16. XIV. The Promise the Free Gift of God, yet Earned by Man
XIV. The Promise the Free Gift of God, yet Earned by Man The promise is the free, gracious act of God, proceeding out of His own nature and purpose, and not earned by man as a reward or resulting from any joint agreement or bargain between the two parties. For example, some such bargain between God and man is supposed according to certain common pagan conceptions of sacrifice.
Prometheus offered a victim in sacrifice, and divided the carcase into two parts, offering the gods their choice; they chose the larger heap, which included all the bones and worthless parts of the victim, leaving to the offerer the finest portions of the flesh.
So, again, the Hindus acquired merit (dharma) proportionate to the number and splendour of the victims offered; and each acquisition of dharma was stored up as invested power in the bank of faith, until in one case a king acquired such an accumulation of strength as to be dangerous to the gods themselves. So in the common conception of Greek and Roman suppliants the act of prayer was a regular bargain between the worshipper and God; the suppliant entreated for such and such reward, stipulating by vow that he would pay so much in offering and gifts: if the deity thought the offering sufficient, he fulfilled the prayer, and the suppliant paid his vow: it was, however, always possible that the suppliant might cheat the god after the prayer was granted, though by such dishonesty he incurred the wrath of the god and was sure to suffer ultimately through some act of the divine power, for he had made his god his enemy. So again the blood of the victim was in some cases regarded as a means of giving strength to the god and thus enabling him to fulfil the prayer of the suppliant.
All such theories of the Divine nature were to Paul degrading to man and sure to work a deterioration in his character and conduct; and this deterioration is progressive, increasing from stage to stage. The Promise and the gift of salvation are the free act of the goodness of God, unbought by man.
Yet while this act is perfectly free and not motived by the conduct of man, it must be earned by man before it becomes operative. There is no contradiction between the two statements: the Promise is the free gift of God, and yet it must be earned by man. The two assertions seem to Paul to be quite harmonious. As Paul said to the simple Lycaonian pagans of Lystra, rain and fruitful seasons are the free gift of God to men, “filling their hearts with food and gladness”. The rain and the climate and the soil are always there; but the food and gladness are gained by work. Before soil and rain can be made to produce harvest, there is much labour needed on the part of man. He has to earn the gifts before they become anything to him. He has to go out of himself, to expend energy, to sacrifice the present for the future, and to give a part of himself, before the free gifts of God materialise in real benefit to him.
There is always needed this double action, both on the part of God and on the part of man. The latter must respond to God. He must seek for Him. Such is the rule of the universe. The Divine in man answers to the Divine above man, and makes a step in the long course upwards towards reunion. This principle is evident in the humbler and more material sphere; otherwise human life would fail. Judaism and Christianity universalised this principle over the moral universe. In other words, the Hebrew Faith, as Paul learned it from his birth and inherited it from his forefathers, forced into his nature the truth that we attain to God, not by sacrificing and shaking off our individuality, but by perfecting it. From the statement of this truth we started in Section X, and to it we now return.
Paul states this apparent contradiction, that the Promise is a free gift of God and yet it must be earned by man, most emphatically in the letter to the Php 3:7-15. His righteousness is not his own: it is the gift of God through Faith: there is nothing else of the smallest value in the whole world except this knowledge, through which he has obtained fellowship with the sufferings of Jesus and has come to be in conformity with the life which was consummated by the death of Jesus. He had no part in attaining this condition: he had simply been seized upon by Christ without conscious action on his own part. Yet, as he also says, he has not yet actually succeeded, on his own side, in seizing Christ: he has not yet attained: he has not yet been made righteous: in other words, his part has not yet been completely performed. He is only struggling onwards through the hard trials of life, forgetting everything except the prize of righteousness that lies before him, hurrying towards the goal like a runner straining every nerve and staking all his energy in reaching the mark and gaining the prize. He has not attained salvation, and yet he has attained it. He has not been made perfect, and yet he is made perfect: “let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus minded” Php 3:15. The perfect union with God, then, is the complete development and perfection of the individual nature. Not even Mohammedanism, much as it has sacrificed of this truth, has forgotten it wholly. These are all religions of energy and of work (though history shows how little Islam has remained true to its start).