THREE ASPECTS OF GOD ? S WORK OF SALVATION ARE PRESENTED TO US IN THE BIBLE. THE FIRST MAY BE CALLED the historical-social. Its subject is the people of God, its object a redeemed humanity or the establishment of God's kingdom upon earth. In the Old Testament its concern is with Israel, in the New Testament with the Church and the kingdom. The second aspect is personal and present. The third is the life beyond: personal immortality in an Eternal kingdom.

Salvation as Personal

The social-historical aspect is the dominant theme of the Old Testament. Its form is nationalistic, with only the beginnings of a universalistic outlook. Jehovah has made a covenant with his people Israel and will redeem them and establish them in righteousness and prosperity and peace. Yet the personal aspect is not wanting. Where there is faith in a personal-ethical God, there religion will become more and more personal-individual. Back of the message of the prophets was the personal experience of the prophets, knowing in their own lives the righteous God of demand and judgment, the merciful God of forgiveness and redemption (Isa. 6; Jer. 1; 31:31-34). The Psalms are the chief expression of this and in such fashion that they have remained aids for individual and corporate worship to this day.

The historic-social hope remained basic in the New Testament. It was with the message of the coming kingdom that Jesus began his work. It was the hope of the early Church that the establishment of that kingdom was at hand. "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" they asked. "Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed," writes Paul (Acts 1:6; Rom. 13:11). But with this there went the emphasis on religion as personal fellowship with God. God's knowledge and concern, his love and care, his demand and his help, came to each individual. Each least sinner is a wandering child for whose return the Father is waiting, said Jesus; when you pray, go apart, look up in trust, and say "Father." The hope of a coming kingdom is always in the background, but there is a continued concern with the message of a present salvation for each individual.

It was only gradually that the primitive Church came to realize the basic importance and full meaning of this personal and present salvation which had come to them in Christ. Here again we see God's method of revelation by action. There was the negative side: their hope of a speedy return of Christ and consummation of the kingdom was not fulfilled. More important was the positive side: the realization that Christ lived and was in their midst; the experience of a new life, of God's forgiving mercy, of peace and power and love and joy which had made of them new men; the conviction that this new life was God's gift by his Spirit; the new fellowship in which they shared, a fellowship in which Christ was Lord and leader and living presence, whose life was God's gift, the creation of his Spirit. Here was salvation as a present reality as well as a future hope.

With this experience there came the need of interpretation, the more so when under Paul's leadership they faced their duty of carrying the new gospel to the Roman world. In this message the present and personal salvation became increasingly significant, as we see from Paul's letters. But there was no ready-made theology here, nor did they aim at one. The interpretation was the work not of theologians but of preachers, bringing the gospel, seeking to make clear what this salvation was and how God saved.

All this helps us understand what we find in the New Testament. There is no systematic statement of a "plan of salvation." There is the clear conviction that God in Christ is reconciling men and bringing them life. There are many ways in which they try to make their message plain. The chief figures used can be briefly indicated. (1) Salvation is reconciliation. Man in his sin is at enmity with God; he is "man in revolt." In Christ the God of mercy seeks to win him back, to reconcile him. (2) They speak of forgiveness and justification. The former is the simple term taken from human relations. The latter is an analogy from the court of justice, a legal term familiar to all. Literalized and absolutized it led later to the penal satisfaction theory. For Paul it was a figure which brought out God's mercy in forgiveness. The sinner stands condemned before the sovereign and righteous God—and God forgives. (3) A third figure is suggested by such words as ransom and redemption (buying back). He who sins is a slave of sin. Salvation is deliverance from this slavery. (4) Still another figure is that of adoption: God in his mercy has adopted us, has taken us into his family as children.

In its deeper meanings this personal salvation was seen as a gift of life, or as the making of new men. So we have salvation set forth (5) as a being born again, or regenerated, as becoming a new man, a new creature or creation. (6) Finally, there is the expressive figure of death and resurrection. Sin means death, the death of the true life of man; salvation is resurrection from this death, it is being made truly alive. Paul uses the figure in connection with the idea of mystical union with Christ. As Christ died on the cross, so man dies to sin; joined by faith to Christ, man rises with him to newness of life.

Though there is no systematic formulation of doctrine here, there is abiding value for Christian thought. The task of theology is to bring these insights into an ordered whole, to use such light as the Church has gained from centuries of Christian thought and experience that we may interpret for our day the meaning of the Christian way of help. Today there is a renewed interest in the problems of associated life and social salvation; but the basic importance of individual salvation remains. Christianity is concerned with a new world, but there can be no new world without new men. And despite all our advance in scientific knowledge and material wealth, the need for personal salvation is becoming ever more insistent. Men are divided within and want unity. They are filled with uncertainty and fear. They are looking for confidence and courage and peace of soul. What is the salvation which we offer?

Salvation as Life

The basic idea can be briefly stated. Salvation is life. Life comes through right relations. The supreme relation is that of man to God. Christ's work is to bring man and God together. So doing, he makes all things new—new men and a new world.

To speak of right relations as the condition of life is to affirm that there is a God-given order within which life is found. That is as true of the spiritual world as it is of nature. It does not mean mechanism in nature or legalism in religion. It belongs to our faith in a God of truth and reason and righteousness, a faithful and dependable God. What Wordsworth says in his "Ode to Duty" we extend, as did he, to the whole realm of life:

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;

And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh

                                                     and strong.

Physical survival and material well-being are contingent for us upon our knowledge of this order; so is our life as moral-spiritual beings. Man is unique in the number of relations which constitute his life. That means a height of achievement to which he may attain, a depth of lostness to which he may fall, beyond that of any other creature of earth.

The First Assembly of the World Council of Churches had for its theme "Man's Disorder and God's Design." Sin is "man's disorder." It is the failure to enter into right relations with God and his world. This means being lost, as the coin was lost off in its dark corner, the sheep away from the fold, the son away from home. And in the New Testament death and being lost mean the same. Life is being in right relations. Death, spiritual as well as physical, is being out of right relations. Christ's salvation means his work in seeking the lost and bringing them into right relations.

Man's life is made up of four relations. All four have meaning for his salvation though not all have equal significance. There is his relation to the natural world with its gifts and tasks, its hardships and its pleasures, its seductions and its possibilities for self-development and service. There is the relation to his fellows, taking innumerable forms, bringing highest joys and deepest sorrows, offering the chance to love and serve and achieve and equally to debase ourselves and destroy others. Here again are the paths of life and death. There is a man's relation to himself: the chance to choose between the higher self and the lower, the task of bringing conflicting interests into harmony and securing peace and unity where there is strife.

The fourth relation is our relation to God, and here our study of salvation must begin. For God is not just another person, and this is not just one relation by the side of others. God is the beginning and the end of all relations. "In thy light do we see light" (Ps. 36:9). "Religion is the first thing and the last thing," says one of H. G. Wells's characters, "and until a man has found God and been found by God, he begins at no beginning, he works to no end. He may have his friendships, his partial loyalties, his scraps of honor. But all these things fall into place and life falls into place only with God." ¹ It is not, as has sometimes been suggested, that all other problems, individual and social, are automatically settled when once men are right with God. It does mean that here is the basic relation. Here we gain light for all dark places and strength for all our needs. God is our highest good, and in him and through him we gain all other goods. And when we are right with him, then we have the spirit in which all the other relations of life are to be lived. "This is eternal life, that they know thee" (John 17:3).

The Christian word for this relation is sonship, and the Christian understanding of what that means is to be found in the life and spirit of Jesus. The sonship relation has a double meaning. First as to character: to be a son is to have the spirit of the Father. Sonship means kinship of spirit. The quality of this spirit Jesus characterized in the Beatitudes and elsewhere in the Sermon on the Mount. He sums it up in the word "love," the spirit of pure, unselfish, all-inclusive good will. You are to love, he says, that you may be sons of your Father. Its second meaning is active; it is life with the Father lived in faith, reverence, worship, trust, dependence, communion in prayer. It means the doing of God's will in the active service of men: "My Father is working still, and I am working" (John 5:17).

But all this would seem not so much to solve man's problem of the way to life as rather to make its solution impossible. Life comes through right relation with God, and that relation involves oneness with God in spirit and in life. That, however, is just what man lacks; he is a sinner, separated from God, opposed to God in his inner spirit and his way of life. What is the use of quoting "closer is he than breathing" when his nearness only makes plainer the gulf that divides? Nor can man say: Now I will make myself good so that I may enter upon this fellowship with God and thus have life. That is just what we cannot do. That is where we need saving help: to become the men that we should be. So we face the paradox: a man can overcome evil and have life only as he is in fellowship with God, but so long as he is evil, that fellowship is impossible.

The Christian answer is found in the gospel of the forgiving God. There is no abatement here of the moral demand: men are to be sons of their Father in spirit and life. But the way to sonship is through the mercy of God. This is the paradox of grace; this is the gospel way: God receives men as sons in order that they may become sons. In his sin man has turned from God. By his sin he has broken the Father-son relation in which alone he can have life. He cannot create in himself the right spirit or establish that right relation. God does that when man turns to him in repentance and faith. He forgives and receives and gives himself to men, not because of their desert but because of his pure and infinite love. And in this fellowship God gives man life. This is the gospel of God's forgiving and self-giving. It has often been overlaid if not concealed by theory or dogma. It is as simple as the practice of Jesus when he received sinners and ate with them, and as the teaching in the parables in which he met the criticism which his practice raised (Luke 15). The parable of the prodigal son is really the parable of the forgiving Father, of his seeking and forgiving love.

The doctrine of forgiveness is simple. Proclaimed as the gospel, it has been understood and received by the lowliest. It is none the less profound. It is far more than any mere remission of penalty. It deals with the greatest forces and the deepest realities, those of persons and personal relations. In turn it makes the supreme demand upon man: the about-face of repentance, the surrender and trust involved in faith, the life of a continuing fellowship in which man offers himself to God with each succeeding day and in each new situation. The basic idea remains the same throughout: God in his infinite mercy receives the repentant and believing sinner into a living and life-giving fellowship.

What this means and how it comes to pass appears when we consider the great Christian terms in which this has been set forth: grace, repentance, faith, forgiveness, reconciliation, words worn smooth by much usage but whose meaning must be grasped if we are to understand the Christian way of salvation.

Grace

Grace comes first. The New Testament was written in the common Greek of its day. Its words were those of common speech. But it gave those words a peculiar depth and wealth of meaning. Notable examples are the words grace and love. In common Greek usage grace (charis) had three meanings which it retains today. It could refer to a quality of person, of speech, or of action; then it meant attractiveness, charm, graciousness. It was used to characterize an attitude toward others, that of friendliness or good will. Finally, as when we speak today of grace at meat, it might mean a response of thanksgiving. Our immediate concern is with the meaning of grace as representing the character of God and his attitude toward men. The word itself is not important. Jesus does not employ it. He uses words like Father, love, mercy, to express this truth that God is forgiving love, infinite and undeserved good will. The sinner's hope is in the saving mercy of God. Salvation is by grace.

The idea of grace was not a New Testament innovation. Prophet and psalmist had dwelt on the lovingkindness of Jehovah; their hope rested on God's gracious purpose to redeem his people. But it was Christ who through his word and life and death gave full and compelling expression to this truth. It was Paul who made clear to the early Church what was new in their faith. Grace was the crucial word. In the end the Church followed Paul, though not all grasped it as clearly as he did. In the history of the Church this truth was often obscured, especially by a recurrent moralism or legalism. Men used the word, but they built up systems of rules and penances, of sacraments and ceremonials, whose observance was declared necessary for salvation. The leaders who recalled the Church to its central faith, however, and brought to it a renewal of life, men like Augustine, Luther, and Wesley, all went back to Paul's gospel of salvation as coming through the grace of God.

In its primary meaning grace has reference to God himself, to his spirit of pure good will, his attitude of mercy. In a secondary sense grace is that which flows out from God to men. This gift of God is first of all forgiveness. This is the first step in salvation, to come into life-giving fellowship with God. To be separated from God is to be lost; to have God is to have life. We cannot earn this fellowship by our merit or achieve it by ourselves. Man cannot raise himself to God. The fellowship, the new life, comes from God and is the gift of his grace. Over and over again Paul reiterates his great theme. In one brief paragraph, Rom. 5:15-17, he repeats the idea no less than seven times, using the two terms free gift and grace.

This gracious forgiveness, however, is but the beginning. Forgiving and giving go together and both are needed throughout the Christian life. Day by day we need forgiveness for our imperfect and sinful lives; day by day by God's mercy we have fellowship with him and receive life from him. This is the grace of God. The merciful God is continually giving himself in love, and the needy man is constantly receiving forgiveness and help. This saving relationship is the "state of grace," and the continued help is spoken of as "enabling grace." "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor. 12:9). Elsewhere Paul writes, "I can do all things in him who strengthens me" (Phil. 4:13). Paul's supreme concern, and that of the New Testament, is with grace in the first sense, as God's forgiving and saving mercy.

First, then, comes the belief that salvation is God's deed, his free gift. But that does not exclude the human side. God offers forgiveness and fellowship and life. The offer is a challenge; the gift cannot be made without the human response. The two New Testament words for the needed response are repentance and faith.

Repentance

Repentance (metanoia) means literally change of mind. In the Christian sense it is an inner about-face, a radical reversal of life attitude. There is more here than mere sorrow for past misdeeds or a changed point of view. Mind and heart and will are all involved. First comes the vision of God. We see the Lord high and lifted up, God holy and righteous and merciful. In that presence we see ourselves in our sin and guilt and know God's purpose as the only way for our life. Then comes the decision, that deed which is at the heart of repentance. It is the prodigal saying, "I will arise and go to my Father." It is a turning from the past, a hatred for the old evil, the commitment to the new good and the higher way. It is our yes, not only to God's judgment upon us, but to his will for us. And because it is no mere remorse for the past, this repentance is not a once for all affair; it is a life task, as Luther rightly saw. It is to be an ever-renewed attitude and act of confession and contrition, of turning from evil and devotion to God and the good.

The lack of this moral passion, of positive hatred of evil and devotion to good, is a constant danger alike in the individual Christian life and in the associated life of Church and community and nation. Here is the first great obstacle to the coming of a new world order, of justice and peace in international life. The nations feel that it is necessary in maintaining their position and power to pass sharp judgment on the defects of others, but they admit no fault or error on their own part, and criticism from within they tend to regard as disloyalty if not treason. This is the avowed position of the totalitarian state; its demand of absolute obedience involves the assumption that its will makes right and is right. The cult of nationalism brings the same danger to other lands. With nations, as well as individuals, there is no safety, no salvation, without humility, confession of fault, the turning from known wrong, the devotion to truth and justice and good will. The -Church needs to call nations as well as individuals to repentance, as did the prophets of old.

Faith

If grace is the term to describe God's nature and his attitude to man, then faith is the best single word to indicate the response which is called for by such a God. The saving love and mercy of God can become effective in us only as we answer in trust and surrender. And that is faith. Faith is the answer of person to Person, of the repentant, believing, self-surrendering man to this God and his gift. Only through this open door can the saving God come in.

In its broadest sense faith means confidence, or trust, a confidence that goes beyond the evidence of the senses or the demonstration of logic. As such it enters into every activity of human life, and necessarily so. Criticism is not excluded. It is not a blind confidence that is called for. We weigh the evidence of our senses. We check by experiment and ongoing experience, including the experience of others. We weigh the judgment of others qualitatively and not merely quantitatively. We criticize the processes of reason. Faith does not require that a man should "make his reason blind." But in the end, if we are ever to act and achieve, we must trust. Hier gilt nur der eine Rat, said a great German scientist of a couple of generations ago, vertraue und handle. "Trust and act." Even the scientist must trust, trust his senses, his processes of reason as he interprets, and the work of his fellow scientists. The engineer trusts the conclusions of the scientist. Both assume the fact of a natural order and its essential dependability, of which there can never be a complete demonstration. Quite as important is the place of confidence in the social order. There we must say: there is no truly human life that is not social, no social life without some mutual confidence, or faith. And always there is a certain spiritual quality in faith. The confidence of faith rests upon the belief that in man and in the universe there is something of reason and right-ness, of value and dependability.

Faith has its supreme expression in religion. The heart of all high religion is the faith that in some ultimate way "goodness and power are one." Religion is belief in a world of a higher order, a world not visible to the eye, not demonstrable by reason, a world that can be known, indeed, but only in a living experience whose requirement is trust and obedience. Religious faith differs from the faith of common life in its object and in its demand. It offers, not a partial good, but the supreme good. Its object is not an impersonal world order or finite and imperfect creatures, but the God of infinite goodness and power. And so its demand is an absolute trust and obedience. Our concern here is specifically with the nature and place of faith in the Christian doctrine of salvation.

The object of this saving faith is God, the God who has come to us in Jesus Christ. Christian faith is trust in a Person. Such a faith involves surrender of our lives, of heart and mind and will; but it is more than obedience, more than submission to authority. It is more than the acceptance of doctrine or creed. In Roman Catholicism, and in not a little Protestantism, these two ideas are combined and faith is conceived as the acceptance of a body of teachings, or beliefs, upon a given authority. Thus the Catholic Encyclopedia declares that faith, first and objectively, is "the sum of truths revealed by God in Scripture and tradition, and which the Church presents to us in a brief form in her creeds; subjectively, faith stands for the habit or virtue by which we assent to those truths." ² Here the Church is conceived as the custodian of the tradition, the authoritative interpreter of tradition and Scripture, and thus as the authority to which man submits, upon whose word he accepts what he is to believe. Faith itself becomes belief on authority. Akin to this is the idea of faith in some Protestant circles as the acceptance of doctrine, or teaching, upon authority. The authority in this case is the Scripture, and that commonly involves the idea of verbal inspiration. In practice, however, this usually means that the object of faith is a certain statement of doctrine as given in some particular creed or in some selected body of "fundamentals." In both cases revelation is the communication of a body of truth and faith is the obedient acceptance of these teachings. With this conception of faith it is easy to see why Roman Catholicism joins works with faith as the necessary condition of salvation.

Nothing less is here involved than the whole question of the meaning of religion and of the way of salvation. For evangelical thought religion means a personal relation with the living God in a fellowship of faith and obedience; salvation is the gift of God in and through that fellowship to which he admits the repentant, believing, self-surrendering sinner. Truth and understanding are both involved here. Faith is response to a God who speaks. Insight belongs to faith as truly as trust and obedience. The biblical writers are interpreters, not mere recorders. They deal with truth, not simply with events but with their meaning. They are concerned with what God is seeking to say to men, and they call on men to hear and understand. The Church seeks to set forth this word of God to men in its teaching and preaching, to declare it in its creeds and doctrines. The object of faith is not the biblical record, the doctrines, or the creeds; it is the living God.

Equally vital for faith is the ethical aspect. The word which brings conviction comes first, but faith is not present until the conviction issues in decision, in our surrender in obedient trust to the God who has spoken. This is more than a matter of "good works" required as a supplement to faith. Faith is at once the initial "Yes" with which the new life begins and the daily "Yes" in which we open our life to God, receive his Spirit of love and righteousness, and express this spirit in all our doings. Freedom from the law meant for Paul not a freedom from moral demand, but a deeper and more searching obligation. In a striking phrase he speaks of "obedience of faith" (Rom. 1:5; 16:26). ³ Paul seeks to win the Gentile world to this new obedience. It is not the obedience which a master asks of his servants or a king of his subjects. It is the free devotion of one who has been freely convinced and who gives a complete obedience because he can now completely trust. It is this new kind of obedience to which Paul would win men, the obedience of faith.

So far we have considered faith in its primary meaning as a word of action, as faith not the faith, a verbal noun rather than a substantive. With faith, just as with truth, we lack the corresponding verb in English. We do not say "faithing" but believing, and so we tend to lose a vital element and to make it mean simply holding for true. The active meaning comes to clearer expression when the object is a person, not an idea or doctrine, especially when, as with the Revised Standard Version, the translation reads "believe in" (for both epi and eis).

But faith is also used in the New Testament and in Christian thought with a substantive meaning. This is really implied when we use faith in the active sense, for it involves awareness, insight, conviction. Hence faith in a secondary sense is used to indicate that which is believed. This is what is meant in speaking of the faith. So Paul speaks of "preaching the faith." The faith, as here used, means the gospel which Paul preached—that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, that men are saved through faith in him, that through his Spirit God gives to man a new life here and the hope of the life beyond. The error, into which the later Church so often fell was that of identifying this faith with the formulations of its creeds or systems and then assuming that saving faith meant the acceptance of some body of doctrine.

Forgiveness, Justification, and Reconciliation

As we turn now to God's action in salvation, three New Testament terms call for closer definition: forgiveness, justification, and reconciliation. They all deal with the central Christian conviction: separated from God by his sin, man is lost; God in his mercy forgives man and receives him into fellowship; in that fellowship man has life. All three refer to the central fact of forgiving and life-giving mercy. "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself"—so Paul summarizes it (2 Cor. 5:19).

What forgiveness means must be understood in the light of what has been said about grace, repentance, and faith. It is no mere remission of penalty—there are consequences of sin which forgiveness cannot wipe out. It is no mere restoration of a status quo ante. Forgiveness looks forward, not merely back. It is creative. Its work is that of creative love. Sin at once separates from God and destroys. It is this separation that must be overcome. Man must be brought into life-giving fellowship with God. Until that is done, there will be no redeeming power in his life. And man cannot lift himself to God. There is only one way left: the free forgiveness of God. Forgiveness means admission to fellowship, and fellowship with God means the overcoming of sin and the giving of the new life. ⁴

This is what the critics of Jesus overlooked, the fact that forgiveness is redemptive. To them Jesus seemed to be a subverter of morals. Did he not treat sinners and saints in the same way, as though righteousness made no difference? "This man receives sinners and eats with them" (Luke 15:2). Jesus countered with the three parables of Luke 15, with their picture of the seeking and forgiving God. Rightly, says Montefiore, the noted Jewish scholar:

Jesus has received no grander and more glorious title to fame than these words "the friend of sinners," coined in mockery and opprobrium. . . . The Rabbis attached no less value to repentance than Jesus. . . . But to seek out the sinner, and, instead of avoiding the bad companion, to choose him as your friend in order to work his moral redemption, this was, I fancy, something new in the religious history of Israel. The method of Jesus inaugurated a new idea, the idea of redemption. ⁵

Jesus was not leveling religion down; he was lifting men up. He, too, was concerned with righteousness; but the way to righteousness was differently envisaged by him. For him the way was that of the humble, penitent, believing heart, which led to righteousness because it led to God. For the Pharisees the matter of righteousness rested with man. Man was to keep the law; that was righteousness. Meanwhile the "sinners," responding to Jesus' message, were pressing into the kingdom, while the "righteous," satisfied, remained without.

Justification is the term that Paul uses to denote the act of forgiving mercy by which God receives the sinner. But while it means the same for him as forgiveness, it is not so good a term. Its background is that of the judge, the court, and the law. That, indeed, is why Paul chose it. It helped him to bring out the sharp contrast of grace with the way of the law. The law dealt with man in factual fashion: this man is innocent, let him go free; this man is guilty, let him be punished. With Christ there had come a new way, says Paul. The sinner's lot is decided not by what he is, but by what God is. He is justified, not by what he has done, not by works and merit, but by God's free grace. Forgiven, he stands accepted before God. This is simply Jesus' message of the forgiving God, and there is one Gospel passage (though only one) which uses the term justify. The penitent tax collector "went down to his house justified" (Luke 18:14).

But the term justification in theological thought has often been given a meaning that is counter to this usage. It is wrong, says Rome, to hold "that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy." Justification is viewed as a factual recognition of what man is. We are justified by God because we "are just, receiving justice within us," because we are "renewed in the spirit of [our] minds" (Eph. 4:23). Justification here is not forgiveness. God makes man just and then simply recognizes what he is. "The instrumental cause (of this justness) is the sacrament of baptism." ⁶

Equally removed from the idea of a gracious forgiveness is that form of Protestant teaching which asserts that justification is possible because God "imputes" to the sinner the righteousness of another (Christ). But righteousness is a quality of spirit, personal and ethical, and not something that can be transferred, like a garment, or like credit on account, from one to another. Nor does justification mean that God discovers in man's repentance and faith the root and the promise of righteousness, and accepts this in its stead. In all this there is an overlooking or a denial of the free forgiveness which springs from God's grace alone.

There is, of course, a problem involved in the idea of free forgiveness, an ethical problem. It must neither run counter to the faith in a righteous God, nor be unconcerned with the need of righteousness in man. But this problem is resolved when \ve recall again on the one side God's demand of repentance and faith, on the other the regenerative and creative power of love and of the life of fellowship with God which is granted through forgiveness. ⁷

Reconciliation is the more inclusive term. It refers to the whole work of God in Christ: God revealing his judgment and mercy, summoning men to himself, forgiving men and receiving them as his children. So Paul speaks of his work as the ministry of reconciliation, of the gospel as the word of reconciliation, and sums up the meaning of Christ when he says, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself (2 Cor. 5:19). The word brings out the personal-ethical nature of salvation. It requires God's action and man's response, God's love met by man's self-surrender, and so the mutual personal relation of Father and child where before had been estrangement. In turn the gospel of reconciling love becomes an ethical imperative: men are to seek the reconciliation of their brother men. The urgent need of this should be obvious to all in a day when classes and nations assume that individual advantage is the common goal and force the means of solution.

1) Mr. Britling Sees It Through, p. 442.

2) V,753.

3) The Revised Standard Version reverts to the King James translation, "obedience to the faith." The translation here given, "obedience of faith," follows the American Standard Version, Juelicher (Glaztbens-Gehorsam) , and Weizsaecker (Gehorsayn des Qlaubens). This interpretation of the phrase fits in with the whole movement of thought in Romans.

4) Cf. Gustaf Aulén, The Faith of the Christian Church, pp. 288-302. 114

5) Some Elements of the Religious Teaching of Jesus, p. 57.

6) The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent: Session VI, "Decree on Justification," ch. VII.

7) Suggestive is this item from the autobiography of a modern apostle of good will, or compassion, Mahatma Gandhi, not a professed Christian but a man who acknowledged his indebtedness to the Gospels and who sealed with his life his devotion to the way of self-giving love. Once, as a boy, deeply repentant for an act of theft and knowing how it would grieve him, he wrote out his confession and prayer of forgiveness and brought them to his father. He tells how the tears fell from his father's eyes. "Those pearl drops of love cleansed my heart and washed my sins away. . . . Today I know that it was pure Ahimsa. When such Ahimsa becomes universal, it transforms everything it touches. There is no limit to its power."