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Justification By Faith Alone
by Jonathan Edwards
Dated November, 1734
Romans 4:5, "But to him
that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his
faith is counted for righteousness."
THE following things may be noted in this verse:
1. That justification respects a man as ungodly. This is evident by
these words — that justifieth the ungodly, which cannot imply less than
that God, in the act of justification, has no regard to anything in the
person justified, as godliness or any goodness in him, but that
immediately before this act, God beholds him only as an ungodly
creature, so that godliness in the person to be justified is not so
antecedent to his justification as to be the ground of it. When it is
said that God justifies the ungodly, it is as absurd to suppose that our
godliness, taken as some goodness in us, is the ground of our
justification, as when it is said that Christ gave sight to the blind to
suppose that sight was prior to, and the ground of, that act of mercy in
Christ. Or as, if it should be said that such an one by his bounty has
made a poor man rich, to suppose that it was the wealth of this poor man
that was the ground of this bounty towards him, and was the price by
which it was procured.
2. It appears, that by him that worketh not, in this verse, is not meant
one who merely does not conform to the ceremonial law, because he that
worketh not, and the ungodly, are evidently synonymous expressions, or
what signify the same, as appears by the manner of their connection. If
not, to what purpose is the latter expression, the ungodly, brought in?
The context gives no other occasion for it, but to show that by the
grace of the gospel, God in justification has no regard to any godliness
of ours. The foregoing verse is, “Now to him that worketh, is the reward
not reckoned of grace, but of debt.” In that verse, it is evident that
gospel grace consists in the reward being given without works, and in
this verse, which immediately follows it, and in sense is connected with
it, gospel grace consists in a man’s being justified as ungodly. By
which it is most plain, that by him that worketh not, and him that is
ungodly, are meant the same thing, and that therefore not only works of
the ceremonial law are excluded in this business of justification, but
works of morality and godliness.
It is evident in the words, that by the faith here spoken of, by which
we are justified, is not meant the same thing as a course of obedience
or righteousness, since the expression by which this faith is here
denoted, is believing on him that justifies the ungodly. — They that
oppose the Solifidians, as they call them, greatly insist on it, that we
should take the words of Scripture concerning this doctrine in their
most natural and obvious meaning, and how do they cry out, of our
clouding this doctrine with obscure metaphors, and unintelligible
figures of speech? But is this to interpret Scripture according to its
most obvious meaning, when the Scripture speaks of our believing on him
that justifies the ungodly, or the breakers of his law, to say that the
meaning of it is performing a course of obedience to his law, and
avoiding the breaches of it? Believing on God as a justifier, certainly
is a different thing from submitting to God as a lawgiver, especially
believing on him as a justifier of the ungodly, or rebels against the
lawgiver.
4. It is evident that the subject of justification is looked upon as
destitute of any righteousness in himself, by that expression, it is
counted, or imputed to him for righteousness. — The phrase, as the
apostle uses it here and in the context, manifestly imports that God of
his sovereign grace is pleased in his dealings with the sinner, so to
regard one that has no righteousness, that the consequence shall be the
same as if he had. This however may be from the respect it bears to
something that is indeed righteous. It is plain that this is the force
of the expression in the preceding verses. In the last verse but one, it
is manifest, the apostle lays the stress of his argument for the free
grace of God — from that text of the Old Testament about Abraham — on
the word counted or imputed. This is the thing that he supposed God to
show his grace in, viz. in his counting something for righteousness, in
his consequential dealings with Abraham, that was no righteousness in
itself. And in the next verse, which immediately precedes the text, “Now
to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt,”
the word there translated reckoned, is the same that in the other verses
is rendered imputed and counted, and it is as much as if the apostle had
said, “As to him that works, there is no need of any gracious reckoning
or counting it for righteousness, and causing the reward to follow as if
it were a righteousness. For if he has works, he has that which is a
righteousness in itself, to which the reward properly belongs.” This is
further evident by the words that follow, Rom. 4:6, “Even as David also
described the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth
righteousness without works.” What can here be meant by imputing
righteousness without works, but imputing righteousness to him that has
none of his own? Verse 7, 8, “Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities
are forgiven, and whose sins are covered: blessed is the man to whom the
Lord will not impute sin.” How are these words of David to the apostle’s
purpose? Or how do they prove any such thing, as that righteousness is
imputed without works, unless it be because the word imputed is used,
and the subject of the imputation is mentioned as a sinner, and
consequently destitute of a moral righteousness? For David says no such
thing, as that he is forgiven without the works of the ceremonial law.
There is no hint of the ceremonial law, or reference to it, in the
words. I will therefore venture to infer this doctrine from the words,
for the subject of my present discourse, viz.
That we are justified only by faith in Christ, and not by any manner of
virtue or goodness of our own.
Such an assertion as this, I am sensible, many would be ready to call
absurd, as betraying a great deal of ignorance, and containing much
inconsistency, but I desire everyone’s patience till I have done.
In handling this doctrine, I would:
I. Explain the meaning of it, and show how I would be understood by such
an assertion.
II. Proceed to the consideration of the evidence of the truth of it.
III. Show how evangelical obedience is concerned in this affair.
IV. Answer objections.
V. Consider the importance of the doctrine.
I. I would explain the meaning of the doctrine, or show in what sense I
assert it, and would endeavor to evince the truth of it, which may be
done in answer to these two inquiries, viz. 1.What is meant by being
justified? 2. What is meant when it is said, that this is “by faith
alone, without any manner of virtue or goodness of our own?”
First, I would show what justification is, or what I suppose is meant in
Scripture by being justified.
A person is to be justified, when he is approved of God as free from the
guilt of sin and its deserved punishment, and as having that
righteousness belonging to him that entitles to the reward of life. That
we should take the word in such a sense, and understand it as the
judge’s accepting a person as having both a negative and positive
righteousness belonging to him, and looking on him therefore as not only
free from any obligation to punishment, but also as just and righteous
and so entitled to a positive reward, is not only most agreeable to the
etymology and natural import of the word, which signifies to pass one
for righteous in judgment, but also manifestly agreeable to the force of
the word as used in Scripture.
Some suppose that nothing more is intended in Scripture by
justification, than barely the remission of sins. If so, it is very
strange, if we consider the nature of the case. For it is most evident,
and none will deny, that it is with respect to the rule or law of God we
are under, that we are said in Scripture to be either justified or
condemned. Now what is it to justify a person as the subject of a law or
rule, but to judge him as standing right with respect to that rule? To
justify a person in a particular case, is to approve of him as standing
right, as subject to the law in that case, and to justify in general is
to pass him in judgment, as standing right in a state correspondent to
the law or rule in general. But certainly, in order to a person’s being
looked on as standing right with respect to the rule in general, or in a
state corresponding with the law of God, more is needful than not having
the guilt of sin. For whatever that law is, whether a new or an old one,
doubtless something positive is needed in order to its being answered.
We are no more justified by the voice of the law, or of him that judges
according to it, by a mere pardon of sin, than Adam, our first surety,
was justified by the law, at the first point of his existence, before he
had fulfilled the obedience of the law, or had so much as any trial
whether he would fulfill it or no. If Adam had finished his course of
perfect obedience, he would have been justified, and certainly his
justification would have implied something more than what is merely
negative. He would have been approved of, as having fulfilled the
righteousness of the law, and accordingly would have been adjudged to
the reward of it. So Christ, our second surety (in whose justification
all whose surety he is, are virtually justified), was not justified till
he had done the work the Father had appointed him, and kept the Father’s
commandments through all trials, and then in his resurrection he was
justified. When he had been put to death in the flesh, but quickened by
the Spirit, 1 Pet. 3:18, then he that was manifest in the flesh was
justified in the Spirit, 1 Tim. 3:16. But God, when he justified him in
raising him from the dead, did not only release him from his humiliation
for sin, and acquit him from any further suffering or abasement for it,
but admitted him to that eternal and immortal life, and to the beginning
of that exaltation that was the reward of what he had done. And indeed
the justification of a believer is no other than his being admitted to
communion in the justification of this head and surety of all believers:
for as Christ suffered the punishment of sin, not as a private person,
but as our surety. So when after this suffering he was raised from the
dead, he was therein justified, not as a private person, but as the
surety and representative of all that should believe in him. So that he
was raised again not only for his own, but also for our justification,
according to the apostle, Rom. 4:25, “Who was delivered for our
offenses, and raised again for our justification.” And therefore it is
that the apostle says, as he does in Rom. 8:34, “Who is he that
condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again.”
But that a believer’s justification implies not only remission of sins,
or acquittal from the wrath due to it, but also an admittance to a title
to that glory which is the reward of righteousness, is more directly
taught in the Scriptures, particularly in Rom. 5:1, 2, where the apostle
mentions both these as joint benefits implied in justification:
“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access into this grace wherein
we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” So remission of sin,
and inheritance among them that are sanctified, are mentioned together
as what are jointly obtained by faith in Christ, Acts 26:18, “That they
may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them that are
sanctified through faith that is in me.” Both these are without doubt
implied in that passing from death to life, which Christ speaks of as
the fruit of faith, and which he opposes to condemnation, John 5:24,
“Verily I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth on him
that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into
condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.”
I proceed now,
Secondly, to show what is meant when it is said, that this justification
is by faith only, and not by any virtue or goodness of our own.
This inquiry may be subdivided into two, viz.
1. How it is by faith. 2. How it is by faith alone, without any manner
of goodness of ours.
1. How justification is by faith. — Here the great difficulty has been
about the import and force of the particle by, or what is that influence
that faith has in the affair of justification that is expressed in
Scripture by being justified by faith.
Here, if I may humbly express what seems evident to me, though faith be
indeed the condition of justification so as nothing else is, yet this
matter is not clearly and sufficiently explained by saying that faith is
the condition of justification, and that because the word seems
ambiguous, both in common use, and also as used in divinity. In one
sense, Christ alone performs the condition of our justification and
salvation. In another sense, faith is the condition of justification,
and in another sense, other qualifications and acts are conditions of
salvation and justification too. There seems to be a great deal of
ambiguity in such expressions as are commonly used (which yet we are
forced to use), such as condition of salvation, what is required in
order to salvation or justification, the terms of the covenant, and the
like, and I believe they are understood in very different senses by
different persons. And besides, as the word condition is very often
understood in the common use of language, faith is not the only thing in
us that is the condition of justification. For by the word condition, as
it is very often (and perhaps most commonly) used, we mean anything that
may have the place of a condition in a conditional proposition, and as
such is truly connected with the consequent, especially if the
proposition holds both in the affirmative and negative, as the condition
is either affirmed or denied. If it be that with which, or which being
supposed, a thing shall be, and without which, or it being denied, a
thing shall not be, we in such a case call it a condition of that thing.
But in this sense faith is not the only condition of salvation and
justification. For there are many things that accompany and flow from
faith, with which justification shall be, and without which, it will not
be, and therefore are found to be put in Scripture in conditional
propositions with justification and salvation, in multitudes of places.
Such are love to God, and love to our brethren, forgiving men their
trespasses, and many other good qualifications and acts. And there are
many other things besides faith, which are directly proposed to us, to
be pursued or performed by us, in order to eternal life, which if they
are done, or obtained, we shall have eternal life, and if not done, or
not obtained, we shall surely perish. And if faith was the only
condition of justification in this sense, I do not apprehend that to say
faith was the condition of justification, would express the sense of
that phrase of Scripture, of being justified by faith. There is a
difference between being justified by a thing, and that thing
universally, necessarily, and inseparably attending justification: for
so do a great many things that we are not said to be justified by. It is
not the inseparable connection with justification that the Holy Ghost
would signify (or that is naturally signified) by such a phrase, but
some particular influence that faith has in the affair, or some certain
dependence that effect has on its influence.
Some, aware of this, have supposed that the influence or dependence
might well be expressed by faith’s being the instrument of our
justification, which has been misunderstood, and injuriously
represented, and ridiculed by those that have denied the doctrine of
justification by faith alone, as though they had supposed faith was used
as an instrument in the hand of God, whereby he performed and brought to
pass that act of his, viz. approving and justifying the believer.
Whereas it was not intended that faith was the instrument wherewith God
justifies, but the instrument wherewith we receive justification: not
the instrument wherewith the justifier acts in justifying, but wherewith
the receiver of justification acts in accepting justification. But yet,
it must be owned, this is an obscure way of speaking, and there must
certainly be some impropriety in calling it an instrument wherewith we
receive or accept justification. For the very persons who thus explain
the matter, speak of faith as being the reception or acceptance itself,
and if so, how can it be the instrument of reception or acceptance?
Certainly there is a difference between the act and the instrument.
Besides, by their own descriptions of faith, Christ, the mediator, by
whom and his righteousness by which we are justified, is more directly
the object of this acceptance and justification, which is the benefit
arising therefrom more indirectly. Therefore, if faith be an instrument,
it is more properly the instrument by which we receive Christ, than the
instrument by which we receive justification.
But I humbly conceive we have been ready to look too far to find out
what that influence of faith in our justification is, or what is that
dependence of this effect on faith, signified by the expression of being
justified by faith, overlooking that which is most obviously pointed
forth in the expression, viz. that (there being a mediator that has
purchased justification) faith in this mediator is that which renders it
a meet and suitable thing, in the sight of God, that the believer,
rather than others, should have this purchased benefit assigned to him.
There is this benefit purchased, which God sees it to be a more meet and
suitable thing that it should be assigned to some rather than others,
because he sees them differently qualified: that qualification wherein
the meetness to this benefit, as the case stands, consists, is that in
us by which we are justified. If Christ had not come into the world and
died, etc. to purchase justification, no qualification whatever in us
could render it a meet or fit thing that we should be justified. But the
case being as it now stands, viz. that Christ has actually purchased
justification by his own blood for infinitely unworthy creatures, there
may be certain qualifications found in some persons, which, either from
the relation it bears to the mediator and his merits, or on some other
account, is the thing that in the sight of God renders it a meet and
condecent thing, that they should have an interest in this purchased
benefit, and of which if any are destitute, it renders it an unfit and
unsuitable thing that they should have it. The wisdom of God in his
constitutions doubtless appears much in the fitness and beauty of them,
so that those things are established to be done that are fit to be done,
and that these things are connected in his constitution that are
agreeable one to another. — So God justifies a believer according to his
revealed constitution, without doubt, because he sees something in this
qualification that, as the case stands, renders it a fit thing that such
should be justified: whether it be because faith is the instrument, or
as it were the hand, by which he that has purchased justification is
apprehended and accepted, or because it is the acceptance itself, or
whatever else. To be justified, is to be approved of God as a proper
subject of pardon, with a right to eternal life. Therefore, when it is
said that we are justified by faith, what else can be understood by it,
than that faith is that by which we are rendered approvable, fitly so,
and indeed, as the case stands, proper subjects of this benefit?
This is something different from faith being the condition of
justification, though inseparably connected with justification. So are
many other things besides faith, and yet nothing in us but faith renders
it meet that we should have justification assigned to us: as I shall
presently show in answer to the next inquiry, viz.
2. How this is said to be by faith alone, without any manner of virtue
or goodness of our own. This may seem to some to be attended with two
difficulties, viz. how this can be said to be by faith alone, without
any virtue or goodness of ours, when faith itself is a virtue, and one
part of our goodness, and is not only some manner of goodness of ours,
but is a very excellent qualification, and one chief part of the
inherent holiness of a Christian? And if it be a part of our inherent
goodness or excellency (whether it be this part or any other) that
renders it a condecent or congruous thing that we should have this
benefit of Christ assigned to us, what is this less than what they mean
who talk of a merit of congruity? And moreover, if this part of our
Christian holiness qualifies us, in the sight of God, for this benefit
of Christ, and renders it a fit or meet thing, in his sight, that we
should have it, why not other parts of holiness, and conformity to God,
which are also very excellent, and have as much of the image of Christ
in them, and are no less lovely in God’s eyes, qualify us as much, and
have as much influence to render us meet, in God’s sight, for such a
benefit as this? Therefore I answer,
When it is said, that we are not justified by any righteousness or
goodness of our own, what is meant is that it is not out of respect to
the excellency or goodness of any qualifications or acts in us
whatsoever, that God judges it meet that this benefit of Christ should
be ours. It is not, in any wise, on account of any excellency or value
that there is in faith, that it appears in the sight of God a meet
thing, that he who believes should have this benefit of Christ assigned
to him, but purely from the relation faith has to the person in whom
this benefit is to be had, or as it unites to that mediator, in and by
whom we are justified. Here, for the greater clearness, I would
particularly explain myself under several propositions,
(1.) It is certain that there is some union or relation that the people
of Christ stand in to him, that is expressed in Scripture, from time to
time, by being in Christ, and is represented frequently by those
metaphors of being members of Christ, or being united to him as members
to the head, and branches to the stock, and is compared to a marriage
union between husband and wife. I do not now pretend to determine of
what sort this union is. Nor is it necessary to my present purpose to
enter into any manner of disputes about it. If any are disgusted at the
word union, as obscure and unintelligible, the word relation equally
serves my purpose. I do not now desire to determine any more about it,
than all, of all sorts, will readily allow, viz. that there is a
peculiar relation between true Christians and Christ, which there is not
between him and others, and which is signified by those metaphorical
expressions in Scripture, of being in Christ, being members of Christ,
etc.
(2.) This relation or union to Christ, whereby Christians are said to be
in Christ (whatever it be), is the ground of their right to his
benefits. This needs no proof: the reason of the thing, at first blush,
demonstrates it. It is exceeding evident also by Scripture, 1 John 5:12,
“He that hath the Son, hath life; and he that hath not the Son, hath not
life.” 1 Cor. 1:30, “Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made
unto us — righteousness.” First we must be in him, and then he will be
made righteousness or justification to us. Eph. 1:6, “Who hath made us
accepted in the beloved.” Our being in him is the ground of our being
accepted. So it is in those unions to which the Holy Ghost has thought
fit to compare this. The union of the members of the body with the head,
is the ground of their partaking of the life of the head. It is the
union of the branches to the stock, which is the ground of their
partaking of the sap and life of the stock. It is the relation of the
wife to the husband, that is the ground of her joint interest in his
estate: they are looked upon, in several respects, as one in law. So
there is a legal union between Christ and true Christians, so that (as
all except Socinians allow) one, in some respects, is accepted for the
other by the supreme Judge.
(3.) And thus it is that faith is the qualification in any person that
renders it meet in the sight of God that he should be looked upon as
having Christ’s satisfaction and righteousness belonging to him, viz.
because it is that in him which, on his part, makes up this union
between him and Christ. By what has been just now observed, it is a
person’s being, according to scripture phrase, in Christ, that is the
ground of having his satisfaction and merits belonging to him, and a
right to the benefits procured thereby. The reason of it is plain: it is
easy to see how our having Christ’s merits and benefits belonging to us,
follows from our having (if I may so speak) Christ himself belonging to
us, or our being united to him. And if so, it must also be easy to see
how, or in what manner, that in a person, which on his part makes up the
union between his soul and Christ, should be the things on the account
of which God looks on it as meet that he should have Christ’s merits
belonging to him. It is a very different thing for God to assign to a
particular person a right to Christ’s merits and benefits from regard to
a qualification in him in this respect, from his doing it for him out of
respect to the value or loveliness of that qualification, or as a reward
of its excellency.
As there is nobody but what will allow that there is a peculiar relation
between Christ and his true disciples, by which they are in some sense
in Scripture said to be one. So I suppose there is nobody but what will
allow, that there may be something that the true Christian does on his
part, whereby he is active in coming into this relation or union: some
uniting act, or that which is done towards this union or relation (or
whatever any please to call it) on the Christian’s part. Now faith I
suppose to be this act.
I do not now pretend to define justifying faith, or to determine
precisely how much is contained in it, but only to determine thus much
concerning it, viz. That it is that by which the soul, which before was
separate and alienated from Christ, unites itself to him, or ceases to
be any longer in that state of alienation, and comes into that
forementioned union or relation to him, or, to use the scripture phrase,
it is that by which the soul comes to Christ, and receives him. This is
evident by the Scriptures using these very expressions to signify faith.
John 6:35-39, “He that cometh to me, shall never hunger; and he that
believeth on me, shall never thirst. But I said unto you, that ye also
have seen me and believe not. All that the Father giveth me, shall come
to me; and him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out. For I came
down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent
me.” Verse 40, “And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one
which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life;
and I will raise him up the last day.” — John 5:38-40, “Whom he hath
sent, him ye believe not. Search the Scriptures, for — they are they
which testify of me. And ye will not come unto me, that ye might have
life.” Verse 43, 44, “I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me
not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. How can
ye believe, which receive honor one of another?” — John 1:12, “But as
many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God,
even to them that believe on his name.” If it be said that these are
obscure figures of speech, which however they might be well understood
of old among those who commonly used such metaphors, are with difficulty
understood now. I allow, that the expressions of receiving Christ and
coming to Christ, are metaphorical expressions. If I should allow them
to be obscure metaphors, yet this much at least is certainly plain in
them, viz. that faith is that by which those who before were separated,
and at a distance from Christ (that is to say, were not so related and
united to him as his people are), cease to be any longer at such a
distance, and come into that relation and nearness, unless they are so
unintelligible, that nothing at all can be understood by them.
God does not give those that believe a union with or an interest in the
Savior as a reward for faith, but only because faith is the soul’s
active uniting with Christ, or is itself the very act of unition, on
their part. God sees it fit, that in order to a union being established
between two intelligent active beings or persons, so as that they should
be looked upon as one, there should be the mutual act of both, that each
should receive the other, as actively joining themselves one to another.
God, in requiring this in order to an union with Christ as one of his
people, treats men as reasonable creatures, capable of act and choice,
and hence sees it fit that they only who are one with Christ by their
own act, should be looked upon as one in law. What is real in the union
between Christ and his people, is the foundation of what is legal: that
is, it is something really in them, and between them, uniting them, that
is the ground of the suitableness of their being accounted as one by the
judge. And if there be any act or qualification in believers of that
uniting nature, that it is meet on that account the judge should look
upon them and accept them as one, no wonder that upon the account of the
same act or qualification, he should accept the satisfaction and merits
of the one for the other, as if these were their own satisfaction and
merits. This necessarily follows, or rather is implied.
And thus it is that faith justifies, or gives an interest in Christ’s
satisfaction and merits, and a right to the benefits procured thereby,
viz. as it thus makes Christ and the believer one in the acceptance of
the supreme Judge. It is by faith that we have a title to eternal life,
because it is by faith that we have the Son of God, by whom life is. The
apostle John in these words, 1 John 5:12, “He that hath the Son hath
life,” seems evidently to have respect to those words of Christ, of
which he gives an account in his gospel, chap. 3:36, “He that believeth
on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son,
shall not see life.” And where the Scripture speaks of faith as the
soul’s receiving or coming to Christ, it also speaks of this receiving,
coming to, or joining with Christ, as the ground of an interest in his
benefits. To as many as received him, “to them gave he power” to become
the sons of God. Ye will not come unto me, “that ye might have life.”
And there is a wide difference between its being suitable that Christ’s
satisfaction and merits should be theirs who believe, because an
interest in that satisfaction and merit is a fit reward of faith — or a
suitable testimony of God’s respect to the amiableness and excellency of
that grace — and its being suitable that Christ’s satisfaction and
merits should be theirs, because Christ and they are so united, that in
the eyes of the Judge they may be looked upon and taken as one.
Although, on account of faith in the believer, it is in the sight of God
fit and congruous, both that he who believes should be looked upon as in
Christ, and also as having an interest in his merits, in the way that
has been now explained. Yet it appears that this is very wide from a
merit of congruity, or indeed any moral congruity at all to either.
There is a twofold fitness to a state. I know not how to give them
distinguishing names, otherwise than by calling the one a moral, and the
other a natural fitness. A person has a moral fitness for a state, when
his moral excellency commends him to it, or when his being put into such
a good state is but a suitable testimony of regard to the moral
excellency, or value, or amiableness of any of his qualifications or
acts. A person has a natural fitness for a state, when it appears meet
and condecent that he should be in such a state or circumstances, only
from the natural concord or agreeableness there is between such
qualifications and such circumstances: not because the qualifications
are lovely or unlovely, but only because the qualifications and the
circumstances are like one another, or do in their nature suit and agree
or unite one to another. And it is on this latter account only that God
looks on it fit by a natural fitness, that he whose heart sincerely
unites itself to Christ as his Savior, should be looked upon as united
to that Savior, and so having an interest in him, and not from any moral
fitness there is between the excellency of such a qualification as
faith, and such a glorious blessedness as the having an interest in
Christ. God’s bestowing Christ and his benefits on a soul in consequence
of faith, out of regard only to the natural concord there is between
such a qualification of a soul, and such a union with Christ, and
interest in him, makes the case very widely different from what it would
be, if he bestowed this from regard to any moral suitableness. For, in
the former case, it is only from God’s love of order that he bestows
these things on the account of faith: in the latter, God does it out of
love to the grace of faith itself. — God will neither look on Christ’s
merits as ours, nor adjudge his benefits to us, till we be in Christ.
Nor will he look upon us as being in him, without an active unition of
our hearts and souls to him, because he is a wise being, and delights in
order and not in confusion, and that things should be together or
asunder according to their nature. His making such a constitution is a
testimony of his love of order. Whereas if it were out of regard to any
moral fitness or suitableness between faith and such blessedness, it
would be a testimony of his love to the act or qualification itself. The
one supposes this divine constitution to be a manifestation of God’s
regard to the beauty of the act of faith. The other only supposes it to
be a manifestation of his regard to the beauty of that order that there
is in uniting those things that have a natural agreement and congruity,
and unition of the one with the other. Indeed a moral suitableness or
fitness to a state includes a natural. For, if there be a moral
suitableness that a person should be in such a state, there is also a
natural suitableness, but such a natural suitableness, as I have
described, by no means necessarily includes a moral.
This is plainly what our divines intend when they say, that faith does
not justify as a work, or a righteousness, viz. that it does not justify
as a part of our moral goodness or excellency, or that it does not
justify as man was to have been justified by the covenant of works,
which was, to have a title to eternal life given him of God, in
testimony of his pleasedness with his works, or his regard to the
inherent excellency and beauty of his obedience. And this is certainly
what the apostle Paul means, when he so much insists upon it, that we
are not justified by works, viz. that we are not justified by them as
good works, or by any goodness, value, or excellency of our works. For
the proof of this I shall at present mention but one thing, and that is,
the apostle from time to time speaking of our not being justified by
works, as the thing that excludes all boasting, Eph. 2:9, Rom. 3:27, and
chap. 4:2. Now which way do works give occasion for boasting, but as
good? What do men use to boast of, but of something they suppose good or
excellent? And on what account do they boast of anything, but for the
supposed excellency that is in it?
From these things we may learn in what manner faith is the only
condition of justification and salvation. For though it be not the only
condition, so as alone truly to have the place of a condition in a
hypothetical proposition, in which justification and salvation are the
consequent. Yet it is the condition of justification in a manner
peculiar to it, and so that nothing else has a parallel influence with
it, because faith includes the whole act of unition to Christ as a
Savior. The entire active uniting of the soul, or the whole of what is
called coming to Christ, and receiving of him, is called faith in
Scripture. However other things may be no less excellent than faith, yet
it is not the nature of any other graces or virtues directly to close
with Christ as a mediator, any further than they enter into the
constitution of justifying faith, and do belong to its nature.
Thus I have explained my meaning, in asserting it as a doctrine of the
gospel, that we are justified by faith only, without any manner of
goodness of our own.
I now proceed,
II. To the proof of it, which I shall endeavor to produce in the
following arguments.
First, such is our case, and the state of things, that neither faith,
nor any other qualifications, or act or course of acts, does or can
render it suitable that a person should have an interest in the Savior,
and so a title to his benefits, on account of an excellency therein, or
any other way, than as something in him may unite him to the Savior. It
is not suitable that God should give fallen man an interest in Christ
and his merits, as a testimony of his respect to anything whatsoever as
a loveliness in him, and that because it is not meet, till a sinner is
actually justified, than anything in him should be accepted of God, as
any excellency or amiableness of his person. Or that God, by any act,
should in any manner or degree testify any pleasedness with him, or
favor towards him, on the account of anything inherent in him, and that
for two reasons:
1. The nature of things will not admit of it. And this appears from the
infinite guilt that the sinner till justified is under, which arises
from the infinite evil or heinousness of sin. But because this is what
some deny, I would therefore first establish that point, and show that
sin is a thing that is indeed properly of infinite heinousness, and then
show the consequence that it cannot be suitable, till the sinner is
actually justified, that God should by any act testify pleasedness with
or acceptance of any excellency or amiableness of his person.
That the evil and demerit of sin is infinitely great, is most
demonstrably evident, because what the evil or iniquity of sin consists
in, is the violating of an obligation, or doing what we should not do.
Therefore by how much the greater the obligation is that is violated, by
so much the greater is the iniquity of the violation. But certainly our
obligation to love or honor any being is great in proportion to the
greatness or excellency of that being, or his worthiness to be loved and
honored. We are under greater obligations to love a more lovely being
than a less lovely. If a being be infinitely excellent and lovely, our
obligations to love him are therein infinitely great. The matter is so
plain, it seems needless to say much about it.
Some have argued exceeding strangely against the infinite evil of sin,
from its being committed against an infinite object, that then it may as
well be argued, that there is also an infinite value or worthiness in
holiness and love to God, because that also has an infinite object.
Whereas the argument, from parity of reason, will carry it in the
reverse. The sin of the creature against God is ill-deserving in
proportion to the distance there is between God and the creature. The
greatness of the object, and the meanness of the subject, aggravates it.
But it is the reverse with regard to the worthiness of the respect of
the creature of God. It is worthless (and not worthy) in proportion to
the meanness of the subject. So much the greater the distance between
God and the creature, so much the less is the creature’s respect worthy
of God’s notice or regard. The unworthiness of sin or opposition to God
rises and is great in proportion to the dignity of the object and
inferiority of the subject. But on the contrary, the value of respect
rises in proportion to the value of the subject, and that for this plain
reason, viz. that the evil of disrespect is in proportion to the
obligation that lies upon the subject to the object, which obligation is
most evidently increased by the excellency and superiority of the
object. But on the contrary, the worthiness of respect to a being is in
proportion to the obligation that lies on him who is the object (or
rather the reason he has), to regard the subject, which certainly is in
proportion to the subject’s value or excellency. Sin or disrespect is
evil or heinous in proportion to the degree of what it denies in the
object, and as it were takes from it, viz. its excellency and worthiness
of respect. On the contrary, respect is valuable in proportion to the
value of what is given to the object in that respect, which undoubtedly
(other things being equal) is great in proportion to the subject’s
value, or worthiness of regard, because the subject in giving his
respect, can give no more than himself. So far as he gives his respect,
he gives himself to the object, and therefore his gift is of greater or
lesser value in proportion to the value of himself.
Hence (by the way) the love, honor, and obedience of Christ towards God,
has infinite value, from the excellency and dignity of the person in
whom these qualifications were inherent. The reason why we needed a
person of infinite dignity to obey for us, was because of our infinite
comparative meanness, who had disobeyed, whereby our disobedience was
infinitely aggravated. We needed one, the worthiness of whose obedience
might be answerable to the unworthiness of our disobedience, and
therefore needed one who was as great and worthy as we were unworthy.
Another objection (that perhaps may be thought hardly worth mentioning)
is, that to suppose sin to be infinitely heinous, is to make all sins
equally heinous: for how can any sin be more than infinitely heinous?
But all that can be argued hence is, that no sin can be greater with
respect to that aggravation, the worthiness of the object against whom
it is committed. One sin cannot be more aggravated than another in that
respect, because the aggravation of every sin is infinite, but that does
not hinder that some sins may be more heinous than others in other
respects: as if we should suppose a cylinder infinitely long, cannot be
greater in that respect, viz. with respect to the length of it. But yet
it may be doubled and trebled, and make a thousand-fold more, by the
increase of other dimensions. Of sins that are all infinitely heinous,
some may be more heinous than others, as well as of divers punishments
that are all infinitely dreadful calamities, or all of them infinitely
exceeding all finite calamities, so that there is no finite calamity,
however great, but what is infinitely less dreadful, or more eligible
than any of them. Yet some of them may be a thousand times more dreadful
than others. A punishment may be infinitely dreadful by reason of the
infinite duration of it, and therefore cannot be greater with respect to
that aggravation of it, viz. its length of continuance, but yet may be
vastly more terrible on other accounts.
Having thus, as I imagine, made it clear that all sin is infinitely
heinous, and consequently that the sinner, before he is justified, is
under infinite guilt in God’s sight, it now remains that I show the
consequence, or how it follows from hence, that it is not suitable that
God should give the sinner an interest in Christ’s merits, and so a
title to his benefits, from regard to any qualification, or act, or
course of acts in him, on the account of any excellency or goodness
whatsoever therein, but only as uniting to Christ; or (which fully
implies it) that it is not suitable that God, by any act, should, in any
manner or degree, testify any acceptance of, or pleasedness with
anything, as any virtue, or excellency, or any part of loveliness, or
valuableness in his person, until he is actually already interested in
Christ’s merits. From the premises it follows, that before the sinner is
already interested in Christ, and justified, it is impossible God should
have any acceptance of, or pleasedness with the person of the sinner, as
in any degree lovely in his sight, or indeed less the object of his
displeasure and wrath. For, by the supposition, the sinner still remains
infinitely guilty in the sight of God, for guilt is not removed but by
pardon. But to suppose the sinner already pardoned, is to suppose him
already justified, which is contrary to the supposition. But if the
sinner still remains infinitely guilty in God’s sight, that is the same
thing as still to be beheld of God as infinitely the object of his
displeasure and wrath, or infinitely hateful in his eyes. If so, where
is any room for anything in him, to be accepted as some valuableness or
acceptability of him in God’s sight, or for any act of favor of any kind
towards him, or any gift whatsoever to him, in testimony of God’s
respect to and acceptance of something of him lovely and pleasing? If we
should suppose that a sinner could have faith, or some other grace in
his heart, and yet remain separate from Christ, and that he is not
looked upon as being in Christ, or having any relation to him, it would
not be meet that such true grace should be accepted of God as any
loveliness of his person in the sight of God. If it should be accepted
as the loveliness of the person, that would be to accept the person as
in some degree lovely to God. But this cannot be consistent with his
still remaining under infinite guilt, or infinite unworthiness in God’s
sight, which that goodness has no worthiness to balance. — While God
beholds the man as separate from Christ, he must behold him as he is in
himself, and so his goodness cannot be beheld by God, but as taken with
his guilt and hatefulness, and as put in the scales with it. So his
goodness is nothing, because there is a finite on the balance against an
infinite whose proportion to it is nothing. In such a case, if the man
be looked on as he is in himself, the excess of the weight in one scale
above another, must be looked upon as the quality of the man. These
contraries being beheld together, one takes from another, as one number
is subtracted from another, and the man must be looked upon in God’s
sight according to the remainder. For here, by the supposition, all acts
of grace or favor, in not imputing the guilt as it is, are excluded,
because that supposes a degree of pardon, and that supposes
justification, which is contrary to what is supposed, viz. that the
sinner is not already justified. Therefore things must be taken strictly
as they are, and so the man is still infinitely unworthy and hateful in
God’s sight, as he was before, without diminution, because his goodness
bears no proportion to his unworthiness, and therefore when taken
together is nothing.
Hence may be more clearly seen the force of that expression in the text,
of believing on him that justifieth the ungodly. For though there is
indeed something in man that is really and spiritually good, prior to
justification, yet there is nothing that is accepted as any godliness or
excellency of the person, till after justification. Goodness or
loveliness of the person in the acceptance of God, in any degree, is not
to be considered as prior but posterior in the order and method of God’s
proceeding in this affair. Though a respect to the natural suitableness
between such a qualification, and such a state, does go before
justification, yet the acceptance even of faith as any goodness or
loveliness of the believer, follows justification. The goodness is on
the forementioned account justly looked upon as nothing, until the man
is justified: And therefore the man is respected in justification, as in
himself altogether hateful. Thus the nature of things will not admit of
a man having an interest given him in the merits or benefits of a
Savior, on the account of anything as a righteousness, or a virtue, or
excellency in him.
2. A divine constitution antecedent to that which establishes
justification by a Savior (and indeed to any need of a Savior), stands
in the way of it, viz. that original constitution or law which man was
put under, by which constitution or law the sinner is condemned, because
he is a violator of that law, and stands condemned, till he has actually
an interest in the Savior, through whom he is set at liberty from that
condemnation. But to suppose that God gives a man an interest in Christ
in reward for his righteousness or virtue, is inconsistent with his
still remaining under condemnation till he has an interest in Christ,
because it supposes, that the sinner’s virtue is accepted, and he
accepted for it, before he has an interest in Christ, inasmuch as an
interest in Christ is given as a reward of his virtue. But the virtue
must first be accepted, before it is rewarded, and the man must first be
accepted for his virtue before he is rewarded for it with so great and
glorious a reward. For the very notion of a reward, is some good
bestowed in testimony of respect to and acceptance of virtue in the
person rewarded. It does not consist with the honor of the majesty of
the King of heaven and earth, to accept of anything from a condemned
malefactor, condemned by the justice of his own holy law, till that
condemnation be removed. And then, such acceptance is inconsistent with,
and contradictory to such remaining condemnation, for the law condemns
him that violates it, to be totally rejected and cast off by God. But
how can a man continue under this condemnation, i. e. continue utterly
rejected and cast off by God, and yet his righteousness or virtue be
accepted, and he himself accepted on the account of it, so as to have so
glorious a reward as an interest in Christ bestowed as a testimony of
that acceptance?
I know that the answer will be that we now are not subject to that
constitution which mankind were at first put under, but that God, in
mercy to mankind, has abolished that rigorous constitution, and put us
under a new law, and introduced a more mild constitution, and that the
constitution or law itself not remaining, there is no need of supposing
that the condemnation of it remains, to stand in the way of the
acceptance of our virtue. And indeed there is no other way of avoiding
this difficulty. The condemnation of the law must stand in force against
a man, till he is actually interested in the Savior who has satisfied
and answered the law, so as effectually to prevent any acceptance of his
virtue, either before, or in order to such an interest, unless the law
or constitution itself be abolished. But the scheme of those modern
divines by whom this is maintained, seems to contain a great deal of
absurdity and self-contradiction. They hold that the old law given to
Adam, which requires perfect obedience, is entirely repealed, and that
instead of it we are put under a new law, which requires no more than
imperfect sincere obedience, in compliance with our poor, infirm,
impotent circumstances since the fall, whereby we are unable to perform
that perfect obedience that was required by the first law. For they
strenuously maintain, that it would be unjust in God to require anything
of us that is beyond our present power and ability to perform, and yet
they hold, that Christ died to satisfy for the imperfections of our
obedience, that so our imperfect obedience might be accepted instead of
perfect. Now, how can these things hang together? I would ask what law
these imperfections of our obedience are a breach of? If they are a
breach of no law, then they are not sins, and if they be not sins, what
need of Christ’s dying to satisfy for them? But if they are sins, and so
the breach of some law, what law is it? They cannot be a breach of their
new law, for that requires no other than imperfect obedience, or
obedience with imperfections. They cannot be a breach of the old law,
for that they say is entirely abolished, and we never were under it, and
we cannot break a law that we never were under. They say it would not be
just in God to exact of us perfect obedience, because it would not be
just in God to require more of us than we can perform in our present
state, and to punish us for failing of it. Therefore by their own
scheme, the imperfections of our obedience do not deserve to be
punished. What need therefore of Christ’s dying to satisfy for them?
What need of Christ’s suffering to satisfy for that which is no fault,
and in its own nature deserves no suffering? What need of Christ’s dying
to purchase that our imperfect obedience should be accepted, when
according to their scheme it would be unjust in itself that any other
obedience than imperfect should be required? What need of Christ’s dying
to make way for God’s accepting such an obedience, as it would in itself
be unjust in him not to accept? Is there any need of Christ’s dying to
persuade God not to do unjustly? If it be said that Christ died to
satisfy that law for us, that so we might not be under that law, but
might be delivered from it, that so there might be room for us to be
under a more mild law, still I would inquire, What need of Christ’s
dying that we might not be under a law that (according to their scheme)
it would in itself be unjust that we should be under, because in our
present state we are not able to keep it? What need of Christ’s dying
that we might not be under a law that it would be unjust that we should
be under, whether Christ died or no?
Thus far I have argued principally from reason, and the nature of
things: — I proceed now to the
Second argument, which is that this is a doctrine which the Holy
Scriptures, the revelation that God has given us of his mind and will —
by which alone we can never come to know how those who have offended God
can come to be accepted of him, and justified in his sight — is
exceeding full. The apostle Paul is abundant in teaching, that “we are
justified by faith alone, without the works of the law.” (Rom. 3:28;
4:5; 5:1; Gal. 2:16; 3:8; 3:11; 3:24) There is no one doctrine that he
insists so much upon, and that he handles with so much distinctness,
explaining, giving reasons and answering objections.
Here it is not denied by any, that the apostle does assert that we are
justified by faith, without the works of the law, because the words are
express. But only it is said that we take his words wrong, and
understand that by them that never entered into his heart, in that when
he excludes the works of the law, we understand him of the whole law of
God, or the rule which he has given to mankind to walk by: whereas all
that he intends is the ceremonial law.
Some that oppose this doctrine indeed say that the apostle sometimes
means that it is by faith, i.e. a hearty embracing the gospel in its
first act only, or without any preceding holy life, that persons are
admitted into a justified state. But say they, it is by a persevering
obedience that they are continued in a justified state, and it is by
this that they are finally justified. But this is the same thing as to
say, that a man on his first embracing the gospel is conditionally
justified and pardoned. To pardon sin is to free the sinner from the
punishment of it, or from that eternal misery that is due it. Therefore
if a person is pardoned, or freed from this misery, on his first
embracing the gospel, and yet not finally freed, but his actual freedom
still depends on some condition yet to be performed, it is inconceivable
how he can be pardoned otherwise than conditionally: that is, he is not
properly actually pardoned, and freed from punishment, but only he has
God’s promise that he shall be pardoned on future conditions. God
promises him, that now, if he perseveres in obedience, he shall be
finally pardoned or actually freed from hell, which is to make just
nothing at all of the apostle’s great doctrine of justification by faith
alone. Such a conditional pardon is no pardon or justification at all
any more than all mankind have, whether they embrace the gospel or no.
For they all have a promise of final justification on conditions of
future sincere obedience, as much as he that embraces the gospel. But
not to dispute about this, we will suppose that there may be something
or other at the sinner’s first embracing the gospel, that may properly
be called justification or pardon, and yet that final justification, or
real freedom from the punishment of sin, is still suspended on
conditions hitherto unfulfilled. Yet they who hold that sinners are thus
justified on embracing the gospel, suppose that they are justified by
this, no otherwise than as it is a leading act of obedience, or at least
as virtue and moral goodness in them, and therefore would be excluded by
the apostle as much as any other virtue or obedience, if it be allowed
that he means the moral law, when he excludes works of the law. And
therefore, if that point be yielded, that the apostle means the moral,
and not only the ceremonial, law, their whole scheme falls to the
ground.
And because the issue of the whole argument from those texts in St.
Paul’s epistles depends on the determination of this point, I would be
particular in the discussion of it.
Some of our opponents in this doctrine of justification, when they deny
that by the law the apostle means the moral law or the whole rule of
life which God has given to mankind, seem to choose to express
themselves thus: that the apostle only intends the Mosaic dispensation.
But this comes to just the same thing as if they said that the apostle
only means to exclude the works of the ceremonial law. For when they say
that it is intended only that we are not justified by the works of the
Mosaic dispensation, if they mean anything by it, it must be, that we
are not justified by attending and observing what is Mosaic in that
dispensation, or by what was peculiar to it, and wherein it differed
from the Christian dispensation, which is the same as that which is
ceremonial and positive, and not moral, in that administration. So that
this is what I have to disprove, viz. that the apostle, when he speaks
of works of the law in this affair, means only works of the ceremonial
law, or those observances that were peculiar to the Mosaic
administration.
And here it must be noted, that nobody controverts it with them, whether
the works of the ceremonial law be not included, or whether the apostle
does not particularly argue against justification by circumcision, and
other ceremonial observances. But all in question is whether when he
denies justification by works of the law, he is to be understood only of
the ceremonial law, or whether the moral law be not also implied and
intended. And therefore those arguments which are brought to prove that
the apostle meant the ceremonial law, are nothing to the purpose, unless
they prove that the apostle meant those only.
What is much insisted on is that it was the judaizing Christians being
so fond of circumcision and other ceremonies of the law, and depending
so much on them, which was the very occasion of the apostle’s writing as
he does against justification by the works of the law. But supposing it
were so, that their trusting in works of the ceremonial law were the
sole occasion of the apostle’s writing (which yet there is no reason to
allow, as may appear afterwards), if their trusting in a particular
work, as a work of righteousness, was all that gave occasion to the
apostle to write, how does it follow, that therefore the apostle did not
upon that occasion write against trusting in all works of righteousness
whatsoever? Where is the absurdity of supposing that the apostle might
take occasion, from his observing some to trust in a certain work as
trusting in any works of righteousness at all, and that it was a very
proper occasion too? Yea, it would have been unavoidable for the apostle
to have argued against trusting in a particular work, in the quality of
a work of righteousness, which quality was general, but he must therein
argue against trusting in works of righteousness in general. Supposing
it had been some other particular sort of works that was the occasion of
the apostle’s writing, as for instance, works of charity, and the
apostle should hence take occasion to write to them not to trust in
their works, could the apostle by that be understood of no other works
besides works of charity? Would it have been absurd to understand him as
writing against trusting in any work at all, because it was their
trusting to a particular work that gave occasion to his writing?
Another thing alleged, as an evidence that the apostle means the
ceremonial law — when he says, we cannot be justified by the works of
the law — is that he uses this argument to prove it, viz. that the law
he speaks of was given so long after the covenant with Abraham, in Gal.
3:17, “And this I say, that the covenant that was confirmed before of
God in Christ, the law which was four hundred and thirty years after,
cannot disannul.” But, say they, it was only the Mosaic administration,
and not the covenant of works, that was given so long after. But the
apostle’s argument seems manifestly to be mistaken by them. The apostle
does not speak of a law that began to exist four hundred and thirty
years after. If he did, there would be some force in their objection,
but he has respect to a certain solemn transaction, well known among the
Jews by the phrase “the giving of the law,” which was at Mount Sinai
(Exo. 19, 20) consisting especially in God’s giving the ten commandments
(which is the moral law) with a terrible voice, which law he afterwards
gave in tables of stone. This transaction the Jews in the apostle’s time
misinterpreted. They looked upon it as God’s establishing that law as a
rule of justification. Against this conceit of theirs the apostle brings
this invincible argument, viz. that God would never go about to disannul
his covenant with Abraham, which was plainly a covenant of grace, by a
transaction with his posterity, that was so long after it, and was
plainly built upon it. He would not overthrow a covenant of grace that
he had long before established with Abraham, for him and his seed (which
is often mentioned as the ground of God’s making them his people), by
now establishing a covenant of works with them at Mount Sinai, as the
Jews and judaizing Christians supposed.
But that the apostle does not mean only works of the ceremonial law,
when he excludes works of the law in justification, but also of the
moral law, and all works of obedience, virtue, and righteousness
whatsoever, may appear by the following things.
1. The apostle does not only say that we are not justified by the works
of the law, but that we are not justified by works, using a general
term, as in our text, “to him that worketh not, but believeth on him
that justifieth,” etc.; and in the 6th verse, “God imputeth
righteousness without works;” and Rom. 11:6, “And if by grace, then is
it no more of works, otherwise grace is no more grace: but if it be of
works, then it is no more grace; otherwise work is no more work.” So,
Eph. 2:8, 9, “For by grace are ye saved, through faith, — not of works;”
by which, there is no reason in the world to understand the apostle of
any other than works in general, as correlates of a reward, or good
works, or works of virtue and righteousness. When the apostle says, we
are justified or saved not by works, without any such term annexed, as
the law, or any other addition to limit the expression, what warrant
have any to confine it to works of a particular law or institution,
excluding others? Are not observances of other divine laws works, as
well as of that? It seems to be allowed by the divines in the Arminian
scheme, in their interpretation of several of those texts where the
apostle only mentions works, without any addition, that he means our own
good works in general. But then, they say, he only means to exclude any
proper merit in those works. But to say the apostle means one thing when
he says, we are not justified by works, and another when he says, we are
not justified by the works of the law, when we find the expressions
mixed and used in the same discourse, and when the apostle is evidently
upon the same argument, is very unreasonable. It is to dodge and fly
from Scripture, rather than open and yield ourselves to its teachings.
2. In the third chapter of Romans, our having been guilty of breaches of
the moral law, is an argument that the apostle uses, why we cannot be
justified by the works of the Old Testament, that all are under sin:
“There is none righteous, no not one: their throat is as an open
sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit: their mouth is full
of cursing and bitterness; and their feet swift to shed blood.” And so
he goes on, mentioning only those things that are breaches of the moral
law. And then when he has done, his conclusion is, in the 19th and 20th
verses, “Now we know that whatsoever things the law saith, it saith to
them that are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all
the world may become guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the
law, shall no flesh be justified in his sight.” This is most evidently
his argument, because all had sinned (as it was said in the 9th verse),
and been guilty of those breaches of the moral law that he had mentioned
(and it is repeated over again, verse 23), “For all have sinned, and
come short of the glory of God;” therefore none at all can be justified
by the deeds of the law. Now if the apostle meant only, that we are not
justified by the deeds of the ceremonial law, what kind of arguing would
that be, “Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness, their feet are
swift to shed blood?” therefore they cannot be justified by the deeds of
the Mosaic administration. They are guilty of the breaches of the moral
law, and therefore they cannot be justified by the deeds of the
ceremonial law! Doubtless, the apostle’s argument is that the very same
law they have broken, can never justify them as observers of it, because
every law necessarily condemns it violators. And therefore our breaches
of the moral law argue no more, than that we cannot be justified by that
law we have broken.
And it may be noted, that the apostle’s argument here is the same that I
have already used, viz. that as we are in ourselves, and out of Christ,
we are under the condemnation of that original law or constitution that
God established with mankind. And therefore it is no way fit that
anything we do, any virtue or obedience of ours, should be accepted, or
we accepted on the account of it.
3. The apostle, in all the preceding part of this epistle, wherever he
has the phrase, the law, evidently intends the moral law principally. As
in the 12th verse of the foregoing chapter: “For as many as have sinned
without law, shall also perish without law.” It is evidently the written
moral law the apostle means, by the next verse but one, “For when the
Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in
the law;” that is, the moral law that the Gentiles have by nature. And
so the next verse, “Which show the work of the law written in their
hearts.” It is the moral law, and not the ceremonial, that is written in
the hearts of those who are destitute of divine revelation. And so in
the 18th verse, “Thou approvest the things that are more excellent,
being instructed out of the law.” It is the moral law that shows us the
nature of things, and teaches us what is excellent, 20th verse, “Thou
hast a form of knowledge and truth in the law.” It is the moral law, as
is evident by what follows, verse 22, 23, “Thou that sayest a man should
not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? Thou that abhorrest
idols, dost thou commit sacrilege? Thou that makest thy boast of the
law, through breaking the law, dishonourest thou God?” Adultery,
idolatry, and sacrilege, surely are the breaking of the moral, and not
the ceremonial law. So in the 27th verse, “And shall not uncircumcision
which is by nature, if it fulfil the law, judge thee, who by the letter
and circumcision dost transgress the law?” i.e. the Gentiles, that you
despise because uncircumcised, if they live moral and holy lives, in
obedience to the moral law, shall condemn you though circumcised. And so
there is not one place in all the preceding part of the epistle, where
the apostle speaks of the law, but that he most apparently intends
principally the moral law. And yet when the apostle, in continuance of
the same discourse, comes to tell us, that we cannot be justified by the
works of the law, then they will needs have it, that he means only the
ceremonial law. Yea, though all this discourse about the moral law,
showing how the Jews as well as Gentiles have violated it, is evidently
preparatory and introductory to that doctrine, Rom. 3:20, “That no
flesh,” that is, none of mankind, neither Jews nor Gentiles, “can be
justified by the works of the law.”
4. It is evident that when the apostle says, we cannot be justified by
the works of the law, he means the moral as well as ceremonial law, by
his giving this reason for it, that “by the law is the knowledge of
sin,” as Rom. 3:20, “By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified
in his sight; for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” Now that law by
which we come to the knowledge of sin, is the moral law chiefly and
primarily. If this argument of the apostle be good, “that we cannot be
justified by the deeds of the law, because it is by the law that we come
to the knowledge of sin;” then it proves that we cannot be justified by
the deeds of the moral law, nor by the precepts of Christianity; for by
them is the knowledge of sin. If the reason be good, then where the
reason holds, the truth holds. It is a miserable shift, and a violent
force put upon the words, to say that the meaning is, that by the law of
circumcision is the knowledge of sin, because circumcision signifying
the taking away of sin, puts men in mind of sin. The plain meaning of
the apostle is that as the law most strictly forbids sin, it tends to
convince us of sin, and bring our own consciences to condemn us, instead
of justifying of us: that the use of it is to declare to us our own
guilt and unworthiness, which is the reverse of justifying and approving
of us as virtuous or worthy. This is the apostle’s meaning, if we will
allow him to be his own expositor. For he himself, in this very epistle,
explains to us how it is that by the law we have the knowledge of sin,
and that it is by the law’s forbidding sin, Rom. 7:7, “I had not known
sin, but by the law; for I had not known lust, except the law had said,
Thou shalt not covet.” There the apostle determines two things: first,
that the way in which “by the law is the knowledge of sin,” is by the
law’s forbidding sin, and secondly, which is more directly still to the
purpose, he determines that it is the moral law by which we come to the
knowledge of sin. “For,” says he, “I had not known lust, except the law
had said, Thou shalt not covet.” Now it is the moral, and not the
ceremonial law, that says, “Thou shalt not covet.” Therefore, when the
apostle argues that by the deeds of the law no flesh living shall be
justified, because by the law is the knowledge of sin, his argument
proves (unless he was mistaken as to the force of his argument), that we
cannot be justified by the deeds of the moral law.
5. It is evident that the apostle does not mean only the ceremonial law,
because he gives this reason why we have righteousness, and a title to
the privilege of God’s children, not by the law, but by faith, “that the
law worketh wrath.” Rom. 4:13-16, “For the promise that he should be the
heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed through the law,
but through righteousness of faith. For if they which are of the law be
heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect. Because
the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression.
Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace.” Now the way in
which the law works wrath, by the apostle’s own account, in the reason
he himself annexes, is by forbidding sin, and aggravating the guilt of
the transgression. “For,” says he, “where no law is, there is no
transgression:” And so, Rom. 7:13, “That sin by the commandment might
become exceeding sinful.” If, therefore, this reason of the apostle be
good, it is much stronger against justification by the moral law than
the ceremonial law. For it is by transgressions of the moral law chiefly
that there comes wrath: for they are most strictly forbidden, and most
terribly threatened.
6. It is evident that when the apostle says, we are not justified by the
works of the law, that he excludes all our own virtue, goodness, or
excellency, by that reason he gives for it, viz. “That boasting might be
excluded.” Rom. 3:26, 27, 28, “To declare, I say, at this time his
righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which
believeth in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law?
of works? Nay; but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude, that a
man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.” Eph. 2:8, 9,
“For by grace are ye saved, through faith; and that not of yourselves;
it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.” Now
what are men wont to boast of, but what they esteem their own goodness
or excellency? If we are not justified by works of the ceremonial law,
yet how does that exclude boasting, as long as we are justified by our
own excellency, or virtue and goodness of our own, or works of
righteousness which we have done?
But it is said, that boasting is excluded, as circumcision was excluded,
which was what the Jews especially used to glory in, and value
themselves upon, above other nations.
To this I answer, that the Jews were not only used to boast of
circumcision, but were notorious for boasting of their moral
righteousness. The Jews of those days were generally admirers and
followers of the Pharisees, who were full of their boasts of their moral
righteousness; as we may see by the example of the Pharisee mentioned in
the 18th of Luke, which Christ mentions as describing the general temper
of that sect: “Lord,” says he, “I thank thee, that I am not as other
men, an extortioner, nor unjust, nor an adulterer.” The works that he
boasts of were chiefly moral works: he depended on the works of the law
for justification. And therefore Christ tells us, that the publican,
that renounced all his own righteousness, “went down to his house
justified rather than he.” And elsewhere, we read of the Pharisees
praying in the corners of the streets, and sounding a trumpet before
them when they did alms. But those works which they so vainly boasted of
were moral works. And not only so, but what the apostle in this very
epistle condemns the Jews for, is their boasting of the moral law. Rom.
2:22, 23, “Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, do thou
commit adultery? Thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?
Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law,
dishonourest thou God?” The law here mentioned that they made their
boast of, was that of which adultery, idolatry, and sacrilege, were the
breaches, which is the moral law. So that this is the boasting which the
apostle condemns them for. And therefore, if they were justified by the
works of this law, then how comes he to say that their boasting is
excluded? And besides, when they boasted of the rites of the ceremonial
law, it was under a notion of its being a part of their own goodness or
excellency, or what made them holier and more lovely in the sight of God
than other people. If they were not justified by this part of their own
supposed goodness or holiness, yet if they were by another, how did that
exclude boasting? How was their boasting excluded, unless all goodness
or excellency of their own was excluded
7. The reason given by the apostle why we can be justified only by
faith, and not by the works of the law, in the 3d chapter of Galations
viz. “That they that are under the law, are under the curse,” makes it
evident that he does not mean only the ceremonial law. In that chapter
the apostle had particularly insisted upon it, that Abraham was
justified by faith, and that it is by faith only, and not by the works
of the law, that we can be justified, and become the children of
Abraham, and be made partakers of the blessing of Abraham: and he gives
this reason for it in the 10th verse: “For as many as are of the works
of the law, are under the curse; for it is written, Cursed is every one
that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the
law to do them.” It is manifest that these words, cited from
Deuteronomy, are spoken not only with regard to the ceremonial law, but
the whole law of God to mankind and chiefly the moral law, and that all
mankind are therefore as they are in themselves under the curse, not
only while the ceremonial law lasted, but now since that has ceased. And
therefore all who are justified, are redeemed from that curse, by
Christ’s bearing it for them; as in verse 13, “Christ hath redeemed us
from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written,
Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” Now therefore, either its
being said that he is cursed who continueth not in all things which are
written in the book of the law to do them, is a good reason why we
cannot be justified by the works of that law of which it is so said, or
it is not: if it be, then it is a good reason why we cannot be justified
by the works of the moral law, and of the whole rule which God has given
to mankind to walk by. For the words are spoken of the moral as well as
the ceremonial law, and reach every command or precept which God has
given to mankind, and chiefly the moral precepts, which are most
strictly enjoined, and the violations of which in both the New Testament
and the Old, and in the books of Moses themselves, are threatened with
the most dreadful curse.
8. The apostle in like manner argues against our being justified by our
own righteousness, as he does against being justified by the works of
the law; and evidently uses the expressions, of our own righteousness,
and works of the law, promiscuously, and as signifying the same thing.
It is particularly evident by Rom. 10:3, “For they being ignorant of
God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own
righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of
God.” Here it is plain that the same thing is asserted as in the two
last verses but one of the foregoing chapter, “But Israel, which
followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of
righteousness. Wherefore? because they sought it, not by faith, but as
it were by the works of the law.” And it is very unreasonable, upon
several accounts, to suppose that the apostle, by their own
righteousness, intends only their ceremonial righteousness. For when the
apostle warns us against trusting in our own righteousness of
justification, doubtless it is fair to interpret the expression in an
agreement with other scriptures. Here we are warned, not to think that
it is for the sake of our own righteousness that we obtain God’s favor
and blessing: as particularly in Deu. 9:4-6, “Speak not thou in thine
heart, after that the Lord thy God hath cast them out from before thee,
saying, For my righteousness the Lord hath brought me in to possess this
land: but for the wickedness of these nations the Lord doth drive them
out from before thee. Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness
of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land: but for the
wickedness of these nations, the Lord thy God doth drive them out from
before thee, and that he may perform the word which he sware unto thy
fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Understand therefore, that the Lord
thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess it, for thy
righteousness; for thou art a stiff-necked people.” None will pretend
that here the expression thy righteousness, signifies only a ceremonial
righteousness, but all virtue or goodness of their own — yea, and the
inward goodness of the heart, as well as the outward goodness of life;
which appears by the beginning of the 5th verse, “Not for thy
righteousness, or for the uprightness of thy heart;” and also by the
antithesis in the 6th verse, “Not for thy righteousness, for thou art a
stiff-necked people.” Their stiff-neckedness was their moral wickedness,
obstinacy, and perverseness of heart. By righteousness, therefore, on
the contrary, is meant their moral virtue, and rectitude of heart and
life. This is what I would argue from hence, that the expression of our
own righteousness, when used in Scripture with relation to the favor of
God — and when we are warned against looking upon it as that by which
that favor, or the fruits of it, are obtained — does not signify only a
ceremonial righteousness, but all manner of goodness of our own.
The Jews also, in the New Testament, are condemned for trusting in their
own righteousness in this sense, Luke 18:9, etc. “And he spake this
parable unto certain that trusted in themselves that they were
righteous.” This intends chiefly a moral righteousness, as appears by
the parable itself, in which we have an account of the prayer of the
Pharisee, wherein the things that he mentions as what he trusts in, are
chiefly moral qualifications and performances, viz. that he was not an
extortioner, unjust, nor an adulterer, etc.
But we need not go to the writings of other penmen of the Scripture. If
we will allow the apostle Paul to be his own interpreter, he — when he
speaks of our own righteousness as that by which we are not justified or
saved — does not mean only a ceremonial righteousness, nor does he only
intend a way of religion and serving God, of our own choosing, without
divine warrant or prescription. But by our own righteousness he means
the same as a righteousness of our own doing, whether it be a service or
righteousness of God’s prescribing, or our own unwarranted performing.
Let it be an obedience to the ceremonial law, or a gospel obedience, or
what it will: if it be a righteousness of our own doing, it is excluded
by the apostle in this affair, as is evident by Tit. 3:5, “Not by works
of righteousness which we have done.” — But I would more particularly
insist on this text; and therefore this may be the
9th argument: that the apostle, when he denies justification by works,
works of the law, and our own righteousness, does not mean works of the
ceremonial law only. Tit. 3:3-7, “For we ourselves also were sometimes
foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures,
living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. But after
that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward men appeared, not
by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy
he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy
Ghost; which he shed on us abundantly, through Jesus Christ our Saviour;
that being justified by his grace we should be made heirs according to
the hope of eternal life.” Works of righteousness that we have done are
here excluded, as what we are neither saved nor justified by. The
apostle expressly says, we are not saved by them, and it is evident that
when he says this, he has respect to the affair of justification. And
that he means, we are not saved by them in not being justified by them,
as by the next verse but one, which is part of the same sentence, “That
being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the
hope of eternal life.”
It is several ways manifest, that the apostle in this text, by “works of
righteousness which we have done,” does not mean only works of the
ceremonial law. It appears by the 3d verse, “For we ourselves also were
sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and
pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.”
These are breaches of the moral law, that the apostle observes they
lived in before they were justified: and it is most plain that it is
this which gives occasion to the apostle to observe, as he does in the
5th verse, that is was not by works of righteousness which they had
done, that they were saved or justified.
But we need not go to the context, it is most apparent from the words
themselves, that the apostle does not mean only works of the ceremonial
law. If he had only said, it is not by our own works of righteousness.
What could we understand by works of righteousness, but only righteous
works, or, which is the same thing, good works? And not say, that it is
by our own righteous works that we are justified, though not by one
particular kind of righteous works, would certainly be a contradiction
to such an assertion. But, the works are rendered yet more strong,
plain, and determined in their sense, by those additional words, which
we have done, which shows that the apostle intends to exclude all our
own righteous or virtuous works universally. If it should be asserted
concerning any commodity, treasure, or precious jewel, that it could not
be procured by money, and not only so, but to make the assertion the
more strong, it should be asserted with additional words, that it could
not be procured by money that men possess, how unreasonable would it be,
after all, to say that all that was meant was, that it could not be
procured with brass money.
And what renders the interpreting of this text, as intending works of
the ceremonial law, yet more unreasonable, is that these works were
indeed no works of righteousness at all, but were only falsely supposed
to be so by the Jews. And this our opponents in this doctrine also
suppose is the very reason why we are not justified by them, because
they are not works of righteousness, or because (the ceremonial law
being now abrogated) there is no obedience in them. But how absurd is it
to say, that the apostle, when he says we are not justified by works of
righteousness that we have done, meant only works of the ceremonial law,
and that for that very reason, because they are not works of
righteousness? To illustrate this by the forementioned comparison: If it
should be asserted, that such a thing could not be procured by money
that men possess, how ridiculous would it be to say, that the meaning
only was, that it could not be procured by counterfeit money, and that
for that reason, because it was not money. What Scripture will stand
before men, if they will take liberty to manage Scripture thus? Or what
one text is there in the Bible that may not at this rate be explained
all away, and perverted to any sense men please?
But further, if we should allow that the apostle intends only to oppose
justification by works of the ceremonial law in this text, yet it is
evident by the expression he uses, that he means to oppose it under that
notion, or in that quality, of their being works of righteousness of our
own doing. But if the apostle argues against our being justified by
works of the ceremonial law, under the notion of their being of that
nature and kind, viz. works of our own doing, then it will follow that
the apostle’s argument is strong against, not only those, but all of
that nature and kind, even all that are of our own doing.
If there were not other text in the Bible about justification but this,
this would clearly and invincibly prove that we are not justified by any
of our own goodness, virtue, or righteousness, or for the excellency or
righteousness of anything that we have done in religion, because it is
here so fully and strongly asserted. But this text abundantly confirms
other texts of the apostle, where he denies justification by works of
the law. No doubt can be rationally made, but that the apostle, when he
shows, that God does not save us by “works of righteousness that we have
done,” verse 5, and that so we are “justified by grace,” verse 7, herein
opposing salvation by works, and salvation by grace — means the same
works as he does in other places, where he in like manner opposes works
and grace, as in Rom. 11:6, “And if by grace, then it is no more of
works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is
it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work.” And the same works as
in Rom. 4:4, “Now to him that worketh, is the reward not reckoned of
grace, but of debt.” And the same works that are spoken of in the
context of the 24th verse of the foregoing chapter, which the apostle
there calls “works of the law, being justified freely by his grace.” And
of the 4th chapter, 16th verse, “Therefore it is of faith, that it might
be by grace.” Where in the context the righteousness of faith is opposed
to the righteousness of the law: for here God’s saving us according to
his mercy, and justifying us by grace, is opposed to saving us by works
of righteousness that we have done. In the same manner as in those
places, justifying us by his grace, is opposed to justifying us by works
of the law.
10. The apostle could not mean only works of the ceremonial law, when he
says, we are not justified by the works of the law, because it is
asserted of the saints under the Old Testament as well as New. If men
are justified by their sincere obedience, it will then follow that
formerly, before the ceremonial law was abrogated, men were justified by
the works of the ceremonial law, as well as the moral. For if we are
justified by our sincere obedience, then it alters not the case, whether
the commands be moral or positive, provided they be God’s commands, and
our obedience be obedience to God. And so the case must be just the same
under the Old Testament, with the works of the moral law and ceremonial,
according to the measure of the virtue of obedience there was in either.
It is true, their obedience to the ceremonial law would have nothing to
do in the affair of justification, unless it was sincere, and so neither
would the works of the moral law. If obedience was the thing, then
obedience to the ceremonial law, while that stood in force, and
obedience to the moral law, had just the same sort of concern, according
to the proportion of obedience that consists in each. As now under the
New Testament, if obedience is what we are justified by, that obedience
must doubtless comprehend obedience to all God’s commands now in force,
to the positive precepts of attendance on baptism and the Lord’s supper,
as well as moral precepts. If obedience be the thing, it is not because
it is obedience to such a kind of commands, but because it is obedience.
So that by this supposition, the saints under the Old Testament were
justified, at least in part, by their obedience to the ceremonial law.
But it is evident that the saints under the Old Testament were not
justified, in any measure, by the works of the ceremonial law. This may
be proved, proceeding on the foot of our adversaries’ own interpretation
of the apostle’s phrase, “the works of the law,” and supposing them to
mean by it only the works of the ceremonial law. To instance in David,
it is evident that he was not justified in any wise by the works of the
ceremonial law, by Rom. 4:6-8, “Even as David also describeth the
blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without
works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose
sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute
sin.” It is plain that the apostle is here speaking of justification,
from the preceding verse, and all the context; and the thing spoken of,
viz. forgiving iniquities and covering sins, is what our adversaries
themselves suppose to be justification, and even the whole of
justification. This David, speaking of himself, says (by the apostle’s
interpretation) that he had without works. For it is manifest that
David, in the words here cited, from the beginning of the 32d Psalm, has
a special respect to himself: he speaks of his own sins being forgiven
and not imputed to him: as appears by the words that immediately follow,
“When I kept silence, my bones waxed old; through my roaring all the day
long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is
turned into the drought of summer. I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and
mine iniquity have I not hid; I said, I will confess my transgressions
unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.” Let us
therefore understand the apostle which way we will respecting works,
when he says, “David describes the blessedness of the man to whom the
Lord imputes righteousness without works,” whether of all manner of
works, or only works of the ceremonial law, yet it is evident at least,
that David was not justified by works of the ceremonial law. Therefore
here is the argument: if our own obedience be that by which men are
justified, then under the Old Testament, men were justified partly by
obedience to the ceremonial law (as has been proved). But the saints
under the Old Testament were not justified partly by the works of the
ceremonial law. Therefore men’s own obedience is not that by which they
are justified.
11. Another argument that the apostle, when he speaks of the two
opposite ways of justification, one by the works of the law, and the
other by faith, does not mean only the works of the ceremonial law, may
be taken from Rom. 10:5, 6. “For Moses describeth the righteousness
which is of the law, that the man which doth those things, shall live by
them. But the righteousness which is of faith, speaketh on this wise,”
etc. — Here two things are evident.
(1) That the apostle here speaks of the same two opposite ways of
justification, one by the righteousness which is of the law, the other
by faith, that he had treated of in the former part of the epistle. And
therefore it must be the same law that is here spoken of. The same law
is here meant as in the last verses of the foregoing chapter, where he
says, the Jews had “not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore?
Because they sought it, not by faith, but as it were by the works of the
law;” as is plain, because the apostle is still speaking of the same
thing. The words are a continuation of the same discourse, as may be
seen at first glance, by anyone that looks on the context.
(2.) It is manifest that Moses, when he describes the righteousness
which is of the law, or the way of justification by the law, in the
words here cited, “He that doth those things, shall live in them,” does
not speak only, nor chiefly, of the works of the ceremonial law; for
none will pretend that God ever made such a covenant with man, that he
who kept the ceremonial law should live in it, or that there ever was a
time, that it was chiefly by the works of the ceremonial law that men
lived and were justified. Yea, it is manifest by the forementioned
instance of David, mentioned in the 4th of Romans, that there never was
a time wherein men were justified in any measure by the works of the
ceremonial law, as has been just now shown. Moses therefore, in those
words which, the apostle says, are a description of the righteousness
which is of the law, cannot mean only the ceremonial law. And therefor
it follows, that when the apostle speaks of justification by the works
of the law, as opposite to justification by faith, he does not mean only
the ceremonial law, but also the works of the moral law, which are the
things spoken of by Moses, when he says, “He that doth those things,
shall live in them.” And these are the things which the apostle in this
very place is arguing that we cannot be justified by, as is evident by
the last verses of the preceding chapter; “But Israel, which followed
after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of
righteousness. Wherefore? Because they sought it, not by faith, but as
it were by the works of the law,” etc. And in the 3d verse of this
chapter, “For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going
about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted
themselves unto the righteousness of God.”
And further, how can the apostle’s description that he here gives from
Moses, of this exploded way of justification by the works of the law,
consist with the Arminian scheme, of a way of justification by the
virtue of a sincere obedience, that still remains as the true and only
way of justification under the gospel? It is most apparent that it is
the design of the apostle to give a description of both the legal
rejected and the evangelical valid ways of justification, in that
wherein they are distinguished the one from the other. But how is it,
that “he who doth those things, shall live in them,” that wherein the
way of justification by the works of the law is distinguished from that
in which Christians under the gospel are justified, according to their
scheme. For still, according to them, it may be said, in the same
manner, of the precepts of the gospel, he that does these things, shall
live in them. The difference lies only in the things to be done, but not
at all in that the doing of them is not the condition of living in them,
just in the one case, as in the other. The words, “He that does them,
shall live in them,” will serve just as well for a description of the
latter as the former. By the apostle’s saying, the righteousness of the
law is described thus, he that doth these things, shall live in them.
But the righteousness of faith saith thus, plainly intimates that the
righteousness of faith saith otherwise, and in an opposite manner.
Besides, if these words cited from Moses are actually said by him of the
moral law as well as ceremonial, as it is most evident they are, it
renders it still more absurd to suppose them mentioned by the apostle,
as the very note of distinction between justification by a ceremonial
obedience, and a moral sincere obedience, as the Arminians must suppose.
Thus I have spoken to a second argument, to prove that we are not
justified by any manner of virtue or goodness of our own, viz. that to
suppose otherwise, is contrary to the doctrine directly urged, and
abundantly insisted on, by the apostle Paul in his epistles.
I now proceed to a
Third argument, viz. that to suppose that we are justified by our own
sincere obedience, or any of our own virtue or goodness, derogates from
gospel grace.
That scheme of justification that manifestly takes from, or diminishes
the grace of God, is undoubtedly to be rejected; for it is the declared
design of God in the gospel to exalt the freedom and riches of his
grace, in that method of justification of sinners, and way of admitting
them to his favor, and the blessed fruits of it, which it declares. The
Scripture teaches, that the way of justification appointed in the gospel
covenant is appointed for that end, that free grace might be expressed,
and glorified, Rom. 4:16, “Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by
grace.” The exercising and magnifying of free grace in the gospel
contrivance for the justification and salvation of sinners, is evidently
the chief design of it. And this freedom and riches of grace in the
gospel is everywhere spoken of in Scripture as the chief glory of it.
Therefore that doctrine which derogates from the free grace of God in
justifying sinners, as it is most opposite to God’s design, so it must
be exceedingly offensive to him.
Those who maintain, that we are justified by our own sincere obedience,
pretend that their scheme does not diminish the grace of the gospel; for
they say, that the grace of God is wonderfully manifested in appointing
such a way and method of salvation by sincere obedience, in assisting us
to perform such an obedience, and in accepting our imperfect obedience,
instead of perfect.
Let us therefore examine that matter, whether their scheme of a man’s
being justified by his own virtue and sincere obedience, does derogate
from the grace of God or no, or whether free grace is not more exalted
in supposing, as we do, that we are justified without any manner of
goodness of our own. In order to this, I will lay down the self-evident
Proposition, that whatsoever that be by which the abundant benevolence
of the giver is expressed, and gratitude in the receiver is obliged,
that magnifies free grace. This I suppose none will ever controvert or
dispute. And it is not much less evident, that it does both show a more
abundant benevolence in the giver when he shows kindness without
goodness or excellency in the object, to move him to it, and that it
enhances the obligation to gratitude in the receiver.
1. It shows a more abundant goodness in the giver, when he shows
kindness without any excellency in our persons or actions that should
move the giver to love and beneficence. For it certainly shows the more
abundant and overflowing goodness, or disposition to communicate good,
by how much the less loveliness or excellency there is to entice
beneficence. The less there is in the receiver to draw goodwill and
kindness, it argues the more of the principle of goodwill and kindness
in the giver. One that has but a little of a principle of love and
benevolence, may be drawn to do good, and to show kindness, when there
is a great deal to draw him, or when there is much excellency and
loveliness in the object to move goodwill. When he whose goodness and
benevolence is more abundant, [he] will show kindness where there is
less to draw it forth. For he does not so much need to have it drawn
from without, he has enough of the principle within to move him of
itself. Where there is most of the principle, there it is most
sufficient for itself, and stands in least need of something without to
excite it. For certainly a more abundant goodness more easily flows
forth with less to impel or draw it, than where there is less, or, which
is the same thing, the more anyone is disposed of himself, the less he
needs from without himself, to put him upon it, or stir him up to it.
And therefore his kindness and goodness appears the more exceeding
great, when it is bestowed without any excellency or loveliness at all
in the receiver, or when the receiver is respected in the gift, as
wholly without excellency. And much more still when the benevolence of
the giver not only finds nothing in the receiver to draw it, but a great
deal of hatefulness to repel it. The abundance of goodness is then
manifested, not only in flowing forth without anything extrinsic to put
it forward, but in overcoming great repulsion in the object. And then
does kindness and love appear most triumphant, and wonderfully great,
when the receiver is not only wholly without all excellency or beauty to
attract it, but altogether, yea, infinitely vile and hateful.
2. It is apparent also that it enhances the obligation to gratitude in
the receiver. This is agreeable to the common sense of mankind, that the
less worthy or excellent the object of benevolence, or the receiver of
kindness is, the more he is obliged, and the greater gratitude is due.
He therefore is most of all obliged, that receives kindness without any
goodness or excellency in himself, but with a total and universal
hatefulness. And as it is agreeable to the common sense of mankind, so
it is agreeable to the Word of God. How often does God in the Scripture
insist on this argument with men, to move them to love him, and to
acknowledge his kindness? How much does he insist on this as an
obligation to gratitude, that they are so sinful, and undeserving, and
ill-deserving?
Therefore it certainly follows, that the doctrine which teaches that
God, when he justifies a man, and shows him such great kindness as to
give him a right to eternal life, does not do it for any obedience, or
any manner of goodness of his, but that justification respects a man as
ungodly, and wholly without any manner of virtue, beauty, or excellency.
I say, this doctrine does certainly more exalt the free grace of God in
justification, and man’s obligation to gratitude for such a favor, than
the contrary doctrine, viz. that God, in showing this kindness to man,
respects him as sincerely obedient and virtuous, and as having something
in him that is truly excellent and lovely, and acceptable in his sight,
and that this goodness or excellency of man is the very fundamental
condition of the bestowment of that kindness on him, or of
distinguishing him from others by that benefit.
But I hasten to a
Fourth argument for the truth of the doctrine: that to suppose a man is
justified by his own virtue or obedience, derogates from the honor of
the Mediator, and ascribes that to man’s virtue which belongs only to
the righteousness of Christ: It puts man in Christ’s stead, and makes
him his own savior, in a respect in which Christ only is his Savior. And
so it is a doctrine contrary to the nature and design of the gospel,
which is to abase man, and to ascribe all the glory of our salvation to
Christ the Redeemer. It is inconsistent with the doctrine of the
imputation of Christ’s righteousness, which is a gospel doctrine.
Here I would explain what we mean by the imputation of Christ’s
righteousness. Prove the thing intended by it to be true. Show that this
doctrine is utterly inconsistent with the doctrine of our being
justified by our own virtue or sincere obedience.
1. I would explain what we mean by the imputation of Christ’s
righteousness. Sometimes the expression is taken by our divines in a
larger sense, for the imputation of all that Christ did and suffered for
our redemption, whereby we are free from guilt, and stand righteous in
the sight of God, and so implies the imputation both of Christ’s
satisfaction and obedience. But here I intend it in a stricter sense,
for the imputation of that righteousness or moral goodness that consists
in the obedience of Christ. — And by that righteousness being imputed to
us, is meant no other than this, that the righteousness of Christ is
accepted for us, and admitted instead of that perfect inherent
righteousness which ought to be in ourselves. Christ’s perfect obedience
shall be reckoned to our account, so that we shall have the benefit of
it, as though we had performed it ourselves. And so we suppose that a
title to eternal life is given us as the reward of this righteousness.
The Scripture uses the word impute in this sense, viz. for reckoning
anything belonging to any person, to another person’s account: As Phm.
18, “If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee ought, put that on mine
account.”
The opposers of this doctrine suppose that there is an absurdity in
supposing that God imputes Christ’s obedience to us. It is to suppose
that God is mistaken, and thinks that we performed that obedience which
Christ performed. But why cannot that righteousness be reckoned to our
account, and be accepted for us, without any such absurdity? Why is
there any more absurdity in it, than in a merchant’s transferring debt
or credit from one man’s account to another, when one man pays a price
for another, so that it shall be accepted as if that other had paid it?
Why is there any more absurdity in supposing that Christ’s obedience is
imputed to us, than that his satisfaction is imputed? If Christ has
suffered the penalty of the law in our stead, then it will follow, that
his suffering that penalty is imputed to us, that is, accepted for us,
and in our stead, and is reckoned to our account, as though we had
suffered it. But why may not his obeying the law of God be as rationally
reckoned to our account, as his suffering the penalty of the law? Why
may not a price to bring into debt, be as rationally transferred from
one person’s account to another, as a price to pay a debt? Having thus
explained what we mean by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, I
proceed,
2. To prove that the righteousness of Christ is thus imputed.
(1.) There is the very same need of Christ’s obeying the law in our
stead, in order to the reward, as of his suffering the penalty of the
law in our stead, in order to our escaping the penalty, and the same
reason why one should be accepted on our account, as the other. There is
the same need of one as the other, that the law of God might be
answered: one was as requisite to answer the law as the other. It is
certain, that was the reason why there was need that Christ should
suffer the penalty for us, even that the law might be answered. For this
the Scripture plainly teaches. This is given as the reason why Christ
was made a curse for us, that the law threatened a curse to us, Gal.
3:10, 13. But the same law that fixes the curse of God as the
consequence of not continuing in all things written in the law to do
them (verse 10) has as much fixed doing those things as an antecedent of
living in them (as verse 12). There is as much connection established in
one case as in the other. There is therefore exactly the same need, from
the law, of perfect obedience being fulfilled in order to our obtaining
the reward, as there is of death being suffered in order to our escaping
the punishment, or the same necessity by the law, of perfect obedience
preceding life, as there is of disobedience being succeeded by death.
The law is, without doubt, as much of an established rule in one case as
in the other.
Christ by suffering the penalty, and so making atonement for us, only
removes the guilt of our sins, and so sets us in the same state that
Adam was in the first moment of his creation, and it is no more fit that
we should obtain eternal life only on that account, than that Adam
should have the reward of eternal life, or of a confirmed and
unalterable state of happiness, the first moments of his existence,
without any obedience at all. Adam was not to have the reward merely on
account of his being innocent. If [that were] so, he would have had it
fixed upon him at once, as soon as ever he was created, for he was as
innocent then as he could be. But he was to have the reward on account
of his active obedience: not on account merely of his not having done
ill, but on account of his doing well.
So on the same account we have not eternal life merely as void of guilt,
which we have by the atonement of Christ, but on the account of Christ’s
active obedience, and doing well. — Christ is our second federal head,
and is called the second Adam (1 Cor. 15:22), because he acted that part
for us, which the first Adam should have done. When he had undertaken to
stand in our stead, he was looked upon and treated as though he were
guilty with our guilt. By his bearing the penalty, he did as it were
free himself from this guilt. But by this the second Adam did only bring
himself into the state in which the first Adam was on the first moment
of his existence, viz. a state of mere freedom from guilt, and hereby
indeed was free from any obligation to suffer punishment. But this being
supposed, there was need of something further, even a positive
obedience, in order to his obtaining, as our second Adam, the reward of
eternal life.
God saw meet to place man first in a state of trial, and not to give him
a title to eternal life as soon as he had made him, because it was his
will that he should first give honor to his authority, by fully
submitting to it, in will and act, and perfectly obeying his law. God
insisted upon it, that his holy majesty and law should have their due
acknowledgment and honor from man, such as became the relation he stood
in to that Being who created him, before he would bestow the reward of
confirmed and everlasting happiness upon him. Therefore God gave him a
law that he might have opportunity, by giving due honor to his authority
in obeying it, to obtain this happiness. It therefore became Christ —
seeing that, in assuming man to himself, he sought a title to this
eternal happiness for him after he had broken the law — that he himself
should become subject to God’s authority, and be in the form of a
servant, that he might do that honor to God’s authority for him, by his
obedience, which God at first required of man as the condition of his
having a title to that reward. Christ came into the world to render the
honor of God’s authority and law consistent with the salvation and
eternal life of sinners. He came to save them, and yet withal to assert
and vindicate the honor of the lawgiver, and his holy law. Now, if the
sinner, after his sin was satisfied for, had eternal life bestowed upon
him without active righteousness, the honor of his law would not be
sufficiently vindicated. Supposing this were possible, that the sinner
could himself, by suffering, pay the debt, and afterwards be in the same
state that he was in before his probation, that is to say, negatively
righteous, or merely without guilt. If he now at last should have
eternal life bestowed upon him, without performing that condition of
obedience, then God would recede from his law, and would give the
promised reward, and his law never have respect and honor shown to it,
in that way of being obeyed. But now Christ, by subjecting himself to
the law, and obeying it, has done great honor to the law, and to the
authority of God who gave it. That so glorious a person should become
subject to the law, and fulfill it, has done much more to honor it, than
if mere man had obeyed it. It was a thing infinitely honorable to God,
that a person of infinite dignity was not ashamed to call him his God,
and to adore and obey him as such. This was more to God’s honor than if
any mere creature, of any possible degree of excellence and dignity, had
so done.
It is absolutely necessary, that in order to a sinner’s being justified,
the righteousness of some other should be reckoned to his account. For
it is declared that the person justified is looked upon as (in himself)
ungodly, but God neither will nor can justify a person without a
righteousness. For justification is manifestly a forensic term, as the
word is used in Scripture, and a judicial thing, or the act of a judge.
So that if a person should be justified without a righteousness, the
judgment would not be according to truth. The sentence of justification
would be a false sentence, unless there be a righteousness performed,
that is, by the judge, properly looked upon as his. To say that God does
not justify the sinner without sincere, though an imperfect obedience,
does not help the case, for an imperfect righteousness before a judge is
no righteousness. To accept of something that falls short of the rule,
instead of something else that answers the rule, is no judicial act, or
act of a judge, but a pure act of sovereignty. An imperfect
righteousness is no righteousness before a judge: For “righteousness (as
one observes) is a relative thing, and has always relation to a law. The
formal nature of righteousness, properly understood, lies in a
conformity of actions to that which is the rule and measure of them.”
Therefore that only is righteousness in the sight of a judge that
answers the law. The law is the judge’s rule. If he pardons and hides
what really is, and so does not pass sentence according to what things
are in themselves, he either does not act the part of a judge, or else
judges falsely. The very notion of judging is to determine what is, and
what is not in anyone’s case. The judge’s work is twofold: it is to
determine first what is fact, and then whether what is in fact be
according to rule, or according to the law. If a judge has no rule or
law established beforehand, by which he should proceed in judging, he
has no foundation to go upon in judging, he has no opportunity to be a
judge, nor is it possible that he should do the part of a judge. To
judge without a law, or rule by which to judge, is impossible. For the
very notion of judging is to determine whether the object of judgment be
according to rule. Therefore God has declared that when he acts as a
judge, he will not justify the wicked, and cannot clear the guilty, and,
by parity of reason, cannot justify without righteousness.
And the scheme of the old law’s being abrogated, and a new law
introduced, will not help at all in this difficulty. For an imperfect
righteousness cannot answer the law of God we are under, whether that be
an old or a new one, for every law requires perfect obedience to itself.
Every rule whatsoever requires perfect conformity to itself, [and] it is
a contradiction to suppose otherwise. For to say, that there is a law
that does not require perfect obedience to itself, is to say that there
is a law that does not require all that it requires. That law that now
forbids sin, is certainly the law that we are now under (let that be an
old or a new one), or else it is not sin. That which is not forbidden,
and is the breach of no law, is no sin. But if we are now forbidden to
commit sin, then it is by a law that we are now under. For surely we are
neither under the forbiddings nor commanding of a law that we are not
under. Therefore, if all sin is now forbidden, then we are now under a
law that requires perfect obedience, and therefore nothing can be
accepted as a righteousness in the sight of our Judge, but perfect
righteousness. So that our Judge cannot justify us, unless he sees a
perfect righteousness in some way belonging to us, either performed by
ourselves, or by another, and justly and duly reckoned to our account.
God does, in the sentence of justification, pronounce a man perfectly
righteous, or else he would need a further justification after he is
justified. His sins being removed by Christ’s atonement, is not
sufficient for his justification. For justifying a man, as has been
already shown, is not merely pronouncing him innocent, or without guilt,
but standing right with regard to the rule that he is under, and
righteous unto life. But this, according to the established rule of
nature, reason, and divine appointment, is a positive, perfect
righteousness.
As there is the same need that Christ’s obedience should be reckoned to
our account, as that his atonement should, so there is the same reason
why it should. As if Adam had persevered, and finished his course of
obedience, we should have received the benefit of his obedience, as much
as now we have the mischief of his disobedience. So in like manner,
there is reason that we should receive the benefit of the second Adam’s
obedience, as of his atonement of our disobedience. Believers are
represented in Scripture as being so in Christ, as that they are legally
one, or accepted as one, by the Supreme Judge. Christ has assumed our
nature, and has so assumed all, in that nature that belongs to him, into
such an union with himself, that he is become their Head, and has taken
them to be his members. And therefore, what Christ has done in our
nature, whereby he did honor to the law and authority of God by his
acts, as well as the reparation to the honor of the law by his
sufferings, is reckoned to the believer’s account: so as that the
believer should be made happy, because it was so well and worthily done
by his Head, as well as freed from being miserable, because he has
suffered for our ill and unworthy doing.
When Christ had once undertaken with God to stand for us, and put
himself under our law, by that law he was obliged to suffer, and by the
same law he was obliged to obey. By the same law, after he had taken
man’s guilt upon him, he himself being our surety, could not be
acquitted till he had suffered, nor rewarded till he had obeyed. But he
was not acquitted as a private person, but as our Head, and believers
are acquitted in his acquittal. Nor was he accepted to a reward for his
obedience, as a private person, but as our Head, and we are accepted to
a reward in his acceptance. The Scripture teaches us, that when Christ
was raised from the dead, he was justified, which justification, as I
have already shown, implies both his acquittal from our guilt, and his
acceptance to the exaltation and glory that was the reward of his
obedience. But believers, as soon as they believe, are admitted to
partake with Christ in this his justification. Hence we are told, that
he was “raised again for our justification,” (Rom. 4:25) which is true,
not only of that part of his justification that consists in his
acquittal, but also his acceptance to his reward. The Scripture teaches
us, that he is exalted, and gone to heaven to take possession of glory
in our name, as our forerunner, Heb. 6:20. We are as it were, both
raised up together with Christ, and also made to sit together with
Christ in heavenly places, and in him, Eph. 2:6.
If it be objected here, that there is this reason, why what Christ
suffered should be accepted on our account, rather than the obedience he
performed, that he was obliged to obedience for himself, but was not
obliged to suffer but only on our account. To this I answer that Christ
was not obliged, on his own account, to undertake to obey. Christ in his
original circumstances, was in no subjection to the Father, being
altogether equal with him. He was under no obligation to put himself in
man’s stead, and under man’s law, or to put himself into any state of
subjection to God whatsoever. There was a transaction between the Father
and the Son, that was antecedent to Christ’s becoming man, and being
made under the law, wherein he undertook to put himself under the law,
and both to obey and to suffer. In [this] transaction these things were
already virtually done in the sight of God, as is evident by this: that
God acted on the ground of that transaction, justifying and saving
sinners, as if the things undertaken had been actually performed long
before they were performed indeed. And therefore, without doubt, in
order to estimate the value and validity of what Christ did and
suffered, we must look back to that transaction, wherein these things
were first undertaken, and virtually done in the sight of God, and see
what capacity and circumstances Christ acted in them. We shall find that
Christ was under no manner of obligation, either to obey the law, or to
suffer its penalty. After this he was equally under obligation to both,
for henceforward he stood as our surety or representative. And therefore
this consequent obligation may be as much of an objection against the
validity of his suffering the penalty, as against his obedience. But if
we look to that original transaction between the Father and the Son,
wherein both these were undertaken and accepted as virtually done in the
sight of the Father, we shall find Christ acting with regard to both as
one perfectly in his own right, and under no manner of previous
obligation to hinder the validity of either.
(2.) To suppose that all Christ does is only to make atonement for us by
suffering, is to make him our Savior but in part. It is to rob him of
half his glory as a Savior. For if so, all that he does is to deliver us
from hell: he does not purchase heaven for us. The adverse scheme
supposes that he purchases heaven for us, in that he satisfies for the
imperfections of our obedience and so purchases that our sincere
imperfect obedience might be accepted as the condition of eternal life,
and so purchases an opportunity for us to obtain heaven by our own
obedience. But to purchase heaven for us only in this sense, is to
purchase it in no sense at all. For all of it comes to no more than a
satisfaction for our sins, or removing the penalty by suffering in our
stead. For all the purchasing they speak of, that our imperfect
obedience should be accepted, is only his satisfying for the sinful
imperfection of our obedience, or (which is the same thing) making
atonement for the sin that our obedience is attended with. But that is
not purchasing heaven, merely to set us at liberty again, that we may go
and get heaven by what we do ourselves. All that Christ does is only to
pay a debt for us. There is no positive purchase of any good. We are
taught in Scripture that heaven is purchased for us. It is called the
purchased possession, Eph. 1:14. The gospel proposes the eternal
inheritance, not to be acquired, as the first covenant did, but as
already acquired and purchased. But he that pays a man’s debt for him,
and so delivers him from slavery, cannot be said to purchase an estate
for him, merely because he sets him at liberty, so that henceforward he
has an opportunity to get an estate by his own hand labor. So that
according to this scheme, the saints in heaven have no reason to thank
Christ for purchasing heaven for them, or redeeming them to God, and
making them kings and priests, as we have an account that they do, in
Rev. 5:9, 10.
(3.) Justification by the righteousness and obedience of Christ, is a
doctrine that the Scripture teaches in very full terms, Rom. 5:18, 19,
“By the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men unto
justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made
sinners, so, by the obedience of one, shall all be made righteous.” Here
in one verse we are told that we have justification by Christ’s
righteousness, and that there might be no room to understand the
righteousness spoken of, merely of Christ’s atonement by his suffering
the penalty. In the next verse it is put in other terms, and asserted
that it is by Christ’s obedience we are made righteous. It is scarcely
possible anything should be more full and determined. The terms, taken
singly, are such as fix their own meaning, and taken together, they fix
the meaning of each other. The words show that we are justified by that
righteousness of Christ which consists in his obedience, and that we are
made righteous or justified by that obedience of his, that is, his
righteousness, or moral goodness before God.
Here possibly it may be objected, that this text means only, that we are
justified by Christ’s passive obedience.
To this I answer, whether we call it active or passive, it alters not
the case as to the present argument, as long as it is evident by the
words that it is not merely under the notion of an atonement for
disobedience, or a satisfaction for unrighteousness, but under the
notion of a positive obedience, and a righteousness, or moral goodness,
that it justifies us, or makes us righteous. Because both the words
righteousness and obedience are used, and used too as the opposites to
sin and disobedience, and an offense. “Therefore as by the offence of
one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so, by the
righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men to justification
of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners; so, by
the obedience of one, shall many be made righteousness.” Now, what can
be meant by righteousness, when spoken of as the opposite to sin, or
moral evil, but moral goodness? What is the righteousness that is the
opposite of an offense, but the behavior that is well pleasing? And what
can be meant by obedience, when spoken of as the opposite of
disobedience, or going contrary to a command, but a positive obeying and
an actual complying with the command? So that there is no room for any
invented distinction of active and passive, to hurt the argument from
this scripture. For it is evident by it, as anything can be, that
believers are justified by the righteousness and obedience of Christ,
under the notion of his moral goodness; — his positive obeying, and
actual complying with the commands of God, and that behavior which,
because of its conformity to his commands, was well-pleasing in his
sight. This is all that ever any need to desire to have granted in this
dispute.
By this it appears, that if Christ’s dying be here included in the words
righteousness and obedience, it is not merely as a propitiation, or
bearing a penalty of a broken law in our stead, but as his voluntary
submitting and yielding himself to those sufferings, was an act of
obedience to the Father’s commands, and so was a part of his positive
righteousness, or moral goodness.
Indeed all obedience considered under the notion of righteousness, is
something active, something done in voluntary compliance with a command;
whether it may be done without suffering, or whether it be hard and
difficult. Yet as it is obedience, righteousness, or moral goodness, it
must be considered as something voluntary and active. If anyone is
commanded to go through difficulties and sufferings, and he, in
compliance with this command, voluntarily does it, he properly obeys in
so doing; and as he voluntarily does it in compliance with a command,
his obedience is as active as any whatsoever. It is the same sort of
obedience, a thing of the very same nature, as when a man, in compliance
with a command, does a piece of hard service, or goes through hard
labor; and there is no room to distinguish between such obedience of it,
as if it were a thing of quite a different nature, by such opposite
terms as active and passive: all the disobeying an easy command and a
difficult one. But is there from hence any foundation to make two
species of obedience, one active and the other passive? There is no
appearance of any such distinction ever entering into the hearts of any
of the penmen of Scripture.
It is true, that of late, when a man refuses to obey the precept of a
human law, but patiently yields himself up to suffer the penalty of the
law, it is called passive obedience. But this I suppose is only a modern
use of the word obedience. Surely it is a sense of the word that the
Scripture is a perfect stranger to. It is improperly called obedience,
unless there be such a precept in the law, that he shall yield himself
patiently to suffer, to which his so doing shall be an active voluntary
conformity. There may in some sense be said to be a conformity of the
law in a person’s suffering the penalty of the law. But no other
conformity to the law is properly called obedience to it, but an active
voluntary conformity to the precepts of it. The word obey is often found
in Scripture with respect to the law of God to man, but never in any
other sense.
It is true that Christ’s willingly undergoing those sufferings which he
endured, is a great part of that obedience or righteousness by which we
are justified. The sufferings of Christ are respected in Scripture under
a twofold consideration, either merely as his being substituted for us,
or put into our stead, in suffering the penalty of the law. And so his
sufferings are considered as a satisfaction and propitiation for sin, or
as he, in obedience to a law or a command of the Father, voluntarily
submitted himself to those sufferings, and actively yielded himself up
to hear them. So they are considered as his righteousness, and a part of
his active obedience. Christ underwent death in obedience to the command
of the Father, Psa. 40:6-8, “Sacrifice and offering thou didst not
desire, mine ears hast thou opened: burnt-offering and sin-offering hast
thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it
is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God; yea, thy law is
within my heart.” John 10:17-18, “I lay down my life, that I might take
it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself: I have
power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This
commandment have I received of my Father.” John 18:11, “The cup which my
Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” And this is part, and
indeed the principal part, of that active obedience by which we are
justified.
It can be no just objection against this, that the command of the Father
to Christ that he should lay down his life was no part of the law that
we had broken, and therefore, that his obeying this command could be no
part of that obedience that he performed for us, because we needed that
he should obey no other law for us, but only that which we had broken or
failed of obeying. For although it must be the same legislative
authority, whose honor is repaired by Christ’s obedience, that we have
injured by our disobedience, yet there is no need that the law which
Christ obeys should be precisely the same that Adam was to have obeyed,
in that sense, that there should be no positive precepts wanting, nor
any added. There was wanting the precept about the forbidden fruit, and
there was added the ceremonial law. The thing required was perfect
obedience. It is no matter whether the positive precepts that Christ was
to obey, were much more than equivalent to what was wanting, because
infinitely more difficult, particularly the command that he had received
to lay down his life, which was his principal act of obedience, and
which, above all other, is concerned in our justification. As that act
of disobedience by which we fell, was disobedience to a positive precept
that Christ never was under, viz. That of abstaining from the tree of
knowledge of good and evil, so that act of obedience by which
principally we are redeemed is obedience to a positive precept, that
should try both Adam’s and Christ’s obedience. Such precepts are the
greatest and most proper trial of obedience, because in them, the mere
authority and will of the legislator is the sole ground of the
obligation (and nothing in the nature of the things themselves), and
therefore they are the greatest trial of any persons’ respect to that
authority and will.
The law that Christ was subject to, and obeyed, was in some sense the
same that was given to Adam. There are innumerable particular duties
required by the law only conditionally, and in such circumstances, are
comprehended in some great and general rule of that law. Thus, for
instance, there are innumerable acts of respect and obedience to men,
which are required by the law of nature (which was a law given to Adam),
which yet are not required absolutely, but upon many prerequisite
conditions: as that there be men standing in such relations to us, and
that they give forth such commands, and the like. So many acts of
respect and obedience to God are included, in like manner, in the moral
law conditionally, or such and such things being supposed: as Abraham’s
going about to sacrifice his son, the Jews’ circumcising their children
when eight days old, and Adam’s not eating the forbidden fruit. They are
virtually comprehended in the great general rule of the moral law, that
we should obey God, and be subject to him in whatsoever he pleases to
command us. Certainly the moral law does as much require us to obey
God’s positive commands, as it requires us to obey the positive commands
of our parents. And thus all that Adam, and all that Christ was
commanded, even his observing the rites and ceremonies of the Jewish
worship, and his laying down his life, was virtually included in this
same great law.
It is no objection against the last-mentioned thing, even in Christ’s
laying down his life, it being included in the moral law given to Adam,
because that law itself allowed of no occasion for any such thing. For
the moral law virtually includes all right acts, on all possible
occasions, even occasions that the law itself allows not. Thus we are
obliged by the moral law to mortify our lusts, and repent of our sins,
though that law allows of no lust to mortify, or sin to repent of.
There is indeed but one great law of God, and that is the same law that
says, “if thou sinnest, thou shalt die;” and “curses is every one that
continues not in all things contained in this law to do them.” All
duties of positive institution are virtually comprehended in this law:
and therefore, if the Jews broke the ceremonial law, it exposed them to
the penalty of the law, or covenant of works, which threatened, “thou
shalt surely die.” The law is the eternal and unalterable rule of
righteousness between God and man, and therefore is the rule of
judgment, but which all that a man does shall be either justified or
condemned; and no sin exposes to damnation, but by the law. So now he
that refuses to obey the precepts that require an attendance on the
sacraments of the New Testament, is exposed to damnation, by virtue of
the law or covenant of works. It may moreover be argued that all sins
whatsoever are breaches of the law or covenant of works, because all
sins, even breaches of the positive precepts, as well as others, have
atonement by the death of Christ. But what Christ died for, was to
satisfy the law, or to bear the curse of the law; as appears by Gal.
3:10-13 and Rom. 7:3, 4.
So that Christ’s laying down his life might be part of that obedience by
which we are justified, though it was a positive precept not given to
Adam. It was doubtless Christ’s main act of obedience, because it was
obedience to a command that was attended with immensely the greatest
difficulty, and so to a command that was the greatest trial of his
obedience. His respect shown to God in it, and his honor to God’s
authority, was proportionably great. It is spoken of in Scripture as
Christ’s principal act of obedience. Phil. 2:7, 8, “But made himself of
no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in
the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled
himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which
is above every name.” And it therefore follows from what has been
already said, that it is mainly by this act of obedience that believers
in Christ also have the reward of glory, or come to partake with Christ
in his glory. We are as much saved by the death of Christ, as his
yielding himself to die was an act of obedience, as we are as it was a
propitiation for our sins. For as it was not only the only act of
obedience that merited, he having performed meritorious acts of
obedience through the whole course of his life, so neither was it the
only suffering that was propitiatory; all his sufferings through the
whole course of his life being propitiatory, as well as every act of
obedience meritorious. Indeed this was his principal suffering, and it
was as much his principal act of obedience.
Hence we may see how that the death of Christ did not only make
atonement, but also merited eternal life, and hence we may see how by
the blood of Christ, we are not only redeemed from sin, but redeemed
unto God. Therefore the Scripture seems everywhere to attribute the
whole of salvation to the blood of Christ. This precious blood is as
much the main price by which heaven is purchased, as it is the main
price by which we are redeemed from hell. The positive righteousness of
Christ, or that price by which he merited, was of equal value with that
by which he satisfied, for indeed it was the same price. He spilled his
blood to satisfy, and by reason of the infinite dignity of his person,
his sufferings were looked upon as of infinite value, and equivalent to
the eternal sufferings of a finite creature. And he spilled his blood
out of respect to the honor of God’s majesty, and in submission to his
authority, who had commanded him so to do. His obedience therein was of
infinite value, both because of the dignity of the person that performed
it, and because he put himself to infinite expense to perform it,
whereby the infinite degree of his regard to God’s authority appeared.
One would wonder what Arminians mean by Christ’s merits. They talk of
Christ’s merits as much as anybody, and yet deny the imputation of
Christ’s positive righteousness. What should there be than anyone should
merit or deserve anything by, besides righteousness or goodness? If
anything that Christ did or suffered, merited or deserved anything, it
was by virtue of the goodness, or righteousness, or holiness of it. If
Christ’s sufferings and death merited heaven, it must be because there
was an excellent righteousness and transcendent moral goodness in that
act of laying down his life. And if by that excellent righteousness he
merited heaven for us, then surely that righteousness is reckoned to our
account, that we have the benefit of it, or, which is the same thing, it
is imputed to us.
Thus, I hope, I have made it evident, that the righteousness of Christ
is indeed imputed to us.
3. I proceed now to the third and last thing under this argument: That
this doctrine, of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, is utterly
inconsistent with the doctrine of our being justified by our own virtue
or sincere obedience. If acceptance to God’s favor, and a title to life,
be given to believers as the reward of Christ’s obedience, then it is
not given as the reward of our own obedience. In what respect soever
Christ is our Savior, that doubtless excludes our being our own saviors
in that same respect. If we can be our own saviors in the same respect
that Christ is, it will thence follow, that the salvation of Christ is
needless in that respect, according to the apostle’s reasoning, Gal.
5:4, “Christ is rendered of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are
justified by the law.” Doubtless, it is Christ’s prerogative to be our
Savior in that sense wherein he is our Savior. And therefore, if it be
by his obedience that we are justified, then it is not by our own
obedience.
Here perhaps it may be said, that a title to salvation is not directly
given as the reward of our obedience. For that is not by anything of
ours, but only by Christ’s satisfaction and righteousness, but yet an
interest in that satisfaction and righteousness is given as a reward of
our obedience.
But this does not at all help the case. For this is to ascribe as much
to our obedience as if we ascribed salvation to it directly, without the
intervention of Christ’s righteousness. For it would be as great a thing
for God to give us Christ, and his satisfaction and righteousness, in
reward for our obedience, as to give us heaven immediately. It would be
as great a reward, and as great a testimony of respect to our obedience.
And if God gives as great a thing as salvation for our obedience, why
could he not as well give salvation itself directly? Then there would
have been no need of Christ’s righteousness. And indeed if God gives us
Christ, or an interest in him, properly in reward for our obedience, he
does really give us salvation in reward for our obedience: for the
former implies the latter. Yea, it implies it, as the greater implies
the less. So that indeed it exalts our virtue and obedience more, to
suppose that God gives us Christ in reward of that virtue and obedience,
than if he should give salvation without Christ.
The thing that the Scripture guards and militates against, is our
imagining that it is our own goodness, virtue, or excellency, that
instates us in God’s acceptance and favor. But to suppose that God gives
us an interest in Christ in reward for our virtue, is as great an
argument that it instates us in God’s favor, as if he bestowed a title
to eternal life as its direct reward. If God gives us an interest in
Christ as a reward of our obedience, it will then follow, that we are
instated in God’s acceptance and favor by our own obedience, antecedent
to our having an interest in Christ. For a rewarding anyone’s excellency,
evermore supposes favor and acceptance on the account of that excellency.
It is the very notion of a reward, that it is a good thing, bestowed in
testimony of respect and favor for the virtue or excellency rewarded. So
that it is not by virtue of our interest in Christ and his merits, that
we first come into favor with God, according to this scheme. For we are
in God’s favor before we have any interest in those merits, in that we
have an interest in those merits given as a fruit of God’s favor for our
own virtue. If our interest in Christ be the fruit of God’s favor, then
it cannot be the ground of it. If God did not accept us, and had no
favor for us for our own excellency, he never would bestow so great a
reward upon us, as a right in Christ’s satisfaction, and righteousness.
So that such a scheme destroys itself. For it supposes that Christ’s
satisfaction and righteousness are necessary for us to recommend us to
the favor of God, and yet supposes that we have God’s favor and
acceptance before we have Christ’s satisfaction and righteousness, and
have these given as a fruit of God’s favor.
Indeed, neither salvation itself, nor Christ the Savior, are given as a
reward of anything in man: They are not given as a reward of faith, nor
anything else of ours: We are not united to Christ as a reward of our
faith, but have union with him by faith, only as faith is the very act
of uniting or closing on our part. As when a man offers himself to a
woman in marriage, he does not give himself to her as a reward of her
receiving him in marriage. Her receiving him is not considered as a
worthy deed in her, for which he rewards her by giving himself to her.
But it is by her receiving him that the union is made, by which she has
him for her husband. It is on her part the unition itself. By these
things it appears how contrary to the gospel of Christ their scheme is,
who say that faith justifies as a principle of obedience, or as a
leading act of obedience, or (as others) the sum and comprehension of
all evangelical obedience. For by this, the obedience or virtue that is
in faith gives it its justifying influence, and that is the same thing
as to say, that we are justified by our own obedience, virtue, or
goodness.
Having thus considered the evidence of the truth of the doctrine, I
proceed now to the
III. Thing proposed, viz. “To show in what sense the acts of a Christian
life, or of evangelical obedience, may be looked upon to be concerned in
this affair.”
From what has been said already, it is manifest that they cannot have
any concern in this affair as good works, or by virtue of any moral
goodness in them: not as works of the law, or as that moral excellency,
or any part of it, which is the fulfillment of that great, universal,
and everlasting law or covenant of works which the great lawgiver has
established, as the highest and unalterable rule of judgment, which
Christ alone answers, or does anything towards it.
It having been shown out of the Scripture, that it is only by faith, or
the soul’s receiving and uniting to the Savior who has wrought our
righteousness, that we are justified. It therefore remains, that the
acts of a Christian life cannot be concerned in this affair any
otherwise than as they imply, and are the expressions of faith, and may
be looked upon as so many acts of reception of Christ the Savior. But
the determining what concerns acts of Christian obedience can have in
justification in this respect, will depend on the resolving of another
point, viz. whether any other act of faith besides the first act, has
any concern in our justification, or how far perseverance in faith, or
the continued and renewed acts of faith, have influence in this affair.
And it seems manifest that justification is by the first act of faith,
in some respects, in a peculiar manner, because a sinner is actually and
finally justified as soon as he has performed one act of faith, and
faith in its first act does, virtually at least, depend on God for
perseverance, and entities to this among other benefits. But yet the
perseverance of faith is not excluded in this affair. It is not only
certainly connected with justification, but it is not to be excluded
from that on which the justification of a sinner has a dependence, or
that by which he is justified.
I have shown that the way in which justification has a dependence on
faith is, that it is the qualification on which the congruity of an
interest in the righteousness of Christ depends, or wherein such a
fitness consists. But the consideration of the perseverance of faith
cannot be excluded out of this congruity or fitness. For it is congruous
that he that believes in Christ should have an interest in Christ’s
righteousness, and so in the eternal benefits purchased by it, because
faith is that by which the soul has union or oneness with Christ. There
is a natural congruity in it, that they who are one with Christ should
have a joint interest with him in his eternal benefits. But yet this
congruity depends on its being an abiding union. As it is needful that
the branch should abide in the vine, in order to its receiving the
lasting benefits of the root, so it is necessary that the soul should
abide in Christ, in order to its receiving those lasting benefits of
God’s final acceptance and favor. John 15:6, 7, “If a man abide not in
me, he is cast forth, as a branch. If ye abide in me, and my words abide
in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” John
15:9, 10, “Continue ye in my love. If ye keep (or abide in) my
commandments, ye shall abide in my love: even as I have kept my Father’s
commandments, and abide in his love.” There is the same reason why it is
necessary that the union with Christ should remain, as why it should be
begun: why it should continue to be, as why it should once be. If it
should be begun without remaining, the beginning would be in vain. In
order to the soul’s being now in a justified state, and now free from
condemnation, it is necessary that it should now be in Christ, and not
merely that it should once have been in him. Rom. 8:1, “There is no
condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” The soul is saved in
Christ, as being now in him, when the salvation is bestowed, and not
merely as remembering that it once was in him. Phil. 3:9, “That I may be
found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law,
but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which
is of God by faith.” 1 John 2:28, “And now, little children, abide in
him; that when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be
ashamed before him at his coming.” In order for people to be blessed
after death, it is necessary not only that they should once be in him,
but that they should die in him. Rev. 14:13, “Blessed are the dead that
die in the Lord.” And there is the same reason why faith, the uniting
qualification, should remain in order to the union’s remaining, as why
it should once be, in order to the union’s once being.
So that although the sinner is actually and finally justified on the
first act of faith, yet the perseverance of faith, even then, comes into
consideration, as one thing on which the fitness of acceptance to life
depends. God in the act of justification, which is passed on a sinner’s
first believing, has respect to perseverance, as being virtually
contained in that first act of faith, and it is looked upon, and taken
by him that justifies, as being as it were a property in that faith. God
has respect to the believer’s continuance in faith, and he is justified
by that, as though it already were, because by divine establishment it
shall follow, and it being by divine constitution connected with that
first faith, as much as if it were a property in it, it is then
considered as such, and so justification is not suspended. But were it
not for this, it would be needful that it should be suspended, till the
sinner had actually persevered in faith.
And that it is so, that God in the act of final justification which he
passes at the sinner’s conversion, has respect to perseverance in faith,
and future acts of faith, as being virtually implied in the first act,
is further manifest by this, viz. That in a sinner’s justification, at
his conversion there is virtually contained a forgiveness as to eternal
and deserved punishment, not only of all past sins, but also of all
future infirmities and acts of sin that they shall be guilty of, because
that first justification is decisive and final. And yet pardon, in the
order of nature, properly follows the crime, and also follows those acts
of repentance and faith that respect the crime pardoned, as is manifest
both from reason and Scripture. David, in the beginning of Psalm 32
speaks of the forgiveness of sins which were doubtless committed long
after he was first godly, as being consequent on those sins, and on his
repentance and faith with respect to them, and yet this forgiveness is
spoken of by the apostle in the 4th of Romans, as an instance of
justification by faith. Probably the sin David there speaks of is the
same that he committed in the matter of Uriah, and so the pardon the
same with that release from death or eternal punishment, which the
prophet Nathan speaks of, 2 Sam. 12:13, “The Lord also hath put away thy
sin; thou shalt not die.” Not only does the manifestation of this pardon
follow the sin in the order of time, but the pardon itself, in the order
of nature, follows David’s repentance and faith with respect to this
sin. For it is spoken of in Psalm 32 as depending on it.
But inasmuch as a sinner, in his first justification, is forever
justified and freed from all obligation to eternal punishment, it hence
of necessity follows, that future faith and repentance are beheld, in
that justification, as virtually contained in that first faith and
repentance. Because repentance of those future sins, and faith in a
Redeemer, with respect to them, or at least, the continuance of that
habit and principle in the heart that has such an actual repentance and
faith in its nature and tendency, is now made sure by God’s promise. —
If remission of sins committed after conversion, in the order of nature,
follows that faith and repentance that is after them, then it follows
that future sins are respected in the first justification, no otherwise
than as future faith and repentance are respected in it. And future
repentance and faith are looked upon by him that justifies, as virtually
implied in the first repentance and faith, in the same manner as
justification from future sins is virtually implied in the first
justification, which is the thing that was to be proved.
And besides, if no other act of faith could be concerned in
justification but the first act, it will then follow that Christians
ought never to seek justification by any other act of faith. For if
justification is not to be obtained by after acts of faith, then surely
it is not a duty to seek it by such acts. And so it can never be a duty
for persons after they are once converted, by faith to seek God, or
believingly to look to him for the remission of sin, or deliverance from
the guilt of it, because deliverance from the guilt of sin, is part of
what belongs to justification. And if it be not proper for converts by
faith to look to God through Christ for it, then it will follow that it
is not proper for them to pray for it. For Christian prayer to God for a
blessing, is but an expression of faith in God for that blessing: prayer
is only the voice of faith. But if these things are so, it will follow
that the petition in the Lord’s prayer, forgive us our debts, is not
proper to be put up by the disciples of Christ, or to be used in
Christian assemblies, and that Christ improperly directed his disciples
to use that petition, when they were all of them, except Judas,
converted before. The debt that Christ directs his disciples to pray for
the forgiveness of, can mean nothing else but the punishment that sin
deserves, or the debt that we owe to divine justice, the ten thousand
talents we owe our Lord. To pray that God would forgive our debts, is
undoubtedly the same thing as to pray that God would release us from
obligation to due punishment. But releasing from obligation to the
punishment due to sin, and forgiving the debt that we owe to divine
justice, is what appertains to justification.
Then to suppose that no after acts of faith are concerned in the
business of justification, and so that it is not proper for any ever to
seek justification by such acts, would be forever to cut off those
Christians that are doubtful concerning their first act of faith, from
the joy and peace of believing. As the business of a justifying faith is
to obtain pardon and peace with God by looking to God, and trusting in
him for these blessings, so the joy and peace of that faith is in the
apprehension of pardon and peace obtained by such a trust. This a
Christian that is doubtful of his first act of faith cannot have from
that act, because, by the supposition, he is doubtful whether it be an
act of faith, and so whether be did obtain pardon and peace by that act.
The proper remedy, in such a case, is now by faith to look to God in
Christ for these blessings, but he is cut off from this remedy, because
he is uncertain whether he his warrant so to do. For he does not know
but that he has believed already, and if so, then he has no warrant to
look to God by faith for these blessings now, because, by the
supposition, no new act of faith is a proper means of obtaining these
blessings. So he can never properly obtain the joy of faith, for there
are acts of true faith that are very weak, and the first act may be so
as well as others. It may be like the first motion of the infant in the
womb: it may be so weak an act, that the Christian, by examining it, may
never be able to determine whether it was a true act of faith or no. It
is evident from fact, and abundant experience, that many Christians are
forever at a loss to determine which was their first act of faith. And
those saints who have had a good degree of satisfaction concerning their
faith, may be subject to great declensions and falls, in which case they
are liable to great fears of eternal punishment. The proper way of
deliverance, is to forsake their sin by repentance, and by faith now to
come to Christ for deliverance from the deserved eternal punishment. But
this it would not be, if deliverance from that punishment was not this
way to be obtained.
But what is a still more plain and direct evidence of what I am now
arguing for, is that the act of faith which Abraham exercised in the
great promise of the covenant of grace that God made to him, of which it
is expressly said, Gal. 3:6, “It was accounted to him for righteousness”
— the grand instance and proof that the apostle so much insists upon
throughout Romans 4, and Galatians 3, to confirm his doctrine of
justification by faith alone — was not Abraham’s first act of faith, but
was exerted long after he had by faith forsaken his own country, Heb.
11:8, and had been treated as an eminent friend of God.
Moreover, the apostle Paul, in Philippians 3, tells us how earnestly he
sought justification by faith, or to win Christ and obtain that
righteousness which was by the faith of him, in what he did after his
conversion. Phil. 3:8, 9, “For whom I have suffered the loss of all
things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found
in him, not having mine own righteousness which is of the law, but that
which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God
by faith.” And in the two next verses he expresses the same thing in
other words, and tells us how he went through sufferings, and became
conformable to Christ’s death, that he might be a partaker with Christ
in the benefit of his resurrection, which the same apostle elsewhere
teaches us, is especially justification. Christ’s resurrection was his
justification. In this, he that was put to death in the flesh, was
justified by the Spirit, and he that was delivered for our offenses,
rose again for our justification. And the apostle tells us in the verses
that follow in that third chapter of Philippians, that he thus sought to
attain the righteousness which is through the faith of Christ, and so to
partake of the benefit of his resurrection, still as though he had not
already attained, but that he continued to follow after it.
On the whole, it appears that the perseverance of faith is necessary,
even to the congruity of justification, and that not the less, because a
sinner is justified, and perseverance promised, on the first act of
faith. But God, in that justification, has respect, not only to the past
act of faith, but to his own promise of future acts, and to the fitness
of a qualification beheld as yet only in his own promise. And that
perseverance in faith is thus necessary to salvation, not merely as a
sine qua non, or as a universal concomitant of it, but by reason of such
an influence and dependence, seems manifest by many Scriptures, I would
mention two or three — Heb. 3:6, “Whose house are we, if we hold fast
the confidence, and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.” Verse
14, “For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of
our confidence stedfast unto the end.” Heb. 6:12, “Be ye followers of
them, who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” Rom. 11:20,
“Well, because of unbelief they were broken off; but thou standest by
faith. Be not high-minded, but fear.”
And, as the congruity to a final justification depends on perseverance
in faith, as well as the first act, so oftentimes the manifestation of
justification in the conscience, arises a great deal more from after
acts, than the first act. All the difference whereby the first act of
faith has a concern in this affair that is peculiar, seems to be, as it
were, only an accidental difference, arising from the circumstance of
time, or its being first in order of time, and not from any peculiar
respect that God has to it, or any influence it has of a peculiar
nature, in the affair of our salvation.
And thus it is that a truly Christian walk, and the acts of an
evangelical, child-like, believing obedience, are concerned in the
affair of our justification, and seem to be sometimes so spoken of in
Scripture, viz. as an expression of a persevering faith in the Son of
God, the only Savior. Faith unites to Christ, and so gives a congruity
to justification, not merely as remaining a dormant principle in the
heart, but as being and appearing in its active expressions. The
obedience of a Christian, so far as it is truly evangelical, and
performed with the Spirit of the Son sent forth into the heart, has all
relation to Christ the Mediator, and is but an expression of the soul’s
believing unition to Christ. All evangelical works are works of that
faith that worketh by love, and every such act of obedience, wherein it
is inward, and the act of the soul, is only a new effective act of
reception of Christ, and adherence to the glorious Savior. Hence that of
the apostle, Gal. 2:20, “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and
the life that I now live in the flesh, is by the faith of the Son of
God.” And hence we are directed, in whatever we do, whether in word or
deed, to do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Col. 3:17.
And that God in justification has respect, not only to the first act of
faith, but also to future persevering acts, as expressed in life, seems
manifest by Rom. 1:17, “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed
from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.”
And Heb. 10:38, 39, “Now the just shall live by faith; but if any man
draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. But we are not of them
who draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe, to the saving of
the soul.”
So that, as was before said of faith, so may it be said of a child-like
believing obedience: it has no concern in justification by any virtue or
excellency in it, but only as there is a reception of Christ in it. And
this is no more contrary to the apostle’s frequent assertion of our
being justified without the works of the law, than to say that we are
justified by faith. For faith is as much a work, or act of Christian
obedience, as the expressions of faith, in spiritual life and walk. And
therefore, as we say that faith does not justify as a work, so we say of
all these effective expressions of faith.
This is the reverse of the scheme of our modem divines, who hold that
faith justifies only as an act or expression of obedience. Whereas, in
truth, obedience has no concern in justification, any otherwise than as
an expression of faith.
I now proceed to the
IV. Thing proposed, viz. To answer objections.
Object. 1. We frequently find promises of eternal life and salvation,
and sometimes of justification itself, made to our own virtue and
obedience. Eternal life is promised to obedience, in Rom. 2:7, “To them
who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory, honor, and
immortality, eternal life:” And the like in innumerable other places.
And justification itself is promised to that virtue of a forgiving
spirit or temper in us, Mat. 6:14, “For, if ye forgive men their
trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: but if you
forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your
trespasses.” All allow that justification in great part consists in the
forgiveness of sins.
To this I answer,
1. These things being promised to our virtue and obedience, argues no
more, than that there is a connection between them and evangelical
obedience, which, I have already observed, is not the thing in dispute.
All that can be proved by obedience and salvation being connected in the
promise, is that obedience and salvation are connected in fact, which
nobody denies, and whether it be owned or denied, is, as has been shown,
nothing to the purpose. There is no need that an admission to a title to
salvation should be given on the account of our obedience, in order to
the promises being true. If we find such a promise, that he that obeys
shall be saved, or he that is holy shall be justified, all that is
needful, in order to such promises being true, is that it be really so:
that he that obeys shall be saved, and that holiness and justification
shall indeed go together. That proposition may be a truth, that he that
obeys shall be saved, because obedience and salvation are connected
together in fact, and yet an acceptance to a title to salvation not be
granted upon the account of any of our own virtue or obedience. What is
a promise, but only a declaration of future truth, for the comfort and
encouragement of the person to whom it is declared? Promises are
conditional propositions, and, as has been already observed, it is not
the thing in dispute, whether other things besides faith may not have
the place of the condition in such propositions wherein pardon and
salvation are the consequent.
2. Promises may rationally be made to signs and evidences of faith, and
yet the thing promised not be upon the account of the sign, but the
thing signified. Thus, for instance, human government may rationally
make promises of such and such privileges to those that can show such
evidences of their being free of such a city, or members of such a
corporation, or descended of such a family, when it is not at all for
the sake of that which is the evidence or sign, in itself considered,
that they are admitted to such a privilege, but only and purely for the
sake of that which it is an evidence of. And though God does not stand
in need of signs to know whether we have true faith or not, yet our own
consciences do, so that it is much for our comfort that promises are
made to signs of faith. Finding in ourselves a forgiving temper and
disposition, may be a most proper and natural evidence to our
consciences, that our hearts have, in a sense of our own utter
unworthiness, truly closed and fallen in with the way of free and
infinitely gracious forgiveness of our sins by Jesus Christ, whence we
may be enabled, with the greater comfort, to apply to ourselves the
promises of forgiveness by Christ.
3. It has been just now shown, how that acts of evangelical obedience
are indeed concerned in our justification itself, and are not excluded
from that condition that justification depends upon, without the least
prejudice to that doctrine of justification by faith, without any
goodness of our own, that has been maintained. Therefore it can be no
objection against this doctrine, that we have sometimes in Scripture
promises of pardon and acceptance made to such acts of obedience.
4. Promises of particular benefits implied in justification and
salvation, may especially be fitly made to such expressions and
evidences of faith as they have a peculiar natural likeness and
suitableness to. As forgiveness is promised to a forgiving spirit in us,
obtaining mercy is fitly promised to mercifulness in us, and the like,
and that upon several accounts, they are the most natural evidences of
our heart’s closing with those benefits by faith. For they do especially
show the sweet accord and consent that there is between the heart and
these benefits, and by reason of the natural likeness that there is
between the virtue and the benefit, the one has the greater tendency to
bring the other to mind. The practice of the virtue tends the more to
renew the sense, and refresh the hope of the blessing promised, and also
to convince the conscience of the justice of being denied the benefit,
if the duty be neglected. Besides the sense and manifestation of divine
forgiveness in our own consciences — yea, and many exercises of God’s
forgiving mercy (as it respects God’s fatherly displeasure), granted
after justification, through the course of a Christian’s life — may be
given as the proper rewards of a forgiving spirit, and yet this not be
at all to the prejudice of the doctrine we have maintained, as will more
fully appear, when we come to answer another objection hereafter to be
mentioned.
Object. 2. Our own obedience, and inherent holiness, is necessary to
prepare men for heaven, and therefore is doubtless what recommends
persons to God’s acceptance, as the heirs of heaven.
To this I answer,
1. Our own obedience being necessary, in order to a preparation for an
actual bestowment of glory, is no argument that it is the thing upon the
account of which we are accepted to a right to it. God may, and does do
many things to prepare the saints for glory, after he has accepted them
as the heirs of glory. A parent may do much to prepare a child for an
inheritance in its education, after the child is an heir. Yea, there are
many things necessary to fit a child for the actual possession of the
inheritance, yet not necessary in order to its having a right to the
inheritance.
2. If everything that is necessary to prepare men for glory must be the
proper condition of justification, then perfect holiness is the
condition of justification. Men must be made perfectly holy, before they
are admitted to the enjoyment of the blessedness of heaven, for there
must in no wise enter in there any spiritual defilement. And therefore,
when a saint dies, he leaves all his sin and corruption when he leaves
the body.
Object. 3. Our obedience is not only indissolubly connected with
salvation, and preparatory to it, but the Scripture expressly speaks of
bestowing eternal blessings as rewards for the good deeds of the saints.
Mat. 10:42, “Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones
a cup of cold water only, in the name of a disciple, he shall in no wise
lose his reward.” 1 Cor 3:8, “Every man shall receive his own reward,
according to his own labor.” And in many other places. This seems to
militate against the doctrine that has been maintained, two ways: (1.)
The bestowing a reward, carries in it a respect to a moral fitness in
the thing rewarded to the reward. The very notion of a reward being a
benefit bestowed in testimony of acceptance of, and respect to, the
goodness or amiableness of some qualification or work in the person
rewarded. Besides, the Scripture seems to explain itself in this matter,
in Rev. 3:4, “Thou hast a few names, even in Sardis, which have not
defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white; for they
are worthy.” This is here given as the reason why they should have such
a reward, “because they were worthy;” which, though we suppose it to
imply no proper merit, yet it at least implies a moral fitness, or that
the excellency of their virtue in God’s sight recommends them to such a
reward, which seems directly repugnant to what has been supposed, viz.
that we are accepted, and approved of God, as the heirs of salvation,
not out of regard to the excellency of our own virtue or goodness, or
any moral fitness therein to such a reward, but only on account of the
dignity and moral fitness of Christ’s righteousness. (2.) Our being
eternally rewarded for our own holiness and good works, necessarily
supposes that our future happiness will be greater or smaller, in some
proportion as our own holiness and obedience is more or less, and that
there are different degrees of glory, according to different degrees of
virtue and good works, is a doctrine very expressly and frequently
taught us in Scripture. But this seems quite inconsistent with the
saints all having their future blessedness as a reward of Christ’s
righteousness. For if Christ’s righteousness be imputed to all, and this
be what entitles each one to glory, then it is the same righteousness
that entitles one to glory which entitles another. But if all have glory
as the reward of the same righteousness, why have not all the same
glory? Does not the same righteousness merit as much glory when imputed
to one as when imputed to another?
In answer to the first part of this objection, I would observe, that it
does not argue that we are justified by our good deeds, that we shall
have eternal blessings in reward for them. For it is in consequence of
our justification, that our good deeds become rewardable with spiritual
and eternal rewards. The acceptableness, and so the rewardableness, of
our virtue, is not antecedent to justification, but follows it, and is
built entirely upon it, which is the reverse of what those in the
adverse scheme of justification suppose, viz. that justification is
built on the acceptableness and rewardableness of our virtue. They
suppose that a saving interest in Christ is given as a reward of our
virtue, or (which is the same thing), as a testimony of God’s acceptance
of our excellency in our virtue. But the contrary is true: that God’s
respect to our virtue as our amiableness in his sight, and his
acceptance of it as rewardable, is entirely built on our interest in
Christ already established. So that the relation to Christ, whereby
believers in scripture language are said to be in Christ, is the very
foundation of our virtues and good deeds being accepted of God, and so
their being rewarded. For a reward is a testimony of acceptance. For we,
and all that we do, are accepted only in the beloved, Eph. 1:6. Our
sacrifices are acceptable, only through our interest in him, and through
his worthiness and preciousness being, as it were, made ours. 1 Pet.
2:4, 5, “To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of
men, but chosen of God, and precious. Ye also as lively stones, are
built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood to offer up spiritual
sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.” Here being actually
built on this stone, precious to God, is mentioned as all the ground of
the acceptableness of our good works to God, and their becoming also
precious in his eyes. So, Heb. 13:21, “Make you perfect in every good
work to do his will, working in you that which is well pleasing in his
sight, through Jesus Christ.” And hence we are directed, whatever we
offer to God, to offer it in Christ’s name, as expecting to have it
accepted no other way, than from the value that God has to that name.
Col. 3:17, “And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of
the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.” To act in
Christ’s name, is to act under him as our head, and as having him to
stand for us, and represent us to God-ward.
The reason of this may be seen from what has been already said, to show
it is not meet that anything in us should be accepted of God as any
excellency of our persons, until we are actually in Christ, and
justified through him. The loveliness of the virtue of fallen creatures
is nothing in the sight of God, till he beholds them in Christ, and
clothed with his righteousness. 1. Because till then we stand condemned
before God, by his own holy law, to his utter rejection and abhorrence.
And, 2. Because we are infinitely guilty before him, and the loveliness
of our virtue bears no proportion to our guilt, and must therefore pass
for nothing before a strict judge. And, 3. Because our good deeds and
virtuous acts themselves are in a sense corrupt, and the hatefulness of
the corruption of them, if we are beheld as we are in ourselves, or
separate from Christ, infinitely outweighs the loveliness of the good
that is in them. So that if no other sin was considered but only that
which attends the act of virtue itself, the loveliness vanishes into
nothing in comparison of it, and therefore the virtue must pass for
nothing, out of Christ. Not only are our best duties defiled, in being
attended with the exercises of sin and corruption which precede, follow,
and are intermingled with them, but even the holy acts themselves, and
the gracious exercises of the godly, are defective. Though the act most
simply considered is good, yet take the acts in their measure and
dimensions, and the manner in which they are exerted, and they are
sinfully defective: there is that defect in them that may well be called
the corruption of them. That defect is properly sin, an expression of a
vile sinfulness of heart and what tends to provoke the just anger of
God, not because the exercises of love and other grace is not equal to
God’s loveliness. For it is impossible the love of creatures (men or
angels) should be so, but because the act is so very disproportionate to
the occasion given for love or other grace, considering God’s
loveliness, the manifestation that is made of it, the exercises of
kindness, the capacity of human nature, and our advantages (and the
like) together. — A negative expression of corruption may be as truly
sin, and as just cause of provocation, as a positive. Thus if a worthy
and excellent person should, from mere generosity and goodness,
exceedingly lay out himself, and with great expense and suffering save
another’s life, or redeem him from some extreme calamity, and if that
other person should never thank him for it, or express the least
gratitude any way, this would be a negative expression of his
ingratitude and baseness. But [it] is equivalent to an act of
ingratitude, or positive exercise of a base unworthy spirit, and is
truly an expression of it, and brings as much blame as if he by some
positive act had much injured another person. And so it would be (only
in a lesser degree) if the gratitude was but very small, bearing no
proportion to the benefit obligation. As if, for so great and
extraordinary a kindness, he should express no more gratitude than would
have been becoming towards a person who had only given him a cup of
water when thirsty, or shown him the way in a journey when at a loss, or
had done him some such small kindness. If he should come to his
benefactor to express his gratitude, and should do after this manner, he
might truly be said to act unworthily and odiously, he would show a most
ungrateful spirit. His doing after such a manner might justly be
abhorred by all, and yet the gratitude, that little there is of it, most
simply considered, and so far as it goes, is good. And so it is with
respect to our exercise of love, and gratitude, and other graces,
towards God. They are defectively corrupt and sinful, and take them as
they are, in their manner and measure, might justly be odious and
provoking to God, and would necessarily be so, were we beheld out of
Christ. For in that this defect is sin, it is infinitely hateful, and so
the hatefulness of the very act infinitely outweighs the loveliness of
it, because all sin has infinite hatefulness and heinousness. But our
holiness has but little value and loveliness, as has been elsewhere
demonstrated.
Hence, though it be true that the saints are rewarded for their good
works, yet it is for Christ’s sake only, and not for the excellency of
their works in themselves considered, or beheld separately from Christ.
For so they have no excellency in God’s sight, or acceptableness to him,
as has now been shown. It is acknowledged that God, in rewarding the
holiness and good works of believers, does in some respect give them
happiness as a testimony of his respect to the loveliness of their
holiness and good works in his sight. For that is the very notion of a
reward. But it is in a very different sense from what would have been if
man had not fallen, which would have been to bestow eternal life on man,
as a testimony of God’s respect to the loveliness of what man did,
considered as in itself, and as in man separately by himself, and not
beheld as a member of Christ. In which sense also, the scheme of
justification we are opposing necessarily supposes the excellency of our
virtue to be respected and rewarded. For it supposes a saving interest
in Christ itself to be given as a reward of it.
Two things come to pass, relating to the saints’ reward for their
inherent righteousness, by virtue of their relation to Christ. 1. The
guilt of their persons is all done away, and the pollution and
hatefulness that attends and is in their good works, is hid. 2. Their
relation to Christ adds a positive value and dignity to their good works
in God’s sight. That little holiness, and those faint and feeble acts of
love, and other grace, receive and exceeding value in the sight of God,
by virtue of God’s beholding them as in Christ, and as it were members
of one so infinitely worthy in his eyes, and that because God looks upon
the persons as of greater dignity on this account. Isa. 43:4, “Since
thou wast precious in my sight, thou has been honorable.” God, for
Christ’s sake, and because they are members of his own righteous and
dear Son, sets an exceeding value upon their persons. Hence it follows,
that he also sets a great value upon their good acts and offerings. The
same love and obedience in a person of greater dignity and value in
God’s sight, is more valuable in his eyes than in one of less dignity.
Love is valuable in proportion to the dignity of the person whose love
it is, because so far as anyone gives his love to another, he gives
himself, in that he gives his heart. But this is a more excellent
offering, in proportion as the person whose self is offered is more
worthy. Believers are become immensely more honorable in God’s esteem by
virtue of their relation to Christ, than man would have been considered
as by himself, though he had been free from sin: as a mean person
becomes more honorable when married to a king. Hence God will probably
reward the little weak love, and poor and exceeding imperfect obedience
of believers in Christ, with more glorious reward than he would have
done Adam’s perfect obedience. According to the tenor of the first
covenant, the person was to be accepted and rewarded, only for the
work’s sake. But by the covenant of grace, the work is accepted and
rewarded, only for the person’s sake: the person being beheld
antecedently as a member of Christ, and clothed with his righteousness.
So that though the saints’ inherent holiness is rewarded, yet this very
reward is indeed not the less founded on the worthiness and
righteousness of Christ. None of the value that their works have in his
sight, nor any of the acceptance they have with him, is out of Christ,
and out of his righteousness. But his worthiness as mediator is the
prime and only foundation on which all is built, and the universal
source whence all arises. God indeed does great things out of regard to
the saints’ loveliness, but it is only as a secondary and derivative
loveliness. When I speak of a derivative loveliness, I do not mean only,
that the qualifications themselves accepted as lovely, are derived from
Christ, from his power and purchase, but that the acceptance of them as
a loveliness, and all the value that is set upon them, and all their
connection with the reward, is founded in, and derived from, Christ’s
righteousness and worthiness.
If we suppose that not only higher degrees of glory in heaven, but
heaven itself, is in some respect given in reward for the holiness and
good works of the saints, in this secondary and derivative sense, it
will not prejudice the doctrine we have maintained. It is no way
impossible that God may bestow heavens’ glory wholly out of respect to
Christ’s righteousness, and yet in reward for man’s inherent holiness,
in different respects, and different ways. It may be only Christ’s
righteousness that God has respect to, for its own sake, the independent
acceptableness and dignity of it being sufficient of itself to recommend
all that believe in Christ to a title to this glory. So it may be only
by this that persons enter into a title to heaven, or have their prime
right to it. Yet God may also have respect to the saints’ own holiness,
for Christ’s sake, and as deriving a value from Christ’s merit, which he
may testify in bestowing heaven upon them. The saints being beheld as
members of Christ, their obedience is looked upon by God as something of
Christ’s: it being the obedience of the members of Christ, as the
sufferings of the members of Christ are looked upon, in some respect, as
the sufferings of Christ. Hence the apostle, speaking of his sufferings,
says, Col. 1:24, “Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up
that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh.” To the
same purpose is Mat. 25:35, etc. I was hungry, naked, sick, and in
prison, etc. And so that in Rev. 11:8 “And their dead bodies shall lie
in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and
Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.”
By the merit and righteousness of Christ, such favor of God towards the
believer may be obtained, as that God may hereby be already, as it were,
disposed to make them perfectly and eternally happy. But yet this does
not hinder, but that God in his wisdom may choose to bestow this perfect
and eternal happiness in this way, viz. in some respect as a reward of
their holiness and obedience. It is not impossible but that the
blessedness may be bestowed as a reward for that which is done after
that an interest is already obtained in that favor, which (to speak of
God after the manner of men) disposes God to bestow the blessedness. Our
heavenly Father may already have that favor for a child, whereby he may
be thoroughly ready to give the child an inheritance, because he is his
child, which he is by the purchase of Christ’s righteousness, and yet
that the Father may choose to bestow the inheritance on the child in a
way of reward for his dutifulness, and behaving in a manner becoming a
child. And so great a reward may not be judged more than a meet reward
for his dutifulness, but that so great a reward is judged meet, does not
arise from the excellency of the obedience absolutely considered, but
from his standing in so near and honorable a relation to God, as that of
a child, which is obtained only by the righteousness of Christ. And thus
the reward, and the greatness of it, arises properly from the
righteousness of Christ, though it be indeed in some sort the reward of
their obedience. As a father might justly esteem the inheritance no more
than a meet reward for the obedience of his child, and yet esteem it
more than a meet reward for the obedience of a servant. The favor whence
a believer’s heavenly Father bestows the eternal inheritance, and his
title as an heir, is founded in that relation he stands in to him as a
child, purchased by Christ’s righteousness: though he in wisdom chooses
to bestow it in such a way, and therein to testify his acceptance of the
amiableness of his obedience in Christ.
Believers having a title to heaven by faith antecedent to their
obedience, or its being absolutely promised to them before, does not
hinder but that the actual bestowment of heaven may also be a testimony
of God’s regard to their obedience, though performed afterwards. Thus it
was with Abraham, the father and pattern of all believers. God bestowed
upon him that blessing of multiplying his seed as the stars of heaven,
and causing that in his seed all the families of the earth should be
blessed, in reward for his obedience in offering up his son Isaac, Gen.
22:16, 17, 18, “And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for
because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine
only son; that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will
multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon
the sea shore; and they seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and
in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou
hast obeyed my voice.” And yet the very same blessings had been from
time to time promised to Abraham, in the most positive terms, and the
promise, with great solemnity, confirmed and sealed to him, as Gen.
12:2, 3; chap. 13:16; chap. 15:1, 4-7, etc. Gen. 17 throughout; chap.
18:10, 18.
From what has been said we may easily solve the difficulty arising from
that text in Rev. 3:4, “They shall walk with me in white, for they are
worthy;” which is parallel with that text in Luke 20:35, “But they which
shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection
from the dead.” I allow (as in the objection) that this worthiness does
doubtless denote a moral fitness to the reward, or that God looks on
these glorious benefits as a meet testimony of his regard to the value
which their persons and performances have in his sight.
1. God looks on these glorious benefits as a meet testimony of his
regard to the value which their persons have in his sight. But he sets
this value upon their persons purely for Christ’s sake. They are such
jewels, and have such preciousness in his eyes, only because they are
beheld in Christ, and by reason of the worthiness of the head they are
the members of, and the stock they are grafted into. And the value that
God sets upon them on this account is so great, that God thinks meet,
from regard to it, to admit them to such exceeding glory. The saints, on
account of their relation to Christ, are such precious jewels in God’s
sight, that they are thought worthy of a place in his own crown. Mal.
3:17; Zec. 9:16. So far as the saints are said to be valuable in God’s
sight, on whatever account, so far may they properly be said to be
worthy, or meet for that honor which is answerable to the value or price
which God sets upon them. A child or wife of a prince is worthy to be
treated with great honor. Therefore if a mean person should be adopted
to be a child of a prince, or should be espoused to a prince, it would
be proper to say, that she was worthy of such and such honor and
respect. There would be no force upon the words in saying that she ought
to have such respect paid her, for she is worthy, though it be only on
account of her relation to the prince that she is so.
2. From the value God sets upon their persons, for the sake of Christ’s
worthiness, he also sets a high value on their virtue and performances.
Their meek and quiet spirit is of great price in his sight. Their fruits
are pleasant fruits, their offerings are an odor of sweet smell to him,
and that because of the value he sets on their persons, as has been
already observed and explained. This preciousness or high valuableness
of believers is a moral fitness to a reward. Yet this valuableness is
all in the righteousness of Christ, that is the foundation of it. The
thing respected is not excellency in them separately by themselves, or
in their virtue by itself, but the value in God’s account arises from
other considerations, which is the natural import of Luke 20:35, “They
which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world,” etc. and Luke
21:36, “That ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that
shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.” 2 Thes. 1:5,
“That ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also
suffer.”
There is a vast difference between this scheme, and what is supposed in
the scheme of those that oppose the doctrine of justification by faith
alone. This lays the foundation of first acceptance with God, and all
actual salvation consequent upon it, wholly in Christ and his
righteousness. On the contrary, in their scheme, a regard to man’s own
excellency or virtue is supposed to be first, and to have the place of
the first foundation in actual salvation, though not in that ineffectual
redemption, which they suppose common to all. They lay the foundation of
all discriminating salvation in man’s own virtue and moral excellency.
This is the very bottom stone in this affair, for they suppose that it
is from regard to our virtue, that even a special interest in Christ
itself is given. The foundation being thus contrary, the whole scheme
becomes exceeding diverse and contrary. The one is an evangelical
scheme, the other a legal one. The one is utterly inconsistent with our
being justified by Christ’s righteousness, the other not at all.
From what has been said, we may understand, not only how the forgiveness
of sin granted in justification is indissolubly connected with a
forgiving spirit in us, but how there may be many exercises of forgiving
mercy granted in reward for our forgiving those who trespass against us.
For none will deny but that there are many acts of divine forgiveness
towards the saints, that do not presuppose an unjustified state
immediately preceding that forgiveness. None will deny, that saints who
never fell from a justified state, yet commit many sins which God
forgives afterwards, by laying aside his fatherly displeasure. This
forgiveness may be in reward for our forgiveness, without any prejudice
to the doctrine that has been maintained, as well as other mercies and
blessings consequent on justification.
With respect to the second part of the objection, that relates to the
different degrees of glory, and the seeming inconsistency there is in
it, that the degrees of glory in different saints should be greater or
lesser according to their inherent holiness and good works, and yet,
that everyone’s glory should be purchased with the price of the very
same imputed righteousness, — I answer that Christ, by his
righteousness, purchased for everyone complete and perfect happiness,
according to his capacity. But this does not hinder but that the saints,
being of various capacities, may have various degrees of happiness, and
yet all their happiness be the fruit of Christ’s purchase. Indeed it
cannot be properly said, that Christ purchased any particular degree of
happiness, so that the value of Christ’s righteousness in the sight of
God, is sufficient to raise a believer so high in happiness, and no
higher, and so that if the believer were made happier, it would exceed
the value of Christ’s righteousness. But in general, Christ purchased
eternal life, or perfect happiness for all, according to their several
capacities. The saints are as so many vessels of different sizes, cast
into a sea of happiness, where every vessel is full: this Christ
purchased for all. But after all, it is left to God’s sovereign pleasure
to determine the largeness of the vessel. Christ’s righteousness meddles
not with this matter. Eph 4:4, 5, 6, 7, “There is one body, and one
Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one
faith, one baptism,” etc. — “But unto every one of us is given grace
according to the measure of the gift of Christ.” God may dispense in
this matter according to what rule he pleases, not the less for what
Christ has done: he may dispense either without condition, or upon what
condition he pleases to fix. It is evident that Christ’s righteousness
meddles not with this matter, for what Christ did was to fulfill the
covenant of works, but the covenant of works did not meddle at all with
this. If Adam had persevered in perfect obedience, he and his posterity
would have had perfect and full happiness. Everyone’s happiness would
have so answered his capacity, that he would have been completely
blessed. But God would have been at liberty to have made some of one
capacity, and other of another, as he pleased. — The angels have
obtained eternal life, or a state of confirmed glory, by a covenant of
works, whose condition was perfect obedience. But yet some are higher in
glory than others, according to the several capacities that God,
according to his sovereign pleasure, has given them. So that it being
still left with God, notwithstanding the perfect obedience of the second
Adam, to fix the degree of each one’s capacity by what rule he pleases,
he has been pleased to fix the degree of capacity, and so of glory, by
the proportion of the saints’ grace and fruitfulness here. He gives
higher degrees of glory, in reward for higher degrees of holiness and
good works, because it pleases him, and yet all the happiness of each
saint is indeed the fruit of the purchase of Christ’s obedience. If it
had been but one man that Christ had obeyed and died for, and it had
pleased God to make him a very large capacity, Christ’s perfect
obedience would have purchased that his capacity should be filled, and
then all his happiness might properly be said to be the fruit of
Christ’s perfect obedience. Though, if he had been of a less capacity,
he would not have had so much happiness by the same obedience, and yet
would have had as much as Christ merited for him. Christ’s righteousness
meddles not with the degree of happiness, any otherwise than as he
merits that it should be full and perfect, according to the capacity. So
it may be said to be concerned in the degree of happiness, as perfect is
a degree with respect to imperfect, but it meddles not with degrees of
perfect happiness.
This matter may be yet better understood, if we consider that Christ and
the whole church of saints are, as it were, one body, of which he is the
Head, and they members, of different place and capacity. Now the whole
body, head, and members, have communion in Christ’s righteousness: they
are all partakers of the benefit of it. Christ himself the Head is
rewarded for it, and every member is partaker of the benefit and reward.
But it does by no means follow, that every part should equally partake
of the benefit, but every part in proportion to its place and capacity.
The Head partakes of far more than other parts, and the more noble
members partake of more than the inferior. As it is in a natural body
that enjoys perfect health, the head, and the heart, and lungs, have a
greater share of this health. They have it more seated in them, than the
hands and feet, because they are parts of greater capacity, though the
hands and feet are as much in perfect health as those nobler parts of
the body. So it is in the mystical body of Christ: all the members are
partakers of the benefit of the Head, but it is according to the
different capacity and place they have in the body. God determines that
place and capacity as he pleases. He makes whom he pleases the foot, and
whom he pleases the hand, and whom he pleases the lungs, etc. 1 Cor
12:18, “God hath set the members every one of them in the body, as it
hath pleased him.” God efficaciously determines the place and capacity
of every member, by the different degrees of grace and assistance in the
improvement of it in this world. Those that he intends for the highest
place in the body, he gives them most of his Spirit, the greatest share
of the divine nature, the Spirit and nature of Christ Jesus the Head,
and that assistance whereby they perform the most excellent works, and
do most abound in them.
Object. 4. It may be objected against what has been supposed (viz. that
rewards are given to our good works, only in consequence of an interest
in Christ, or in testimony of God’s respect to the excellency or value
of them in his sight, as built on an interest in Christ’s righteousness
already obtained). That the Scripture speaks of an interest in Christ
itself, as being given out of respect to our moral fitness. Mat. 10:37,
38, 39, “He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of
me: he that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me: he
that taketh not up his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of
me: he that findeth his life, shall lose it,” etc. Worthiness here at
least signifies a moral fitness, or an excellency that recommends. And
this place seems to intimate as though it were from respect to a moral
fitness that men are admitted even to an union with Christ, and interest
in him. Therefore this worthiness cannot be consequent on being in
Christ, and by the imputation of his worthiness, or from any value that
is in us, or in our actions in God’s sight, as beheld in Christ.
To this I answer, that though persons when they are accepted, are not
accepted as worthy, yet when they are rejected, they are rejected as
unworthy. He that does not love Christ above other things, but treats
him with such indignity, as to set him below earthly things, shall be
treated as unworthy of Christ. His unworthiness of Christ, especially in
that particular, shall be marked against him, and imputed to him. And
though he be a professing Christian, and live in the enjoyment of the
gospel, and has been visibly ingrafted into Christ, and admitted as one
of his disciples, as Judas was, yet he shall be thrust out in wrath, as
a punishment of his vile treatment of Christ. The forementioned words do
not imply that if a man does love Christ above father and mother, etc.
that he would be worthy. The most they imply is that such a visible
Christian shall be treated and thrust out as unworthy. He that believes
is not received for the worthiness or moral fitness of faith, but yet
the visible Christian is cast out by God, for the unworthiness and moral
unfitness of unbelief. A being accepted as one of Christ’s, is not the
reward of believing, but being thrust out from being one of Christ’s
disciples, after a visible admission as such, is properly a punishment
of unbelief. John 3:18,19, “He that believeth on him, is not condemned;
but he that believeth not, is condemned already, because he has not
believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the
condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness
rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” Salvation is promised
to faith as a free gift, but damnation is threatened to unbelief as a
debt, or punishment due to unbelief. They who believed while in the
wilderness, did not enter into Canaan, because of the worthiness of
their faith. But God swore in his wrath, that they that believed not
should not enter in, because of the unworthiness of their unbelief.
Admitting a soul to an union with Christ is an act of free and sovereign
grace, but excluding at death, and at the day of judgment, those
professors of Christianity who have had the offers of a Savior, and
enjoyed great privileges as God’s people, is a judicial proceeding, and
a just punishment of their unworthy treatment of Christ. The design of
this saying of Christ is to make them sensible of the unworthiness of
their treatment of Christ, who professed him to be their Lord and
Savior, and set him below father and mother, etc. and not to show the
worthiness of loving him above father and mother. If a beggar should be
offered any great and precious gift, but as soon as offered, should
trample it under his feet, it might be taken from him, as unworthy to
have it. Or if a malefactor should have his pardon offered him, that he
might be freed from execution, and should only scoff at it, his pardon
might be refused him, as unworthy of it. Though if he had received it,
he would not have had it for his worthiness, or as being recommended to
it by his virtue. For his being a malefactor supposes him unworthy, and
its being offered him to have it only on accepting, supposes that the
king looks for no worthiness, nothing in him for which he should bestow
pardon as a reward. This may teach us how to understand Acts 13:46, “It
was necessary that the Word of God should first have been spoken unto
you; but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of
everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.”
Object. 5. It is objected against the doctrine of justification by faith
alone, that repentance is evidently spoken of in Scripture as that which
is in a special manner the condition of remission of sins: but remission
of sins is by all allowed to be that wherein justification does (at
least) in great part consist.
But it must certainly arise from a misunderstanding of what the
Scripture says about repentance, to suppose that faith and repentance
are two distinct things, that in like manner are the conditions of
justification. For it is most plain from the Scripture, that the
condition of justification, or that in us by which we are justified, is
but one, and that is faith. Faith and repentance are not two distinct
conditions of justification, nor are they two distinct things that
together make one condition of justification. But faith comprehends the
whole of that by which we are justified, or by which we come to have an
interest in Christ, and there is nothing else that has a parallel
concern with it in the affair of our salvation. And this the divines on
the other side themselves are sensible of, and therefore they suppose
that the faith the apostle Paul speaks of, which he says we are
justified by alone, comprehends in it repentance.
And therefore, in answer to the objection, I would say that when
repentance is spoken of in Scripture as the condition of pardon, thereby
is not intended any particular grace, or act, properly distinct from
faith, that has a parallel influence with it in the affair of our pardon
or justification. But by repentance is intended nothing distinct from
active conversion (or conversion actively considered), as it respects
the term from which. Active conversion is a motion or exercise of the
mind that respects two terms, viz. sin and God, and by repentance is
meant this conversion, or active change of the mind, so far as it is
conversant about the term from which or about sin. This is what the word
repentance properly signifies: a change of the mind, or, which is the
same thing, the turning or the conversion of the mind. Repentance is
this turning, as it respects what is turned from. Acts 26:19. —
“Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I showed unto them of Damascus and at
Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judea, and then to the
aaaaaGentiles, that they should repent, and turn to God.” Both these are
the same turning, but only with respect to opposite terms. In the former
is expressed the exercise of mind about sin in this turning: in the
other, the exercise of mind towards God.
If we look over the Scriptures that speak of evangelical repentance, we
shall presently see that repentance is to be understood in this sense,
as Mat. 9:13, “I am nota come to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance.” Luke 13:3, “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise
perish.” And chap. 15:7, 10, “There is joy in heaven over one sinner
that repenteth,” i. e. over one sinner that is converted. Acts 11:18,
“Then hath God alsoto the Gentiles granted repentance unto life.” This
is said by the Christians of the circumcision at Jerusalem, upon Peter’s
giving an account of the conversion of Cornelius and his family, and
their embracing the gospel, though Peter had said nothing expressly
about their sorrow for sin. And again, Acts 17:30, “But now commandeth
all men every where to "repent.” And Luke 16:30, “Nay, father Abraham,
but if one went to them frothe dead, they would repent.” 2 Pet. 3:9,
“The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count
slackness, but is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should
perish, but that all should come to repentance.” It is plain that in
these and other places, by repentance is meant conversion.
Now it is true, that conversion is the condition of pardon and
justification. But if it be so, how absurd is it to say, that conversion
is one condition of justification, and faith another, as though they
were two distributively distinct and parallel conditions? Conversion is
the condition of justification, because it is that great change by which
we are brought from sin to Christ, and by which we become believers in
him: agreeable to Mat. 21:32, “And ye, when ye had seen it, repented not
afterward, that ye might believe him.” When we are directed to repent,
that our sins may be blotted out, it is as much as to say, let your
minds and hearts be changed, that your sins may be blotted out. But if
it be said, let your hearts be changed, that you may be justified, and
believe, that you may be justified, does it therefore follow, that the
heart being changed is one condition ofjustification, and believing
another? But our minds must be changed, that we may believe, and so may
be justified.
And besides, evangelical repentance, being active conversion, is not to
be treated of as a particular grace, properly and entirely distinct from
faith, as by some it seems to have been. What is conversion, but the
sinful, alienated soul’s closing with Christ, or th sinner’s being
brought to believe in Christ? That exercise of soul in conversion that
respects sin, cannot be excluded out of the nature of faith in Christ:
there is something in faith, or closing with Christ, that respects sin,
and that is evangelical repentance. That repentance which in Scripture
is called, repentance for the remission of sins, is that very principle
or operation of the mind itself that is called faith, so far as it is
conversant about sin. Justifying faith in a Mediator is conversant about
two things. It is conversant about sin or evil to be rejected and to be
delivered from, and about positive good to be accepted and obtained by
the Mediator. As conversant about the former of these, it is
evangelical repentance, or repentance for remission of sins. Surely they
must be veryignorant, or at least very inconsiderate, of the whole tenor
of the gospel, who think that the repentance by which remission of sins
is obtained, can be completed as to all that is essential to it, without
any respect to Christ, or application of the mind to the Mediator, who
alone has made atonement for sin. — Surely so great a part of salvation
as remission of sins, is not to be obtained without looking or coming to
the great and only Savior. It is true, repentance, in its more general
abstracted nature, is only a sorrow for sin, and forsaking of it, which
is a duty of natural religion. But evangelical repentance, for
repentance for remission of sins, has more than this essential to it: a
dependence of soul on the Mediator for deliverance from sin, is of the
essence of it.
That justifying repentance has the nature of faith, seems evident by
Acts 19:4, “Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of
repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on him
which should come after him, that is, on ChristJesus.” The latter words,
“saying unto the people, that they should believe on him,” etc. are
evidently exegetical of the former, and explain how he preached
repentance for the remission of sins. When it is said, that he preached
repentance for the remission of sin, saying that they should believe on
Christ, it cannot be supposed but that his saying, that they should
believe on Christ, was intended as directing them what to do that they
might obtain the remission of sins. So 2 Tim. 2:25, “In meekness
instructing those that oppose themselves; if Godperadventure will give
them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.” That acknowledging
of the truth which there is in believing, is here spoken of as what is
retained in repentance. And on the other hand, that faith includes
repentance in its nature, is evident by the apostle’s speaking of sin as
destroyed in faith, Gal. 2:18. — In the preceding verses the apostle
mentions an objection against the doctrine of justification by faith
alone, viz. that it tends to encourage men in sin, and so to make Christ
the minister of sin. This objection he rejects and refutes with this,
“If I build again the things that I destroyed, I make myself a
transgressor.” If sin be destroyed by faith, it must be by repentance of
sin included in it. For we know that it is our repentance of sin, or the
ìåôáíïéá, or turning of the mind from sin, that is our destroying our
sin.
That in justifying faith which directly respects sin, or the evil to be
delivered from by the Mediator, is as follows: a sense of our own
sinfulness, and the hatefulness of it, and a hearty acknowledgment of
its desert of the threatened punishment, looking to the free mercy of
God in a Redeemer, for deliverance from it and its punishment.
Concerning this, here described, three things may be noted: 1. That it
is the very same with that evangelical repentance to which remission of
sins is promised in Scripture. 2. That it is of the essence of
justifying faith, and is the same with that faith, so far as it is
conversant about evil to be delivered from by the Mediator. 3. That this
is indeed the proper and peculiar condition of remission of sins.
1. All of it is essential to evangelical repentance, and is indeed the
very thing meant by that repentance, to which remission of sins is
promised in the gospel. As to the former part of the description, viz. a
sense of our own sinfulness, and the hatefulness of it, and a hearty
acknowledgment of its desert of wrath, none will deny it to be included
in repentance. But this does not comprehend the whole essence of
evangelical repentance. But what follows does also properly and
essentially belong to its nature, looking to the free mercy of God in a
Redeemer, for deliverance from it, and the punishment of it. That
repentance to which remission is promised, not only always has this with
it, but it is contained in it, as what is of the proper nature and
essence of it: and respect is ever had to this in the nature of
repentance, whenever remission is promised to it. And it is especially
from respect to this in the nature of repentance, that it has that
promise made to it. If this latter part be missing, it fails of the
nature of that evangelical repentance to which remission of sins is
promised. If repentance remains in sorrow for sin, and does not reach to
a looking to the free mercy of God in Christ for pardon, it is not that
which is the condition of pardon, neither shall pardon be obtained by
it. Evangelical repentance is an humiliation for sin before God. But the
sinner never comes and humbles himself before God in any other
repentance, but that which includes hoping in his mercy for remission.
If sorrow be not accompanied with that, there will be no coming to God
in it, but a flying further from him. There is some worship of God in
justifying repentance, but that is not in any other repentance which has
not a sense of and faith in the divine mercy to forgive sin, Psa. 130:4,
“There is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.” The
promise of mercy to a true penitent, in Pro. 28:13 is expressed in these
terms, “Whoso confesseth and forsaketh his sins, shall have mercy.” But
there is faith in God’s mercy in that confessing. The psalmist (Psalm
32) speaking of the blessedness of the man whose transgression is
forgiven — and whose sin is covered, to whom the Lord imputes not sin —
says that while he kept silence his bones waxed old, but he acknowledged
his sin unto God: his iniquity he did not hide. He said he would confess
his transgression to the Lord, and then God forgave the iniquity of his
sin. The manner of expression plainly holds forth, that then he began to
encourage himself in the mercy of God, but his bones waxed old while he
kept silence. And therefore the apostle Paul, in the 4th of Romans,
brings this instance, to confirm the doctrine of justification by faith
alone, that he had been insisting on. When sin is aright confessed to
God, there is always faith in that act. That confessing of sin which is
joined with despair, as in Judas, is not the confession to which the
promise is made. In Acts 2:38, the direction given to those who were
pricked in their heart with a sense of the guilt of sin, was to repent
and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of their
sins. Being baptized in the name of Christ for the remission of sins,
implied faith in Christ for the remission of sins. Repentance for the
remission of sins was typified of old by the priest’s confessing the
sins of the people over the scapegoat, laying his hands on him, Lev.
16:21, denoting it is that repentance and confession of sin only that
obtains remission, which is made over Christ the great sacrifice, and
with dependence on him. Many other things might be produced from the
Scripture, that in like manner confirm this point, but these may be
sufficient.
2. All the forementioned description is of the essence of justifying
faith, and not different from it, so far as it is conversant about sin,
or the evil to be delivered from by the Mediator. For it is doubtless of
the essence of justifying faith, to embrace Christ as a Savior from sin
and its punishment, and all that is contained in that act is contained
in the nature of faith itself. But in the act of embracing Christ as a
Savior from our sin and its punishment, is implied a sense of our
sinfulness, and a hatred for our sins, or a rejecting them with
abhorrence, and a sense of our desert of punishment. Embracing Christ as
a Savior from sin, implies the contrary act, viz. rejecting sin. If we
fly to the light to be delivered from darkness, the same act is contrary
to darkness, viz. a rejecting of it. In proportion to the earnestness
with which we embrace Christ as a Savior from sin, in the same
proportion is the abhorrence with which we reject sin, in the same act.
Yea, suppose there be in the nature of faith, as conversant about sin,
no more than the hearty embracing of Christ as a Savior from the
punishment of sin, this act will imply in it the whole of the
above-mentioned description. It implies a sense of our own sinfulness.
Certainly in the hearty embracing of a Savior from the punishment of our
sinfulness, there is the exercise of a sense that we are sinful. We
cannot heartily embrace Christ as a Savior from the punishment of that
which we are not sensible we are guilty of. There is also in the same
act, a sense of our desert of the threatened punishment. We cannot
heartily embrace Christ as a Savior from that which we are not sensible
that we have deserved. For if we are not sensible that we have deserved
the punishment, we shall not be sensible that we have any need of a
Savior from it, or, at least, shall not be convinced but that God who
offers the Savior, unjustly makes him needful, and we cannot heartily
embrace such an offer. And further, there is implied in a hearty
embracing Christ as a Savior from punishment, not only a conviction of
conscience, that we have deserved the punishment, such as the devils and
damned have, but there is a hearty acknowledgment of it, with the
submission of the soul, so as with the accord of the heart, to own that
God might be just in the punishment. If the heart rises against the act
or judgment of God, in holding us obliged to the punishment, when he
offers us his Son as a Savior from the punishment, we cannot with the
consent of the heart receive him in that character. But if persons thus
submit to the righteousness of so dreadful a punishment of sin, this
carries in it a hatred of sin.
That such a sense of our sinfulness, and utter unworthiness, and desert
of punishment, belongs to the nature of saving faith, is what the
Scripture from time to time holds forth, as particularly in Mat.
15:26-28. “But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the
children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs. And she said, Truth, Lord: yet
the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master’s table. Then
Jesus answered, and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith.” — And
Luke 7:6-9. “The centurion sent friends to him, saying unto him, Lord,
trouble not thyself, for I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter under
my roof. Wherefore neither thought I myself worthy to come unto thee;
but say in a word, and my servant shall be healed: for I also am a man
set under authority,” etc. — “When Jesus heard these things, he
marvelled at him, and turned him about, and said unto the people that
followed him, I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not
in Israel.” And also verse 37, 38. “And behold, a woman in the city,
which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the
Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster-box of ointment, and stood at his
feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did
wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed
them with the ointment.” Together with verse 50. “He said unto the
woman, Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.”
These things do not necessarily suppose that repentance and faith are
words of just the same signification. For it is only so much in
justifying faith as respects the evil to be delivered from by the
Savior, that is called repentance. Besides, both repentance and faith
take them only in their general nature, [and] are entirely distinct.
Repentance is a sorrow for sin, and forsaking of it, and faith is a
trusting in God’s sufficiency and truth. But faith and repentance, as
evangelical duties, or justifying faith, and repentance for remission of
sins, contain more in them, and imply a respect to a mediator, and
involve each other’s nature: *2* though they still bear the name of
faith and repentance, from those general moral virtues — that
repentance, which is a duty of natural religion, and that faith, which
was a duty required under the first covenant — that are contained in
this evangelical act, which severally appear, when this act is
considered with respect to its different terms and objects.
It may be objected here that the Scripture sometimes mentions faith and
repentance together, as if they were entirely distinct things, as in
Mark 1:15, “Repent ye, and believe the gospel.” But there is not need of
understanding these as two distinct conditions of salvation, but the
words are exegetical one of another. It is to teach us after what manner
we must repent, viz. as believing the gospel, and after what manner we
must believe the gospel, viz. as repenting. These words no more prove
faith and repentance to be entirely distinct, than those fore-mentioned,
Mat. 21:32. “And ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterwards, that
ye might believe him.” Or those, 2 Tim. 2:25. “If peradventure God will
give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.” The apostle, in
Acts 19:4 seems to have reference to these words of John the Baptist,
“John baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people,
that they should believe,” etc. where the latter words, as we have
already observed, are to explain how he preached repentance.
Another Scripture where faith and repentance are mentioned together, is
Acts 20:21. “Testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greeks,
repentance towards God, and faith towards the Lord Jesus Christ.” It may
be objected, that in this place, faith and repentance are not only
spoken of as distinct things, but having distinct objects.
To this I answer, that faith and repentance, in their general nature,
are distinct things, and repentance for the remission of sins, or that
in justifying faith that respects the evil to be delivered from, so far
as it regards that term, which is what especially denominates it
repentance, has respect to God as the object, because he is the Being
offended by sin, and to be reconciled, but that in this justifying act,
whence it is denominated faith, does more especially respect Christ. But
let us interpret it how we will, the objection of faith being here so
distinguished from repentance, is as much of an objection against the
scheme of those that oppose justification by faith alone, as against
this scheme. For they hold that the justifying faith the apostle Paul
speaks of, includes repentance, as has been already observed.
3. This repentance that has been described, is indeed the special
condition of remission of sins. This seems very evident by the
Scripture, as particularly, Mark 1:4. “John did baptize in the
wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance, for the remission of
sins.” So, Luke 3:3, “And be came into all the country about Jordan,
preaching the baptism of repentance, for the remission of sins.” Luke
24:47, “And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in
his name among all nations.” Acts 5:31, “Him hath God exalted with his
right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance unto
Israel, and forgiveness of sins.” Acts 2:38. Repent, and be baptized
every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of
sins.” And, chap. 3:19. “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that
your sins may be blotted out.” The like is evident by Lev. 26:40-42;
Job. 33:27, 28; Psa. 32:5; Pro. 28:13; Jer. 3:13. And 1 John 1:9 and
other places.
And the reason may be plain from what has been said. We need not wonder
that what in faith especially respects sin, should be especially the
condition of remission of sins, or that this motion or exercise of the
soul, as it rejects and flies from evil and embraces Christ as a Savior
from it, should especially be the condition of being free from that
evil: in like manner, as the same principle or motion, as it seeks good,
and cleaves to Christ as the procurer of that good, should be the
condition of obtaining that good. Faith with respect to good is
accepting and with respect to evil it is rejecting. Yea this rejecting
evil is itself an act of acceptance. It is accepting freedom or
separation from that evil, and this freedom or separation is the benefit
bestowed in remission. No wonder that what in faith immediately respects
this benefit, and is our acceptance of it, should be the special
condition of our having it. It is so with respect to all the benefits
that Christ has purchased. Trusting in God through Christ for such a
particular benefit that we need, is the special condition of obtaining
that benefit. When we need protection from enemies, the exercise of
faith with respect to such a benefit, or trusting in Christ for
protection from enemies, is especially the way to obtain that particular
benefit, rather than trusting in Christ for something else, and so of
any other benefit that might be mentioned. So prayer (which is the
expression of faith) for a particular mercy needed, is especially the
way to obtain that mercy. — So that no argument can be drawn from hence
against the doctrine of justification by faith alone. And there is that
in the nature of repentance, which peculiarly tends to establish the
contrary of justification by works. For nothing so much renounces our
own worthiness and excellency, as repentance. The very nature of it is
to acknowledge our own utter sinfulness and unworthiness, and to
renounce our own goodness and all confidence in self; and so to trust in
the propitiation of the Mediator, and ascribe all the glory of
forgiveness to him.
Object. 6. The last objection I shall mention, is that paragraph in the
3d chapter of James, where persons are said expressly to be justified by
works: Jam. 2:21. “Was not Abraham our father justified by works?” Verse
24. “Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith
only.” Verse 25. “Was not Rahab the harlot justified by works?”
In answer to this objection, I would,
1. Take notice of the great unfairness of the divines that oppose us, in
the improvement they make of this passage against us. All will allow,
that in that proposition of St. James, “By works a man is justified, and
not by faith only,” one of the terms, either the word faith, or else the
word justify, is not to be understood precisely in the same sense as the
same terms when used by St. Paul, because they suppose, as well as we,
that it was not the intent of the apostle James to contradict St. Paul
in that doctrine of justification by faith alone, in which he had
instructed the churches. But if we understand both the terms, as used by
each apostle, in precisely the same sense, then what one asserts is a
precise, direct, and full contradiction of the other: the one affirming
and the other denying the very same thing. So that all the controversy
from this text comes to this, viz. which of these two terms shall be
understood in a diversity from St. Paul. They say that it is the word
faith, for they suppose that when the apostle Paul uses the word, and
makes faith that by which alone we are justified, that then by it is
understood a compliance with and practice of Christianity in general, so
as to include all saving Christian virtue and obedience. But as the
apostle James uses the word faith in this place, they suppose thereby is
to be understood only an assent of the understanding to the truth of
gospel doctrines, as distinguished from good works, and that may exist
separate from them, and from all saving grace. We, on the other hand,
suppose that the word justify is to be understood in a different sense
from the apostle Paul. So that they are forced to go as far in their
scheme, in altering the sense of terms from Paul’s use of them, as we.
But yet at the same time that they freely vary the sense of the former
of them, viz. faith, yet when we understand the latter, viz. justify, in
a different sense from St. Paul, they exclaim against us. What necessity
of framing this distinction, but only to serve an opinion? At this rate
a man may maintain anything, though never so contrary to Scripture, and
elude the clearest text in the Bible! Though they do not show us why we
have not as good warrant to understand the word justify in a diversity
from St. Paul, as they the word faith. If the sense of one of the words
must be varied on either scheme, to make the apostle James’s doctrine
consistent with the apostle Paul’s, and if varying the sense of one term
or the other be all that stands in the way of their agreeing with either
scheme, and if varying the sense of the latter be in itself as fair as
of the former, then the text lies as fair for one scheme as the other,
and can no more fairly be an objection against our scheme than theirs.
And if so, what becomes of all this great objection from this passage in
James?
2. If there be no more difficulty in varying the sense of one of these
terms than another, from anything in the text itself, so as to make the
words suit with either scheme, then certainly that is to be chosen that
is most agreeable to the current of Scripture, and other places where
the same matter is more particularly and fully treated of, and therefore
that we should understand the word justify in this passage of James, in
a sense in some respects diverse from that in which St. Paul uses it.
For by what has been already said, it may appear, that there is no one
doctrine in the whole Bible more fully asserted, explained, and urged,
than the doctrine of justification by faith alone, without any of our
own righteousness.
3. There is a very fair interpretation of this passage of St. James, no
way inconsistent with this doctrine of justification, which I have shown
that other scriptures abundantly teach, which the words themselves will
as well allow of, as that which the objectors put upon them, and much
better agrees with the context: and that is, that works are here spoken
of as justifying as evidences. A man may be said to be justified by that
which clears him, or vindicates him, or makes the goodness of his cause
manifest. When a person has a cause tried in a civil court, and is
justified or cleared, he may be said in different senses to be justified
or cleared, by the goodness of his cause, and by the goodness of the
evidences of it. He may be said to be cleared by what evidences his
cause to be good, but not in the same sense as he is by that which makes
his cause to be good. That which renders his cause good, is the proper
ground of his justification. It is by that that he is himself a proper
subject of it, but evidences justify, only as they manifest that his
cause is good in fact, whether they are of such a nature as to have any
influence to render it so or no. It is by works that our cause appears
to be good, but by faith our cause not only appears to be good, but
becomes good, because thereby we are united to Christ. That the word
justify should be sometimes understood to signify the former of these,
as well as the latter, is agreeable to the use of the word in common
speech: as we say such an one stood up to justify another, i.e. he
endeavored to show or manifest his cause to be good. — And it is certain
that the word is sometimes used in this sense in Scripture, when
speaking of our being justified before God: as where it is said, we
shall be justified by our words, Mat. 12:37. “For by thy words thou
shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” It cannot
be meant that men are accepted before God on the account of their words.
For God has told us nothing more plainly, than that it is the heart that
he looks at, and that when he acts as judge towards men, in order to
justifying or condemning, he tries the heart, Jer. 11:20. “But, O Lord
of hosts, that judgest righteously, that triest the reins and the heart,
let me see thy vengeance on them; for unto thee have I revealed my
cause.” Psa. 7:8, 9, “The Lord shall judge the people: judge me, O Lord,
according to my righteousness, and according to mine integrity that is
in me. O let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end; but establish
the just; for the righteous God trieth the hearts and reins.” Verse 11,
“God judgeth the righteous.” And many other places to the like purpose.
And therefore men can be justified by their words, no otherwise than as
evidences or manifestations of what is in the heart. And it is thus that
Christ speaks of the words in this very place, as is evident by the
context, Mat. 12:34, 35. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth
speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart,” etc. The
words, or sounds themselves, are neither parts of godliness nor
evidences of godliness, but as signs of what is inward.
God himself, when he acts towards men as judge, in order to a
declarative judgment, makes use of evidences, and so judges men by their
works. And therefore, at the day of judgment, God will judge men
according to their works. For though God will stand in no need of
evidence to inform him what is right, yet it is to be considered that he
will then sit in judgment, not as earthly judges do, to find out what is
right in a cause, but to declare and manifest what is right. And
therefore that day is called by the apostle, “the day of the revelation
of the righteous judgment of God,” Rom. 2:5.
To be justified, is to be approved of and accepted, but a man may be
said to be approved and accepted in two respects: the one is to be
approved really, and the other to be approved and accepted
declaratively. Justification is twofold: it is either the acceptance and
approbation of the judge itself, or the manifestation of that
approbation by a sentence or judgment declared by the judge, either to
our own consciences or to the world. If justification be understood in
the former sense, for the approbation itself, that is only that by which
we become fit to be approved. But if it be understood in the latter
sense, for the manifestation of this approbation, it is by whatever is a
proper evidence of that fitness. In the former, only faith is concerned,
because it is by that only in us that we become fit to be accepted and
approved. In the latter, whatever is an evidence of our fitness, is
alike concerned. And therefore, take justification in this sense, and
then faith, and all other graces and good works, have a common and equal
concern in it. For any other grace, or holy act, is equally an evidence
of a qualification for acceptance or approbation, as faith.
To justify has always, in common speech, signified indifferently, either
simply approbation, or testifying that approbation: sometimes one, and
sometimes the other; because they are both the same, only as one is
outwardly what the other is inwardly. So we, and it may be all nations,
are wont to give the same name to two things, when one is only
declarative of the other. Thus sometimes judging, intends only judging
in our thoughts; at other times, testifying and declaring judgment. So
such words as justify, condemn, accept, reject, prize, slight, approve,
renounce, are sometimes put for mental acts, at other times, for an
outward treatment. So in the sense in which the apostle James seems to
use the word justify for manifestative justification, a man is justified
not only by faith, but also by works: as a tree is manifested to be
good, not only by immediately examining the tree, but also by the fruit,
Pro. 20:11, “Even a child is known by his doing, whether his work be
pure, and whether it be right.”
The drift of the apostle does not require that he should be understood
in any other sense; for all that he aims at, as appears by a view of the
context, is to prove that good works are necessary. The error of those
that he opposed was this: that good works were not necessary to
salvation, that if they did but believe that there was but one God, and
that Christ was the Son of God and the like, and were baptized, they
were safe, let them live how they would, which doctrine greatly tended
to licentiousness. The evincing the contrary of this is evidently the
apostle’s scope.
And that we should understand the apostle, of works justifying as an
evidence, and in a declarative judgment, is what a due consideration of
the context will naturally lead us to. — For it is plain, that the
apostle is here insisting on works, in the quality of a necessary
manifestation and evidence of faith, or as what the truth of faith is
made to appear by: as Jam. 2:18, “Show me thy faith without thy works,
and I will show thee my faith by my works.” And when he says, verse 26,
“As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead
also.” It is much more rational and natural to understand him as
speaking of works, as the proper signs and evidences of the reality,
life, and goodness of faith. Not that the very works or actions done are
properly the life of faith, as the spirit in the body, but it is the
active, working nature of faith, of which the actions or works done are
the signs, that is itself the life and spirit of faith. The sign of a
thing is often in scripture language said to be that thing; as it is in
that comparison by which the apostle illustrates it. Not the actions
themselves of a body, are properly the life or spirit of the body, but
the active nature, of which those actions or motions are the signs, is
the life of the body. That which makes men pronounce anything to be
alive is that they observe it has an active operative nature, which they
observe no otherwise than by the actions or motions which are the signs
of it. It is plainly the apostle’s aim to prove, that if faith has not
works, it is a sign that it is not a good sort of faith, which would not
have been to his purpose if it was his design to show that it is not by
faith alone, though of a right sort, that we have acceptance with God,
but that we are accepted on the account of obedience as well as faith.
It is evident, by the apostle’s reasoning, that the necessity of works,
is not from their having a parallel concern in our salvation with faith.
But he speaks of works only as related to faith, and expressive of it,
which, after all, leaves faith the alone fundamental condition, without
anything else having a parallel concern with it in this affair; and
other things conditions, only as several expressions and evidences of
it.
That the apostle speaks of works justifying only as a sign, or evidence,
and in God’s declarative judgment, is further confirmed by Jam. 2:21,
“Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered up
Isaac his son upon the altar?” Here the apostle seems plainly to refer
to that declarative judgment of God concerning Abraham’s sincerity,
manifested to him, for the peace and assurance of his own conscience,
after his offering up Isaac his son on the altar, Gen. 22:12, “Now I
know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine
only son, from me.” But here it is plain, and expressed in the very
words of justification or approbation, that this work of Abraham
offering up his son on the altar, justified him as an evidence. When the
apostle James says, we are justified by works, he may and ought to be
understood in a sense agreeable to the instance he brings for the proof
of it: but justification in that instance appears by the works of
justification themselves, to be by works as an evidence. And where this
instance of Abraham’s obedience is elsewhere mentioned, in the New
Testament, it is mentioned as a fruit and evidence of his faith. Heb.
11:17, “By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac; and he
that had received the promises, offered up his only-begotten son.”
And in the other instance which the apostle mentions, Jam. 2:25.
“Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had
received the messengers, and had sent them out another way?” The apostle
refers to a declarative judgment, in that particular testimony which was
given of God’s approbation of her as a believer, in directing Joshua to
save her when the rest of Jericho was destroyed, Jos. 6:25, “And Joshua
saved Rahab the harlot alive, and her father’s household, and all that
she had; and she dwelleth in Israel even unto this day: because she hid
the messengers which Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.” This was accepted
as an evidence and expression of her faith. Heb. 11:31, “By faith the
harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had
received the spies with peace.” The apostle in saying, “Was not Rahab
the harlot justified by works?” by the manner of his speaking has
reference to something in her history. But we have no account in her
history of any other justification of her but this.
4. If, notwithstanding, any choose to take justification in St. James’s
precisely as we do in Paul’s epistles, for God’s acceptance or
approbation itself, and not any expression of that approbation, what has
been already said concerning the manner in which acts of evangelical
obedience are concerned in the affair of our justification, affords a
very easy, clear, and full answer. For if we take works as acts or
expressions of faith, they are not excluded. So a man is not justified
by faith only, but also by works; i.e. he is not justified only by faith
as a principle in the heart, or in its first and more immanent acts, but
also by the effective acts of it in life, which are the expressions of
the life of faith, as the operations and actions of the body are of the
life of that; agreeable to Jam. 2:26.
What has been said in answer to these objections, may also, I hope,
abundantly serve for an answer to another objection, often made against
this doctrine, viz. that it encourages licentiousness in life. For, from
what has been said, we may see that the Scripture doctrine of
justification by faith alone, without any manner of goodness or
excellency of ours, does in no wise diminish either the necessity or
benefit of a sincere evangelical universal obedience. Man’s salvation is
not only indissolubly connected with obedience, and damnation with the
want of it, in those who have opportunity for it, but depends upon it in
many respects. It is the way to salvation, and the necessary preparation
for it. Eternal blessings are bestowed in reward for it, and our
justification in our own consciences and at the day of judgment depends
on it, as the proper evidence of our acceptable state; and that even in
accepting of us as entitled to life in our justification, God has
respect to this, as that on which the fitness of such an act of
justification depends: so that our salvation does as truly depend upon
it, as if we were justified for the moral excellency of it. And besides
all this, the degree of our happiness to all eternity is suspended on,
and determined by, the degree of this. So that this gospel-scheme of
justification is as far from encouraging licentiousness, and contains as
much to encourage and excite to strict and universal obedience, and the
utmost possible eminency of holiness, as any scheme that can be devised,
and indeed unspeakably more.
I come now to the
V. And last thing proposed, which is, to consider the “importance of
this doctrine.”
I know there are many that make as though this controversy was of no
great importance: that it is chiefly a matter of nice speculation,
depending on certain subtle distinctions, which many that make use of
them do not understand themselves: that the difference is not of such
consequence as to be worth being zealous about: and that more hurt is
done by raising disputes about it than good.
Indeed I am far from thinking that it is of absolute necessity that
persons should understand, and be agreed upon, all the distinctions
needful particularly to explain and defend this doctrine against all
cavils and objections. Yet all Christians should strive after an
increase of knowledge, and none should content themselves without some
clear and distinct understanding in this point. But we should believe in
the general, according to the clear and abundant revelations of God’s
word, that it is none of our own excellency, virtue, or righteousness,
that is the ground of our being received from a state of condemnation
into a state of acceptance in God’s sight, but only Jesus Christ, and
his righteousness and worthiness, received by faith. This I think to be
of great importance, at least in application to ourselves, and that for
the following reasons.
First, the Scripture treats of this doctrine, as a doctrine of very
great importance. That there is a certain doctrine of justification by
faith, in opposition to justification by the works of the law, which the
Apostle Paul insists upon as of the greatest importance, none will deny,
because there is nothing in the Bible more apparent. The apostle, under
the infallible conduct of the Spirit of God, thought it worth his most
strenuous and zealous disputing about and defending. He speaks of the
contrary doctrine as fatal and ruinous to the souls of men, in the
latter end of the ninth chapter of Romans, and beginning of the tenth.
He speaks of it as subversive of the gospel of Christ, and calls it
another gospel, and says concerning it: if anyone, “though an angel from
heaven, preach it, let him be accursed;” Gal. 1:6-9 compared with the
following part of the epistle. Certainly we must allow the apostles to
be good judges of the importance and tendency of doctrines, at least the
Holy Ghost in them. And doubtless we are safe, and in no danger of
harshness and censoriousness, if we only follow him, and keep close to
his express teachings, in what we believe and say of the hurtful and
pernicious tendency of any error. Why are we to blame for saying what
the Bible has taught us to say, or for believing what the Holy Ghost has
taught us to that end that we might believe it?
Second, the adverse scheme lays another foundation of man’s salvation
than God has laid. I do not now speak of that ineffectual redemption
that they suppose to be universal, and what all mankind are equally the
subjects of. But I say, it lays entirely another foundation of man’s
actual, discriminating salvation, or that salvation, wherein true
Christians differ from wicked men. We suppose the foundation of this to
be Christ’s worthiness and righteousness. On the contrary, that scheme
supposes it to be man’s own virtue, even so, that this is the ground of
a saving interest in Christ itself. It takes away Christ out of the
place of the bottom stone, and puts in men’s own virtue in the room of
him, so that Christ himself in the affair of distinguishing, actual
salvation, is laid upon this foundation. And the foundation being so
different, I leave it to everyone to judge whether the difference
between the two schemes consists only in punctilios of small
consequence. The foundations being contrary, makes the whole scheme
exceeding diverse and opposite: the one is a gospel scheme, the other a
legal one.
Third, it is in this doctrine that the most essential difference lies
between the covenant of grace and the first covenant. The adverse scheme
of justification supposes that we are justified by our works, in the
very same sense wherein man was to have been justified by his works
under the first covenant. By that covenant our first parents were not to
have had eternal life given them for any proper merit in their
obedience, because their perfect obedience was a debt that they owed
God. Nor was it to be bestowed for any proportion between the dignity of
their obedience, and the value of the reward, but only it was to be
bestowed from a regard to a moral fitness in the virtue of their
obedience, to the reward of God’s favor. A title to eternal life was to
be given them, as a testimony of God’s pleasedness with their works, or
his regard to the inherent beauty of their virtue. And so it is the very
same way that those in the adverse scheme suppose that we are received
into God’s special favor now, and to those saving benefits that are the
testimonies of it. I am sensible the divines of that side entirely
disclaim the popish doctrine of merit, and are free to speak of our
utter unworthiness, and the great imperfection of all our services. But
after all, it is our virtue, imperfect as it is, that recommends men to
God, by which good men come to have a saving interest in Christ, and
God’s favor, rather than others. These things are bestowed in testimony
of God’s respect to their goodness. So that whether they will allow the
term merit or no, yet they hold, that we are accepted by our own merit,
in the same sense, though not in the same degree, as under the first
covenant.
But the great and most distinguishing difference between that covenant
and the covenant of grace is, that by the covenant of grace we are not
thus justified by our own works, but only by faith in Jesus Christ. It
is on this account chiefly that the new covenant deserves the name of a
covenant of grace, as is evident by Rom. 4:16: “Therefore it is of
faith, that it might be by grace.” And chap. 3:20, 24, “Therefore by the
deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight… Being
justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Jesus
Christ.” And Rom. 11:6, “And if by grace, then it is no more of works;
otherwise grace is no more grace: but if it be of works; then it is no
more grace; otherwise work is no more work.” Gal. 5:4, “Whosoever of you
are justified by the law, ye are fallen from grace.” And therefore the
apostle, when in the same epistle to the Galatians, speaking of the
doctrine of justification by works as another gospel, adds, “which is
not another,” Gal. 1:6, 7. It is no gospel at all: it is law. It is no
covenant of grace, but of works. It is not an evangelical, but a legal
doctrine. Certainly that doctrine wherein consists the greatest and most
essential difference between the covenant of grace and the first
covenant, must be a doctrine of great importance. That doctrine of the
gospel by which above all others it is worthy of the name gospel, is
doubtless a very important doctrine of the gospel.
Fourth, this is the main thing for which fallen men stood in need of
divine revelation, to teach us how we who have sinned may come to be
again accepted of God, or, which is the same thing, how the sinner may
be justified. Something beyond the light of nature is necessary to
salvation chiefly on this account. Mere natural reason afforded no means
by which we could come to the knowledge of this: it depending on the
sovereign pleasure of the Being that we had offended by sin. This seems
to be the great drift of that revelation which God has given, and of all
those mysteries it reveals, all those great doctrines that are
peculiarly doctrines of revelation, and above the light of nature. It
seems to have been very much on this account, that it was requisite that
the doctrine of the Trinity itself should be revealed to us. That by a
discovery of the concern of the several divine persons in the great
affair of our salvation, we might the better understand and see how all
our dependence in this affair is on God, and our sufficiency all in him,
and not in ourselves: that he is all in all in this business, agreeable
to 1 Cor. 1:29-31, “That no flesh should glory in his presence. But of
him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and
righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: that according as it
is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” What is the
gospel, but only the glad tidings of a new way of acceptance with God
unto life, a way wherein sinners may come to be free from the guilt of
sin, and obtain a title to eternal life? And if, when this way is
revealed, it is rejected, and another of man’s devising be put in the
room of it, without doubt, it must be an error of great importance, and
the apostle might well say it was another gospel.
Fifth, the contrary scheme of justification derogates much from the
honor of God and the Mediator. I have already shown how it diminishes
the glory of the Mediator, in ascribing that to man’s virtue and
goodness, which belongs alone to his worthiness and righteousness. By
the apostle’s sense of the matter it renders Christ needless, Gal. 5:4,
“Christ is become of no effect to you, whosoever of you are justified by
the law.” If that scheme of justification be followed in its
consequences, it utterly overthrows the glory of all the great things
that have been contrived, and done, and suffered in the work of
redemption. Gal. 2:21, “If righteousness come by the law, Christ is dead
in vain.” It has also been already shown how it diminishes the glory of
divine grace (which is the attribute God has especially set himself to
glorify in the work of redemption), and so that it greatly diminishes
the obligation to gratitude in the sinner that is saved. Yea, in the
sense of the apostle, it makes void the distinguishing grace of the
gospel, Gal. 5:4, “Whosoever of you are justified by the law, are fallen
from grace.” It diminishes the glory of the grace of God and the
Redeemer, and proportionably magnifies man. It makes the goodness and
excellency of fallen man to be something, which I have shown are
nothing. I have also already shown, that it is contrary to the truth of
God in the threatening of his holy law, to justify the sinner for his
virtue. And whether it were contrary to God’s truth or no, it is a
scheme of things very unworthy of God. It supposes that God, when about
to lift up a poor, forlorn malefactor, condemned to eternal misery for
sinning against his Majesty, and to make him unspeakably and eternally
happy, by bestowing his Son and himself upon him, as it were, sets all
this to sale, for the price of his virtue and excellency. I know that
those we oppose acknowledge, that the price is very disproportionate to
the benefit bestowed, and say, that God’s grace is wonderfully
manifested in accepting so little virtue, and bestowing so glorious a
reward for such imperfect righteousness. But seeing we are such
infinitely sinful and abominable creatures in God’s sight, and by our
infinite guilt have brought ourselves into such wretched and deplorable
circumstances — and all our righteousnesses are nothing, and ten
thousand times worse than nothing (if God looks upon them as they be in
themselves — is it not immensely more worthy of the infinite majesty and
glory of God, to deliver and make happy such wretched vagabonds and
captives, without any money or price of theirs, or any manner of
expectation of any excellency or virtue in them, in any wise to
recommend them? Will it not betray a foolish, exalting opinion of
ourselves, and a mean one of God, to have thought of offering anything
of ours, to recommend us to the favor of being brought from wallowing,
like filthy swine, in the mire of our sins, and from the enmity and
misery of devils in the lowest hell, to the state of God’s dear
children, in the everlasting arms of his love in heavenly glory, or to
imagine that that is the constitution of God, that we should bring our
filthy rags, and offer them to him as the price of this?
Sixth, the opposite scheme does most directly tend to lead men to trust
in their own righteousness for justification, which is a thing fatal to
the soul. This is what men are of themselves exceedingly prone to do
(and that though they are never so much taught the contrary), through
the partial and high thoughts they have of themselves, and their
exceeding dullness of apprehending any such mystery as our being
accepted for the righteousness of another. But this scheme does directly
teach men to trust in their own righteousness for justification, in that
it teaches them that this is indeed what they must be justified by,
being the way of justification that God himself has appointed. So that
if a man had naturally no disposition to trust in his own righteousness,
yet if he embraced this scheme, and acted consistent with it, it would
lead him to it. But that trusting in our own righteousness, is a thing
fatal to the soul, is what the Scripture plainly teaches us. It tells us
that it will cause that Christ shall profit us nothing, and be of no
effect to us, Gal. 5:2-4. For though the apostle speaks there
particularly of circumcision, yet it is not merely being circumcised,
but trusting in circumcision as a righteousness, that the apostle has
respect to. He could not mean that merely being circumcised would render
Christ of no profit or effect to a person, for we read that he himself,
for certain reasons, took Timothy and circumcised him, Acts 16:3. And
the same is evident by the context, and by the rest of the epistle. And
the apostle speaks of trusting in their own righteousness as fatal to
the Jews, Rom 9:31, 32, “But Israel, which followed after the law of
righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore?
Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the
law; for they stumbled at that stumbling stone.” Together with Rom.
10:3, “For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about
to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto
the righteousness of God.” And this spoken of as fatal to the Pharisees,
in the parable of the Pharisee and the publican, which Christ spoke to
them in order to reprove them for trusting in themselves that they were
righteous. The design of the parable is to show them, that the very
publicans shall be justified, rather than they, as appears by the
reflection Christ makes upon it, Luke 18:14, “I tell you, this man went
down to his house justified rather than the other;” that is, this and
not the other. The fatal tendency of it might also be proved from its
inconsistency with the nature of justifying faith, and with the nature
of that humiliation that the Scripture often speaks of as absolutely
necessary to salvation. But these Scriptures are so express, that it is
needless to bring any further arguments.
How far a wonderful and mysterious agency of God’s Spirit may so
influence some men’s hearts, that their practice in this regard may be
contrary to their own principles, so that they shall not trust in their
own righteousness, though they profess that men are justified by their
own righteousness — or how far they may believe the doctrine of
justification by men’s own righteousness in general, and yet not believe
it in a particular application of it to themselves — or how far that
error which they may have been led into by education, or cunning
sophistry of others, may yet be indeed contrary to the prevailing
disposition of their hearts, and contrary to their practice — or how far
some may seem to maintain a doctrine contrary to this gospel doctrine of
justification, that really do not, but only express themselves
differently from others, or seem to oppose it through their
misunderstanding of our expressions, or we of theirs, when indeed our
real sentiments are the same in the main — or may seem to differ more
than they do, by using terms that are without a precisely fixed and
determinate meaning — or to be wide in their sentiments from this
doctrine, for want of a distinct understanding of it: whose hearts, at
the same time, entirely agree with it, and if once it was clearly
explained to their understandings, would immediately close with it, and
embrace it. How far these things may be, I will not determine, but am
fully persuaded that great allowances are to be made on these and such
like accounts, in innumerable instances. Though it is manifest from what
has been said, that the teaching and propagating contrary doctrines and
schemes, is of a pernicious and fatal tendency.
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