The opposition of _gift_ and _debt_, of gratuitous salvation through faith to salvation earned by works of law, belongs to the marrow of St Paul’s divinity. The teaching of the great evangelical epistles is condensed into the brief words of verses 8 and 9. The reason here assigned for God’s dealing with men by way of gift and making them absolutely debtors--“lest any one should boast”--was forced upon the apostle’s mind by the stubborn pride of legalism; it is stated in terms identical with those of the earlier letters. Men will glory in their virtues before God; they flaunt the rags of their own righteousness, if any such pretext, even the slightest, remains to them. We sinners are a proud race, and our pride is oftentimes the worst of our sins. Therefore God humbles us by His compassion. He makes to us a free gift of His righteousness, and excludes every contribution from our store of merit; for if we could supply anything, we should inevitably boast as though all were our own. We must be content to receive mercy, love, grace, kindness--everything, without deserving the least fraction of the immense sum. How it strips our vanity; how it crushes us to the dust--“the weight of pardoning love!” Concerning the office of _faith_ in salvation we have already spoken in Chapter IV.[83] It is on the objective fact rather than the subjective means of salvation that the apostle lays stress in this passage. His readers do not seem to have realized sufficiently what God has given them and the greatness of the salvation already accomplished. They measured inadequately the power which had touched and changed their lives (i. 19). St Paul has shown them the depth to which they were formerly sunk, and the height to which they have been raised (vv. 1-6). He can therefore assure them, and he does it with redoubled emphasis: “You _are saved_; By grace you are saved men!”[84] Not, “You will be saved”; nor, “You were saved”; nor, “You are in course of salvation,”--for salvation has many moods and tenses,--but, in the perfect passive tense, he asserts the glorious accomplished _fact_. With the same reassuring emphasis in chapter i. 7 he declared, “We have redemption in His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.”