34. XXXII. Faith unto Salvation
XXXII. Faith unto Salvation When the true nature and meaning of the Pauline term “faith” is understood, we see that the greatest difficulties which Paulinism presents to the modern mind rest on a misconception of the word.
“Why should I be condemned because another man sinned, or made righteous because another has paid the penalty for me?” That is the question which constantly rises in one form or another to the mind of the ordinary man in modern time, and to a somewhat less degree probably in ancient time: every age has its own special difficulties to meet and its questions to put. As has been pointed out in Section XVII, we are, according to Paul, condemned not because another man sinned, but because we ourselves sin; and I do not hesitate to say that according to Paul we are made righteous, not simply because another man, even Jesus, has paid the penalty for us, but because we, through faith in Jesus and in His death on behalf of all men, attain to righteousness. This appears too markedly contrary to some widely received conceptions of Pauline teaching: is it justifiable as an expression of his thought? The usual conception of Pauline teaching may be very roughly stated thus. Salvation is procured, not by ceremonial observance and ritual acts of outward homage and external respect towards Divine power, nor even by obedience to the highest moral law which requires that man should“do justly and love mercy and walk humbly with God,”
Paul does not object to this desire and choice of the ordinary reasonable man. Such was apparently his own original aim in life. He came to Jerusalem to live the higher life; he eagerly desired to do rightly; and in attempting with his whole heart and soul to carry into effect this eager desire, he found himself trampling on what was best in his nation, an accomplice in the murder or attempted murder of the noblest among his own people, and a hater and enemy of the Lord Himself. The discovery that his enthusiasm to serve God aright had led him headlong into such perverse and shameful conduct produced the most profound effect on his judgment. He saw that the result of the eager desire to live one’s own life well through one’s own effort must be utter failure. We cannot do what we desire to do: we are inevitably led into sin and wrong-doing, partly by our own nature, partly by the perverting influence of the errors and sins of preceding generations, as the iniquity of the fathers is visited on the children and produces in them an ever-increasing liability to error, partly by the very law itself which stands above us and which we strive to obey. Paul felt keenly that the law had in itself been an influence to lead him astray: it had drawn his attention away from the truth: he had set it in the place of God, and it had concealed from him the true nature of God and the purpose of Christ.
Paul himself, therefore, had natural sympathy with that judgment and intention of the common man. He began so, and he knew both what was good in that intention, and what was mistaken. In the natural condition of human character, when it is not yet too much perverted by wrong choice and wrong aspirations, and has not yet begun to aim deliberately at wrongdoing for its own sake or as a means to gain some ulterior object, the ordinary reasonable man desires to do rightly, to act according to a good standard of conduct, and to gain thereby the rewards in character and in external blessings which ought (as he thinks) to accompany and result from good action. His natural sense of right accepts this as a just principle and a fair measure of treatment.
It is often argued that righteous action of this kind is of a lower class than the righteousness that is gained by faith, and therefore would not be sufficient to merit salvation. Theologians labour to prove this by a variety of considerations and arguments, on which we need not enter. The natural sense of fairness in the ordinary man of our time is not convinced by them; and the Gospel of Paul, in so far as it is recommended by such methods, fails to touch him.
Such theological arguments are, however, beside the point: they never touch the real problem with which we are here concerned: they do not interpret rightly the mind of Paul. To the Apostle the crux of the whole situation lay, not in the fact that righteousness if so gained is in itself of a lower order, but in the fact that righteousness cannot be attained in this way. If the way were possible, if it led to success and to true righteousness, all would be well. But it cannot lead to success: it does not produce true righteousness. Sometimes it leads to appalling error and crime: sometimes it produces less terrible, but still quite unsatisfactory results. There is no possible way of permanently right action except through the driving power of faith in the one greatest ideal, when it has made itself a real thing to us and in us.
Examine the question in every way you please. Take it historically. The history of the past was, as Paul saw and as every pagan thinker and poet (except Virgil, sometimes) acknowledged, a process of deterioration and degeneration. Man was not growing better. Racial sin had vitiated the whole fabric of society, and lowered the national standard of judgment and conduct. Take it in the typical case of the first man, Adam. He had sinned where every circumstance was in his favour. Take it in the individual case: no man can feel that, as he grows older, he grows better, except through faith and the consequent self-sacrifice in that greatest ideal which is Christ, with the hope and the love that accompany it.
Another way was needed. Except by another path righteousness could not be attained. God had shown that way through Jesus. It is the way of dying that one may live, of suffering that one may triumph.