4. The Instrumentality used in Regeneration
A. The Roman, English and Lutheran churches hold that regeneration is accomplished through the instrumentality of baptism. The Disciples, or followers of Alexander Campbell, make regeneration include baptism, as well as repentance and faith. To the view that baptism is a means of regeneration we urge the following objections:
(a) The Scriptures represent baptism to be not the means but only the sign of regeneration, and therefore to presuppose and follow regeneration. For this reason only believers—that is, persons giving credible evidence of being regenerated—were baptized (Acts 8:12). Not external baptism, but the conscientious turning of the soul to God which baptism symbolizes, saves us (1 Pet. 3:21—συνειδήσεως ἀγαθῆς ἐπερώτημα). Texts like John 3:5, Acts 2:38, Col. 2:12, Tit. 3:5, are to be explained upon the principle that regeneration, the inward change, and baptism, the outward sign of that change, were regarded as only different sides or aspects of the same fact, and either side or aspect might therefore be described in terms derived from the other.
(b) Upon this view, there is a striking incongruity between the nature of the change to be wrought and the means employed to produce it. The change is a spiritual one, but the means are physical. It is far more rational to suppose that, in changing the character of intelligent beings, God uses means which have relation to their intelligence. The view we are considering is part and parcel of a general scheme of mechanical rather than moral salvation, and is more consistent with a materialistic than with a spiritual philosophy.
Acts 8:12—“when they believed Philip preaching good tidings concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized”; 1 Pet. 3:21—“which also after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation [marg.—‘inquiry’, ‘appeal’] of a good conscience toward God” = the inquiry of the soul after God, the conscientious turning of the soul to God.
Plumptre, however, makes ἐπερώτημα a forensic term equivalent to “examination,” and including both question and answer. It means, then, the open answer of allegiance to Christ, given by the new convert to the constituted officers of the church. “That which is of the essence of the saving power of baptism is the confession and the profession which precede it. If this comes from a conscience that really renounces sin and believes on Christ, then baptism, as the channel through which the grace of the new birth is conveyed and the convert admitted into the church of Christ, ‘saves us,’ but not otherwise.” We may adopt this statement from Plumptre’s Commentary, with the alteration of the word “conveyed” into “symbolized” or “manifested.” Plumptre’s interpretation is, as he seems to admit, in its obvious meaning inconsistent with infant baptism; to us it seems equally inconsistent with any doctrine of baptismal regeneration.
Scriptural regeneration is God’s (1) changing man’s disposition, and (2) securing its first exercise. Regeneration, according to the Disciples, is man’s (1) repentance and faith, and (2) submission to baptism. Alexander Campbell, Christianity Restored: “We plead that all the converting power of the Holy Spirit is exhibited in the divine Record.” Address of Disciples to Ohio Baptist State Convention, 1871: “With us regeneration includes all that is comprehended in faith, repentance, and baptism, and so far as it is expressive of birth, it belongs more properly to the last of these than to either of the former.” But if baptism be the instrument of regeneration, it is difficult to see how the patriarchs, or the penitent thief, could have been regenerated. Luke 23:43—“This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.” Bossuet: “This day”—what promptitude! “With me”—what companionship! “In Paradise”—what rest! Bersier: “ ‘This day’—what then? no flames of Purgatory? no long period of mournful expiation? ‘This day’—pardon and heaven!”
Baptism is a condition of being outwardly in the kingdom; it is not a condition of being inwardly in the kingdom. The confounding of these two led many in the early church to dread dying unbaptized, rather than dying unsaved. Even Pascal, in later times, held that participation in outward ceremonies might lead to real conversion. He probably meant that an initial act of holy will would tend to draw others in its train. Similarly we urge unconverted people to take some step that will manifest religious interest. We hope that in taking this step a new decision of the will, inwrought by the Spirit of God, may reveal itself. But a religion which consists only in such outward performances is justly denominated a cutaneous religion, for it is only skin‐deep. On John 3:5—“Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God”; Acts 2:38—“Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins”; Col. 2:12—“buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith”; Tit. 3:5—“saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit”—see further discussion and exposition in our chapter on the Ordinances. Adkins, Disciples and Baptists, a booklet published by the Am. Bap. Pub. Society, is the best statement of the Baptist position, as distinguished from that of the Disciples. It claims that Disciples overrate the externals of Christianity and underrate the work of the Holy Spirit. Per contra, see Gates, Disciples and Baptists.
B. The Scriptural view is that regeneration, so far as it secures an activity of man, is accomplished through the instrumentality of the truth. Although the Holy Spirit does not in any way illuminate the truth, he does illuminate the mind, so that it can perceive the truth. In conjunction with the change of man’s inner disposition, there is an appeal to man’s rational nature through the truth. Two inferences may be drawn:
(a) Man is not wholly passive at the time of his regeneration. He is passive only with respect to the change of his ruling disposition. With respect to the exercise of this disposition, he is active. Although the efficient power which secures this exercise of the new disposition is the power of God, yet man is not therefore unconscious, nor is he a mere machine worked by God’s fingers. On the other hand, his whole moral nature under God’s working is alive and active. We reject the “exercise‐system,” which regards God as the direct author of all man’s thoughts, feelings, and volitions, not only in its general tenor, but in its special application to regeneration.
Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:503—“A dead man cannot assist in his own resurrection.” This is true so far as the giving of life is concerned. But once made alive, man can, like Lazarus, obey Christ’s command and “come forth” (John 11:43). In fact, if he does not obey, there is no evidence that there is spiritual life. “In us is God; we burn but as he moves”—“Est deus in nobis; agitante calescimus illo.” Wireless telegraphy requires an attuned receiver; regeneration attunes the soul so that it vibrates responsively to God and receives the communications of his truth. When a convert came to Rowland Hill and claimed that she had been converted in a dream, he replied: “We will see how you walk, now that you are awake.”
Lord Bacon said he would open every one of Argus’s hundred eyes, before he opened one of Briareus’s hundred hands. If God did not renew men’s hearts in connection with our preaching of the truth, we might well give up our ministry. E. G. Robinson: “The conversion of a soul is just as much according to law as the raising of a crop of turnips.” Simon, Reconciliation, 377—“Though the mere preaching of the gospel is not the cause of the conversion and revivification of men, it is a necessary condition—as necessary as the action of light and heat, or other physical agencies, are on a germ, if it is to develop, grow, and bear its proper fruit.”
(b) The activity of man’s mind in regeneration is activity in view of the truth. God secures the initial exercise of the new disposition which he has wrought in man’s heart in connection with the use of truth as a means. Here we perceive the link between the efficiency of God and the activity of man. Only as the sinner’s mind is brought into contact with the truth, does God complete his regenerating work. And as the change of inward disposition and the initial exercise of it are never, so far as we know, separated by any interval of time, we can say, in general, that Christian work is successful only as it commends the truth to every man’s conscience in the sight of God (2 Cor. 4:2).
In Eph. 1:17, 18, there is recognized the divine illumination of the mind to behold the truth—“may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him; having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of his calling” On truth as a means of regeneration, see Hovey, Outlines, 192, who quotes Cunningham, Historical Theology, 1:617—“Regeneration may be taken in a limited sense as including only the first impartation of spiritual life ... or it may be taken in a wider sense as comprehending the whole of that process by which he is renewed or made over again in the whole man after the image of God,—i. e., as including the production of saving faith and union to Christ. Only in the first sense did the Reformers maintain that man in the process was wholly passive and not active; for they did not dispute that, before the process in the second and more enlarged sense was completed, man was spiritually alive and active, and continued so ever after during the whole process of his sanctification.”
Dr. Hovey suggests an apt illustration of these two parts of the Holy Spirit’s work and their union in regeneration: At the same time that God makes the photographic plate sensitive, he pours in the light of truth whereby the image of Christ is formed in the soul. Without the “sensitizing” of the plate, it would never fix the rays of light so as to retain the image. In the process of “sensitizing,” the plate is passive; under the influence of light, it is active. In both the “sensitizing” and the taking of the picture, the real agent is not the plate nor the light, but the photographer. The photographer cannot perform both operations at the same moment. God can. He gives the new affection, and at the same instant he secures its exercise in view of the truth.
For denial of the instrumentality of truth in regeneration, see Pierce, in Bap. Quar., Jan. 1872:52. Per contra, see Anderson, Regeneration, 89‐122. H. B. Smith holds middle ground. He says: “In adults it [regeneration] is wrought most frequently by the word of God as the instrument. Believing that infants may be regenerated, we cannot assert that it is tied to the word of God absolutely.” We prefer to say that, if infants are regenerated, they also are regenerated in conjunction with some influence of truth upon the mind, dim as the recognition of it may be. Otherwise we break the Scriptural connection between regeneration and conversion, and open the way for faith in a physical, magical, sacramental salvation. Squier, Autobiog., 368, says well, of the theory of regeneration which makes man purely passive, that it has a benumbing effect upon preaching: “The lack of expectation unnerves the efforts of the preacher; an impression of the fortuitous presence neutralizes his engagedness. This antinomian dependence on the Spirit extracts all vitality from the pulpit and sense of responsibility from the hearer, and makes preaching an opus operatum, like the baptismal regeneration of the formalist.” Only of the first element in regeneration are Shedd’s words true: “A dead man cannot assist in his own resurrection” (Dogm. Theol., 2:503).
Squier goes to the opposite extreme of regarding the truth alone as the cause of regeneration. His words are none the less a valuable protest against the view that regeneration is so entirely due to God that in no part of it is man active. It was with a better view that Luther cried: “O that we might multiply living books, that is, preachers!” And the preacher is successful only as he possesses and unfolds the truth. John took the little book from the Covenant‐angel’s hand and ate it (Rev. 10:8‐11). So he who is to preach God’s truth must feed upon it, until it has become his own. For the Exercise‐system, see Emmons, Works, 4:339‐411; Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 2:439.
5. The Nature of the Change wrought in Regeneration
A. It is a change in which the governing disposition is made holy. This implies that:
(a) It is not a change in the substance of either body or soul. Regeneration is not a physical change. There is no physical seed or germ implanted in man’s nature. Regeneration does not add to, or subtract from, the number of man’s intellectual, emotional or voluntary faculties. But regeneration is the giving of a new direction or tendency to powers of affection which man possessed before. Man had the faculty of love before, but his love was supremely set on self. In regeneration the direction of that faculty is changed, and his love is now set supremely upon God.
Eph. 2:10—“created in Christ Jesus for good works”—does not imply that the old soul is annihilated, and a new soul created. The “old man” which is “crucified”—(Rom. 6:6) and “put away” (Eph. 4:22) is simply the sinful bent of the affections and will. When this direction of the dispositions is changed, and becomes holy, we can call the change a new birth of the old nature, because the same faculties that acted before are acting now, the only difference being that now these faculties are set toward God and purity. Or, regarding the change from another point of view, we may speak of man as having a “new nature,” as “recreated,” as being a “new creature,” because this direction of the affection and will, which ensures a different life from what was led before, is something totally new, and due wholly to the regenerating act of God. In 1 Pet. 1:23—“begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible”—all materialistic inferences from the word “seed,” as if it implied the implantation of a physical germ, are prevented by the following explanatory words: “through the word of God, which liveth and abideth.”
So, too, when we describe regeneration as the communication of a new life to the soul, we should not conceive of this new life as a substance imparted or infused into us. The new life is rather a new direction and activity of our own affections and will. There is, indeed a union of the soul with Christ; Christ dwells in the renewed heart; Christ’s entrance into the soul is the cause and accompaniment of its regeneration. But this entrance of Christ into the soul is not itself regeneration. We must distinguish the effect from the cause; otherwise we shall be in danger of a pantheistic confounding of our own personality and life with the personality and life of Christ. Christ is indeed our life, in the sense of being the cause and supporter of our life, but he is not our life in the sense that, after our union with him, our individuality ceases. The effect of union with Christ is rather that our individuality is enlarged and exalted (John 10:10—“I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.” See page 799, (c)).
We must therefore take with a grain of allowance the generally excellent words of A. J. Gordon, Twofold Life, 22—“Regeneration is the communication of the divine nature to man by the operation of the Holy Spirit through the word (2 Pet. 1:4).... As Christ was made partaker of human nature by incarnation, that so he might enter into truest fellowship with us, we are made partakers of the divine nature, by regeneration, that we may enter into truest fellowship with God. Regeneration is not a change of nature, i. e., a natural heart bettered. Eternal life is not natural life prolonged into endless duration. It is the divine life imparted to us, the very life of God communicated to the human soul, and bringing forth there its proper fruit.” Dr. Gordon’s view that regeneration adds a new substance or faculty to the soul is the result of literalizing the Scripture metaphors of creation and life. This turning of symbol into fact accounts for his tendency toward annihilation doctrine in the case of the unregenerate, toward faith cure and the belief that all physical evils can be removed by prayer. E. H. Johnson, The Holy Spirit: “Regeneration is a change, not in the quantity, but in the quality, of the soul.” E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 320—“Regeneration consists in a divinely wrought change in the moral affections.”
So, too, we would criticize the doctrine of Drummond, Nat. Law in the Spir. World: “People forget the persistence of force. Instead of transforming energy, they try to create it. We must either depend on environment, or be self‐sufficient. The ‘cannot bear fruit of itself’ (John 15:4) is the ‘cannot’ of natural law. Natural fruit flourishes with air and sunshine. The difference between the Christian and the non‐Christian is the difference between the organic and the inorganic. The Christian has all the characteristics of life: assimilation, waste, reproduction, spontaneous action.” See criticism of Drummond, by Murphy, in Brit. Quar., 1884:118‐125—“As in resurrection there is a physical connection with the old body, so in regeneration there is a natural connection with the old soul.” Also, Brit. Quar., July, 1880, art.: Evolution Viewed in Relation to Theology—“The regenerating agency of the Spirit of God is symbolized, not by the vitalization of dead matter, but by the agency of the organizing intelligence which guides the evolution of living beings.” Murphy’s answer to Drummond is republished. Murphy’s Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 1‐33—“The will can no more create force, either muscular or mental, than it can create matter. And it is equally true that for our spiritual nourishment and spiritual force we are altogether dependent on our spiritual environment, which is God.” In “dead matter” there is no sin.
Drummond would imply that, as matter has no promise or potency of life and is not responsible for being without life (or “dead,” to use his misleading word), and if it ever is to live must wait for the life‐giving influence to come unsought, so the human soul is not responsible for being spiritually dead, cannot seek for life, must passively wait for the Spirit. Plymouth Brethren generally hold the same view with Drummond, that regeneration adds something—as vitality—to the substance of the soul. Christ is transsubstantiated into the soul’s substance; or, the πνεῦμα is added. But we have given over talking of vitality, as if it were a substance or faculty. We regard it as merely a mode of action. Evolution, moreover, uses what already exists, so far as it will go, instead of creating new; as in the miracle of the loaves, and as in the original creation of man, so in his recreation or regeneration. Dr. Charles Hodge also makes the same mistake in calling regeneration an “origination of the principle of the spirit of life, just as literal and real a creation as the origination of the principle of natural life.” This, too, literalizes Scripture metaphor, and ignores the fact that the change accomplished in regeneration is an exclusively moral one. There is indeed a new entrance of Christ into the soul, or a new exercise of his spiritual power within the soul. But the effect of Christ’s working is not to add any new faculty or substance, but only to give new direction to already existing powers.
(b) Regeneration involves an enlightenment of the understanding and a rectification of the volitions. But it seems most consonant with Scripture and with a correct psychology to regard these changes as immediate and necessary consequences of the change of disposition already mentioned, rather than as the primary and central facts in regeneration. The taste for truth logically precedes perception of the truth, and love for God logically precedes obedience to God; indeed, without love no obedience is possible. Reverse the lever of affection, and this moral locomotive, without further change, will move away from sin, and toward truth and God.
Texts which seem to imply that a right taste, disposition, affection, logically precedes both knowledge of God and obedience to God, are the following: Ps. 34:8—“Oh taste and see that Jehovah is good”; 119:36—“Incline my heart unto thy testimonies”; Jer. 24:7—“I will give them a heart to know me”; Mat. 5:8—“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God”; John 7:17—“If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God”; Acts 16:14—of Lydia it is said: “whose heart the Lord opened to give heed unto the things which were spoken by Paul”; Eph. 1:18—“having the eyes of your heart enlightened.” “Change the centre of a circle and you change the place and direction of all its radii.”
The text John 1:12, 13—“But as many as received him, to them gave him the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”—seems at first sight to imply that faith is the condition of regeneration, and therefore prior to it. “But if ἐξουσίαν here signifies the ‘right’ or ‘privilege’ of sonship, it is a right which may presuppose faith as the work of the Spirit in regeneration—a work apart from which no genuine faith exists in the soul. But it is possible that John means to say that, in the case of all who received Christ, their power to believe was given to them by him. In the original the emphasis is on ‘gave,’ and this is shown by the order of the words”; see Hovey, Manual of Theology, 345, and Com. on John 1:12, 13—“The meaning would then be this: ‘Many did not receive him; but some did; and as to all who received him, he gave them grace by which they were enabled to do this, and so to become God’s children.’ ”
Ruskin: “The first and last and closest trial question to any living creature is, ‘What do you like?’ Go out into the street and ask the first man you meet what his taste is, and, if he answers candidly, you know him, body and soul. What we like determines what we are, and is the sign of what we are; and to teach taste is inevitably to form character.” If the taste here spoken of is moral and spiritual taste, the words of Ruskin are sober truth. Regeneration is essentially a changing of the fundamental taste of the soul. But by taste we mean the direction of man’s love, the bent of his affections, the trend of his will. And to alter that taste is not to impart a new faculty, or to create a new substance, but simply to set toward God the affections which hitherto have been set upon self and sin. We may illustrate by the engineer who climbs over the cab into a runaway locomotive and who changes its course, not by adding any new rod or cog to the machine, but simply by reversing the lever. The engine slows up and soon moves in an opposite direction to that in which it has been going. Man needs no new faculty of love; he needs only to have his love set in a new and holy direction; this is virtually to give him a new birth, to make him a new creature, to impart to him a new life. But being born again, created anew, made alive from the dead, are physical metaphors, to be interpreted not literally but spiritually.
(c) It is objected, indeed, that we know only of mental substance and of mental acts, and that the new disposition or state just mentioned, since it is not an act, must be regarded as a new substance, and so lack all moral quality. But we reply that, besides substance and acts, there are habits, tendencies, proclivities, some of them native and some of them acquired. They are voluntary, and have moral character. If we can by repeated acts originate sinful tendencies, God can surely originate in us holy tendencies. Such holy tendencies formed a part of the nature of Adam, as he came from the hand of God. As the result of the Fall, we are born with tendencies toward evil for which we are responsible. Regeneration is a restoration of the original tendencies toward God which were lost by the Fall. Such holy tendencies (tastes, dispositions, affections) are not only not unmoral—they are the only possible springs of right moral action. Only in the restoration of them does man become truly free.
Mat. 12:33—“Make the tree good, and its fruit good”; Eph. 2:10—“created in Christ Jesus for good works.” The tree is first made good—the character renewed in its fundamental principle, love to God—in the certainty that when this is done the fruit will be good also. Good works are the necessary result of regeneration by union with Christ. Regeneration introduces a new force into humanity, the force of a new love. The work of the preacher is that of coöperation with God in the impartation of a new life—a work far more radical and more noble than that of moral reform, by as much as the origination of a new force is more radical and more noble than the guidance of that force after it has been originated. Does regeneration cure disease and remove physical ills? Not primarily. Mat. 1:21—“thou shalt call his name Jesus; for it is he that shall save his people from their sins.” Salvation from sin is Christ’s first and main work. He performed physical healing only to illustrate and further the healing of the soul. Hence in the case of the paralytic, when he was expected to cure the body, he said first: “thy sins are forgiven” (Mat. 9:2); but, that they who stood by might not doubt his power to forgive, he added the raising up of the palsied man. And ultimately in every redeemed man the holy heart will bring in its train the perfected body: Rom. 8:23—“we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”
On holy affection as the spring of holy action, see especially Edwards, Religious Affections, in Works, 3:1‐21. This treatise is Jonathan Edwards’s Confessions, as much as if it were directly addressed to the Deity. Allen, his biographer, calls it “a work which will not suffer by comparison with the work of great teachers in theology, whether ancient or modern.” President Timothy Dwight regarded it as most worthy of preservation next to the Bible. See also Hodge, Essays and Reviews, 1:48; Owen on the Holy Spirit, in Works, 3:297‐336; Charnock on Regeneration; Andrew Fuller, Works, 2:461‐471, 512‐560, and 3:796; Bellamy, Works, 2:502; Dwight, Works, 2:418; Woods, Works, 3:1‐21; Anderson, Regeneration, 21‐50.
B. It is an instantaneous change, in a region of the soul below consciousness, and is therefore known only in its results.
(a) It is an instantaneous change.—Regeneration is not a gradual work. Although there may be a gradual work of God’s providence and Spirit, preparing the change, and a gradual recognition of it after it has taken place, there must be an instant of time when, under the influence of God’s Spirit, the disposition of the soul, just before hostile to God, is changed to love. Any other view assumes an intermediate state of indecision which has no moral character at all, and confounds regeneration either with conviction or with sanctification.
Conviction of sin is an ordinary, if not an invariable, antecedent of regeneration. It results from the contemplation of truth. It is often accompanied by fear, remorse, and cries for mercy. But these desires and fears are not signs of regeneration. They are selfish. They are quite consistent with manifest and dreadful enmity to God. They have a hopeful aspect, simply because they are evidence that the Holy Spirit is striving with the soul. But this work of the Spirit is not yet regeneration; at most, it is preparation for regeneration. So far as the sinner is concerned, he is more of a sinner than ever before; because, under more light than has ever before been given him, he is still rejecting Christ and resisting the Spirit. The word of God and the Holy Spirit appeal to lower as well as to higher motives; most men’s concern about religion is determined, at the outset, by hope or fear. See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:512.
All these motives, though they are not the highest, are yet proper motives to influence the soul; it is right to seek God from motives of self‐interest, and because we desire heaven. But the seeking which not only begins, but ends, upon this lower plane, is never successful. Until the soul gives itself to God from motives of love, it is never saved. And so long as these preliminary motives rule, regeneration has not yet taken place. Bible‐reading, and prayers, and church‐attendance, and partial reformations, are certainly better than apathy or outbreaking sin. They may be signs that God is working in the soul. But without complete surrender to God, they may be accompanied with the greatest guilt and the greatest danger; simply because, under such influences, the withholding of submission implies the most active hatred to God, and opposition to his will. Instance cases of outward reformation that preceded regeneration,—like that of John Bunyan, who left off swearing before his conversion. Park: “The soul is a monad, and must turn all at once. If we are standing on the line, we are yet unregenerate. We are regenerate only when we cross it.” There is a prevenient grace as well as a regenerating grace. Wendelius indeed distinguished five kinds of grace, namely, prevenient, preparatory, operant, coöperant, and perfecting.
While in some cases God’s preparatory work occupies a long time, there are many cases in which he cuts short his work in righteousness (Rom. 9:28). Some persons are regenerated in infancy or childhood, cannot remember a time when they did not love Christ, and yet take long to learn that they are regenerate. Others are convicted and converted suddenly in mature years. The best proof of regeneration is not the memory of a past experience, however vivid and startling, but rather a present inward love for Christ, his holiness, his servants, his work, and his word. Much sympathy should be given to those who have been early converted, but who, from timidity, self‐distrust, or the faults of inconsistent church members, have been deterred from joining themselves with Christian people, and so have lost all hope and joy in their religious lives. Instance the man who, though converted in a revival of religion, was injured by a professed Christian, and became a recluse, but cherished the memory of his dead wife and child, kept the playthings of the one and the clothing of the other, and left directions to have them buried with him.
As there is danger of confounding regeneration with preparatory influences of God’s Spirit, so there is danger of confounding regeneration with sanctification. Sanctification, as the development of the new affection, is gradual and progressive. But no beginning is progressive or gradual; and regeneration is a beginning of the new affection. We may gradually come to the knowledge that a new affection exists, but the knowledge of a beginning is one thing; the beginning itself is another thing. Luther had experienced a change of heart, long before he knew its meaning or could express his new feelings in scientific form. It is not in the sense of a gradual regeneration, but in the sense of a gradual recognition of the fact of regeneration, and a progressive enjoyment of its results, that “the path of the righteous” is said to be “as the dawning light”—the morning‐ dawn that begins in faintness, but—“that shineth more and more unto the perfect day” (Prov. 4:18). Cf. 2 Cor. 4:4—“the god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn upon them.” Here the recognition of God’s work is described as gradual; that the work itself is instantaneous, appears from the following verse 6—“Seeing it is God, that said, Light shall shine out of darkness, who shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
Illustrate by the unconscious crossing of the line which separates one State of the Federal Union from another. From this doctrine of instantaneous regeneration, we may infer the duty of reaping as well as of sowing: John 4:38—“I sent you to reap.” “It is a mistaken notion that it takes God a long time to give increase to the seed planted in a sinner’s heart. This grows out of the idea that regeneration is a matter of training; that a soul must be educated from a lost state into a state of salvation. Let us remember that three thousand, whom in the morning Peter called murderers of Christ, were before night regenerated and baptized members of his church.” Drummond, in his Nat. Law in the Spir. World, remarks upon the humaneness of sudden conversion. As self‐ limitation, self‐mortification, suicide of the old nature, it is well to have it at once done and over with, and not to die by degrees.
(b) This change takes place in the region of the soul below consciousness.—It is by no means true that God’s work in regeneration is always recognized by the subject of it. On the other hand, it is never directly perceived at all. The working of God in the human soul, since it contravenes no law of man’s being, but rather puts him in the full and normal possession of his own powers, is secret and inscrutable. Although man is conscious, he is not conscious of God’s regenerating agency.
We know our own natural existence only through the phenomena of thought and sense. So we know our own spiritual existence, as new creatures in Christ, only through the new feelings and experiences of the soul. “The will does not need to act solitarily, in order to act freely.” God acts on the will, and the resulting holiness is true freedom. John 8:36—“If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” We have the consciousness of freedom; but the act of God in giving us this freedom is beyond or beneath our consciousness.
Both Luther and Calvin used the word regeneration in a loose way, confounding it with sanctification. After the Federalists made a distinct doctrine of it, Calvinists in general came to treat it separately. And John Wesley rescued it from identification with sacraments, by showing its connection with the truth. E. G. Robinson: “Regeneration is in one sense instantaneous, in another sense not. There is necessity of some sort of knowledge in regeneration. The doctrine of Christ crucified is the fit instrument. The object of religion is to produce a sound rather than an emotional experience. Revivals of religion are valuable in just the proportion in which they produce rational conviction and permanently righteous action.” But none are left unaffected by them. “An arm of the magnetic needle must be attracted to the magnetic pole of the earth, or it must be repelled,—there is no such thing as indifference. Modern materialism, refusing to say that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, is led to declare that the hate of God is the beginning of wisdom” (Diesselhoff, Die klassische Poesie, 8).
(c) This change, however, is recognized indirectly in its results.—At the moment of regeneration, the soul is conscious only of the truth and of its own exercises with reference to it. That God is the author of its new affection is an inference from the new character of the exercises which it prompts. The human side or aspect of regeneration is Conversion. This, and the Sanctification which follows it (including the special gifts of the Holy Spirit), are the sole evidences in any particular case that regeneration is an accomplished fact.
Regeneration, though it is the birth of a perfect child, is still the birth of a child. The child is to grow, and the growth is sanctification; in other words, sanctification, as we shall see, is simply the strengthening and development of the holy affection which begins its existence in regeneration. Hence the subject of the epistle to the Romans—salvation by faith—includes not only justification by faith (chapters 1‐7), but sanctification by faith (chapters 8‐16). On evidences of regeneration, see Anderson, Regeneration, 169‐214, 227‐295; Woods, Works, 44‐55. The transition from justification by faith to sanctification by faith is in chapter 8 of the epistle to the Romans. That begins by declaring that there is no condemnation in Christ, and ends by declaring that there is no separation from Christ. The work of the Holy Spirit follows upon the work of Christ. See Godet on the epistle.
The doctrine of Alexander Campbell was a protest against laying an unscriptural emphasis on emotional states as evidences of regeneration—a protest which certain mystical and antinomian exaggerations of evangelical teaching very justly provoked. But Campbell went to the opposite extreme of practically excluding emotion from religion, and of confining the work of the Holy Spirit to the conscious influence of the truth. Disciples need to recognize a power of the Holy Spirit exerted below consciousness, in order to explain the conscious acceptance of Christ and of his salvation.
William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 271—“If we should conceive that the human mind, with its different possibilities of equilibrium, might be like a many sided solid with different surfaces on which it could lie flat, we might liken mental revolutions to the spatial revolutions of such a body. As it is pried up, say by a lever, from a position in which it lies on surface A, for instance, it will linger for a time unstably half way up, and if the lever cease to urge it, it will tumble back or relapse, under the continued pull of gravity. But if at last it rotate far enough for its centre of gravity to pass beyond the surface A altogether, the body will fall over, on surface B, say, and will abide there permanently. The pulls of gravity towards A have vanished, and may now be disregarded. The polyhedron has become immune against further attraction from this direction.”
III. Conversion
Conversion is that voluntary change in the mind of the sinner, in which he turns, on the one hand, from sin, and on the other hand, to Christ. The former or negative element in conversion, namely, the turning from sin, we denominate repentance. The latter or positive element in conversion, namely, the turning to Christ, we denominate faith.
For account of repentance and faith as elements of conversion, see Andrew Fuller, Works, 1:666; Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik, 3d ed., 201‐206. The two elements of conversion seem to be in the mind of Paul, when he writes in Rom. 6:11—“reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus”; Col. 3:3—“ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” Cf. ἀποστρέφω, in Acts 3:26—“in turning away every one of you from your iniquities,” with ἐπιστρέφω in Acts 11:21—“believed” and “turned unto the Lord.” A candidate for ordination was once asked which came first: regeneration or conversion. He replied very correctly: “Regeneration and conversion are like the cannon‐ball and the hole—they both go through together.” This is true however only as to their chronological relation. Logically the ball is first and causes the hole, not the hole first and causes the ball.
(a) Conversion is the human side or aspect of that fundamental spiritual change which, as viewed from the divine side, we call regeneration. It is simply man’s turning. The Scriptures recognize the voluntary activity of the human soul in this change as distinctly as they recognize the causative agency of God. While God turns men to himself (Ps. 85:4; Song 1:4; Jer. 31:18; Lam. 5:21), men are exhorted to turn themselves to God (Prov. 1:23; Is. 31:6; 59:20; Ez. 14:6; 18:32; 33:9, 11; Joel 2:12‐14). While God is represented as the author of the new heart and the new spirit (Ps. 51:10; Ez. 11:19; 36:26), men are commanded to make for themselves a new heart and a new spirit (Ez. 18:31; 2 Cor. 7:1; cf. Phil. 2:12, 13; Eph. 5:14).
Ps. 85:4—“Turn us, O God of our salvation”; Song 1:4—“Draw me, we will run after thee”; Jer. 31:18—“turn thou me, and I shall be turned”; Lam. 5:21—“Turn thou us unto thee, O Jehovah, and we shall be turned.”
Prov. 1:23—“Turn you at my reproof: Behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you”; Is. 31:6—“Turn ye unto him from whom ye have deeply revolted, O children of Israel”; 59:20—“And a Redeemer will come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob”; Ez. 14:6—“Return ye, and turn yourselves from your idols”; 18:32—“turn yourselves and live”; 33:9—“if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from it, and he turn not from his way, he shall die in his iniquity”; 11—“turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” Joel 2:12‐14—“turn ye unto me with all your heart.”
Ps. 51:10—“Create in me a clean heart, O God; And renew a right spirit within me”; Ez. 11:19—“And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh”; 36:26—“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.”
Ez. 18:31—“Cast away from you all your transgressions, wherein ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” 2 Cor. 7:1—“Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God”; cf. Phil. 2:12, 13—“work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure”; Eph. 5:14—“Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall shine upon thee.”
When asked the way to heaven, Bishop Wilberforce replied: “Take the first turn to the right, and go straight forward.” Phillips Brooks’s conversion is described by Professor Allen, Life, 1:266, as consisting in the resolve “to be true to himself, to renounce nothing which he knew to be good, and yet bring all things captive to the obedience of God, ... the absolute surrender of his will to God, in accordance with the example of Christ: ‘Lo, I am come ... to do thy will, O God’ (Heb. 10:7).”
(b) This twofold method of representation can be explained only when we remember that man’s powers may be interpenetrated and quickened by the divine, not only without destroying man’s freedom, but with the result of making man for the first time truly free. Since the relation between the divine and the human activity is not one of chronological succession, man is never to wait for God’s working. If he is ever regenerated, it must be in and through a movement of his own will, in which he turns to God as unconstrainedly and with as little consciousness of God’s operation upon him, as if no such operation of God were involved in the change. And in preaching, we are to press upon men the claims of God and their duty of immediate submission to Christ, with the certainty that they who do so submit will subsequently recognize this new and holy activity of their own wills as due to a working within them of divine power.
Ps. 110:3—“Thy people offer themselves willingly in the day of thy power.” The act of God is accompanied by an activity of man. Dorner: “God’s act initiates action.” There is indeed an original changing of man’s tastes and affections, and in this man is passive. But this is only the first aspect of regeneration. In the second aspect of it—the rousing of man’s powers—God’s action is accompanied by man’s activity, and regeneration is but the obverse side of conversion. Luther’s word: “Man, in conversion, is purely passive,” is true only of the first part of the change; and here, by “conversion,” Luther means “regeneration.” Melanchthon said better: “Non est enim coäctio, ut voluntas non possit repugnare: trahit Deus, sed volentem trahit.” See Meyer on Rom. 8:14—“led by the Spirit of God”: “The expression,” Meyer says, “is passive, though without prejudice to the human will, as verse 13 proves: ‘by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body.’ ”
As, by a well known principle of hydrostatics, the water contained in a little tube can balance the water of a whole ocean, so God’s grace can be balanced by man’s will. As sunshine on the sand produces nothing unless man sow the seed, and as a fair breeze does not propel the vessel unless man spread the sails, so the influences of God’s Spirit require human agencies, and work through them. The Holy Spirit is sovereign,—he bloweth where he listeth. Even though there be uniform human conditions, there will not be uniform spiritual results. Results are often independent of human conditions as such. This is the truth emphasized by Andrew Fuller. But this does not prevent us from saying that, whenever God’s Spirit works in regeneration, there is always accompanying it a voluntary change in man, which we call conversion, and that this change is as free, and as really man’s own work, as if there were no divine influence upon him.
Jesus told the man with the withered hand to stretch forth his hand; it was the man’s duty to stretch it forth, not to wait for strength from God to do it. Jesus told the man sick of the palsy to take up his bed and walk. It was that man’s duty to obey the command, not to pray for power to obey. Depend wholly upon God? Yes, as you depend wholly upon wind when you sail, yet need to keep your sails properly set. “Work out your own salvation” comes first in the apostle’s exhortation; “for it is God who worketh in you” follows (Phil. 2:12, 13); which means that our first business is to use our wills in obedience; then we shall find that God has gone before us to prepare us to obey.
Mat. 11:12—“the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and men of violence take it by force.” Conversion is like the invasion of a kingdom. Men are not to wait for God’s time, but to act at once. Not bodily exercises are required, but impassioned earnestness of soul. Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:49‐56—“Not injustice and violence, but energetic laying hold of a good to which they can make no claim. It is of no avail to wait idly, or to seek laboriously to earn it; but it is of avail to lay hold of it and to retain it. It is ready as a gift of God for men, but men must direct their desire and will toward it.... The man who put on the wedding garment did not earn his share of the feast thereby, yet he did show the disposition without which he was not permitted to partake of it.”
James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 12—“The two main phenomena of religion, they will say, are essentially phenomena of adolescence, and therefore synchronous with the development of sexual life. To which the retort is easy: Even were the asserted synchrony unrestrictedly true as a fact (which it is not), it is not only the sexual life, but the entire higher mental life, which awakens during adolescence. One might then as well set up the thesis that the interest in mechanics, physics, chemistry, logic, physiology and sociology, which springs up during adolescent years along with that in poetry and religion, is also a perversion of the sexual instinct, but this would be too absurd. Moreover, if the argument from synchrony is to decide, what is to be done with the fact that the religious age par excellence would seem to be old age, when the uproar of the sexual life is past?”
(c) From the fact that the word “conversion” means simply “a turning,” every turning of the Christian from sin, subsequent to the first, may, in a subordinate sense, be denominated a conversion (Luke 22:32). Since regeneration is not complete sanctification, and the change of governing disposition is not identical with complete purification of the nature, such subsequent turnings from sin are necessary consequences and evidences of the first (cf. John 13:10). But they do not, like the first, imply a change in the governing disposition,—they are rather new manifestations of a disposition already changed. For this reason, conversion proper, like the regeneration of which it is the obverse side, can occur but once. The phrase “second conversion,” even if it does not imply radical misconception of the nature of conversion, is misleading. We prefer, therefore, to describe these subsequent experiences, not by the term “conversion,” but by such phrases as “breaking off, forsaking, returning from, neglects or transgressions,” and “coming back to Christ, trusting anew in him.” It is with repentance and faith, as elements in that first and radical change by which the soul enters upon a state of salvation, that we have now to do.
Luke 22:31, 32—“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat: but I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not; and do thou, when once thou hast turned again [A. V.: ‘art converted’], establish thy brethren”; John 13:10—“He that is bathed [has taken a full bath] needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit [as a whole].” Notice that Jesus here announces that only one regeneration is needed,—what follows is not conversion but sanctification. Spurgeon said he believed in regeneration, but not in re‐ regeneration. Second blessing? Yes, and a forty‐second. The stages in the Christian life are like ice, water, invisible vapor, steam, all successive and natural results of increasing temperature, seemingly different from one another, yet all forms of the same element.
On the relation between the divine and the human agencies, we quote a different view from another writer: “God decrees to employ means which in every case are sufficient, and which in certain cases it is foreseen will be effectual. Human action converts a sufficient means into an effectual means. The result is not always according to the varying use of means. The power is all of God. Man has power to resist only. There is a universal influence of the Spirit, but the influences of the Spirit vary in different cases, just as external opportunities do. The love of holiness is blunted, but it still lingers. The Holy Spirit quickens it. When this love is wholly lost, sin against the Holy Ghost results. Before regeneration there is a desire for holiness, an apprehension of its beauty, but this is overborne by a greater love for sin. If the man does not quickly grow worse, it is not because of positive action on his part, but only because negatively he does not resist as he might. ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock.’ God leads at first by a resistible influence. When man yields, God leads by an irresistible influence. The second influence of the Holy Spirit confirms the Christian’s choice. This second influence is called ‘sealing.’ There is no necessary interval of time between the two. Prevenient grace comes first; conversion comes after.”
To this view, we would reply that a partial love for holiness, and an ability to choose it before God works effectually upon the heart, seem to contradict those Scriptures which assert that “the mind of the flesh is enmity against God” (Rom. 8:7), and that all good works are the result of God’s new creation (Eph. 2:10). Conversion does not precede regeneration,—it chronologically accompanies regeneration, though it logically follows it.
1. Repentance
Repentance is that voluntary change in the mind of the sinner in which he turns from sin. Being essentially a change of mind, it involves a change of view, a change of feeling, and a change of purpose. We may therefore analyze repentance into three constituents, each succeeding term of which includes and implies the one preceding:
A. An intellectual element,—change of view—recognition of sin as involving personal guilt, defilement, and helplessness (Ps. 51:3, 7, 11). If unaccompanied by the following elements, this recognition may manifest itself in fear of punishment, although as yet there is no hatred of sin. This element is indicated in the Scripture phrase ἐπίγνωσις ἁμαρτίας (Rom. 3:20; cf. 1:32).
Ps. 51:3, 11—“For I know my transgressions; And my sin is ever before me.... Cast me not away from thy presence, And take not thy Holy Spirit from me”; Rom. 3:20—“through the law cometh the knowledge of sin”; cf. 1:32—“who, knowing the ordinance of God, that they that practise such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but also consent with them that practise them.”
It is well to remember that God requires us to cherish no views or emotions that contradict the truth. He wants of us no false humility. Humility (humus) = groundness—a coming down to the hard‐pan of facts—a facing of the truth. Repentance, therefore, is not a calling ourselves by hard names. It is not cringing, or exaggerated self‐contempt. It is simple recognition of what we are. The “’umble” Uriah Heep is the arrant hypocrite. If we see ourselves as God sees us, we shall say with Job 42:5, 6—“I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; But now mine eye seeth thee: Wherefore I abhor myself, And repent in dust and ashes.”
Apart from God’s working in the heart there is no proper recognition of sin, either in people of high or low degree. Lady Huntington invited the Duchess of Buckingham to come and hear Whitefield, when the Duchess answered: “It is monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl on the earth,—it is highly offensive and insulting.” Mr. Moody, after preaching to the prisoners in the jail at Chicago, visited them in their cells. In the first cell he found two, playing cards. They said false witnesses had testified against them. In the second cell, the convict said that the guilty man had escaped, but that he, a mere accomplice, had been caught. In the last cell only Mr. Moody found a man crying over his sins. Henry Drummond, after hearing the confessions of inquirers, said: “I am sick of the sins of these men,—how can God bear it?”
Experience of sin does not teach us to recognize sin. We do not learn to know chloroform by frequently inhaling it. The drunkard does not understand the degrading effects of drink so well as his miserable wife and children do. Even the natural conscience does not give the recognition of sin that is needed in true repentance. The confession “I have sinned” is made by hardened Pharaoh (Ex. 9:27), double minded Balaam (Num. 22:34), remorseful Achan (Josh. 7:20), insincere King Saul (1 Sam. 15:24), despairing Judas (Mat. 27:4); but in no one of these cases was there true repentance. True repentance takes God’s part against ourselves, has sympathy with God, feels how unworthily the Ruler, Father, Friend of men has been treated. It does not ask, “What will my sin bring to me?” but, “What does my sin mean to God?” It involves, in addition to the mere recognition of sin:
B. An emotional element,—change of feeling—sorrow for sin as committed against goodness and justice, and therefore hateful to God, and hateful in itself (Ps. 51:1, 2, 10, 14). This element of repentance is indicated in the Scripture word μεταμέλομαι. If accompanied by the following element, it is a λύπη κατὰ Θεόν. If not so accompanied, it is a λύπη τοῦ κόσμου = remorse and despair (Mat. 27:3; Luke 18:23; 2 Cor. 7:9, 10).
Ps. 51:1, 2, 10, 14—“Have mercy upon me ... blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin.... Create in me a clean heart, O God; ... Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God”; Mat. 27:3—“_Then Judas, who betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in that I betrayed innocent __ blood_”; Luke 18:23—“when he heard these things, he became exceeding sorrowful; for he was very rich”; 2 Cor. 7:9, 10—“I now rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye were made sorry unto repentance; for ye were made sorry after a godly sort.... For godly sorrow worketh repentance unto salvation, a repentance which bringeth no regret: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.” We must distinguish sorrow for sin from shame on account of it and fear of its consequences. These last are selfish, while godly sorrow is disinterested. “A man may be angry with himself and may despise himself without any humble prostration before God or confession of his guilt” (Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:535, note).
True repentance, as illustrated in Ps. 51, does not think of 1. consequences, 2. other men, 3. heredity, as an excuse; but it sees sin as 1. transgression against God, 2. personal guilt, 3. defiling the inmost being. Perowne on Ps. 51:1—“In all godly sorrow there is hope. Sorrow without hope may be remorse or despair, but it is not repentance.” Much so‐called repentance is illustrated by the little girl’s prayer: “O God, make me good,—not real good, but just good enough so that I won’t have to be whipped!” Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, 2:3—“’Tis meet so, daughter; but lest you do repent As that the sin hath brought you to this shame, Which sorrow is always towards ourselves, not heaven, Showing we would not spare heaven as we love it, But as we stand in fear.... I do repent me as it is an evil, And take the shame with joy.” Tempest, 3:3—“For which foul deed, the Powers delaying, not forgetting, Have incensed the seas, and shores, yea, all the creatures, Against your peace.... Whose wrath to guard you from ... is nothing but heart’s sorrow And a clear life ensuing.”
Simon, Reconciliation, 195, 379—“At the very bottom it is God whose claims are advocated, whose part is taken, by that in us which, whilst most truly our own, yea, our very selves, is also most truly his, and of him. The divine energy and idea which constitutes us will not let its own root and source suffer wrong unatoned. God intends us to be givers as well as receivers, givers even to him. We share in his image that we may be creators and givers, not from compulsion, but in love.” Such repentance as this is wrought only by the Holy Spirit. Conscience indeed is present in every human heart, but only the Holy Spirit convinces of sin. Why is the Holy Spirit needed? A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 189‐201—“Conscience is the witness to the law; the Spirit is the witness to grace. Conscience brings legal conviction; the Spirit brings evangelical conviction. The one begets a conviction unto despair; the other a conviction unto hope. Conscience convinces of sin committed, of righteousness impossible, of judgment impending; the Comforter convinces of sin committed, of righteousness imputed, of judgment accomplished—in Christ. God alone can reveal the divine view of sin, and enable man to understand it.” But, however agonizing the sorrow, it will not constitute true repentance, unless it leads to, or is accompanied by:
C. A voluntary element,—change of purpose—inward turning from sin and disposition to seek pardon and cleansing (Ps. 51:5, 7, 10; Jer. 25:5). This includes and implies the two preceding elements, and is therefore the most important aspect of repentance. It is indicated in the Scripture term μετάνοια (Acts 2:38; Rom. 2:4).
Ps. 51:5, 7, 10—“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity; And in sin did my mother conceive me.... Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.... Create in me a clean heart, O God; And renew a right spirit within me”; Jer. 25:5—“Return ye now every one from his evil way, and from the evil of your doings”; Acts 2:38—“And Peter said unto them, Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ”; Rom. 2:4—“despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?”
Walden, The Great Meaning of Metanoia, brings out well the fact that “repentance” is not the true translation of the word, but rather “change of mind”; indeed, he would give up the word “repentance” altogether in the N. T., except as the translation of μεταμέλεια. The idea of μετάνοια is abandonment of sin rather than sorrow for sin,—an act of the will rather than a state of the sensibility. Repentance is participation in Christ’s revulsion from sin and suffering on account of it. It is repentance from sin, not of sin, nor for sin—always ἀπό and ἔκ, never περί or ἐπί. The true illustrations of repentance are found in Job (42:6—“I abhor myself, And repent in dust and ashes”); in David (Ps. 51:10—“Create in me a clean heart; And renew a right spirit within me”); in Peter (John 21:17—“thou knowest that I love thee”); in the penitent thief (Luke 23:42—“Jesus, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom”); in the prodigal son (Luke 15:18—“I will arise and go to my Father”).
Repentance implies free will. Hence Spinoza, who knows nothing of free will, knows nothing of repentance. In book 4 of his Ethics, he says: “Repentance is not a virtue, that is, it does not spring from reason; on the contrary, the man who repents of what he has done is doubly wretched or impotent.” Still he urges that for the good of society it is not desirable that vulgar minds should be enlightened as to this matter; see Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 315. Determinism also renders it irrational to feel righteous indignation either at the misconduct of other people or of ourselves. Moral admiration is similarly irrational in the determinist; see Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 24.
In broad distinction from the Scriptural doctrine, we find the Romanist view, which regards the three elements of repentance as the following: (1) contrition; (2) confession; (3) satisfaction. Of these, contrition is the only element properly belonging to repentance; yet from this contrition the Romanist excludes all sorrow for sin of nature. Confession is confession to the priest; and satisfaction is the sinner’s own doing of outward penance, as a temporal and symbolic submission and reparation to violated law. This view is false and pernicious, in that it confounds repentance with its outward fruits, conceives of it as exercised rather toward the church than toward God, and regards it as a meritorious ground, instead of a mere condition, of pardon.
On the Romanist doctrine of Penance, Thornwell (Collected Writings, 1:423) remarks: “The culpa may be remitted, they say, while the pœna is to some extent retained.” The priest absolves, not declaratively, but judicially. Denying the greatness of the sin, it makes man able to become his own Savior. Christ’s satisfaction, for sins after baptism, is not sufficient; our satisfaction is sufficient. But performance of one duty, we object, cannot make satisfaction for the violation of another.
We are required to confess one to another, and specially to those whom we have wronged: James 5:16—“Confess therefore your sins one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.” This puts the hardest stress upon our natural pride. There are a hundred who will confess to a priest or to God, where there is one who will make frank and full confession to the aggrieved party. Confession to an official religious superior is not penitence nor a test of penitence. In the Confessional women expose their inmost desires to priests who are forbidden to marry. These priests are sometimes, though gradually, corrupted to the core, and at the same time they are taught in the Confessional precisely to what women to apply. In France many noble families will not permit their children to confess, and their women are not permitted to incur the danger.
Lord Salisbury in the House of Lords said of auricular confession: “It has been injurious to the moral independence and virility of the nation to an extent to which probably it has been given to no other institution to affect the character of mankind.” See Walsh, Secret History of the Oxford Movement; A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 111—“Asceticism is an absolute inversion of the divine order, since it seeks life through death, instead of finding death through life. No degree of mortification can ever bring us to sanctification.” Penance can never effect true repentance, nor be other than a hindrance to the soul’s abandonment of sin. Penance is something external to be done, and it diverts attention from the real inward need of the soul. The monk does penance by sleeping on an iron bed and by wearing a hair shirt. When Anselm of Canterbury died, his under garments were found alive with vermin which the saint had cultivated in order to mortify the flesh. Dr. Pusey always sat on a hard chair, traveled as uncomfortably as possible, looked down when he walked, and whenever he saw a coal‐fire thought of hell. Thieves do penance by giving a part of their ill‐gotten wealth to charity. In all these things there is no transformation of the inner life.
In further explanation of the Scripture representations, we remark:
(a) That repentance, in each and all of its aspects, is wholly an inward act, not to be confounded with the change of life which proceeds from it.
True repentance is indeed manifested and evidenced by confession of sin before God (Luke 18:13), and by reparation for wrongs done to men (Luke 19:8). But these do not constitute repentance; they are rather fruits of repentance. Between “repentance” and “fruit worthy of repentance,” Scripture plainly distinguishes (Mat. 3:8).
Luke 18:13—“But the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote his breast, saying, God, be thou merciful to me a sinner [‘be propitiated to me the sinner’]”; 19:8—“And Zacchæus stood, and said unto the Lord, Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have wrongfully exacted aught of any man, I restore fourfold”; Mat. 3:8—“Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of repentance.” Fruit worthy of repentance, or fruits meet for repentance, are: 1. Confession of sin; 2. Surrender to Christ; 3. Turning from sin; 4. Reparation for wrong doing; 5. Right moral conduct; 6. Profession of Christian faith.
On Luke 17:3—“if thy brother sin, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him”—Dr. B. H. Carroll remarks that the law is uniform which makes repentance indispensable to forgiveness. It applies to man’s forgiveness of man, as well as to God’s forgiveness of man, or the church’s forgiveness of man. But I must be sure that I cherish toward the offender the spirit of love, whether he repents or not. Freedom from all malice toward him, however, and even loving prayerful labor to lead him to repentance, is not forgiveness. This I can grant only when he actually repents. If I do forgive him without repentance, then I impose my rule on God when I pray: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Mat. 6:12).
On the question whether the requirement that we forgive without atonement implies that God does, see Brit. and For. Evang. Rev., Oct 1881:678‐691—“Answer: 1. The present constitution of things is based upon atonement. Forgiveness on our part is required upon the ground of the Cross, without which the world would be hell. 2. God is Judge. We forgive, as brethren. When he forgives, it is as Judge of all the earth, of whom all earthly judges are representatives. If earthly judges may exact justice, much more God. The argument that would abolish atonement would abolish all civil government. 3. I should forgive my brother on the ground of God’s love, and Christ’s bearing of his sins. 4. God, who requires atonement, is the same being that provides it. This is ‘handsome and generous.’ But I can never provide atonement for my brother. I must, therefore, forgive freely, only upon the ground of what Christ has done for him.”
(b) That repentance is only a negative condition, and not a positive means of salvation.
This is evident from the fact that repentance is no more than the sinner’s present duty, and can furnish no offset to the claims of the law on account of past transgression. The truly penitent man feels that his repentance has no merit. Apart from the positive element of conversion, namely, faith in Christ, it would be only sorrow for guilt unremoved. This very sorrow, moreover, is not the mere product of human will, but is the gift of God.
Acts 5:31—“Him did God exalt with his right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins”; 11:18—“Then to the Gentiles also hath God granted repentance unto life”; 2 Tim. 2:25—“if peradventure God may give them repentance unto the knowledge of the truth.” The truly penitent man recognizes the fact that his sin deserves punishment. He never regards his penitence as offsetting the demands of law, and as making his punishment unjust. Whitefield: “Our repentance needeth to be repented of, and our very tears to be washed in the blood of Christ.” Shakespeare, Henry V, 4:1—“More will I do: Though all that I can do is nothing worth, Since that my penitence comes after all, Imploring pardon”—imploring pardon both for the crime and for the imperfect repentance.
(c) That true repentance, however, never exists except in conjunction with faith.
Sorrow for sin, not simply on account of its evil consequences to the transgressor, but on account of its intrinsic hatefulness as opposed to divine holiness and love, is practically impossible without some confidence in God’s mercy. It is the Cross which first makes us truly penitent (cf. John 12:32, 33). Hence all true preaching of repentance is implicitly a preaching of faith (Mat. 3:1‐12; cf. Acts 19:4), and repentance toward God involves faith in the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21; Luke 15:10, 24; 19:8, 9; cf. Gal. 3:7).
John 12:32, 33—“And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself. But this he said, signifying by what manner of death he should die.” Mat. 3:1‐12—John the Baptist’s preaching of repentance was also a preaching of faith; as is shown by Acts 19:4—“John baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they should believe on him that should come after him, that is, on Jesus.” Repentance involves faith: Acts 20:21—“testifying both to Jews and to Greeks repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ”; Luke 15:10, 24—“there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.... this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found”; 19:8, 9—“the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have wrongfully exacted aught of any man, I restore fourfold. And Jesus said unto him, To‐day is salvation come to this house, forasmuch as he also is a son of Abraham”—the father of all believers; cf. Gal. 3:6, 7—“Even as Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness. Know therefore that they that are of faith, the same are sons of Abraham.”
Luke 3:18 says of John the Baptist: “he preached the gospel unto the people,” and the gospel message, the glad tidings, is more than the command to repent,—it is also the offer of salvation through Christ; see Prof. Wm. Arnold Stevens, on John the Baptist and his Gospel, in Studies on the Gospel according to John. 2 Chron. 34:19—“And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the law, that he rent his clothes.” Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 44‐46—“Just in proportion as one sins, does he render it impossible for him truly to repent. Repentance must be the work of another in him. Is it not the Spirit of the Crucified which is the reality of the penitence of the truly penitent?” If this be true, then it is plain that there is no true repentance which is not accompanied by the faith that unites us to Christ.
(d) That, conversely, wherever there is true faith, there is true repentance also.
Since repentance and faith are but different sides or aspects of the same act of turning, faith is as inseparable from repentance as repentance is from faith. That must be an unreal faith where there is no repentance, just as that must be an unreal repentance where there is no faith. Yet because the one aspect of his change is more prominent in the mind of the convert than the other, we are not hastily to conclude that the other is absent. Only that degree of conviction of sin is essential to salvation, which carries with it a forsaking of sin and a trustful surrender to Christ.
Bishop Hall: “Never will Christ enter into that soul where the herald of repentance hath not been before him.” 2 Cor. 7:10—“repentance unto salvation.” In consciousness, sensation and perception are in inverse ratio to each other. Clear vision is hardly conscious of sensation, but inflamed eyes are hardly conscious of anything besides sensation. So repentance and faith are seldom equally prominent in the consciousness of the converted man; but it is important to know that neither can exist without the other. The truly penitent man will, sooner or later, show that he has faith; and the true believer will certainly show, in due season, that he hates and renounces sin.
The question, how much conviction a man needs to insure his salvation, may be answered by asking how much excitement one needs on a burning steamer. As, in the latter case, just enough to prompt persistent effort to escape; so, in the former case, just enough remorseful feeling is needed, to induce the sinner to betake himself believingly to Christ.
On the general subject of Repentance, see Anderson, Regeneration, 279‐288; Bp. Ossory, Nature and Effects of Faith, 40‐48, 311‐318; Woods, Works, 3:68‐78; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 5:1‐10, 208‐246; Luthardt, Compendium, 3d ed., 206‐208; Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 375‐381; Alexander, Evidences of Christianity, 47‐60; Crawford, Atonement, 413‐419.
2. Faith
Faith is that voluntary change in the mind of the sinner in which he turns to Christ. Being essentially a change of mind, it involves a change of view, a change of feeling, and a change of purpose. We may therefore analyze faith also into three constituents, each succeeding term of which includes and implies the preceding:
A. An intellectual element (notitia, credere Deum),—recognition of the truth of God’s revelation, or of the objective reality of the salvation provided by Christ. This includes not only a historical belief in the facts of the Scripture, but an intellectual belief in the doctrine taught therein as to man’s sinfulness and dependence upon Christ.
John 2:23, 24—“How when he was in Jerusalem at the passover, during the feast, many believed on his name, beholding his signs which he did. But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for that he knew all men”; cf. 3:2—Nicodemus has this external faith: “no one can do these signs that thou doest, except God be with him.” James 2:19—“Thou believest that God is one; thou doest well: the demons also believe, and shudder.” Even this historical faith is not without its fruits. It is the spring of much philanthropic work. There were no hospitals in ancient Rome. Much of our modern progress is due to the leavening influence of Christianity, even in the case of those who have not personally accepted Christ.
McLaren, S. S. Times, Feb. 22, 1902:107—“Luke does not hesitate to say, in Acts 8:13, that ‘Simon Magus also himself believed.’ But he expects us to understand that Simon’s belief was not faith that saved, but mere credence in the gospel narrative as true history. It had no ethical or spiritual worth. He was ‘amazed,’ as the Samaritans had been at his juggleries. It did not lead to repentance, or confession, or true trust. He was only ‘amazed’ at Philip’s miracles, and there was no salvation in that.” Merely historical faith, such as Disciples and Ritschlians hold to, lacks the element of affection, and besides this lacks the present reality of Christ himself. Faith that does not lay hold of a present Christ is not saving faith.
B. An emotional element (assensus, credere Deo),—assent to the revelation of God’s power and grace in Jesus Christ, as applicable to the present needs of the soul. Those in whom this awakening of the sensibilities is unaccompanied by the fundamental decision of the will, which constitutes the next element of faith, may seem to themselves, and for a time may appear to others, to have accepted Christ.
Mat. 13:20, 21—“he that was sown upon the rocky places, this is he that heareth the word, and straightway with joy receiveth it; yet hath he not root in himself, but endureth for a while; and when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, straightway he stumbleth”; cf. Ps. 106:12, 13—“Then believed they his words; they sang his praise. They soon forgat his works; they waited not for his counsel”; Ez. 33:31, 32—“And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but do them not; for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goeth after their gain. And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument; for they hear thy words, but they do them not”; John 5:35—Of John the Baptist: “He was the lamp that burneth and shineth; and ye were willing to rejoice for a season in his light”; 8:30, 31—“As he spake these things, many believed on him (εἰς αὐτόν). Jesus therefore said to those Jews that had believed him (αὐτῷ), If ye abide in my word, then are ye truly my disciples.” They believed him, but did not yet believe on him, that is, make him the foundation of their faith and life. Yet Jesus graciously recognizes this first faint foreshadowing of faith. It might lead to full and saving faith.
“Proselytes of the gate” were so called, because they contented themselves with sitting in the gate, as it were, without going into the holy city. “Proselytes of righteousness” were those who did their whole duty, by joining themselves fully to the people of God. Not emotion, but devotion, is the important thing. Temporary faith is as irrational and valueless as temporary repentance. It perhaps gained temporary blessing in the way of healing in the time of Christ, but, if not followed by complete surrender of the will, it might even aggravate one’s sin; see John 5:14—“Behold, thou art made whole; sin no more, lest a worse thing befall thee.” The special faith of miracles was not a high, but a low, form of faith, and it is not to be sought in our day as indispensable to the progress of the kingdom. Miracles have ceased, not because of decline in faith, but because the Holy Spirit has changed the method of his manifestations, and has led the church to seek more spiritual gifts.
Saving faith, however, includes also:
C. A voluntary element (fiducia, credere in Deum),—trust in Christ as Lord and Savior; or, in other words—to distinguish its two aspects:
(a) Surrender of the soul, as guilty and defiled, to Christ’s governance.
Mat. 11:28, 29—“Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me”; John 8:12—“I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in the darkness”; 14:1—“Let not your heart be troubled: believe in God, believe also in me”; Acts 16:31—“Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved.” Instances of the use of πιστεύω, in the sense of trustful committance or surrender, are: John 2:24—“But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for that he knew all men”; Rom. 3:2—“they were intrusted with the oracles of God”; Gal. 2:7—“when they saw that I had been intrusted with the gospel of the uncircumcision.” πίστις = “trustful self‐surrender to God” (Meyer).
In this surrender of the soul to Christ’s governance we have the guarantee that the gospel salvation is not an unmoral trust which permits continuance in sin. Aside from the fact that saving faith is only the obverse side of true repentance, the very nature of faith, as submission to Christ, the embodied law of God and source of spiritual life, makes a life of obedience and virtue to be its natural and necessary result. Faith is not only a declaration of dependence, it is also a vow of allegiance. The sick man’s faith in his physician is shown not simply by trusting him, but by obeying him. Doing what the doctor says is the very proof of trust. No physician will long care for a patient who refuses to obey his orders. Faith is self‐surrender to the great Physician, and a leaving of our case in his hands. But it is also the taking of his prescriptions, and the active following of his directions.
We need to emphasize this active element in saving faith, lest men get the notion that mere indolent acquiescence in Christ’s plan will save them. Faith is not simple receptiveness. It gives itself, as well as receives Christ. It is not mere passivity,—it is also self‐committal. As all reception of knowledge is active, and there must be attention if we would learn, so all reception of Christ is active, and there must be intelligent giving as well as taking. The Watchman, April 30, 1896—“Faith is more than belief and trust. It is the action of the soul going out toward its object. It is the exercise of a spiritual faculty akin to that of sight; it establishes a personal relation between the one who exercises faith and the one who is its object. When the intellectual feature predominates, we call it belief; when the emotional element predominates, we call it trust. This faith is at once ‘An affirmation and an act Which bids eternal truth be present fact.’ ”
There are great things received in faith, but nothing is received by the man who does not first give himself to Christ. A conquered general came into the presence of his conqueror and held out to him his hand: “Your sword first, sir!” was the response. But when General Lee offered his sword to General Grant at Appomattox, the latter returned it, saying: “No, keep your sword, and go to your home.” Jacobi said that “Faith is the reflection of the divine knowing and willing in the finite spirit of man.” G. B. Foster, in Indiana Baptist Outlook, June 19, 1902—“Catholic orthodoxy is wrong in holding that the authority for faith is the church; for that would be an external authority. Protestant orthodoxy is wrong in holding that the authority for faith is the book; for that would be an external authority. Liberalism is wrong in holding that the reason is the authority for faith. The authority for faith is the revelation of God.” Faith in this revelation is faith in Christ the Revealer. It puts the soul in connection with the source of all knowledge and power. As the connection of a wire with the reservoir of electric force makes it the channel of vast energies, so the smallest measure of faith, any real connection of the soul with Christ, makes it the recipient of divine resources.
While faith is the act of the whole man, and intellect, affection, and will are involved in it, will is the all‐inclusive and most important of its elements. No other exercise of will is such a revelation of our being and so decisive of our destiny. The voluntary element in faith is illustrated in marriage. Here one party pledges the future in permanent self‐surrender, commits one’s self to another person in confidence that this future, with all its new revelations of character, will only justify the decision made. Yet this is rational; see Holland, in Lux Mundi, 46‐48. To put one’s hand into molten iron, even though one knows of the “spheroidal state” that gives impunity, requires an exertion of will; and not all workmen in metals are courageous enough to make the venture. The child who leaped into the dark cellar, in confidence that her father’s arms would be open to receive her, did not act irrationally, because she had heard her father’s command and trusted his promise. Though faith in Christ is a leap in the dark, and requires a mighty exercise of will, it is nevertheless the highest wisdom, because Christ’s word is pledged that “him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37).
J. W. A. Stewart: “Faith is 1. a bond between persons, trust, confidence; 2. it makes ventures, takes much for granted; 3. its security is the character and power of him in whom we believe,—not our faith, but his fidelity, is the guarantee that our faith is rational.” Kant said that nothing in the world is good but the good will which freely obeys the law of the good. Pfleiderer defines faith as the free surrender of the heart to the gracious will of God. Kaftan, Dogmatik, 21, declares that the Christian religion is essentially faith, and that this faith manifests itself as 1. doctrine; 2. worship; 3. morality.
(b) Reception and appropriation of Christ, as the source of pardon and spiritual life.
John 1:12—“as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name”; 4:14—“whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life”; 6:53—“Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves”; 20:31—“these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name”; Eph. 3:17—“that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith”; Heb. 11:1—“Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen”; Rev. 3:20—“Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”
The three constituents of faith may be illustrated from the thought, feeling, and action of a person who stands by a boat, upon a little island which the rising stream threatens to submerge. He first regards the boat from a purely intellectual point of view,—it is merely an actually existing boat. As the stream rises, he looks at it, secondly, with some accession of emotion,—his prospective danger awakens in him the conviction that it is a good boat for a time of need, though he is not yet ready to make use of it. But, thirdly, when he feels that the rushing tide must otherwise sweep him away, a volitional element is added,—he gets into the boat, trusts himself to it, accepts it as his present, and only, means of safety. Only this last faith in the boat is faith that saves, although this last includes both the preceding. It is equally clear that the getting into the boat may actually save a man, while at the same time he may be full of fears that the boat will never bring him to shore. These fears may be removed by the boatman’s word. So saving faith is not necessarily assurance of faith; but it becomes assurance of faith when the Holy Spirit “beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God” (Rom. 8:16). On the nature of this assurance, and on the distinction between it and saving faith, see pages 844‐846.
“Coming to Christ,” “looking to Christ,” “receiving Christ,” are all descriptions of faith, as are also the phrases: “surrender to Christ,” “submission to Christ,” “closing in with Christ.” Paul refers to a confession of faith in Rom. 10:9—“if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord.” Faith, then, is a taking of Christ as both Savior and Lord; and it includes both appropriation of Christ, and consecration to Christ. The voluntary element in faith, however, is a giving as well as a taking. The giving, or surrender, is illustrated in baptism by submergence; the taking, or reception, by emergence. See further on the Symbolism of Baptism. McCosh, Div. Government: “Saving faith is the consent of the will to the assent of the understanding, and commonly accompanied with emotion.” Pres. Hopkins, in Princeton Rev., Sept. 1878:511‐540—“In its intellectual element, faith is receptive, and believes that God is; in its affectional element, faith is assimilative, and believes that God is a rewarder; in its voluntary element, faith is operative, and actually comes to God (Heb. 11:6).”
Where the element of surrender is emphasized and the element of reception is not understood, the result is a legalistic experience, with little hope or joy. Only as we appropriate Christ, in connection with our consecration, do we realize the full blessing of the gospel. Light requires two things: the sun to shine, and the eye to take in its shining. So we cannot be saved without Christ to save, and faith to take the Savior for ours. Faith is the act by which we receive Christ. The woman who touched the border of Jesus’ garment received his healing power. It is better still to keep in touch with Christ so as to receive continually his grace and life. But best of all is taking him into our inmost being, to be the soul of our soul and the life of our life. This is the essence of faith, though many Christians do not yet realize it. Dr. Curry said well that faith can never be defined because it is a fact of life. It is a merging of our life in the life of Christ, and a reception of Christ’s life to interpenetrate and energize ours. In faith we must take Christ as well as give ourselves. It is certainly true that surrender without trust will not make us possessors of God’s peace. F. L. Anderson: “Faith is submissive reliance on Jesus Christ for salvation: 1. Reliance on Jesus Christ—not mere intellectual belief; 2. Reliance on him for salvation—we can never undo the past or atone for our sins; 3. Submissive reliance on Christ. Trust without surrender will never save.”
The passages already referred to refute the view of the Romanist, that saving faith is simply implicit assent to the doctrines of the church; and the view of the Disciple or Campbellite, that faith is merely intellectual belief in the truth, on the presentation of evidence.
The Romanist says that faith can coëxist with mortal sin. The Disciple holds that faith may and must exist before regeneration,—regeneration being completed in baptism. With these erroneous views, compare the noble utterance of Luther, Com. on Galatians, 1:191, 247, quoted in Thomasius, III, 2:183—“True faith,” says Luther, “is that assured trust and firm assent of heart, by which Christ is laid hold of,—so that Christ is the object of faith. Yet he is not merely the object of faith; but in the very faith, so to speak, Christ is present. Faith lays hold of Christ, and grasps him as a present possession, just as the ring holds the jewel.” Edwards, Works, 4:71‐73; 2:601‐641—“Faith,” says Edwards, “includes the whole act of unition to Christ as a Savior. The entire active uniting of the soul, or the whole of what is called coming to Christ, and receiving of him, is called faith in the Scripture.” See also Belief, What Is It? 150‐179, 290‐298.
Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 530—“Faith began by being: 1. a simple trust in God; then followed, 2. a simple expansion of that proposition into the assent to the proposition that God is good, and, 3. a simple acceptance of the proposition that Jesus Christ was his Son; then, 4. came in the definition of terms, and each definition of terms involved a new theory; finally, 5. the theories were gathered together into systems, and the martyrs and witnesses of Christ died for their faith, not outside but inside the Christian sphere; and instead of a world of religious belief which resembled the world of actual fact in the sublime unsymmetry of its foliage and the deep harmony of its discords, there prevailed the most fatal assumption of all, that the symmetry of a system is the test of its truth and the proof thereof.” We regard this statement of Hatch as erroneous, in that it attributes to the earliest disciples no larger faith than that of their Jewish brethren. We claim that the earliest faith involved an implicit acknowledgement of Jesus as Savior and Lord, and that this faith of simple obedience and trust became explicit recognition of our Lord’s deity and atonement just so soon as persecution and the Holy Spirit disclosed to them the real contents of their own consciousness.
An illustration of the simplicity and saving power of faith is furnished by Principal J. R. Andrews, of New London, Conn., Principal of the Bartlett Grammar School. When the steamer Atlantic was wrecked off Fisher’s Island, though Mr. Andrews could not swim, he determined to make a desperate effort to save his life. Binding a life‐preserver about him, he stood on the edge of the deck waiting his opportunity, and when he saw a wave moving shoreward, he jumped into the rough breakers and was borne safely to land. He was saved by faith. He accepted the conditions of salvation. Forty perished in a scene where he was saved. In one sense he saved himself; in another sense he depended upon God. It was a combination of personal activity and dependence upon God that resulted in his salvation. If he had not used the life‐ preserver, he would have perished; if he had not cast himself into the sea, he would have perished. So faith in Christ is reliance upon him for salvation; but it is also our own making of a new start in life and the showing of our trust by action. Tract 357, Am. Tract Society—“What is it to believe on Christ? It is: To feel your need of him; To believe that he is able and willing to save you, and to save you now; and To cast yourself unreservedly upon his mercy, and trust in him alone for salvation.”
In further explanation of the Scripture representations, we remark:
(a) That faith is an act of the affections and will, as truly as it is an act of the intellect.
It has been claimed that faith and unbelief are purely intellectual states, which are necessarily determined by the facts at any given time presented to the mind; and that they are, for this reason, as destitute of moral quality and as far from being matters of obligation, as are our instinctive feelings of pleasure and pain. But this view unwarrantably isolates the intellect, and ignores the fact that, in all moral subjects, the state of the affections and will affects the judgment of the mind with regard to truth. In the intellectual act the whole moral nature expresses itself. Since the tastes determine the opinions, faith is a moral act, and men are responsible for not believing.
John 3:18‐20—“He that believeth on him is not judged: he that believeth not hath been judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, lest his works should be reproved”; 5:40—“ye will not come to me, that ye may have life”; 16:8, 9—“And he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin ... of sin, because they believe not on me”; Rev. 2:21—“she willed not to repent.” Notice that the Revised Version very frequently substitutes the voluntary and active terms “disobedience” and “disobedient” for the “unbelief” and “unbelieving” of the Authorized Version,—as in Rom. 15:31; Heb. 3:18; 4:6, 11; 11:31. See Park, Discourses, 45, 46.
Savages do not know that they are responsible for their physical appetites, or that there is any right and wrong in matters of sense, until they come under the influence of Christianity. In like manner, even men of science can declare that the intellectual sphere has no part in man’s probation, and that we are no more responsible for our opinions and beliefs than we are for the color of our skin. But faith is not a merely intellectual act,—the affections and will give it quality. There is no moral quality in the belief that 2 + 2 = 4, because we can not help that belief. But in believing on Christ there is moral quality, because there is the element of choice. Indeed it may be questioned, whether, in every judgment upon moral things, there is not an act of will.
Hence on John 7:17—“If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak from myself”—F. L. Patton calls attention to the two common errors: (1) that obedience will certify doctrine,—which is untrue, because obedience is the result of faith, not vice versa; (2) that personal experience is the ultimate test of faith,—which is untrue, because the Bible is the only rule of faith, and it is one thing to receive truth through the feelings, but quite another to test truth by the feelings. The text really means, that if any man is willing to do God’s will, he shall know whether it be of God; and the two lessons to be drawn are: (1) the gospel needs no additional evidence; (2) the Holy Ghost is the hope of the world. On responsibility for opinions and beliefs, see Mozley, on Blanco White, in Essays Philos. and Historical, 2:142; T. T. Smith, Hulsean Lectures for 1839. Wilfrid Ward, The Wish to Believe, quotes Shakespeare: “Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought”; and Thomas Arnold: “They dared not lightly believe what they so much wished to be true.”
Pascal: “Faith is an act of the will.” Emerson, Essay on Worship: “A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples. Man’s religious faith is the expression of what he is.” Bain: “In its essential character, belief is a phase of our active nature, otherwise called the will.” Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 257—“Faith is the creative human answer to the creative divine offer. It is not the passive acceptance of a divine favor.... By faith man, laying hold of the personality of God in Christ, becomes a true person. And by the same faith he becomes, under God, a creator and founder of true society.” Inge, Christian Mysticism, 52—“Faith begins with an experiment and ends with an experience. But even the power to make the experiment is given from above. Eternal life is not γνῶσις, but the state of acquiring knowledge—ἴνα γιγνώσκωσιν. It is significant that John, who is so fond of the verb ‘to know,’ never uses the substantive γνῶσις.” Crane, Religion of To‐morrow, 148—“ ‘I will not obey, because I do not yet know’? But this is making the intellectual side the only side of faith, whereas the most important side is the will‐side. Let a man follow what he does believe, and he shall be led on to larger faith. Faith is the reception of the personal influence of a living Lord, and a corresponding action.”
William James, Will to Believe, 61—“This life is worth living, since it is what we make it, from the moral point of view.... Often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.... If your heart does not want a world of moral reality, your head will assuredly never make you believe in one.... Freedom to believe covers only living options which the intellect cannot by itself resolve.... We are not to put a stopper on our heart, and meantime act as if religion were not true”; Psychology, 2:282, 321—“Belief is consent, willingness, turning of our disposition. It is the mental state or function of cognizing reality. We never disbelieve anything except for the reason that we believe something else which contradicts the first thing. We give higher reality to whatever things we select and emphasize and turn to with a will.... We need only in cold blood act as if the thing in question were real, and keep acting as if it were real, and it will infallibly end by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. Those to whom God and duty are mere names, can make them much more than that, if they make a little sacrifice to them every day.”
E. G. Robinson: “Campbellism makes intellectual belief to be saving faith. But saving faith is consent of the heart as well as assent of the intellect. On the one hand there is the intellectual element: faith is belief upon the ground of evidence; faith without evidence is credulity. But on the other hand faith has an element of affection; the element of love is always wrapped up in it. So Abraham’s faith made Abraham like God; for we always become like that which we trust.” Faith therefore is not chronologically subsequent to regeneration, but is its accompaniment. As the soul’s appropriation of Christ and his salvation, it is not the result of an accomplished renewal, but rather the medium through which that renewal is effected. Otherwise it would follow that one who had not yet believed (i. e., received Christ) might still be regenerate, whereas the Scripture represents the privilege of sonship as granted only to believers. See John 1:12, 13—“But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”; also 3:5, 6, 10‐15; Gal. 3:26; 2 Pet. 1:3; cf. 1 John 5:1.
(b) That the object of saving faith is, in general, the whole truth of God, so far as it is objectively revealed or made known to the soul; but, in particular, the person and work of Jesus Christ, which constitutes the centre and substance of God’s revelation (Acts 17:18; 1 Cor. 1:23; Col. 1:27; Rev. 19:10).
The patriarchs, though they had no knowledge of a personal Christ, were saved by believing in God so far as God had revealed himself to them; and whoever among the heathen are saved, must in like manner be saved by casting themselves as helpless sinners upon God’s plan of mercy, dimly shadowed forth in nature and providence. But such faith, even among the patriarchs and heathen, is implicitly a faith in Christ, and would become explicit and conscious trust and submission, whenever Christ were made known to them (Mat. 8:11, 12; John 10:16; Acts 4:12; 10:31, 34, 35, 44; 16:31).
Acts 17:18—“he preached Jesus and the resurrection”; 1 Cor. 1:23—“we preach Christ crucified”; Col. 1:27—“this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: whom we proclaim”; Rev. 19:10—“the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” Saving faith is not belief in a dogma, but personal trust in a personal Christ. It is, therefore, possible to a child. Dorner: “The object of faith is the Christian revelation—God in Christ.... Faith is union with objective Christianity—appropriation of the real contents of Christianity.” Dr. Samuel Hopkins, the great uncle, defined faith as “an understanding, cordial receiving of the divine testimony concerning Jesus Christ and the way of salvation by him, in which the heart accords and conforms to the gospel.” Dr. Mark Hopkins, the great nephew, defined it as “confidence in a personal being.” Horace Bushnell: “Faith rests on a person. Faith is that act by which one person, a sinner, commits himself to another person, a Savior.” In John 11:25—“I am the resurrection and the life”—Martha is led to substitute belief in a person for belief in an abstract doctrine. Jesus is “the resurrection,” because he is “the life.” All doctrine and all miracle is significant and important only because it is the expression of the living Christ, the Revealer of God.
The object of faith is sometimes represented in the N. T., as being God the Father. John 5:24—“He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life”; Rom. 4:5—“to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness.” We can explain these passages only when we remember that Christ is God “manifested in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16), and that “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). Man may receive a gift without knowing from whom it comes, or how much it has cost. So the heathen, who casts himself as a sinner upon God’s mercy, may receive salvation from the Crucified One, without knowing who is the giver, or that the gift was purchased by agony and blood. Denney, Studies in Theology, 154—“No N. T. writer ever remembered Christ. They never thought of him as belonging to the past. Let us not preach about the historical Christ, but rather, about the living Christ; nay, let us preach him, present and omnipotent. Jesus could say: ‘Whither I go, ye know the way’ (John 14:4); for they knew him, and he was both the end and the way.”
Dr. Charles Hodge unduly restricts the operations of grace to the preaching of the incarnate Christ: Syst. Theol., 2:648—“There is no faith where the gospel is not heard; and where there is no faith, there is no salvation. This is indeed an awful doctrine.” And yet, in 2:668, he says most inconsistently: “As God is everywhere present in the material world, guiding its operations according to the laws of nature; so he is everywhere present with the minds of men, as the Spirit of truth and goodness, operating on them according to laws of their free moral agency, inclining them to good and restraining them from evil.” This presence and revelation of God we hold to be through Christ, the eternal Word, and so we interpret the prophecy of Caiaphas as referring to the work of the personal Christ: John 11:51, 52—“he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation; and not for the nation only, but that he might also gather together into one the children of God that are scattered abroad.”
Since Christ is the Word of God and the Truth of God, he may be received even by those who have not heard of his manifestation in the flesh. A proud and self‐righteous morality is inconsistent with saving faith; but a humble and penitent reliance upon God, as a Savior from sin and a guide of conduct, is an implicit faith in Christ; for such reliance casts itself upon God, so far as God has revealed himself,—and the only Revealer of God is Christ. We have, therefore, the hope that even among the heathen there may be some, like Socrates, who, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit working through the truth of nature and conscience, have found the way of life and salvation.
The number of such is so small as in no degree to weaken the claims of the missionary enterprise upon us. But that there are such seems to be intimated in Scripture: Mat. 8:11, 12—“many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven: but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness”; John 10:16—“And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and they shall become one flock, one shepherd”; Acts 4:12—“And in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved”; 10:31, 34, 35, 44—“Cornelius, thy prayer is heard, and thine alms are had in remembrance in the sight of God.... Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him.... While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all them that heard the word”; 16:31—“Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house.”
And instances are found of apparently regenerated heathen; see in Godet on John 7:17, note (vol. 2:277), the account of the so‐ called “Chinese hermit,” who accepted Christ, saying: “This is the only Buddha whom men ought to worship!” Edwards, Life of Brainard, 173‐175, gives an account “of one who was a devout and zealous reformer, or rather restorer, of what he supposed was the ancient religion of the Indians.” After a period of distress, he says that God “comforted his heart and showed him what he should do, and since that time he had known God and tried to serve him; and loved all men, be they who they would, so as he never did before.” See art. by Dr. Lucius E. Smith, in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1881:622‐645, on the question: “Is salvation possible without a knowledge of the gospel?” H. B. Smith, System, 323, note, rightly bases hope for the heathen, not on morality, but on sacrifice.
A chief of the Camaroons in S. W. Africa, fishing with many of his tribe long before the missionaries came, was overtaken by a storm, and while almost all the rest were drowned, he and a few others escaped. He gathered his people together afterwards and told the story of disaster. He said: “When the canoes upset and I found myself battling with the waves, I thought: To whom shall I cry for help? I knew that the god of the hills could not help me; I knew that the evil spirit would not help me. So I cried to the Great Father, Lord, save me! At that moment my feet touched the sand of the beach, and I was safe. Now let all my people honor the Great Father, and let no man speak a word against him, for he can help us.” This chief afterwards used every effort to prevent strife and bloodshed, and was remembered by those who came after as a peace‐ maker. His son told this story to Alfred Saker, the missionary, saying “Why did you not come sooner? My father longed to know what you have told us; he thirsted for the knowledge of God.” Mr. Saker told this in England in 1879.
John Fiske appends to his book, The Idea of God, 168, 169, the following pathetic words of a Kafir, named Sekese, in conversation with a French traveler, M. Arbrouseille, on the subject of the Christian religion: “Your tidings,” said this uncultured barbarian, “are what I want, and I was seeking before I knew you, as you shall hear and judge for yourself. Twelve years ago I went to feed my flocks; the weather was hazy. I sat down upon a rock, and asked myself sorrowful questions; yes, sorrowful, because I was unable to answer them. Who has touched the stars with his hands—on what pillars do they rest? I asked myself. The waters never weary, they know no other law than to flow without ceasing from morning till night and from night till morning; but where do they stop, and who makes them flow thus? The clouds also come and go, and burst in water over the earth. Whence come they—who sends them? The diviners certainly do not give us rain; for how could they do it? And why do I not see them with my own eyes, when they go up to heaven to fetch it? I cannot see the wind; but what is it? Who brings it, makes it blow and roar and terrify us? Do I know how the corn sprouts? Yesterday there was not a blade in my field; to‐day I returned to my field and found some; who can have given to the earth the wisdom and the power to produce it? Then I buried my head in both hands.”
On the question whether men are ever led to faith, without intercourse with living Christians or preachers, see Life of Judson, by his son, 84. The British and Foreign Bible Society publish a statement, made upon the authority of Sir Bartle Frere, that he met with “an instance, which was carefully investigated, in which all the inhabitants of a remote village in the Deccan had abjured idolatry and caste, removed from their temples the idols which had been worshiped there time out of mind, and agreed to profess a form of Christianity which they had deduced from the careful perusal of a single Gospel and a few tracts.” Max Müller, Chips, 4:177‐189, apparently proves that Buddha is the original of St. Josaphat, who has a day assigned to him in the calendar of both the Greek and the Roman churches. “Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis.”
The Missionary Review of the World, July, 1896:519‐523, tells the story of Adiri, afterwards called John King, of Maripastoon in Dutch Guiana. The Holy Spirit wrought in him mightily years before he heard of the missionaries. He was a coal‐black negro, a heathen and a fetish worshiper. He was convicted of sin and apparently converted through dreams and visions. Heaven and hell were revealed to him. He was sick unto death, and One appeared to him declaring himself to be the Mediator between God and man, and telling him to go to the missionaries for instruction. He was persecuted, but he won his tribe from heathenism and transformed them into a Christian community.
S. W. Hamblen, missionary to China, tells of a very earnest and consistent believer who lived at rather an obscure town of about 2800 people. The evangelist went to visit him and found that he was a worthy example to those around him. He had become a Christian before he had seen a single believer, by reading a Chinese New Testament. Although till the evangelist went to his house he had never met a Baptist and did not know that there were any Baptist churches in existence, yet by reading the New Testament he had become not only a Christian but a strong Baptist in belief, so strong that he could argue with the missionary on the subject of baptism.
The Rev. K. E. Malm, a pioneer Baptist preacher in Sweden, on a journey to the district as far north as Gestrikland, met a woman from Lapland who was on her way to Upsala in order to visit Dr. Fjellstedt and converse with him as to how she might obtain peace with God and get rid of her anxiety concerning her sins. She said she had traveled 60 (= 240 English) miles, and she had still far to go. Malm improved the opportunity to speak to her concerning the crucified Christ, and she found peace in believing on his atonement. She became so happy that she clapped her hands, and for joy could not sleep that night. She said later: “Now I will return home and tell the people what I have found.” This she did, and did not care to continue her journey to Upsala, in order to get comfort from Dr. Fjellstedt.
(c) That the ground of faith is the external word of promise. The ground of assurance, on the other hand, is the inward witness of the Spirit that we fulfil the conditions of the promise (Rom. 4:20, 21; 8:16; Eph. 1:13; 1 John 4:13; 5:10). This witness of the Spirit is not a new revelation from God, but a strengthening of faith so that it becomes conscious and indubitable.
True faith is possible without assurance of salvation. But if Alexander’s view were correct, that the object of saving faith is the proposition: “God, for Christ’s sake, now looks with reconciling love on me, a sinner,” no one could believe, without being at the same time assured that he was a saved person. Upon the true view, that the object of saving faith is not a proposition, but a person, we can perceive not only the simplicity of faith, but the possibility of faith even where the soul is destitute of assurance or of joy. Hence those who already believe are urged to seek for assurance (Heb. 6:11; 2 Peter 1:10).
Rom. 4:20, 21—“looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what he had promised, he was able also to perform”; 8:16—“The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God”; Eph. 1:13—“in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise”; 1 John 4:13—“hereby we know that we abide in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit”; 5:10—“He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in him.” This assurance is not of the essence of faith, because believers are exhorted to attain to it: Heb. 6:11—“And we desire that each one of you may show the same diligence unto the fulness of hope [marg.—‘full assurance’] even to the end”; 2 Pet. 1:10—“Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure.” Cf. Prov. 14:14—“a good man shall be satisfied from himself.”
There is need to guard the doctrine of assurance from mysticism. The witness of the Spirit is not a new and direct revelation from God. It is a strengthening of previously existing faith until he who possesses this faith cannot any longer doubt that he possesses it. It is a general rule that all our emotions, when they become exceedingly strong, also become conscious. Instance affection between man and woman.
Edwards, Religious Affections, in Works, 3:83‐91, says the witness of the Spirit is not a new word or suggestion from God, but an enlightening and sanctifying influence, so that the heart is drawn forth to embrace the truth already revealed, and to perceive that it embraces it. “Bearing witness” is not in this case to declare and assert a thing to be true, but to hold forth evidence from which a thing may be proved to be true: God “beareth witness ... by signs and wonders” (Heb. 2:4). So the “seal of the Spirit” is not a voice or suggestion, but a work or effect of the Spirit, left as a divine mark upon the soul, to be an evidence by which God’s children may be known. Seals had engraved upon them the image or name of the persons to whom they belonged. The “seal of the Spirit,” the “earnest of the Spirit,” the “witness of the Spirit,” are all one thing. The childlike spirit, given by the Holy Spirit, is the Holy Spirit’s witness or evidence in us.
See also illustration of faith and assurance, in C. S. Robinson’s Short Studies for S. S. Teachers, 179, 180. Faith should be distinguished not only from assurance, but also from feeling or joy. Instance Abraham’s faith when he went to sacrifice Isaac; and Madame Guyon’s faith, when God’s face seemed hid from her. See, on the witness of the Spirit, Short, Bampton Lectures for 1846; British and For. Evan. Rev., 1888:617‐631. For the view which confounds faith with assurance, see Alexander, Discourses on Faith, 63‐118.
It is important to distinguish saving faith from assurance of faith, for the reason that lack of assurance is taken by so many real Christians as evidence that they know nothing of the grace of God. To use once more a well‐worn illustration: It is getting into the boat that saves us, and not our comfortable feelings about the boat. What saves us is faith in Christ, not faith in our faith, or faith in the faith. The astronomer does not turn his telescope to the reflection of the sun or moon in the water, when he can turn it to the sun or moon itself. Why obscure our faith, when we can look to Christ?
The faith in a distant Redeemer was the faith of Christian, in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Only at the end of his journey does Christian have Christ’s presence. This representation rests upon a wrong conception of faith as laying hold of a promise or a doctrine, rather than as laying hold of the living and present Christ. The old Scotch woman’s direction to the inquirer to “grip the promise” is not so good as the direction to “grip Christ.” Sir Francis Drake, the great English sailor, had for his crest an anchor with a cable running up into the sky. A poor boy, taught in a mission school in Ireland, when asked what was meant by saving faith, replied: “It is grasping God with the heart.”
The view of Charles Hodge, like that of Alexander, puts doctrine before Christ, and makes the formal principle, the supremacy of Scripture, superior to the material principle, justification by faith. The Shorter Catechism is better: “Faith in Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest on him alone for salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel.” If this relation of faith to the personal Christ had been kept in mind, much religious despondency might have been avoided. Murphy, Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 30, 31, tells us that Frances Ridley Havergal could never fix the date of her conversion. From the age of six to that of fourteen she suffered from religious fears, and did not venture to call herself a Christian. It was the result of confounding being at peace with God and being conscious of that peace. So the mother of Frederick Denison Maurice, an admirable and deeply religious woman, endured long and deep mental suffering from doubts as to her personal election.
There is a witness of the Spirit, with some sinners, that they are not children of God, and this witness is through the truth, though the sinner does not know that it is the Spirit who reveals it to him. We call this work of the Spirit conviction of sin. The witness of the Spirit that we are children of God, and the assurance of faith of which Scripture speaks, are one and the same thing, the former designation only emphasizing the source from which the assurance springs. False assurance is destitute of humility, but true assurance is so absorbed in Christ that self is forgotten. Self‐consciousness, and desire to display one’s faith, are not marks of true assurance. When we say: “That man has a great deal of assurance,” we have in mind the false and self‐ centered assurance of the hypocrite or the self‐deceiver.
Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 231—“It has been said that any one who can read Edwards’s Religious Affections, and still believe in his own conversion, may well have the highest assurance of its reality. But how few there were in Edwards’s time who gained the assurance, may be inferred from the circumstance that Dr. Hopkins and Dr. Emmons, disciples of Edwards and religious leaders in New England, remained to the last uncertain of their conversion.” He can attribute this only to the semi‐deistic spirit of the time, with its distant God and imperfect apprehension of the omnipresence and omnipotence of Christ. Nothing so clearly marks the practical progress of Christianity as the growing faith in Jesus, the only Revealer of God in nature and history as well as in the heart of the believer. As never before, faith comes directly to Christ, abides in him, and finds his promise true: “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world” (Mat. 28:20). “Nothing before, nothing behind; The steps of faith Fall on the seeming void and find The Rock beneath.”
(d) That faith necessarily leads to good works, since it embraces the whole truth of God so far as made known, and appropriates Christ, not only as an external Savior, but as an internal sanctifying power (Heb. 7:15, 16; Gal. 5:6).
Good works are the proper evidence of faith. The faith which does not lead men to act upon the commands and promises of Christ, or, in other words, does not lead to obedience, is called in Scripture a “dead,” that is, an unreal, faith. Such faith is not saving, since it lacks the voluntary element—actual appropriation of Christ (James 2:14‐26).
Heb. 7:15, 16—“another priest, who hath been made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life”; Gal. 5:6—“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love”; James 2:14, 26—“What doth it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but have not works? Can that faith save him?... For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead.”
The best evidence that I believe a man’s word is that I act upon it. Instance the bank‐cashier’s assurance to me that a sum of money is deposited with him to my account. If I am a millionaire, the communication may cause me no special joy. My faith in the cashier’s word is tested by my going, or not going, for the money. So my faith in Christ is evidenced by my acting upon his commands and promises. We may illustrate also by the lifting of the trolley to the wire, and the resulting light and heat and motion to the car that before stood dark and cold and motionless upon the track. Salvation by works is like getting to one’s destination by pushing the car. True faith depends upon God for energy, but it results in activity of all our powers. Rom. 3:28—“We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.” We are saved only by faith, yet this faith will be sure to bring forth good works; see Gal. 5:6—“faith working through love.” Dead faith might be illustrated by Abraham Lincoln’s Mississippi steamboat, whose whistle was so big that, when it sounded, the boat stopped. Confession exhausts the energy, so that none is left for action.
A. J. Gordon, The First Thing in the World, or The Primacy of Faith: “David Brainard speaks with a kind of suppressed astonishment of what he observed among the degraded North American Indians; how, preaching to them the good news of salvation through the atonement of Christ and persuading them to accept it by faith, and then hastening on in his rapid missionary tours, he found, on returning upon his track a year or two later, that the fruits of righteousness and sobriety and virtue and brotherly love were everywhere visible, though it had been possible to impart to them only the slightest moral or ethical teaching.”
(e) That faith, as characteristically the inward act of reception, is not to be confounded with love or obedience, its fruit.
Faith is, in the Scriptures, called a work, only in the sense that man’s active powers are engaged in it. It is a work which God requires, yet which God enables man to perform (John 6:29—ἔργον τοῦ Θεοῦ. Cf. Rom. 1:17—δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ). As the gift of God and as the mere taking of undeserved mercy, it is expressly excluded from the category of works upon the basis of which man may claim salvation (Rom. 3:28; 4:4, 5, 16). It is not the act of the full soul bestowing, but the act of an empty soul receiving. Although this reception is prompted by a drawing of heart toward God inwrought by the Holy Spirit, this drawing of heart is not yet a conscious and developed love: such love is the result of faith (Gal. 5:6). What precedes faith is an unconscious and undeveloped tendency or disposition toward God. Conscious and developed affection toward God, or love proper, must always follow faith and be the product of faith. So, too, obedience can be rendered only after faith has laid hold of Christ, and with him has obtained the spirit of obedience (Rom. 1:5—ὑπακοὴν πίστεως = “obedience resulting from faith”). Hence faith is not the procuring cause of salvation, but is only the instrumental cause. The procuring cause is the Christ, whom faith embraces.
John 6:29—“This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent”; cf. Rom. 1:17—“For therein is revealed a righteousness of God from faith unto faith: as it is written, But the righteous shall live by faith”; Rom. 3:28—“We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law”; 4:4, 5, 16—“Now to him that worketh, the reward is not reckoned as of grace, but as of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness.... For this cause it is of faith, that it may be according to grace”; Gal. 5:6—“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love”; Rom. 1:5—“through whom we received grace and apostleship, unto obedience of faith among all the nations.”
Faith stands as an intermediate factor between the unconscious and undeveloped tendency or disposition toward God inwrought in the soul by God’s regenerating act, on the one hand, and the conscious and developed affection toward God which is one of the fruits and evidences of conversion, on the other. Illustrate by the motherly instinct shown in a little girl’s care for her doll,—a motherly instinct which becomes a developed mother’s love, only when a child of her own is born. This new love of the Christian is an activity of his own soul, and yet it is a “fruit of the Spirit” (Gal. 5:22). To attribute it wholly to himself would be like calling the walking and leaping of the lame man (Acts 3:8) merely a healthy activity of his own. For illustration of the priority of faith to love, see Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:533, note; on the relation of faith to love, see Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 1:116, 117.
The logical order is therefore: 1. Unconscious and undeveloped love; 2. Faith in Christ and his truth; 3. Conscious and developed love; 4. Assurance of faith. Faith and love act and react upon one another. Each advance in the one leads to a corresponding advance in the other. But the source of all is in God. God loves, and therefore he gives love to us as well as receives love from us. The unconscious and undeveloped love which he imparts in regeneration is the root of all Christian faith. The Roman Catholic is right in affirming the priority of love to faith, if he means by love only this unconscious and undeveloped affection. But the Protestant is also right in affirming the priority of faith to love, if he means by love a conscious and developed affection. Stevens, Johannine Theology, 368—“Faith is not a mere passive receptivity. As the acceptance of a divine life, it involves the possession of a new moral energy. Faith works by love. In faith a new life‐force is received, and new life‐powers stir within the Christian man.”
We must not confound repentance with fruits meet for repentance, nor faith with fruits meet for faith. A. J. Gordon, The First Thing in the World: “Love is the greatest thing in the world, but faith is the first. The tree is greater than the root, but let it not boast: ‘if thou gloriest, it is not thou that bearest the root, but the root thee’ (Rom. 11:18). Love has no power to branch out and bear fruit, except as, through faith, it is rooted in Christ and draws nourishment from him. 1 Pet. 1:5—‘who by the power of God are guarded through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time’; 1 Cor. 13:13—‘now abideth faith, hope, love’; Heb. 10:19‐25—‘draw near ... in fulness of faith ... hold fast the confession of our hope ... provoke unto love and good works’; Rom. 5:1‐5—‘justified by faith ... rejoice in hope ... love of God hath been shed abroad in our hearts’; 1 Thess. 1:1, 2—‘work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope.’ Faith is the actinic ray, hope the luminiferous ray, love the calorific ray. But faith contains the principle of the divine likeness, as the life of the parent given to the child contains the principle of likeness to the father, and will insure moral and physical resemblance in due time.”
A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 112—“ ‘The love of the Spirit’ (Rom. 15:30) is the love of the Spirit of Christ, and it is given us for overcoming the world. The divine life is the source of the divine love. Therefore the love of God is ‘shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given unto us’ (Rom. 5:5). Because we are by nature so wholly without heavenly affection, God, through the indwelling Spirit, gives us his own love with which to love himself.” A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 286, 287, points out that in 2 Cor. 5:14—“the love of Christ constraineth us”—the love of Christ is “not our love to Christ, for that is a very weak and uncertain thing; nor even Christ’s love to us, for that is still something external to us. Each of these leaves a separation between Christ and us, and fails to act as a moving power within.... Not simply our love to Christ, nor simply Christ’s love to us, but rather Christ’s love in us, is the love that constrains. This is the thought of the apostle.” The first fruit of this love, in its still unconscious and undeveloped state, is faith.
(f) That faith is susceptible of increase.
This is evident, whether we consider it from the human or from the divine side. As an act of man, it has an intellectual, an emotional, and a voluntary element, each of which is capable of growth. As a work of God in the soul of man, it can receive, through the presentation of the truth and the quickening agency of the Holy Spirit, continually new accessions of knowledge, sensibility, and active energy. Such increase of faith, therefore, we are to seek, both by resolute exercise of our own powers, and above all, by direct application to the source of faith in God (Luke 17:5).
Luke 17:5—“And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith.” The adult Christian has more faith than he had when a child,—evidently there has been increase. 1 Cor. 12:8, 9—“For to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom ... to another faith, in the same Spirit.” In this latter passage, it seems to be intimated that for special exigencies the Holy Spirit gives to his servants special faith, so that they are enabled to lay hold of the general promise of God and make special application of it. Rom. 8:26, 27—“the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity ... maketh intercession for us ... maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God”; 1 John 5:14, 15—“And this is the boldness which we have toward him, that, if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us: and if we know that he heareth us whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions which we have asked of him.” Only when we begin to believe, do we appreciate our lack of faith, and the great need of its increase. The little beginning of light makes known the greatness of the surrounding darkness. Mark 9:24—“I believe; help thou mine unbelief”—was the utterance of one who recognized both the need of faith and the true source of supply.
On the general subject of Faith, see Köstlin, Die Lehre von dem Glauben, 13‐85, 301‐341, and in Jahrbuch f. d. Theol., 4:177 sq.; Romaine on Faith, 9‐89; Bishop of Ossory, Nature and Effects of Faith, 1‐40; Venn, Characteristics of Belief, Introduction; Nitzsch, System of Christ. Doct., 294.
IV. Justification
1. Definition of Justification.
By justification we mean that judicial act of God by which, on account of Christ, to whom the sinner is united by faith, he declares that sinner to be no longer exposed to the penalty of the law, but to be restored to his favor. Or, to give an alternative definition from which all metaphor is excluded: Justification is the reversal of God’s attitude toward the sinner, because of the sinner’s new relation to Christ. God did condemn; he now acquits. He did repel; he now admits to favor.
Justification, as thus defined, is therefore a declarative act, as distinguished from an efficient act; an act of God external to the sinner, as distinguished from an act within the sinner’s nature and changing that nature; a judicial act, as distinguished from a sovereign act; an act based upon and logically presupposing the sinner’s union with Christ, as distinguished from an act which causes and is followed by that union with Christ.
The word “declarative” does not imply a “spoken” word on God’s part,—much less that the sinner hears God speak. That justification is sovereign, is held by Arminians, and by those who advocate a governmental theory of the atonement. On any such theory, justification must be sovereign; since Christ bore, not the penalty of the law, but a substituted suffering which God graciously and sovereignly accepts in place of our suffering and obedience.
Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1100, wrote a tract for the consolation of the dying, who were alarmed on account of sin. The following is an extract from it: “Question. Dost thou believe that the Lord Jesus died for thee? Answer. I believe it. Qu. Dost thou thank him for his passion and death? Ans. I do thank him. Qu. Dost thou believe that thou canst not be saved except by his death? Ans. I believe it.” And then Anselm addresses the dying man: “Come then, while life remaineth in thee; in his death alone place thy whole trust; in naught else place any trust; to his death commit thyself wholly; with this alone cover thyself wholly; and if the Lord thy God will to judge thee, say, ‘Lord, between thy judgment and me I present the death of our Lord Jesus Christ; no otherwise can I contend with thee.’ And if he shall say that thou art a sinner, say thou: ‘Lord, I interpose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my sins and thee.’ If he say that thou hast deserved condemnation, say: ‘Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my evil deserts and thee, and his merits I offer for those which I ought to have and have not.’ If he say that he is wroth with thee, say: ‘Lord, I oppose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between thy wrath and me.’ And when thou hast completed this, say again: ‘Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between thee and me.’ ” See Anselm, Opera (Migne), 1:686, 687. The above quotation gives us reason to believe that the New Testament doctrine of justification by faith was implicitly, if not explicitly, held by many pious souls through all the ages of papal darkness.
2. Proof of the Doctrine of Justification
A. Scripture proofs of the doctrine as a whole are the following:
Rom. 1:17—“a righteousness of God from faith unto faith”; 3:24‐30—“being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus ... the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.... We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law ... justify the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumsion through faith”; Gal. 3:11—“Now that no man is justified by the law before God, is evident: for, The righteous shall live by faith; and the law is not of faith; but, He that doeth them shall live in them”; Eph. 1:7—“in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace”; Heb. 11:4, 7—“By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous.... By faith Noah ... moved with godly fear, prepared an ark ... became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith”; cf. Gen. 15:6—“And he believed in Jehovah; and he reckoned it to him for righteousness”; Is. 7:9—“If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established”; 28:16—“he that believeth shall not be in haste”; Hab. 2:4—“the righteous shall live by his faith.”
Ps. 85:8—“He will speak peace unto his people.” God’s great word of pardon includes all else. Peace with him implies all the covenant privileges resulting therefrom. 1 Cor. 3:21‐23—“all things are yours,” because “ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.” This is not salvation by law, nor by ideals, nor by effort, nor by character; although obedience to law, and a loftier ideal, and unremitting effort, and a pure character, are consequences of justification. Justification is the change in God’s attitude toward the sinner which makes all these consequences possible. The only condition of justification is the sinner’s faith in Jesus, which merges the life of the sinner in the life of Christ. Paul expresses the truth in Gal. 2:16, 20—“Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed on Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law ... I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me.”
With these observations and qualifications we may assent to much that is said by Whiton, Divine Satisfaction, 64, who distinguishes between forgiveness and remission: “Forgiveness is the righting of disturbed personal relations. Remission is removal of the consequences which in the natural order of things have resulted from our fault. God forgives all that is strictly personal, but remits nothing that is strictly natural in sin. He imparts to the sinner the power to bear his burden and work off his debt of consequences. Forgiveness is not remission. It is introductory to remission, just as conversion is not salvation, but introductory to salvation. The prodigal was received by his father, but he could not recover his lost patrimony. He could, however, have been led by penitence to work so hard that he earned more than he had lost.
“Here is an element in justification which Protestantism has ignored, and which Romanism has tried to retain. Debts must be paid to the uttermost farthing. The scars of past sins must remain forever. Forgiveness converts the persistent energy of past sin from a destructive to a constructive power. There is a transformation of energy into a new form. Genuine repentance spurs us up to do what we can to make up for time lost and for wrong done. The sinner is clothed anew with moral power. We are all to be judged by our works. That Paul had been a blasphemer was ever stimulating him to Christian endeavor. The faith which receives Christ is a peculiar spirit, a certain moral activity of love and obedience. It is not mere reliance on what Christ was and did, but active endeavor to become and to do like him. Human justice takes hold of deeds; divine righteousness deals with character. Justification by faith is justification by spirit and inward principle, apart from the merit of works or performances, but never without these. God’s charity takes the will for the deed. This is not justification by outward conduct, as the Judaizers thought, but by the godly spirit.” If this new spirit be the Spirit of Christ to whom faith has united the soul, we can accept the statement. There is danger however of conceiving this spirit as purely man’s own, and justification as not external to the sinner nor as the work of God, but as the mere name for a subjective process by which man justifies himself.
B. Scripture use of the special words translated “justify” and “justification” in the Septuagint and in the New Testament.
(a) δικαιόω—uniformly, or with only a single exception, signifies, not to make righteous, but to declare just, or free from guilt and exposure to punishment. The only O. T. passage where this meaning is questionable is Dan. 12:3. But even here the proper translation is, in all probability, not “they that turn many to righteousness,” but “they that justify many,” i. e., cause many to be justified. For the Hiphil force of the verb, see Girdlestone, O. T. Syn., 257, 258, and Delitzsch on Is. 53:11; cf. James 5:19, 20.
O. T. texts: Ex. 23:7—“I will not justify the wicked”; Deut. 25:1—“they [the judges] shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked”; Job 27:5—“Far be it from me that I should justify you”; Ps. 143:2—“in thy sight no man living is righteous”; Prov. 17:15—“He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the righteous, Both of them alike are an abomination to Jehovah”; Is. 5:23—“that justify the wicked for a bribe, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him”; 50:8—“He is near that justifieth me”; 53:11—“_by the knowledge of __ himself shall my righteous servant justify many; and he shall bear their iniquities_”; Dan. 12:3—“and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever” (“they that justify many,” i. e., cause many to be justified); cf. James 5:19, 20—“My brethren, if any among you err from the truth, and one convert him; let him know, that he who converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall cover a multitude of sins.”
The Christian minister absolves from sin, only as he marries a couple: he does not join them,—he only declares them joined. So he declares men forgiven, if they have complied with the appointed divine conditions. Marriage may be invalid where these conditions are lacking, but the minister’s absolution is of no account where there is no repentance of sin and faith in Christ; see G. D. Boardman, The Church, 178. We are ever to remember that the term justification is a forensic term which presents the change of God’s attitude toward the sinner in a pictorial way derived from the procedure of earthly tribunals. The fact is larger and more vital than the figure used to describe it.
McConnell, Evolution of Immortality, 134, 135—“Christ’s terms are biological; those of many theologians are legal. It may be ages before we recover from the misfortune of having had the truth of Christ interpreted and fixed by jurists and logicians, instead of by naturalists and men of science. It is much as though the rationale of the circulation of the blood had been wrought out by Sir Matthew Hale, or the germ theory of disease interpreted by Blackstone, or the doctrine of evolution formulated by a legislative council.... The Christ is intimately and vitally concerned with the eternal life of men, but the question involved is of their living or perishing, not of a system of judicial rewards and penalties.” We must remember however that even biology gives us only one side of the truth. The forensic conception of justification furnishes its complement and has its rights also. The Scriptures represent both sides of the truth. Paul gives us the judicial aspect, John the vital aspect, of justification.
In Rom. 6:7—ὁ γὰρ ἀποθανὼν δεδικαίωται ἀπὸ τῆς ἁμαρτίας = “he that once died with Christ was acquitted from the service of sin considered as a penality.” In 1 Cor. 4:4—οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐμαυτῷ σύνοιδα. ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐν τούτῳ δεδικαίωμαι = “I am conscious of no fault, but that does not in itself make certain God’s acquittal as respects this particular charge.” The usage of the epistle of James does not contradict this; the doctrine of James is that we are justified only by such faith as makes us faithful and brings forth good works. “He uses the word exclusively in a judicial sense; he combats a mistaken view of πίστις, not a mistaken view of δικαιόω”; see James 2:21, 23, 24, and Cremer, N. T. Lexicon, Eng. trans., 182, 183. The only N. T. passage where this meaning is questionable is Rev. 22:11; but here Alford, with א, A and B, reads δικαιοσύνην ποιησάτω.
N. T. texts: Mat. 12:37—“For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned”; Luke 7:29—“And all the people ... justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John”; 10:29—“But he, desiring to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbor?” 16:15—“Ye are they that justify yourselves in the sight of men; but God knoweth your hearts”; 18:14—“This man went down to his house justified rather than the other”; cf. 13 (lit.) “God, be thou propitiated toward me the sinner”; Rom. 4:6‐8—“Even as David also pronounceth blessing upon the man, unto whom God reckoneth righteousness apart from works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, And whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin”; cf. Ps. 32:1, 2,—“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom Jehovah imputeth not iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no guile.”
Rom. 5:18, 19—“So then as through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”; 8:33, 34—“Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth?” 2 Cor. 5:19, 21—“God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses.... Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God [God’s justified persons] in him”; Rom. 6:7—“he that hath died is justified from sin”; 1 Cor. 4:4—“For I know nothing against myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord” (on this last text, see Expositor’s Greek Testament, in loco).
James 2:21, 23, 24—“_Was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar?... Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness.... Ye see that by works __ a man is justified, and not only by faith._” James is denouncing a dead faith, while Paul is speaking of the necessity of a living faith; or, rather, James is describing the nature of faith, while Paul is describing the instrument of justification. “They are like two men beset by a couple of robbers. Back to back each strikes out against the robber opposite him,—each having a different enemy in his eye” (Wm. M. Taylor). Neander on James 2:14‐26—“James is denouncing mere adhesion to an external law, trust in intellectual possession of it. With him, law means an inward principle of life. Paul, contrasting law as he does with faith, commonly means by law mere external divine requisition.... James does not deny salvation to him who has faith, but only to him who falsely professes to have. When he says that ‘by works a man is justified,’ he takes into account the outward manifestation only, speaks from the point of view of human consciousness. In works only does faith show itself as genuine and complete.” Rev. 22:11—“he that is righteous, let him do righteousness still”—not, as the A. V. seemed to imply, “he that is just, let him be justified still”—i. e., made subjectively holy.
Christ is the great Physician. The physician says: “If you wish to be cured, you must trust me.” The patient replies: “I do trust you fully.” But the physician continues: “If you wish to be cured, you must take my medicines and do as I direct.” The patient objects: “But I thought I was to be cured by trust in you. Why lay such stress on what I do?” The physician answers: “You must show your trust in me by your action. Trust in me, without action in proof of trust, amounts to nothing” (S. S. Times). Doing without a physician is death; hence Paul says works cannot save. Trust in the physician implies obedience; hence James says faith without works is dead. Crane, Religion of To‐morrow, 152‐155—“Paul insists on apple‐tree righteousness, and warns us against Christmas‐tree righteousness.” Sagebeer, The Bible in Court, 77,78—“By works, Paul means works of law; James means by works, works of faith.” Hovey, in The Watchman, Aug. 27, 1891—“A difference of emphasis, occasioned chiefly by the different religious perils to which readers were at the time exposed.”
(b) δικαίωσις—is the act, in process, of declaring a man just,—that is, acquitted from guilt and restored to the divine favor (Rom. 4:25; 5:18).
Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”; 5:18—“unto all men to justification of life.” Griffith‐Jones, Ascent through Christ, 367, 368—“Raised for our justification” = Christ’s death made our justification possible, but it did not consummate it. Through his rising from the dead he was able to come into that relationship to the believer which restores the lost or interrupted sonship. In the church the fact of the resurrection is perpetuated, and the idea of the resurrection is realized.
(c) δικαίωμα—is the act, as already accomplished, of declaring a man just,—that is, no longer exposed to penalty, but restored to God’s favor (Rom. 5:16, 18; cf. 1 Tim. 3:16). Hence, in other connections, δικαίωμα has the meaning of statute, legal decision, act of justice (Luke 1:6; Rom. 2:26; Heb. 9:1).
Rom. 5:16, 18—“of many trespasses unto justification ... through one act of righteousness”; cf. 1 Tim. 3:16—“justified in the spirit.” The distinction between δικαίωσις and δικαίωμα may be illustrated by the distinction between poesy and poem,—the former denoting something in process, an ever‐working spirit; the latter denoting something fully accomplished, a completed work. Hence δικαίωμα is used in Luke 1:6—“ordinances of the Lord”; Rom. 2:26—“ordinances of the law”; Heb. 9:1—“ordinances of divine service.”
(d) δικαιοσύνη—is the state of one justified, or declared just (Rom. 8:10; 1 Cor. 1:30). In Rom. 10:3, Paul inveighs against τὴν ἰδίαν δικαιοσύνην as insufficient and false, and in its place would put τὴν τοῦ Θεοῦ δικαιοσύνην,—that is, a δικαιοσύνη which God not only requires, but provides; which is not only acceptable to God, but proceeds from God, and is appropriated by faith,—hence called δικαιοσύνη πίστεως or ἐκ πίστεως. “The primary signification of the word, in Paul’s writings, is therefore that state of the believer which is called forth by God’s act of acquittal,—the state of the believer as justified,” that is, freed from punishment and restored to the divine favor.
Rom. 8:10—“the spirit is life because of righteousness”; 1 Cor. 1:30—“Christ Jesus, who was made unto us ... righteousness”; Rom. 10:3—“being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.” Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:542—“The ‘righteousness of God’ is the active and passive obedience of incarnate God.” See, on δικαιοσύνη, Cremer, N. T. Lexicon, Eng. trans., 174; Meyer on Romans, trans., 68‐70—“δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ (gen. of origin, emanation from) = rightness which proceeds from God—the relation of being right into which man is put by God (by an act of God declaring him righteous).”
E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 304—“When Paul addressed those who trusted in their own righteousness, he presented salvation as attainable only through faith in another; when he addressed Gentiles who were conscious of their need of a helper, the forensic imagery is not employed. Scarce a trace of it appears in his discourses as recorded in the Acts, and it is noticeably absent from all the epistles except the Romans and the Galatians.”
Since this state of acquittal is accompanied by changes in the character and conduct, δικαιοσύνη comes to mean, secondarily, the moral condition of the believer as resulting from this acquittal and inseparably connected with it (Rom. 14:17; 2 Cor. 5:21). This righteousness arising from justification becomes a principle of action (Mat. 3:15; Acts 10:35; Rom. 6:13, 18). The term, however, never loses its implication of a justifying act upon which this principle of action is based.
Rom. 14:17—“the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”; 2 Cor. 5:21—“that we might become the righteousness of God in him”; Mat. 3:15—“Suffer it now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”; Acts 10:35—“in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him”; Rom. 6:13—“present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.” Meyer on Rom. 3:23—“Every mode of conception which refers redemption and the forgiveness of sins, not to a real atonement through the death of Christ, but subjectively to the dying and reviving with him guaranteed and produced by that death (Schleiermacher, Nitzsch, Hofmann), is opposed to the N. T.,—a mixing up of justification and sanctification.”
On these Scripture terms, see Bp. of Ossory, Nature and Effects of Faith, 436‐496; Lange, Com., on Romans 3:24; Buchanan on Justification, 226‐249. Versus Moehler, Symbolism, 102—“The forgiveness of sins ... is undoubtedly a remission of the guilt and the punishment which Christ hath taken and borne upon himself; but it is likewise the transfusion of his Spirit into us”; Newman, Lectures on Justification, 68‐143; Knox, Remains; N. W. Taylor, Revealed Theology, 310‐372.
It is a great mistake in method to derive the meaning of δίκαιος from that of δικαιοσύνη, and not vice versa. Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Am. Jour. Theology, April, 1897—“δικαιοσύνη, righteousness, in all its meanings, whether ethical or forensic, has back of it the idea of law; also the idea of violated law; it derives its forensic sense from the verb δικαιόω and its cognate noun δικαίωσις; δικαιοσύνη therefore is legal acceptableness, the status before the law of a pardoned sinner.”
Denney, in Expos. Gk. Test., 2:565—“In truth, ‘sin,’ ‘the law,’ ‘the curse of the law,’ ‘death,’ are names for something which belongs not to the Jewish but to the human conscience; and it is only because this is so that the gospel of Paul is also a gospel for us. Before Christ came and redeemed the world, all men were at bottom on the same footing: Pharisaism, legalism, moralism, or whatever it is called, is in the last resort the attempt to be good without God, to achieve a righteousness of our own, without an initial all‐inclusive immeasurable debt to him; in other words, without submitting, as sinful men must submit, to be justified by faith apart from works of our own, and to find in that justification, and in that only, the spring and impulse of all good.”
It is worthy of special observation that, in the passages cited above, the terms “justify” and “justification” are contrasted, not with the process of depraving or corrupting, but with the outward act of condemning; and that the expressions used to explain and illustrate them are all derived, not from the inward operation of purifying the soul or infusing into it righteousness, but from the procedure of courts in their judgments, or of offended persons in their forgiveness of offenders. We conclude that these terms, wherever they have reference to the sinner’s relation to God, signify a declarative and judicial act of God, external to the sinner, and not an efficient and sovereign act of God changing the sinner’s nature and making him subjectively righteous.
In the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, session 6, chap. 9 is devoted to the refutation of the “inanis hæreticorum fiducia”; and Canon 12 of the session anathematizes those who say: “fidem justificantem nihil aliud esse quam fiduciam divinæ misericordiæ, peccata remittentis propter Christum”; or that “justifying faith is nothing but trust in the divine mercy which pardons sins for Christ’s sake.” The Roman Catholic doctrine on the contrary maintains that the ground of justification is not simply the faith by which the sinner appropriates Christ and his atoning work, but is also the new love and good works wrought within him by Christ’s Spirit. This introduces a subjective element which is foreign to the Scripture doctrine of justification.
Dr. E. G. Robinson taught that justification consists of three elements: 1. Acquittal; 2. Restoration to favor; 3. Infusion of righteousness. In this he accepted a fundamental error of Romanism. He says: “Justification and sanctification are not to be distinguished as chronologically and statically different. Justification and righteousness are the same thing from different points of view. Pardon is not a mere declaration of forgiveness—a merely arbitrary thing. Salvation introduces a new law into our sinful nature which annuls the law of sin and destroys its penal and destructive consequences. Forgiveness of sins must be in itself a gradual process. The final consequences of a man’s sins are written indelibly upon his nature and remain forever. When Christ said: ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’, it was an objective statement of a subjective fact. The person was already in a state of living relation to Christ. The gospel is damnation to the damnable, and invitation, love and mercy to those who feel their need of it. We are saved through the enforcement of law on every one of us. Forgiveness consists in the removal from consciousness of a sense of ill‐desert. Justification, aside from its forensic use, is a transformation and a promotion. Sense of forgiveness is a sense of relief from a hated habit of mind.” This seems to us dangerously near to a denial that justification is an act of God, and to an affirmation that it is simply a subjective change in man’s condition.
E. H. Johnson: “If Dr. Robinson had been content to say that the divine fiat of justification had the manward effect of regeneration, he would have been correct; for the verdict would be empty without this manward efficacy. But unfortunately, he made the effect a part of the cause, identifying the divine justification with its human fruition, the clearance of the past with the provision for the future.” We must grant that the words inward and outward are misleading, for God is not under the law of space, and the soul itself is not in space. Justification takes place just as much in man as outside of him. Justification and regeneration take place at the same moment, but logically God’s act of renewing is the cause and God’s act of approving is the effect. Or we may say that regeneration and justification are both of them effects of our union with Christ. Luke 1:37—“For no word from God shall be void of power.” Regeneration and justification may be different aspects of God’s turning—his turning us, and his turning himself. But it still is true that justification is a change in God and not in the creature.
3. Elements of Justification
These are two:
A. Remission of punishment.
(a) God acquits the ungodly who believe in Christ, and declares them just. This is not to declare them innocent,—that would be a judgment contrary to truth. It declares that the demands of the law have been satisfied with regard to them, and that they are now free from its condemnation.
Rom. 4:5—“But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness”; cf. John 3:16—“gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish”; see page 856, (a), and Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:549. Rom. 5:1—“Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God”—not subjective peace or quietness of mind, but objective peace or reconciliation, the opposite of the state of war, in which we are subject to the divine wrath. Dale, Ephesians, 67—“Forgiveness may be defined: 1. in personal terms, as a cessation of the anger or moral resentment of God against sin; 2. in ethical terms, as a release from the guilt of sin which oppresses the conscience; 3. in legal terms, as a remission of the punishment of sin, which is eternal death.”
(b) This acquittal, in so far as it is the act of God as judge or executive, administering law, may be denominated pardon. In so far as it is the act of God as a father personally injured and grieved by sin, yet showing grace to the sinner, it is denominated forgiveness.
Micah 7:18—“Who is a God like into thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth over the transgression of the remnant of his heritage?” Ps. 130:4—“But there is forgiveness with thee, That thou mayst be feared.” It is hard for us to understand God’s feeling toward sin. Forgiveness seems easy to us, largely because we are indifferent toward sin. But to the holy One, to whom sin is the abominable thing which he hates, forgiveness involves a fundamental change of relation, and nothing but Christ’s taking the penalty of sin upon him can make it possible. B. Fay Mills: “A tender spirited follower of Jesus Christ said to me, not long ago, that it had taken him twelve years to forgive an injury that had been committed against him.” How much harder for God to forgive, since he can never become indifferent to the nature of the transgression!
(c) In an earthly tribunal, there is no acquittal for those who are proved to be transgressors,—for such there is only conviction and punishment. But in God’s government there is remission of punishment for believers, even though they are confessedly offenders; and, in justification, God declares this remission.
There is no forgiveness in nature. F. W. Robertson preached this. But he ignored the vis medicatrix of the gospel, in which forgiveness is offered to all. The natural conscience says: “I must pay my debt.” But the believer finds that “Jesus paid it all.” Illustrate by the poor man, who on coming to pay his mortgage finds that the owner at death had ordered it to be burned, so that now there is nothing to pay. Ps. 34:22—“Jehovah redeemeth the soul of his servants, And none of them that take refuge in him shall be condemned.”
A child disobeys his father and breaks his arm. His sin involves two penalties, the alienation from his father and the broken arm. The father, on repentance, may forgive his child. The personal relation is re‐established, but the broken bone is not therefore at once reknit. The father’s forgiveness, however, will assure the father’s help toward complete healing. So justification does not ensure the immediate removal of all the natural consequences of our sins. It does ensure present reconciliation and future perfection. Clarke, Christian Theology, 364—“Justification is not equivalent to acquittal, for acquittal declares that the man has not done wrong. Justification is rather the acceptance of a man, on sufficient grounds, although he has done wrong.” As the Plymouth Brethren say: “It is not the sin‐question, but the Son‐question.” “Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more” (Heb. 10:17). The father did not allow the prodigal to complete the confession he had prepared to make, but interrupted him, and dwelt only upon his return home (Luke 15:22).
(d) The declaration that the sinner is no longer exposed to the penalty of law, has its ground, not in any satisfaction of the law’s demand on the part of the sinner himself, but solely in the bearing of the penalty by Christ, to whom the sinner is united by faith. Justification, in its first element, is therefore that act by which God, for the sake of Christ, acquits the transgressor and suffers him to go free.
Acts 13:38, 39—“Be it known unto you therefore, brethren, that through this man is proclaimed unto you remission of sins: and by him [lit.: ‘in him’] every one that believeth is justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses”; Rom. 3:24, 26—“being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus ... that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus”; 1 Cor. 6:11—“but ye were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus”; Eph. 1:7—“in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.”
This acquittal is not to be conceived of as the sovereign act of a Governor, but rather as a judicial procedure. Christ secures a new trial for those already condemned—a trial in which he appears for the guilty, and sets over against their sin his own righteousness, or rather shows them to be righteous in him. C. H. M.: “When Balak seeks to curse the seed of Abraham, it is said of Jehovah: ‘He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, Neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel’ (Num. 23:21). When Satan stands forth to rebuke Joshua, the word is: ‘Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan ... is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?’ (Zech. 3:2). Thus he ever puts himself between his people and every tongue that would accuse them. ‘Touch not mine anointed ones,’ he says, ‘and do my prophets no harm’ (Ps. 105:15). ‘It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth?’ (Rom. 8:33, 34).” It is not sin, then, that condemns,—it is the failure to ask pardon for sin, through Christ. Illustrate by the ring presented by Queen Elizabeth to the Earl of Essex. Queen Elizabeth did not forgive the penitent Countess of Nottingham for withholding the ring of Essex which would have purchased his pardon. She shook the dying woman and cursed her, even while she was imploring forgiveness. There is no such failure of mercy in God’s administration.
Kaftan, in Am. Jour. Theology, 4:698—“The peculiar characteristic of Christian experience is the forgiveness of sins, or reconciliation—a forgiveness which is conceived as an unmerited gift of God, which is bestowed on man independently of his own moral worthiness. Other religions have some measure of revelation, but Christianity alone has the clear revelation of this forgiveness, and this is accepted by faith. And forgiveness leads to a better ethics than any religion of works can show.”
B. Restoration to favor.
(a) Justification is more than remission or acquittal. These would leave the sinner simply in the position of a discharged criminal,—law requires a positive righteousness also. Besides deliverance from punishment, justification implies God’s treatment of the sinner as if he were, and had been, personally righteous. The justified person receives not only remission of penalty, but the rewards promised to obedience.
Luke 15:22‐24—“Bring forth quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: and bring the fatted calf, and kill it, and let us eat, and make merry: for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found”; John 3:16—“gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should ... have eternal life”; Rom. 5:1, 2—“Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; through whom also we have had our access by faith into this grace wherein we stand; and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God”—“this grace” being a permanent state of divine favor; 1 Cor. 1:30—“But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption: that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord”; 2 Cor. 5:21—“that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”
Gal. 3:6—“Even as Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness”; Eph. 2:7—“the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus”; 3:12—“in whom we have boldness and access in confidence through our faith in him”; Phil. 3:8, 9—“I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord ... the righteousness which is from God by faith”; Col. 1:22—“reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and without blemish and unreprovable before him”; Tit. 3:4, 7—“the kindness of God our Savior ... that, being justified by his grace, we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life”; Rev. 19:8—“And it was given unto her that she should array herself in fine linen, bright and pure: for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.”
Justification is setting one right before law. But law requires not merely freedom from offence negatively, but all manner of obedience and likeness to God positively. Since justification is in Christ and by virtue of the believer’s union with Christ, it puts the believer on the same footing before the law that Christ is on, namely, not only acquittal but favor. 1 Tim. 3:16—Christ was himself “justified in the spirit,” and the believer partakes of his justification and of the whole of it, i. e., not only acquittal but favor. Acts 13:39—“in him every one that believeth is justified” i. e., in Christ; 1 Cor. 6:11—“justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ”; Gal. 4:5—“that we might receive the adoption of sons”—a part of justification; Rom. 5:11—“through whom we have now received the reconciliation”—in justification; 2 Cor. 5:21—“that we might become the righteousness of God in him”; Phil. 3:9—“the righteousness which is from God by faith”; John 1:12—“to them gave he the right to become children of God”—emphasis on “gave”—intimation that the “becoming children” is not subsequent to the justification, but is a part of it.
Ellicott on Tit. 3:7—“δικαιοθέντες, ‘justified,’ in the usual and more strict theological sense; not however as implying only a mere outward non‐imputation of sin, but as involving a ‘mutationem status,’ an acceptance into new privileges, and an enjoyment of the benefits thereof (Waterland, Justif, vol. vi, p. 5); in the words of the same writer: ‘Justification cannot be conceived without some work of the Spirit in conferring a title to salvation.’ ” The prisoner who has simply served out his term escapes without further punishment and that is all. But the pardoned man receives back in his pardon the full rights of citizenship, can again vote, serve on juries, testify in court, and exercise all his individual liberties, as the discharged convict cannot. The Society of Friends is so called, not because they are friends to one another, but because they regard themselves as friends of God. So, in the Middle Ages, Master Eckart, John Tauler, Henry Suso, called themselves the friends of God, after the pattern of Abraham; 2 Chron. 20:7—“Abraham thy friend”; James 2:23—“Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness; and he was called the friend of God”, i. e., one not merely acquitted from the charge of sin, but also admitted into favor and intimacy with God.
(b) This restoration to favor, viewed in its aspect as the renewal of a broken friendship, is denominated reconciliation; viewed in its aspect as a renewal of the soul’s true relation to God as a father, it is denominated adoption.
John 1:12—“But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name”; Rom. 5:11—“and not only so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation”; Gal. 4:4, 5—“born under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons”; Eph. 1:5—“having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself”; cf. Rom. 8:23—“even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body”—that is, this adoption is completed, so far as the body is concerned, at the resurrection.
Luther called Psalms 32, 51, 130, 143, “the Pauline Psalms,” because these declare forgiveness to be granted to the believer without law and without works. Ps. 130:3, 4—“If thou, Jehovah, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, That thou mayest be feared” is followed by verses 7, 8—“O Israel, hope in Jehovah; For with Jehovah there is lovingkindness, And with him is plenteous redemption. And he will redeem Israel From all his iniquities.” Whitefield was rebuked for declaring in a discourse that Christ would receive even the devil’s castaways; but that very day, while at dinner at Lady Huntington’s, he was called out to meet two women who were sinners, and to whose broken hearts and blasted lives that remark gave hope and healing.
(c) In an earthly pardon there are no special helps bestowed upon the pardoned. There are no penalties, but there are also no rewards; law cannot claim anything of the discharged, but then they also can claim nothing of the law. But what, though greatly needed, is left unprovided by human government, God does provide. In justification, there is not only acquittal, but approval; not only pardon, but promotion. Remission is never separated from restoration.
After serving a term in the penitentiary, the convict goes out with a stigma upon him and with no friends. His past conviction and disgrace follow him. He cannot obtain employment. He cannot vote. Want often leads him to commit crime again; and then the old conviction is brought up as proof of bad character, and increases his punishment. Need of Friendly Inns and Refuges for discharged criminals. But the justified sinner is differently treated. He is not only delivered from God’s wrath and eternal death, but he is admitted to God’s favor and eternal life. The discovery of this is partly the cause of the convert’s joy. Expecting pardon, at most, he is met with unmeasured favor. The prodigal finds the father’s house and heart open to him, and more done for him than if he had never wandered. This overwhelms and subdues him. The two elements, acquittal and restoration to favor, are never separated. Like the expulsion of darkness and restoration of light, they always go together. No one can have, even if he would have, an incomplete justification. Christ’s justification is ours; and, as Jesus’ own seamless tunic could not be divided, so the robe of righteousness which he provides cannot be cut in two.
Failure to apprehend this positive aspect of justification as restoration to favor is the reason why so many Christians have little joy and little enthusiasm in their religious lives. The preaching of the magnanimity and generosity of God makes the gospel “the power of God unto salvation” (Rom. 1:16). Edwin M. Stanton had ridden roughshod over Abraham Lincoln in the conduct of a case at law in which they had been joint counsel. Stanton had become vindictive and even violent when Lincoln was made President. But Lincoln invited Stanton to be Secretary of War, and he sent the invitation by Harding, who knew of all this former trouble. When Stanton heard it, he said with streaming eyes: “Do you tell me, Harding, that Mr. Lincoln sent this message to me? Tell him that such magnanimity will make me work with him as man was never served before!”
(d) The declaration that the sinner is restored to God’s favor, has its ground, not in the sinner’s personal character or conduct, but solely in the obedience and righteousness of Christ, to whom the sinner is united by faith. Thus Christ’s work is the procuring cause of our justification, in both its elements. As we are acquitted on account of Christ’s suffering of the penalty of the law, so on account of Christ’s obedience we receive the rewards of law.
All this comes to us in Christ. We participate in the rewards promised to his obedience: John 20:31—“that believing ye may have life in his name”; 1 Cor. 3:21‐23—“For all things are yours; ... all are yours; and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.” Denovan, Toronto Baptist, Dec. 1883, maintains that “grace operates in two ways: (1) for the rebel it provides a scheme of justification,—this is judicial, matter of debt; (2) for the child it provides pardon,—fatherly forgiveness on repentance.” Heb. 7:19—“the law made nothing perfect ... a bringing in thereupon of a better hope, through which we draw nigh unto God.” This “better hope” is offered to us in Christ’s death and resurrection. The veil of the temple was the symbol of separation from God. The rending of that veil was the symbol on the one hand that sin had been atoned for, and on the other hand that unrestricted access to God was now permitted us in Christ the great forerunner. Bonar’s hymn, “Jesus, whom angel hosts adore,” has for its concluding stanza: “’T is finished all: the veil is rent. The welcome sure, the access free:—Now then, we leave our banishment, O Father, to return to thee!” See pages 749 (b), 770 (h).
James Russell Lowell: “At the devil’s booth all things are sold. Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold; For a cap and bells our lives we pay: Bubbles we buy with a whole soul’s tasking; ’T is heaven alone that is given away, ’T is only God may be had for the asking.” John G. Whittier: “The hour draws near, howe’er delayed and late, When at the Eternal Gate, We leave the words and works we call our own, And lift void hands alone For love to fill. Our nakedness of soul Brings to that gate no toll; Giftless we come to him who all things gives, And live because he lives.”
H. B. Smith, System of Christian Doctrine, 523, 524—“Justification and pardon are not the same in Scripture. We object to the view of Emmons (Works, vol. 5), that ‘justification is no more nor less than pardon,’ and that ‘God rewards men for their own, and not Christ’s, obedience,’ for the reason that the words, as used in common life, relate to wholly different things. If a man is declared just by a human tribunal, he is not pardoned, he is acquitted; his own inherent righteousness, as respects the charge against him, is recognized and declared. The gospel proclaims both pardon and justification. There is no significance in the use of the word ‘justify,’ if pardon be all that is intended....
“Justification involves what pardon does not, a righteousness which is the ground of the acquittal and favor; not the mere favor of the sovereign, but the merit of Christ, is at the basis—the righteousness which is of God. The ends of the law are so far satisfied by what Christ has done, that the sinner can be pardoned. The law is not merely set aside, but its great ends are answered by what Christ has done in our behalf. God might pardon as a sovereign, from mere benevolence (as regard to happiness); but in the gospel he does more,—he pardons in consistency with his holiness,—upholding that as the main end of all his dealings and works. Justification involves acquittal from all the penalty of the law, and the inheritance of all the blessings of the redeemed state. The penalty of the law—spiritual, temporal, eternal death—is all taken away; and the opposite blessings are conferred, in and through Christ—the resurrection to blessedness, the gift of the Spirit, and eternal life....
“If justification is forgiveness simply, it applies only to the past. If it is also a title to life, it includes the future condition of the soul. The latter alone is consistent with the plan and decrees of God respecting redemption—his seeing the end from the beginning. The reason why justification has been taken as pardon is two‐fold: first, it does involve pardon,—this is its negative side, while it has a positive side also—the title to eternal life; secondly, the tendency to resolve the gospel into an ethical system. Only our acts of choice as meritorious could procure a title to favor, a positive reward. Christ might remove the obstacle, but the title to heaven is derived only from what we ourselves do.
“Justification is, therefore, not a merely governmental provision, as it must be on any scheme that denies that Christ’s work has direct respect to the ends of the law. Views of the atonement determine the views on justification, if logical sequence is observed. We have to do here, not with views of natural justice, but with divine methods. If we regard the atonement simply as answering the ends of a governmental scheme, our view must be that justification merely removes an obstacle, and the end of it is only pardon, and not eternal life.”
But upon the true view, that the atonement is a complete satisfaction to the holiness of God, justification embraces not merely pardon, or acquittal from the punishments of law, but also restoration to favor, or the rewards promised to actual obedience. See also Quenstedt, 3:524; Philippi, Active Obedience of Christ; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:432, 433.
4. Relation of Justification to God’s Law and Holiness
A. Justification has been shown to be a forensic term. A man may, indeed, be conceived of as just, in either of two senses: (a) as just in moral character,—that is, absolutely holy in nature, disposition, and conduct; (b) as just in relation to law,—or as free from all obligation to suffer penalty, and as entitled to the rewards of obedience.
So, too, a man may be conceived of as justified, in either of two senses: (a) made just in moral character; or, (b) made just in his relation to law. But the Scriptures declare that there does not exist on earth a just man, in the first of these senses (Eccl. 7:20). Even in those who are renewed in moral character and united to Christ, there is a remnant of moral depravity.
If, therefore, there be any such thing as a just man, he must be just, not in the sense of possessing an unspotted holiness, but in the sense of being delivered from the penalty of law, and made partaker of its rewards. If there be any such thing as justification, it must be, not an act of God which renders the sinner absolutely holy, but an act of God which declares the sinner to be free from legal penalties and entitled to legal rewards.
Justus is derived from jus, and suggests the idea of courts and legal procedures. The fact that “justify” is derived from justus and facio, and might therefore seem to imply the making of a man subjectively righteous, should not blind us to its forensic use. The phrases “sanctify the Holy One of Jacob” (Is. 29:23; cf. 1 Pet. 3:15—“sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord”) and “glorify God” (1 Cor. 6:20) do not mean, to make God subjectively holy or glorious, for this he is, whatever we may do; they mean rather, to declare, or show, him to be holy or glorious. So justification is not making a man righteous, or even pronouncing him righteous, for no man is subjectively righteous. It is rather to count him righteous so far as respects his relations to law, to treat him as righteous, or to declare that God will, for reasons assigned, so treat him (Payne). So long as any remnant of sin exists, no justification, in the sense of making holy, can be attributed to man: Eccl. 7:20—“Surely there is not a righteous man upon earth, that doeth good and sinneth not.” If no man is just, in this sense, then God cannot pronounce him just, for God cannot lie. Justification, therefore, must signify a deliverance from legal penalties, and an assignment of legal rewards. O. P. Gifford: There is no such thing as “salvation by character”; what men need is salvation from character. The only sense in which salvation by character is rational or Scriptural is that suggested by George Harris, Moral Evolution, 409—“Salvation by character is not self‐righteousness, but Christ in us.” But even here it must be remembered that Christ in us presupposes Christ for us. The objective atonement for sin must come before the subjective purification of our natures. And justification is upon the ground of that objective atonement, and not upon the ground of the subjective cleansing.
The Jews had a proverb that if only one man could perfectly keep the whole law even for one day, the kingdom of Messiah would at once come upon the earth. This is to state in another form the doctrine of Paul, in Rom. 7:9—“When the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.” To recognize the impossibility of being justified by Pharisaic works was a preparation for the gospel; see Bruce, Apologetics, 419. The Germans speak of Werk‐, Lehre‐, Buchstaben‐, Negations‐, Parteigerechtigkeit; but all these are forms of self‐righteousness. Berridge: “A man may steal some gems from the crown of Jesus and be guilty only of petty larceny, ... but the man who would justify himself by his own works steals the crown itself, puts it on his own head, and proclaims himself by his own conquests a king in Zion.”
B. The difficult feature of justification is the declaration, on the part of God, that a sinner whose remaining sinfulness seems to necessitate the vindicative reaction of God’s holiness against him, is yet free from such reaction of holiness as is expressed in the penalties of the law.
The fact is to be accepted on the testimony of Scripture. If this testimony be not accepted, there is no deliverance from the condemnation of law. But the difficulty of conceiving of God’s declaring the sinner no longer exposed to legal penalty is relieved, if not removed, by the three‐ fold consideration:
(a) That Christ has endured the penalty of the law in the sinner’s stead.
Gal. 3:13—“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us.” Denovan: “We are justified by faith, instrumentally, in the same sense as a debt is paid by a good note or a check on a substantial account in a distant bank. It is only the intelligent and honest acceptance of justification already provided.” Rom. 8:3—“God, sending his own Son ... condemned sin in the flesh” = the believer’s sins were judged and condemned on Calvary. The way of pardon through Christ honors God’s justice as well as God’s mercy; cf. Rom. 3:26—“that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.”
(b) That the sinner is so united to Christ, that Christ’s life already constitutes the dominating principle within him.
Gal. 2:20—“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me.” God does not justify any man whom he does not foresee that he can and will sanctify. Some prophecies produce their own fulfilment. Tell a man he is brave, and you help him to become so. So declaratory justification, when published in the heart by the Holy Spirit, helps to make men just. Harris, God the Creator, 2:332—“The objection to the doctrine of justification by faith insists that justification must be conditioned, not on faith, but on right character. But justification by faith is itself the doctrine of a justification conditioned on right character, because faith in God is the only possible beginning of right character, either in men or angels.” Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 67‐79, in a similar manner argues that Paul’s emphasis is on the spiritual effect of the death of our Lord, rather than on its expiatory effect. The course of thought in the Epistle to the Romans seems to us to contradict this view. Sin and the objective atonement for sin are first treated; only after justification comes the sanctification of the believer. Still it is true that justification is never the sole work of God in the soul. The same Christ in union with whom we are justified does at that same moment a work of regeneration which is followed by sanctification.
(c) That this life of Christ is a power in the soul which will gradually, but infallibly, extirpate all remaining depravity, until the whole physical and moral nature is perfectly conformed to the divine holiness.
Phil. 3:21—“who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to subject all things unto himself”; Col. 3:1‐4—“If then ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth. For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also with him be manifested in glory.”
Truth of fact, and ideal truth, are not opposed to each other. F. W. Robertson, Lectures and Addresses, 256—“When the agriculturist sees a small, white, almond‐like thing rising from the ground, he calls that an oak; but this is not a truth of fact, it is an ideal truth. The oak is a large tree, with spreading branches and leaves and acorns; but that is only a thing an inch long, and imperceptible in all its development; yet the agriculturist sees in it the idea of what it shall be, and, if I may borrow a Scriptural phrase, he imputes to it the majesty, and excellence, and glory, that is to be hereafter.” This method of representation is effective and unobjectionable, so long as we remember that the force which is to bring about this future development and perfection is not the force of unassisted human nature, but rather the force of Christ and his indwelling Spirit. See Philippi, Glaubenslehre, v, 1:201‐208.
Gore, Incarnation, 224—“’Looking at the mother,’ wrote George Eliot of Mrs. Garth in The Mill on the Floss, ‘you might hope that the daughter would become like her—which is a prospective advantage equal to a dowry—the mother too often standing behind the daughter like a malignant prophecy: Such as I am, she will shortly be.’ George Eliot imputes by anticipation to the daughter the merits of the mother, because her life is, so to speak, of the same piece. Now, by new birth and spiritual union, our life is of the same piece with the life of Jesus. Thus he, our elder brother, stands behind us, his people, as a prophecy of all good. Thus God accepts us, deals with us, ‘in the Beloved,’ rating us at something of his value, imputing to us his merits, because in fact, except we be reprobates, he himself is the most powerful and real force at work in us.”
5. Relation of Justification to Union with Christ and the Work of the Spirit.
A. Since the sinner, at the moment of justification, is not yet completely transformed in character, we have seen that God can declare him just, not on account of what he is in himself, but only on account of what Christ is. The ground of justification is therefore not, (a) as the Romanists hold, a new righteousness and love infused into us, and now constituting our moral character; nor, (b) as Osiander taught, the essential righteousness of Christ’s divine nature, which has become ours by faith; but (c) the satisfaction and obedience of Christ, as the head of a new humanity, and as embracing in himself all believers as his members.
Ritschl regarded justification as primarily an endowment of the church, in which the individual participated only so far as he belonged to the church; see Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl’sche Theologie, 70. Here Ritschl committed an error like that of the Romanist,—the church is the door to Christ, instead of Christ being the door to the church. Justification belongs primarily to Christ, then to all who join themselves to Christ by faith, and the church is the natural and voluntary aggregation of those who in Christ are thus justified. Hence the necessity for the resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus. “For as the ministry of Enoch was sealed by his reception into heaven, and as the ministry of Elijah was also abundantly proved by his translation, so also the righteousness and innocence of Christ. But it was necessary that the ascension of Christ should be more fully attested, because upon his righteousness, so fully proved by his ascension, we must depend for all our righteousness. For if God had not approved him after his resurrection, and he had not taken his seat at his right hand, we could by no means be accepted of God” (Cartwright).
A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 46, 193, 195, 206—“Christ must be justified in the spirit and received up into glory, before he can be made righteousness to us and we can become the righteousness of God in him. Christ’s coronation is the indispensable condition of our justification.... Christ the High Priest has entered the Holy of Holies in heaven for us. Until he comes forth again at the second advent, how can we be assured that his sacrifice for us is accepted? We reply: By the gift of the Holy Spirit. The presence of the Spirit in the church is the proof of the presence of Christ before the throne.... The Holy Spirit convinces of righteousness, ‘because I go unto the Father, and ye see me no more’ (John 16:10). We can only know that ‘we have a Paraclete with the Father, even Jesus Christ the Righteous’ (1 John 2:1), by that ‘other Paraclete’ sent forth from the Father, even the Holy Spirit (John 14:25, 26; 15:26). The church, having the Spirit, reflects Christ to the world. As Christ manifests the Father, so the church through the Spirit manifests Christ. So Christ gives to us his name, ‘Christians,’ as the husband gives his name to the wife.”
As Adam’s sin is imputed to us, not because Adam is in us, but because we were in Adam; so Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us, not because Christ is in us, but because we are in Christ,—that is, joined by faith to one whose righteousness and life are infinitely greater than our power to appropriate or contain. In this sense, we may say that we are justified through a Christ outside of us, as we are sanctified through a Christ within us. Edwards: “The justification of the believer is no other than his being admitted to communion in, or participation of, this head and surety of all believers.”
1 Tim. 1:14—“faith and love which is in Christ Jesus”; 3:16—“He who was manifested in the flesh, Justified in the spirit”; Acts 13:39—“and by him [lit.: ‘in him’] every one that believeth is justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses”; Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”; Eph. 1:6—“accepted in the Beloved”—Rev. Vers.: “freely bestowed on us in the Beloved”; 1 Cor. 6:11—“justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.” “We in Christ” is the formula of our justification; “Christ in us” is the formula of our sanctification. As the water which the shell contains is little compared with the great ocean which contains the shell, so the actual change wrought within us by God’s sanctifying grace is slight compared with the boundless freedom from condemnation and the state of favor with God into which we are introduced by justification; Rom. 5:1, 2—“Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; through whom also we have had our access by faith into this grace wherein we stand; and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”
Here we have the third instance of imputation. The first was the imputation of Adam’s sin to us; and the second was the imputation of our sins to Christ. The third is now the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us. In each of the former cases, we have sought to show that the legal relation presupposes a natural relation. Adam’s sin is imputed to us, because we are one with Adam; our sins are imputed to Christ, because Christ is one with humanity. So here, we must hold that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us, because we are one with Christ. Justification is not an arbitrary transfer to us of the merits of another with whom we have no real connection. This would make it merely a legal fiction; and there are no legal fictions in the divine government.
Instead of this external and mechanical method of conception, we should first set before us the fact of Christ’s justification, after he had borne our sins and risen from the dead. In him, humanity, for the first time, is acquitted from punishment and restored to the divine favor. But Christ’s new humanity is the germinal source of spiritual life for the race. He was justified, not simply as a private person, but as our representative and head. By becoming partakers of the new life in him, we share in all he is and all he has done; and, first of all, we share in his justification. So Luther gives us, for substance, the formula: “We in Christ = justification; Christ in us = sanctification.” And in harmony with this formula is the statement quoted in the text above from Edwards, Works, 4:66.
See also H. B. Smith, Presb. Rev., July, 1881—“Union with Adam and with Christ is the ground of imputation. But the parallelism is incomplete. While the sin of Adam is imputed to us because it is ours, the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us simply because of our union with him, not at all because of our personal righteousness. In the one case, character is taken into the account; in the other, it is not. In sin, our demerits are included; in justification, our merits are excluded.” For further statements of Dr. Smith, see his System of Christian Theology, 524‐552.
C. H. M. on Genesis, page 78—“The question for every believer is not ‘What am I?’ but ‘What is Christ?’ Of Abel it is said: ‘God testified of his gifts’ (Heb. 11:4, A. V.). So God testifies, not of the believer, but of his gift,—and his gift is Christ. Yet Cain was angry because he was not received in his sins, while Abel was accepted in his gift. This was right, if Abel was justified in himself; it was wrong, because Abel was justified only in Christ.” See also Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 384‐388, 392; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 448.
B. The relation of justification to regeneration and sanctification, moreover, delivers it from the charges of externality and immorality. God does not justify ungodly men in their ungodliness. He pronounces them just only as they are united to Christ, who is absolutely just, and who, by his Spirit, can make them just, not only in the eye of the law, but in moral character. The very faith by which the sinner receives Christ is an act in which he ratifies all that Christ has done, and accepts God’s judgment against sin as his own (John 16:11).
John 16:11—“of judgment, because the prince of this world hath been judged”—the Holy Spirit leads the believer to ratify God’s judgment against sin and Satan. Accepting Christ, the believer accepts Christ’s death for sin, and resurrection to life for his own. If it were otherwise, the first act of the believer, after his discharge, might be a repetition of his offences. Such a justification would offend against the fundamental principles of justice and the safety of government. It would also fail to satisfy the conscience. This clamors not only for pardon, but for renewal. Union with Christ has one legal fruit—justification; but it has also one moral fruit—sanctification.
A really guilty man, when acquitted by judge and jury, does not cease to be the victim of remorse and fear. Forgiveness of sin is not in itself a deliverance from sin. The outward acquittal needs to be accompanied by an inward change to be really effective. Pardon for sin without power to overcome sin would be a mockery of the criminal. Justification for Christ’s sake therefore goes into effect through regeneration by the Holy Spirit; see E. H. Johnson, in Bib. Sac., July, 1892:362.
A Buddhist priest who had studied some years in England printed in Shanghai not long ago a pamphlet entitled “Justification by Faith the only true Basis of Morality.” It argues that any other foundation is nothing but pure selfishness, but that morality, to have any merit, must be unselfish. Justification by faith supplies an unselfish motive, because we accept the work done for us by another, and we ourselves work from gratitude, which is not a selfish motive. After laying down this Christian foundation, the writer erects the structure of faith in the Amida incarnation of Buddha. Buddhism opposes to the Christian doctrine of a creative Person, only a creative process; sin has relation only to the man sinning, and has no relation to Amida Buddha or to the eternal law of causation; salvation by faith in Amida Buddha is faith in one who is the product of a process, and a product may perish. Tennyson: “They are but broken lights of Thee, And thou, O Christ, art more than they.”
Justification is possible, therefore, because it is always accompanied by regeneration and union with Christ, and is followed by sanctification. But this is a very different thing from the Romanist confounding of justification and sanctification, as different stages of the same process of making the sinner actually holy. It holds fast to the Scripture distinction between justification as a declarative act of God, and regeneration and sanctification as those efficient acts of God by which justification is accompanied and followed.
Both history and our personal observation show that nothing can change the life and make men moral, like the gospel of free pardon in Jesus Christ. Mere preaching of morality will effect nothing of consequence. There never has been more insistence upon morality than in the most immoral times, like those of Seneca, and of the English deists. As to their moral fruits, we can safely compare Protestant with Roman Catholic systems and leaders and countries. We do not become right by doing right, for only those can do right who have become right. The prodigal son is forgiven before he actually confesses and amends (Luke 15:20, 21). Justification is always accompanied by regeneration, and is followed by sanctification; and all three are results of the death of Christ. But the sin‐offering must precede the thank‐offering. We must first be accepted ourselves before we can offer gifts; Heb. 11:4—“By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous, God bearing witness in respect of his gifts.”
Hence we read in Eph. 5:25, 26—“Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it, having cleansed = [after he had cleansed] it by the washing of water with the word” [= regeneration]; 1 Pet. 1:1, 2—“elect ... according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit [regeneration], unto obedience [conversion] and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ [justification]”; 1 John 1:7—“if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin”—here the “cleansing” refers primarily and mainly to justification, not to sanctification; for the apostle himself declares in verse 8—“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
Quenstedt says well, that “justification, since it is an act, outside of man, in God, cannot produce an intrinsic change in us.” And yet, he says, “although faith alone justifies, yet faith is not alone.” Melanchthon: “Sola fides justificat; sed fides non est sola.” With faith go all manner of gifts of the Spirit and internal graces of character. But we should let go all the doctrinal gains of the Reformation if we did not insist that these gifts and graces are accompaniments and consequences of justification, instead of being a part or a ground of justification. See Girdlestone, O. T. Synonyms, 104, note—“Justification is God’s declaration that the individual sinner, on account of the faith which unites him to Christ, is taken up into the relation which Christ holds to the Father, and has applied to him personally the objective work accomplished for humanity by Christ.”
6. Relation of Justification to Faith
A. We are justified by faith, rather than by love or by any other grace: (a) not because faith is itself a work of obedience by which we merit justification,—for this would be a doctrine of justification by works; (b) nor because faith is accepted as an equivalent of obedience,—for there is no equivalent except the perfect obedience of Christ; (c) nor because faith is the germ from which obedience may spring hereafter,—for it is not the faith which accepts, but the Christ who is accepted, that renders such obedience possible; but (d) because faith, and not repentance, or love, or hope, is the medium or instrument by which we receive Christ and are united to him. Hence we are never said to be justified διὰ πίστιν, = on account of faith, but only διὰ πίστεως, = through faith, or ἐκ πίστεως, = by faith. Or, to express the same truth in other words, while the grace of God is the efficient cause of justification, and the obedience and sufferings of Christ are the meritorious or procuring cause, faith is the mediate or instrumental cause.
Edwards, Works, 4:69‐73—“Faith justifies, because faith includes the whole act of unition to Christ as a Savior. It is not the nature of any other graces or virtues directly to close with Christ as a mediator, any further than they enter into the constitution of justifying faith, and do belong to its nature”; Observations on Trinity, 64‐67—“Salvation is not offered to us upon any condition, but freely and for nothing. We are to do nothing for it,—we are only to take it. This taking and receiving is faith.” H. B. Smith, System, 524—“An internal change is a sine qua non of justification, but not its meritorious ground.” Give a man a gold mine. It is his. He has not to work for it; he has only to work it. Working for life is one thing; working from life is quite another. The marriage of a poor girl to a wealthy proprietor makes her possessor of his riches despite her former poverty. Yet her acceptance has not purchased wealth. It is hers, not because of what she is or has done, but because of what her husband is and has done. So faith is the condition of justification, only because through it Christ becomes ours, and with him his atonement and righteousness. Salvation comes not because our faith saves us, but because it links us to the Christ who saves; and believing is only the link. There is no more merit in it than in the beggar’s stretching forth his hand to receive the offered purse, or the drowning man’s grasping the rope that is thrown to him.
The Wesleyan scheme is inclined to make faith a work. See Dabney, Theology, 637. This is to make faith the cause and ground, or at least to add it to Christ’s work as a joint cause and ground, of justification; as if justification were διὰ πίστιν, instead of διὰ πίστεως or ἐκ πίστεως. Since faith is never perfect, this is to go back to the Roman Catholic uncertainty of salvation. See Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:744, 745 (Syst. Doct., 4:206, 207). C. H. M. on Gen. 3:7—“They made themselves aprons of fig‐leaves, before God made them coats of skin. Man ever tries to clothe himself in garments of his own righteousness, before he will take the robe of Christ’s. But Adam felt himself naked when God visited him, even though he had his fig‐leaves on him.”
We are justified efficiently by the grace of God, meritoriously by Christ, instrumentally by faith, evidentially by works. Faith justifies, as roots bring plant and soil together. Faith connects man with the source of life in Christ. “When the boatman with his hook grapples the rock, he does not pull the shore to the boat, but the boat to the shore; so, when we by faith lay hold on Christ, we do not pull Christ to us, but ourselves to him.” Faith is a coupling; the train is drawn, not by the coupling, but by the locomotive; yet without the coupling it would not be drawn. Faith is the trolley that reaches up to the electric wire; when the connection is sundered, not only does the car cease to move, but the heat dies and the lights go out. Dr. John Duncan: “I have married the Merchant and all his wealth is mine!”
H. C. Trumbull: “If a man wants to cross the ocean, he can either try swimming, or he can trust the captain of a ship to carry him over in his vessel. By or through his faith in that captain, the man is carried safely to the other shore; yet it is the ship’s captain, not the passenger’s faith, which is to be praised for the carrying.” So the sick man trusts his case in the hands of his physician, and his life is saved by the physician,—yet by or through the patient’s faith. This faith is indeed an inward act of allegiance, and no mere outward performance. Whiton, Divine Satisfaction, 92—“The Protestant Reformers saw that it was by an inward act, not by penances or sacraments that men were justified. But they halted in the crude notion of a legal court room process, a governmental procedure external to us, whereas it is an educational, inward process, the awakening through Christ of the filial spirit in us, which in the midst of imperfections strives for likeness more and more to the Son of God. Justification by principle apart from performance makes Christianity the religion of the spirit.” We would add that such justification excludes education, and is an act rather than a process, an act external to the sinner rather than internal, an act of God rather than an act of man. The justified person can say to Christ, as Ruth said to Boaz: “Why have I found favor in thy sight, that thou shouldest take knowledge of me, seeing I am a foreigner?” (Ruth 2:10).
B. Since the ground of justification is only Christ, to whom we are united by faith, the justified person has peace. If it were anything in ourselves, our peace must needs be proportioned to our holiness. The practical effect of the Romanist mingling of works with faith, as a joint ground of justification, is to render all assurance of salvation impossible. (Council of Trent, 9th chap.: “Every man, by reason of his own weakness and defects, must be in fear and anxiety about his state of grace. Nor can any one know, with infallible certainty of faith, that he has received forgiveness of God.”). But since justification is an instantaneous act of God, complete at the moment of the sinner’s first believing, it has no degrees. Weak faith justifies as perfectly as strong faith; although, since justification is a secret act of God, weak faith does not give so strong assurance of salvation.
Foundations of our Faith, 216—“The Catholic doctrine declares that justification is not dependent upon faith and the righteousness of Christ imputed and granted thereto, but on the actual condition of the man himself. But there remain in the man an undeniable amount of fleshly lusts or inclinations to sin, even though the man be regenerate. The Catholic doctrine is therefore constrained to assert that these lusts are not in themselves sinful, or objects of the divine displeasure. They are allowed to remain in the man, that he may struggle against them; and, as they say, Paul designates them as sinful, only because they are derived from sin, and incite to sin; but they only become sin by the positive concurrence of the human will. But is not internal lust displeasing to God? Can we draw the line between lust and will? The Catholic favors self here, and makes many things lust, which are really will. A Protestant is necessarily more earnest in the work of salvation, when he recognizes even the evil desire as sin, according to Christ’s precept.”
All systems of religion of merely human origin tend to make salvation, in larger or smaller degree, the effect of human works, but only with the result of leaving man in despair. See, in Ecclesiasticus 3:30, an Apocryphal declaration that alms make atonement for sin. So Romanism bids me doubt God’s grace and the forgiveness of sins. See Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theol., 228, 229, and his quotations from Luther. “But if the Romanist doctrine is true, that a man is justified only in such measure as he is sanctified, then: 1. Justification must be a matter of degrees, and so the Council of Trent declares it to be. The sacraments which sanctify are therefore essential, that one may be increasingly justified. 2. Since justification is a continuous process, the redeeming death of Christ, on which it depends, must be a continuous process also; hence its prolonged reiteration in the sacrifice by the Mass. 3. Since sanctification is obviously never completed in this life, no man ever dies completely justified; hence the doctrine of Purgatory.” For the substance of Romanist doctrine, see Moehler, Symbolism, 79‐190; Newman, Lectures on Justification, 253‐345; Ritschl, Christian Doctrine of Justification, 121‐226.
A better doctrine is that of the Puritan divine: “It is not the quantity of thy faith that shall save thee. A drop of water is as true water as the whole ocean. So a little faith is as true faith as the greatest. It is not the measure of thy faith that saves thee,—it is the blood that it grips to that saves thee. The weak hand of the child, that leads the spoon to the mouth, will feed as well as the strong arm of a man; for it is not the hand that feeds, but the meat. So, if thou canst grip Christ ever so weakly, he will not let thee perish.” I am troubled about the money I owe in New York, until I find that a friend has paid my debt there. When I find that the objective account against me is cancelled, then and only then do I have subjective peace.
A child may be heir to a vast estate, even while he does not know it; and a child of God may be an heir of glory, even while, through the weakness of his faith, he is oppressed with painful doubts and fears. No man is lost simply because of the greatness of his sins; however ill‐deserving he may be, faith in Christ will save him. Luther’s climbing the steps of St. John Lateran, and the voice of thunder: “The just shall live by faith,” are not certain as historical facts; but they express the substance of Luther’s experience. Not obeying, but receiving, is the substance of the gospel. A man cannot merit salvation; he cannot buy it; but one thing he must do,—he must take it. And the least faith makes salvation ours, because it makes Christ ours.
Augustine conceived of justification as a continuous process, proceeding until love and all Christian virtues fill the heart. There is his chief difference from Paul. Augustine believes in sin and grace. But he has not the freedom of the children of God, as Paul has. The influence of Augustine upon Roman Catholic theology has not been wholly salutary. The Roman Catholic, mixing man’s subjective condition with God’s grace as a ground of justification, continually wavers between self‐righteousness and uncertainty of acceptance with God, each of these being fatal to a healthful and stable religious life. High‐church Episcopalians, and Sacramentalists generally, are afflicted with this distemper of the Romanists. Dr. R. W. Dale remarks with regard to Dr. Pusey: “The absence of joy in his religious life was only the inevitable effect of his conception of God’s method of saving men; in parting with the Lutheran truth concerning justification, he parted with the springs of gladness.” Spurgeon said that a man might get from London to New York provided he took a steamer; but it made much difference in his comfort whether he had a first class or a second class ticket. A new realization of the meaning of justification in our churches would change much of our singing from the minor to the major key; would lead us to pray, not for the presence of Christ, but from the presence of Christ; would abolish the mournful upward inflections at the end of sentences which give such unreality to our preaching; and would replace the pessimistic element in our modern work and worship with the notes of praise and triumph. In the Pilgrim’s Progress, the justification of the believer is symbolized by Christian’s lodging in the Palace Beautiful whose window opened toward the sunrising.
Even Luther did not fully apprehend and apply his favorite doctrine of justification by faith. Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 168 sq., states the fundamental principles of Protestantism as: “1. The Christian religion is wholly given in the word of God and in the inner experience which answers to that word. 2. The assured belief that the Christian has a gracious God. ‘Nun weisz und glaub’ ich’s feste, Ich rühm’s auch ohne Scheu, Dasz Gott, der höchst’ und beste, Mein Freund und Vater sei; Und dasz in allen Fällen Er mir zur Rechten steh’, Und dampfe Sturm und Wellen, Und was mir bringet Weh’.’ 3. Restoration of simple and believing worship, both public and private. But Luther took too much dogma into Christianity; insisted too much on the authority of the written word; cared too much for the means of grace, such as the Lord’s Supper; identified the church too much with the organized body.” Yet Luther talked of beating the heads of the Wittenbergers with the Bible, so as to get the great doctrine of justification by faith into their brains. “Why do you teach your child the same thing twenty times?” he said. “Because I find that nineteen times is not sufficient.”
C. Justification is instantaneous, complete, and final: instantaneous, since otherwise there would be an interval during which the soul was neither approved nor condemned by God (Mat. 6:24); complete, since the soul, united to Christ by faith, becomes partaker of his complete satisfaction to the demands of law (Col. 2:9, 10); and final, since the union with Christ is indissoluble (John 10:28, 29). As there are many acts of sin in the life of the Christian, so there are many acts of pardon following them. But all these acts of pardon are virtually implied in that first act by which he was finally and forever justified; as also successive acts of repentance and faith, after such sins, are virtually implied in that first repentance and faith which logically preceded justification.
Mat. 6:24—“No man can serve two masters”; Col. 2:9, 10—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and in him ye are made full, who is the head of all principality and power”; John 10:28, 29—“they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who hath given them unto me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.”
Plymouth Brethren say truly that the Christian has sin in him, but not on him, because Christ had sin on him, but not in him. The Christian has sin but not guilt, because Christ had guilt but not sin. All our sins are buried in the grave with Christ, and Christ’s resurrection is our resurrection. Toplady: “From whence this fear and unbelief? Hast thou, O Father, put to grief Thy spotless Son for me? And will the righteous Judge of men Condemn me for that debt of sin, Which, Lord, was laid on thee? If thou hast my discharge procured, And freely in my room endured The whole of wrath divine, Payment God cannot twice demand, First at my bleeding Surety’s hand, And then again at mine. Complete atonement thou hast made, And to the utmost farthing paid Whate’er thy people owed; How then can wrath on me take place, If sheltered in thy righteousness And sprinkled with thy blood? Turn, then, my soul, unto thy rest; The merits of thy great High‐priest Speak peace and liberty; Trust in his efficacious blood, Nor fear thy banishment from God, Since Jesus died for thee!”
Justification, however, is not eternal in the past. We are to repent unto the remission of our sins (Act 2:38). Remission comes after repentance. Sin is not pardoned before it is committed. In justification God grants us actual pardon for past sin, but virtual pardon for future sin. Edwards, Works, 4:104—“Future sins are respected, in that first justification, no otherwise than as future faith and repentance are respected in it; and future faith and repentance are looked upon by him that justifies as virtually implied in that first repentance and faith, in the same manner that justification from future sins is implied in that first justification.”
A man is not justified from his sins before he has committed them, nor is he saved before he is born. A remarkable illustration of the extreme to which hyper‐Calvinism may go is found in Tobias Crisp, Sermons, 1:358—“The Lord hath no more to lay to the charge of an elect person, yet in the height of iniquity, and in the excess of riot, and committing all the abomination that can be committed ... than he has to the charge of the saint triumphant in glory.” A far better statement is found in Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 61—“As there is upon earth no consummated penitence, so neither is there any forgiveness consummated.... Forgiveness is the recognition, by anticipation, of something which is to be, something toward which it is itself a mighty quickening of possibilities, but something which is not, or at least is not perfectly, yet.... Present forgiveness is inchoate, is educational.... It reaches its final and perfect consummation only when the forgiven penitent has become at last personally and completely righteous. If the consummation is not reached but reversed, then forgiveness is forfeited (Mat. 18:32‐35).” This last exception, however, as we shall see in our discussion of Perseverance, is only a hypothetical one. The truly forgiven do not finally fall away.
7. Advice to Inquirers demanded by a Scriptural View of Justification.
(a) Where conviction of sin is yet lacking, our aim should be to show the sinner that he is under God’s condemnation for his past sins, and that no future obedience can ever secure his justification, since this obedience, even though perfect, could not atone for the past, and even if it could, he is unable, without God’s help, to render it.
With the help of the Holy Spirit, conviction of sin may be roused by presentation of the claims of God’s perfect law, and by drawing attention, first to particular overt transgressions, and then to the manifold omissions of duty, the general lack of supreme and all‐pervading love to God, and the guilty rejection of Christ’s offers and commands. “Even if the next page of the copy book had no blots or erasures, its cleanness would not alter the smudges and misshapen letters on the earlier pages.” God takes no notice of the promise “Have patience with me, and I will pay thee” (Mat. 18:29), for he knows it can never be fulfilled.
(b) Where conviction of sin already exists, our aim should be, not, in the first instance, to secure the performance of external religious duties, such as prayer, or Scripture‐reading, or uniting with the church, but to induce the sinner, as his first and all‐inclusive duty, to accept Christ as his only and sufficient sacrifice and Savior, and, committing himself and the matter of his salvation entirely to the hands of Christ, to manifest this trust and submission by entering at once upon a life of obedience to Christ’s commands.
A convicted sinner should be exhorted, not first to prayer and then to faith, but first to faith, and then to the immediate expression of that faith in prayer and Christian activity. He should pray, not for faith, but in faith. It should not be forgotten that the sinner never sins against so much light, and never is in so great danger, as when he is convicted but not converted, when he is moved to turn but yet refuses to turn. No such sinner should be allowed to think that he has the right to do any other thing whatever before accepting Christ. This accepting Christ is not an outward act, but an inward act of mind and heart and will, although believing is naturally evidenced by immediate outward action. To teach the sinner, however apparently well disposed, how to believe on Christ, is beyond the power of man. God is the only giver of faith. But Scripture instances of faith, and illustrations drawn from the child’s taking the father at his word and acting upon it, have often been used by the Holy Spirit as means of leading men themselves to put faith in Christ.
Bengel: “Those who are secure Jesus refers to the law; those who are contrite he consoles with the gospel.” A man left work and came home. His wife asked why. “Because I am a sinner.” “Let me send for the preacher.” “I am too far gone for preachers. If the Lord Jesus Christ does not save me I am lost.” That man needed only to be pointed to the Cross. There he found reason for believing that there was salvation for him. In surrendering himself to Christ he was justified. On the general subject of Justification, see Edwards, Works, 4:64‐132; Buchanan on Justification, 250‐411; Owen on Justification, in Works, vol. 5; Bp. of Ossory, Nature and Effects of Faith, 48‐152; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 3:114‐212; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 3:133‐200; Herzog, Encyclopädie, art.: Rechtfertigung; Bushnell, Vicarious Sacrifice, 416‐420, 435.
Section III.—The Application Of Christ’s Redemption In Its Continuation.
Under this head we treat of Sanctification and of Perseverance. These two are but the divine and the human sides of the same fact, and they bear to each other a relation similar to that which exists between Regeneration and Conversion.