The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle of St Paul to the RomansMoule, H. C. G. (Handley Carr Glyn)
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle of St Paul to the Romans
Moule, H. C. G. (Handley Carr Glyn)
Bible. Romans -- Commentaries
This undesigned witness to the meaning of the Pauline doctrine of
Justification by Faith only will appear still more strongly when we
come to the Apostle's answer to his questioners. He meets them not at
all by modifications of his assertions. He has not a word to say about
additional and corrective conditions precedent to our peace with God.
He makes no impossible hint that Justification means the making of us
good, or that Faith is a "short title" for Christian practice. No;
there is no reason for such assertions either in the nature of words,
or in the whole cast of the argument through which he has led us. What
does he do? He takes this great truth of our acceptance in Christ our
Merit, and puts it unreserved, unrelieved, unspoiled, in contact with
other truth, of coordinate, nay, of superior greatness, for it is the
truth to which Justification leads us, as way to end. He places our
acceptance through Christ Atoning in organic connexion with our life
in Christ Risen. He indicates, as a truth evident to the conscience,
that as the thought of our share in the Lord's Merit is inseparable
from union with the meriting Person, so the thought of this union is
inseparable from that of a spiritual harmony, a common life, in which
the accepted sinner finds both a direction and a power in his Head.
Justification has indeed set him free from the condemning claim of
sin, from guilt. He is as if _he_ had died the Death of sacrifice,
oblation, and satisfaction; as if _he_ had passed through the _Lama
Sabachthani_, and had "poured out _his_ soul" for sin. So he is "dead
to sin," in the sense in which his Lord and Representative "died to"
it; the atoning death has killed sin's claim on him for judgment. As
having so died, in Christ, he is "justified from sin." But then,
because he thus died "in Christ," he is "in Christ" still, in respect
also of resurrection. He is justified, not that he may go away, but
that in His Justifier he may live, with the powers of that holy and
eternal life with which the Justifier rose again.
The two truths are concentrated as it were into one, by their equal
relation to the same Person, the Lord. The previous argument has made
us intensely conscious that Justification, while a definite
transaction in law, is not a mere transaction; it lives and glows with
the truth of connexion with a Person. That Person is the Bearer for us
of all Merit. But He is also, and equally, the Bearer for us of new
Life; in which the sharers of His Merit share, for they are in Him. So
that, while the Way of Justification can be isolated for study, as it
has been in this Epistle, the justified man cannot be isolated from
Christ, who is his life. And thus he can never _ultimately_ be
considered apart from his possession, in Christ, of a new possibility,
a new power, a new and glorious call to living holiness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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