et in 10°, where such emphasis is laid on Christ’s obedience, it is to be noted (see v.) that the obedience required of Christ is specifically that of a Redeemer: i.e. ex hypothesi, the obedience of One who becomes one with the sinful not only in nature but in experience and in lot (one of the leading thoughts of the Epistle, ef. 210-18) taking on Himself their flesh and blood, their temptations and disgipline, the whole burden, curse, and doom of theif sins, and so setting them free. Yet the difference between the conception of Law here and in St. Paul is seen in this, that while St. Paul ex- presses the result of this redemptive death by δικαιοῦν, in Hebrews it is expressed by ἁγιάζειν. In other words, the result to St. Paul is that there is no con- demnation, the claim of the Law against the indi- vidual is annulled; to the writer to the Hebrews the result is that worship is made possible ; the soul is able now, as it was not before, to draw near to God; true religion is put within its reach. This distinction justifies us, after all, in saying that the distinction between moral and ritual law belongs tothe NT. St. Paul does mainly think of law as moral—God’s demand for righteousness ; Hebrews thinks of it as ritual—the medium through which or the constitution under which we worship. But in both cases the law comes to an end with the gospel. Christ finishes it as a way of attaining righteousness, Ro 10‘. Hebrews finishes it also as a mode of worshipping God, 131,
IV. THE LAW IN THE OTHER NT Booxs.— Among the remaining books of the NT, those which exhibit most indications of the controversy which had raged between Jewish and Gentile Christians are the Apocalypse and the Ep. of James. In the former (2°’) the Church in Thyatira is threatened because it tolerates ‘the woman Jezebel who. . . teaches and seduces my servants to commit forni- cation, and to eat things offered to idols,’ i.e. to violate the compact of Ac 15%, ef. Rev 2%. There may have been a spurious, antinomian influence at work here, which appealed to St. Paul’s name, but it is absurd (with Renae Saint Paul, pp. 303, 307, L’Antechrist, p. 363 ft.) to regard this as a denunciation of St. Panl’s doctrine. Although, too, the Apocalypse lays great stress on works, it never regards them as having the character of statutory acts of obedience: in other words, they are not legal. They are the works of Jesus (2*), and are co-ordinated in 2” with love, faith, ministry, and patience (Holtzmann, NT Theol. i. 465). “A favourite expression for the Christian life (the keeping of the commandments of God, 1917 1413. ef, 3°) 1s probably borrowed, like other things in the Apoc., from St. Paul (1 Co 7). The conception of a reward (22? 1118) no more proves legalism in the author of this book than in Jesus Himself (Mt 511), If there is a future which is determined according to man’s works, and this is the teaching not of Apoe. only but of the whole NT, it is neither legal nor servile, but only sane to let it tell on the pre- sent life. In the Gospel of St. John the numerous references to the law, with the exception of 1”, have no religious interest ; and there it is contrasted with the gospel as a less perfect revelation, grace and truth (n>x} 199) being the essential attributes
of God.
LAW (LN NEW TESTAMENT)
The Ep. of James is more difficult. It has often been treated as a document of legal Christianity, the aim of which is to refute the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith apart from works of law. But it is remarkable that the critical passage (2-5), in which faith and works are discussed in their relation to each other, never once uses the Pauline expression ἔργα νόμου. If the writer 1s controverting St. Paul, it must be admitted that he has not grasped the Pauline point of view, and that Luther’s verdict on his work was justified. His conception of faith is not the same as St. Paul's, and that is why he has to supplement it by werks ; and the works by which it is supplemented, and in which indeed it 1s exhibited, are not what St. Paul meant by works of law. They are not acts of obedience to any statutory embodiment of divine will, As illustrated in ν. ὅδ. they are rather what St. Paul would have called fruits of the Spiriv. They are, if we choose to say so, the fulfilment of a law, but the writer takes care that we do not conceive the law legally. It is a law which must be actually obeyed, no doubt, but it is also the law of liberty (1% 2”), which Christians freely and spontaneously fulfil; it is condensed, as in the teaching of Jesus, Mt 22", into the ‘royal Isw,’ Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself; and it is perfect. ‘The law, in short, is the same as the word of God, and to St. James this is not external and preceptive. There is a native affinity be- tween man and the word; when he receives it, it becomes an implanted word, a thing that strikes root in his nature and has power to save his soul (1°). With this word God has begotten him ; it is in his heart, as Jesus promises, spirit and life (Jn 6%); the law, that is, is impulse as well as law to the Christian, and the keeping of it is