SECTION I. OF DIVINE RENEWING LOVE. B INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. Y 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; for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained, that we should walk in them." With this passage of Scripture our division on justifying love concluded, with it also we begin that on sanctifying love; for it forms the transition from the former to the latter, and clearly shows that justifying grace in Christ does not presuppose our works, i.e. the agency of our virtues, just because it produces them in a creative manner; and that justification cannot be derived from the old man and his deeds, but only from Christ, because it is to bring forth the new man, who walks with new love in a new life. Sanctification and renewal are the product, and therefore cannot be the producers, of justification. If any man be in Christ (be received into the communion of the Redeemer and of His righteousness), he is a new creature, who has not created himself, but is created in Christ Jesus unto good works; the old has passed away with its wrath; lo, all has become new in redeeming love, which produces sanctifying and renewing love (2 Cor. v. 17). The new birth, no less than the natural birth, presupposes generation, which in the wider sense forms Q part of its notion; while in the narrower, justification is that which generates, and sanctification, as the new life, that which is born. Both, justification no less than sanctification, are effected by the Holy Ghost, who, as He is in the Godhead the bond of unity and love between the Father and the Son, is also the bond of love between God and man, between Christ and the Christian. It is through Him that that constant and, so to speak, intimate indwelling of the Father and the Son, promised to the loving and beloved soul, and certainly to be distinguished from momentary influences, takes place (John xiv. 23, xvii. 26). The holy love of God produces in the soul that love to God, which is the mother of all the Christian virtues, or fruits of the Spirit (Gal. ii. 20, v. 22). It is selfevident that the gracious love of God to us is no work of ours, but neither is our believing love to Him a product of our natural will, but of that love of God wherewith He first loved us, and of His Spirit, which bears witness to our spirit and inclines our heart and will towards Him.1 They who call the love, which is shed abroad in the heart and penetrates the whole soul, the work of our will, forget that love in general, though it works, is yet no work produced by our will, being, on the contrary, the producer of all good will. Through it our heart will become willing and inclined to all good, and independently co-operate with new power, so that the work of sanctification is performed neither by God's Spirit and grace alone, nor by man's spirit and will alone, nor even by both one with the other (synergistically), but rather by both united, so that everywhere the truly human is vitally penetrated by the Divine.2 In this case then the old rule holds good, that grace does not destroy, but heals nature, 1 Nulla est enim major ad amorem invitatio quam prævenire amando et nimis durus est animus qui amorem si nolebat impendere, nolit rependere.— Augustine, de catechiz. rudib. 7. 2 Revera tunc per virtutem Spiritus sancti co-operari possumus et debemus. -Conc. Form. ii. p. 674 (Rechenb.); comp. the same, p. 680: Voluntas jam renata in quotidianis pœnitentiæ exercitiis non est otiosa, sed in omnibus operibus Spiritus sancti, quæ ille per nos efficit, co-operatur. make it whole (gratia non tollit sed sanat naturam),—the notions wholeness and holiness being nearly related. It does not suppress the activity of the natural powers, to which, on the contrary, it gives new animation. It does this not by mere support and assistance, with which it only supplements their diseased weakness,' but by the new health, with which it so fills them that they are no longer in need of crutches, but act independently in that strength of God which has become their own, as the Psalmist says (Ps. lxxi. 16, xxvii. 1): "I will go forth in the strength of the Lord." This united action of God and man is witnessed to by the apostle in the apparently contradictory saying (Phil. ii. 12 sq.): “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you to will and to work according to His good pleasure;" comp. Phil. iv. 13: "I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me." 2 It is the very nature of love, that, though the special quality of the heart, it is not set upon itself, but upon another, whom it loves, and that what belongs to him belongs to it, and what belongs to it belongs to him. Hence it is not the part of love, but of selfishness, to think anything of itself, or to act as of itself (2 Cor. iii. 5). Love will, on the contrary, confess to God that our sufficiency is of God. Where this is misconceived, where sufficiency and virtue are ascribed, not to God, but to himself, a man leaves the bond of love, and consequently that of holiness, which consists in the penetration of the human by the Divine, and, where the former is separated from the latter, disappears. The good becomes un-good, unholy, ungodly when and so far as it is not perceived to come from God, but attributed to the merit of the creature. The loving acknowledgment, that all good is an effluence and influence of the alone good God, is itself an essential element of the good, 1 Quasi homo conversus una cum spiritu sancto eo modo co-operaretur, quemadmodum duo equi simul una currum trahunt.-Ibid. * Comp. Harless, Christliche Ethik, 4th ed., Stuttgart 1849, § 23, p. |