* As Jesus did in Mt 6^: 'you cannot serve two masters, but you must serve one, either God or mammon.' In the next chapter (Ito ?•*), St. Paul puts the same thoufjht from another point of view : * you must belong to Someone, either to the Law or to Christ.*
(iSouKiliBriTe, v.'*). Sin is a slavery, so is SiKaiorivri. You once knew the former ; now take the latter. Here the position of Suatodi'i'i;, which is absolutely due to God's grace, as he has just been arguing in the previous chapter, becomes not only a memory and a hope but an obligation upon those who are justified, the nexus being the Person of Christ with wliich our faith identifies us, since Clirist has broken the hold of sin over us and opened up to us the sphere and the capacity of the Divine life.*
This nexus is not a mere play on the diderent senses of Sixaiocrwi). The forensic metiiphors used by St. Paul in connexion with righteousness in the technical sense remlcr it all tlie more imperative to grasp the larger thought for which he is seeking a somewhat controversial expression. When a sinner is pronounced righteous or justified, as we have seen, this does not correspond to the cool verilict of acquittal passed by some outside authority ; it is the gracious dealing of a loving God, whose end is life for the sinner. The clearest statement of this truth is in the long passage of Ro 5'*'- : ' W^hile the sentence ensuing on a single sin resulted in doom, the free gift ensuing on many trespasses issues in acquittal ' (but acquittal is not the last word). ' For if the trespass of one man allowed death to reign through that one man, much more shall those who receive the overflowing grace and free gift of righteousness reign in life through One, through Jesus Christ.' The SiKaiujia or acquittal carries life with it. Hence the Apostle sums up : ' Well then, as one man's trespass issued in doom for all, so one man's act of redress issues in acquittal and life {eh Sixafuiriv fw^s) for all ; just as one man's disobedience made all the rest sinners, so one man's obedience will make all the rest righteous . . . sin increased, but grace surpassed it far, so that while sin had reigned the reign of death, grace might also reign with a righteousness that ends in life eternal through Jesus Christ our Lord.' It is passages like this w'hich suggest that the Pauline doctrine of right- eousness by faith finds its equivalent in the Johan- nine doctrine of fellowship with the Father and the Son, life in both cases being the central thought. The door into this fellowship opens from within, and similarly the righteousness which issues in life is steadily regarded as a free gift of God ; you can- not pay for it, or work for it, you have only to accept the reconciliation. The life comes through a Divine self-sacrifice. When St. Paul is using his most juridical language, he never forgets to bring this out, and the very fact that his line of argu- ment in this section does not lead him to develop the human faith which receives the gift enables him to lay all the more stress upon the Divine generosity which provided it for needy man.t ' The gift,' ' the free gift,' ' for nothing ' — it is as if he could not say enough to convince his readers of
* It is the vnaKori Of Christ (5^9) which realizes the new order of reconciliation and SiKaioavinq for men, who in turn have to give in (see above), by an act of obedience, to these gracious terms of God for their redemption. But the luiman vTraKori is not exhausted by this surrender to God in Christ ; it lias to be worked out in His service and spirit (Ro 6i2f-). Cf. W. Schlatter's Giaitlte und Gekormtii, Gutersloh, 1901.
t Cf. what R. W. Dale once said about Maurice (Life of R. W. Daley London, 1898, p. 541) : ' What he wanted was to be con- scious that he de&ervd all the love and trust that came to him. I am more and more clear about this, that we must be content to know that the best things come to us both from man and God without our deserving them. We are under grace, not under law. Not until we have beaten down our pride and self- assertion so as to be able to take everything from earth and heaven just as a child takes everything, without raising the question. Do I deserve this or not ? or rather with the habitual conviction that we deserve nothing and are content that it should be so, do we get into right relations either with our Father in heaven or with the brothers and sisters about us. That principle is capable of a most fatal misconception, but in its truth it is one of the secreta of righteousness and joy."
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God's character and motives in the work of recon- ciliation.
Yet even when he considers liunian faith in this connexion, it onlj' serves to enijiliasize tlie truth that tlie new relation of rifjhteonsness cannot rest on any |iact between a man and his God. Faitli is not the contribution which the sinner makes. Tbere were reliyious conceptions of rij;hteousne.ss wliich ^ave a place to faith alonj;side works, but St. I'aiil would not hear of such an admixture as we meet, e.g., in the apocalypse oi 4 J^^''<t- 'A worker has his wage counted to him as a due, not as a favour ; but a man who instead of working believes in him wlio justities the ungodly lias his faith counted as righteousness' (Ko 4''). Kvery- tliing turns upon faith, he adds (4'"), for the new riglueousness is a gift or, historically regarded, a promise ; these are the terms on wliicii it is otfered.