not until reconciled unto God by the death of his Son, that we bring forth fruit unto righteousness ; that when justified by the righteousness of Christ, we are made partakers of his Spirit; being justified we are sanctified ; that union with Christ by faith secures not only the imputation of his righteousness to our justi- fication, but the participation of his life unto our sanctification ; so that as surely as He lives and lives unto God, so they that believe on Him shall live unto God ; and that none are partakers of the merit of his death who do not become partakers of the power of his life. We do not, therefore, he says, make void the law of God. Yea, we establish the law. We teach the only true way to become holy ; although that way appears foolishness unto the wise of this world, whose wisdom is folly in the sight of God.
§ 4. The Righteousness of Christ the Ground of Justification.
The imperative question remains, How shall a man be just with God ? If our moral excellence be not the ground on which God pronounces us just, what is that ground ? The grand reason why such different answers are given to this question is, that it is understood in different senses. The Scriptural and Protestant answer is absurd, if the question means what Romanists and others understand it to mean. If " just " means good, i. e., if the word be taken in its moral, and not in its judicial sense, then it is absurd to say that a man can be good with the goodness of another ; or to say that God can pronounce a man to be good who is not good. Bellarmin says an Ethiopian clothed in a white garment is not white. Curcellasus, the Remonstrant, says, " A man can no more be just with the justice of another, than he can be white with the whiteness of another." Moehler 1 says, it is impossible that anything should appear to God other than it really is ; that an unjust man should appear to him, or be pro- nounced by him just. All this is true in the sense intended by these writers, " The judgment of God is according to truth." (Rom. ii. 2.) Every man is truly just whom He justifies or de- clares to be just. It is in vain to dispute until the " status quses- tionis " be clearly determined. The word Suauos, " righteous," or " just," has two distinct senses, as above stated. It has a moral, and also a legal, forensic, or judicial sense. It sometimes ex- presses moral character, sometimes simply a relation to law and justice. In one sense to pronounce a man just, is to declare that he is morally good. In another sense, it is to declare that the
1 Symbolik, § 14, 6th ed. Mainz, 1843, p. 139.
142