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.Justusis derived fromjus, and suggests the idea of courts and legal procedures. The fact that“justify”is derived fromjustusandfacio, 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, tomakeGod subjectively holy or glorious, for this heis, whatever we may do; they mean rather, todeclare, orshow, him to be holy or glorious. So justification is not making a man righteous, or even pronouncing him righteous, for no manissubjectively 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“salvationbycharacter”; what men need is salvationfromcharacter. 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 Christinus presupposes Christforus. 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.[pg 860]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, inRom. 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[pg 861]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, heimputesto 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.”[pg 862]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 receivedin his sins, while Abel was acceptedin 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[pg 863]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 inEph. 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[pg 864]justification, not to sanctification; for the apostle himself declares inverse 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.”
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.Justusis derived fromjus, and suggests the idea of courts and legal procedures. The fact that“justify”is derived fromjustusandfacio, 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, tomakeGod subjectively holy or glorious, for this heis, whatever we may do; they mean rather, todeclare, orshow, him to be holy or glorious. So justification is not making a man righteous, or even pronouncing him righteous, for no manissubjectively 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“salvationbycharacter”; what men need is salvationfromcharacter. 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 Christinus presupposes Christforus. 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.[pg 860]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, inRom. 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[pg 861]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, heimputesto 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.”[pg 862]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 receivedin his sins, while Abel was acceptedin 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[pg 863]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 inEph. 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[pg 864]justification, not to sanctification; for the apostle himself declares inverse 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.”
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.Justusis derived fromjus, and suggests the idea of courts and legal procedures. The fact that“justify”is derived fromjustusandfacio, 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, tomakeGod subjectively holy or glorious, for this heis, whatever we may do; they mean rather, todeclare, orshow, him to be holy or glorious. So justification is not making a man righteous, or even pronouncing him righteous, for no manissubjectively 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“salvationbycharacter”; what men need is salvationfromcharacter. 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 Christinus presupposes Christforus. 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.[pg 860]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, inRom. 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[pg 861]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, heimputesto 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.”[pg 862]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 receivedin his sins, while Abel was acceptedin 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[pg 863]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 inEph. 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[pg 864]justification, not to sanctification; for the apostle himself declares inverse 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.”
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.Justusis derived fromjus, and suggests the idea of courts and legal procedures. The fact that“justify”is derived fromjustusandfacio, 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, tomakeGod subjectively holy or glorious, for this heis, whatever we may do; they mean rather, todeclare, orshow, him to be holy or glorious. So justification is not making a man righteous, or even pronouncing him righteous, for no manissubjectively 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“salvationbycharacter”; what men need is salvationfromcharacter. 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 Christinus presupposes Christforus. 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.[pg 860]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, inRom. 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[pg 861]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, heimputesto 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.”[pg 862]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 receivedin his sins, while Abel was acceptedin 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[pg 863]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 inEph. 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[pg 864]justification, not to sanctification; for the apostle himself declares inverse 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.”
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.Justusis derived fromjus, and suggests the idea of courts and legal procedures. The fact that“justify”is derived fromjustusandfacio, 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, tomakeGod subjectively holy or glorious, for this heis, whatever we may do; they mean rather, todeclare, orshow, him to be holy or glorious. So justification is not making a man righteous, or even pronouncing him righteous, for no manissubjectively 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“salvationbycharacter”; what men need is salvationfromcharacter. 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 Christinus presupposes Christforus. 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.[pg 860]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, inRom. 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[pg 861]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, heimputesto 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.”[pg 862]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 receivedin his sins, while Abel was acceptedin 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[pg 863]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 inEph. 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[pg 864]justification, not to sanctification; for the apostle himself declares inverse 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.”
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.Justusis derived fromjus, and suggests the idea of courts and legal procedures. The fact that“justify”is derived fromjustusandfacio, 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, tomakeGod subjectively holy or glorious, for this heis, whatever we may do; they mean rather, todeclare, orshow, him to be holy or glorious. So justification is not making a man righteous, or even pronouncing him righteous, for no manissubjectively 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“salvationbycharacter”; what men need is salvationfromcharacter. 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 Christinus presupposes Christforus. 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.[pg 860]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, inRom. 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[pg 861]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, heimputesto 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.”[pg 862]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 receivedin his sins, while Abel was acceptedin 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[pg 863]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 inEph. 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[pg 864]justification, not to sanctification; for the apostle himself declares inverse 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.”
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.Justusis derived fromjus, and suggests the idea of courts and legal procedures. The fact that“justify”is derived fromjustusandfacio, 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, tomakeGod subjectively holy or glorious, for this heis, whatever we may do; they mean rather, todeclare, orshow, him to be holy or glorious. So justification is not making a man righteous, or even pronouncing him righteous, for no manissubjectively 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“salvationbycharacter”; what men need is salvationfromcharacter. 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 Christinus presupposes Christforus. 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.[pg 860]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, inRom. 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[pg 861]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, heimputesto 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.”
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.
Justusis derived fromjus, and suggests the idea of courts and legal procedures. The fact that“justify”is derived fromjustusandfacio, 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, tomakeGod subjectively holy or glorious, for this heis, whatever we may do; they mean rather, todeclare, orshow, him to be holy or glorious. So justification is not making a man righteous, or even pronouncing him righteous, for no manissubjectively 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“salvationbycharacter”; what men need is salvationfromcharacter. 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 Christinus presupposes Christforus. 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.[pg 860]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, inRom. 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.”
Justusis derived fromjus, and suggests the idea of courts and legal procedures. The fact that“justify”is derived fromjustusandfacio, 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, tomakeGod subjectively holy or glorious, for this heis, whatever we may do; they mean rather, todeclare, orshow, him to be holy or glorious. So justification is not making a man righteous, or even pronouncing him righteous, for no manissubjectively 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“salvationbycharacter”; what men need is salvationfromcharacter. 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 Christinus presupposes Christforus. 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, inRom. 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.”
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.
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[pg 861]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, heimputesto 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.”
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[pg 861]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, heimputesto 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.”[pg 862]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 receivedin his sins, while Abel was acceptedin 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[pg 863]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 inEph. 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[pg 864]justification, not to sanctification; for the apostle himself declares inverse 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.”
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.”
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 receivedin his sins, while Abel was acceptedin 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.
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 receivedin his sins, while Abel was acceptedin 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[pg 863]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.”
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 inEph. 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[pg 864]justification, not to sanctification; for the apostle himself declares inverse 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.”
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 inEph. 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[pg 864]justification, not to sanctification; for the apostle himself declares inverse 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.”