Hence the overwhelming prominence of faith in the Gospel. It is the correlative of the overwhelming, the absolute, prominence of Jesus Christ. Christ is all. Faith is man's acceptance of Him as such. "Justification by Faith" is not acceptance because faith is a valuable thing, a merit, a recommendation, a virtue.[13] It is acceptance because of Jesus Christ, whom man, dropping all other hopes, receives. It is, let us repeat it, the sinner's empty hand and parted lips. It has absolutely nothing to do with earning the gift of God, the water and the bread of God; it has all to do with taking it. This we shall see open out before us as we proceed.
So the Gospel "_unveils God's righteousness_"; it draws the curtains from His glorious secret. And as each fold is lifted, the glad beholder looks on "_from faith to faith_." He finds that this reliance is to be _his_ part; first, last, midst, and without end. He takes Jesus Christ by faith; he holds Him by faith; he uses Him by faith; he lives, he dies, in Him by faith; that is to say, always by Him, by Him received, held, used.
Then lastly, we mark the quotation from the Prophet, who, for the Apostle, is the organ of the Holy Ghost. What Habakkuk wrote is, for Paul, what God says, God's Word. The Prophet, as we refer to his brief pages, manifestly finds his occasion and his first significance in the then state of his country and his people. If we please, we may explain the words as a patriot's contribution to the politics of Jerusalem, and pass on. But if so, we pass on upon a road unknown to our Lord and His Apostles. To Him, to them, the prophecies had more in them than the Prophets knew; and Habakkuk's appeal to Judah to retain the Lord Jehovah among them in all His peace and power, by trusting Him, is known by St Paul to be for all time an oracle about the work of faith. So he sees it in a message straight to the soul which asks how, if Christ is God's Righteousness, shall I, a sinner, win Christ for me. "Wouldst thou indeed be _just_ with God, right with Him as Judge, accepted by the Holy One? Take His Son in the empty arms of mere trust, and He is thine for this need, and for all."
"_I am not ashamed of the Gospel._" So the Apostle affirms, as he looks toward Rome. What is it about this Gospel of God, and of His Son, which gives occasion for such a word? Why do we find, not here only, but elsewhere in the New Testament, this contemplated possibility that the Christian may be ashamed of his creed, and of his Lord? "Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me, and of My words, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed" (Luke ix. 26); "Be not thou ashamed of the testimony of our Lord"; "Nevertheless, I am not ashamed" (2 Tim. i. 8, 12). This is paradoxical, as we come to think upon it. There is much about the purity of the Gospel which might occasion, and does too often occasion, an awe and dread of it, seemingly reasonable. There is much about its attendant mysteries which might seem to excuse an attitude, however mistaken, of reverent suspense. But what is there about this revelation of the heart of Eternal Love, this record of a Life equally divine and human, of a Death as majestic as it is infinitely pathetic, and then of a Resurrection out of death, to occasion shame? Why, in view of this, should man be shy to avow his faith, and to let it be known that this is all in all to him, his life, his peace, his strength, his surpassing interest and occupation?