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3.13 - A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age
The Christianity of Paul
The Profound Act of Faith
It will be seen that Paul does not teach the abrogation or destruction of law; law still exists as truly as it ever did, and will exist so long as there is any sin, and will continue to be binding upon sinners so long as there are any sinners.
It is only the release from law of those that have died with Christ unto the flesh and risen with him in the Spirit that Paul teaches: the release, that is, of those that have faith in Christ. And such teaching is relieved from all possible flavor of antinomianism by Paul's view of the Christian life as a divine life, and by his profound conception of faith as the human condition of the inception and continuance of that life.
Faith, according to Paul, is the act whereby a man identifies himself with Christ, becomes actually one with him in nature, and is thus enabled to die and rise again with him. Faith is thus the indispensable, and at the same time the all-sufficient, condition of salvation. Viewed in this way, it is an act of the profoundest spiritual meaning.
It is not mere assent, intellectual or moral, it is not mere confidence in Christ's words or in his promises, it is not a mere belief that he is what he claims to be, but it is the reception of Christ himself into the soul. By it a man becomes completely one with Christ, for Christ enters into and abides with every believing, that is, every receptive, man.
Faith is thus not an act of a part only of man's nature, but of his whole nature, or rather, strictly speaking, it is not an act at all, but simply the attitude of receptivity toward Christ. Paul's view of the character and quality of faith appears perhaps as clearly as anywhere in the words: "By their unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by thy faith. Be not high-minded, but fear; for if God spared not the natural branches, neither will he spare thee." [Rom. 11:20,21]
It is clear, therefore, that the essence of faith, according to Paul, is the renunciation of confidence in self, and the absolute dependence upon and trust in another; a spirit of humility and self-renunciation which alone fits one for the indwelling of Christ. So long as this attitude of receptivity, this self-emptiness and openness to the Divine Spirit, is maintained, Christ dwells in the man, living in him and through him the Christian life, the free, spiritual life over which no law has dominion.
But if the faith be lost, if a man fall into unbelief, or become high-minded and fail to maintain the true attitude of receptivity, Christ will depart, and he will come again under the control of the flesh and under the dominion of the law. [This possibility Paul distinctly contemplates in Rom. 11:20 sq.]
Faith, or the attitude of receptivity toward the Spirit of God, thus conditions not merely the beginning, but the continuance of the Christian life. Only to a receptive man will the Divine Spirit be given, and only in such a man will it abide. [The harmonization of this idea with the conception of the absoluteness of God's election, which is asserted so unequivocally in Romans 9, Paul nowhere attempts. But it is to be noticed that his sweeping statement of God's unconditional sovereignty in the matter of election is made in reply to the Jews, who supposed that their efforts after legal righteousness gave them a claim on God, and that God was bound to give them life as a reward. In opposition to such a claim Paul asserts that God is bound by nothing in man; but that he is absolutely free and sovereign, and may elect whom he pleases without any regard to the character or accomplishments of the person or class thus elected. The claim, which they make, is not that they have faith, --Paul would not have answered such a claim thus, -- but that they have merit. On the other hand, over against those who excuse themselves on the ground that they are not to blame, if God thus elects and condemns according to his own good pleasure, Paul is no less decisive in his assertion of human responsibility and in his insistence that the Jews' rejection is due to their own want of faith (Rom. 9:32). Paul leaves these two divergent lines of thought unreconciled, as they are left in the Old Testament; but the fact that with a particular polemic interest he asserts so strongly God's absolute and unconditioned sovereignty should not lead us to suppose that he intends to imply that the exercise of faith upon which he expressly conditions salvation is not in man's own power.]
Used by permission of the publisher.
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