Instead of this external and mechanical method of conception, we should first set before us the fact of Christ’s justification, after he had borne our sins and risen from the dead. In him, humanity, for the first time, is acquitted from punishment and restored to the divine favor. But Christ’s new humanity is the germinal source of spiritual life for the race. He was justified, not simply as a private person, but as our representative and head. By becoming partakers of the new life in him, we share in all he is and all he has done; and, first of all, we share in his justification. So Luther gives us, for substance, the formula: “We in Christ = justification; Christ in us = sanctification.” And in harmony with this formula is the statement quoted in the text above from Edwards, Works, 4:66. See also H. B. Smith, Presb. Rev., July, 1881—“Union with Adam and with Christ is the ground of imputation. But the parallelism is incomplete. While the sin of Adam is imputed to us because it is ours, the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us simply because of our union with him, not at all because of our personal righteousness. In the one case, character is taken into the account; in the other, it is not. In sin, our demerits are included; in justification, our merits are excluded.” For further statements of Dr. Smith, see his System of Christian Theology, 524‐552. C. H. M. on Genesis, page 78—“The question for every believer is not ‘What am I?’ but ‘What is Christ?’ Of Abel it is said: ‘_God testified of his gifts_’ (_Heb. 11:4_, A. V.). So God testifies, not of the believer, but of his gift,—and his gift is Christ. Yet Cain was angry because he was not received _in his sins_, while Abel was accepted _in his gift_. This was right, if Abel was justified in himself; it was wrong, because Abel was justified only in Christ.” See also Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 384‐388, 392; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 448. B. The relation of justification to regeneration and sanctification, moreover, delivers it from the charges of externality and immorality. God does not justify ungodly men in their ungodliness. He pronounces them just only as they are united to Christ, who is absolutely just, and who, by his Spirit, can make them just, not only in the eye of the law, but in moral character. The very faith by which the sinner receives Christ is an act in which he ratifies all that Christ has done, and accepts God’s judgment against sin as his own (John 16:11).