FAITH AND SALVATION,181
but we have been doing so, not in the interests of complexity, but, on. the contrary, in order to combat the false notions by which simplicity is destroyed. We have not for a moment meant to imply that all the logical implications which we have found in faith are always consciously or separately in the mind of the man who believes; mysterious indeed is the chemistry of the soul, and a whole new world of thought as well as life is often conveyed to a man in an experience of faith that seems to be as simple as the falling of a leaf from the bough and as inevitable as 'the flow. of a mighty river to the sea. Certainly,^ at bottom, faith is in one sense a very simple thing; it simply means that abandoning the vain effort of earning one's way into God's presence we accept the gift of salvation which Christ offers so full and free. Such is the "doctrine" — let us not be afraid of the word — such is the "doctrine" of justification through faith alone.
That has been a liberating doctrine in the history of the world; to it was due the breaking of mediaeval bondage at the Reformation; to it is due ultimately the civil liberty that we possess today. And now that it is being abandoned, civil liberty is slowly but steadily being destroyed in the interests of a soul-killing collectivism that is worse in some respects than the tyrannies of the past. Let us hope that the process may be arrested in time. If we are interested in what God thinks of us, we shall not be deterred by what men think; the very desire for justification in the sight of God makes us independent of the judgment of men. And if the very desire for justification is liberating, how much more the attainment of it! The man who has been justified by God, the man who has accepted as a free gift the condition of tightness with God which Christ offers, is not a man who hopes that possibly, with due effort, if he does not fail, he may finally win through to become a child of God. But he is a man who has already become a child of God. If our being children of God depended in slightest measure upon us, we could never be sure that we had attained the high estate. But as a matter of fact it does not depend upon us; it depends only upon God. It is not a reward that we have earned but a gift that we have received.
FAITH AND WORKS
Because of the fundamental nature of faith, as it has been set forth, on the basis of the New Testament teaching, in the last chapter, it is natural to find that in the New Testament faith, as the reception of a free gift, is placed in sharpest contrast with any intrusion of human merit; it is natural to find that faith is sharply contrasted with works; The contrast is really implied by the New Testament throughout, and in one book, the Epistle to the Galatians, it forms the express subject of the argument. That book from the beginning to the end is a mighty polemic in defence of the doctrine of justification by faith alone; and as such it has rightly been called the Magna Charta of Christian liberty. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the world was lying in darkness; but God then raised up a man who read this Epistle with his own eyes, and the Reformation was born. So it may be in our own day. Again the world is sinking into bondage; the liberty of the sons of God is again giving place to the bondage of a religion of merit: but God still lives, and His Spirit again may bring the charter of our liberty to light.
Meanwhile a strange darkness covers the eyes of men; the message of the great Epistle, so startlingly clear to the man whose eyes have been opened, is hidden by a mass of misinterpretation as absurd in its way as the mediae- val rubbish of the fourfold sense of Scripture which the Reformation brushed aside, Grammatico-historical interpretation is still being favored in theory, but despite is being done to it (by preachers if not by scholars) in practice; and the Apostle is being made to say anything that men wish him to have said. A new Reformation, we think, like the Reformation of the sixteenth century, would be marked, among other things, by a return to plain common sense; and the Apostle would be allowed, despite our likes and dislikes, to say what he really meant to say.
But what did the Apostle, in the Epistle to the Galatians, really mean to say; against what was he writing in that great polemic; and what was he setting up in place of that which he was endeavoring to destroy?
The answer which many modern writers are giving to this question is that the Apostle is arguing merely against an external ceremonial religion in the interests of a religion based on great principles; that he is arguing against a piecemeal conception of morality which makes morality consist in a series of disconnected rules, in the interests of a conception that draws out human conduct naturally from a central root in love; that he is arguing, in other words, against the "letter of the law" in the interests of its "spirit."
This interpretation, we think, involves an error which cuts away the very vitals of the Christian religion. Like other fatal errors, indeed, it does contain an element of truth; in one passage, at least, in the Epistle to the Galatians Paul does seem to point to the external character of the ceremonial law. as being inferior to the higher (or to use modern terminology, more "spiritual") stage to which religion, under the new dispensation, had come. But that passage is isolated merely, and certainly does not in itself give the key to the meaning of the Epistle. On the contrary, even in that passage, when it is taken in its context, the inferiority of the old dispensation as involving ceremonial requirements is really put merely as a sign of an inferiority that is deeper still; and it is that deeper inferiority which the Epistle as a whole is concerned to set forth. The ceremonial character of the Old Testament law, so inferior to the inwardness of the new dispensation, was intended hy God to mark the inferiority of any dispensation of law as distinguished from a dispensation of grace.
Of.course a word of caution should again at thii. point be injected. Paul never means to say that the old dispensation was merely a dispensation of law; he always admits, and indeed insists upon, the element of grace which ran through it from "beginning to end, the element of grace which appeared in the Promise. But his opponents in Galatia had rejected that element of grace; and their use of the Old Testament law, as distinguished from its right use as a schoolmaster unto Christ, really made of the old dispensation a dispensation of law and nothing more.
What then, according to Paul, was the real, underlying inferiority of that dispensation of law; how was it to he contrasted with the new dispensation which ^Christ had ushered in? It is hard to see how the answer to this question.can really he regarded as obscure;
the Apostle has poured forth his very soul to make the matter plain. Most emphatically the contrast was not between a lower law and a higher law; it was not between an external, piecemeal conception of the law and a conception which reduces it to great underlying principles; but it was a contrast between any kind of law, no matter how sublimated, provided only it be conceived of as a way of obtaining merit, and the absolutely free grace of God.
This contrast is entirely missed by the interpretation that prevails popularly in the Modernist Church: the advocates of "salvation by character'* have supposed that the polemic of the Apostle was turned merely against certain forgotten ceremonialists of long ago, while in reality it is turned quite as much against them. It is turned, indeed, against any man who seeks to stand in God's sight on the basis of his own merit instead of on the basis of the sacrifice which Christ offered to satisfy divine justice upon the cross. The truth is that the prevailing Modernist interpretation of Galatians, which is in some respects apparently just the interpretation favored by the Roman Church, makes the Apostle say almost the exact opposite of what he means.
The Modernist return to mediaevalism in the interpretation of Galatians is no isolated thing, but is only one aspect of a misinterpretation of the whole Bible; in particular it is closely akin to a misinterpretation of a great sentence in one of the other Epistles of Paul. The sentence to which we refer is found in II Corinthians iii, 6: "The letter, killeth, but the Spirit giveth life."..: That sentence is perhaps the most frequently misused utterance in the whole Bible. It has indeed in this respect much competition: many phrases in the New Testament are being used today to mean almost their exact opposite, as for example, when the words, "God in Christ" and the like, are made to be an expression of the vague pantheism so popular just now, or as when the entire gospel of redemption is regarded as a mere symbol of an optimistic view of man against which that doctrine was in reality a stupendous protest, or as when the doctrine of the incarnation is represented, as indicating the essential oneness of God and man! One is reminded constantly at the present time of the way in which the Gnostics of the second century used Biblical texts to support their thoroughly un-Biblical systems. The historical methocf 'of study, in America at least, is very generally being abandoned; and the New Testament writers are being made to say almost anything that twentieth-century readers could have wished them to say.
This abandonment of scientific historical method in exegesis, which is merely one manifestation of the intellectual decadence of our day, appears at countless points in contemporary religious literature; but at no point does it appear with greater clearness than in connection with the great utterance in II Corinthians to which we have referred. The words: "The letter killeth, but the Spirit 'giveth life/* are constantly interpreted to mean that we are perfectly justified in taking the law of God with a grain of salt; they arc held to indicate that Paul was no "literalist," but a "Liberal," who believed that the Old Testament was not true in detail and the Old Testament" law was not valid' in detail, but that all God requires is that we should extract the few great principles which the Bible teaches and not insist upon the rest. In short, the words are held to involve a contrast between the letter of the law and "the spirit of the law"; they are held to mean that literalism is deadly, while attention to great principles keeps a man intellectually and spiritually alive.
Thus has one of the greatest utterances in the New Testament been reduced to comparative triviality — a triviality with a kernel of truth in it, to be sure, but triviality all the same. The triviality, indeed, is merely relative; no doubt it is important to observe that attention to the general sense of a book or a law is far better than such a reading of details as, that the context in which the details are found is ignored. But all that is quite foreign to the meaning of the Apostle in this passage, and is, though quite true and quite important in its place, trivial in comparison with the tremendous thing that Paul is here endeavoring to say. / What Paul is really doing here is not contrasting the letter of the law with the spirit of the law, but contrasting the law of God with the Spirit of God. When he says, "The letter killeth," he is making no contemptuous reference to a pedantic literalism which shrivels the soul; but he is setting forth the terrible majesty of God's law. The letter, the "thing written," in the law of God, says Paul, pronounces a dread sentence of death upon the transgressor; but the Holy Spirit of God, as distinguished from the law, gives life. The law of God, Paul means, is, as law, external. It is God's holy will to which we must conform; hut it contains in itself no promise of its fulfilment; it is one thing to have the law written, and quite another thing to have it obeyed. In fact, because of the sinful; ness of our hearts, because of the power of the flesh, the recognition of God's law only makes sin take on the definite form of transgression; it only makes sin more exceeding sinful. The law of God was written on tables of stone or on tjie rolls of the Old Testament books, but it was quite a different thing to get it written in the. hearts and lives of the people. So it is today. The text is of very wide application. The law of God, however it comes to us, is "letter"; it is a "thing written," external to the hearts and lives of men. It is written in the Old Testament; it is written in the Ser-, mon on the Mount; it is written 'in Jesus' stupendous command of love for God and one's neighbor; it is written in whatever way we become conscious of the commands of God. Let no one say that such an extension of the text involves that very anti-historical modernizing which we have just denounced; on the contrary it is amply justified by Paul himself. "When the Gentiles," Paul says, "which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves."1 The Old Testament law is just a clear, authentic presentation of a law of God under which all men stand.
And that law, according to Paul, issues a dreadful sentence of eternal death. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die"; not the hearer of the law is justified hut the doer of it. And, alas, none are doers; all have sinned. The law of God is holy and just and good; it is inexorable; and we have fallen under its just condemnation,
That is at bottom what Paul means by the words, "The letter killeth." He does not mean that attention to pedantic details shrivels and deadens the soul. No doubt that is true, at least within certain limits; it is a useful thought. But it is trivial indeed compared with what Paul means. Something far more majestic, far more terrible, is meant by the Pauline phrase. The "letter" that the Apostle means is the same as the curse of God's law that he speaks of in Galatians; it is the dreadful handwriting of ordinances that was against us; and the death with which it kills is the eternal death of those who are forever separated from God.
But that is not all of the text. "The letter killeth," Paul says, "but the Spirit giveth life." There is no doubt about what he means by "the Spirit." He does not mean the "spirit of the law" as contrasted with the letter; he certainly does not mean the lax interpretation of God's commands which is dictated' by human lust or pride; he certainly does not mean the spirit of man. No real student of Paul, whatever be his own religious views, can doubt, I think, but that the Apostle means the Spirit of God. God's law brings death because of sin; but God's Spirit, applying to the soul the redemption offered by Christ, brings life. The thing that is written killcth; but the Holy Spirit, in the new birth, or, as Paul says, the new creation, giveth life.
The contrast runs all through the New Testament. Hopelessness under the law is described, for example, in the seventh chapter of Romans. "Oh wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"2 But this hopelessness is transcended by the gospel, "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death."3 The law's just sentence of condemnation was borne for us by Christ who suffered in our stead; the handwriting of ordinances which was against us — the dreadful "letter"— was nailed to the cross, and we have a fresh start in the full favor of God. And in addition to this new and right relation to God, the Spirit of God also gives the sinner a new birth and makes him a new creature. The New Testament from beginning to end deals gloriously with this work of grace. The giving of life of which Paul speaks in this text is the new birth, the new creation; it is Christ who liveth in us. Here is the fulfillment of the great prophecy of Jeremiah: "But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts."4 The law is no longer for the Christian a command which it is for him by his own strength to obey, but its requirements are fulfilled through the mighty power of the Holy Spirit. There is the glorious freedom of the gospel. The gospel does not abrogate God's law, but it makes men love it with all their hearts.
How is it with us? The law of God stands over us; we have offended against it in thought, word and deed; its. majestic "letter" pronounces a sentence of death against our sin. Shall we obtain a specious security by ignoring God's law, and by taking refuge in an easier law of our own devising? Or shall the Lord Jesus, as He is offered to us in the gospel, wipe out the sentence of condemnation that was against us, and shall the Holy Spirit write God's law in our heart, and make us doers of the law and not hearers only? So and only so will the great text be applied to us: "The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life."
The alternative that underlies this verse, then, and that becomes explicit in Galatians also, is not an alternative between an external or ceremonial religion and what men would now call (by a misuse of the New Testament word) a "spiritual" religion, important though that alternative no doubt is; but it is an alternative between a religion of merit and a religion of grace. The Epistle to the Galatians is directed just as much against the modern notion of "salvation by character" or salvation by "making Christ Master" in the life or salvation by a mere attempt to put into practice "the principles of Jesus," as it is directed against the Jewish ceremonialists of long ago: for what the Apostle is concerned to deny is any intrusion of human merit into- the work by which salvation is obtained. That work, according to the Epistle to the Galatians and according to the whole New Testament, is the work of God and of God alone.
At this point appears the full poignancy of the great Epistle with which we have been dealing. Paul is not merely arguing that a man is justified by faith— so much no doubt his opponents, the Judaizers, admitted— but he is arguing that a man is justified by faith alone. What the Judaizers said was not that a man is justified by works; but that he is justified by faith and works — exactly the thing that is being taught by the Roman Catholic Church today. No doubt they admitted that it was necessary for a man to have faith in. Christ in order, to be saved: but they held that it was also necessary for him to keep the law the best he could; salvation, according to them, was not by faith alone and not by works alone but by faith and works together. A man's obedience to the law of God, they held, was not, indeed, sufficient for salvation; but it was necessary; and it became sufficient when it was supplemented by Christ. Against this compromising solution of the problem, the Apostle insists upon a sharp alternative: a man may be saved by works (if he keeps the law perfectly), or he may be saved by faith; but he cannot possibly be f'saved by faith and works together. Christ, according to Paul, will do everything or nothing; if righteousness / is in slightest measure obtained by our obedience to the / law, then Christ died in vain; if we trust in slightest measure in our own good works, then we have turned away from grace and Christ profiteth us nothing.. To the world, that may seem to be a hard saying; it is not a hard saying to the man who has ever been at the foot of the Cross; it is not a hard saying to the man who has first known the bondage of the law, the weary effort at establishment of his own righteousness in the presence of God, and.then has come to understand, as in a wondrous flash of light, that Christ has done all, and that the weary bondage was vain. What a great theologian is the Christian heart — the Christian heart that has been touched by redeeming grace! The man who has felt the burden of sin roll away at the sight of the Cross, who has said of the Lord Jesus, "He loved me and gave Himself for me," who has sung with Toplady: "Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to Thy cross I cling" — that man knows in his heart of hearts that the Apostle is right, that to trust Christ only for part is not to trust Him at all, that our own righteousness is insufficient even to bridge the.smallest gap which might be left open between us and God, that there is no hope unless we can safely say to the Lord Jesus, without shadow of reservation, without shadow of self- trust: "Thou must -save, and Thou alone."
That is the centre of the Christian religion — the absolutely undeserved and sovereign grace of God, saving sinful men by the gift of Christ upon the cross. Condemnation comes by merit; salvation comes only by grace: condemnation is earned by man; salvation is given by God. The fact of the grace of God runs through the New Testament like a golden thread; indeed for it the New Testament exists. It is found in the words which Jesus spoke in the days of His flesh, as in the parables of the servant coming in from the field and of the laborers in the vineyard; it Is found