These brethren are all true children of God, washed in the precious blood of Christ. Fortunately they were not telling the truth about themselves; more seriously they were maligning the Saviour, and while the intellectual confusion may not keep them from victory in their own lives it serves to entangle many an earnest seeker. And this sort of handling of God’s word is what has furnished the enemies of the Gospel of grace their chief weapons in attack. These statements, if they are taken at their face value, constitute as complete a denial of the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as Mrs. Eddy’s philosophy of the denial of sin and the Saviour.
As Luther roused the Church by the battle cry of “Justification by Faith,” let the complete truth of the complete Gospel be sounded to-day in the cry of “Salvation by Faith.” For “it is of faith, that it may be according to Grace” (Rom. 4:16). God never justifies a sinner without saving him. That is, he does not call a man righteous without making him righteous. If he did, God would be in the place of the man whom James condemns, who says to the brother or sister naked and in need of daily food: “Go in peace, be ye warmed and filled,” yet gives them not the things needful to the body. “What doth it profit?” James asks. “Even so faith, if it have not works, is dead in itself” (Jas. 2:15-17).
Even so would the calling a man righteous without making him righteous be useless for the soul that is naked and destitute of righteousness. Justification, in the sense of “declaring righteous,” is dead apart from the miracle of cleansing and regeneration which makes righteous. And we need righteousness, just as the naked and hungry man needs clothing and food, now in this life. There is no hope held out for any future provision of freeing from sin. There is still a part of our redemption from sin and its results that is future, but very distinctly are we told that this concerns the redemption of our body, not the purifying of the soul. (Using purifying in its negative meaning of cleansing from impurity. For we must remember that there is a positive, progressive, and increasing work in conforming us to the likeness of Christ which is quite distinct from this matter of cleansing, which is always absolute; we are either cleansed or we are not cleansed from sin.)
The works that James insists on as a proof that the faith is real faith, are possible only for the new creature in Christ, who is producing the fruit of the Spirit as he abides in Christ, the fruit which is the righteousness of Christ made real in experience, and abounding more and more as we grow in grace (not into grace), and the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Not a half salvation of “justification by faith” to take care of the past only of our sins, but let our watchword be a complete salvation of “CHRIST BY FAITH.” For it is Christ that saves from sin, who makes a new creation with old things put away, and who provides a way of abiding in that freedom, walking in joy and peace and victory, just as we received Him in freedom.
“If, therefore, the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”
“Being made free from sin, ye became servants of righteousness.”
“Now being made free from sin and become servants of God, ye have your fruit unto sanctification.”
“For freedom did Christ set us free: Stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage.”