3. A gift to mankind of the spirit and life that was in His Flesh and Blood.-John vi. 51 and 63.

Those three petitions of the Lord's own prayer in which we ask for deliverance from the Evil One, forgiveness of our trespasses, and daily bread, seem to be a supplication that God will realise to each of us what His Son made possible for mankind.

CHAPTER III.

The Soteriology of the New Testament-Continued.

WE

IV. THE TEACHING OF ST. PAUL.

E now have to consider how our Lord's Apostles, enlightened by the Holy Ghost, seemed to regard the redeeming work of Christ. And first we will examine St. Paul's Epistles.

In four of his Epistles St. Paul has occasion to speak in set terms of the work which Christ accomplished for mankind in dying on the cross. In all his Epistles he alludes to it; but the brief allusions of the other Epistles add nothing to the doctrine of the four more important passages. These, therefore, we will consider in detail. The fullest statement is in the Epistle to the ROMANS.

St. Paul's doctrine is strongly coloured by the fact that he was a convert from Pharisaism. As a Pharisee he had believed himself to be righteous (díxa10s). His conversion opened his eyes to the fact that this was in reality self-righteousness, and that the righteousness which is of God and which avails before God (δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ)

1 That by "the righteousness of God" St. Paul means the righteousness which is of God, which God bestows upon us, by remitting our

is something very different. No amount of observances gya vóμov) will justify a man if he be at heart selfish, proud, and worldly (oagzinós). We have within us a good self and a bad self (the spirit and the flesh). The Law has no power to redeem us from our bad self. The utmost it can do is to make us miserably conscious of our bad self. And this is the right point of view from which to approach the doctrine of Christ's atonement.

It may be useful to paraphrase the passages which set it forth.

iii. 23-26. All having sinned, we can only be justified (set right with God) by means of the redemption that we have in Christ.

God, in His eternal counsels, purposed that Christ should be to us what the mercy-seat' was to the Jews, the source of all our hope of Divine favour, our trust being in His blood, that is in His sacrifice. God's purpose was to exhibit thus His own righteousness, that is, His own mode of establishing a right relation between Himself and mankind. He had overlooked trangression heretofore, and he would now vindicate this forbearance, and show that it had been in view of the coming atonesins, is clear from Romans iii. 21-24, where he explains it to mean our being justified freely by His grace. It means therefore God's method of justifying man, i.e. of putting him into a right relation to Himself. See p. 64.

1 It makes no real difference in the import of the passage whether (with Chrysostom, Theodoret, Luther, Calvin, and Grotius) we translate aorηplov as the " mercy-seat" on which the blood of the sin-offering was sprinkled, or (with the Vulgate and English version) as the "propitiation" which that sin-offering effected; or the sin offering itself (with Alford).

ment; thus proving Himself both just and justifying— just in requiring atonement, and justifying all who make faith in Christ their principle of action. '

1

In the fifth chapter the Apostle institutes a comparison or rather contrast between Adam and Christ, showing that the benefits resulting from Christ's work are co-extensive with the evils from Adam's fall. A reign of sin and death was developed from Adam's one sin; a reign of grace was developed from Christ's allholy life.

v. 6-11. The Apostle dwells on the exceeding love of God in giving His Son to die for us while we were yet sinners. (Thus the Father's love was the moving cause, not the result, of the atonement.) "If, while we were yet sinners, Christ undertook by dying to render it possible for God to receive us into favour, much more will He now save us from again forfeiting that favour. For if while we were alienated from God, we were reconciled to God (made-at-one with God) through the death of His Son; much more surely shall we, now that we are reconciled, be saved in His life; that is, be kept safe in that divine life which we draw from Him."

Then he goes on to institute a comparison between the reign of sin and death that dated from Adam, and the reign of grace and life that dates from Christ. It is clearly a mistake to see in this passage any doctrine of imputation. He is speaking simply of a propensity to sin which would never have been developed in the

1 Literally-him who is of faith in Jesus-i.e. him who is, or whose character is, the result of faith in Jesus.

race but for the sin of Adam; and of an obedience which, being rendered by One of the race, restores the race to right relations towards God (v. 19).

Thus we see that in these two passages St. Paul is speaking of the passive and of the active work of Christ.

From the third chapter we learn what His passive work, His suffering, has accomplished for us :-it has made atonement (at-one-ment or reconciliation to God) possible.

From the fifth chapter we see what the active work of Christ, His all-holy life, has done for us—it has given us a standard towards which the Divine life which He infuses into us is ever raising us.

In the next chapter (vi. 1-11) St. Paul seems to point to the very same solution of the mystery of atonement by death which we thought we found suggested by Christ's words at the institution of the Eucharist (supra, pp. 173-8). The whole force of the passage turns on the thought that in Christ's death we all died. Christ, as the head of the race, virtually and potentially crucified mankind's worse self (the flesh, or old Adam), and so removed that which separated us from God and barred our restoration to favour. St. Paul gives us a most helpful thought in saying that what Baptism is to the individual, that Christ's death was to the race :'-It not only pledged the race to mortification of the sinful self, but also imparted an inward and spiritual grace enabling all who would appropriate it by faith to work out this mortification of the sinful self.

Again this sacramental grace of Christ's death was

1 See Extract from St. Augustine, p. 296, sub finem.