St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. Gore Charles

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Pharisees, abandoned to ecclesiastical observances. All moral codes or standards, sanctioned by a society or class and involving no more than a limited liability, come under the moral category of 'works of a law.' They all are apt to leave men as independent of God as the Pharisees, and as resentful of the fuller light. The late Master of Balliol expresses a characteristic opinion that the notions of 'legal righteousness,' or of 'the pride of human nature,' or 'the tendency to rebel against the will of God, or to attach an undue value to good works[42],' are 'fictions as applied to our own time[43].' But this is surely lamentably untrue. Men all round us dread the idea of committing themselves to God. They do not know how far it will carry them. They are like would-be soldiers who should refuse to enlist till they had had some assurance as to the extremest risk that their service might involve. Thus, because they cannot get this assurance, they will make no beginning of the life of real faith. They live by a limited code which retains their independence for them. If they are also ecclesiastically minded, the 'legal righteousness' always involved in this sort of morality becomes even outwardly more like that of the Pharisees, and it is not very uncommon among churchmen. But the whole habit of mind, inside or outside the area of professed churchmanship, has its root in what is properly and profoundly human pride and the false clinging to independence of God. This 'pride of life' seems to be almost more dangerous and, in fact, disastrous than even 'the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes.' Thus if we can only get St. Paul's doctrine of the necessity of faith rightly understood, there is no teaching more necessary for these times.

And, on the other hand, where men are really ready to follow the light and do God's will, they need—they need exceedingly for the good of the whole body—to realize St. Paul's teaching about justification, that is, about God's constant attitude towards men, in order to obtain that peace which is meant to be, not the far-off goal of Christian life, but its basis and foundation. When a person is continuously apprehensive and excited about his spiritual state, he is not in the temper of mind in which he can best serve God or work out his own or other men's salvation. 'Peace must go before as well as follow after; a peace, too, not to be found in the necessity of law (as philosophy has sometimes held), but in the sense of the love of God to His creatures. He has no right to this peace, and yet he has it.' In these words of the same writer whom we just now were obliged to criticize we may find a simple expression of the truth. 'Wherefore, being accepted of God simply because we take Him at His word, let us have and hold peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ[44].' Then we can throw ourselves without embarrassments into the life of love and sacrifice, the life which has the love of God in Christ for its motive, and reflects it among men.

      No doubt we must admit that St. Paul's doctrine of justification has not been generally appreciated in the Church—the fact is strange, but it is indisputable. No doubt also we must admit that those who have chiefly been identified with it have often even disastrously distorted it. No doubt, as a result both of this neglect and of this distortion, the ordinary religious Englishman of the present day is disposed to pass it by as having little meaning for him. Nevertheless it remains true that no revival of religion can ever attain to any ripeness or richness unless this central doctrine of St. Paul's gospel resumes its central place with us also. For, as St. Paul preached it, it means this above all else—personal devotion to Jesus Christ as our redeemer. This personal devotion begins by accepting from Him the unmerited boon of forgiveness of our sins, and (what is only the other side of such forgiveness) inheritance in the consecrated body. But the consciousness of what we have received from Christ, and the price it cost Him to put it at our disposal, gives to the whole subsequent life the character of a devotion based on gratitude. This is the Christian life according to St. Paul—personal devotion to Christ and personal service based on gratitude for what He has done for us. 'For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who for their sakes died and rose again.'

[1] Acts xx. 23.

[2] Hort's Prolegomena to Romans and Ephesians (Macmillan, 1895), p. 9.

[3] Sanday and Headlam's Commentary (T. & T. Clark, 1895), p. xxviii. This commentary is henceforth referred to as S. & H.

[4] See Rom. ii. 17; iii. 9, &c.

[5] See Rom. i. 13; xi. 13-32; xv. 14-21.

[6] Rom. xvi. 3.

[7] See Rom. vi. 17, and remarks p. 234; cf. S. & H., p. xli.

[8] Acts xv. 1-35.

[9] Gal. ii. 1-10.

[10] Rom. xv. 25-32.

[11] Hort, l.c., p. 44.

[12] Rom. i. 10, 11; xv. 22-24.

[13] On the relation between the two, see later, p. 168.

[14] 1 Macc. ii. 42; vii. 13 ff.

[15] John v. 44.

[16] Matt. xv. 6; xxiii. 23.

[17] Rom. x. 3.

[18] Acts xv. 10.

[19] Rom. vii. 7.

[20] See the argument of Gal. iii. 15-22. 'God is one' in a sense which excludes the idea of any relatively independent contracting party over against Him.

[21] Acts xxvi. 14.

[22] Col. ii. 20-22.

[23] 2 Tim. i. 12.

[24] Rom. x. 5-8.

[25] Cf. iii. 22, 26, &c.

[26] 2 Cor. v. 19; Rom. iv. 25.

[СКАЧАТЬ