(4.) There is, then, a threefold cause of our salvation: the Father who sends his Son, the Son who procures salvation, and the Holy Spirit who applies it to the believer. This threefold agency is set forth in the benediction, which comprehends all divine blessings: "the grace (charis) of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the (agape) of God, and the communion (koinonia) of the Holy Spirit." [793] This is Paul's practical view of the Holy Trinity as revealed in the gospel. The grace of Christ is mentioned first because in it is exhibited to us the love of the Father in its highest aspect as a saving power; to the Holy Spirit is ascribed the communion because he is the bond of union between the Father and the Son, between Christ and the believer, and between the believers as members of one brotherhood of the redeemed.
To this divine trinity corresponds, we may say, the human trinity of Christian graces: faith, hope, love. [794]
III. The Order of Salvation.--(1.) Salvation has its roots in the eternal counsel of God, his Foreknowledge (prognosis), and his Foreordination (proorismos, prothesis); the former an act of his omniscient intellect, the latter of his omnipotent will. Logically, foreknowledge precedes foreordination, but in reality both coincide and are simultaneous in the divine mind, in which there is no before nor after. [795]
Paul undoubtedly teaches an eternal election by the sovereign grace of God, that is an unconditioned and unchangeable predestination of his children to holiness and salvation in and through his Son Jesus Christ. [796] He thus cuts off all human merit, and plants the salvation upon an immovable rock. But he does not thereby exclude human freedom and responsibility; on the contrary, he includes them as elements in the divine plan, and boldly puts them together. [797] Hence he exhorts and warns men as if salvation might be gained or lost by their effort. Those who are lost, are lost by their own unbelief. Perdition is the righteous judgment for sin unrepented of and persisted in. It is a strange misunderstanding to make Paul either a fatalist or a particularist; he is the strongest opponent of blind necessity and of Jewish particularism, even in the ninth chapter of Romans. But he aims at no philosophical solution of a problem which the finite understanding of man cannot settle; he contents himself with asserting its divine and human aspects, the religious and ethical view, the absolute sovereignty of God and the relative freedom of man, the free gift of salvation and the just punishment for neglecting it. Christian experience includes both truths, and we find no contradiction in praying as if all depended on God, and in working as if all depended on man. This is Pauline theology and practice.
Foreknowledge and foreordination are the eternal background of salvation: call, justification, sanctification, and glorification mark the progressive steps in the time of execution, and of the personal application of salvation. [798]
(2.) The Call (klesis) proceeds from God the Father through the preaching of the gospel salvation which is sincerely offered to all. Faith comes from preaching, preaching from preachers, and the preachers from God who sends them. [799]
The human act which corresponds to the divine call is the conversion (metanoia) of the sinner; and this includes repentance or turning away from sin, and faith or turning to Christ, under the influence of the Holy Spirit who acts through the word. [800] The Holy Spirit is the objective principle of the new life of the Christian. Faith is the free gift of God, and at the same time the highest act of man. It is unbounded trust in Christ, and the organ by which we apprehend him, his very life and benefits, and become as it were identified with him, or mystically incorporated with him. [801]
(3.) Justification (dikaiosis) is the next step. This is a vital doctrine in Paul's system and forms the connecting link as well as the division line between the Jewish and the Christian period of his life. It was with him always a burning life-question. As a Jew he sought righteousness by works of the law, honestly and earnestly, but in vain; as a Christian he found it, as a free gift of grace, by faith in Christ. Righteousness (dikaiosune), as applied to man, is the normal relation of man to the holy, will of God as expressed in his revealed law, which requires supreme love to God and love to our neighbor; it is the moral and religious ideal, and carries in itself the divine favor and the highest happiness. It is the very end for which man was made; he is to be conformed to God who is absolutely holy and righteous. To be god-like is the highest conception of human perfection and bliss.
But there are two kinds of righteousness, or rather two ways of seeking it: one of the law, and sought by works of the law; but this is imaginary, at best very defective, and cannot stand before God; and the righteousness of Christ, or the righteousness of faith, which is freely communicated to the believer and accepted by God. Justification is the act of God by which he puts the repenting sinner in possession of the righteousness of Christ. It is the reverse of condemnation; it implies the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ's righteousness. It is based upon the atoning sacrifice of Christ and conditioned by faith, as the subjective organ of apprehending and appropriating Christ with all his benefits. We are therefore justified by grace alone through faith alone; yet faith remains not alone, but is ever fruitful of good works.
The result of justification is peace (eirene) with God, and the state of adoption (huiothesia) and this implies also the heirship (kleronomia) of eternal life. "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified with him." [802] The root of Paul's theory of justification is found in the teaching of Christ: he requires from his disciples a far better righteousness than the legal righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, as a condition of entering the kingdom of heaven, namely, the righteousness of God; he holds up this righteousness of God as the first object to be sought; and teaches that it can only be obtained by faith, which he everywhere presents as the one and only condition of salvation on the part of man. [803]
(4.) Sanctification (hagiasmos). [804] The divine act of justification is inseparable from the conversion and renewal of the sinner. It affects the will and conduct as well as the feeling. Although gratuitous, it is not unconditional. It is of necessity the beginning of sanctification, the birth into a new life which is to grow unto full manhood. We are not justified outside of Christ, but only in Christ by a living faith, which unites us with him in his death unto sin and resurrection unto holiness. Faith is operative in love and must produce good works as the inevitable proof of its existence. Without love, the greatest of Christian graces, even the strongest faith would be but "sounding brass or clanging cymbal." [805]
Sanctification is not a single act, like justification, but a process. It is a continuous growth of the whole inner man in holiness from the moment of conversion and justification to the reappearance of Jesus Christ in glory. [806] On the part of God it is insured, for he is faithful and will perfect the good work which he began; on the part of man it involves constant watchfulness, lest he stumble and fall. In one view it depends all on the grace of God, in another view it depends all on the exertion of man. There is a mysterious co-operation between the two agencies, which is expressed in the profound paradox: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure." [807] The believer is mystically identified with Christ from the moment of his conversion (sealed by baptism). He died with Christ unto sin so as to sin no more; and he rose with him to a new life unto God so as to live for God; he is crucified to the world and the world to him; he is a new creature in Christ; the old man of sin is dead and buried, the new man lives in holiness and righteousness. "It is no longer I (my own sinful self) that lives, but it is Christ that lives in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh, I live in faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me." [808] Here is the whole doctrine of Christian life: it is Christ in us, and we in Christ. It consists in a vital union with Christ, the crucified and risen Redeemer, who is the indwelling, all-pervading, and controlling life of the believer; but the union is no pantheistic confusion or absorption; the believer continues to live as a self-conscious and distinct personality. For the believer "to live is Christ, and to die is gain." "Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's." [809]
In Romans 12, Paul sums up his ethics in the idea of gratitude which manifests itself in a cheerful sacrifice of our persons and services to the God of our salvation. [810]
(5.) Glorification (doxazein). This is the final completion of the work of grace in the believer and will appear at the parousia of our Lord. It cannot be hindered by any power present or future, visible or invisible, for God and Christ are stronger than all our enemies and will enable us to come out more than conquerors from the conflict of faith.
This lofty conviction of final victory finds most eloquent expression in the triumphal ode which closes the eighth chapter of Romans. [811]
IV. The Historical Progress of the gospel of salvation from Jews to Gentiles and back again to the Jews. [812] Salvation was first intended for and offered to the Jews, who were for centuries prepared for it by the law and the promise, and among whom the Saviour was born, lived, died, and rose again. But the Jews as a nation rejected Christ and his apostles, and hardened their hearts in unbelief. This fact filled the apostle with unutterable sadness, and made him willing to sacrifice even his own salvation (if it were possible) for the salvation of his kinsmen.
But he sees light in this dark mystery. First of all, God has a sovereign right over all his creatures and manifests both his mercy and his righteousness in the successive stages of the historical execution of his wise designs. His promise has not failed, for it was not given to all the carnal descendants of Abraham and Isaac, but only to the spiritual descendants, the true Israelites who have the faith of Abraham, and they have been saved, as individual Jews are saved to this day. And even in his relation to the vessels of wrath who by unbelief and ingratitude have fitted themselves for destruction, he shows his long-suffering.
In the next place, the real cause of the rejection of the body of the Jews is their own rejection of Christ. They sought their own righteousness by works of the law instead of accepting the righteousness of God by faith.
Finally, the rejection of the Jews is only temporary and incidental in the great drama of history. It is overruled for the speedier conversion of the Gentiles, and the conversion of the full number or the organic totality of the Gentiles (not all individual Gentiles) will lead ultimately to the conversion of Israel. "A hardening in part has befallen Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in; and so all Israel shall be saved."