Abraham, or which brings any other man, into acceptance.\n\nIn giving this answer St. Paul had in view another attitude with which\nhe had been long familiar, and which he calls 'seeking to be justified\nby works of the law.'  It was the attitude of the Jews, especially as\nthey appear in St. John's Gospel.  They were proud of their divine law\nand of belonging to the chosen people, the children of Abraham and\nMoses.  They knew how to make good their standing-ground with God.  By\nkeeping the law, as the law had come to be understood among themselves,\nthey could accumulate merits altogether out of proportion to their\nfailures or demerits.  They could even be helped by the merits of the\nold saints[9].  Thus they could {165} stand before God on the basis of\na certain engagement or covenant, into which God had entered with His\npeople, and claim their due reward.\n\nThis utterly demoralizing attitude--leading as it does to formalism and\nhypocrisy, or, at the best, unprogressive stagnation--this attitude,\nwhich left out of sight all the higher and infinite elements in the Old\nTestament, was the actual attitude of contemporary Pharisaic Jews.  The\ncharacteristics with which it endowed them were pride in the law; a\nsense of personal merit coupled with a contempt for 'sinners of the\nGentiles,' or the common 'people which knew not the law'; a\nself-satisfied stagnation which made them utterly resent the new light\nof the gospel; a regard for the public opinion of their class, which\nmade them slaves to convention; and moral hollowness and rottenness\nwithin.  It was because this was their attitude that they rejected the\nChrist.  'Going about to establish their own righteousness, they did\nnot submit themselves to the righteousness of God.'  It was because St.\nPaul had been brought up in the school of the Pharisees, but had come\nto perceive its moral rottenness and to accept Jesus as the Christ,\nthat he bases all his {166} doctrine on the substitution of\njustification by faith for justification by works.\n\nBy 'works' or 'works of the law' he means an attitude towards God which\nleft a man largely independent of Him.  Under the divine covenant the\nman of the covenant has a certain task to do, a certain law to keep:\nthat kept, especially in its external requirements as contemporary\nauthority enforces it, he is his own master.  He is entitled to resent\nany further claims upon him.  This religious ideal means, as we have\nseen, pride, stagnation, conventionalism, hypocrisy.  And the more it\nis considered the more unnatural it appears.  For\n\n(1) It ignores the fundamental relation of man to God, viz. that, as a\ncreature, he depends absolutely and at every stage on God.  He has no\ninitiative in himself.  Thus the only attitude towards God which\nexpresses the reality is one in which God is recognized as continually\nsupplying, or promising, or offering, or claiming, and man is\ncontinually accepting, or believing, or corresponding, or obeying.\n\n(2) It ignores the ineradicable taint of sin in man, and the\naccumulated guilt of particular sins.  A man may gloss over his inward\nsinfulness, and cloak and ignore his secret sins; he {167} may live\noutwardly in high reputation; but if he comes to know himself, he knows\nhimself as a sinner, who depends, at starting, absolutely on God for\nforgiveness and 'deliverance from coming wrath.'\n\n(3) It is quite contented to leave all mankind, except a small elect\nbody, out of the conditions of acceptance with God.\n\nIn substituting 'faith' for works of the law, then, as the principle of\njustification, St. Paul was really 'returning to nature'; he was\nrealizing facts, and supplying a basis for a morality both progressive\nand universal.  Further, he was true to all the highest teaching of the\nOld Testament, which continually finds the source and ground of sin and\nfailure in man's independence of God; which is averse to nothing so\nconspicuously as to substituting external conformity for moral\ncharacter; which is heavy with the consciousness of sin; which humbly\nexpects a fuller, wider, and richer disclosure of the kingdom of God.\nFinally, he was true to that deep and summary teaching of our Lord to\nthe Jews, 'This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath\nsent.'  No doubt it may still be said St. Paul argues in an\n'uncritical' manner on the basis of a particular {168} text.  But in\ndoing this he was doing as his Jewish contemporaries did; and if the\nparticular text is used to prove a real or true principle, who shall\ncomplain of it?\n\n2.  And now to conciliate St. Paul and St. James.  It is a satisfactory\ntask, for the statements which appear so contradictory admit, when they\nare examined, of an easy harmony.\n\nLet us suppose, what is highly probable, that the report of St. Paul's\nteaching reached St. James at Jerusalem at second-hand, in a\nfragmentary and perverted manner--perhaps as illustrated by unfortunate\nspecimens of its influence where it was wilfully misunderstood.  'Men\nare justified before God by faith without consideration of works.'  St.\nJames' holy and beautiful, but no doubt somewhat unphilosophical mind,\nwas alarmed and scandalized.  By faith he understood an intellectual\nquality--the acceptance of the divine truth revealed; and he points out\nwith the simplicity of moral common sense, that never in the Old\nTestament is right belief represented as the ground of acceptance with\nGod without the right conduct which is its natural sequence.  Who can\ndeny that the devils have a 'right belief' in the existence of God?\nFaith, in fact, without {169} works--orthodox belief without moral\nobedience--is a lifeless form, a body without spirit[10].\n\nTo all this St. Paul would of course have agreed, in St. James' sense\nof the word faith.  In fact, St. James' faith, i.e. bare orthodox\nbelief, is closely akin to, and apt to keep company with, formal\necclesiastical observance, which is part of what St. Paul means by\n'works.'  Both were characteristic of the Pharisaic Jews.  St. Paul and\nSt. James would have been at one in saying, 'There must be life in this\ndead shell of orthodox belief, if it is to have value with God; and\nwhat alone can give it life is the real spirit of moral obedience to\nthe will of the holy and good God'--which is what St. James means by\n'works.'  The disagreement between them is then, so far, only verbal.\nBut St. Paul goes deeper, into a region where St. James does not follow\nhim, and asks what is the real starting-ground of the truest\nobedience--the real root of the moral life?  And he finds this\nstarting-ground, this fundamental establishment of the right relation\nto God, in what he called faith; that is, no mere orthodoxy of\nintellect, but a fundamental relationship of man towards God--the\nutterly receptive faculty, {170} the profound quality of the\nself-surrendering will.\n\n3.  There is a young philosophical inquirer in Plato's Dialogue of the\n_Republic_ who is so anxious to get at the ultimate principle of\njustice, as distinct from its consequences and secondary qualities,\nthat Socrates laughingly tells him he is 'scrubbing and polishing it\nlike a statue.'  Now St. Paul has the philosopher's instinct to get at\na principle in its pure simplicity.  He scrubs faith clean of all\nextraneous accidents.  He is most anxious that we should disengage its\nactivity from all the other closely-interconnected elements in human\nnature; and so perceive that, whatever a man has been or is in race or\nconduct or antecedents, once let him exhibit faith, the faith which\ntakes God at His word, and by that very fact and no other, all the\nobstacles to God's acceptance of him are overcome.  The true relation\nof the man to God is restored in its elementary principle.  And nothing\nbut this, however elaborate its apparent performances, can restore the\nfundamental relationship.  It is faith only, and not works, however\nsplendid, which justifies or enables God to take a man, place him\namongst the righteous, and work upon and in him.  But this elemental\n{171} act of simply abandoning independence, trampling on pride and\ntaking God at His word, is an act or attitude of the whole man which\nnecessarily (granted that it be not withdrawn) becomes correspondence\nof the whole being with God, a lifelong obedience, an allegiance and\nhomage of every faculty of will, and emotion, and intellect.  'Faith,'\nthen, as Calvin once said, 'is pregnant with good works, but it\njustifies before they are brought forth.'\n\nThat the rudimentary justifying faith, on which St. Paul is here\ninsisting, is a developing thing, a living and germinating principle,\nthe basis of a life which grows--but always 'from faith to faith,' from\none stage of faith to another--will appear clearly enough as we go on.\nBut even here, in this chapter, it appears already that faith is\nsomething quite inconsistent with remaining as we are.  Faith looks to\na divine promise--a promise of astounding change--and believes that God\nis able to realize it in us.  Such was Abraham's faith.  Such, we may\nadd, was the faith of those in the Gospels who came to be healed, and\nto whom it was said, 'According to your faith be it unto you.'  Our\nfaith then also must expect and desire some amazing transformation of\nour human nature, {172} according to a divine promise--nothing less\nthan power out of impotence, life out of death.\n\nAnd it is from this point of view that the Resurrection is apparently\nregarded in this chapter, as holding the place it does in the 'scheme'\nof our justification by faith.  We are to believe that God is able to\nbring life morally out of death.  He makes that act of faith possible\nor easier for us by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  This evidence of\nGod's power in the case of Jesus, the person on whom our divine faith\nis to rest, gives an adequate support and reasonable security to our\nfaith.  'He was designated as the Son of God with power, by the\nresurrection from the dead,' and thus becomes the natural object for\nsuch a faith in the power of God to carry out His promises as is\nnecessary for our justification.  This is probably the meaning of the\nparticular words with which the fourth chapter closes--'Who died for\nour sins (that is, in order that, in virtue of His atoning sacrifice,\nour sins might be forgiven) and rose again for our justification' (i.e.\nin order that our faith might have in the risen Lord an adequate\nobject).  But of course the relation of faith to the risen Lord is by\nno means exhausted in this thought.\n\n{173}\n\n4.  We Englishmen are possessed with the idea that there is nothing so\nalien to our characters as the temper of the Pharisees or the doctrine\nof the merit of good works.  But if we can look at the matter below the\nsurface, we can hardly fail to realize that the spirit which St. Paul\nso mightily repudiates lies in some respects very close to our natural\ninstincts.  The Englishman has a standard, of his class, his college,\nhis profession, which it is his pride not to fall short of; but he is\nintensely alarmed at any claim upon his moral independence over and\nabove this allowed standard; he is inclined to turn his back completely\nupon the idea of fundamental surrender to the unknown and infinite\nclaim of God; he is contented with himself and his standard, and\noccupies himself in comparing it favourably with the standards of other\nclasses, or still more of other nations.  But what is this spirit but,\nfor good or for evil, the spirit of Pharisaism under a wholly different\ndress?  'They going about to establish their own righteousness, have\nnot submitted themselves to the righteousness of God.'  'How can ye\nbelieve which seek glory one of another, and the glory that cometh from\nthe only God ye seek not?'  'They measuring themselves by {174}\nthemselves and comparing themselves amongst themselves are not wise.'\nHere are typical condemnations of the self-satisfied Pharisaic temper\nso expressed as to prevent us from supposing that we shall escape\ncondemnation with the Pharisees merely because we do not say long\nprayers in public places, or distinguish ourselves by a careful\nritualism.\n\n\n\n[1] Gen. xv. 5, 6.\n\n[2] Ps. xxxii.\n\n[3] Gen. xvii.\n\n[4] None of the promises are verbally to this effect.  But this is the\nsubstantial outcome of them.\n\n[5] Or 'of Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh' (margin).\n\n[6] 1 Macc. ii. 52; cf. Ecclus. xliv. 20.\n\n[7] James ii. 21, 22.\n\n[8] Cf. S. and H. p. 101.\n\n[9] There is contemporary evidence for this illustration of their\nposition; see _Ephesians_, app. note C.\n\n[10] James ii. 14-26.\n\n\n\n\n{175}\n\nDIVISION III.  CHAPTERS V-VIII.\n\n_The accepted life or the moral consequences of justification._\n\nSec. 1. CHAPTER V. 1-11.\n\n_The holy confidence of the justified._\n\nPeace is a fundamental spiritual need of the human soul.  But the peace\nthat is God's gift comes only through the breaking up of the peace of\nsoul which comes from ignoring God.  The Pharisee on the temple steps\nwas at peace when he thanked God that he was not as other men are--at\npeace in his misplaced pride.  The mass of men in heathen Corinth,\nwhere St. Paul was writing, were at peace in their sins.  And St. Paul\nhas set himself with all his might, as in his preaching generally, so\nin this particular letter, to break up this false peace of conscience.\nLike the prophet of old he spurns those who would 'heal the hurt of the\ndaughter of God's {176} people lightly, saying, Peace, peace, when\nthere is no peace.'  Thus he has been arousing the conscience of\nGentiles and Jews equally, and forcing upon them the conviction that\ntheir present life is a condemned life, under the doom of a righteous\nGod.  But when the conviction is driven home, when the wound is fairly\nrecognized and probed, comes in due course the healing remedy.  It lies\nin the recognition of what God really is--of the sort of character\nwhich He is manifesting now in His Son Jesus Christ.  For behold!\nwholly apart from any question of what we are or have been, God is\nfound waiting for us with the offer of His love, which is also the\npower to accomplish what He offers.  It is pardon and new life He\noffers to us.  It is for us simply to take Him at His word, and without\nany delay or reckoning up of accounts, to be acquitted and accepted for\nrighteous simply because we have believed His word.\n\nThe secure ground of peace in the soul, therefore, lies in the frank\nand severe recognition of our own sinfulness, but also, and even more,\nin looking away from ourselves and simply fixing our whole\nconsideration on the character of God, who in certain acts has shown\nHis {177} good-will toward us, and His power to make His goodwill\neffectual.  All hope for us starts simply from God and His mind of love\ntoward us.  'Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his\nSon.'\n\nThus we find St. Paul, in the passage we are now to consider, beginning\na fresh appeal to believers in Christ on this basis, which he has\nalready made so secure.  Seeing, he says, that we have now been\naccepted simply because we believed, let us enter into that heritage of\npeace which our Lord Jesus Christ by His redemption has won for us.\nFor what is our present condition?  Through His redeeming sacrifice we\nhave received an introduction, at no other cost than that of believing,\ninto a new standing-ground before God, a new state in which the whole\natmosphere is one of grace or divine favour.  We can therefore enjoy a\nsolid peace in the present based on the sure consideration of the\ndivine goodwill, and we can make it our boast that we have a\nwell-grounded hope of future restoration to that highest fruition of\nwhich our nature is capable--fellowship in the divine glory.  And while\nwe enjoy these present privileges of ours, let us show that we really\nvalue them by making {178} the outward hardships which accompany them a\nmatter of boasting also.  For we know that only such hardships, bravely\nencountered, can give to our characters the quality of steadfastness;\nand steadfastness through the experience of life makes of us men of\napproved moral metal; and this process of probation, in which we are\ntried and not found wanting, again generates hope in us--the same hope\nin God's love which accompanied the beginning of our justification,\nonly now confirmed in us by our own experience.  And this divine hope\nhas nothing treacherous about it[1].  It is grounded on what God has\nalready done.  He has already given us His Holy Spirit, and by that\ngift poured forth His love into our hearts: He would not have done this\nin order to cheat us at the last.\n\nWe can indeed test and measure the mind of God toward us by human\ncomparisons.  In our experience of men we might perhaps find some one\nbrave enough even to die for another, if that other was, I do not say\nmerely an upright man, but a good and loveable one.  But what is the\nfact in God's dealings with us?  It was {179} when we were sinful and\nhelpless in our sinfulness--nay rather, when we were living in flat\nantagonism to God--that He proved His own pure love toward us by taking\nadvantage of the divine opportunity to give His Son to die for us.  And\nHe, thus dying on our behalf, won for us by the shedding of His blood a\nreconciliation with God, which lay altogether outside anything which\nour state naturally suggested.  Well then, God would not, so to speak,\nhave gone out of His way to make this beginning, unless He had intended\nto carry the work through, so as finally to save us out from under the\ndivine wrath, or, in other words, into the divine fellowship.\nCertainly, accepted as we have been in virtue of Christ's\nblood-shedding, and thus reconciled to God when our natural state was\nhostility to Him, we can trust Him, now that He has made us His\nfriends, to accomplish our deliverance, not by any further\nblood-shedding, but by admitting us into the life of Christ risen from\ndeath.  But, to end where we began, it is not only the hope of a future\ndeliverance that makes us glad.  We also make our boast of our present\nrelation and friendship with God through His Son.\n\n{180}\n\nBeing therefore justified by faith, let us have peace with God through\nour Lord Jesus Christ; through whom also we have had our access by\nfaith into this grace wherein we stand; and let us rejoice in hope of\nthe glory of God.  And not only so, but let us also rejoice in our\ntribulations: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience,\nprobation; and probation, hope: and hope putteth not to shame; because\nthe love of God hath been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy\nGhost which was given unto us.  For while we were yet weak, in due\nseason Christ died for the ungodly.  For scarcely for a righteous man\nwill one die: for peradventure for the good man some one would even\ndare to die.  But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while\nwe were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  Much more then, being now\njustified by his blood, shall we be saved from the wrath _of God_\nthrough him.  For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God\nthrough the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be\nsaved by his life; and not only so, but we also rejoice in God through\nour Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the\nreconciliation.\n\n\n1.  We feel in this passage, and in those which follow, that a great\ntransition is being accomplished, or has been accomplished, in the\nargument, we hardly know how: the transition from the thought of our\npreliminary justification or acceptance with God for Christ's sake, to\nthat of our sanctification, or the life consecrated in Christ: the\ntransition from the thought of Christ's work _for us_ to that of\nChrist's work _in us_: from {181} the gift of acquittal to the gift of\nthe Spirit (ver. 5), and the life of the baptized (vi. 3).  St. Paul is\nnot conscious of the transition, as modern theologians or Christians\nacquainted with theological controversy cannot but be, because the two\nstages are to his mind absolutely inseparable.  Those to whom he wrote\nhad like himself come, with whatever of struggle, to believe in Christ;\nbelieving, they had been baptized into Christ, and had received by the\nlaying on of hands the gift of the Holy Ghost.  This fellowship in\nChrist's life, this possession of the Spirit, constituted Christianity.\nTo enjoy these things was to be a Christian.  The idea of a\nChristianity which stopped short of incorporation into Christ, or which\nclaimed this incorporation outside His body which is the Church, and\napart from the visible sacramental means of union, did not occur to St.\nPaul.  A Christianity which did not own allegiance to the Church was\nnot in question.  But his entire present aim is to convince the heart\nand reason of Christians that the whole privilege of their new 'state\nof grace' belongs to them simply in virtue of faith.  As he asks the\nGalatians: 'Received ye the Spirit,' i.e. did ye become Christians, 'by\nthe works of the law or by the hearing of faith?'  That is his point.\n{182} They were not made Christians because they had done anything to\ndeserve it.  They were simply helpless sinners, and it was the\ngratuitous mercy of God which looked upon them and provided a means of\nforgiveness for them, and justified them or set them upon a new basis\nof acceptance, without any consideration of what they were or had done,\npurely and simply because He loved them and meant that the mere\nspectacle of His unmerited love and bounty should inspire their\ngratitude and win their hearts.  Therefore he lays such emphasis on\ntheir initial need of forgiveness: on their helplessness to get rid of\ntheir own sins: on their dependence for forgiveness on a sacrifice to\nwhich they could contribute nothing: on their being justified by simply\nreceiving in trust the offer of God.  But the offer when it is listened\nto is found to consist in forgiveness indeed--but forgiveness as a step\ntoward new life in the body of Christ.  Thus what Christ won for man,\nwhat becomes available for each man in virtue of believing the message,\nis here described as 'our introduction' (rather than 'access') 'into\nthis grace wherein we stand'--an introduction into a spiritual region\nwhere God's favour is the prevailing atmosphere, or, to use a later\nphrase, into 'a state of grace'; a {183} district of security out of\nwhich, however, men may fall again by deliberate unfaithfulness, as St.\nPaul warns the Galatians[2]: 'Ye are severed from Christ, ye who would\nbe justified by the law; ye are fallen away from grace.'\n\nAnd St. Paul's language does not let us suppose that the whole of what\nhe means by our 'salvation' is included in our preliminary\nacceptance[3].  That is simply our first introduction into a permanent\nstate.  Our 'salvation' is here, as elsewhere, spoken of as equivalent\nto deliverance from wrath in the day of judgement, which means that our\nwhole moral being has become such as can bear the scrutiny of the\ndivine righteousness and the fellowship of the divine glory.\n\n2.  Where the Revised Version above[4] reads 'rejoice,' it is important\nto remember that the word is that used for the illegitimate 'glorying'\nor 'boasting' of iii. 27 and iv. 2.  Christians have something to boast\nof, but it is not their own; it is God's gift.  Therefore they are\nespecially delighted when God's strength is shown in their weakness,\nand they will more particularly 'boast of their weaknesses' (cf. 2 Cor.\nxi. 30).\n\n{184}\n\n3.  St. Paul's argument that the Christian hope is fundamentally\ntrustworthy is based, we may notice, on a twofold appeal.  First (ver.\n5), he appeals to the gift of the Spirit which at a definite time[5]\neach Christian received, doubtless by the laying on of hands.  This\ngift is in itself an outpouring of the divine love and an 'earnest' of\nfuture glory (2 Cor. i. 22, v. 5).  No doubt almost all the Christians\nhad more or less intensely _felt_ the reality of the divine love in the\nindwelling Spirit.  But St. Paul lays stress rather on the fact than on\nthe feeling.  Secondly (vers. 6 ff.), he appeals to the great\nredemptive act of God.  God had gone out of His way to make a great\nsacrifice in order to reconcile us when we were enemies, and therefore\nmay be trusted to carry out the preliminary reconciliation into full\nspiritual deliverance or salvation by Christ's life.  The greater\neffort carries with it the less.\n\n\n\n[1] Isa. xxviii. 16: 'He that believeth shall not be put to shame'\n(Greek version).\n\n[2] Gal. v. 4.\n\n[3] Cf. also p. 310.\n\n[4] verses 2, 3, 11.\n\n[5] The tense is an aorist, 'the Holy Ghost which was given' at a\ndefinite past moment; not as in the unrevised Bible 'is given.'\n\n\n\n\n{185}\n\nDIVISION III.  Sec. 2.  CHAPTER V. 12-21.\n\n_The Second Adam._\n\nSt. Paul had spoken, at the end of the passage we have just been\nreading, of our being 'saved by (or 'in') Christ's life.'  And this\nbrings him to what is truly the central point of his theology--the life\nin Christ by the Spirit: the thought that the glorified Man, with all\nthe power of the divine life at work in Him, though He is hidden from\nsight, is still perpetuating His life by His Spirit in that society\nwhich He has established to be His body.  It stands to reason that if\nreal fellowship in the life of Christ is the privilege of the\nChristian, this must be a greater thing by far than any preparatory\ngift of acquittal or justification, which indeed has its value simply\nin virtue of that to which it admits us.  St. Paul then loves to\ncontrast the new {186} manhood of believers in Christ, the life in\nChrist, in all its moral characteristics, with the old manhood,\nenslaved to sin, as it existed substantially identical in its bondage\nunder the outwardly differing conditions of Gentile and Jewish society.\nAnd as that old life of our race had a unity which St. Paul believed\nwas due to a common origin in the first man Adam, so he thought of\nChrist as a second Adam--the 'last Adam'--a spiritual progenitor from\nwhom was to be derived another human race by spiritual generation with\na better unity of its own; or rather a new spiritual progenitor from\nwhom the whole of the old race might gradually derive, by spiritual\nregeneration, a new life, which should penetrate and spread, and oust\nthe corruption of the old manhood, till the whole was redeemed and\nushered into the glory for which it had been originally destined.\n\nAnd here, in the passage we are now to read, St. Paul develops the\nthought of the influence of Adam and his sin upon the human race, and\ndraws from it an argument for the deeper and greater influence of the\nNew Man upon the same race, reconstituted under a new head.\n\nAdam's sin--the disobedience of the one man--had a disastrous effect\nupon his race as a {187} whole.  It introduced sin, and through sin its\npenalty, death; and it passed to all mankind--the penalty, because also\nthe sin.  All men sinned in fact, and all died.  This can be stated\nwithout exception.  It is quite true that where there is no special law\nto instruct men, they may sin ignorantly, and therefore without its\nbeing imputed to them as guilt; yet the sin is there all the same, and\nits presence, before the Mosaic law was given to enlighten men, was\nmarked by the reign of death, even in the case of persons innocent of\nany actual sin like Adam's.  Sin then, as marked by death, exists\nuniversally, apart from any knowledge of it or even any actual offence,\nas the effect of Adam's transgression upon his whole race.  But to Adam\ncorresponds in the divine purpose Christ.  He is the new head of the\nrace--to transmit the free gift of life, as Adam transmitted the\npenalty of death.  His life was one summary obedience: one perfectly\nacceptable object to the eyes of God.  And there flows from it an\nabundant river of the good favour of God--which is also the good favour\nof the man Jesus Christ--and of the gift by which that good favour\nshows itself, the gift of righteousness extending on into an eternal\nlife.  Therefore we may argue {188} _a fortiori_[1] from the influence\nof Adam to the influence of Christ--[_a fortiori_, because, though God\nhas been, so to speak, constrained to punish us, His whole desire is to\ndo us good; and the method of diffusion which He has allowed to operate\nfor evil, we can be much more sure He will set to work for good][2].\nWe see the trespass of the one generating universal death, and we are\nsure that the counter influence of Christ is as universally diffusive\nand incomparably more powerful.  We see the one man's offence appealing\nto God for judgement and producing a condemned race; but we see, on the\nother hand, a multitude of sins appealing to the divine compassion to\nlet loose the free gift which shall make for acquittal.  If the\nconsequence of the transgression was inevitable, and a reign of death\nfollowed, so much more certainly must the divine gift, abundant as it\nis, bring about the triumph of eternal life.  If the one fault diffused\nitself in universal condemnation, so the one act which meets the divine\napproval must diffuse itself to produce {189} universally an accepted\nlife.  One disobedience made the whole race sinners: one obedience\nshall make the whole race righteous.  The law came in parenthetically\nto the world of sin and death to let actual sin, like Adam's, have its\nfull and fatal scope.  But the greatness of the sin only magnifies\nstill more the greatness of the remedy which divine goodness supplies,\nthat the sovereignty of sin in a world of death might be swallowed up\nin the sovereignty of divine goodwill working through righteousness\nunto life eternal through Jesus Christ our Lord.\n\n\nTherefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death\nthrough sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all\nsinned:--for until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed\nwhen there is no law.  Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until\nMoses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's\ntransgression, who is a figure of him that was to come.  But not as the\ntrespass, so also _is_ the free gift.  For if by the trespass of the\none the many died, much more did the grace of God, and the gift by the\ngrace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound unto the many.  And not as\nthrough one that sinned, _so_ is the gift: for the judgement _came_ of\none unto condemnation, but the free gift _came_ of many trespasses unto\njustification.  For if, by the trespass of the one, death reigned\nthrough the one; much more shall they that receive the abundance of\ngrace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one,\n_even_ Jesus Christ.  So then as through one trespass _the judgement\ncame_ unto all men to {190} condemnation; even so through one act of\nrighteousness _the free gift came_ unto all men to justification of\nlife.  For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made\nsinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be\nmade righteous.  And the law came in beside, that the trespass might\nabound; but where sin abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly:\nthat, as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through\nrighteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.\n\n\n1.  St. Paul in this section, as also in part in his speech at Athens,\nteaches, as matter which can be assumed and need not be emphasized,\nthat God made 'of one' (Adam) 'every nation of men[3]'; that Adam, by\nactual transgression of a divine commandment, introduced sin, and with\nsin death which is its punishment, into the world of man; and that as a\nresult all men sinned.  This universal sin he would, no doubt--as in\nchapter i, so here--ascribe in part to men's own wills.  In this very\nchapter he asserts that what finally 'abounded' was actual\n'transgression' like Adam's[4].  But this is not the whole account of\nthe matter.  Prior to all question of actual sins; prior to all\nquestion of knowledge or consequent responsibility, death was\nuniversal, and death marked the inward reign {191} of sin.  Men in the\nmass were, through Adam's sin, constituted sinners[5].\n\nSt. Paul then, assuming here as elsewhere[6] the narrative of Gen. iii\nas true in substance if not in form, teaches (1) the unity of our race\nas derived from Adam; (2) the original transgression of Adam, as being\npartly the example of subsequent sins and partly the source of a moral\ncorruption, which since his fall has been inherent in our race\nindependently of any actual sins; and (3) the introduction of death\n_into the human race_ as the punishment of sin.\n\nOn the other hand, the common idea of an imputation of Adam's guilt to\nhis descendants he expressly does not teach.  Sin is not imputed or\nreckoned as guilt to the individual apart from the knowledge necessary\nto constitute responsibility[7].  It is extraordinary how the idea of\nimputed _guilt_ can have come to be ascribed to St. Paul when he\nexpressly guards against it.  What the descendants of Adam inherit is\nan actual inherent weakness or sinfulness.  Again, St. Paul does not\nattempt to analyze the actual sin of the world so as to discriminate\nbetween the factors of inherited {192} weakness on the one hand and\nreiterated acts of rebellion on the other; but he recognizes both.  His\nlanguage indeed here, and in chapter vii, would be satisfied by a very\nmoderate doctrine of the effects of original sin, that is, of the\ntransmitted effect of sin, considered apart from its repetition.  There\nis no warrant whatever in St. Paul for the idea that one man's sin\nresulted in the total depravity of human nature.  Once more he is\ncontent, as usual, to teach generally and without exactness.  Thus he\ndoes not consider the exceptions to the universal law of death recorded\nin the Old Testament--Enoch and Elijah--though he, no doubt, recognized\nthem.  That in spite of these exceptions he still states the law with\nsuch universality: 'Death reigned from Adam to Moses even over them\nthat had not sinned[8]' is a warning not to understand St. Paul's\nuniversal propositions with an exactness only applicable to those of a\nschoolman or a modern man of science.\n\n2.  So much for the substance of St. Paul's teaching; and now what is\nto be said as to its sources?  St. Paul states his doctrine of original\nsin as if it were a commonplace which he could {193} assume and argue\nfrom.  Now the Book of Genesis certainly spoke of a primaeval\ndisobedience in our first parents, and of the infliction on them, as a\npenalty for their disobedience, of conditions of strife and pain and\ndeath.  But the idea of the transmission of _sinfulness_ does not seem\nto be suggested.  Moreover, this narrative made remarkably little\nimpression on the Old Testament literature as a whole[9].  The\ndoctrine, however, of the introduction of _death_ through the\ntemptation and sin of Adam and Eve is found again in the apocryphal\nliterature: thus, 'God created man for incorruption, ... but by the\nenvy of the devil death entered into the world[10].'  From a woman was\nthe beginning of sin; and because of her we all die[11].'  Unto Adam\nthou gavest thy one commandment, which he transgressed, and immediately\nthou appointedst death for him and in his generations; and there were\nborn of him nations and tribes, peoples {194} and kindreds, out of\nnumber[12].'  'Adam sinned, and death was decreed against those who\nshould be born[13].'  This was also the prevalent doctrine of the\nRabbis represented in the Talmud.  The idea of an inheritance of\n_moral_ corruption--but not specially associated with Adam's fall--may\nbe found in the cry of the Psalmist, 'In sin hath my mother conceived\nme!' perhaps also in other passages of the Old Testament, and in our\nLord's teaching, as recorded both by the Synoptists and in St. John's\nGospel[14]; but as connected with Adam's sin it does not, so far as can\nbe ascertained, appear for certain in Jewish literature till we get to\nthe Second Book of Esdras, a Jewish Apocalypse later than St. Paul.\nThere it is taught that there was originally a seed of evil, 'a wicked\nheart,' in Adam as he was created, side by side with the good in him,\nand that he by his sin gave it preponderance in the race[15]--a form of\nteaching not by any means identical with St. Paul's.  On the whole,\nthen, it remains a matter of some doubt what exactly was the source\n{195} whence St. Paul got the certainty and completeness of his\ndoctrine of 'the fault and corruption of the nature of every man that\nnaturally is ingendered of the offspring of Adam.'\n\n3.  The more important question for us, however, is not whence St. Paul\nderived the materials for his teaching, but whether it is true--whether\nit can hold in the light of modern anthropology.  And to this question\nonly a partial answer--the answer that appears to be most\nnecessary--will be attempted here[16].\n\nWe are in our generation rightly anxious if we are asked to accept any\nprofessedly historical statement for which we feel the evidence is\ndoubtful.  We know that from the point of view of history the origin of\nour human species is lost in dense obscurity and uncertainty.  And it\nrelieves many consciences to realize that, if St. Paul states his\nargument in a form which implies the historical character of the\nnarrative in Genesis iii, all that is necessary for his argument is to\nassume (1) that the human race is organically one, and can be dealt\nwith as one; (2) that sin is universal in our race; (3) that at least\nthe sting or curse or bondage of death is due to sin.  If we realize\nthat this is all that {196} need be allowed in order to give us full\nfellowship in St. Paul's religious teaching, we shall be able to\ninvestigate the further truth of his teaching, from a scientific and\nhistorical point of view, with a free mind.\n\nAnd the three propositions stated above are not reasonably open to\ndoubt, (1) That our race is one species, and derived from one source,\nis the conclusion of the modern ethnologist as much as of St. Paul[17].\nThe general theory of evolution has effectively counteracted the\nprevious tendency to postulate the existence of various independent\nraces of men.\n\n(2) There are many professors of psychology who deny the existence of\nmoral freedom and consequently of sin in St. Paul's sense at all.  As I\nhave already pointed out, this is the real battle-ground between\ntheology and science.  But granted the reality of moral freedom and of\n{197} sin, i.e. of something which need not and ought not to have been\ncommitted, it is impossible to deny that, below the innumerable sins of\nwhich human history is full, there exists deep in our nature an\n'ineradicable taint'--a morbid tendency to do wrong--a bias or\npropensity to evil--which is the heritage of our race; which indeed men\nmay become unconscious of by acquiescing in sin, but of which they\nbecome painfully conscious again as soon as they are awakened to a\nmoral ideal.  The late Dr. Mozley collected a remarkable series of\npassages from what he calls 'worldly philosophers and poets'--notably\nByron and Shelley--testifying to the belief in universal sin[18].  This\nof course we may say is only the inheritance of animal tendencies from\nan animal ancestry; but if so, it is exactly what our higher spiritual\nnature might and ought to have subdued long ago and brought into\nsubjection.  Its presence with us and in us now is the result of sins\ninnumerable--innumerable wilful preferences of the lower to the higher\nnature, which have let it loose and given it force.  It is, in the\nstrictest sense, the inheritance of sin in the race.\n\n(3) The New Testament frequently reiterates {198} the assertion that\nChrist has robbed death of its sting or delivered men from its bondage.\nAnd this is also expressed (both by St. Paul and by our Lord Himself,\nas reported by St. John) by saying that Christ has 'abolished\ndeath[19]' or that the believer shall never die[20].  But if Christ has\nabolished death, then there is at least a certain sense in which sin\nhas been the cause of death.  The essence of death, according to this\nuse of the word, lies not in the physical transition from one state of\nexistence to another, which is no more death than it is birth.  Death\nmeans destruction, ruin and collapse.  And what is called death--the\ndeath of the present body--has only gathered about it such terrible\nassociations because men have become corrupt, and godless and therefore\nshort-sighted in their estimate of life.  In the moral sense then in\nwhich Christ abolished death, sin certainly introduced it for man.\n\nNow there is, I think, reason to believe more exactly with St. Paul\nthan is involved in these three positions[21].  But I feel sure that\nany one who accepts these three positions--no one of which any believer\nin God and morality can well {199} reject--may find himself in complete\npractical fellowship with St. Paul's religious thought and with the\nwhole argument of this epistle.\n\nHumanity, in spite of all its racial differences, is a great unity: it\nis, if not 'of one' individual, yet 'of one blood,' and it is as a\nwhole infected with sin; this is in effect the doctrine of the 'old\nAdam.'  And because it is one, and universally tainted, therefore\nChrist can deal with it as one, in order to accomplish its restoration.\nAnd all St. Paul's argument holds good.  God has made humanity one, and\nso one that what each does tends to affect all.  Thus it has come about\nthat the force of sin--the wilful refusal of the higher life and choice\nof the lower--has passed in its effects into the moral fibre of our\nrace, and weakened and corrupted the whole.  God tolerates this, for\nman must be, and must be dealt with as being, one and free.  But God\ndesires the well-being of man.  He hates sin.  It has all but baffled\nHis purpose for man.  Therefore, if He has tolerated the use which sin\nhas made of the organic unity of the human race, He can much more be\ntrusted to use that same unity for the purpose of good.  As man is one\nin sin, so we can be one in righteousness: as the old Adam has been\n{200} universal, so can the new.  As sin has been propagated\nphysically, so Christ can spiritually propagate the new manhood.  The\nforces of recovery shall spread and permeate more radically than the\nforces of evil, and shall finally triumph.\n\nOf course, in view of all the deep racial differences between, for\ninstance, Europeans, Chinamen, and the races of India, to believe in\nthe unity of humanity in any real sense at all is a great act of faith.\nBut it is an act of faith in which science encourages us, and not least\nthe comparative study of religions.  Our religious instincts and\nfaculties are found in very different degrees of development, but they\nare fundamentally the same.  And it is an act of faith to which Christ\nand Christianity fundamentally commit us, though it is probably true to\nsay that since New Testament times the brotherhood of men has been\npractically found to be the most difficult of Christian dogmas.\n\n4.  It is not inopportune, in view of recent controversy, to call\nattention in this connexion to the fact that St. Paul's doctrine of\nChrist as the second Adam of necessity involves in some form His\nmiraculous birth.  St. Paul indeed says nothing about Christ's nativity\nof {201} the Virgin as an event in history; but he conceives of the\nChrist as a fresh start in manhood, a new man, who yet drew the\nsubstance of His manhood from the old stock, for He was 'born of a\nwoman,' and 'of the seed of David.'  There is thus physical continuity\nbetween the old Adam and Christ, and yet, from the moral point of view,\nthe break is complete.  The inheritance of sin which has followed, and\nmust according to natural law follow, physical descent, is quite cut\noff.  Christ is man of our old substance and yet new man, wholly free\nfrom any taint of sin.  This involves a new creative act upon the\nmanhood of Christ in its source.  It involves something strictly\nmiraculous conditioning the continuity of His descent from David.\nThere is continuity, and yet a break in continuity.  And this is\nexactly what the strongly-attested fact of the Virgin birth--whatever\nbe the physiological account which is to be given of it--is calculated\nto supply.  It presents us with a Christ born of a woman, of the\nsubstance of our nature, and yet only so constituted by a new creative\nact of God.\n\n5.  It will of course be noticed that the drift of St. Paul's argument\nin this passage is directly towards universal salvation, for 'the many'\n{202} means 'the whole mass.'  This is the case in other places where\nhe is considering what we may call the natural tendency and scope of\nthe gospel, 'As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made\nalive.'  But there are passages of a different tendency in St. Paul's\nepistles, where he is considering the human attitude towards the\npurpose of God; and there he appears to emphasize strongly the power of\nthe human will to refuse the light and turn God's blessing into a\ncurse.  If the 'savour' of the apostle's preaching is to 'those who are\nbeing saved a savour proceeding from life and tending to life,' even\neternal life, it is for the wilful who are perishing in their\nwilfulness 'a savour as from death and tending to death': for they\nshall 'suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from the face of the\nLord, and from the glory of his might[22].'  What this eternal\ndestruction means, and how it is to be harmonized with the vision of\nunity, we cannot precisely tell.  Verily, 'we know' but 'in part.'  But\nat least we must recognize that St. Paul asserts both sides of the\npicture: and that the 'terror' and the hope are not dissociable.\n\n6.  We must also notice, before we leave the {203} passage, that the\napplication of the word justification receives a certain extension.  As\nthe 'grace' of God is associated with a 'gift of righteousness[23],'\nthat is to say, of real fellowship in the life of God, so the\npreliminary 'justification of sinners,' in which the divine grace first\nof all conspicuously shows itself, is to pass into a 'justification of\nlife' (or 'a justification taking effect in life'); that is to say, the\nactual life is to become acceptable.  God begins with accepting sinners\nand dealing with them as if they were righteous if only they will\nbelieve.  But it is in view of a moral process which is to produce a\nnew life, and is to end in making acceptable not themselves only, in\nspite of their lives, but their life itself.  The object of the\njustifying faith is, and must be, as we saw, a living person.  It is\nChrist who was 'raised again for our justification.'  And the living\nChrist can be satisfied with nothing short of a living fellowship\nbetween us and Himself in His own life and spirit.\n\n\n\n[1] An _a fortiori_ argument means an argument with a 'still more' in\nit:--If something is so then _still more_ something else.\n\n[2] The words in brackets are the suppressed premise in the\nargument--suppressed, but none the less evident.\n\n[3] Acts xvii. 26.\n\n[4] ver. 20.\n\n[5] ver. 13, 14, 19.\n\n[6] 1 Cor. xi. 3; 1 Tim. ii. 13-15.\n\n[7] Rom. iv. 15; v. 13.\n\n[8] Much more (the argument implies) after the law had been given and\nsin could be 'imputed' as sin again.\n\n[9] The references in Hos. vi. 7, Isa. xliii. 27, Job xxxi. 33, are not\ncertainly, or even probably, to Adam.  There is an obscure but\ninteresting reference in Ezek. xxviii. 14-16, in which 'the fall' seems\nto be treated as representative of Tyre's fall, and presumably\ntherefore of all situations in which divine gifts and vocations are\nsquandered and lost.\n\n[10] Wisd. ii. 23, 24; cf. Rom. v. 12.\n\n[11] Ecclus. xxv. 24.  The first clause need not mean more than 'she\nwas the first to sin.'\n\n[12] 2 Esdras iii. 7.\n\n[13] _Apoc. Baruch_ xxiii. 4, and elsewhere.  In parts of this book the\npenalty of Adam's sin is regarded as being not death, but _premature_\ndeath: see liv. 15, lvi. 6, and Mr. Charles' notes.\n\n[14] See Matt. vii. 11; John ii. 25; iii. 3, &c.\n\n[15] 2 Esdras iii. 21, 22; iv. 30; vii. 48.\n\n[16] The matter is to be dealt with more at length in app. note E.\n\n[17] See E. B. Tylor in _Encycl. Brit._ ii, _s.v._ ANTHROPOLOGY, p.\n114: 'The polygenist view (i.e. the doctrine of a plurality of origins)\ntill a few years since was gaining ground.  Two modern views, however\n(i.e. the belief in the antiquity of man and the development of\nspecies), have tended to restore, though under a new aspect, the\ndoctrine of a single human stock.'  Cf. Darwin, _Descent of Man_ (2nd\ned.), p. 176: 'Those naturalists who admit the principle of evolution\n... will feel no doubt that all the races of men are descended from a\nsingle primitive stock.'  See also Keane in app. note E.\n\n[18] Mozley's _Lectures and Theol. Papers_ (Longmans), pp. 157 ff.\n\n[19] 2 Tim. i. 10.\n\n[20] John vi. 50; viii. 51.\n\n[21] See app. note E.\n\n[22] 2 Thess. i. 7-10; 2 Cor. ii. 16.\n\n[23] ver. 17.\n\n\n\n\n{204}\n\nDIVISION III.  Sec. 3.  CHAPTER VI. 1-14.\n\n_The Christian life a living by dying._\n\nIt has now been made apparent that belief in Christ introduces a man\ninto a new sphere of 'life in Christ' or 'state of grace'--a state,\nthat is, in which the divine grace or goodwill is the atmosphere and\nmotive force.  And just as with his natural life he inherited all the\ntaint and curse attaching to sin in the unredeemed manhood, so now in\nhis new state he receives from Christ all the bountiful outpouring, not\nof acquittal only, but of divine life.  What he is called to witness is\nthe triumph of the divine goodwill over the old forces and tendencies\nof sin in himself and in the world.\n\nBut now a monstrous suggestion presents itself, akin to that attempt of\nthe Jew (of which we heard in chapter iii) to claim exemption from the\ndivine judgement on his own sins on the ground that Jewish\nunfaithfulness had but given {205} God a background upon which to\nreveal Himself and His righteousness more effectively.  St. Paul, we\nsaw, indignantly crushed that attempt to use logic against conscience.\nNow, however, a similar suggestion makes itself heard, only from the\nside not of Jewish factiousness, but of Gentile lawlessness.  Would it\nnot give divine grace a still better opportunity to show its quality\nif, now that we are Christians, we go on living our old life of sin?\nThe more it has got to forgive in us, the more superabundant will its\nmercy appear.  Shall we not then continue in sin that grace may abound?\nWe have other reasons, besides this passage, for believing that St.\nPaul's teaching about divine grace and justifying faith not only\nadmitted of being misunderstood, but was misunderstood, in his own\ntime[1] as at later periods, in such a way as to cut the roots of moral\neffort.  'Unlearned and unstable men were wresting his words to their\nown destruction.'  And to any lawless suggestions based upon the misuse\nof God's free grace, St. Paul had already given the easiest answer when\nhe had laid it down {206} as an absolutely universal truth that God\nwill at last 'render to every man according to his works ... to them\nthat are factious and obey not the truth but obey unrighteousness,\nwrath and indignation, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man\nthat worketh evil'; or when he had met the developed logic of the\nself-excusing Jew with the sharp and final rejoinder--'whose\ncondemnation is just.'\n\nHere however St. Paul gives not the easiest answer to the antinomian\nsuggestion, but a deep, fruitful, and decisive one.  He demonstrates\nthe absolute incompatibility of principle between the life of sin and\nthe Christian state.  By the very nature of the case no man can belong\nto both.  As St. John said, 'he that is begotten of God' in the new\nlife in Christ 'cannot sin' without thereby abandoning his new\nstanding-ground.  At the moment when we became Christians by the act of\nbaptism, we said good-bye to the old life of sin as completely as a\ndying man says good-bye to the familiar scenes and passes over to\n'yonder side.'  We were admitted by baptism into Christ Jesus; that is,\nwe were admitted into a certain sort of human life with a certain law\nor character.  What is then the character and law of Christ's life?\n'We believe that {207} Jesus died and rose again[2].'  That is the\ncentral and summary fact about Him.  He passed to life through death.\nAnd this physical death of His on the cross was not merely a fact in\nhistory, it was a fact with a moral significance[3].  While He had been\nin this sinful world of ours He had borne its sin, but had no part in\nit.  He was in the sinful world, but not of it.  He was to sin and all\nits motives as one dead.  And by His physical death upon the cross He\ngave summary expression to this moral alienation.  He made a final and\noutward breach with sin, and passed out of its range, for evermore\n'separated from sinners.'  'He died to sin once for all.'  And the\nglory of the Father[4] broke forth from its customary concealment and\nvindicated the Christ by raising Him from the dead, because of what His\ndeath had morally meant.\n\nThus the 'likeness,' or moral counterpart, of Christ's death is to be,\nlike Him, dead to sin.  And if we are not called to be physically\ncrucified, we are called to its moral counterpart.  We must become\nmorally 'of one growth' with {208} Christ's death[5], like the slip\nwith the tree it is grafted into.  Only so can we share the new life of\nHis resurrection.  This is represented in the very ceremony of our\nbaptism.  It was impressed upon us by all its outward symbolism that to\nbecome a Christian we must die to the old life.  We were brought to the\nmargin of the water as to a death, and descended, bowed beneath the\nwaves, as into the tomb with Christ: in order so, and only so, as\nhaving died and been buried, to emerge again into the new life under\nthe conditions of which henceforth we are to conduct ourselves[6].  And\nthis new life is not only an actual present fellowship in the risen\nChrist (ver. 4): it expects to become so (ver. 5) in a fuller and\ncompleter measure, but always on the basis of one and the same clear\nconviction, which we may express thus--When Christ was nailed to the\ncross, our old sinful manhood was nailed there with Him, so that\nhenceforth our animal nature, hitherto the haunt and stronghold of sin,\nmight be paralyzed and rendered as powerless as any crucified criminal,\nand we, set free to become new men, might no longer be sin's slaves.\nThat old sinful self of {209} ours was put to death, and we passed, as\nnew men, into another life.  Henceforth the tyrant sin has no claim on\nus, for death closes all scores and acquits of all claims.  'The man is\ndead' is a summary and final plea against all claimants, and that is\nour plea against the claim of sin.  We have died to it once and for\nall.  Therefore, and only therefore, we can hope to share the deathless\nglory of Christ's resurrection.  He died once, and passed henceforth\naltogether out of death's control.  For the death that He died was to\nmake an end with sin, and that was done once for all.  Henceforth there\nis nothing left but life, and that life in the eternal God.  This\ntherefore is the view we are to take of ourselves as now included in\nChrist: we are, in regard to sin, dead men who are no longer responsive\nto its impulses or alive to its interests: and therefore, in regard to\nGod, we are alive in Christ to whom we are united.\n\nAnd (ver. 12) the practical duty which follows from this is plain.\nChristians must not acknowledge a tyrant whose strength and power is\ngone for ever, by letting sin still reign in the lower part of their\nnature--the body still subject to physical death--and so bring their\nhigher nature into an unnatural subjection to its appetites: they must\n{210} not leave the limbs of their redeemed selves at the disposal of\nthe dethroned king Sin, to be used as weapons for the warfare of\niniquity.  No: they must correspond to the privileges of the new life\nin God into which they have passed, by making an offering of\nthemselves[7] to God, with all the free will which befits those who\nwere dead and are alive again; and an offering also of their limbs, now\nrestored to their own control, as weapons for God's warfare of\nrighteousness.  Sin shall no longer be their lord.  That despotism\nbelonged to the days when they were under the law.  Now it is not the\nlaw they are under, but the sovereignty of the divine goodwill.\n\n\nWhat shall we say then?  Shall we continue in sin, that grace may\nabound?  God forbid.  We who died to sin, how shall we any longer live\ntherein?  Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ\nJesus were baptized into his death?  We were buried therefore with him\nthrough baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the\ndead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness\nof life.  For if we have become united with the likeness of his death,\nwe shall be also with the likeness of his resurrection; knowing this,\nthat our old man was crucified with _him_, that the body of {211} sin\nmight be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin;\nfor he that hath died is justified from sin.  But if we died with\nChrist, we believe that we shall also live with him; knowing that\nChrist being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more hath\ndominion over him.  For the death that he died, he died unto sin once:\nbut the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God.  Even so reckon ye\nalso yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.\n\nLet not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey\nthe lusts thereof: neither present your members unto sin as instruments\nof unrighteousness; but present yourselves unto God, as alive from the\ndead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.  For\nsin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law, but\nunder grace.\n\n\n1.  In the analysis of the passage given above, the order of the ideas\nhas been somewhat altered, and their meaning expanded, with the\nintention of rendering the real argument more intelligible; while I\nbelieve that no idea is suggested that is foreign to the original.  The\npassage, however, is extraordinarily condensed, and is full of some of\nthe most characteristic of St. Paul's thoughts--amongst them that of\nthe life in Christ as being a living by dying, or a life out of death.\n\nIt is impossible to try to lead a human life under any standard that\ncan be called moral without knowing that it involves some sort of\n'mortification' of selfish and sensual appetites.  There {212} is that\nin human nature which, as moralists generally must recognize and in\nfact have in a measure recognized, must be 'done to death.'  It was\nthis principle that was expressed with such terrible vigour by our Lord\nwhen He bade us pluck out the offending eye and cut off the offending\nhand.  But the novelty in Christianity was the emphasis which it laid\nrather on the living than on the dying; it was its teaching as to the\ninfusion into human life of a new and positive spiritual force, which\nwas to overcome evil with good and swallow up death in victory.  It was\nby their belief in a gift of the Spirit imparted to them, and by their\nresulting power to think and act freely according to God, that the\nChristians were distinguished from the rest of the world.  It is this\nupon which their apostolic teachers continually insist.  'I have\nwritten unto you young men, because ye are strong.'  'As many as are\nlead by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.'  It is only as it\nwere in the second place that it appears that this living in the new\nlife will involve dying to an old one.  Thus the dying is always made\nto appear to be in order to a living.  The end is always the life.  'I\ncame that they may have life,' our Lord had said, 'and have it\nabundantly.'\n\n{213}\n\nThe phrases about dying in order to live have their root in our Lord's\nteaching, as St. John represents it[8], but belong most\ncharacteristically to St. Paul.  The principle which they enforce\nbelongs only to a fallen world, for it is only the sin within us and\nabout us that has to be put to death, or to which we have to die.  But\nit finds its highest exemplification in the case of Christ who, sinless\nHimself, came into a world of sin and lived under its conditions.\nTherefore He had to 'die' to sin and selfishness in the world in order\nto 'live' in His own proper life to God.  And this dying to sin--this\nrefusing it and repudiating it--is summarily represented in His death\nupon the cross.  The worldly world killed Him because He would have\nnone of its selfishness and sin.  He, by voluntarily dying sooner than\nsurrender to the demands of this world, made a final separation of\nHimself from sin.  Thus He lived His life to God at the cost of dying.\nAnd this law of Christ's life is to be the law of ours.  We must die to\nsin--not on a visible cross, but by a repudiation of it as thorough and\nreal: nor to sin outside us only, but to sin in ourselves.  It is only\nto express this attitude toward sin in ourselves in other {214} words,\nto say that we have to mortify and crucify our own carnal and selfish\nselves.\n\nAnd just as Christ summed up His attitude towards the world by His\ndeath upon the cross, so the Christian's attitude to the world was\nsummed up in his baptism.  At that moment he died to the world of\nsin[9].  This state of deadness to sin has to be constantly renewed, or\nagain and again recovered.  But it was in that sacramental moment\nrealized in principle and symbolically represented.  The convert who\nwas immersed beneath the baptismal waters and emerged again, realized\neasily that this 'bath of regeneration' was, what the early Christians\ncalled it, 'his grave and his mother.'  All the circumstances of his\nbaptism forced it upon him that he had passed out of an old life into a\nnew--that he died to one state of things and came to life in another.\nThe Christians of St. Paul's churches, like newly-made Christians in\nCentral Africa or India to-day, were very often highly imperfect; but\nthey knew--they could not but know--that they had passed under a new\nallegiance; that like the just-converted Frankish {215} idolater, they\nmust 'burn what they had adored, and adore what they had burned[10].'\n\nWe in our generation, and in a country where Christianity has become\ntraditional, realize this much less easily.  It is not only that we\nhave, in our Church and country, almost wholly lost the symbolism which\nbelongs to baptism by immersion[11]; though that is as great a loss as\nany symbolic action, not necessary to the administration of a\nsacrament, can be.  It is not only that we are as a general rule\nbaptized in infancy, for that under right conditions[12] embodies a\nfundamental Christian principle and comes down from the origin of\nChristianity.  It is much more that Christianity has been allowed to\nbecome conventional and cheap.  It requires no effort or moral courage\nto own, in a formal sense, the name of Christ.  The result is that\nmasses of {216} men belong to the Church who are in practice living\npurely worldly lives, and that the Church and the world are fused\ntogether.  Hence it follows again that what the majority of Christians\ndo is supposed to represent a tolerable manner of life for an ordinary\nChristian, who does not profess to be better than his neighbours.\nUnder these circumstances there is nothing which is more important than\nto reassert the law of life through death as the only Christian law of\nliving.  The 'old man' is as vigorous as ever.  The world is still\ngratifying its sensual appetites and grasping after wealth without\nregard to the law of God.  Malice, jealousy, and hatred are alive and\nflourishing.  God is still being ignored, refused, blasphemed.  That is\nto say, the world of sin is still what it always was.  It is still\nunder the same unchangeable wrath of God; and still therefore to live\nto God is only possible for one who will, and that deliberately and\npersistently, die to the world.  The renunciation must be conscious and\ndeliberate.  The mortification and crucifixion of the 'old man' and\n'the body of sin' must be painful, at times even agonizing.  A\nreasonable Christian will be indeed surprised if something painful is\nnot being continually required of him.  And a reasonable Christian\n{217} rejoices to purchase, even by great sacrifices, the pearl of\ngreat price, which is fellowship with Christ:--'that he may know him\nand the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his\nsufferings, being made conformable unto his death.'  This is the point.\nIt is not enough for us to be baptized.  Our baptism is evacuated of\nall meaning unless we are also 'being converted,' or 'turning' from the\nworld to God; unless we are turning our back upon its lawless lusts,\nits worldly ambitions, its graspings after money, its refusals of pain,\nits selfish and unloving life.  Nay: all this renunciation was already\ninvolved in the Name spoken over us at our baptism.  The Christian name\npledges us to the Christian law of living by dying, progress by\nconversion.  You cannot refuse the dying without repudiating the Name.\n'Die and re-exist,' said Goethe, 'for so long as this is not\naccomplished thou art but a troubled guest upon an earth of gloom[13].'\n\n'Reckon ye, therefore, yourselves to be dead unto sin.'  This phrase,\naddressed to common Christians, supplies a magnificent instance of St.\nPaul's idealism, that is to say, of his love of {218} considering\nthings, and his desire that others should consider things, in the light\nof their central and dominant idea or principle--as they ought to be\nrather than as they are.  This is his continual practice: to idealize\nnot in the sense of thinking unreally of things, but in the sense of\nthinking of them in the light of that which is most fundamental in\nthem.  It is in this way that he thinks of 'the world,' or godless\nhuman society, and seems to represent it as worse than it sometimes\nappears, because its governing principle is radically evil.  It is in\nthis way that he thinks of the Church, and speaks of it in terms of\nglory not justified by the facts simply as they appear; because it has\nthat at work within it which is capable of transforming it until it not\nonly is, but looks like, the body of Christ, or the city of God.  This\nidealizing method is naturally distasteful to English common sense in\nmost departments of thinking, and perhaps particularly in the region of\nreligion.  But we suffer from an over-close adhesion to the 'matters of\nfact' or 'the things which do appear.'  We do not think of our life,\nourselves, our church according to the divine principle which they\nembody, or 'according to the pattern shown to us in the mount.'  Thus\n{219} we are never uplifted, enlarged, ennobled by the vision of\n\n      ... The gleam,\n  The light that never was on sea or land.\n\nThat light never was or is manifest on the surface of actual\nexperience, and yet it is always latent--the touch of glory in common\nthings, the radiance in even our dim world, 'the master light of all\nour seeing.'  We have almost all of us got to learn the practical power\nof the Christian imagination, disciplined and spiritually enlightened,\nto enrich and ennoble actual life.  The objects which our imagination\nshould reflect are realities, but realities not yet developed.  What\nour imagination should do for us is to teach us to see things not as\nthey are, but as they are coming to be.\n\n2.  'Life in Christ Jesus,' 'Christ living in me'--there can be no\nquestion that these beautiful phrases which, if St. John's witness be\ntrue, represent the teaching of Christ Himself[14], express also what\nis most central in St. Paul's idea of Christianity.  It was the great\nmerit of Matthew Arnold's _St. Paul and Protestantism_[15] that it\n{220} recalled the fact to notice in ordinary educated circles.  Recent\nscientific study of St. Paul has gone in the same direction.  The\ndoctrines of atonement and justification are essential to St. Paul's\ntheology, but not central: the doctrine of life in Christ, spiritual\nand moral identification with Christ, is both essential and central.\nThe maintenance of this life of union is again, as Matthew Arnold\nteaches us, the final and most developed function of faith--'that\nChrist may dwell in our hearts by faith'; for faith is, or grows to be,\nsuch devotion to Christ's person as desires to lose itself and its\nselfish aims in Him and His work.  But Matthew Arnold strangely leaves\nout of sight the two-sidedness of this relation: we abide in Christ by\nfaith, {221} because Christ first of all abides in us by His\nloving-kindness and grace.  It is His love, always beforehand with\nus--not merely to forgive us our sins, but to pour itself out in the\ncommunicated Spirit--that takes us up within the circle of His own\nlife; it is the act of God incorporating us into Christ which evokes\nand makes possible the response of our faith to realize His indwelling\nand make the adhesion mutual.  God's gift is prior to our response and\nthe ground of it; and moreover God's gift is permanent and abiding.  It\nwould indeed be a thought of despair if the bond between Christ and us\ndepended upon the continuous energy of our faith to maintain it.  Nay,\nit is always there--unintermittent through all our broken efforts and\nvicissitudes of will--always there for us to recur to.  We are to\nreckon ourselves 'dead to sin and alive to righteousness,' because and\nonly because we are also to reckon ourselves 'in Christ.'  That is our\npermanent state, and it is the function of faith not to create, but to\nrealize it.\n\nIt is St. Paul's clear and vivid perception of a divine gift given, a\nrelationship to God established by God's act, not ours, and that at a\nparticular time, which is closely connected with his {222} sacramental\nteaching.  If a divine gift is to be given (1) definite at a definite\ntime, (2) to men of body as well as spirit in a world not only\nspiritual but material, (3) publicly as to members of a social\norganization--it is most natural that the gift should be embodied in an\noutward rite and outward vehicle.  So St. Paul appears to think.  There\nis no shrinking about his sacramental language.  It can be said with\njustice that certain forms of sacerdotal or ecclesiastical government\nwhich have appeared in Church history would to his mind have savoured,\nor more than savoured, of bondage to men and bondage to the 'beggarly\nrudiments' of ceremonial observances.  St. Paul is very jealous of\nmaintaining what we may call spiritual individuality and personal\nliberty.  But there is no justification to be found in St. Paul's\nepistles for saying that he connects sacramentalism--i.e. the idea of\nnecessary spiritual gifts divinely promised on the occasion, and\nthrough the medium, of certain outward religious rites of a\ncommunity--with that 'bondage' to 'beggarly rudiments' of which he has\nso great a dread.  St. Paul's language does not admit of our supposing\nthat he knew of any other way of admission 'into Christ' except through\nthe gate {223} of baptism, or any other means of communion in Christ's\nbody and blood except 'the breaking of the bread.'\n\n3.  It will be necessary before we leave this great passage to give\nsome special attention to three phrases.\n\n'_Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father_.'  In the\nNew Testament the sacrifice of Christ, the atonement won by Christ, is\ncontinually ascribed to the Father, acting through and in the Son--'God\nwas in Christ reconciling the world unto himself.'  So also the\nresurrection is uniformly ascribed to the Father's power acting in the\ncase of the Son[16].  Our current Christian language has in both cases\ndeparted too widely from apostolic practice.  The doctrine of the Holy\nTrinity would be more intelligently held, and the worship of the Church\nmore normally offered in the Spirit through the Son to the Father, if\nwe had not fallen into the habit of so speaking of the action of the\nSon in dying and rising as habitually to leave out of sight the truth\nthat His action, as Son, is and {224} must always be the Father's\naction through Him; and that reversely our worship of the Son must\nalways be really, and ought to be in our habitual consciousness, the\nworship of the Father through Him.\n\n'_Our old man was crucified with him_.'  As Shelley said that, when\nAdonais died, ''tis death is dead, not he,' so in an infinitely deeper\nsense St. Paul says that what was killed upon the cross was (he does\nnot say 'instead of Christ,' but 'with Christ') sin and the 'old man.'\nThe 'old man' means the old way of living, or rather the old way of\nliving considered as having been appropriated by the sinful individual\nand thus made his own self.  Thus it was the old self that was put to\ndeath on the cross, and a new self came to life, which was the same in\nunchanged personality and yet so practically different in all its\nrelationships, that it could assert and claim exemptions from the\nobligations contracted by the 'old man.'\n\n'_That the body of sin might be done away_.'  The identification of sin\nwith the individual had been specially with his body.  His bodily\nappetites and impulses and parts had been so used to the ways of sin as\nto become a 'body of sin,' and this, St. Paul says, has to be 'done\naway' or {225} annulled.  It is not that we are to harm the body\nitself: for the body itself is good, and is to be offered, with all its\nmembers, to become the weapon of Christian warfare.  There is indeed no\nmaterial thing as such that is evil.  The 'body of sin' means exactly\n'the body considered as having become the receptacle of sin': as when\nour Lord speaks of the 'mammon of unrighteousness[17],' He means money\nwhich has become the instrument of unrighteousness, but which the\nchildren of light are to convert to profitable uses.  'To annul the\nbody of sin' means, therefore, almost the same as 'to annul sin in the\nbody' and leave the body free; but it emphasizes the fact that sin has\ngot such hold of the body that to annul sin involves annulling the\nbody: as St. Paul says elsewhere, 'I buffet' (or 'distress') 'my body\nand bring it into bondage[18].'\n\n\n\n[1] See Gal. v. 13: 'Only use not your freedom for an occasion of the\nflesh.'  Cf. 2 Pet. iii. 16, and the implications of St. James' Epistle.\n\n[2] 1 Thess. iv. 14.\n\n[3] The meaning of ver. 4 is interpreted in vers. 10, 11.\n\n[4] Ver. 4; cf. John xi. 40.  'The glory of God' is specially manifest\nin the resurrection of the dead.\n\n[5] This is the original suggestion of the word 'united' in ver. 5.\n\n[6] Cf. Col. ii. 12.\n\n[7] The Greek words represented by 'leave at the disposal of,' 'make an\noffering to,' are different parts of the same verb.  'The tense of the\nformer expresses continuance, habit; ... of the latter, a single\nirrevocable act of surrender' (Vaughan, _in loc._).\n\n[8] John xii. 24, 25.\n\n[9] It is one gain of the R.V. that for 'ye are dead' (Col. iii. 3, ii.\n20), 'we are dead' (Rom. vi. 2, 8), &c., we read 'ye died,' 'we died,'\ni.e. at the definite moment of baptism.\n\n[10] Gregory of Tours, _Hist. Franc._ ii. 31: 'To whom (Chlovis) as he\nenters the font to be baptized, the holy man of God (Remigius) thus\neloquently spoke--\"Meekly bow thy neck, Sigambrian: adore what thou\nhast burnt; burn what thou hast adored.\"'\n\n[11] Baptism by 'affusion' began within the first century, but as the\nexception, not the rule.  See app. note F.\n\n[12] By infant baptism under right conditions, I mean the baptism of\ninfants when there is some real security provided, through their\nparents or proper sponsors, for their Christian education, according to\nthe intention of the Church.  On the primitive origin of infant\nbaptism, see _Ephesians_, pp. 230, 231.\n\n[13] 'Stirb und werde!\n    Denn so lang du das nicht hast,\n    Bist du nur ein trueber Gast\n      Auf der dunkeln Erde' (quoted by M. Arnold).\n\n[14] John vi. 53-58; xiv. 19, 20; xv. 1-10; xvii. 21-23.\n\n[15] P. 81 (2nd ed.): 'The three essential terms of Pauline theology\nare not, therefore, as popular theology makes them--_calling,\njustification, sanctification_: they are rather these--_dying with\nChrist, resurrection from the dead, growing into Christ_.'  Cf. p. 76:\n'How did Paul's faith, working through love, help him [to control\nappetite and self-will]?  It enabled him to reinforce duty by\naffection.  In the central need of his nature, the desire to govern\nthese motives of unrighteousness, it enabled him to say: _Die to them_!\n_Christ did_.  If any man be in Christ, said St. Paul--that is, if any\nman identifies himself with Christ by attachment, so that he enters\ninto His feelings and lives with His life--he is a new creature; he can\ndo, and does, what Christ did.'  It would be truer, surely, to say in\nthe first of these two passages not 'the three _essential_,' &c., but\n'the three _central_.'  Nothing can be more truly essential to Pauline\ntheology than the terms, calling, justification, atonement; but the two\nlast of them at least do not belong to the central region of religion,\nbut have to do with the removal of preliminary obstacles to our\nentrance upon it.\n\n[16] The apparent exception is John x. 18; but even there the word\nrendered 'take' would perhaps be better rendered 'receive.'  Christ had\nthe right to lay down His own life and the right to receive it again\nfrom the Father.  So Hort, _First Ep. of Peter_, pp. 34, 84.\n\n[17] Luke xvi. 9.\n\n[18] 1 Cor. ix. 27.\n\n\n\n\n{226}\n\nDIVISION III.  Sec. 4.  CHAPTER VI. 15-23.\n\n_The perfect freedom is God's service._\n\nThe reiterated mention of the deliverance of the Christian from the\nyoke of the law--'Ye are not under law, but under grace'--brings up the\nexcuse for licentious living in a new form:--'This very abolition of\nthe strict power of the law in favour of a system of which the ruling\nprinciple is God's goodness, at least makes one willing to contemplate\nany particular act of sin[1], with a good hope of escaping punishment.'\nSt. Paul meets the suggestion with a 'God forbid,' and then gives a\ndeep reason for repudiating it, a reason however which is but a version\nof our Lord's saying, 'Every one that committeth sin is the slave of\nsin[2].'  Every man is always acting under obedience.  What he {227}\ndoes in a particular case represents an act of obedience to some\nmaster; that is to say, a taking service with him.  Moreover it appears\non reflection that it must be with one of two masters and cannot be\nwith both, for 'no man can serve two masters.'  It is either with sin,\nwhose service ends in spiritual as well as physical death, or with Him\nto whom obedience is properly due, whose service ends in righteousness.\nWhat gives St. Paul reason for thankfulness in thinking of the\nconversion of the Christians at Rome, is not that those who became\nChristians became thereby exempt from obedience, but that they changed\ntheir allegiance from sin to Christ.  At their conversion they gladly\nsubmitted to a pattern or standard of teaching--the teaching of\nChrist--to which they were handed over for the fashioning of their\nlives--that is to say, they were made free from sin only to become\nslaves to righteousness.  He uses the word slavery because so long as\ntheir weak flesh shrinks from divine obedience, they must recognize\nthat the life which is really liberty must be accepted even as a\nbondage, till it cease to seem so.  In old days they offered their\nlimbs as slaves to uncleanness and lawlessness, and the result was a\nlawless life.  {228} Now they must yield their limbs as slaves to\nrighteousness with a view to a consecrated life.  And the change of\nallegiance is surely matter for congratulation.  They can recall the\ndays when they were free from the service of righteousness, as being\nslaves of sin, and they can remember what fruit they enjoyed as the\nresult of experiences which they now blush to bring to mind.  Of such\nexperiences death, moral no less than physical, is the result.  Now,\nset free from sin's slavery and made God's slaves, they enjoy the\npresent fruit of consecration to God and the ultimate prospect of\neternal life.  So long as Sin was their master he would pay them their\nwages, and the wages which Sin pays is always death.  But now that they\nare surrendered into God's hands, and simply dependent on His\nloving-kindness, there is no question of wages, but the gift of His\nbounty is eternal life, in Him whose life includes their own, Jesus\nChrist their Lord.\n\n\nWhat then? shall we sin, because we are not under law, but under grace?\nGod forbid.  Know ye not, that to whom ye present yourselves _as_\nservants unto obedience, his servants ye are whom ye obey; whether of\nsin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?  But thanks be to\nGod, that, whereas ye were servants of sin, ye became obedient from the\nheart to that form of teaching {229} whereunto ye were delivered; and\nbeing made free from sin, ye became servants of righteousness.  I speak\nafter the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as\nye presented your members _as_ servants to uncleanness and to iniquity\nunto iniquity, even so now present your members _as_ servants to\nrighteousness unto sanctification.  For when ye were servants of sin,\nye were free in regard of righteousness.  What fruit then had ye at\nthat time in the things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of\nthose things is death.  But now being made free from sin, and become\nservants to God, ye have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end\neternal life.  For the wages of sin is death; but the free gift of God\nis eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.\n\n\n1.  St. Paul is here expounding the real meaning of human liberty.  It\nis generally regarded as the power 'to do as one pleases' or a state of\nindependence.  But such a state does not exist.  There is indeed such a\nthing as the absence of external control up to a certain point.  That\nis an element of liberty, but it reaches but a little way.  The true\nliberty is the power to realize one's nature and make the best of\noneself--the power to be what one ought to be or is meant to be.  The\ninstinct of language, as applied to man, recognizes this.  When we see\na drunkard, we recognize a man the balance of whose nature is upset.\nThe higher part of his nature is being dragged at the chariot-wheels of\nhis lower.  So, {230} be he never so free a citizen, we call him a\nslave--a slave of drink.  On the same principle we speak of the slaves\nof lust or the slaves of money or the slaves of fashion or the slaves\nof popularity.  By these phrases we describe various moral states in\nwhich some external or purely animal force dominates a man, and he\nloses his self-control, and his whole nature becomes disordered.  The\ntrue order of human nature is that a man's body should be controlled by\nhis will.  Then he is self-determined.  His whole life is the\nexpression of a rational principle.  He makes the best of himself.  He\nis free to be a real man, according to the proper idea of manhood.\n\nBut how can this be?  Can this reason or rational will in man stand and\nwork of itself?  Is it so constructed as to be independent?  No.  Just\nas truly as a man's bodily forces are drawn from sources outside\nhimself, so his spiritual being depends on sources and motives beyond\nhimself.\n\nWhat does man's 'freedom of will' consist of?  Speaking exactly, it\nconsists of a power to _direct_ a certain amount of physical force\nwhich passes into one's bodily frame, and to let it go out in one or\nanother form of action, deed or word or {231} thought, more or less\nmoral or immoral, spiritual or carnal.  And this liberty of direction,\nwhen more closely examined, is found to consist in a power which the\nwill has to choose between motives which present themselves as ideas to\nthe mind and to hand itself over to one or the other.  Some of these\nmotives are derived from physical or worldly appetites; some are\nderived through the conscience or faculty of spiritual apprehension.\nIf, in cases where the lower motives conflict with the higher, a man\nstill yields himself to the latter, his life is spiritual; and it is so\nbecause it is determined by motives and reinforced by influences which\ncome from beyond himself, and are in fact the motives and forces of the\nSpirit of God.  But in neither case is he independent and free from\nobedience.  He stands at a meeting-point of the spiritual and material\nworld, and must be governed by one or the other.  In either case man's\nlife is played upon and dominated by motive-forces, infinitely vaster\nand mightier than himself.  Let him try (as he has tried) to forget his\nnecessary dependence--to detach himself from the higher obedience and\nto 'be as God,' independent--and he falls necessarily under the\ndominion of the lower forces, of his flesh or of the world.  If he is\nto cease {232} to live below himself, he must consent to surrender to\nwhat is above himself.  He must yield his spirit to the divine Spirit,\nwhich is its natural master.  So he ceases to be carnal, or governed by\nthe flesh, and becomes spiritual, or governed by the divine Spirit.\nAnd that is liberty.  'That man,' said Leo the Great, 'has true peace\nand liberty whose flesh is controlled by the judgement of his mind, as\nhis mind is directed by the government of God[3].'  God's service, and\nthat only, is perfect freedom.\n\nMan then is so constructed that he can only cease to fall below himself\nby being raised above himself.  His life cannot fail to be stamped with\nthe impress of sin unless it is stamped with the impress of God.  The\nstate of the Christian, surrendered to the fashioning of God, is that\ntrue dependence which is the true liberty.  Independent of God, man\nstands at last over against God to get what his independent action has\nmerited; and that is penal death, the inevitable outcome of misused\nfaculties, enslaved to sin.  Surrendered to God in faith, on the other\nhand, he receives into his nature, through all its open portals, the\ninflooding tide of divine love; and enters, enriched and uplifted, into\nthe life that {233} is eternal, the life which he shares with Jesus,\nthe life that is truly human and really divine.\n\nIt is of great practical importance that we should get a just idea of\nwhat our freedom consists in.  There are men who, under the impulse of\na purely materialist science, declare the sense of moral freedom to be\nan illusion.  This is of course a gross error.  But what has largely\nplayed into the hands of this error is the exaggerated idea of human\nfreedom which is ordinarily current, an idea which can only be held by\nignoring our true and necessary dependence and limitation.  It is this\nthat we need to have brought home to us.  There is an admirable story\namong George Crabbe's Tales, called 'The Gentleman Farmer.'  The hero\nstarts in life resolved that he will not put up with any bondage.  The\northodox clergyman, the orthodox physician, and orthodox matrimony--all\nthese alike represent social bondage in different forms, and he will\nhave none of them.  So he starts on a career of 'unchartered freedom,'\n\n  'To prove that _he alone was king of him_.'\n\nAnd the last scene of all represents him the weak slave of his\nmistress, a quack doctor, and a revivalist--'which things are an\nallegory.'\n\n{234}\n\n2.  The phrase 'a form' or 'pattern of teaching,' is interesting.  It\nsuggests the idea of the Church as holding a 'pattern of sound\nwords[4],' a definite body of instruction, which is to form the life of\neach person who gives himself over to her loving discipline.  Christian\nfaith is not a formless impulse; it is self-surrender to a corporate\nlife ruled on a definite model of religious and moral teaching.  What\nSt. Paul has here chiefly in mind is moral teaching.  But the moral\nteaching was inseparable from religious facts and motives.  Nor is it\ndifficult to ascertain from the allusions of the New Testament what the\nsubjects were in which the first Christians were orally instructed, or,\nin other words, what constituted 'the tradition' which lies behind the\nwritten books of the New Testament.  It comprised instruction in (1)\nthe facts of our Lord's life, death, and resurrection[5]; (2) the\nmeaning of sacred rites--baptism, laying on of hands,\neucharist[6]--including the Lord's Prayer[7]; (3) the moral duties of\n'the way,' and the doctrine 'of the resurrection of {235} the dead and\nof eternal judgement[8]'; (4) the meaning of 'the Name of the Father,\nand of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost[9].'  On all these subjects the\nbooks of the New Testament do not give the primary instruction, but\nimply that it has been already given.\n\n3.  The word rendered 'sanctification' (vers. 19, 22) is one which\nneeds to have its primitive force restored to it[10].  The 'saint' is\nthe person set apart for the worship and service of God.  What is here\ntranslated 'sanctification' means literally (1) 'the process of being\nmade fit for such worship and service,' that is, consecration as of a\npriest; or (2) by a slight transition of meaning, the result of such\nconsecration, i.e. 'holiness.'\n\n\n\n[1] The tense of the verb in 'shall we sin' appears to indicate an act,\nnot a habit of sin.\n\n[2] John viii. 34.\n\n[3] _Serm._ xxxix. 2.\n\n[4] 2 Tim. i. 13.\n\n[5] Cf. Luke i. 1-4; 1 Cor. xi. 23; xv. 3, 4.\n\n[6] Cf. Rom. vi. 3; Heb. vi. 1-6; 1 Cor. x. 15, 16; xi. 23 ff.; Acts\nii. 38.\n\n[7] _Didache_, 8; cf. below, p. 293.\n\n[8] Heb. vi. 1, 2; 1 Thess. iv. 1, 2; v. 2.\n\n[9] See Hort, _First Ep. of Peter_, p. 18, for the fact that 'a\nrecognized belief or idea [of the threefold Name] seems to be\neverywhere presupposed.'\n\n[10] Cf. above, pp. 31, 32.\n\n\n\n\n{236}\n\nDIVISION III.  Sec. 5.  CHAPTER VII. 1-6.\n\n_Freedom from the law by union with Christ._\n\nSt. Paul is full of two thoughts.  The first is that of life out of\ndeath, living by dying.  He had lived an old life in which 'those\nmultitudinous motions of appetite and self-will which reason and\nconscience disapproved, reason and conscience could yet not govern, and\nhad to yield to them.  This, as we shall see, is what drove Paul almost\nto despair[1].'  He had passed to a new life in which he found in\nactual, blessed experience that he could do the thing that he would.\nHe could do all things--through Christ that strengthened him.  For it\nwas Christ who had been the means of transferring him from the old life\nto the new, and that by His own way of dying to live.  Christ Himself\nhad lived 'by the Spirit' deliberately and always.  He {237} had never\nfailed morally to do the thing that He would.  But so violent was the\nantagonism between His life of divine obedience (with the claims that\nit involved upon other men) and 'the sinful, wilful, weak world around,\nthat the world could not tolerate His presence in it; and it came to\nthis--that He could only live by the Spirit at the cost of dying to the\nworld, i.e. choosing to be put to death sooner than give up obedience\nto His Father.  He chose to die, and thus dying He lived through death\nin the life of the Spirit, and was raised again from death in body\nalso.  Now Christ had brought St. Paul--as He would bring all men--into\nunion with His new life, and by the same method.  St. Paul had had to\ndie to the sinful world in order to live to God.  But he, being not\nonly a man but a sinner, was obliged not only, like Christ, to die to\nsin in the world--he had also to die to sin in himself.  In other\nwords, he had to 'crucify his flesh with its affections and\nlusts'--that is, 'his old man' or old way of living.  He had, by the\nhelp of Christ's Spirit, to assert his inner self or personality\nagainst a false self--a false way of life--which had appropriated him\nand held him captive.  Only by being emancipated from the {238} 'old\nman' could he come to live 'in Christ.'  It is this transference from\nthe 'old man,' or old way of life, to the new, by means of a death that\nSt. Paul here describes under the figure of a second marriage.  The\nman's true self was as a wife married to 'the old man.'  The old man\nwas nailed to Christ's cross (vi. 6)--that is, the old way of life was\nput an end to, even with violence.  Thus the wife, the human\npersonality, is, according to the law of marriage, free to contract a\nsecond union with Christ, the second Man.  This is one of the main\nthoughts in St. Paul's mind.\n\nBut it is entangled with a second.  The 'old man' was closely\nassociated with 'the law'--the law which had awakened it out of its\nlife of moral apathy by its stern reminders of the will of God.  The\nlaw had reminded, instructed, enlightened; but it could not give the\ninward power needed to obey its requirements.  It served but to bring\nto light the tyranny of sin which made man incapable of yielding\nobedience to the will of God; it even augmented its power by\nstimulating it to opposition.  The law therefore belonged purely and\nsimply to the old condition of moral impotence--the life 'in the flesh'\nand not 'in the Spirit.'  It fulfilled the {239} only function it could\nfulfil in awaking the consciousness of sin.  Thus to pass from 'the\nlife of the flesh' to 'the life in the Spirit' was to pass out of its\ndominion.  This is the other thought with which St. Paul is occupied in\nthe passage we are just going to read.  This too he expresses with the\nhelp of the figure of death.  Human law only regards a living man.\nDeath acquits him from law by taking him out of the region where it\napplies.  Therefore, when a man dies with Christ to the 'old man,' he\npasses out of the reach of the law which threatened the old man but had\nno function beyond that.\n\nEach of these two thoughts is quite distinct and clear; but they are\nfused in the present passage.  St. Paul begins with the second, to show\nthat the 'dead' Christian is free from the law (ver. 1; cf. vi. 7).\nBut marriage law is taken as an example of law, and by this link we\npass from the second thought to the first.  But the second thought\nrequires the man's _self_ to die with Christ to escape from the region\nof law.  The first thought, on the other hand, requires the 'old man,'\nor old mode of life, to die, to leave the man's real self free to be\nmarried to Christ; and this change of subject {240} introduces\nconfusion into the passage.  The attempts to show that there is no\nconfusion are not successful.  In ver. 1 the idea plainly is that the\nself dies, as in vi. 7.  In ver. 4 the main idea plainly is that the\n'old man' is dead, and has left the self free to contract a new\nmarriage.  But the other idea is still sufficiently dominant to cause\nSt. Paul to say 'ye died to the law,' instead of 'your old man was\ncrucified.'  Morally, of course, the two phrases mean the same thing;\nand one who, like St. Paul, is _dictating_ a letter, is specially\nliable to verbal confusions even when his thought is clear.\n\nAfter these explanations the analysis shall be made as brief as\npossible.  St. Paul, having, in the latter part of the sixth chapter,\nshown that the abolition of the power of the law is no excuse for sin,\nrecurs to and develops the principles which he has now guarded from\nabuse, viz. that the power of the law is past for the Christian.  He is\nwriting, he says, to men, whether themselves Jews or not, who\nunderstand what law means, and that its dominion over a man ends with\nhis death.  It has no jurisdiction beyond the grave.  He takes the\nmarriage law ('the law of or {241} 'concerning the husband,' ver. 2) as\nan illustration.  Without noticing the exceptions in the way of\npossibilities of divorce which the Jewish law admitted, he lays it down\ngenerally that 'the law of the husband' binds the wife till death, but\ndeath dissolves its power.  When her husband is dead she is\n'discharged' and free to be married again.  (Here we have passed from\nthe idea of a man escaping by death out of the dominion of law to that\nof his death dissolving the force of law in the interests of another,\nviz. his wife.)  That is the state of the Christian's real self.\nChrist's body, St. Paul says, was nailed to the cross, and you were put\nto death there with Him; or rather, your 'old man' was put to death\nthere, and you were left, like wives discharged from the marriage law\nby the intervention of death, free to be united to the risen Christ,\nand to see fruits of your new union such as God can approve.  There\nwere fruits from the former union with the 'old man,' in the days when\nyou were still under the power of the flesh.  The body was subject to\nfeelings and emotions which, under the provocation of the law, became\nthe instruments of sin; and these all at work in our limbs\n(constituting the 'old man,' and having {242} ourselves for the\nsubject-wife) brought forth the fruits of actions fit only for a\nkingdom of death.  But now we are discharged from the law, like the\nwife whose husband is dead, having died to that in which we were held\ncaptive, and come to life in a new region; so that we can be\nslaves--that, as we have seen in the last chapter, we must always be,\nso far as yielding a complete obedience is concerned--only no longer\nunder the old bondage of a written law, but in the new freedom of the\nempowering Spirit.\n\n\nOr are ye ignorant, brethren (for I speak to men that know the law),\nhow that the law hath dominion over a man for so long time as he\nliveth?  For the woman that hath a husband is bound by law to the\nhusband while he liveth; but if the husband die, she is discharged from\nthe law of the husband.  So then if, while the husband liveth, she be\njoined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if the\nhusband die, she is free from the law, so that she is no adulteress,\nthough she be joined to another man.  Wherefore, my brethren, ye also\nwere made dead to the law through the body of Christ; that ye should be\njoined to another, _even_ to him who was raised from the dead, that we\nmight bring forth fruit unto God.  For when we were in the flesh, the\nsinful passions, which were through the law, wrought in our members to\nbring forth fruit unto death.  But now we have been discharged from the\nlaw, having died to that wherein we were holden; so that we serve in\nnewness of the spirit, and not in oldness of the letter.\n\n{243}\n\n1.  If we ask ourselves what is practically meant by St. Paul's idea of\nthe marriage of the redeemed soul to Christ, which supplements his\nthought of the whole Church as the bride of Christ[2], the answer seems\nto be that it is made up of a moral and a theological factor.  The\nmoral factor is the idea of the devotion of the believer to Christ--'as\na young man marrieth a virgin.'  The theological idea is that of the\nrisen Christ making the soul of the believer fruitful in good works by\ninfusing into it His own Spirit or life.\n\n2.  The conception of the freedom of the redeemed from the moral and\nceremonial law is very easily realized by reference to our ideas of\ncivic freedom in connexion with the criminal law.  The criminal law\nexists, and the policemen are among its administrative officers, but\nthe respectable citizen is free in his relation to the criminal law,\nand passes the policeman without any sense of alarm--not because he is\nat liberty to break the law, but because he has become accustomed to a\nway of living with which the agents of the law are not called upon to\ninterfere.  It is in a sense like this that St. Paul conceives the\nChristians to have escaped from the bondage of the Mosaic law.\n\n{244}\n\n3.  What is the meaning of the common phrase our 'passions'?  It refers\nto those feelings which we experience without any action of our will.\nIt may be a mere neutral sensation of smell.  It may be a feeling of\nhunger, thirst, desire, anger.  These are our 'passions' as opposed to\nour actions.  These appeal to the will as motives, and it appertains to\nthe will to determine whether it will yield to them and so translate\npassions into voluntary actions.  When the will is weak, and passion is\nallowed to pass into action uncontrolled, the man becomes the slave of\nsin, and his passions, in themselves innocent or only constituting the\nmaterial of temptation, become the 'sinful passions' of which St. Paul\nspeaks in this place.\n\n\n\n[1] Matthew Arnold, _St. Paul and Protestantism_, p. 76.\n\n[2] Eph. v. 22.\n\n\n\n\n{245}\n\nDIVISION III.  Sec. 6.  CHAPTER VII. 7-25.\n\n_The function and failure of the law._\n\nThe somewhat confused passage just dealt with, in which several moral\nideas and metaphors are struggling for the mastery, is followed by a\nfamous passage of luminous power in which St. Paul expounds, with a\nprofound insight into human nature, the function and failure of law.\n\nThe close alliance into which St. Paul constantly puts 'the law' with\nthe reign of sin, an alliance hardly suggested by any other New\nTestament teacher, suggests inevitably the idea that St. Paul, like the\nlater Gnostics, regarded the law itself as 'sin,' that is, as owing its\norigin to the power of evil and working for its ends.  Such an idea he\nof course repudiates.  But all the same it is law, written or\nproclaimed, and law only, which both awakens the sense of sin in man\nand stimulates sin itself to put {246} forth its power.  Let me take\nmyself, we may imagine St. Paul as saying (for the 'I' of this passage\nis very far from being strictly autobiographical), as representing man\nin his moral history.  I was alive apart from any law once.  That is to\nsay, I lived as suited me best, according to my instincts, asking no\nmoral questions and troubled by no scruples.  And all this time sin,\nconsidered as a moral tyrant, was as if dead.  I had no defined moral\nideal and consequently no struggle and no failure.  Then comes the law\nwith its 'Thou shalt not covet' (or do this or that).  It imposes\nlimits in the name of God on my life of instinct.  It cries 'Hands\noff!'  At once I find opposition between me and the law.  I do covet\nthis and that which the law says I must not have.  I find myself in the\neye of the moral law a transgressor.  And there is something more than\nmy own lawless desire in opposition to the law.  I become conscious of\na great power of sin at work in the world and in me--something greater\nthan myself, which intervenes in the struggle and reinforces the\nopposition to the law.  The tyrant Sin rouses himself on the pretext\nafforded by the hostile commandment, and exercises his power both by\nstimulating my desires, like Eve's (ver. 8), and {247} deceiving my\nintelligence, like hers, to believe that good is evil (ver. 11), and so\nbrings me by means of the commandment into a state of flat disobedience\nto the law, which is death.  For the law was given for life--'This do,\nand thou shalt live'; but there is the necessary converse--'This\ntransgress, and thou shalt die' (vers. 7-11).\n\nThe law then, it is quite plain, is the expression of the will of God.\nAnd the particular commandment is holy and righteous and good.  Is the\ngood then my poison?  No.  But what has happened is this--the\nexpression of the good in the law has brought the tyranny of sin out\ninto the light.  It had me in its power before, but I did not know it\nand I did not struggle.  But as soon as the law aroused in me the\nbeginning of moral consciousness, sin used the commandment as its knife\nto kill me; and so showed its hideous character--which indeed it was\nthe divine intention to uncloak by means of the law (12-13).\n\nFor this it is that we must recognize as the true state of the case.\nOn the one hand a spiritual law proclaimed over me.  On the other hand\na man who in virtue of my fleshly nature have been sold to be a slave\nof sin, and who as a slave {248} find myself doing acts by force of\ncircumstances, the true nature of which I do not understand, and which,\nso far from choosing, I hate (vers. 14, 15).  For I am not only of this\nfleshly nature; I have also a conscience which responds to the claim of\nthe law and recognizes it as right.  But my wish to obey the law is not\nstrong enough to carry my flesh with it.  Thus my actual practice is in\nflat contradiction to the ideal of my choice.  But henceforth my will\nis on the side of the law, and myself is in my will[1].  What runs so\nuncontrollably to evil is, it appears, not myself at all, but the alien\ntyranny of sin which has taken possession of me and made my flesh its\nhaunt and instrument--the haunt and instrument of evil only and not of\ngood.  So I can only wish good and practise evil, and become more and\nmore conscious that I am not my own master.  The law of God, accepted\nby my will, becomes the law of my mind or inner being; but when I seek\nto impose it on my limbs and act accordingly, I find another law--the\nlaw of the tyrant Sin--holding sway in my lower nature; my authority is\ndefied and {249} I myself am dragged in humiliating captivity to sin in\nmy lower nature (vers. 16-23).  My body has become the death of my\nspirit.  It is my prison-house.  I cry out in my misery for\ndeliverance.  And it is this deliverance which I praise God for having\ngiven me through Jesus Christ our Lord.  (By union with Him my higher\nself is reinforced, and I can control my lower nature and become my own\nmaster.)  But in my isolated, unassisted self, the best that I can get\nto is a flat contradiction between the service of the law of God in my\nmind and the service of sin in my flesh (vers. 24, 25).\n\n\nWhat shall we say then?  Is the law sin?  God forbid.  Howbeit, I had\nnot known sin, except through the law: for I had not known coveting,\nexcept the law had said, Thou shall not covet: but sin, finding\noccasion, wrought in me through the commandment all manner of coveting:\nfor apart from the law sin is dead.  And I was alive apart from the law\nonce: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died; and the\ncommandment, which was unto life, this I found _to be_ unto death: for\nsin, finding occasion, through the commandment beguiled me, and through\nit slew me.  So that the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and\nrighteous, and good.  Did then that which is good become death unto me?\nGod forbid.  But sin, that it might be shewn to be sin, by working\ndeath to me through that which is good;--that through the commandment\nsin might become exceeding sinful.  For we know that the law is\nspiritual: but I am carnal, {250} sold under sin.  For that which I do\nI know not: for not what I would, that do I practise; but what I hate,\nthat I do.  But if what I would not, that I do, I consent unto the law\nthat it is good.  So now it is no more I that do it, but sin which\ndwelleth in me.  For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth\nno good thing: for to will is present with me, but to do that which is\ngood is not.  For the good which I would I do not: but the evil which I\nwould not, that I practise.  But if what I would not, that I do, it is\nno more I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in me.  I find then the\nlaw[2], that, to me who would do good, evil is present.  For I delight\nin the law of God after the inward man: but I see a different law in my\nmembers, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into\ncaptivity under the law of sin which is in my members.  O wretched man\nthat I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?  I thank\nGod through Jesus Christ our Lord.  So then I myself with the mind\nserve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.\n\n\ni.\n\nSt. Paul, as has been said, is constantly in his epistles of this\nperiod stating briefly or alluding to the failure of 'the law' to\nsupply man with the moral strength needed to live a good life at peace\nwith God.  Thus: 'The power of sin is the law.'  'As many as are of the\nworks of the law are under a curse.'  'The letter (the written law)\nkilleth.'  'Through the law cometh the {251} knowledge of sin.'  'The\nlaw worketh wrath.'  'The law came in beside, that the trespass might\nabound[3].'  The first of these sayings, occurring as it does\naltogether out of apparent connexion with the context, shows us as\nclearly as anything could how full of the idea his mind was.  But only\nhere, in this chapter, does he open his heart to us to show us the\nexperience on which such a strange and original conclusion was based.\n\nWe can imagine a youth of intensely susceptible moral and religious\nnature like Saul of Tarsus passing out of the home of his boyhood into\nthe school of Gamaliel in Jerusalem.  The one subject of instruction\nthere was 'the law'--the divine law which was the pride of Israel's\nrace--in all the grand severity of its moral requirement and in all the\ncomplexity of its ritual regulations.  It was the one topic.  And all\nabout him he saw the Pharisees building up the fabric of a meritorious\nlife before God out of their observances.  Now, no doubt the most\neasily self-satisfied Pharisees made much of the principle of\ncompensation--that 'obedience to certain laws' (e.g. the law of the\nsabbath or 'the law of fringes') 'was as good as obedience to the {252}\nwhole[4].'  The Pharisee of our Lord's parable who went up to the\ntemple to pray, satisfied himself because he observed certain practices\nbeyond the requirements of the law.  Our Lord bears witness that the\nScribes and Pharisees paid tithe of mint and anise and\ncummin--traditional extensions of the law--and omitted the weightier\nmatters, judgement, mercy, and faith, yet were righteous in their own\neyes.  On the other hand, the maxim of St. James, 'Whosoever shall keep\nthe whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is become guilty of\nall,' was a commonplace of the Jewish schools.\n\nThere can be no doubt that it must have been the severer teaching that\nfastened upon young Saul's mind.  He acknowledged himself a 'debtor to\nkeep the whole law[5].'  And in ritual detail, though no doubt the\neffort required was immense, he managed to be 'blameless[6].'  But in\nthe weightier and deeper matters it was not so.  The moral law,\nenforced and commented upon, continually confronting him with its 'Thou\nshalt not,' brought to light in him the fact of sin--in desire, we\nshould gather, rather than in act or word.  The law said 'Thou shalt\nnot covet' (or {253} lust).  And Saul said, 'But I do lust after this\nand that and the other.  My heart and my desires are not in harmony\nwith the law.  Nay, the very fact that the law prohibits it seems to\nmake my wrong desire stronger.'  So the whole Pharisaic idea of a moral\nlife--the standing over against God and building up a fabric of\nmerits--seemed to be unsatisfactory.  The fabric in his own case was\nfull of internal rottenness.  It would not bear severe examination.\nMoreover he could not but observe the lives of those around him who\nwere so well satisfied with their moral edifices, and he recognized\nthat their satisfaction was due to nothing but hypocrisy or\nshallowness.  As he went later to Jewish settlements in various\ncentres, he saw always the picture of a life fair in its own eyes and\nrotten in fact.  His general experience of Jewish life is summed up\nstrongly enough in the second chapter of this epistle.  Thus he drew\nthe conclusion that the law could not be really kept--it was only\npossible to keep it by means of evasions and compensations which made\nit worse than useless.\n\nMeanwhile there was forming itself in Saul's mind the conviction that\nthe whole attitude of the Pharisees towards God was false.  They lived\nas if God had made a contract or covenant with {254} them, and within\nthe terms of this covenant man could deal with God on an independent\nbasis.  God must keep to His covenant and not augment it or change it.\nAnd on their side the people of God under the covenant had nothing to\ndo but to keep their part of the bargain and claim their reward with a\nconscious and proper pride in the merits of their race and of\nthemselves.  This was exactly the spirit in which they rejected Jesus\nas the Christ, as it was also exactly this spirit which He had chosen\nfor His sternest denunciations.  But all this idea of merits, all this\nboasting, must have come to seem to Saul's mind monstrously untrue to\nthe real fundamental relation of man to God.  For who maketh thee to\ndiffer? and what hast thou, O Jew, that thou didst not receive?  And if\nthou didst receive it, why dost thou boast thyself as if thou hadst not\nreceived it?  Thus St. Paul's training must not only have made him feel\nthat he could not satisfy himself in keeping the whole law; but it must\nalso have convinced him that law itself as a principle, law as\nunderstood and represented among the orthodox Jews, was fundamentally\nand permanently incompatible with the real relation of man to God.\nThere were many elements in the Old Testament, {255} notably in the\nPsalms, in which a quite different relation of man to God was\nindicated--a relation of meek trust as of a son to a father, and of\npenitence and dependence and peace.  But in the teaching St. Paul had\nreceived, the law, the legal covenant of man and God, which suggested a\nquite different moral attitude, was the essential element; and that, we\nmust suppose, he felt increasingly sure was a foundation on which he\ncould not stand.\n\nNo doubt these deep questionings about the law, and the growing misery\naccompanying them, made him at first all the more zealous for it.  No\ndoubt they explain his fanaticism against the Christians.  No doubt his\n'kicking against the goad' represents the rebellion of his heart\nagainst anything which seemed to threaten the position of the law of\nhis fathers, and especially against the utter upheaval of foundations\ninvolved in accepting for Christ Him whom the leaders of his people had\nrejected and caused to be crucified.  But when he had effected the\ngreat transition, when he had found in Jesus Christ all that satisfied\nhis deepest instincts about God and his deepest desires for union with\nHim, his old experience of the law took shape in a profound theory of\nits place in the divine {256} education of the human race.  Ultimately\nman is meant to be in such close and harmonious relations to the divine\nSpirit that he should both know what is right and do it by an inner\nlight and power.  But an outward written law was a necessary prelude to\nthis; and that in the main because sin--individual sins and the long\ntradition of sin--had hardened men's consciences and blinded their\neyes, and the divine law as proclaimed through the conscience had\nbecome in consequence either utterly inadequate or had even been\nsilenced altogether.  A written law therefore, peremptory and explicit,\nand announcing its sanction in definite penalties, was needed to teach\nmen anew what God really required.  It was given in such a mode as\nthrew men on their own independent moral strength, and by that very\nfact convinced the best among them of their inward weakness and sin;\nwhile to many more it appeared rather as involving an impossible\neffort--as 'a yoke which neither they nor their fathers were able to\nbear.'  In either case it was their 'tutor to bring them to\nChrist'--with His teaching of God, not as a taskmaster, but as a\nFather, righteous indeed, but still more loving.  And if there were\nothers again, shallow or worthless men, whom the law simply hardened\n{257} in the superficial self-righteousness of mere 'observances,' or\nthe worst sort of religious hypocrisy, that was only another way of\ndemonstrating its inadequacy.  It left the world to choose between the\nPharisees and Christ as representing real righteousness.\n\nThis 'doctrine of the law' involves both its necessary function and its\nfailure.  There can be indeed to no thoughtful mind any doubt as to its\nnecessary function.  Conscience, individual and social, is continually\ngoing to sleep.  It may be taken quite for certain that if Christ were\namongst us in manifest power by His Spirit to-day--as He ought to be in\nthe Church--our society as a whole would be smitten anew with a sense\nof sin, and not least of social sin[7].  Our familiar excuses for our\nselfish indulgence of our lusts, for our weak surrenders to passion and\nimpulse, for our commercial dishonesties, for our failures to carry\nrighteousness into politics, for our social injustices, for our\nselfishness and {258} luxury, for our scamped and half-hearted\nwork--the familiar pleas of commercial or physical necessity, or\npolitical exigencies, or lack of knowledge, or absence of\nresponsibility, or the influence of heredity--would dry up and wither\non our lips under the powerful glare of the divine 'letter'--Thou\nshalt, Thou shalt not.  God hath not 'given any man license to sin,' He\nhath given no man exemption from the trouble or the suffering or the\nloss involved in doing right.  The obligation is peremptory to be just,\nto be merciful, to be honest, to be self-denying, to be pure.  And if\nwe do not care to take the trouble to be so, the only alternative is to\nhave Christ for our adversary, and find at last the horrible depth of\nmeaning which His words contain--'Thus and thus have ye made void the\nword of God by your tradition.'  'Inasmuch as ye did it not, depart, ye\ncursed, into eternal fire!'  'It is good for thee to enter into the\nkingdom of God maimed or halt or with one eye, rather than having two\nhands or feet or eyes to be cast into hell, where their worm dieth not\nand the fire is not quenched.'  These and the like words are\nmetaphorical--but metaphors which are intended to teach the heart only\nthe more vividly because they are metaphorical.\n\n{259}\n\nIndeed, in each age, and therefore in ours, most fertile of excuses, we\nneed the letter to kill us; the stern, outward, unmistakable\nannouncement of God's will to assure us that God does not change with\nour whims or feelings, and cannot accommodate Himself to immoral\nnecessities.  In each age, and therefore in ours, most capable of moral\nself-deception, we need continual and forcible reminders that a quiet\nconscience is no adequate guarantee of agreement with God, unless we\nhave taken pains to keep our conscience enlightened by meditating on\nthe divine word.\n\nAnd if St. Paul's account of the function of 'the law' is true, so also\nis his account of its necessary failure.  It is obviously true if you\nconfine 'the law' to meaning what in the tradition of the Pharisees it\nhad come to mean, or what in his ideal way of thinking St. Paul defined\nit to mean--that is, not the whole Old Testament with its anticipations\nin prophecy and psalm of the temper of sonship and its evangelical\nforecasts of the new covenant, but bare precept, expressing externally\nand unmistakably the will of God.  Mere law, instructing men truly and\nsearchingly as to God's requirement in thought as well as word and\ndeed, instructing {260} men and challenging them, and doing nothing\nmore, is so manifestly incomplete an expression of God's relation to\nman, quite apart from all question of its ritual elements, that it can\nin the nature of things serve only a temporary purpose in the\nconscience, by leading us to a truer knowledge of Him who terrifies\nindeed, but only in order to reassure, and kills but only in order to\nraise to life again.\n\n\nii.\n\nAt this point it is necessary to answer the two much-disputed\nquestions--and it is possible to do it briefly--Is St. Paul, in giving\nthis summary of moral experience, speaking 'of himself or of some other\nman'? and--Is the struggle described in verses 14-24 to be regarded as\noccurring without or within the frontiers of the regenerate state?\n\nThere is no doubt that St. Paul must be in part really describing an\nexperience through which he passed.  He was really, we may imagine,\n'alive without the law once' in the sense that he was brought up a\nhappy Jewish child, under the law but not deeply feeling the terror of\nits claims, until he was growing towards {261} the 'independent' period\nof life and found himself confronted with its requirements in detail.\nThere need be no doubt that he is speaking of some experience of his\nown when he alludes, here as elsewhere, to the deceitfulness of sin;\nand when he describes the two stages of moral progress--the first, in\nwhich the conscience of the man is awakened to recognize that his\nhabitual practice is not in any full sense controlled by his reason and\nwill; and the second, in which the will is deliberately enlisted on the\nside of good, and the man only made thereby the more conscious that his\nwill is in no real control of his actions, but that he is the captive\nof the alien power of sin.  In some sense, though St. Paul does not\ngive us the materials for saying exactly in what sense, he must have\npassed through these stages of experience.  He must have really felt\nhimself the slave of sin, though the sin was of a sort which left him,\n'as touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.'  He\nmust have felt that he could not do what he ought; and the bitterness\nof his persecuting zeal may have been in part the reflection of this\nsense of impotence.\n\nAnd so far as St. Paul is speaking of himself, there can be no shadow\nof doubt that the state {262} of conflict lay almost wholly outside his\nconversion and regeneration.  It was 'prevenient grace'--God's dealing\nwith him before he acknowledged Christ--that set his will so strongly\nto desire and approve the right; and his new personal faith in Jesus,\nand the might of the Spirit of Jesus to whom he became united, gave him\nthe power to do what he had so long and so ineffectually been willing.\nThis was his experience, and he bears witness to it.  Even though he\nwould have made no claim to sinlessness after his conversion, yet the\nsense of sin which possessed him so strongly, which made him call\nhimself 'not worthy to be called an apostle,' 'less than the least of\nall saints,' and 'chief of sinners,' was in the main a memory of what\nwas past.  The present sense was the consciousness of power in Christ.\nIt is inconceivable that St. Paul should describe himself, while a\nChristian, as 'sold under sin.'  And it was an idea of human corruption\nquite different from St. Paul's which prevented Augustine and Calvin\nfrom recognizing that either a pious Jew, or a Gentile which had not\nthe law, could be moved by the divine Spirit to 'rejoice in the law of\nGod after the inner man' (ver. 22), quite independently of any\nknowledge of Christ.\n\n{263}\n\nBut if St. Paul is in a real measure autobiographical in this passage,\nthere is no reasonable doubt that he is not merely so.  He has\ngeneralized his experiences to represent the moral experiences of the\nrace.  The 'I' is the human individual in general.  Thus 'alive without\nthe law,' if it can in a certain sense describe what St. Paul had once\nbeen, describes much better the state of men--Greeks and Romans, or men\nall the world over 'before the law came'--who had an easy social\nstandard and lived natural lives without any troublesome moral ideals,\nand were wholly unvisited by conscientious scruples or the terrors of\nthe divine holiness.  Upon such men comes the severer knowledge of the\nrighteousness of God through the teaching of some prophet or founder of\nreligion.  It may come to men collectively in a nation or group, and\nresult in some general movement of conscience.  Or it may come to an\nindividual through some circumstance which confronts him with a higher\nmoral claim than he has ever faced before--through the example of a\nfriend, through a book or a sermon.  To many in St. Paul's day the\nsynagogues, where 'Moses had in every city them that preached him,' had\nbeen the means of their awakening to the moral {264} claim of God.  And\nwhenever men are thus confronted with the divine law of righteousness,\nin a more or less perfect form and with more or less of impressiveness\nlaying its prohibitions upon them--'Thou shalt not do this or that'--if\nthey do not harden their hearts to it, they pass through the stages of\nexperience which St. Paul has so admirably idealized.  There is that in\nthem which the prohibitions of the divine law stimulates into\nantagonism.  They become conscious of a power which beguiles or cheats\nthem into breaking the law; they awake to the sense of sin and failure\nto do God's will, and find that they are not their own masters, but are\ndrifting under the impulse of what is not themselves.  There awakens in\nthem the conscience and will to approve and choose what is right, and\nwith that a 'self-contempt bitterer to drink than blood,' as they\nrealize that though they approve and choose the right they cannot do\nit.  Thus the conviction is strengthened that their true selves are on\nthe side of God and right, and that which holds them captive is an\nalien tyranny which has got its lodgement in their lower nature.\n\nThis is the psychological moment for the arrival of the gospel.  The\nman who simply {265} desires the right and is paralyzed by his own\nimpotence to realize it in his own strength, out of the depth of his\ndespair learns that God is not a taskmaster and judge, but a Father;\nthat He is not his adversary, but is on his side; that if he will\nsimply surrender himself to the divine love, as it is made evident in\nChrist, all his past failures and sins are as if they had never been,\nand for the future God will not teach him from outside and leave him to\nstruggle alone, but will work in him to will and to do His good\npleasure.  Then the sense of moral impotence may pass into the sense of\npower in Christ.  And in proportion as any man's actual life-history,\nor the history of any group of men, corresponds to this ideal sketch,\nthe period of moral struggle and failure may fall in the main outside\nthe regeneration and new life in Christ.\n\nBut, almost from the beginnings of Christianity, and increasingly as\nChristianity has become popular, men have been 'christened' in infancy\nor in mature life without the moral issue having been defined or the\nmoral will awakened.  An ordinary Englishman, for example, is baptized\nin infancy.  This means that he is actually regenerate and introduced\ninto {266} the body of Christ.  In rare cases he is so brought up as to\nrealize this, and corresponds so willingly with the teaching that he\nlives the life of the regenerate from the first, and never, except in a\nvery refined form, knows the sense of impotence or passes through the\nperiod of hopeless struggle.  He has never found God's commandments\ngrievous.  But in most cases there is no such pains taken to enlighten\nthe young conscience, or no such readiness of correspondence.  The man\nlives as his surroundings suggest--a decent enough life, very likely,\nand more or less honourable, but never in face of the full divine law.\nAnd such an one is 'alive without the law.'  For him all the\nexperiences St. Paul describes are still to come, inside the circle of\nhis actual regeneration.  And they may be very gradual and slow, and\nmay repeat themselves, more or less, innumerable times.  St. Paul's is\nan ideal picture; but the intended issue is always the same.  When we\nfind ourselves saying, 'To will is present with me, but to do that\nwhich is good is not,' we may be quite certain that we are not\nrealizing the power of our new birth.  We are as men whom God has as\nyet only externally visited.  We are conscious of our own weakness and\nof the {267} strength of evil; but not of the third force, stronger\nthan either ourselves or the power of evil, which is at our disposal if\nwe will draw upon it.  What is needed is a deliberate and whole-hearted\nrealization that we are in Christ and Christ is in us by His Spirit; an\nunconditional surrender of faith to Him: a practice, which grows more\nnatural by exercise, of remembering and deliberately drawing by faith\nupon His strength in the moments of temptation and not merely upon our\nown resources.  'In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth I will do thus\nand thus.'  So we too may form like St. Paul the habit of victory.  We\ntoo may cry in sober earnest 'It is no longer I that live (in my naked\nself), but Christ that liveth in me.'  'I thank God through Jesus\nChrist our Lord.'\n\nWhen that sense of struggle or failure which St. Paul describes occurs,\nas is generally the case with us traditional Christians, in the process\nof our awakening to the knowledge of the new birth, we may in a sense\nsay that the struggle is part of the process of regeneration[8]; but\nthe word 'regeneration' best describes, not a process, but a single\ndivine act upon us and in {268} us[9], and this single divine act is\nconsistently identified in the New Testament with our baptism, though\nit is only realized by our moral conversion when we awake to claim the\nprivileges of our new life.\n\n\niii.\n\nThere are two smaller points which claim notice.\n\nWe are reminded by the way in which St. Paul speaks of sin, in this and\nother passages--as a force or power greater than the individual man,\nwhich possesses him and dominates him through his lower nature--and\nespecially by the consciousness which he betrays of its 'beguiling'\npower, that he believed in personal agencies of evil.  'Our wrestling\nis not against flesh and blood (merely), but against the\nprincipalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this\ndarkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly\nplaces[10].'  Particularly it is in the deceitfulness of sin that St.\nPaul realizes what one must call the personal character of the evil\npower[11].  He is profoundly conscious that {269} there makes itself\nheard in temptation a voice as of a person which lies to us, as it lied\nto Eve, as to the true character of the suggested action; and when we\nhave been deceived and seduced, and have done the deed, and its real\ncharacter has become apparent, 'the tempter' turns round upon us with\nthe grin of unmasked malevolence.  Is there any one who can really\ndissociate from his own spiritual experience this idea of the tempter\nand the deceiver?\n\nWe do well to remember in reading this passage the meaning of the\nrecurring word 'law.'  In modern English it has come to mean the\nprinciple or method observable in anything.  Such and such a thing, we\nsay, exhibits such and such a law, i.e. acts constantly in such and\nsuch a way.  It is natural therefore for us to read this meaning into\nthe word in verse 21, as in the Authorized Version, 'I find then a law,\nthat, when I would do good, evil is present with me,' i.e. I find that\nthis is what constantly happens.  But the Greek word, as used in the\nOld and New Testaments, does not bear any meaning like this[12].  It\nmeans always the {270} injunction or set of injunctions imposed by a\nlaw-giver.  In this passage it is used seven times of the divine\n(Mosaic) law.  When the will accepts this law and would impose it on\nthe lower nature, it becomes 'the law of the mind,' i.e. the law which\nthe mind enjoins (verse 23).  With this conflicts 'the law of sin,'\n'the different law,' which sin or the evil one would impose and which\nhas gained actual sway 'in our members.'  We must then interpret verse\n21 in harmony with this use, and taking the sentence to be a broken\none, translate, as the margin of the Revised Version, 'I find then, in\nregard of the law, that, to me who would do good, evil is present.'\n\n\n\n[1] 'I was myself in both [flesh and spirit], but more myself in what I\napproved than in what I disapproved.'--Augustine, _Confessions_, viii.\n5.\n\n[2] Rather, as margin, 'I find then in regard of the law': see below,\np. 269.\n\n[3] Cf. 1 Cor. xv. 56; Gal. iii. 10; 2 Cor. iii. 6; Rom. iii. 20; iv.\n15; v. 20.\n\n[4] See J. B. Mayor in _The Epistle of St. James_ (ii. 10), p. 86.\n\n[5] Gal. v. 3.\n\n[6] Phil. iii. 6.\n\n[7] It is disappointing, I think, that the grave appeal to the Church\nas regards social duty, made by the bishops assembled at Lambeth last\nyear in commending to the notice of us all the report of their\nCommittee on Industrial Problems, has received such scant attention,\nexcept from a certain group of Churchmen who were already occupied with\nthe problem.  It might have been expected that this solemn appeal would\nhave vastly widened the area of attention.\n\n[8] 'Inter regenerandum.'  St. John will not speak of a wilful sinner\nas truly 'begotten of God,' 1 John iii. 9; v. 18, &c.\n\n[9] See Dale, quoted in Ephesians, p. 86.\n\n[10] Eph. vi. 12.\n\n[11] Cf. 2 Thess. ii. 9-11: 'The working of Satan with all ... deceit\nof unrighteousness ... a working of error, that they should believe a\nlie.'  2 Cor. xi. 14: 'Satan fashioneth himself into an angel of\nlight.'  1 Tim. ii. 14: 'The woman being beguiled hath fallen into\ntransgression.'  Cf. Heb. iii. 13: 'The deceitfulness of sin.'\n\n[12] It never appears to be used, as in classical Greek, for 'custom,'\neither in LXX or N.T.\n\n\n\n\n{271}\n\nDIVISION III.  Sec. 7.  CHAPTER VIII. 1-11.\n\n_Life in the Spirit._\n\nIf we were to represent the Epistle to the Romans as a _bas relief_,\nthere would be two passages which would have to stand in the highest\nrelief--the end of the third chapter, in which St. Paul speaks of that\nfree justification which is given to all men on the equal basis of\nfaith in Christ the propitiation for their sins; and this eighth\nchapter, in which he speaks of the triumph which belongs to the life of\nthe justified, lived in the power of Christ's Spirit.\n\nThe note of this chapter is struck in the words 'no condemnation' at\nthe beginning--'There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are\nin Christ Jesus.'  St. Paul knew so well what it was to be conscious of\nbeing under condemnation.  He had never been what we should call a\nsinner.  He had always been a man who, according to the standards of\nthe {272} Pharisaic righteousness, was pre-eminently righteous; he had\nalways been a man who did much for religion.  But he had known, in a\nform in which it is known to very few of us, what it was to be\nconscious of being under God's condemnation.  God had been to him as a\ntaskmaster over against him, breaking in upon his life with continual\nand searching warnings as to the divine requirements, with continual\nthreatenings and continual terrors; and he had been as one standing\nover against God with the consciousness that, do as he might, he could\nnever satisfy, or climb up to the level of, the requirements of the\nrighteous God.  There was always the haunting sense that he fell\nshort--always the haunting sense that he was on his trial, and on that\ntrial was condemned.  But now all had been changed; and that by a\nprocess which in a certain sense was as simple as possible, but than\nwhich nothing could be more fundamental and deep.  All was changed\nbecause the relation had begun at the other end.  No longer was there a\nclimbing up of man to God, no longer the effort of a Saul to commend\nhimself to God.  The relationship had begun at the other end, at God's\nend.  Or rather, what had begun was the realization on the man's {273}\npart of the true order.  For God had been beforehand with Saul all\nalong.  All the time that he was striving, working, slaving to commend\nhimself to a God whose righteousness he could never attain to, God was\nwaiting there for him to find out his mistake--waiting to reveal\nHimself as no hard taskmaster, but as the Creator, the Father of his\nspirit.  The process had now begun anew from the other side.  God had\nsimply of His own pure initiative manifested His love.  He had sent His\nSon out of His own essential being into this world as it was, not\nasking whether it was a fit world for the Son to enter into; but taking\nit simply as it was, because it appealed to the divine compassion by\nthe very multitude of its sins and the very vastness of its need, God\nhad sent forth His only begotten Son out of the bosom of His love and\nof His pure initiative; had sent Him to take this nature of ours upon\nHim, in it to make atonement for us with God, and in it, raised from\ndeath and glorified, to be the source of a new and spiritual life, such\nas should triumph over sin in all who will believe in Him.  That is the\ngreat point.  It was all purely God's doing: a pure disclosure and act\nof God, who showed Himself ready to take {274} men as they were, to\nforgive them and entrust them with the divine Spirit, if they would\nonly trust Him.  God is no longer the taskmaster over against men, with\nHis threats and His terrors.  He is the Father who has given His Son,\nwho has given men a sacrifice whereby He can forgive their sins, and\nhas given them the Spirit of His Son into their hearts.  God is on\ntheir side, and they are on God's side.  That is the great change.  And\nthe object of it all is that what formerly seemed so unattainable might\nnow be the very thing that proved itself practicable--to live according\nto God; that the requirement of the law might be no longer an\nimpossible claim over us, terrorizing us with its perpetual threats,\nbut that by the power of the new life in which we live, 'the\nrighteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after\nthe flesh, but after the spirit.'\n\nThe following is a paraphrase of the passage we are now to study:--\n\nThe result then of all that has been said is that the divine verdict of\nguilty, which went forth over men on account of their sins--that\n'disclosure of divine wrath' which St. Paul had so profoundly felt and\ninterpreted--hangs no longer over those who have passed into the new\n{275} life in Christ Jesus.  In the old life, sin with its attendant\ndeath held sway over us and gave the law to our actions.  But we were\nfreed from that despotism in passing under a new and stronger\nauthority.  It is the divine Spirit, by whom we have been brought into\nthe life in Christ, who now controls us.  Of old the Mosaic law was\npowerless to help us.  It could inform us of God's will, but it could\nnot enable our poor weak human nature to keep His requirements.  But\nGod has provided an effective remedy for this state of things.  He has\nsent His own Son to take our nature upon Him, and come in among our\nsinful race without any apparent difference between us and Him.  He put\nHim simply among us and in our position, to be the sacrifice for sin;\nand thereby did for us what we had so failed to do for\nourselves--passed effective sentence of condemnation on sin, and that\nin our own nature.  [Do we ask how sin was condemned?  The answer is,\nit stood condemned by the perfect sacrifice of reparation for sin,\nwhich the sinless Man made to the divine character on our behalf, when\nat the requirement of obedience He shed His blood.  It stood condemned,\nstill more fully, by the fact that God raised Him from the dead and\nexalted {276} Him far beyond the reach of sin, to the glory of His\nright hand, and made Him the head of a redeemed manhood, and poured\nforth His Spirit to be the new life of all that believe in Him][1].\nAnd the object of this mission of the Son, and this judgement on sin in\nHis person, was the creation of that new humanity to which we belong,\nwhich lives not under the control of human appetite, but under the\ncontrol of Spirit: and because it so lives, in the life of Another,\nsucceeds in the one point where man had hitherto failed, in keeping the\nrighteous requirements of the divine law.  Our new way of life,\ntherefore, is contrasted with the old in its whole tone.  For just as,\nif we live in fact under the control of our weak manhood with its wants\nand appetites, our mind and conscious aim is directed to minister to\nits purposes, so in the same way if our life is in fact controlled by\nSpirit, our conscious aim also is directed to spiritual purposes.  And\nthe two lives are contrasted no less markedly in their prospects.\n{277} The mind controlled by human appetites is under the doom of\ndeath, temporal and eternal.  The mind controlled by the Spirit is in a\nstate of life, so far as concerns itself, and of peace towards God.\nThe mind controlled by human appetites is under the doom of death\nbecause it is at war with God.  It does not, it cannot, keep His\ncommandments.  Those therefore who so live in their own strength\nmerely, cannot please Him.  But that is not now our state.  We now live\nin the power of Spirit, since the Spirit of God and Christ--that is,\nChrist Himself--dwells in us.  To have Him is the very meaning of being\na Christian.  Not to have Christ's Spirit, that is Himself, dwelling in\nus, is not to belong to Him.  But if He does dwell in us, then, though\nthe body must still pay the debt of death, because of sin to which it\nhas belonged--nay though it is already as good as dead--yet the Spirit\nwithin us is a superior principle of life, because of the divine\nrighteousness which it bestows upon us.  And this life shall triumph\nover death in our case, as in Christ's.  For God, who raised up Christ\nfrom the dead, shall also by the working of the divine Spirit which\ndwells in us, give life again even to our bodies, though now they are\nsubject to death.\n\n{278}\n\nThere is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ\nJesus.  For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free\nfrom the law of sin and of death.  For what the law could not do, in\nthat it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the\nlikeness of sinful flesh and _as an offering_ for sin, condemned sin in\nthe flesh: that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who\nwalk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.  For they that are\nafter the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are\nafter the spirit the things of the spirit.  For the mind of the flesh\nis death; but the mind of the spirit is life and peace: because the\nmind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the\nlaw of God, neither indeed can it be: and they that are in the flesh\ncannot please God.  But ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if\nso be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you.  But if any man hath not\nthe Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.  And if Christ is in you, the\nbody is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of\nrighteousness.  But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the\ndead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead\nshall quicken also your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwelleth\nin you.\n\n\n1.  St. Paul declares that the Father sent His own Son to redeem us in\n'the likeness of the flesh of sin.'  The word 'likeness' is the same as\nthat used in the similar passage[2], where we are told that the eternal\nSon in love for us 'emptied Himself' so far as to take the 'form,'\n{279} or essential characteristics, of our servile human nature; nor\nonly its essential characteristics, but also the outward conditions or\n'likeness' of common men as they are.  The point is that Christ, who\nHimself as man 'knew no sin[3],' appeared amongst us under all the\ncircumstances of sin, and with no outward or apparent difference\nbetween us and Him--'in all points like as we are' with the single\nexception of sin in the will or in the nature.\n\n2.  In verse 3 the Authorized Version, and the margin of the Revised,\ntranslating the Greek literally, give us, 'God sending His own Son ...\n_for sin_.'  But the phrase 'for sin' is continually used in the Greek\nof the Old Testament for the sin-offering, and in the New Testament\nalways has the sacrificial meaning attached to it[4]; and accordingly\nits meaning here must be so defined.\n\n3.  The flesh of man, considered as a material thing, is not evil.  It\nwas that which the Son took, and it was 'in the flesh' so assumed that\nHe pronounced sentence on sin--in that very flesh which was sin's\ndomain; as, in the Epistle {280} to the Ephesians[5]. He is said to\nhave 'abolished the enmity in his flesh.'  The flesh as such then is\nnot evil; but when, as in our fallen state, the proper order of our\ncomplex manhood has been reversed, and the flesh has become the\npredominant partner, having the mastery of the spirit, then it becomes\na 'flesh of sin.'  To live 'in the flesh,' or 'according to the flesh,'\nis to let the flesh have its way and be the master instead of the\nslave.  Then the whole life becomes carnal--a carrying out 'the works\nof the flesh'--and even the rational faculty becomes a 'carnal mind.'\nWhat our redemption effects is to restore the right order and make the\nflesh again the instrument of the spirit--of the human spirit, that is,\nempowered by the divine Spirit, without which it cannot hold its\nground.  Then the whole life, with all its bodily faculties, becomes\nspiritual and carries into effect 'the works of the Spirit.'\n\nIn the passage we have been considering, the Revised Version\ndistinguishes, by the use of capital letters, between the divine\nSpirit[6] and the human[7], or spirit in general; but the fact that the\ndivine Spirit is what liberates and restores the human spirit is so\nmuch in St. Paul's {281} mind that it seems better to make the primary\nreference to the divine Spirit throughout.\n\nIt is of the greatest practical moment to grasp that, to St. Paul, the\nchange in human life which comes about through our conversion and new\nbirth is a change in order.  What was managed from below is now\ncontrolled from above.  That is the point on which we need to examine\nourselves.  Where do we begin from?  Are we in the position of men\nstruggling to manage their own lives, and commend themselves according\nto some standard more or less right, which either their personal pride\nor their social circle or the divine law has set up?  If so, God is\nover against us, our taskmaster, our adversary, our stern judge, and\nour life is 'according to the flesh.'  It is managed from below.  It is\nruled on its own level, and it fails.  But there is another life which\nbegins at once from the thought of God.  God has made us, and therefore\nHe is responsible for us.  He has made me because He loves me.\nTherefore He is bound to make the best of me.  If I will only put\nmyself into His hands He is pledged, simply because He created me,\ntherefore to redeem me, to save me, to glorify me.  He takes that\nresponsibility upon Himself.  He has shown His {282} love by the\nsending and the sacrifice of His Son and by the gift of His Spirit.\nAnd His Spirit I have received.  At a definite moment He came upon me.\nHe entered into my life, as into those first Christians to whom St.\nPaul wrote, at baptism and by the laying-on of hands.  This is the fact\nthen.  God is on my side.  He makes Himself responsible for my being.\nIf I will only entrust myself to Him with the cordial return of\ntrustful love, then all that He has ever breathed into my heart of\nhuman possibility He will realize and bring to perfection.  The\nrequirement of the law shall be fulfilled in us who walk not after the\nflesh but after the Spirit.--This is a point of view upon which it is\nworth while reflecting deeply, and over and over again.  Unless we are\ncontinually practising ourselves in this conception of life, we find\nourselves falling back again into the attitude of one standing over\nagainst God with God for his taskmaster.  And that is the false and\nalways ruinous idea.\n\nWe must also take careful note of what St. Paul means by 'spiritual'\nand 'carnal.'  'Carnal' does not mean made of flesh, and 'spiritual'\ndoes not mean immaterial.  That is carnal which is ruled by the flesh,\nruled from {283} below.  That life is carnal in which our spirit, meant\nfor God, is dragged at the chariot-wheels of our lower life; and that\nis spiritual which is ruled and mastered by the Spirit.  We must not\nsuppose that we shall make our religion spiritual by disparaging\nexternal acts or bodily exercises of worship.  No; that is spiritual\nwhich is ruled by the Spirit.  The worship in 'spirit and in truth,'\nfor us men who belong to the religion of the Incarnation, must be a\nworship in body.  But it will be spiritual if it is full of spiritual\nintention.  Secular business again is spiritual if it is ruled by the\ndivine Spirit according to the law of righteousness.  Politics are\nspiritual, commercial and municipal life are spiritual, art and science\nare spiritual, and everything that develops our faculties is spiritual,\nif we will allow the divine Spirit to rule in all according to the law\nof righteousness, truth, and beauty.  For the whole of our being, with\nall its sum of faculties, is made by God and meant for God.  What a\nmistake it is then, when people speak, as they so often do, as if sin\nwere really natural, as if lust and worldliness were natural, and as if\nspirituality were something unnatural, belonging to another world.  It\nis exactly the opposite.  The only _natural_ position for us is when\nour {284} flesh is ruled by the spirit.  It is an unnatural usurpation\nwhen the spirit is dragged at the chariot-wheels of the flesh, when our\nlife is dominated by lusts or appetites.  That is the very overthrow of\nnature.  And grace does but restore to us the true order of our being,\nwhen the flesh and all the faculties of our body are again controlled\nby the spirit, so that our whole being expresses a spiritual purpose\nand obeys a spiritual law.  The same external acts are spiritual or\ncarnal, natural or unnatural, according as they express or do not\nexpress the mind of the Spirit.  The same physical facts are the basis\nof true married love, and of the wildest licentiousness.  In the latter\ncase they are carnal because they express no spiritual purpose; in the\nother case they are spiritual because, consecrated in the family life,\nthey become the organ and the vehicle of the divine Spirit.  God will\nbe responsible for our whole life, our politics, our commerce, our\nmarriage, the workings of our intellect, the workings of our emotions,\nall the parts of our nature.  He will raise our nature up through\ndeath; He will consecrate it to life immortal in the divine city; He\nwill sanctify it here and now: if only, and in all things, we will\nbelieve that He who made our {285} life is capable of making the best\nof it, and show ourselves ready to entrust it to His disposal.\n\n4.  We must notice what is implied in this passage about the Holy\nTrinity.  St. Paul speaks[8] of 'the Spirit of God' (the Father), 'the\nSpirit of Christ,' 'Christ,' and then again, the 'Spirit of Him that\nraised up Christ,' as if all these expressions were identical; as\nelsewhere[9] he prays that the Father will strengthen men by His\nSpirit, in order that Christ may dwell in their hearts, and they be\nfilled with the fullness of God.  All which language means that where\nthe Spirit is, Christ is, and where Christ is, God the Father is.  So\nin St. John, our Lord speaks of the Holy Spirit as 'another' advocate\nwho is to come 'in his name' from the Father; and yet adds that in the\nSpirit's coming He Himself will come; and with Him the Father--'we will\ncome[10].'  The sacred 'persons' are spoken of as distinct--personally\ndistinct--and yet as so mutually involved in the action one of another\nthat the coming of one is the coming of all.  So truly is God one in\nthree.  We find something like this in human personalities under the\ninfluence of love.  Each single personality is not {286} self-contained\nand exclusive.  Love, to a real degree, fuses persons; and thus the\nhusband and wife and child (to take the highest example) may be said to\nlive and act in one another and through one another's influence.  But\nthis is only to a limited extent.  We are also mutually exclusive.  Our\nresponsibility and actions remain individual and impermeable.  What I\nam doing, I am doing, and not another.  But with God the mutual\ninterpenetration of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is represented in the\ninspired language as far more complete.  The Godhead is a fellowship\nand relationship of perfect love 'in three persons.'  But God is not\nthree separate individuals.  What each 'person' does the others do.\nThe action of one involves all.  God is inseparably one in His being\nand in His action.  If the Father creates, He creates through the Son\nand by the Spirit.  If the Son redeems, the redemption proceeds from\nthe Father and is effected in the Spirit.  If the Spirit sanctifies, it\nis from and in the Father and the Son.  Thus when the Spirit came forth\nat Pentecost out of the uplifted manhood of the Son to impart to us all\nHis richness, He came not merely to supply His absence, but to\naccomplish His presence.  He makes Christ present within us, and also\nthe {287} Father: so that God, three in one, dwells in the hearts of\nHis people.\n\n5.  'The requirement of the law is to be fulfilled in us.'  Do we ask\nhow we are to keep the whole of that terrible law?  It is by obeying\nthe commandment to love our neighbours as ourselves, in which the whole\nlaw is 'briefly comprehended[11].'\n\n6.  If in the last verse of this passage we read 'through His Spirit,'\nand not (as the margin) 'because of His Spirit,' then the Holy Spirit\nis expressly spoken of as the agent of our resurrection and, by\nimplication, of the resurrection of Christ.  And this is the natural\nfunction for the 'Giver of Life': indeed 'Spirit' means nothing else\nthan 'breath'--the 'breath of life from God[12].'\n\n\n\n[1] The passage in brackets expands the sense in which St. Paul\nconceives the Father to have passed sentence of condemnation on sin, in\nthe person and through the sacrifice of Christ, in accordance with such\npassages as vers. 21-24; iv. 25; Phil. ii. 8-10; Eph. i. 15 ff.\n\n[2] Phil. ii. 7.\n\n[3] 2 Cor. v. 21.\n\n[4] See Heb. x. 6, cf. 18, 26; xiii. 11; 1 Pet. iii. 18; 1 John ii. 2;\niv. 10.\n\n[5] ii. 15.\n\n[6] Verses 2, 9, 11.\n\n[7] Verses 4, 5, 6, 9, 10.\n\n[8] Verses 9-11.\n\n[9] Eph. iii. 14-19.\n\n[10] John xiv. 16, 18, 23, 26.\n\n[11] Rom. xiii. 9.\n\n[12] Ezek. xxxvii. 9; Rev. xi. 11.\n\n\n\n\n{288}\n\nDIVISION III.  Sec. 8.  CHAPTER VIII. 12-17.\n\n_The life of sonship._\n\nWe are now in the Spirit.  The divine Spirit dwells within us, and\nrestores our nature to its proper balance by giving us control over our\nlower nature.  The moral meaning and obligations of such a condition\nare plain, and St. Paul proceeds to enforce them.  When our impulses\nand appetites solicit us to let them have their own way, we must give\nthem to understand that they are making a claim which we cannot\nrecognize and which, if we did, would lead us the way of death.  On the\ncontrary, it is these merely physical tendencies--the practices of the\nbody when left to itself--that we must put to death by the power of the\nSpirit.  And if we do this we are on the way of life.  Why so\ncertainly?  Because we are sons of God--nothing less.  Those who thus\nact under the Spirit's guidance are all of them sons of God.  Further,\n{289} if we ask ourselves what sort of spirit we received when we\nbecame Christians, we know that it was not a spirit appropriate to\nslaves and calculated to bring us again into a condition of terror\nunder a law.  It was a spirit appropriate to those who have been\nadopted for sons of God, and it is in the power of that spirit that we\ncry out to God by the name of Abba, Father, in our familiar\nsupplication.  We have thus in our own spirits the sense that we are\nsons; and behind that and reinforcing it, the divine Spirit, by putting\nthe word Father into our lips, bears the same witness.  Well then, if\nwe are thus children of God, we have the child's prospect of entering\ninto our inheritance.  Christ, our elder brother, has already entered\ninto it, and we shall enter into it with Him, if we are content to take\nthe Christian maxim for true, and suffer with Him on this side of\ndeath, that we may share His glory beyond.\n\n\nSo then, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the\nflesh: for if ye live after the flesh, ye must die; but if by the\nspirit ye mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.  For as many as\nare led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.  For ye received\nnot the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye received the spirit\nof adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.  The {290} Spirit himself\nbeareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God: and if\nchildren, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so\nbe that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified with _him_.\n\n\nThere are several phrases in this passage which we shall do well to\nnotice.\n\n1.  _If by the spirit ye mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live_.\nMortification is absolutely necessary, and at every stage of the\nChristian life.  It is the carrying into effect in detail of the\nfundamental law of our new life--the law which the baptismal ritual was\nintended to teach--life by means of death.  For the body had gained the\nupper hand: it had come to control the weakened spirit.  Therefore the\nreinvigorated spirit must react upon the body and its impulses.  It\nmust make its government felt, and the physical tendencies must be\nchecked, pruned, cut back.  This is the Christian circumcision.  And as\nChrist was first born, then circumcised the eighth day; so each new\nbirth in Christ must be followed by a like circumcision of the\nluxuriance of animal appetites.  We learn the lesson when we are\nchildren: we expect to be restrained and curbed: and unless we are very\nfoolish we learn the lesson only more deeply in later life.  There\n{291} is no single faculty or function of our being which can escape\nthis law.  No friendship can be cemented without mutual self-denial.\nNo marriage, however founded on affection, can be blessed without the\nmutual pain of self-repression and concession.  No art or science can\nbe mastered by mere intelligence without moral discipline.  No gift can\nbe consecrated in its natural luxuriance.  'Every branch in Christ that\nbeareth fruit, He pruneth it that it may bring forth more fruit.'\n\n2.  _As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God_.\nThe New Testament language would have us regard all the baptized as\nregenerate and sons of God, but it will not let us mistake the meaning\nof this teaching.  In any effective sense it is they, and only they,\nwho are really _controlled by_ the divine Spirit who can call\nthemselves sons.  As St. John says, freedom from sin is the only test\nof divine birth[1].  And the best way to make our new birth effective\nis to meditate on the gift which we, when we became Christians, did\nactually receive.  We who, like the first Christians, received baptism\nwith the laying-on of hands, did then and there receive (such is the\nimplication {292} of St. Paul's language)[2] a spirit proper not to\nslaves but to sons of God, qualifying us to call on God as our father,\nand to co-operate in the purposes of His kingdom.  It remains for us to\nclaim these powers and privileges of our sonship, and to claim them to\nthe full.  Yet how many anxious-minded Christians of our day would\nappear to have received nothing more nor less than the spirit of\nslaves!  They realize their religion as a restraint, a responsibility,\na cause of fear.  And such a servile religion is no doubt better than a\nhypocritical sense of sonship unaccompanied by the fear of sin.  The\nwise man remarks that 'a servant that dealeth wisely shall have rule\nover a son that causeth shame, and shall have part in the inheritance\namong the brethren[3].'  But the spirit of the slave is not what we are\ncalled to.  If we had more religion, if we would give it freer course,\nif we would consent to think less of our circumstances and more of God\nand His gifts, there would be less fear and more joy both in our work\nand our prayer.\n\n3.  _Abba, Father_.  Our Lord, speaking in {293} Aramaic, the\nvernacular of Palestine, is recorded by St. Mark in His hour of agony\nto have said _Abba_.  And even in the Greek-speaking churches of St.\nPaul's day, that sacred word was still used side by side with its Greek\nequivalent, according to the witness of this and the parallel passage,\nGal. iv. 6.  St. Paul appears to be referring to some occasion on which\nthe Church was in the habit of calling on God with the Aramaic and\nGreek words side by side, and it is more than likely[4] that he is\nmaking a definite reference to the Lord's Prayer, as recited by the\nRoman and Galatian Christians in the form prescribed for us in St.\nLuke's version[5], beginning 'Father.'  The retention by Greek\nChristians of an Aramaic word in a familiar religious formula, is like\nthe later retention by the Latins of the Greek prayer, _Kyrie eleison_,\nor the retention by us of the names _Te Deum, Magnificat_, &c.  St.\nPaul's meaning would come home to us better if we were to\nread--'whereby we cry _Our Father_.'\n\n4.  '_The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are\nchildren of God_.'  This is a very {294} important passage for showing\nthat St. Paul did not in any way confuse the divine Spirit and the\nhuman, and that in his belief the divine indwelling did not in any way\nannihilate the human personality.  Even in the closest union God\nremains God and man man.  But the passage is at least as important as\nopening up a special avenue of insight into St. Paul's conception of\nChristian worship and spiritual life generally.  He speaks first of a\nwitness of the individual spirits of Christians to the fact of their\ndivine sonship; and he distinguishes from it something greater, a\nwitness of the divine Spirit, supporting the human.  What exactly does\nhe mean by this witness of the divine Spirit as distinct from the\nconsciousness which--under the leading of the divine Spirit--Christians\nare led themselves to form?  How are we to distinguish the Spirit's\nwitness from the witness of our own hearts inspired by Him?  Is it\nmerely[6] that the 'consciousness (of the individual) is analyzed, and\nits _data_ are referred partly to the man himself, partly to the Spirit\nof God moving and prompting him?'  I do not think that a closer\nexamination will lead us to be satisfied with this.\n\n{295}\n\nThe witness of the divine Spirit is apparently fixed by the context to\nconsist in the supply to us of the phrase 'Abba, Father[7]'.  It is the\nSpirit 'in whom we cry' (or, as the passage in the Galatians says, 'who\nHimself comes into our hearts crying) Abba, Father,' who thus, by\nsuggesting this cry to us, bears witness with our own spirits that we\nare sons of God.  Thus the supporting witness of the Spirit lies\nespecially in a certain mode of address to God or formula of prayer\nwhich He supplies.  But this 'cry' or prayer the Spirit supplies to the\nhearts of the Church as a whole.  The whole Church, and not the\nindividual soul only, is the Spirit's home.  'Know ye not that ye are\n(corporately) a temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in\nyou'[8]?  The witness of the Spirit is thus a witness borne in the\nwhole Church, which supports and sustains the witness of the individual\nsoul.  This is a thought full of consolation.  The life of the\nindividual Christian reposes upon, and is infolded by, the larger life\nof the whole body.  Behind his own spiritual consciousness, with all\nits vicissitudes, lies the inspired consciousness of the whole body,\nthe witness of the Spirit; and this in part expresses itself in\ninspired {296} formulas--the Lord's Prayer, the psalms, the creeds of\nthe divine name, the Church's worship; and these formulas, representing\nour best self, are to sustain us in our fluctuations of feeling, and\ncarry us over our periods of dryness and insensibility.  'The Spirit\nHimself beareth witness with our spirit.'\n\n5.  'The inheritance' of the children of God, which in the Old\nTestament begins by meaning the Holy Land, was spiritualized into\nmeaning the kingdom of the Messiah.  'They shall inherit the land for\never[9]': 'the meek shall inherit the earth[10].'  And this kingdom of\nthe Messiah is an eternal kingdom: 'they shall inherit eternal\nlife[11]'--that is to be our inheritance as the chosen people of the\nLord.  And it is an inheritance not only incorruptible but\ninexhaustible: all share in it to the full of their capacities, and the\nabundance of those who share diminishes nothing from the richness that\nremains.\n\nAnd into that inheritance Christ is 'the way.'  His life shows the law\nby which it is to be won.  It was a current Christian saying--'a\nfaithful saying'--'if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him; if\nwe endure, we shall also reign {297} with Him[12].'  And whenever we\nare inclined to complain at anything we may have to suffer, there is\none thought capable at once of quenching all murmuring, because of its\nindisputable reasonableness--'It is enough for the disciple that he be\nas his Master.'\n\n\n\n[1] 1 John iii. 9.\n\n[2] 'Ye received' (at a particular time), not 'ye have received'; cf.\nabove, p. 214, note 1.\n\n[3] Prov. xvii. 2.\n\n[4] See Chase, _Lord's Prayer in the Early Church_ ('Texts and\nStudies,' Cambridge), p. 23.  Cf. Hort on 1 Pet. i. 17.\n\n[5] xi. 2.\n\n[6] S. and H., _in loc._\n\n[7] Cf. Vaughan and Gifford, _in loc._\n\n[8] 1 Cor. iii. 16.\n\n[9] Isa. lx. 21.\n\n[10] Matt. v. 5.\n\n[11] Matt. xix. 29.\n\n[12] 2 Tim. ii. 11.\n\n\n\n\n{298}\n\nDIVISION III.  Sec. 9.  CHAPTER VIII. 18-30.\n\n_The hope of the creation._\n\nSt. Paul has touched upon the familiar topic of Christian suffering,\nand he ends his great argument with a splendid encouragement to\nbelievers to suffer gladly, and that for a manifold reason.  First\n(18-25), that the suffering is altogether inconsiderable by comparison\nwith the glory to which it leads, and is in itself only a part of the\nuniversal travail-pang through which created nature as a whole is to\nproduce a glorious new earth to be the habitation of righteousness.\nSecondly (26-30), that we are not alone in our sufferings.  We have the\nsupport, within us and around us, of the Holy Spirit as our effective\nintercessor, and the consciousness of an eternal and infallible purpose\nof divine love which is taking effect stage by stage in the case of\neach one of us whom God has made members of His elect body.  The\nfollowing is a paraphrase.\n\n{299}\n\nThe sufferings in which this present situation involves us Christians\nare quite inconsiderable by comparison with the heavenly glory which is\ndestined to be disclosed and to include us.  The sense of this glorious\nfuture pervades the whole creation.  Nature is like some on-looker at a\nspectacle craning the neck to see what is coming.  She is waiting for\nthe final disclosure of the children of God in their true position;\nknowing that she too--as a new heaven and a new earth--will share that\nglorious future.  At present her powers are continually frustrated;\nfailure is everywhere; the law of corruption is upon her like a\nbondage.  This curse she was subjected to, through no will of her own,\nby the simple fiat of her Creator--but not for ever: she was left to\nhope for deliverance from this bondage into a state of freedom--a\nshare, that is, in the freedom which is to belong to the final glory of\nthe children of God.  With this in mind we can bear the universal\nspectacle of pain.  What we have always heard hitherto, wherever we\nhave lent our ear all through nature, has been groans; but they are the\ngroans as of a woman in travail: and in these groans we, God's chosen\npeople, though we already possess the first instalment of the divine\nSpirit, {300} the pledge of what is yet to come--in these groans we\nbear our part, and also in the hope that accompanies the groaning.  We\ngroan expecting to realize our sonship, as that can only be realized\nwhen body as well as soul is redeemed from all evil.  Hope is thus the\nvery condition on which we received our spiritual deliverance when we\nbecame Christ's.  And hope means nothing else than a condition of\nexpecting good things not yet in sight.  It means the readiness to\nendure till they come.\n\nAnd there is another reason why we should be glad to bear our present\nsufferings.  It is because, though we are weak in ourselves, we are not\nleft alone.  Of ourselves we should be bewildered and not know even\nwhat we ought to ask God to give us.  But we have in the Spirit who\ndwells in us a divine advocate and intercessor.  His intercession makes\nitself perceptible to us in groaning desires after a better condition,\ndesires which cannot be put into words, but which are intelligible\nenough to God.  He who searches the hearts interprets the longings we\ncannot express--understands, that is, the Spirit's meaning; for He is\nGod's own Spirit, and the intercessions He makes for us, the\nconsecrated people, express God's own {301} intention.  And what that\nintention is towards us we know.  We know that it is an intention of\ngood which cannot fail for those who love God; or, in other words, for\nthose who are the subjects of the divine purpose and call--an intention\nof good to which everything, even seeming evils, must minister.  For\nGod's purpose reaches from eternity to eternity, and cannot be baffled\nfrom without or fail by the way.  Those whom in eternity He designated\nbeforehand as instruments of His will, those He also eternally destined\nfor the highest human perfection--for the blessed lot of being made\nlike His own Son, as He should be hereafter incarnate, so that He might\nbe an elder brother in a great human family: and those who were thus\nappointed beforehand for this high destiny, in due course He called\ninto the elect body.  And those whom He thus called He acquitted and\naccepted for righteous: and whom He thus accepted He crowned with glory.\n\n\nFor I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to\nbe compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us-ward.  For the\nearnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the\nsons of God.  For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own\nwill, but by reason of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation\nitself also shall be delivered from the bondage {302} of corruption\ninto the liberty of the glory of the children of God.  For we know that\nthe whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.\nAnd not only so, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the\nSpirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for _our_\nadoption, _to wit_, the redemption of our body.  For by hope were we\nsaved: but hope that is seen is not hope: for who hopeth for that which\nhe seeth?  But if we hope for that which we see not, _then_ do we with\npatience wait for it.\n\nAnd in like manner the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know\nnot how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh intercession\nfor us with groanings which cannot be uttered; and he that searcheth\nthe hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh\nintercession for the saints according to _the will of_ God.  And we\nknow that to them that love God all things work together for good,\n_even_ to them that are called according to _his_ purpose.  For whom he\nforeknew, he also foreordained _to be_ conformed to the image of his\nSon, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren: and whom he\nforeordained, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also\njustified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.\n\n\ni.\n\nThere are passages in the New Testament which are unique.  Such is the\npassage in St. Peter's epistle about Christ preaching in His\ndisembodied human spirit to other spirits in Hades--a passage vaguely\nsuggestive of wide thoughts and hopes, and leading us to suppose {303}\nthat the ideas which it contained were familiar in the apostolic\ncircle, but standing alone, with practically nothing to elucidate it\nfrom outside.  And the passage just read about the groaning of creation\nin travail-pains is unique, not because there is not a good deal to\nelucidate it in other parts of the Bible, but because St. Paul in his\ntreatment of common material strikes a note of sympathy with nature\nfrom nature's point of view, which is heard nowhere else in the Bible.\n\nIn Genesis we read that 'the ground was cursed[1]' because of man's\nsin, in the sense apparently that, as the penalty of his sin, nature\nwas to be made a rougher home for him, and he was to extract his food\nfrom it only with pain and sweat.  Isaiah is perhaps interpreting this\nprimitive lesson in more modern tones when he cries that 'the earth is\npolluted under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed\nthe laws, changed the ordinance, broken the ever-lasting covenant.\nTherefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell\ntherein are found guilty: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are\nburned, and few men left.  The new wine mourneth, the vine\nlanguisheth[2].'  In this sense certainly, if not in some more\nrecondite {304} sense also, the ground is stricken with a curse as a\nresult of human sin.  And there are parts of the world where no lesson\nseems more patent.  At any rate, whatever be the interpretation given\nto it, it was part of the common Jewish teaching that 'though all\nthings were made very good, yet when the first man sinned they were\ncorrupted, and shall return no more to their proper state until the son\nof Pherez[3] shall come[4].'  For the curse was not to be for ever.\nThere was a good time to come--a new heaven, a new earth, wherein\nrighteousness should dwell--'A restoration of all things,' and not\nmerely of man[5], which should accompany the coming of the Messiah.\nThis was a most popular idea in Jewish hearts.  'I will transform the\nheaven and make it an eternal blessing and light.  And I will transform\nthe earth and make it a blessing and cause mine elect ones to dwell\nupon it: but the sinners and evil-doers shall not set foot thereon[6].'\n\nHere then we have the common belief which St. Paul inherits and uses.\nHe lays indeed very little stress upon the connexion of the earth's\npresent condition with human sin, if he {305} even alludes to it.  He\nonly says it was 'subjected to vanity' by the decree of the Creator,\nand that with a glorious prospect.  It is upon the present aspect of\nthe creation and its great prospect that his eyes are set.  And his\nsuperiority to contemporary Jewish thought is shown by the fact that in\nhis vision of the future he is catholic and cosmic.  What he is\ncontemplating is not a world renovated in order that one chosen race\nmay be happy and glorious, but a renovated world for a perfected\nhumanity.  And in his representation of the present aspects of nature\nhe strikes an extraordinarily modern note by exhibiting, as it were\nunintentionally, a deep and real sympathy with nature in her pain from\nher own point of view.  The Psalms can supply examples of a real\nsympathetic fellowship in the happiness of creation--a happiness which\nmodern pessimists strangely ignore.  But here we have, as nowhere else\nin the Bible--perhaps nowhere in ancient literature--a man who feels\nwith the pain of creation[7].  He notes how much 'vanity' there is in\nnature--how much that is ineffective and disappointing, how much waste\nand sadness--by reason of the omnipresent law of corruption, {306}\ndissolution and decay under which she is laid.  He feels this as from\nnature's own heart.  And he has an ear for the universal cry of\npositive pain, pain as of a woman in travail, which is one at least of\nthe most unmistakeable voices of nature.  But he has got an explanation\nof this universal pain which makes it tolerable to him.  It is the pain\nwhich accompanies a birth.  The pain, as in the case of the woman, is\nto be justified by the issue.  Nature 'eagerly expects' as well as\n'groans': and will doubtless 'remember no more the anguish, for joy' of\nthat which is the fruit of her agony.  For there is a destiny for the\nwhole material world which includes man.  As man is to be perfected and\nspiritualized in body no less than in mind; so the whole man, perfected\nin glory, is to have his place in a world emancipated in like manner\nfrom failure and pain.\n\nPerhaps the most important consideration to be derived from this\npassage is that St. Paul's thought is equally alien to a one-sided\nspiritualism and a one-sided materialism.  A one-sided spiritualism,\nsuch as is represented to-day by (most falsely-called) 'Christian\nScience,' either disbelieves in the reality of matter altogether, or\nregards it with its attendant qualities of weakness and pain as evil\nand a thing to be ignored.  The religion of {307} the Incarnation, on\nthe other hand, as represented by St. Paul, recognizes it as God's\ncreation and the temple of His presence.  In our manhood, as scientific\ninvestigation assures us, we can exercise no activity of spirit except\nas parts of a material world, through the senses and by the\ninstrumentality of the bodily organs.  Spirit and matter are in us so\nlinked together that the real difficulty to a thinking Christian is to\nconceive at all of a 'disembodied' state of the personal human spirit\nafter death which is in any sense a living state.  But such a\n'disembodied' state--if the word really represents the truth--is\nunnatural and temporary.  The perfected human spirit is to have an\nembodiment which is to be material, as being truly a body, but also\nspiritual, because it is to be the fitting organ of the perfected\nspirit, in no way embarrassing or clogging its activity by any\ngrossness or corruption.  This is the Christian hope, definite in\nprinciple, if quite unaccompanied by any anticipated knowledge of\nmethod or details.  And this destiny of the human body cannot be\nseparated from the destiny of the material universe as a whole.  Matter\nas a whole is to have an unending development like spirit, and a\ndevelopment with a justifying purpose of glory in it.\n\n{308}\n\nAnd St. Paul is equally opposed to the materialism which gives to\nmatter a substantive existence apart from spirit.  Metaphysical inquiry\nassures us that we can have no conception of a material object, or of\nmatter in general, except as related to a consciousness or spirit; or,\nin other words, except as an adjunct to some sort of personality.  Such\nmetaphysical inquiry did not lie in St. Paul's way.  But he is in\nharmony with its results when he contemplates a glorified nature as\nstill relative to glorified personalities.  Nature is to share the\nrevelation of the glory of the _sons_ of God.\n\nWe cannot help wondering, as we read these verses, whether St. Paul had\nin mind that occasion when, before the chosen witnesses, Christ was\nbodily transfigured on the holy mount by an anticipation of the glory\ndestined for His sonship; and the apostles felt their hearts thereby\nencouraged to believe more surely in the teaching of the prophets about\nthe general glory that was to accompany the final manifestation of the\nChrist[8].\n\nWhen St. Paul talks of nature 'groaning' and (still more) 'eagerly\nexpecting,' is it merely a poetical personification, as Chrysostom and\nmost {309} commentators suppose, like that of the Psalmist when he\nmakes 'the floods clap their hands'?  It may be so.  George Crabbe, in\nhis _Delay is Dangerous_, draws a singularly beautiful picture of a\nlate autumn morning as it appeared to a dejected man, and he ends the\ndescription with the lines:--\n\n  These things were sad in nature, or they took\n  Sadness from him, the likeness of his look.\n\nIs the latter the true explanation?  Is there no sadness or eager\ndesire in nature independently--I will not say of spirit, but of the\nhuman spirit?  It is sometimes very difficult to believe this.  And may\nnot the Christian belief about angels make the fancy legitimate, that\nevery created thing has some accompanying intelligence--higher or\nlower--which consciously realizes its beauty and its joy, and also its\npain and its hope?  If this be so, then there is not merely deficiency\nand pain, but the consciousness of this deficiency and pain, a real\ngroaning and a real expectation, in the great fabric of nature.  We may\nlegitimately imagine this; but we have probably no right to attribute\nsuch an imperfectly-based speculation to St. Paul[9].\n\n{310}\n\nii.\n\nIt is very interesting to notice the various points of view from which\nSt. Paul contemplates the great ideas of 'redemption,' 'adoption,'\n'salvation.'  Christ redeemed us by the shedding of His blood, and we\nentered into the redeemed state individually and were adopted as sons\nwhen we became Christians.  This is, beyond all question, St. Paul's\nbelief.  But when he contemplates the outward conditions of the\nredeemed man, and finds them quite incongruous with freedom and\nsonship, so wholly unashamed is he to require that these outward\nconditions shall be transformed, and body as well as spirit shall be\nredeemed, that he speaks as if the great hope were still unrealized and\nwe were still only expecting to be redeemed and adopted--'waiting for\nour adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.'  He thus retains the\nintensely Jewish language of what we may call Christ's own Apocalypse,\nwhen He bids His disciples, as the Day of the Lord approaches, to 'look\nup and lift up their heads: because their redemption draweth nigh.'\n\nThe uses of the words 'saved' and 'salvation' are still more\nremarkable.  If we are {311} contemplating the finished work of Christ,\nwe are led to say, 'By grace have we been saved[10].'  If we are\nconsidering our own individual entrances into this great salvation at\nthe time of our believing or becoming Christians in baptism, we say,\n'It was upon a basis of hope that we were saved[11].'  If we are\nconsidering the progressive life of the believer, we say, 'He is being\nsaved[12].'  If we are looking to the great and final hope, we say, 'We\nshall be saved.'  'Our salvation is nearer than when we became\nbelievers[13].'  This simple set of facts about New Testament language\nthrows a great light on the popular revivalist question--'Are you\nsaved?'\n\n\niii.\n\nOur Lord once asked one who came to Him to be healed--'What wilt thou\nthat I should do unto thee?' and a very devout modern writer[14] builds\nupon this an argument that we ought to learn continually to pray with\nmore definiteness and detail.  Probably it is true to say {312} that\nthe advanced Christian learns to pray more definitely for spiritual\nthings, as he grows in spiritual discernment and sees more distinctly\nwhat God's moral will is for himself and others.  But there is no\nsimilar growth to be expected in the knowledge of what outward gifts\nwill really help or hinder us and others.  And it is with his eye\nchiefly on the outward conditions of the Christian's life that St. Paul\nhere says--'We know not what we should pray for as we ought'; and\nteaches us that 'The Spirit makes intercession for the saints according\nto God.'  We must be content to recognize, even while we\nhalf-ignorantly pray for what we think we need, that '_all_ (outward)\nthings work together for good to them that love God.'  St. Paul had\nlearnt that lesson when he himself 'besought the Lord thrice' that his\ngreat physical trouble might be removed from him, and was refused[15].\nThe Son of Man Himself prayed only 'Father, _if it be possible_, let\nthis cup pass from me,' and learned in experience that it was not\npossible.  These lessons may suffice to humble any one who grows\nover-confident that he knows what outward circumstances are best for\nhimself or his friends or the Church.\n\n{313}\n\nWe all feel deeply the imperfection of our prayers: how weak, how\nignorant they are!  And St. Paul consoles us with the belief in an\nintercession--perfect, all-knowing, divine--which supports and sustains\nand, we may say, includes ours.  The 'intercession of the Spirit' in\nour behalf, carried on, it is implied, 'in the hearts' of the saints\nwhich only God searches, is mentioned nowhere in the New Testament but\nhere.  But it is not to be separated from the intercession of Christ\nwhich is mentioned just below[16].  Christ's intercession is 'at the\nright hand of God,' but also He has by the Spirit taken us up into His\nown life.  He dwells in us by His Spirit.  By His Spirit we are knit\ninto one and made His body.  Doubtless, then, dwelling thus by the\nSpirit in the body, Christ intercedes for us.  This is the intercession\nof the Spirit, which is also the intercession of Christ--an\nintercession gathering up into one, and sustaining and connecting and\nperfecting, all the imperfect prayers of all the saints.\n\nThis interceding Spirit is in Himself perfectly conscious of God's mind\nand purpose, and God is perfectly conscious of His.  He intercedes\n'according to God.'  This intercession {314} is but a form of the\nperfect divine life.  But in the heart of the Church this desire of the\nSpirit can make itself felt only in groanings for the divine\nmanifestations which, like the aspirations which music suggests or\nexpresses, are too deep to admit of articulate utterance.  St. Paul,\nwhen he speaks of groanings which cannot be put into words, is perhaps\nthinking of the 'tongues' in which the spiritual emotion of the first\nChristian churches found expression.  And we should think of some\nearnest act of corporate Christian worship when, under the workings of\nthe one Spirit, the strong desire after what is holiest and highest\npossesses men, and binds them together with a sense of longing for the\ndivine manifestation which could not be put into definite words.\n\nSt. Paul speaks of the groaning of suffering nature (ver. 22), and the\ngroaning of the individual Christians (ver. 23), and also the groaning\nof the divine Spirit in the Church (ver. 26).  No word could express\nmore powerfully the intense desire after the manifestation of the\ndivine kingdom which, in St. Paul's mind, should lie at the heart of\ntrue Christian prayer.\n\nAnd the true prayer of the Spirit--the prayer which is according to\nGod--is described (ver. 27) {315} as 'on behalf of saints[17]'--on\nbehalf of a separated and consecrated body.  It follows, that is to\nsay, the lines of Christ's own prayer--'I pray not for the world, but\nfor those whom thou hast given me.'  It is through the sanctified life\nthat the divine influences are to spread over the world: and by praying\nfor the consecrated body we are praying that that life may be exhibited\nmore and more perfectly amongst men so as to strike their consciences\nand move them to conversion; that through our good works which they now\nbehold they may glorify God in the day when they themselves are\nvisited.  The New Testament method of praying for the world is thus in\ngreat part indirect.  But the direct method is also enjoined.  We are\nalso to pray directly 'for all men[18].'\n\n\niv.\n\nThere is, I think, no point on which St. Paul has been more\nmisrepresented than on his teaching about predestination.  He teaches\nplainly that it is God's purpose to 'have mercy upon all': that He\n'willeth that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the\n{316} truth[19].'  But He works towards this universal end through a\nmethod of selected human instruments--through an elect body.  Such an\nelect body had been the Jewish nation--selected, we cannot tell why,\nbut very possibly in part because of its capacity for coherence and\ntoughness, coupled with a singular aptitude for simple religious\nideas--qualities which in themselves of course were the gift of God.\nThis nation might have expanded, as was intended, into a catholic\nchurch.  But, as it refused to correspond with its vocation in this\nrespect, in fact the catholic Church appears in history as taking its\nplace, even while it was developed out of it--an elect body gathered\nout of 'every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues.'  The\nelection of this catholic body to be the heirs of salvation and to bear\nthe name of God in the world was, it would have been held, a\nself-evident fact.  St. Paul reasons not up to this fact but from it.\nHe uses the admitted fact to strengthen its individual members under\nstress of trial.  They must bear earthly troubles because they form the\nappointed discipline for the individuals who form the select body.  Let\nmen but love God, and then all outward things {317} whatsoever work\ntogether for good for them.  The fact that they love God is the\nsufficient evidence of their election.  Those who love God are also\nthose who are 'called according to His purpose.'  But, we ask, Have\nnone received the call and rejected it? were none called, who do not\nlove God? is it not true, that 'Many are called and few chosen'?  St.\nPaul says not a word to the contrary.  But that is not the question he\nis considering.  The members of the Christian Church, devoted to God,\nto whom he is writing _have_ been called.  This call of which they have\nbecome the subject is, St. Paul assures them, no afterthought, no\nmomentary act of God, which as it came into being in a moment so may\npass away.  It is not a being taken up by God and then perhaps dropped\nagain.  His gifts and calling are without repentance on His side,\nbecause they represent an eternal will.  In the eternal mind God\n'foreknew' this chosen body.  To 'know' as used of God (in contexts\nwhere it is implied that others are not 'known') means to 'take\nknowledge of or mark out for a divine purpose, as God said of the Jews,\n'You only have I known of all the families of the earth[20],' that is,\nyour {318} nation only have I singled out or designated[21].  This\ndivine marking out then was an eternal act.  God eternally marked out\ncertain persons, those presumably whom a certain preparatory discipline\nand moral education, Jewish or heathen, should have made apt for His\npurpose, such aptitude being of course again His gift.  Anyway, for\nreasons which we cannot probe, God did eternally foreknow or mark out\nbeforehand a body of men to be His catholic church.  And those so\nmarked out were in the eternal counsels appointed for a high spiritual\nvocation, to be made like the divine Son, who was to be made man, so\nthat, with Christ as heir and elder brother, they together might\nrepresent in the world the divine ideal for man.  And upon those so\nmarked out and foreordained, in due time the divine call came by the\napostolic preaching.  And, at the first movement of corresponsive\nfaith, they had been acquitted of all their old sins and planted all at\nonce upon a new basis in Christ Jesus.  And those thus set upon the new\nbasis God also had already in His divine counsels clothed with glory,\ntheir share in the glory of the divine Son which is only waiting to be\nfully manifested.  Every {319} Christian therefore who has felt a\nmovement of God in his heart, under which he has become a Christian,\nknows that he is in God's keeping.  God will not fail him.  He who has\nbegun the good work will perform it.  Trouble and anxiety within or\nwithout need not alarm him.  He has but to keep himself, joyful and\nconfident, in God's hands.  The movement of God upon him and within\nhim, as it proceeds out of the eternal mind, so it passes securely on\ninto the eternal issue.  No doubt St. Paul would say they might tear\nthemselves by utter wilfulness out of the divine hand, as for the time\nat least the Jews had mostly done.  But short of that they are safe.\nThe movement of God, the protection of God, the purpose of God, is upon\nthem and around them, and goes before them preparing their way,\nindividually and corporately.\n\nThis is the moral use St. Paul makes of the doctrine of predestination.\nAnd it is to do egregious violence to his general teaching to suggest\nthat he entertained the idea of persons created with an opposite\npredestination--to eternal misery.  St. Paul is dealing here only with\nwhat God has already shown of His purpose in the actual vocation of\nsome.  Ultimately {320} he assures us all men share the divine purpose\nfor good[22].  But, on the other hand, he never suggests that they may\nnot resist it, or allows us to say that so far as concerns themselves\nthey may not defeat it.\n\n\n\n[1] iii. 17-19; v. 29.\n\n[2] xxiv. 5-7.\n\n[3] i.e. Messiah, son of David, son of Pherez (Ruth iv. 18).\n\n[4] _Bereshith Rabbah_, xii. 5.\n\n[5] Isa. lxv. 17, lxvi. 22; cf. 2 Pet. iii. 13; Rev. xxi. 1; Acts iii.\n21.\n\n[6] _Book of Enoch_, xlv. 4, 5.\n\n[7] St. Paul's word 'creation' (verses 30-22) is used in St. Paul's\nsense in Wisd. xvi. 34, xix. 6.\n\n[8] 2 Pet. i. 16-19.\n\n[9] Cf. Latham, _Service of Angels_ (Cambridge, 1894).\n\n[10] Eph. ii. 5.\n\n[11] Rom. viii. 24.\n\n[12] 1 Cor. xv. 2; 2 Cor. ii. 15.  (The present tense in both cases.)\n\n[13] Rom. v. 9, 10; xiii. 11: cf. 1 Tim. iv. 16; 2 Tim. iv. 18.\n\n[14] Andrew Murray's _With Christ in the School of Prayer_ (Nisbet\n1891), p. 71.\n\n[15] 2 Cor. xii. 8: cf. Phil. i. 22, 'What I shall choose I wot not.'\n\n[16] Verse 34.\n\n[17] Not 'the saints' in the Greek.\n\n[18] 1 Tim. ii. 1.\n\n[19] Rom. xi. 32; 1 Tim. ii. 4.\n\n[20] Amos iii. 2: cf. Ps. i. 6; Hos. xiii. 5; Matt. vii. 23.\n\n[21] Cf. Hort on 1 Pet. pp. 19, 80.\n\n[22] See especially Rom. xi. 29-33.\n\n\n\n\n{321}\n\nDIVISION III.  Sec. 10.  CHAPTER VIII. 31-39.\n\n_Christian assurance._\n\nSt. Paul has brought his great argument to an end.  And before he\npasses to its manifold application in the later parts of his epistle,\nhe applies it in words which spring glowing from a heart on fire with\nthe gospel he loves, to reassure disheartened and nervous Christians.\nIt was a natural feature of the apostolic age that the disciples should\nlose their first courage and become afraid, when the hard experience\nthey were to expect became plain to them.  The Epistle to the Hebrews\nis written full in face of this failure of courage among Jewish\nChristians.  For the Gentiles whom St. Paul has more particularly in\nview there were manifold causes of alarm--fears derived from their own\nweakness, from spiritual uncertainty, and from their precarious\nposition.  It was not only that outward calamity--famine and\npestilence--might {322} come on them like other people.  They plainly\nfelt--St. Paul plainly felt, as he thought of the bitter hostility of\nthe Jews actually ready to break out upon the Church, and of the\njealousy of the Empire, not yet hostile but easily capable of becoming\nso--that times of persecution were at hand: that the Christians were\ntruly in the world as 'lambs in the midst of wolves.'  Therefore he\nwould have them realize the whole secret of that invincible strength,\nthat power to endure and triumph, which ought to be theirs.\n\nWhat is to be our practical conclusion, he asks, from all this\ntheology, from all this consideration of revealed facts and truths?\nThe sum of it all is that God is not our taskmaster and critical judge.\nHe is altogether on our side.  And if this be so, whose hostility can\nby comparison come into consideration at all?  God showed His mind\ntoward us by the greatest possible act of self-sacrifice, the giving up\nof His own divine Son to die for us.  And, plainly, if of His free love\nHe gave us His greatest gift, He will not fail to accompany it with\neverything that love can suggest.  Or, to put the matter in another\nway, if God, in full knowledge of what we were thought proper to take\nus for His chosen {323} people and to put us in a position of\nacceptance with Him, who can with any hope of success bring a charge\nagainst us or pass condemnation on us?  For we know the mind of the\nonly judge.  Or, once again, what can be so reassuring as to consider\nthe person of our advocate or mediator?  It is Christ Jesus, God's own\nSon in our nature, who died a sacrifice for our sins, but so far from\nbeing conquered by death, was raised from among the dead, and exalted\nto the right hand of God, and there is occupied in presenting Himself\nbefore the Father in intercession for us--covering all our approach to\nGod with His acceptableness.  Out of the protecting power of this love\nof Christ, then, who shall tear us?  It is quite true that troubles may\nbeat upon us--outward affliction, or inward trouble, or persecution, or\nfamine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword.  We may find that only the\nwords of the Psalmist[1] suit our case, 'For thy sake are we being put\nto death the whole day: the estimate formed of us is that of sheep\nmeant for slaughter.'  But in all these contingencies the love of\nChrist can supply us with a more than victorious power.  For this is\nSt. Paul's conviction, that no conceivable power {324} of life or of\ndeath, or of the angelic hierarchy, nothing in present circumstances or\nfuture destiny, no possible force, neither the highest height of\nheavens or the deepest depth of hell, no possible creation of God other\nthan what we now know to exist, shall be able to tear us from that\nwhich holds us in a grasp stronger than the strongest--the love of God\nwhich is in Christ Jesus, who is our Lord.\n\n\nWhat then shall we say to these things?  If God _is_ for us, who _is_\nagainst us?  He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for\nus all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things?  Who\nshall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?  It is God that\njustifieth; who is he that shall condemn?  It is Christ Jesus that\ndied, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who is at the right\nhand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.  Who shall separate\nus from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or anguish, or\npersecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  Even as it\nis written,\n\n  For thy sake we are killed all the day long;\n  We were accounted as sheep for the slaughter.\n\nNay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that\nloved us.  For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor\nangels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor\npowers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to\nseparate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.\n\n\nThere is not much that needs comment in these verses.  We may notice\nthe contrast {325} between the tone of the Psalmist quoted by St.\nPaul--weighed down, like many a servant of the older covenant, with the\nunintelligible experience of the persecution of God's faithful\npeople--and the exultant faith of St. Paul which finds no difficulty in\nthe experience at all.  Again, we do well to observe that among the\nforces enumerated by St. Paul which cannot tear us out of the hand of\nGod, he does not include our own wills, and we could not even conceive\nhim so including them.  Once again, we take note how 'the love of\nChrist' (ver. 35) is resolved (ver. 39) into the 'love of God in Christ\nJesus.'  Christ's love is God's love, as Christ is truly proper and\nessential to the being of God, His own very Son.\n\nThese words, I say, need very little comment, but they thrill our souls\nas hardly any other words of St. Paul.  They are the real summary of\nthis epistle, and show us how the glorious apostle of Christian liberty\nwould have us view our life.  We are not to build the edifice of a life\nwhich at the top is to be within sight of God.  We are to start from\nGod who from eternity and all along has been beforehand with us: in His\nexternal personal love predestinating, creating, calling, pardoning,\nholding, and keeping us {326} in continual growth for eternal glory.\nAnd the one power of religion is therefore faith, that faculty by which\nwe look continually out of ourselves, and starting from God, committing\nourselves wholly to God, raise the fabric of life, in the community of\na true human brotherhood, upon the secure basis of the love of Him who\ncreated us, and will satisfy utterly the being which He has given us.\nThis is the summary lesson of the great epistle.\n\n\n\n[1] Ps. xliv. 22.\n\n\n\n\nEND OF VOL. I\n\n\n\n\n\n\n_A Series of Simple Expositions_\n\n_of_\n\n_Portions of the New Testament_,\n\nBY THE\n\nRIGHT REV. CHARLES GORE, D.D.,\n\nLORD BISHOP OF WORCESTER.\n\n_Crown 8vo, Green Cloth, 3s. 6d. each volume._\n\n  THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT.\n  THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS.\n  THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS.\n      Vol. I. cap. i-viii.\n      Vol. II. cap. ix-xvi, with Appendices.\n\n\n\n\nOTHER WORKS\n\nBY THE\n\nRIGHT REV. CHARLES GORE, D.D.\n\nLORD BISHOP OF WORCESTER.\n\n\n_Crown 8vo 2s. 6d._\n\nTHE MISSION OF THE CHURCH.  Four Lectures delivered in the Cathedral\nChurch of St. Asaph.\n\nCONTENTS:--I.  The Mission of the Church.--II.  Unity within the Church\nof England.--III.  The Relation of the Church to Independent and\nHostile Opinion.--IV.  The Mission of the Church in Society.--Appended\nNotes.\n\n'It is a twofold work--to sanctify what can be hallowed, to pass\njudgement on that which must be condemned.  From this point of view the\ninterest of Mr. Gore's new book is great.'--_Church Quarterly_.\n\n\n_8vo, 7s. 6d._\n\nTHE BAMPTON LECTURES, 1891; The Incarnation of the Son of God.\n\n\n_8vo, 7s. 6d._\n\nDISSERTATIONS ON SUBJECTS CONNECTED WITH THE INCARNATION.\n\n\n_Crown 8vo, 5s. net._\n\nESSAYS ON CHURCH REFORM.  Eleven Essays on the Present and Future\nPosition of the Church of England.  By the Right Rev. CHARLES GORE,\nD.D.; and other eminent British, Colonial, and American writers.\n\n\n_Crown 8vo, 6s._\n\nLUX MUNDI.  A Series of Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation.  By\nVarious Writers.  Edited by the Right Rev. CHARLES GORE, D.D.\n\n\nLONDON:\n\nJOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.","title":"St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans: A Practical Exposition. Vol. I","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":71473}