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without exerting a personal subjective influence on the character of the justified person, making him personally holy. This personal improvement which will inevitably follow justification as one of its effects is due to sanctification ; but it is not a part of justi- fication itself. It is not allowable to confound cause and effect.
3. The doctrine has been denounced as legalistic and even immoral. What has to be carefully remembered is that Paul is not responsible for what a theological scholasticism or a popular evangelicalism may have made of his doctrine. God does not impute righteousness to the unrighteous, but He accepts instead of righteousness, instead of a perfect fulfilment of the whole law, faith. " Faith is reckoned for righteousness." In forgiving, God's intention is not to allow a man to feel comfortable and happy while indifferent to, and indolent in, goodness ; but to give a man a fresh opportunity, a new ability to become holy and godly. Those whom God reckons righteous, He means also to make righteous ; and the gradual process of sanctification can only begin with the initial act of justification. A man must be relieved of the burden of his guilt, he must be recalled from the estrangement of his sin, he must be allowed to escape from the haunting shadows of his doom, before he can with any confidence, courage, or constancy tread the upward path of goodness to God. The man who accepts God's forgiveness in faith cannot mean to abuse it by continu- ance in sin, but must long for and welcome it as allowing him to make a fresh start on the new path of trustful, loyal, and devoted surrender to God. Paul, it is quite certain, knew of no saving faith that could claim justification but disown sanctification. To him faith was not only assent to what Christ had by His sacrifice done for man's salvation, but consent, constant and complete, to all that Christ by His Spirit might do in transforming character. He knew of no purpose of grace that stopped short at reckoning men righteous, and did not go on to making them righteous.1
Tj Your little child does the wrong thing or says the false thing. Then comes sorrow, let us hope, and the resolve to do better, and the old question, " Am I good now ? " And you, sitting there half glad, half fearful, know that the fault is not conquered yet, that the consequence of that slip, that fall, remains, a scar if not a wound ; but you recognize, too, that the aspiration
1 A. E. Garvie. ACTS & ROM. — 18
274 JUSTIFICATION
is genuinely for the right, the face set towards victory. It is not righteousness achieved, but you count the faith, the attitude of soul, for righteousness. You say, " Yes, you are good now." The declaration is of goodness unrealized as yet; but, nevertheless, actual to the heart of grace, in hope and resolve. And with the declaration the shadow vanishes, and that confidence is restored in which lies, perhaps, the child's chief hope of achieving the goodness.1
Tf When Eobert Browning sings —
Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do,
it may have a perilous sound. But by and by we discover that it is a profoundly true interpretation of life. It is the will outreaching towards a perfection unattained, and, perhaps, even unattainable here. It is the exaltation of the inward life ; the motion of the soul towards the highest that it knows and sees. This faith counts as righteousness in the sight of God.
All I could never be, All, men ignored in me, This, I was worth to God.
He counted what we would fain be, but were not, unto us for righteousness. There is a book of which some of us are fond which describes the resolution of an old, old maid to adventure to Central Africa to preach to the heathen. Of course, the thing was impossible; and, of course, at last, with many tears, she discovered that she would never go. In human reckoning I suppose the will, the faith, the consecration of spirit, count for nothing. Certainly she did not go. There was no actual achieve- ment of the heroism proposed. But I believe, with Browning, that this was her exaltation ; and all she could never be she was worth to God; and that the willed deed was reckoned in His sight as a deed done. This is the point at which even the law of God is transcended by His free, matchless grace.
See the king — I would help him but cannot, the wishes fall
through. Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to
enrich, To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would — knowing
which, I know that my service is perfect.2
1 C. S. Home, 8 Browning, Saul.
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4 Justification is not simply pardon, and it is not sancti- fication.
(1) It is not Pardon. There is something more than forgive- ness here. Your little child who has done wrong pleads with you, " Am I good now ? " " Yes," you say ; but the shadow has not passed from your face. And the child knows that all is not right. "Am I good now?" "Yes." "Then why don't you smile?" Exactly. You must get back to the old footing. Say what you like, even the sweetest tones of forgiveness do not always remove the impression of a shadow across the face of God. The old familiarity and confidence are gone. Whatever be the precise theological content of justification we all know what we mean, what we feel we want — the cloud off the sun, the doubt off the heart, the uneasy apprehension dispelled. We want to be at home again, and walk once more as children of the light. That is justification.1