It is very natural that a much fuller account of Jesus' teaching as to faith should be given in the more intimate discourses which are preserved by John. But in these discourses, too. His primary task is to bind men to Him by faith. The chief dilTerence is that here, consonantly with the nature of the discourses recorded, much more prevailing stress is laid upon the higher aspects of faith, and we see Jesus striving specially to attract to Him- self a faith consciously set upon eternal good. In a number of instances we find ourselves in much the same atmosphere as in the Synoptics (4-' •'"• ^ *«• 9^) ; and the method of Jesus is the same throughout. Everywhere He offers Himself as the object of faith, and claims faith in Himself for the highest concerns of the soul. But everywhere He begins at the level at which He finds His hearers, and leads them upward to these higher things. It is so that He deals witli Nathanael (1") and Nicodemus (3'-); and it is so that He deals constantly with the Jews, every- where requiring faith in Himself for eternal life (5i..2».3e 035. 40. « 7iw §24 jQa. 36 12". «), declaring
that faith in Him is the certain outcome of faith in their o^vn Scriptures (S'"- "), is demanded by the witness borne Him by God in His mighty works ()Q25.s«.37j_ is involved in and is indeed identical with faith in God (5^ *< gw. « gn i.j«,_ ^nd is the one thing wliich God requires of them (6®), and the failure of wliich will bring them eternal ruin (3" 5»» 0" 8=*). When dealing with His followers. His primary care was to build up their faith in Him. Witness especially His solicitude for their faith in the last hours of His intercourse with them. For tlie faith they had reposed in Him He returns thanks to God (17*), but He is still nursing their faith (16"), preparing for its increase through the events to come (13'" 16'^), and with almost passion- »t« eagemess claiming it at their hands ( 14'' '"• "• ").
Even after His resurrection we find Him restoring the faith of the waverer (20®) with words which pronounce a special blessing on those who should hereafter believe on less compelling evidence — words whose point is not fully caught until we realize that they contain an intimation of the work of the apostles as, like His own, summed up in bringing men to faith in Him (17^' ").
The record in Ac of the apostolic proclamation testifies to the faithfulness with which this otlice was prosecuted by Jesus' delegates (Ac 3^- ^). The task undertaken "by them was, by persuading men (Ac 17* 28*"), to bring them unto obedience to the faith that is in Jesus (.-Vc 6', Ro 1» 16-", cf. 2 Th 1«, 2 Co lU'). And by such 'testifying faith towards our Lord Jesus fchrist' (Ac 20-', cf. 10") there was quickly gathered together a community of 'believers' (Ac 2" i*-^'), that is, of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ (Ac 5'* 9" 11" li^), and that not only in Jems, but beyond (8'^ 9*- 10" 11-' 13« 14'), and. not only of Jews (10" 15' 21»') but of Gentiles (IP' 13« 14' 15' IV'-** 18=^ 19" 21«). The enucleation of this community of believers brought to the apostolic teachers the new task of preserving the idea of faith, which was the forma- tive principle of the new community, and to propa- gate which in the world, pure and living and sound, was its chief office. It was inevitable that those who were called into the faith of Christ should bring into the infant Church with them many old ten- dencies of thinking, and that within the new community the fermentation of ideas should be very great. The task of instructing and dis- ciplining the new community soon became un- avoidably one of the heaviest of apostolic duties ; and its progress is naturally reflected in their letters. Thus certain differences in their modes of dealing with faith emerge among NT writers, according as one lays stress on the deadness and profitlessness of a faith which produces no fruit in the life, and another on the valueless- ness of a faith which does not emancipate from the bondage of the law ; or as one lays stress on the perfection of the object of faith and the necessity of keeping the heart set upon it, and another on the necessity of preserving in its purity that subjective altitude towards the unseen and future which constitutes the very essence of faith ; or as one lays stress on the reaching out of faith to the future in confident hope, and another on the present enjoyment by faith of all the bless- ings of salvation.
It was to James that it fell to rebuke the Jewish tendency to conceive of the faith which was pleasing to J" as a mere intellectual acquies- cence in His being and claims, when imported into the Church and made to do duty as ' the faith of our Lord Jesua Christ, the Glory' (2'). He has sometimes been misread as if he were depreciating faith, or at least the place of fait!, in salvation. But it is perfectly clear that with James, as truly as with any other NT writer, a sound faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as the mani- fested God (2') lies at the very basis of the Christian life (P), and is the condition of all acceptable approach to God (1» 5"). It is not faith as he conceives it which he depreciates, but that professed faith (X^, 2'*) which cannot be shown to be real by appropriate works (2"*), and so differs by a whole diameter alike from the faith of Abraham that was reckoned unto him for righteousness (2**), and from the faith of Chris- tians as James understood it (2' 1', cf. I*'). The imi)ression which is easily taken from the l.iot lialf of the second chapter of James, that his teach- ing and that of Paul stand in some polemic relation, is nevertheless a delusion, and arises from an insufficient realization of the place 00-