This is still the only tenable distinction if, conversely, we look back on the old life from the standpoint of the new. That strength of the God-consciousness is not original; it is a gift which becomes ours only after sin has developed its power; and what has emerged in time can be removed in time only by its opposite. Hence not merely is approximation to the goal delayed by the fact that what have become habitual and therefore often and easily provoked sins have to be countered by the aforesaid power of repulsion, but inasmuch as the sinfulness of each has a ground in existence prior to him and external to him, his sin cannot be perfectly blotted out, but remains always something in process of disappearance. In so far as it has not yet disappeared, it may make itself visible, and acts will occur within the state of sanctification similar to those common before regeneration, where what emerges is the power of the sinful common life, whereas the traces of preparatory grace lie deeply hidden. Nay more; since even in sanctification growth does not take place without a preliminary struggle between the old man and the new, this struggle cannot at any point in its whole course be viewed as an even advance to increase in the power of the one and decrease in the power of the other. By the influence of the sinful common life around us our own sinfulness is constantly being stirred up again. In itself it might be steadily limited by the growth of the new man, but this cannot equally be said of the reinforcements it receives from without. At least in view of the variegated changes in this sphere, where in the most irregular and unforeseen ways the individual life is held in grip, more firmly or more slackly, by the common sinful life, it could only be explained by a special miracle, and not by the ordinary course of divine grace among men, if in that struggle there were not special moments when the power of sin came out more strongly than in the earlier moments. Even after regeneration, then, many and varied conditions appear, among others repentance, and this by no means always merely in the form of slight compunction for trifles. But this repentance is distinguished from every previous repentance by the fixed inward resolution to be no longer under the power of sin, and is to be conceived as a vanishing quantity in the same way as the repentance which, so long as even in obedience some opposition to the impulses proceeding from Christ makes itself felt, accompanies all actions which appear as fruits of this obedience, yet also show traces of opposition. Even if these intermittent evidences of the continued presence of sin make particular instants, as compared with others, seem relapses, none the less a settled consciousness remains that the longer the series of such fluctuations observed, the greater is the advance seen to be on the whole, and that the certainty of faith as an understanding of what union with Christ means and as a delight in that union is always increasing, so that in the powers put at Christ’s disposal sin can never win fresh ground, while all the time it is being dislodged from its former positions. It is chiefly by this fact, that sin can win no new ground, that the state of sanctification is most definitely distinguished from all that went before.

3. If now, on the other hand, we consider how this condition approximates to likeness to Christ, there has above been drawn a boundary line which it is not given to us to overstep. From the beginning of His incarnation onwards Christ developed in every way naturally yet constantly and uninterruptedly in organic union with the indwelling principle of His life, and in its service. To no other who brings with him a personality that has shared the common life of sinfulness is this vouchsafed. This difference from Christ must, strictly speaking, be there at every moment, and it will come into actual consciousness in proportion to the clarity of our self-consciousness in relation to the divine—that is, our illumination. For wherever there is imperfection, especially such as not merely represents the form of development in time, but is a real imperfection touching the relation between deed and motive, there will also be a basis for the recollection, and to that extent for an actual realization, of the old life; and therefore even in moments really involving an advance in likeness to Christ, there will also exist a consciousness of sin. But this does not prevent union with Christ from being operative in every moment of the state of sanctification; and thus at every moment that life merits the description given in our proposition.

This is already involved in the analogy suggested—namely, that regeneration may be regarded as the divine act of union with human nature and sanctification as the state constituted by that union. Just as that act of union would have been an empty illusion had it not produced an enduring state of living union in which the two elements were inseparable, the human nature in all its performances proving itself the instrument of the divine power, so the activity of divine power in Christ that in regeneration flows out from Him and unites individuals to Himself would be nothing at all, would be indistinguishable from the most fleeting and superficial impulses, and as far as possible from being the end of the old life and the beginning of the new, unless that act showed itself operative in every moment in time, making every moment a recapitulation of the first, and, as it were, a being laid hold of afresh by the receptive activity of Christ—every moment thus including in itself a new determination to live not for self but in fellowship with Christ. Taken together, these two things involve the sinless perfection of Christ and, for the introspective self-consciousness, His blessedness. To make clear here, too, the limits of the likeness and the difference, we shall have to distinguish a constant and a variable within this growing correspondence between the elements of our life and the impulses proceeding from Christ. Viewed as a renewal of regeneration every moment is like every other, and is a participation in the perfection and blessedness of Christ; for without this no reception into fellowship with Him is possible. This constant is in its one aspect the ever self-renewed willing of the Kingdom of God, on which every single act and resolve of Christ was based. In its other aspect it is the consciousness of the union of the Divine Essence with human nature through Christ, as was the case in Christ in every detail of His self-consciousness. All this is participation in blessedness, since union with the Supreme Being is absolute satisfaction; it is equally participation in sinless perfection, for the kingdom of God excludes all sin, yet includes strength for all good. The variable factor, i.e. everything else occurring as a particular item in the life of the regenerate, lies within the limits so drawn. Particular actions show in their execution more or less sin, and so do particular purposes. The actual individual self-consciousness bears witness to this in many a moment of sorrow, where the sorrow is assuaged by the simultaneous presence of the constant factor. At other moments the self-consciousness is a joy that passes into humility because its only right to exist is found in what assuages the sorrow lying so near it.

Any further doctrine there is to formulate concerning the state of sanctification must bear upon this antithesis between the element that belongs to the starting-point and the element that belongs to the goal.

FIRST THEOREM: THE SINS OF THE REGENERATE

§ III. Since they are continually being combated, the sins of those in the state of sanctification always carry their forgiveness with them and have no power to annul the divine grace of regeneration.

1. Taking together the two propositions just laid down, namely, that in the state of sanctification no new sins develop, and that in all moments, in all acts and works, even in the best and likest to Christ, some trace of sin exists belonging to the former state,³ it becomes clear that in the state of sanctification there can be no sin which could make regeneration nugatory. For every sinful act includes a resistance on the part of the new man, albeit not a persistent or successful resistance; and therefore in such acts, just as much as in those where the old man is overborne, the new man is seen to be active, and therefore still alive. It is, of course, only in moments of defeat that anyone has ever fancied that the state of grace might be lost; yet in this region there is no definite contrast between defeat and victory, but only a distinction of less or more in which no definite point can be fixed at which the result begins to be fatal. If we do seek to establish such a contrast, pronouncing this a sinful act and that a good work, we are merely naming it by its preponderating quality. In some cases, indeed, the difference seems almost infinite; yet if the sin be the deed of a regenerate man, it cannot be the same sin as a sin ever so like it in the unregenerate; if only for this reason, that in it as in his good works a constant element is present. Everyone who observes himself or others will note acts which fluctuate between the two descriptions, and cases in which it is adventitious circumstances that tip the balance one way or the other, making the same action at one time a good work though on the point of becoming a sin, and at another time a sin instead of a good work. The state of grace cannot possibly be lost in the first case and not in the second. The principle we here go by, namely, that in the state of sanctification no new sin can develop, seems rather indefinite. No action is quite identical with any previous action, and it is not every sin that is a novelty. The labelling, therefore, of any given action as novel seems to depend on a rather arbitrary estimate of the degree in which it is to be regarded as akin or similar to previous actions—a point of which, strictly speaking, a man can judge only for himself. This, and no more, can be laid down in general terms. Taking regeneration in the sense we have given it, and assuming that only subsequent to it a sense-function develops which previously was latent, or that relations are formed so entirely new that they awaken an echo in those elements of our being in which sin previously resided, everyone must confess that it is inconceivable that such a function or such relations should develop in sinful fashion. And in the same way, if in an individual we conceive of any function or relation whatsoever which by personal idiosyncrasy or the influence of training and social morality, was kept so constantly pure even before regeneration that no sin ever arose out of it, it is unthinkable that after regeneration sin should effect an entrance at that point. What follows is clear enough. In every case where sin appears to have entered we must say either that the sin is not really new, but belongs to a former period and has simply been revived; or else that regeneration has not been of a right and true kind, inasmuch as sinfulness has borne new fruit.

Also from another point of view we must reject the proposition contradictory of ours. The assertion that a regenerate man, though a new man, might by an act lose the grace of regeneration stands in the closest connexion with the idea already rejected, that our first parent could by an act lose the characteristics he still had while acting. If the reply be made that grace is not lost by the act of the new man, but by his not acting, this again conflicts with the assumption that regeneration is the beginning of the life of Christ in us, a life which necessarily is action. In fact, it is evident, just as before, that however such a destructive action might be conceived, the grace of regeneration would have to have been lost previously. Indeed, loyalty to the concept of regeneration permits us another analogy. It would be through the co-operation of the very impulses proceeding from Christ that a man would have to proclaim his severance from living fellowship with Christ, just as, in the case of the Evil Spirit, it was through the very powers that made him most akin to God that he broke away from that relation—the same result following in each case.

Finally, if we return to the problem of how we are definitely to differentiate the condition of sanctification (whether it can be lost or not) from the condition obtaining within the common life of sinfulness (though under the influence of preparatory grace), the problem forces us to make a distinction between the work of divine grace on men and in and through men. If the latter be not a purely momentary thing, ever ebbing again, and equivalent to no more than inspiration, it goes without saying that it must be continuous; for if even this work of grace could be imagined as ceasing, its duration, whether long or short, would always make it a mere inspiration. The proposition contradictory of ours, therefore, must choose between a self-effected alteration of man’s own nature, and a voluntary self-withdrawal of divine grace previous to the decisive action, just as before the fall of man a withdrawal is supposed to have taken place of an extraordinary, restraining divine grace. It seems impossible, therefore, that the doctrine opposed to ours can in this conceptual form be derived from the self-consciousness of one who is conscious of divine grace. For even if we concede that a moment of regeneration is not capable of being definitely isolated in perceptible self-consciousness, and also that the assurance of a form of life antagonistic to the former condition does not at once supervene, still we must agree that in actual experience the manifestations of the new life become ever more continuous, and that confidence in the endurance of this living union with Christ thus becomes more and more a feature of the perceptible self-consciousness, for in spite of all fluctuations an increasing sway of the life of Christ over the flesh marks out the state of sanctification This natural confidence answering to the fact of regeneration can be expressed in thought only by the first half of our theorem, and not by its contradictory.

2. Even though they are backed by teachers of repute, and have made their way into more than one confessional document, the opposing formulæ, that faith may be lost,⁴ that justification may be lost, and that grace may be lost,⁵ have the less claim on our acceptance that other credal statements clearly expressing the confidence of our theorem are (in part explicitly, in part by implication) on our side.⁶

If we compare these differing statements with one another, certain facts emerge. First, the concept of falling away and the fallen, and the intrusion of a reference to baptism show that the formulæ opposed to ours are connected with old ecclesiastical decisions which rightly stood out against a harsh desire to exclude certain people. But those falling away, lapsing outwardly from the faith and forsaking the Church, had not necessarily lost faith inwardly: they abjured only outwardly through fear: that is to say, it was merely in courage they were imperfect. Nor were the baptized all regenerate then any more than now. Such, therefore, as forsook Christianity, to enjoy perhaps more sensual freedom, had not been completely laid hold of and were not yet possessed of genuine faith and justification. Secondly, as soon as this same concept ‘falling away’ is applied to our present circumstances in the same sense that it involves loss of faith or justification, the question what sort of sin it is that occasions this loss is answered in very different ways. To sin with knowledge and with will, to sin deliberately, and to continue in deliberate sin, are widely different.⁷ Taking the two extremes, the first belongs to that fluctuating less or more found in everyone who is in the state of sanctification, where even the imperfection of a good work is often enough known and willed; the second, deliberate continuance in a knowing and complete resistance, is obviously a case where regeneration has been only apparent. Thirdly, it is beyond doubt that if the doctrine of the inadmissibility of justifying divine grace (or, better expressed, the absolute trustworthiness of such grace) has not become an accepted dogma of the Church, this is entirely due to the controversy with the Roman Church and the polemic against fanatical sects; as indeed every dogmatic proposition which cannot be made good by analysis of the Christian self-consciousness must have its basis either in speculation or in some similarly external ground. This is clear enough for the further reason that it also covers the case of one continuing in sin deliberately. The fanatical caricature of this doctrine, which rests solely on an inward certainty of feeling, and enlarges the thesis by inverting it and giving it the form that whatever the regenerate man does is right or at least permissible, is quite familiar, but finds no support in the formula here adopted. So, too, the inference that the Roman Church seeks to draw from the doctrine of justification by faith is amply guarded against by our presupposition that the regenerate continuously struggles against sin. As for the wanton abuse of the doctrine, there is just as much excuse for it in the doctrine that one can always be converted again if one falls from grace as in the doctrine that the sins which may be committed by a regenerate man do not annul his state of grace. It is, however, much more in accord with our line of argument to meet the objection in view by saying that one who seeks such a subterfuge does not really want to struggle against sin and is therefore not regenerate; this whole doctrine has nothing whatever to do with his case. No ground therefore remains for seeking to improve upon the simple unforced utterance of the evangelical Christian self-consciousness by a preamble made up of additions untenable in themselves and confusing in their effect.

3. Neither is the declaration that in the state of sanctification sins always carry their forgiveness with them intended to mean that the regenerate man is conscious of forgiveness while he is sinning, or that he sins in and with this consciousness; the sin must come to consciousness as an accomplished fact and as accompanied by repentance; for forgiveness and repentance are mutually dependent. But this is certain, that resistance, even if not fortunate and victorious, is a presage of repentance, and hence too of the consciousness of forgiveness. The real meaning is simply that what is true of the concept of justification as a whole is true of this particular part of it. The gracious forgiveness of sins is not an individual decree or act bearing on the single life, nor is it merely declaratory; it is one that emancipates from the sphere of guilt and penal desert, and one that is general—being fulfilled, indeed, at some point of time for each individual, but being then really fulfilled, and needing no repetition. For the divine omniscience cannot in the act of forgiving sins regard them as altogether blotted out at the moment of regeneration, but only as gradually vanishing. If conversion be this turning-point, yet so that sin none the less reappears later, then even subsequent to it there must in consciousness be a relation to this act, though naturally an altered relation. In the life under the dominion of common sinfulness, sin is common guilt, and sins are not reckoned separately to individuals; each has his share in the common guilt and nothing is separately forgiven him. In the state of sanctification the converse is the case. Redemption is possible only in the form of a common life, and sin has its basis, strictly speaking, not in this common life, but only in the individual, in so far as he still has something in him of the old common life of sin. His is therefore not a guilt appertaining to the common life but to him as an individual, and it is so reckoned. It is only an apparent contradiction that sins are reckoned to him, and are yet always forgiven; not only because forgiveness itself is always a kind of reckoning, but because it is the only kind of reckoning that enters here. Sins are reckoned personally to the natural person who has passed out of the sinful common life into the new life, and indeed more personally to him than to one who still belongs to the old common life; they are not reckoned to the new man who, identifying himself with the whole through the feeling of community, does not carry in himself the sense of guilt. They are forgiven him because they can be reckoned only to the old man that he no longer is. Hence also he has the consciousness of forgiveness as soon as he is conscious of himself as being within the new common life. For in virtue of his willing the Kingdom of God and repudiating sin the continuity of the new life has not been interrupted, having always produced simultaneously some degree of resistance to sin. It is self-evident that this consciousness, in whatever degree it may be felt, cannot be simultaneous with sinning, that the repudiation of sin can make itself felt only after the event, and that the consciousness of forgiveness presupposes regret.

4. Since in dealing with the subject one can hardly avoid diverging into Christian Ethics, less might be said here about the struggle with sin itself, were it not that in this connexion too misunderstandings have arisen. It has now been made quite clear that in the state of sanctification the danger each is in of falling into sin comes from those departments of the sensuous life which before regeneration had exercised most power, and has its seat in those relations where habits in accordance with inclination were most easily formed. This sphere, within which lie the enticements which always are hardest to resist entirely, is the sphere of temptation for the individual. Now in everyone the activity of the life of Christ, issuing from His will for the Kingdom of God, defines itself by the demands that meet him in virtue of his position within the common life. That will takes shape in certain fixed aims; and these come to constitute a continuous will as the law of Christian morality begins to embrace the whole of life. Hence the sphere of temptation must lie within this sphere of vocation, taking that word in its widest sense. There can be no struggle against our own sin other than the struggle against the sin we actually encounter in the course of our activity in the Kingdom of God; and any action taken against such sin is part of this activity. The struggle therefore consists simply in this, that we seek to reject or conquer the temptations that arise in the course of this activity; and this formula must cover the whole campaign against whatever sins are possible within the varying course of the state of sanctification. Otherwise two differing yet parallel demands would arise, neither of which at any given moment could be fulfilled without infringing on the other. Both points can be made clear, as follows. The right use of divine forgiveness is conditioned in every case by the struggle against sin; but the right use of divine adoption by which, within the state of sanctification, even after sin, that is to say at every moment (for there is always some sin remaining), one can still say he is a child of God, is conditioned by the liveliness and activity of faith. And since forgiveness and adoption are one and the same, what conditions each must also be one and the same. There is therefore no such thing as a struggle at random against possible future sins, which could only mean the suppression or weakening of sensuous powers developed in a natural way, and injury to them as instruments of the spirit. Nor are there exercises in repentance consisting of special acts which do not arise out of our business in the Kingdom of God. Still less is there room for an arbitrary flight from the sphere of temptation which would be at the same time a flight from the sphere of duty; no such step could issue from our being taken up into living fellowship with Christ. Fellowship with Him is always a fellowship with His mission to the world, and this such a withdrawal would contradict. What remains as the one right course, is resistance to the temptations that actually occur.

SECOND THEOREM: THE GOOD WORKS OF THE REGENERATE

§ 112. The good works of the regenerate are natural effects of faith, and as such are objects of divine good pleasure. Apol. Conf. iii.: Deinde docemus, quomodo Deo placeat, si quid fit, videlicet non quia legi satisfacimus, sed quia sumus in Christo.—Artic. Smalc. xiii.: Hanc fidem sequuntur bona opera. Et quod in illis pollutum et imperfectum est, pro peccato et defectu non censetur, idque etiam propter Christum: atque ita totus homo, cum quoad personam suam tum quoad opera sua iustus et sanctus est… . Dicimus praeterea, ubi non sequuntur bona opera, ibi fidem esse falsam. —Expos. simpl. xvi.: Docemus enim vere bona opera enasci ex viva fide … et a fidelibus fieri secundum voluntatem vel regulam verbi Dei… . Etenim non probantur Deo opera et nostro arbitrio delecti cultus, … placent vero approbanturque a Deo quae a nobis fiunt per fidem, quia illi placent Deo propter fidem in Christum, quia faciunt opera bona … docemus Deum bona operantibus amplam dare mercedem… . Referimus tamen hanc mercedem non ad meritum hominis accipientis.—Conf. Mylhus. viii.: … . quamvis haec (fides) per opera caritatis se sine intermissione exerceat … attamen iustitiam et satisfactionem pro peccatis nostris non tribuimus operibus quae fidei fructus sunt. —Conf. Belg. xxiv.: Atque haec opera, quae a bona fidei radice proficiscuntur, coram Deo bona eique accepta sunt… . Facimus igitur bona quidem opera, sed neutiquam ut iis promereamur… . Interim tamen non negamus Deum bona opera remunerari.—Conf. Angl. xiv.: Opera, quae supererogationis appellant, non possunt sine arrogantia et impietate praedicari.

1. The discussions, so common in our confessional documents and in all older expositions of doctrine, of the idea that good works are not necessary for justification, we must regard as irrelevant to the subject; for if even the first point in the doctrine of regeneration be conceded, the idea is such as could occur to no one. Justification and conversion are mutually conditioned; hence as conversion cannot be conditioned by good works, neither is justification. And it would be odd to put the further question whether eternal life and blessedness are conditioned by good works. Both begin along with faith, for both are included in what we have seen to be the constant element existing in the soul from the moment of regeneration onwards. We cannot argue this particular point with anyone who dissents; we should first have to refute him on other points. Anyone who holds that good works are necessary to blessedness, because for him faith is mere knowledge, is using a different vocabulary from ours, or holding an entirely different doctrine of redemption.

The most remarkable misconception, however, is that which, in the course of this controversy, has led to the extravagant position that good works are injurious to salvation—a position only half-heartedly surrendered, as if there might be something in it, if only the proposition were defined more closely and with more propriety,⁸ so as to avoid all offence. The fact is, that works which would be injurious if a man put his trust in them would not be good works at all in our sense. Anyone who does truly good works has blessedness already in his faith, and therefore cannot find himself wanting first to rely upon his works.

On the other hand, the positive statement that good works are the natural effect of faith is so closely bound up with all that has been said above that it needs no explanation. Allowing ourselves to be taken up into living fellowship with Christ, we are laid hold of by the union of the divine with the human nature in His Person, and consent to this becomes a constant and active will to maintain and extend this union. Anything this will produces is a good work, were it only an incipient resistance to sin. Thus it is a needless anxiety that wants to deny that faith is conserved or retained by good works.⁹ If we imagine the retention of faith as if its implanting were something transitory (which it really is not, any more than any act of recognition), then we can only conceive the life of faith as a series of moments in which faith is always the same and unaltered. But it is impossible to conceive two moments of faith thus separated from one another without the first producing a good work before the second has come into existence. Hence the retention of faith, if for the moment we speak of such a thing, is always mediated by good works. The right thing to say is this, that our union with Christ in faith is, though not as completely, yet quite as essentially, an active obedience as His life was an active obedience of the human nature to the indwelling being of God within Him; and our reception into living fellowship with Him is the fruitful germ of all good works in the same way as the act of uniting was in His case the germ of all redeeming activity. This may also be expressed by saying that the regenerate cannot but do good works in virtue of faith; and it is surely a vain misunderstanding thereupon to interject the question: Are good works also free? To ask that involves the assumption that the weakest will, though the will most easily forced to change, is the most free, and that the hero of faith, who does not know how to describe his condition better than by saying that he ‘can do no other,’ is not free. The whole living susceptibility which is the condition of men in conversion is clearly a free condition; so is the will for the Kingdom of God arising from conversion, for there is no will without freedom. To be continuously and receptively open to the influence of Christ, and continuously active in will for His Kingdom, is the life-process of the new man.

2. Connected with this is the question how far the good works of the regenerate man are his own in such a sense that they can be reckoned to him. We shall disregard to begin with the part of the question which concerns the possibility of reward, and first answer that which concerns the authorship of good works. If we recall at this point the fact that there is no redemption which does not establish a new common life to which everyone appropriating redemption essentially belongs, two questions arise: How far do the good works belong to the individual doing them or to Christ? And how far to the community or to the individual? In regard to the first question it is self-evident that in virtue of the living fellowship existing between them, what belongs to Christ in a good work cannot be separated from what belongs to the individual; for this would be to dissolve the fellowship. A formula, however, has to be found which will bring out the participation of both. Now conversion is the beginning of sanctification, and in it Christ alone is active, the individual being merely in a state of living susceptibility; yet in conversion the new life comes into being. Hence every moment of active faith must be ascribed to Christ in so far as the analogy with its commencement holds good, that is, in so far as in that moment new life comes into being or is enhanced; in short, in so far as it contains progress. For if we could ourselves make the new life grow, we could make it begin. But as in that turning-point the new man came into being, and the will for the Kingdom of God thus arising is our own will, every moment in the activity of faith is to be ascribed to us and is our work, in so far as it is an expression of this implanted will. To call the divine grace in sanctification co-operative grace on this account is an incorrect expression, even apart from its unhappy suggestion that grace is thus assigned a secondary place in the authorship of good works. For the fact is not that divine grace is working along with what is a good work of our own, but that divine grace has here been at work from the beginning, and what is its own it effects by itself. The expression, however, intends to make out a third kind of grace in addition to preparatory and effectual grace, and especially to indicate that the regenerate man has become spontaneously active. This intention is undoubtedly right, but since this third kind is no less effectual than the second, a different word would describe it better than co-operative. Now while this formula obviously applies primarily only to the determination of the will (for in the execution of the act imperfection and sin are always present, and they cannot therefore be ascribed to Christ), it has already been allowed that even in particular resolves something impure may mingle; hence we shall have to confine it to whatever in a good work is of the nature of progress. If, however, we consider the relation of the individual to the Christian common life, everything shows as absolutely common; and it would be a misconceived interest to try to define the participation of each in the common activity.

3. From all this it is very easy to understand in what sense good works are the object of divine good-pleasure. The actual deeds, as they come into view, cannot be so, for they are at the same time good works and sins. The object of good-pleasure is only that element in them which is an activity of faith and an expression of our living fellowship with Christ. Thus it is only the love in our good works that is pleasing to God, this being, in the will for the Kingdom of God, at once love to men and love to Christ and love to God; while at the same time it is Christ’s love working in and through us. Now, since what is sometimes there and sometimes not cannot be an object of divine good-pleasure, this latter must rest especially on the element that remains constant through all moments in the state of sanctification, while also it draws to itself and assimilates what is changing. It is therefore quite right to say that it is really only the person, and the person only as God regards him in Christ, that is the object of divine good-pleasure; the works are so regarded merely for the person’s sake. This consciousness, necessarily involved in the will for the Kingdom of God, is the blessedness which accompanies that will.

In this light, the question whether God rewards good works appears very superfluous. What is our own feeling? If sonship is involved in regeneration, and blessedness in sonship, can the regenerate man desire or obtain a further reward? He already possesses the implicit guarantee for every advance in sanctification. Nor can he desire any; for inward spirit and reward cannot really be related to each other; and besides, the works are sin too, and merit no reward. This is why it is rightly held that the state of grace leaves no room for reward. It is quite improper to give the name ‘reward’ to a widening of one’s circle of influence, or, what is the same thing, an enhancement of one’s powers; that merely offers us a further opportunity of doing things for which a reward is given. As a matter of fact, in all the citations from Confessions which admit the idea of reward, one has the feeling that they are only half convinced. There is all the less reason for conceding the point that the idea of reward can be no motive to progress in sanctification.

4. Although we have already made a distinction in the activities of faith between what is an expression of our actual condition, and what constitutes an advance, this cannot be stretched to mean that there are two kinds of good works—those that spring from existing powers, and those that increase power. There are not two kinds. If there were, we should be entangled in an interminable and insoluble struggle. We should have to try at every moment to do some work of each kind, and yet one of the new kinds would always have to be postponed to the other. It can be shown, rather, that in this sphere there can be no actions specially aimed at enhancing our powers. With faith the will for the Kingdom of God has come into existence. This creates for every believer, in view of his individual situation in the world, challenges to activity in the Kingdom of God, answering to the powers at his command and his knowledge of the conditions by which he is surrounded. The sum-total of these relations constitutes his sphere of vocation, the idea of which is intimately bound up with his will for the Kingdom of God: and all the good works of each individual must lie within this sphere; nothing outside vocation can be a good work. At certain periods of life and in certain relations, acts directed towards the discipline and the enhancement of power are part of a man’s vocation, and are justified on that score; but real discipline and enhancement of power is found in the actual pursuit of one’s vocation, as is the case with all finite spiritual powers; and the more we consider the inner meaning of things, the more we shall see that there can be no other way of it. For the power of faith cannot be strengthened by special acts not prompted by Christ, while those which He does prompt belong essentially to vocation, and go to achieve something for the Kingdom of God. Just because there are sinful ways, as well as ways well-pleasing to God, of enhancing spiritual and sensuous powers, we must see to it that everything that may be done for this end is justifiable as an act of vocation. Accordingly, if by means of grace we understand such activities as advance sanctification, and by good works the fruits of sanctification, it follows that we recognize no means of grace but such as are at the same time good works, and that all good works must likewise be means of grace. There are no purely ascetic acts, nor are there arbitrary good works—that is, good works lying outside our vocation. Still less are there any such as, after he had done justice to his vocation, a man might do by way of supplement.

5. If the foregoing is the essence of sanctification, so that all activity in the Kingdom of God and every inward development of personality proceeds from the living power of faith and its action through love, it can hardly be more than an accident of memory if at this point a question crops up as to the necessity and use of law, in whatever sense that term be taken. Something like legislation will always exist in Christian life in order in certain spheres to guide the actions of those who lack insight. This is where civil law and the regulations applying to every kind of art and handicraft come in. Such legislation is a good work in so far as it has its basis in love; and since it is a proceeding that involves and makes large demands on spiritual powers, it is also a means of grace. But to law itself we can concede no value in the sphere of sanctification, for love always is, and does, much more than law can be or do. Law does not even suffice to produce the recognition of sin in those who are being sanctified, for in itself it does not pierce behind the outward act to the inward mood and temper. In Christ we have a far more perfect means of recognizing sin. And Paul¹⁰ himself no longer grants even this necessity for law once faith has been revealed. Still less can law hold before us the goal of sanctification. That goal can only be behaviour¹¹ exhibiting in all its details the strength and purity of inward disposition, and law, as a collection of separate precepts,¹² can never let us see this. Paul therefore cites as works of the Spirit things that cannot be defined or measured by any law, for to call propositions expressive of the inward spirit commandments is a most inaccurate form of language. The two commandments cited¹³ by Christ as containing the whole law are not really commands. Nor do even they set forth the goal of sanctification in its full purity, for they exhibit love to God and love to our neighbour as two separate things alongside of each other. As for Christ’s one commandment,¹⁴ He really means by calling it so to contrast it with the whole law of commandments: for His is no command; its real analogy¹⁵ is found in His own redeeming love.

Hence one may justly say that in the Christian Church it is neither necessary nor advisable to begin instruction about sin, and still less about sanctification, with the Decalogue. In either case, this can only lead to imperfect and superficial ideas. Even though one endeavours to import into the Decalogue all kinds of things that are not there, such a method is for one thing an opportune illustration of bad, arbitrary exegesis; and besides, the same result can be more easily and logically derived from the moral law of reason as developed under the influence of Christianity—a law which formulates, not acts, but modes of action.¹⁶ Christian Ethics, however, will answer much better to its true relation to Dogmatics, and so to its own immediate purpose, if it drops the imperative mood altogether, and simply gives an all-round description of how men live within the Kingdom of God.

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Footnotes

1. Cf. § 83. ↩

2. Eph. 2¹⁹. ↩

3. Expos. simpl. xvi.: Sunt multa praeterea indigna Deo, et imperfecta plurima inveniuntur in operibus etiam sanctorum.—Conf. Belg. xxiv.: Nullum enim opus facere possumus, quod non est carnis vitio pollutum. ↩

4. Epit. artic. iv.: Credimus … cum dicitur renatos bene operari libero et spontaneo spiritu, id non ita accipiendum esse, quod … nihilominus tamen fidem retineat (scil. homo renatus) etiamsi in peccatis ex proposito perseveret.—Ibid.: reprobamus dogma illud, quod fides in Christum non amittatur … etiamsi (homo) sciens volensque peccet. ↩

5. Melanchth., loc. pp. 124 and 276: Necesse est autem discernere peccata quae in renatis in hac vita manent ab illis peccatis, propter quae amittuntur gratia et fides … est igitur actuale mortale in labente post reconciliationem actio interior vel exterior pugnans cum lege Dei facta contra conscientiam—nec potest stare cum malo proposito contra conscientiam fidei.—Augs. Conf. xii.: ‘… that those who have sinned after baptism can always, if they are converted, receive forgiveness… . Hereby those are repudiated who teach that such as have once become religious can never fall away.’—Declar. Thorun. xi. p. 421: Quasi statuamus semel iustificatos Dei gratiam eiusve certitudinem … non posse amittere quamvis in peccatis pro lubitu volutentur. Cum contra potius doceamus, ipsos etiam renatos quoties in peccata contra conscientiam recidunt, in iisque aliquamdiu perseverant, nec fidem vivam nec Dei gratiam iustificantem nedum eius certitudinem … pro illo tempore retinere, etc.—Reinh., Dogm., § 127, is careful to take the main proposition, ipsum tamen justificationis decretum in Deo mutabile non est, along with that (ibid. 2.) that a man can be justified more than once in his life. For as often as he receives faith once more after the occurrence of a moral lapse the decretum justificans related to this faith must again take place in God. See § 128: … iustificatio … neglecta fide iterum potest amitti. ↩

6. Expos. simpl. xvi.: Eadem (fides) retinet nos in officio.—Conf. Gall. xxi.: … credimus fidem electis dari, ut non semel tantum in rectam viam introducantur, quin potius ut in ea ad extremum usque pergant.—Sol. decl., p. 802: Deus proposuit se iustificatos etiam in multiplici et varia ipsorum infirmitate … defensurum … et si lapsi fuerint, manum supposituram ut ad vitam conserventur. Augustine’s sentence is relevant at this point: Ego autem id esse dico peccatum ad mortem, fidem quae per dilectionem operatur deserere usque ad mortem (De corr. et grat. 35). ↩

7. See above, § 74. ↩

8. Epit. Artic. iv.: Repudiamus … nudam hanc offendiculi plenam … phrasin, bona opera noxia esse ad salutem. See also what immediately follows. ↩

9. Ibid.: Credimus fidem in nobis conservari aut retineri non per opera, sed tantum per Spiritum Dei. The latter remark is not yet relevant, but is quite true. All the same, the Holy Spirit has no other way of giving strength to faith than by activity in works. ↩

10. Gal. 3²⁵ 5¹⁸, even though he here speaks of the flesh lusting against the spirit. ↩

11. Eph. 4¹³, where we are expressly pointed to the standard set by Christ. ↩

12. νόμος ἐντολῶν ἐν δόγμασι (Eph. 2¹⁵).—Sol. decl. vi.: observandum est, quando de bonis operibus agitur, quae legi Dei sunt conformia … quod hoc loco vocabulum legis unam tantum rem significat: immutabilem scilicet voluntatem Dei, secundum quam homines omnes vitae suae rationes instituere debeant. —In this whole discussion, de tertio usu legis, which, contrary to our own view, upholds the notion of law within Christendom, we best see the inexactitude of the idea underlying it, and the sort of confusion it inevitably sets up. ↩

13. Matt. 22³⁷ff.. ↩

14. John 15¹². ↩

15. Conf. Gall. xxiii.: Credimus omnes legis figuras adventu Jesu Christi sublatas esse, quamvis earum veritas et substantia nobis in eo constat, in quo sunt omnes impletae. ↩

16. One cannot say with truth of any law: Lex inculcat … esse voluntatem et mandatum Dei ut in nova vita ambulemus. Here obviously the Mosaic Law is meant. ↩