(c) Christ-in-us the result. — The feud between ' faith ' and ' works ' is an old one. Certain points are clear. It is not a question of sinners being j ustified by works whether 'legal' or 'good.' The impeni- tent are never justified. It is not a question of believers being justified by good works only. By his works the believer will be judyed. These are bald positions easily excluded. The crux of the controversy is that works to be good must spring from no motive other than the one proper motive, the new life in Christ. There are three alter- natives: (1) Our own merit. We can go bej'ond the legal requirements so far that we are able to com- pensate for our wrongdoing. (2) Other-s' merit. Others may compensate similarly for us, either by way of being our substitute or by -way of trans- ference of their supererogatory virtue to us. Both positions lose force in face of the Divine claims upon us and all men for the whole devotion of which we are capable at every moment ; even then we are 'unprofitable servants.' (3) Not of merit but of faith. By this it is not meant that we are justified because faith shows that we have altered our ways and that faith can complete itself in good works, or because faith has in it the germ of all that God api)roves ; we are justihed by faith, not on the ground of the holy life that may' follow, but
on the ground of Him who by faith is indwelling in our spirits and implants us in a new world of spiritual reality, where love (as He is love) alone is power. 'Love is the fulfilling of all law.' In pre-Christian ages that principle miglit be m meu like Abraham in unconscious operation and be credited to them for its worth. Similarly to-day in the world outside Christ. But implicitly or explicitly it must be present whenever this is so ; good works are the outcome of character not of ordinances, of love not of law, and the character and love are of Christ in us. The apostles plainly conceive of Christ in this reference in an ascending scale of presence in the world. He is in the Cosmos as its principle. He is in humanity, of which He is the 'recaijitulation.' He is in the Christian body, of which He is head. Good works are good from the principle underlying them. It is that principle that justifies the doers of them. That principle is Christ. The Epistle to the Hebrews labours to show that Christ as Priest and Victim is perfect, eternal, final, from the fact that He is character, not ordinances. The Johannine Epistles are pregnant with the idea that Christ in the heart is Love. But character and love are pure Spirit. Its implanting into us for ever saves our ' good works' from degenerating into a mere moral code, and furnishes us with a richer and more personal basis for our conHdence in doing our goodness. Our virtues cannot be things without us : they must be self-determined ; but, if my self is deter- mined by Christ in me, we can truly say, and ought to say, of our good works, as of all else in our life, 'Not I, but Christ in me.' This, further, we can saj' from the first, and with assurance. The con- fidence is secure in the implanted principle ; it is not bound to the good works, which are themselves not independent but based on the principle. No doubt the real and vital relation of the Christian to Christ is invariablj' and inevitably accompanied by its practical sense and the actual experience of its living results in his quickened and risen self; but it is not the accompaniment, it is the relation itself, that is the ground of certainty. Ritschl * is out of the true lineal descent of Reformed theology when he argues that the individual believer attains certainty of salvation only as in the exercise of his religious experience he reaches dominion over the world ; he is back on the old plane of ' ordinances ' and ' works ' which incited Luther's polemic.
There Luther was on sure ground — true to his own experience, true to the apostolic mind. That mind conceived and solved the problem of justifi- cation with splendid invincible spirituality, as the act of God alone. In so doing it at the same time set its finality on the firmest foundation. If the idea of the union between the Divine and the human be true, and the actualization of it necessary to satisfy the deepest want of the human spirit, before it finds peace with God, all that the case
* Ritschl's is the most exhaustive and original discussion in modern theology of the doctrine of justification. No references can t;ive any idea of its wealth. The distinctive features of his definition are only partly true to Lutheran tradition. They are as follows: (1) the identification of justification and forgiveness of sins ; (2) the denial of any punishment of sin except the sinner's separation from God ; (3) the rejection of the ideas of the imputed righteousness of Christ and His substitutionary suffering ; (4) the subordination of reconciliation to justification ;
(5) the ascription of justification to the Christian community ;