The faith which receives this blessing is faith in Christ Jesus. This faith is conceived by St. Paul not as a mere intellectual assent or as a recogni- tion of the unseen world, but as an enthusiastic trust in Christ as Saviour, and as a complete devo- tion to Him as Lord. The whole inner nature, including mind, heart, and will, is committed to
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Him in trust and devotion. In receiving Jesus as Christ, St. Paul gave liimself to Jesus as Lord. This saving faith became the medium of all Divine blessing to St. Paul, and, drawing upon his own experience, he taught that it would be and must be the medium of blessing to all. Hence he gloried in the gospel, ' for therein is revealed a righteous- ness of God by faith unto faith' (Ro 1''). The gospel could thus become a universal message for mankind, for it dealt with all men alike as sinners, and offered to all who believed in Christ the righteousness of God, ' being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus • (324).
After this illuminating experience of the grace of God came to St. Paul he turned hack to the OT and found in its pages that in the religious experi- ence there narrated the blessings of God had come also through faith. Thus ' to Abraham his faith was reckoned for rigliteousness' (Ro 4^, Gal 3^). So David pronounced blessing upon the man unto whom God reckoneth righteousness apart from works (Ro 4^). He found that God's method had always been the same. His grace had reached its end when a human heart had responded in faith. This truth is utterly opposed to St. Paul's former belief that righteousness came by the Law, and both in Rom. and Gal. he labours to prove that, whatever the work of the Law was, it was not to gain a right standing with God. It had a mission even concerning faith, but it was the mission of an attendant slave to bring those who were in ward unto Christ ; but when that mission was fulfilled, they were no longer under law, but were all sons of God, through faith in Christ Jesus (Gal S'--*"""*). Thus the Christian life is re- garded as a free, loving, spiritual service, of which faith in Christ is the prime origin and the constant inspiration.
In the Pastoral Epistles that are usually associ- ated with the name of St. Paul we find ' the faith ' frequently used as equivalent to the Christian faith or teaching. Thus in 1 Tim. we find : 'Some made shipwreck concerning the faith' (P^). Deacons must hold the ' mj'stery of the faith in a pure conscience ' (3^). ' In later times some shall fall away from the faith' (4^). 'If any provideth not for his own, and specially his own household, he hath denied the faith ' (5*). It is inferred by some that the use of ' the faith' in this sense im- plies a late date for this Epistle, possibly consider- ably after St. Paul's death ; but it is significant that in Gal., which is among the very earliest of the Pauline Epistles, there is found the expres sion : ' Before the faith came, we were kept in ward under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed' (Gal 3-^). Here the Apostle describes the early period not as the time before faith came, for faith was found already in the OT, but as the time before the faith came, i.e. the faith of Christ. Thus in this early Epistle we have the starting-point for the later use.
i. In the Epistle to the Hebrews. — In this Epistle faith has not the content that has been found in the Epistles of St. Paul. It is true that when the writer is speaking of ' the first principles of Christ' he mentions first, in a manner sug- gestive of St. Paul's phrases, the ' foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God' {iiri dedv, 6^). But even here 'dead works' is not used in the Pauline sense as works done apart from Christ or as works of themselves, and ' faith ' is not the enthusiastic trust in Christ which St. Paul enshrines as the central feature of experience and dogma. In Heb., faith may be defined in general terms as the human response to the word of God. When man refuses to respond, he is guilty of unbelief and of hardness of heart ;
when he responds to God speaking to him, then he believes. God sent His word through agents, such as angels (2^) and prophets (V), but especially in the last times He has spoken through His Son, and has borne witness to this message by ' signs and wonders, by manifold powers, and by gifts of the H0I3' Ghost ' (2^* *). Faith is the obedient response to this word of God, and has been found in all those who have become ' the cloud of witnesses ' (12^). The secret of the assurance, devotion, and endurance of the OT saints is found in their unceasing confidence in the God who revealed Himself to them (P). The greatest example of this faith was Jesus Himself, ' the author and perfecter of faith ' (12-), who led the way in the career of faith and embodied in His own life its full realization. This believing response to the word of God produces within the mind certain activities, the chief of which the writer describes when he gives faith its well-known definition (11') : ' Faith is the assurance of things hoped for (or it gives substance to things hoped for), the proving of things not seen (or the conviction of unseen realities.)' Faith is the conviction of the reality of things not made known through the senses, and, so far as religion is concerned, it is produced by the word of God.