Let us suppose, what is highly probable, that the report of St. Paul's teaching reached St. James at Jerusalem at second-hand, in a fragmentary and perverted manner—perhaps as illustrated by unfortunate specimens of its influence where it was wilfully misunderstood. 'Men are justified before God by faith without consideration of works.' St. James' holy and beautiful, but no doubt somewhat unphilosophical mind, was alarmed and scandalized. By faith he understood an intellectual quality—the acceptance of the divine truth revealed; and he points out with the simplicity of moral common sense, that never in the Old Testament is right belief represented as the ground of acceptance with God without the right conduct which is its natural sequence. Who can deny that the devils have a 'right belief' in the existence of God? Faith, in fact, without works—orthodox belief without moral obedience—is a lifeless form, a body without spirit[[10]].
To all this St. Paul would of course have agreed, in St. James' sense of the word faith. In fact, St. James' faith, i.e. bare orthodox belief, is closely akin to, and apt to keep company with, formal ecclesiastical observance, which is part of what St. Paul means by 'works.' Both were characteristic of the Pharisaic Jews. St. Paul and St. James would have been at one in saying, 'There must be life in this dead shell of orthodox belief, if it is to have value with God; and what alone can give it life is the real spirit of moral obedience to the will of the holy and good God'—which is what St. James means by 'works.' The disagreement between them is then, so far, only verbal. But St. Paul goes deeper, into a region where St. James does not follow him, and asks what is the real starting-ground of the truest obedience—the real root of the moral life? And he finds this starting-ground, this fundamental establishment of the right relation to God, in what he called faith; that is, no mere orthodoxy of intellect, but a fundamental relationship of man towards God—the utterly receptive faculty, the profound quality of the self-surrendering will.
3. There is a young philosophical inquirer in Plato's Dialogue of the Republic who is so anxious to get at the ultimate principle of justice, as distinct from its consequences and secondary qualities, that Socrates laughingly tells him he is 'scrubbing and polishing it like a statue.' Now St. Paul has the philosopher's instinct to get at a principle in its pure simplicity. He scrubs faith clean of all extraneous accidents. He is most anxious that we should disengage its activity from all the other closely-interconnected elements in human nature; and so perceive that, whatever a man has been or is in race or conduct or antecedents, once let him exhibit faith, the faith which takes God at His word, and by that very fact and no other, all the obstacles to God's acceptance of him are overcome. The true relation of the man to God is restored in its elementary principle. And nothing but this, however elaborate its apparent performances, can restore the fundamental relationship. It is faith only, and not works, however splendid, which justifies or enables God to take a man, place him amongst the righteous, and work upon and in him. But this elemental act of simply abandoning independence, trampling on pride and taking God at His word, is an act or attitude of the whole man which necessarily (granted that it be not withdrawn) becomes correspondence of the whole being with God, a lifelong obedience, an allegiance and homage of every faculty of will, and emotion, and intellect. 'Faith,' then, as Calvin once said, 'is pregnant with good works, but it justifies before they are brought forth.'
That the rudimentary justifying faith, on which St. Paul is here insisting, is a developing thing, a living and germinating principle, the basis of a life which grows—but always 'from faith to faith,' from one stage of faith to another—will appear clearly enough as we go on. But even here, in this chapter, it appears already that faith is something quite inconsistent with remaining as we are. Faith looks to a divine promise—a promise of astounding change—and believes that God is able to realize it in us. Such was Abraham's faith. Such, we may add, was the faith of those in the Gospels who came to be healed, and to whom it was said, 'According to your faith be it unto you.' Our faith then also must expect and desire some amazing transformation of our human nature, according to a divine promise—nothing less than power out of impotence, life out of death.
And it is from this point of view that the Resurrection is apparently regarded in this chapter, as holding the place it does in the 'scheme' of our justification by faith. We are to believe that God is able to bring life morally out of death. He makes that act of faith possible or easier for us by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This evidence of God's power in the case of Jesus, the person on whom our divine faith is to rest, gives an adequate support and reasonable security to our faith. 'He was designated as the Son of God with power, by the resurrection from the dead,' and thus becomes the natural object for such a faith in the power of God to carry out His promises as is necessary for our justification. This is probably the meaning of the particular words with which the fourth chapter closes—'Who died for our sins (that is, in order that, in virtue of His atoning sacrifice, our sins might be forgiven) and rose again for our justification' (i.e. in order that our faith might have in the risen Lord an adequate object). But of course the relation of faith to the risen Lord is by no means exhausted in this thought.
4. We Englishmen are possessed with the idea that there is nothing so alien to our characters as the temper of the Pharisees or the doctrine of the merit of good works. But if we can look at the matter below the surface, we can hardly fail to realize that the spirit which St. Paul so mightily repudiates lies in some respects very close to our natural instincts. The Englishman has a standard, of his class, his college, his profession, which it is his pride not to fall short of; but he is intensely alarmed at any claim upon his moral independence over and above this allowed standard; he is inclined to turn his back completely upon the idea of fundamental surrender to the unknown and infinite claim of God; he is contented with himself and his standard, and occupies himself in comparing it favourably with the standards of other classes, or still more of other nations. But what is this spirit but, for good or for evil, the spirit of Pharisaism under a wholly different dress? 'They going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God.' 'How can ye believe which seek glory one of another, and the glory that cometh from the only God ye seek not?' 'They measuring themselves by themselves and comparing themselves amongst themselves are not wise.' Here are typical condemnations of the self-satisfied Pharisaic temper so expressed as to prevent us from supposing that we shall escape condemnation with the Pharisees merely because we do not say long prayers in public places, or distinguish ourselves by a careful ritualism.
[[1]] Gen. xv. 5, 6.
[[2]] Ps. xxxii.
[[3]] Gen. xvii.