things :-—(1) the admission of the sufferings of Christ, in themselves of incomparably less value, in the place of the real penalty of the law; and (2) the admission of faith and evangelical obedience, in the place of that perfect obedience which the law demands as the ground of the sinner’s justification. The first relaxation prepares the way for the second, and renders it consistent with the good of the moral universe. This makes faith the ground, and not the mere condition of salvation, and assimilates the Governmental Theory, as to all essential points, with the Arminian Soteriology.
In opposition to this view of the nature of justifica- tion, the Scriptures fully support the truth of the doc- trine common to all the Lutheran and Reformed Churches, including the following points :—1. Justifica- tion is not mere pardon executed in virtue of his kingly prerogative, but it is a judgment pronounced by God as Judge, to the effect that the believer is in all respects free of the claims of law as a covenant of life. 2. The ground upon which justification proceeds is neither the sovereion prerogative of God, nor the faith and gracious obedience of the believer accepted in view of Christ’s exemplary suffering; but it is the all-perfect righteous- ness of Christ, which, in the just judgment of God, as a matter of fact, belongs to the believer by the terms of the covenant and for the purpose of justification, and which hence fulfils, in the rigour of justice, all the demands of the law upon us.
1. Justification is not mere pardon.
It is, of course, believed on all hands (a) that justifi- cation includes pardon of sin as one of its main elements ; and (b) that this pardon, in relation to the unworthy subjects of it, who are selected from the great mass of
CHAPTER XIV.
The true doctrine stated and proved,
Justifiea- tion not mere par- don.
humanity neither better nor worse than themselves, is a_
matter of grace absolutely sovereign. Hence justification
206 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
cuarter 1s Often set forth in Scripture as pardon (Isa. lv. 7), remis-
xIV.
sion (Acts x. 43), forgiveness (Eph. i. 7), and the non-im- putation of sin (Rom. iv. 8), &c. But that justification is not mere pardon is evident from the following facts:—
Mere pardon is—(a.) The act of a sovereign waiving the claims of the law and discharging the penalty. (b.) It proceeds upon sovereign prerogative and the proprieties of governmental policy to relax the demands of law, but does not declare them satisfied. (¢.) The effect of mere pardon is simply to remit the penalty; it does not advance the pardoned man to any positive favour, nor entitle him to any positive reward.
But, on the contrary, justification is a judicial act of God, proceeding upon the fact that all the demands of law upon the persons concerned are satisfied ; and it pronounces believers to be entitled to the rewards con- ditioned upon obedience to the law as a covenant of life. This is certain—
(1.) From the uniform classical and New Testament usage of the words dlkatos, ducatocvyy, Oicatwpa, diKatow, The dikatos was ‘‘a person observant of rules ; hence observant of the rules of right,” the moral law; and hence a just man, or vectus. Atcaroovyy was the char- acter of the décatos—that in the man which conforms to and fulfils the law.* Aacow is to proclaim a man to be dixaros—that is, to possess a drkarooury, or righteous- ness. No person confounds in Greek any more than in English the ideas of justification and mere pardon ; and the language which is uniformly used to express the one cannot, by any fair interpretation, be held to convey the other. The language necessarily suggests the function of a judge, not of a sovereign; and it implies that the law is satisfied, not relaxed ; and that the person declared to be just is entitled to whatever benefits have been
* Liddell and Scott’s Lexicon.
DOOTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION, 207
graciously made to depend, by covenant, upon the con- cuarrsr dition of perfect conformity to the law. ade.