The Pauline doctrine of Justification by Faith has received in the history of the Church a twofold interpretation. On the one hand, it has been maintained that the sole significance of faith is that it gives to the believer power, by God's supernatural aid, to realise a goodness of which he is naturally incapable. On the other hand, it is held that the peculiarity of faith is that, though he himself is a sinner deserving condemnation, it affords to the believer an assurance of the favour with which a loving Father regards him, not on account of his own attainments, but in virtue of the perfect obedience of the Son of God with whom each is united by faith. The former is the more distinctively Roman view; the latter that of the Reformed Church. While the Catholic form of the doctrine gives to 'works' a place not less important than faith in justification, the Protestant exalts 'faith' to the position of priority as more in harmony with the mystery of the atoning sacrifice of Christ as expounded by St. Paul. Faith justifies, because it is for the Christian the vision of an ideal. What we admire in another is already implicitly within us. We {178} already possess the righteousness we believe in. The moral beauty of Christ is ours inasmuch as we are linked to Him by faith, and have accepted as our true self all that He is and has achieved. Hence faith is not merely the sight of the ideal in Christ. It is the energy of the soul as well, by which the believer strives to realise that which he admires. According to the teaching of Scripture faith has thus a threefold value. It is a receptive attitude, a justifying principle, and an energising power. It is that by which the believer accepts and appropriates the gift of Life offered by God in Christ.
3. Obedience.—Faith contains the power of a new obedience. But faith worketh by love. The soul's surrender to Christ is the crowning phase of man's response. The obedience of love is the natural sequel of repentance and faith, the completing act of consecration. As God gives Himself in Christ to man, so man yields in Christ to God all he is and all he has.
Without enlarging upon the nature of this final act of self-surrender, three points of ethical value ought not to be overlooked.
(1) Obedience is an activity of the soul by which the believer appropriates the life of God. Life is not merely a gift, it is a task, an achievement. We are not simply passive recipients of the Good, but free and determinative agents who react upon what is given, taking it up into our life and working it into the texture of our character. The obedience of love is the practical side of faith. While God imparts the energy of the Spirit, we apply it and by strenuous endeavour and unceasing effort mould our souls and make our world.
(2) It is a consecration of the whole personality. All the powers of man are engaged in soul-making. Religion is not a detached region of experience, a province separate from the incidents and occupations of ordinary existence. Obedience must cover the whole of life, and demands the exercise and devotion of every gift. Not only is every thought to be brought into subjection to the mind of {179} Christ, but every passion and desire, every activity and power of body and mind are to be consecrated to God and transformed into instruments of service. 'Our wills are ours to make them thine.' But the will is not a separate faculty; it is the whole man. And the obedience of the will is nothing less than the response of our entire manhood to the will of God.
(3) Finally, obedience is a growing power of assimilation to Christ. We grow in the Christian life according to the measure of our faith and the exercise of our love. The spiritual world is potentially ours at the beginning of the Christian life, but it has to be worked out in daily experience. Like every other form of existence spiritual life is a growth which only attains to strength and fruition through continual conflict and achievement. The soul is not a finished product. In patience it is to be acquired.[23] By trial and temptation, by toil and expenditure, through all the hardships and hazards of daily life its value is determined and its destiny shaped. And according to the measure in which we use these experiences, and transmute them by obedience to the will of God into means of good, do we grow in Christian character and approximate to the full stature of the perfect Man.
To this self-determining activity Eucken has given the name of 'Activism.' 'The basis of a true life,' says this writer, 'must be continually won anew.'[24] Activism acquires ethical character inasmuch as it involves the taking up of the spiritual world into our own volition and being. Only by this ceaseless endeavour do we advance to fresh attainments of the moral life, and are enabled to assimilate the divine as revealed to us in Christ. Nor is it merely the individual self that is thus enriched and developed by obedience to the will of God. By personal fidelity to the highest we are aiding the moral development of mankind, and are furthering the advancement of all that is good and true in the world. Not only are we making {180} our own character, but we are helping to build up the kingdom of God upon the earth.
Repentance, Faith, and Obedience are thus the human factors of the new life. They are the moral counterparts of Grace. God gives and man appropriates. By repentance we turn from sin and self to the true home of our soul in the Fatherhood of God. By faith we behold in Christ the vision of the ideal self. By obedience and the daily surrender of ourselves to the divine will we transform the vision into the reality. They are all manifestations of love, the responsive notes of the human heart to the appeal of divine love.
[1] Irenaeus, Contra Haereses, III. xviii. 1.
[2] Matt. xx. 28; John xi. 51; Matt. xxvi. 28; Mark xiv. 8, 9.