* Cf. the NT use of ' saint ' — one of the covenant-people, the potentiall}' holj' — of whom moral qualifications are asserted not as a fact but as a duty. See F. J. A. Hort, The First Epistle of St. Peter, I. l—Il. 17, London, 1898, p. 70.
670
JUSTIFICATION
JUSTIFICATION^
unseen present visible, and by so doing unites us to Christ in His present and future plenitude (10^- ^^), from whom flows the transforming in- fluence creative of the graces of life which are never separated from faith nor faith from them.
The efficacy of His Sacrifice rests fundamentally on the majesty of His Person. His High-Priestly act is an expression of the eternal Spirit of the Divine love. By it He has destroyed every barrier of sin which lay between man and God. He has, as the sin-ofiering for humanity, freed all men potentially from the guilty consciousness of sin, and brought Christians to the heavenly rest of God. The emphasis is on what follows, viz. : ' the enter- ing within the veil,' less the surrender of His life than its presentation within the veil, implying that the love and merciful kindness of God, which were manifested in time and in the earthly ministry, are eternal and changeless principles perpetually operative on our behalf. This must ultimately be the ground of our acceptance and the assurance of our life in communion with Him. The benefits and efficacy of His perfect Sacrifice are conditioned by our attitude of faith and trust.
(6) The apostolic doctrine in relation to Christ's teaching. — Is the apostolic teaching a necessary consequence of Christ's self-witness? Yes; if certain considerations be kept in view. We see, e.g., that it was not drawn by conscious deduction. It is an original construction derived from life, from their experience of Christ reveal- ing Himself in them (Gal 1^^), as Christ's is from the manifold fruitfulness and insight of His own sublime Personality. Then we see it elaborated under stress of the Judaistic and Hellenistic en- vironment of that age, in the endeavour to establish and justify itself in the intellectual atmosphere of the nascent Church-life. It was not possible to accomplish this with success except by a process which should display the hidden significance of what at first seemed so simple, and is so simple to simple hearts.* That age, however, was not simple-hearted ; t it was a highly intellectual, pro- foundly perplexed, saddened age, sobbing its heart out in weakness ; requiring accordingly the doc- trine that would strengthen and comfort with effect to be in the mould of its own speculation and intuition. Christ's teaching is a plain, positive statement on the practical religious plane, deliver- ing itself as easily as the flow of the stream, in conflict only with the hindrances of indifl'erence and want of faith. That attitude characterizes the General Epistles, which are close echoes of the Master's style, and directed to the same general consciousness of religion as His was. It is other- wise with the Pauline and Johannine Epistles : in them we have the underlying universal quality and principle of His teaching disclosed, beaten out inch by inch on the hard anvil of bitter controversy (Pauline) ; or reflecting the more lambent genius of the mystic (Johannine). The differences are great, but they are not oppositions, nor vitiations. The same facts are looked at and loved, by means of the same great powers of soul, and within the same great principles and convictions. J Nor must we forget that since Christ's Person is the source of this inspiration and enlightenment, their state- ment is coloured throughout its whole extent by that all-pervading fact. It is a fact which leaves the writers free to be careless of superficial har- monizations, conscious as they are of the sub- stantial unity below all apparent divergences and dissonances. That unity is impressive ; its outlines
• As, e.g., in Christ's teaching.
t Cf., for a popular description, M. Arnold's Obermann.
t Ct., for an able vindication of this view of the relation of the apostolic doctrine to Christ's, J. Denney, Jenus and the Gospel, London. 19U8.
strong and vivid. In contrast with Gentile wisdom and Jewish LaAv, which were both powerless to redeem men from sin, Christ stands out as Saviour. He is the answer to the age-long cry, ' How shall man be just with God ? ' He is ' the new and living way' of access into God's presence (He 10'-"), as He Himself claimed (Jn 14^). By Him is proclaimed ' the forgiveness of sins' (Ac 13^^). He is exalted to give forgiveness (Ac 5'^), and gives it (Eph 1'', Col V*, etc.). He has broken down the 'wall of partition ' ( Eph 2") and ' rent the veil ' of the Temple (Mt 21^\ Mk IS^s, Lk 23*^). He has eflected 'so great salvation' (He 2^) in His own body on the tree (1 P22^), by eternal Spirit (He 9^*), in Himself and for Himself, as the Author and Finisher of our faith, really, vitally, consciously, not with a dull sense of unintelligible burden, but wholly rationally, intensely spiritually, in an ex- perience where the issues are of life and death, fought out in a fiery heat of thought and emo- tion, of deeply moving religious conscience. The apostolic consciousness has caught the rich impress of this travail of soul. It sets it forth for mankind in varying form and mode — the picture of the great and guiltless sorrow bearing the sins of the world, and, in bearing them, bearing them away. As the soul of the age was sobbing itself out, here a nobler soul shares the fellowship of its sufl'eringand of all sutt'ering, but not in weakness ; for the pain is fully faced and taken up into conscious life, there to be transmuted into abiding life. Thus was Christ justified ; thus are we.