The revelation of the Divine grace which awakens faith takes place, according to St. Paul, in the Person of Christ (2 Co 5") and in His work, more especially in His death, but also in His resurrec- tion. Christ's death was the work of the Divine grace in that God ordained it as an expiatory sacrifice for sin, Christ dying instead of sinners, that in the act of justification He might not appear indulgent of sin (Ro 3=^; cf. 2 Co 5"->, Ro 5«). Christ's resurrection is also included in the revela- tion by which God's grace to sinners is made known (Ro 4''» 8** 109, 1 Co 15"), but St. Paul does not define its exact place in it. In fact, Christ's resur- rection, as the object of faith, is hardly separable from the Risen Christ. It is God's act by which He presents Christ alive, in spite of His death (Ro 4='' 10^), as the object of faith.
It is to be observed, finally, that justification requires for its complete explanation both sides of the correlation, grace and faith, which in St. Paul's mind are associated in the closest possible manner. Thus he speaks of the revelation of the righteous- ness of God through faith (1" Z^) : the whole is really one idea. Only thus can we explain the remarkable interchange of language which the Apostle uses with respect to the two sides of the correlation. Justification is generally associated more closely with faith, or the subjective side (3=« 51). But in 2 Co S^" St. Paul says that God was in Christ, not imputing to men their trespasses, \\hich last phrase is synonymous \vith ' justifying men'; so that here justification is associated with the objective side, or the revelation of grace (cf. Ro S-'). So also in Ro 5'", if 6iralw/io be rightly trans- lated '.sentence of justification ' (.so Sanday-Head- lam, I.e. p. 141), then St. Paul here remeseiits this sentence as falling once for all at the death of Christ. On the other hand, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ belongs to the objective side of the correla- tion ; yet St. Paul speaks of Christ in Ro 3== as propitiatory through faith in His blood. Evidently, then, gi-ace and faith are so organically related that the one implies the other, and is properly understood only through its correlative.
We must now return to the form in which St.
JUSTIFICATION
JUSTIFICATION
Paul has expressed his doctrine of justification. It is, as we liave seen, determined by his Pharisaic training, and is that of a forensic judgment. But the form is all that the Apostle has in common with the Pharisaic idea. The judgment of justifi- cation in his conception is extra-judicial, i.e. God has regard in it to considerations outside the Law. The righteousness of faith is ' apart from law ' (x^P's vbiiov, Ro 3^'). The Law as sucli takes account only of merit, as St. Paul himself testifies : ' He that doeth them shall live in them ' (Gal 3'=). But the Divine sentence of justification takes account of faith, which is a consideration beyond the pur- view of the Law: 'The law is not of faith '(16.). In fact, in justification the Law is transcended by grace, which reckons faith for righteousness (Ro 4^- '). St. Paul does not mean that faith is a work, and that grace simply reckons the work of faith instead of the works of the Law. This would be, after all, half legalism. With the Apostle, as we have seen, faith is not a work, but a receiving ; not a second principle of justification over against gTace, but simply the reflex of Divine grace in man. Grace therefore sees in faith simply this reflex of itself, and in justifying the sinner by- faith in reality justifies on the ground of itself (cf. Is 43=5).
What, then, is the essential point in the Pauline presentation of justification as forensic ? It is, to use philosophic language, that justification is a synthetic, not an analytic judgment. It is not based on anything in the believer— not even on his faith, wliich comes into view only so far as the Divine grace is reflected in it. In justification God 'justifies the ungodly' (Ro 4') : the words are evidently chosen by St. Paul with a clear sense of the paradox involved, as the deliberate opposition of language to the OT shows (cf. Ex 23', Dt 25^, Pr 17", Is 5^^). God does not, in justification, recognize the presence of any attribute in the sinner ; on the contrary. He adds to him an attri- bute while he is still a sinner, viz. that of righteous- ness. It is evident that the paradoxical character of this doctrine created misunderstanding even in St. Paul's time (Ro 3* ; cf. 6') ; and it has done so ever since. The paradox, however, resolves itself at once as soon as we remember that it is ' right- eousness,' not in the ethical, but in the religious sense, as the condition of acceptance with God, which is meant. The OT taught that righteous- ness was the condition of acceptance with God ; the Pharisees sharpened this into the doctrine that the performance of the Law was the condition. St. Paul's language is determined by this form in which he found the problem of acceptance with God stated ; his meaning simply is that God accepts the sinner on the ground of His mere grace, apart from all question of merit. It is consequently ' only another, though less difficult, expression for the same act of the Divine judgment' when St. Paul speaks of adoption (vioBeala, Gal 4''), or the reception of the sinner into the position of a child of God (Holtzmann, Neutest. Theol. ii. p. 134). Adoption is also formally a judicial act, and really a synthetic act of the Divine judgment. The possible objection to this identification of justi- fication and adoption, viz. that justification is the act of God as Judge, but adoption His act as Father, falls to the ground as soon as it is remem- bered that justification is really an extra-judicial judgment, proceeding from the Divine grace (Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation', iii., Eng. tr. p. 86 ff.).