The life and work of St. Paul

464 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PATTL.
bestowed upon us, in the inward and ever-deepening righteousness of our own
life ; it is, in fact, a new and spiritual life, lived in the faith of the Son of God,
who loved us, and gave Himself for us. 1 And hence will be seen at once the
absurdity of any radical antithesis between Christian faith and Christian works,
since they can no more exist apart from each other than the tree which is
severed from the root, or, to use the illustration of Luther, than fire can exist
apart from light and heat.
"
Justification and sanctification," says Calvin,
" cohere, but they are not one and the same. It is faith alone which justifies,
and yet the faith which justifies is not alone ; just as it is the heat alone of the
sun which warms the earth, and yet in the sun it is not alone, because it is
always conjoined with light."
In accordance with his usual manner when he is enunciating a new truth,
St. Paul seeks to support it by the Old Testament Scriptures, and reads the
deeper meaning which he has now developed into the words, " The just shall
live by faith," which Habakkuk had used in the far simpler sense of " the just
shall be delivered by his fidelity." But St. Paul reads these simple words
by the light of his own spiritual illumination, which, like the fabled splendour
on the graven gems of the Urim, makes them flash into yet diviner oracles.
Into the words " faith " and " life " he infuses a significance which he had
learnt from revelation, and, as has been truly said, where Habakkuk ends,
Paul begins. And, in fact, his very phrase, " justification by faith," marks
the meeting-point of two dispensations. The conception of " justification "
has its roots in Judaism ; the conception of " faith " is peculiarly Christian.
The latter word so completely dominates over the former, that Sucaioo-vvri from
its first meaning of "righteousness," a quality of God, comes to mean sub-
jectively "justification" as a condition of man the adequate relation in
which man has to stand towards God. Man's appropriation of God's recon-
ciling love in Christ has issued in a change in man's personal life : justification
has become sanctification, which is the earnest of future glory.
m.
UNIVERSALITY OF SIN.
"Knit in vetitum, damni secura, libido." OLATTD.
HAVING thus endeavoured to render clear the one subject which underlies the
entire system of St. Paul's theology, we can proceed more rapidly in trying to
catch his line of thought through the remainder of the Epistle.
valuable sections on Faith and Justification In Pfleiderer's
1 See the two very
Paulinisium, v. Other explanations of "from faith to faith " areI, " from the Old
to the New Testament " (Origen, Ohrys., &c.) ; 2, " Ex tide legis in fidem evangolii "
(TertJ ; 3, "from faith to the believer " (iii. 22 ; Olshausen, &c.) ; 4, " from weak to strong
faith' (cf. 2 Cor. iii. 18; Ps. Ixxxiv. 7; Luther, &c.) ; 5, "An intensive expression =
mera fides ; faith the prora etpuppis (Bengel, &c.) ; 6, From Divine faithfulness to human
faith (Ewald). Of. Heb. xii. 2, "the author &n& finisher of oar faith " (Lange, ad te. .