Faith Considered as Justifying

EoMANS iv. 16. — “Therefore it is of Faith, that it might be by Grace.”

Although the liigHy interesting subject of Christ’s righteousness as our justification before God, must be frequently brought into view in this series, it will come before us now only as incidental to our main incjuiry. As an introduction to what is chiefly proposed, these few familiar statements must suffice in resrard to this foundation truth of evan2:elical theolosry. In the com’se of ages Catholic divines, as they are called, met upon certain platforms of doctrine which they defined in creeds and treatises. These were tauGrht in all the schools, with a certain degree of unanimity. Among the doctrines of these was that view of justification which the Keformers, without a dissentino’ voice, rejected. Luther and the rest showed from Scripture that Komish theology confounded justification and sanctification. It asserted that a man is justified when he is made inwardly holy by a supernatural operation; by an infusion from above of inherent sanctity, which they call an infused habit, (JiaUtus iiifusus.) Reformed theology admitted the necessity of this inward holiness, this supernatural aid, and this change of disposition, referring all these to the head of sanctification. But it went to the Law and to the Testimony, to show, that this is not the way in which Divine Wisdom has chosen to represent justification. In the Old and N“ew Testament, wherever the sinner’s rescue is spoken of, the great matter is made to be the removal of guilt, or that relation to God’s justice, law, wrath, and penalty, which excludes and must forever exclude the ofi’ender from peace and perfection. Viewed from our low human point of observation, it is as if God, sitting in his august judgment-seat, should say, “This guilty man is no longer guilty,” which is dififerent from saying, This impure man is no longer impure. This sentence or declaration is pronounced in court, whence our fathers, from the Keformation downwards, spoke of justification as a judicial or forensic act. All such terms are metaphorical, and are not even by generous opponents pressed to all the inconvenient results of a perfect analogy. So to press a metaphor, would render absurd all that we say about God’s “council,” “throne,” or “moral government.” These are phrases borrowed from the affairs of men, to helj) our understanding of the aflPairs of God. God justifies the sinner by declaring the Law satisfied in regard to him. In regard to this sinner, the Law has no demand of wrath, no sword of punition, no bar of exclusion. But how can this be, while the sinner is still in fact a sinner? In no way could it be, if the sinner were regarded as in himself, or if justification imported a real or intrinsic change. For that real and intrinsic change we must look to another quarter. What we now seek is a change of state, from wrath to favour — from guilt to righteousness. God pronounces the sinner to be thus removed from one state to another, just as the judge pronounces the accused prisoner at the bar to be innocent. The declaration of the judge does not make the prisoner either better or worse as to his inward character. The declaration of God does not, as a declaration, make the justified sinner either better or worse; though he is then and there made better, and placed in a train of being made better eternally, but by an influence which clear minds love to keej) separate. This logical discrimination was not observed by the Komanists, and hence the darkness which overspreads their entire scheme of redemjDtion, the more remarkable in contrast with the clearness of their statements concerning the Trinity, the godhead of Christ, and the Incarnation. In pronouncing the sinner to l)e right in the view of law, which includes negative and positive righteousness, remission of sin, and title to

favour, God does not pronounce what is contrary to the truth of the case, which would be so, if he pronounced him one who had never sinned, or one who is this moment sinless. The justifpng act is the apjDlication to the sinner of Christ’s satisfactory work. By a metaphor we call it forensic, or declarative. It sets over to the believing sinner the satisfaction of the Divine Surety. 1. The righteousness of Jesus Christ with all its merits is placed to the account of the sinner; not as actually wrought by him, which would be untrue, in fact, but as wrought for him, in his name, and on his behalf. 2. As a necessary concomitant, or rather as a blessing involved in this, the sins of the believer with all their guilt are remitted; not on the ground that he has never committed them, nor on the ground that he has made personal satisfaction, both which would be untrue, in fact, but because the righteousness of Christ presents a complete satisfaction. 3. And, as a third particular, the soul thus justified because thus viewed in Christ, is admitted to favour, life, and the rewards of grace. To these advantages, all included in justification, the sinner is admitted immediately on his believing.

In any investigation of Faith, it is necessary to inquire. What is the jpart or province of Faith in this important act of Justification? And this is what we propose to consider in the sequel of this discourse. 1. The Word of God declares that he who is justified is justified by faith. “The just shall live by his faith.” Heb.

ii. 4. “For therein [in the Gospel] is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, The just shall live by faith.” Kom. i. 17. “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.” Kom. iii. 28. “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law.” Gal. ii. 16. “The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” iii. 24. “We wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.” V. 5. “The righteousness which is of God by faith.” Philipp. iii. 9. No proposition can be proved from the Scriptures, if such passages do not prove that a man is justified by faith. And, indeed, this is acknowledged to be true in some sense by all with whom we have to do in this argument. The question, however, is still open. Why, and in what manner, are we justified by faith? 2. Faith does not justify, in whole or in part, as a righteousness, or as a meritorious obedience. It is not the intrinsic excellence of faith as an exercise of mind, or as a Christian virtue, which procures our justification. It is true that faith is highly honourable to God and beneficial to man. Taking all scriptural passages together, there is no single grace of which more excellent things are affii’med, than faith. It is the spring of all obedience, and the beginning of all sanctification, being the soul’s homage to God as Infinite Truth. Faith is greatly acceptable to the living and true God, and ^’ without faith it is impossible to please him.” But no one of these qualities, nor all together, give Faith its justifying power.

In all the respects just mentioned, faith is part of our dues; an obligation to be rendered; a tribute exacted; a spiritual service coramanded; an inward and most desirable work, and so a part of conformity to law. Under these aspects. Faith stands among sister Graces, such as Hope, Humility, Patience, Joy, Purity, and Love, as offering an obedience which in an unfallen state would satisfy divine justice, but which in our present broken condition, as condemned, must not be pleaded before God. As a meritorious part of obedience, faith cannot be accepted in lieu of a whole obedience. It would be the j)aying of a single sheaf by one who owes the entire harvest. The more we enhance the value of faith, in itself considered, the more do we lean towards a justification by works. But the very places which attribute justification to faith, do as in the same breath deny justification by works. And on collating the passages, you will be struck with the truth, if you have not already observed it, that when Paul intends most strongly and absolutely to represent our salvation as gracious or independent of all works, obedience, or cleservings, he chooses to say it is by faith. In Paul’s mind, justification by faith is justification by grace, or gratuitous justification, which clearly shows that faith does not justify as a rendering of meritorious obedience. For example, boasting is excluded, “By what law? of works? Nay, but by the law of faith.” Rom. iii. 27. Again, iv. 2: “If Abraham were justified by works he hath whereof to glory; but... Abraham believed... and it was counted unto him for righteousness.” iv. 16: “It is of faith, that it might be by grace.” iii. 28: “A man is justified by faith, without the works of the law.” Gal. iii. 12. “The law is not of faith, but the man that doeth them shall live in them.” These passages are cited to show how the apostle places faith and works in the relation of diametrical opposites. To be justified then by faith, on its own deservings as a meritorious act, were to be saved after all by our doings, or, what is the same, it were justification by works under the denomination of faith. In any comprehensive and spiritual view, faith is itself a work of obedience; and in this naked character it is excluded, like every other work, from any share in justification.

3. The act of faith is not set to the believer’s account as an equivalent, which God accepts instead of a complete satisfaction to law. Thus asserting, we only deny the same error under a difi*erent form, somewhat more specious, because it is supported by the superficial meaning of certain passages of the Scriptures. The passages ought to be candidly weighed; they are these: of Abraham, Rom. iv. 20, it is said that he “was strong in faith, giving glory to God... and therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness.” James ii. 23. “And the Scripture saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness, and he was called the friend of God.” Gal. iii. 6: “Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” Certain theologians hastily argue from the sound rather than the sense of these passages, that the very act of believing is placed to the believer’s credit, or, in scriptural phrase, is imputed to him, as equivalent to all the debt of duty, as payment in full of all other obligation, in a word, as a righteousness before God. There is something so strange and startling in this, there is in it so little relief to the mind which labours with the problem of making an unrighteous subject righteous, it presents so much of new difficulty, while it removes so little of the old, that one would gladly find any fair way of escape from the interpretation, and such a way is happily obvious. All these similar expressions teach one grand Gospel verity, viz., not that any single act of duty, such as faith, is accepted in lieu of all acts of duty; which would satisfy grace as little as it satisfies justice; but that it is as believing, not as working, that man is regarded when God accepts him. He believes “unto righteousness.” Rom. X. 10. And this faith is not the ground, but the means of his justification. So that we may safely fall back upon the conclusion just now stated, that faith, viewed as a rendering of dues to the law, is not accounted to the believing sinner as his righteousness. All within him rises to testify that his righteousness in God’s sight is something vastly different from any actin2:s of his own mind.

4. Equally would we protest against the solution proposed by some distinguished and pious authors, that faith justifies, because faith carries in it as in a germ all the obedience which God requires; because “faith works by love,” and ^’ love is the fulfillino; of the law” because faith is obedience in the source or in the bud; because faith is necessarily followed by universal holiness, and therefore is contemplated by God, who sees the end from the beginning, as prophetic of this and as the radical and all-comprehensive grace. As to all these beauties and glories of faith we ^dll not unsay what we have already said. None shall go beyond us in high tliouglits of faith. Already have we wearied more than one by liarping on this string. As the grace which most honours truth and God as true and the Word made flesh as God’s Re’ealer of truth, faith stands forth forever as the forerunner and strengthener of all virtues. Nevertheless, we will not ascribe to the channel that which belongs to the fountain, nor to the means that which belongs of right to the cause. To all these several schemes which would discover in faith itself some intrinsic cause of its being the justifying work, we have one and the same objection; it is simple and insuperable; they all ascribe the righteousness of the soul to itself rather than to Christ. Though it be acknowledged by them that faith is wrought of God, we dare not make particular works of God in the soul to be a substitute for the souPs universal righteousness. We will not build up a structure, half meritorious and half gracious. We cannot accept a justification due to obedience under the name of gratuity, however refined that obedience may be made, and even though it be the seed of all obedience.

To sum up this part of the reasoning, we must abandon all hope of being saved, even by faith, if our acceptance to favoui’ is to depend on some value inherent in faith as a state, habit, or act of the human soul.

The Gospel is very intelligible when we look at it simply. Salvation there is all of Grace, all of Christ, all of God. The pardon, and the admittance to favour, and the reward, are all free, by which we mean gratuitous. ISTot merely works in their grosser sense do not deserve it, but faith, though it were the heavenliest of works, does not deserve it. And this is so far from being a speculative point, that the labom’ing soul needs this to rise from the dust of unrighteousness, and throws out ballast, ascends swiftly and surmounts many a cloud the moment it learns enough of free grace to cease all weighing or measurement of the believing acts. The glory of faith is that its utter emptiness opens to receive consununate good.

5. By these steps we are fairly reduced to something like a general conclusion. From denials of erroneous doctrine, it is high time we should come to an affirmation of the true. The Ijavt of Faith,, in the worh of Justification,, is altogether instrumental. Faith herself, lost in the dazzling rays, points away from her own reflections to the glorious Sun of Righteousness. All that we have recently said of Faith, represents it as essentially conversant with Truth, even with God as Infinite Truth. It is Truth, my brethren, which, to all eternity, is the satisfying nutriment of intellectual beings. It is the Truth of the Gospel which occupies, fills, transforms, and satiates the renewed soul. The truth presented in the person and atoning work of Jesus Christ is the special object of the returning sinner’s faith. That which gives him relief and peace is not any thing of excellence which he discovers in faith as faith. The shipwrecked mariner, who descries the succouring vessel approaching his frail raft, spends no thought on the process of vision by which he sees the relief The ship, the ship, fills his eye. The drowning wretch who has sunk and sunk, and now, as he rises out of the waves, seizes the offered rope with a spasm of agonizing vehemence, considers not the quality of that grasp; it is the cord, the arm, the friend who saves his life. The sinner, going down again and again in a sea of troubles, where God himself plunges him, and with renewed conviction still plunges him, while all his waves and his billows go over him, and deep calleth unto deep at the noise of his waterspouts, and who stretches out those cold, clammy, convulsive, dying fingers to the almighty hand of Jesus, which is reached towards him, and which he knows by the print of the nails, makes no account of that stretching out of the hand. It is but the instrument, and yet it saves him. His faith saves him. But how little does he x his eye on that faith! What is it but a receptive faculty, a hand that clings, a conscious vacuity that longs and receives, an acquiescence that is satisfied, a recumbency that finds rest? Kepose there, thou long troubled soul, on the bosom of thy Jesus, for he loves thee, and would ever hold thee there. Cling on, and hide thyself in the ample folds of that golden, yea that crimson righteousness, and let believing make it all thine; but oh! dwell not a moment on thy believing. Learn the true excellency of faith, and it is enough, it receives Christ, it makes Christ thine. As a naked instrument, it apprehends and accepts the righteousness of Christ.

The more you x your attention on faith as if faith were the object of inquiry, the less faith you will have. Meditating and prying into the mystery of the eye produces no vision; turn those organs towards the light. Forget the means in the end, and the instrument in the consummation. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved!

6. As in the matter of justification, faith is simply receptive and instrumental, it follows that our profoundest attention should be given to the glorious object of faith, which is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ as our Rio-hteousness. All the brightness which faith has is reflected upon it by the luminary on which it gazes. When the once darkling soul is made the subject of that divine operation, by which a principle of life is infused, the very earliest symptom of such birth is its apprehension of truth. It has emerged into daylight. The great and infinitely lovely object which, though present before, was in obscurity, begins to be faintly visible. The face of infinite purity and love shining from the Cross, radiates unwonted grace and beauty. The historical Christ becomes the personal love of the new-born soul, as beheld not merely in the dull hard outline of facts and doctrines, but in the celestial and ravishing qualities of personal fascination. Inadequately but truly, because supernaturally and spiritually, the Christ of God is seen as he is; and now for the first is he thus seen. The eyes of this prodigal sinner’s understanding are opened to see the light of the glory of God as it shines in the face of Jesus Christ. And as that which tempestuously drove him through mountain seas into this haven, was horrible and consuming Consciousness of guilt and dread of God’s anger, so that which the opening eye of the new creature first beholds, as he believes, is the infinitely satisfying value of Christ as his righteousness. “Surely, shall one say, In the Lord have I nghteousness and strength.” Is. xlv. 24. Conscience is brought to peace by this means only.

See in this the completory antitype of what took place 3,000 years ago when a poor Hebrew wretch, in anguish for his crime, came with his kid or his lamb to the altar before the tabernacle. There he stands, all crimson and scarlet in conscious defilement. The sword of God’s ven. geance seems lifted. He hardly conceives that for such guilt Jehovah will accept an offering. He trembles and is pale. See, the priest has taken the unblemished little victim and laid it palpitating on the altar. “What a type of innocence in the room of guilt! What a signal hieroglyphic of substitution and imputation! Look again, for the anxious sinner has laid his unsteady hand upon the head of the offering; and hark, he is confessing over it his sins. But what is this? The gentle and holy priest, as if waking to sudden vengeance, has plunged the knife into the meek, unresisting heart, and the vital stream of the atonement baptizes the altar. Bowing his head, as if he looked through the emblem to a future Cross, the sinner receives from the priestly hand the sprinkling of a hyssop-branch dipped in expiation, and he knows himself to be pardoned. What is this scene? My fellow-sinner, it is sacrifice, it is atonement, it is the prelusive cross and passion, it is the Old Testament sacrament expounding the new. Only a dim morning twilight was that levitical Gospel compared with our meridian illumination. Jesus cries, Look unto me and be ye saved! It is the perpetual voice with which we come to you. Looking is believing. ‘Suck looking is salvation. Look and live. Look away from self, and even from faith as wrought in yourself, unto the great and sole meritorious ground of acceptance. The faith which, by pre-eminence, saves the soul, looks at Christ. Bitten by fiery serpents, and burning with deadly poison in the veins, the Israelite in the desert gives one look, one look, at the lifted brazen type, and lives.” As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so [hath] the Son of Man [been] lifted up, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.” Believeth on him! And do I believe? Oh! do I believe? Look steadily. Look in one direction, and see to it, that direction be not self- ward. Unlearn the perverse lesson of a lifetime, and turn your thoughts yonder, towards the light, towards the healing serpent, towards the cross, towards the heart of divine love that breaks in agony upon the accursed tree, out of very longing for your salvation. Look, for looking is believing. And while you look, and believe, and receive Christ as offered, and repose all your weight on Mm as yom* ultimate rest; yea, while you are forgetting self in the contemplation of him who is all your salvation and all your desiie... the God of Justice and of Mercy, is writing your name among the ungodly who are justified. The Author and Finisher of faith, who has been leading you to believe, has in that instant and by that faith knit you indissolubly to his Son. As surely as you believe in Christ, so surely the righteousness of Christ has become yours. ISTor is there a height or a depth, in heaven or earth, that can break the bond. “Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died? Yea, rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us!” Rom. viii. 34.