§ 106. The self-consciousness characterizing those assumed into living fellowship with Christ may be set forth under both conceptions, Regeneration and Sanctification.
- If it be the essence of redemption that the God-consciousness already present in human nature, though feeble and repressed, becomes stimulated and made dominant by the entrance of the living influence of Christ, the individual on whom this influence is exercised attains a religious personality not his before. Before this the God-consciousness was evinced only casually in isolated flashes, never kindling to a steady flame. The God-consciousness was not in a position to take constant control of the various elements of life. Even those elements actually controlled by it were in fact always quickly submerged by elements of a contrary nature; whereas a devout personality must be taken to mean one in which every mainly passive element is part of the relation to the God-consciousness produced by the influence of the Redeemer; and every active element is due to an impulse of the same God-consciousness. Life thus comes under a different formula, making it a life that is new; hence the phrases ‘a new man,’ ‘a new creature,’ 1 which bear the same sense as our phrase ‘a new personality.’ This new life of course presents itself as something in process of becoming, for the individual identity persists and the new life can only, as it were, be grafted on to the old. And yet the situation in which the new life is present as something in process of becoming, when related in memory to the situation in which it was not present at all, can be attached and bound together with the old into one continuous personal life only by assuming a turning-point at which the continuity of the old ceased, and that of the new began to be in process of becoming. This is the essence of the conception ‘regeneration.’ Similarly from another point of view the growing continuity of the new life in which the elements answering to its formula are more and more integrated and the elements representing the old life recur ever more feebly and rarely is denoted by the expression ‘sanctification.’
If now in this connexion we recall what was said before, namely, that the relation of Christ to the rest of humanity is exactly the same as the relation within His personality of its divine to its human element, we may add that these two conceptions, regeneration and sanctification, set forth just the same distinction as between the act of uniting and the state of union; except that in that instance first of all one Person originated intact, and so the state of union too was an unbroken continuity, and an uninterrupted diffusion through the human nature; which would, accordingly, happen in this instance too were it not that, through the identity of the subject with the earlier personality, elements from the life of sinfulness are still present as a hindrance. And as in that former instance one could not exist without the other, so here we cannot isolate regeneration or sanctification.
- The formulation of this division being thus generally justified, we need only add to what has already been said 2 one remark about the order adopted. The part which has just been concluded, dealing with the kingly office of Christ, might of itself have led in the most natural way to a description of the new corporate life over which He holds sway; and as the incitements that bring about this assumption into living fellowship with Christ come to each man only from this corporate life, and as the sanctification of each depends on the effective influence upon him of the whole, this doctrine might very well have been treated in the next section. But the other arrangement is equally correct. For, the entrance of Christ into humanity being its second creation, humanity thus becomes a new creature, and one may regard this entrance as also the regeneration of the human race, which to be sure only actually comes to pass in the form of the regeneration of individuals. And as the community of believers in its true essence consists only of the totality of the sanctified elements of all who are assumed into living fellowship with Christ, so again the sanctification of the individual includes everything by which the fellowship is constituted and maintained and extended. In view of this symmetrical interlocking, the order taken justifies itself for one reason, because while individuals are indeed originally laid hold of by Christ, yet at the same time it is always by an influence of Christ Himself, mediated by His spiritual presence in the Word, that individuals are assumed into the fellowship of the new life; but, above all, because the earlier place is more suitable for what in one aspect relates back to the old corporate life of general sinfulness but in another aspect lies at the base of the new common life under grace. This double reference holds for both of the conceptions to be discussed in this Division. While regeneration is for the individual the turning-point at which the earlier life as it were breaks off and the new begins, it can also be regarded as the vanishing of the old life in a fashion explicable only by the redeeming activity of Christ, which, be it noted, takes effect in such wise that simultaneously therewith the power of the new life is implanted in the soul. The treatment of the theme has therefore both a backward reference to the previous division of the subject and an anticipation of the main lines of the next Section, where the power of the new life is considered as the common spirit which animates the whole. Sanctification also has two aspects: from one point of view it is measured by the degree in which the common sinfulness is more or less rapidly overcome in the individual soul; from the other it is measured by the relation of the individual soul to the new corporate life in the service of which it makes more or less rapid progress.
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