Luther again, who identified himself, as no other teacher has ever done, with St. Paul's epistles of justification, was so zealous to separate the faith in virtue of which God justifies us from all idea of merit, that he represented it as a bare acceptance of the divine offer without any moral quality at all – a bare believing ourselves to be saved, without any moral reason in it. Thus, accepting an existing scholastic distinction between an 'informed' faith, i.e. a faith ensouled by love, and a 'formless' or bare faith, he held the faith on account of which God justifies us to be rigidly of the formless kind; and while fully recognizing the richer sort of faith as the God-given quality of those already justified, declared that it had nothing to do with their justification. But this conception of two separate sorts of faith, of which only the loveless sort, that involves no moral worth, has to do with our acceptance with God, is not only a high road to moral laxity or antinomianism, but is also utterly alien to the spirit of St. Paul, in whom the whole life of faith is one and continuous39. It could only have arisen at a particular moment of theological controversy which is past and gone. And the same must be said of the allied doctrine of the total depravity of our fallen nature, which drove men to violent misinterpretations alike of scripture and of their moral instincts.
And what of the Tridentine theology? No doubt in its general view of our fallen human nature it is far more reasonable and Pauline than the Lutheran; and it is also truer to St. Paul in laying the main stress on a divine righteousness actually imparted to us, and not on Christ's merits imputed and not imparted; or, in other words, in recognizing that forgiveness is only a prelude to the development of a new life of holiness. But on the other hand it puts itself hopelessly out of relation to St. Paul's language and thought by interpreting justification as the being made righteous, and accordingly speaking of baptism as the instrument by which we are justified, whereas to St. Paul justification means our preliminary acceptance without regard to what we have been, and the initial faith which enables men to be thus accepted would normally, in those he is thinking about, have preceded baptism, as in his own case, or that of Cornelius, or of the eunuch. Who can doubt that the faith of St. Paul's conversion is what enabled God to accept him, though it remained for him, as for other men, to 'wash away his sins' by being 'baptized into Christ40?'
May we not truly say that deeper and maturer study of St. Paul has for us undercut and antiquated the theological standing-grounds of the sixteenth century, and substituted for them something both truer, completer, and freer?
It only remains to make more emphatic what has been already suggested, that the Pauline doctrine of justification is of much more than antiquarian interest. We do not, as has been already shown, get rid of the 'danger of thinking to be saved by works' because we are not, like the Pharisees, abandoned to ecclesiastical observances. All moral codes or standards, sanctioned by a society or class and involving no more than a limited liability, come under the moral category of 'works of a law.' They all are apt to leave men as independent of God as the Pharisees, and as resentful of the fuller light. The late Master of Balliol expresses a characteristic opinion that the notions of 'legal righteousness,' or of 'the pride of human nature,' or 'the tendency to rebel against the will of God, or to attach an undue value to good works41,' are 'fictions as applied to our own time42.' But this is surely lamentably untrue. Men all round us dread the idea of committing themselves to God. They do not know how far it will carry them. They are like would-be soldiers who should refuse to enlist till they had had some assurance as to the extremest risk that their service might involve. Thus, because they cannot get this assurance, they will make no beginning of the life of real faith. They live by a limited code which retains their independence for them. If they are also ecclesiastically minded, the 'legal righteousness' always involved in this sort of morality becomes even outwardly more like that of the Pharisees, and it is not very uncommon among churchmen. But the whole habit of mind, inside or outside the area of professed churchmanship, has its root in what is properly and profoundly human pride and the false clinging to independence of God. This 'pride of life' seems to be almost more dangerous and, in fact, disastrous than even 'the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes.' Thus if we can only get St. Paul's doctrine of the necessity of faith rightly understood, there is no teaching more necessary for these times.
And, on the other hand, where men are really ready to follow the light and do God's will, they need – they need exceedingly for the good of the whole body – to realize St. Paul's teaching about justification, that is, about God's constant attitude towards men, in order to obtain that peace which is meant to be, not the far-off goal of Christian life, but its basis and foundation. When a person is continuously apprehensive and excited about his spiritual state, he is not in the temper of mind in which he can best serve God or work out his own or other men's salvation. 'Peace must go before as well as follow after; a peace, too, not to be found in the necessity of law (as philosophy has sometimes held), but in the sense of the love of God to His creatures. He has no right to this peace, and yet he has it.' In these words of the same writer whom we just now were obliged to criticize we may find a simple expression of the truth. 'Wherefore, being accepted of God simply because we take Him at His word, let us have and hold peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ43.' Then we can throw ourselves without embarrassments into the life of love and sacrifice, the life which has the love of God in Christ for its motive, and reflects it among men.
No doubt we must admit that St. Paul's doctrine of justification has not been generally appreciated in the Church – the fact is strange, but it is indisputable. No doubt also we must admit that those who have chiefly been identified with it have often even disastrously distorted it. No doubt, as a result both of this neglect and of this distortion, the ordinary religious Englishman of the present day is disposed to pass it by as having little meaning for him. Nevertheless it remains true that no revival of religion can ever attain to any ripeness or richness unless this central doctrine of St. Paul's gospel resumes its central place with us also. For, as St. Paul preached it, it means this above all else – personal devotion to Jesus Christ as our redeemer. This personal devotion begins by accepting from Him the unmerited boon of forgiveness of our sins, and (what is only the other side of such forgiveness) inheritance in the consecrated body. But the consciousness of what we have received from Christ, and the price it cost Him to put it at our disposal, gives to the whole subsequent life the character of a devotion based on gratitude. This is the Christian life according to St. Paul – personal devotion to Christ and personal service based on gratitude for what He has done for us. 'For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who for their sakes died and rose again.'
CHAPTER I. 1-7.
Salutation
It was the custom in the days of the Romans to begin a letter with a brief indication from whom it came and to whom it was addressed, in the form of a complimentary salutation, thus – to take an example from the New Testament – 'Claudius Lysias unto the most excellent governor Felix, greeting44.' We are familiar in our day with the like forms for beginning and ending letters, serving the same purpose and generally no other. St. Paul then accepts the epistolary form of his day, but pours into it an increasing wealth of personal meaning45. Thus in this place the necessary address – 'Paul the apostle to the believers in Jesus Christ which are in Rome, greeting' – is expanded into a salutation extraordinarily full of meaning, explaining (1) who it is who writes the letter; (2) with what justification; (3) to whom; and (4) with what greeting.
(1) It is Paul who is writing, and he describes himself both personally and officially. Personally, since the day when he surrendered himself