a
misunderstanding of St. Paul's doctrine of justification by faith which
called forth the protest of St. James' epistle. And indeed the traces
of this tendency to pervert the gospel are apparent enough in {179} St.
Paul's own epistles. Divine grace, it was even argued, can better show
its largeness if we afford it an opportunity by the abundance of our
sin. 'Let us continue in sin that grace may abound.' To this
monstrous suggestion St. Paul replies, in his epistle to the Romans[2],
that it rests on a complete misconception. Christian faith is an
introduction into Christ. Believing we are baptized into Him. This
means that we are to live as He lived towards the world of sin and
towards God. It means that we surrender ourselves in a spirit of glad
obedience to be moulded after His pattern. If our believing does not
lead to this new living, beyond all question it is a spurious thing,
and none of the Christian privileges attach to it. With a similar
purpose St. Paul writes here to the Asiatics--newly-made Christians,
who lived in the midst of an appallingly corrupt society, and whose
inherited traditions of conduct were altogether lacking in
self-restraint--to warn them against possible abuses of their Christian
privileges and Christian liberty.

To be a Christian is to be committed to a new life different utterly
from the old life.

What was the old life? In writing to the {180} Romans St. Paul
describes the life of the contemporary heathen world as having its
origin in a refusal of the will to acknowledge God. 'They glorified
Him not as God.' 'They refused to have God in their knowledge.' Hence
a darkening of the understanding. 'They became vain in their
reasonings; their senseless hearts were darkened; professing themselves
to be wise they became fools.' This explains the origin and
possibility of so foolish a worship as that of men and beasts.
Further, with the obscuring of the intelligence there was a perversion
and emancipation of the passions, resulting in all forms of lawlessness
and unnatural vice. A similar description of the 'old life' St. Paul
gives here. The root of evil here also appears to be in the 'heart'
(or will)--'the hardening of the heart'; hence arises 'vanity of the
mind,' an aimlessness or loss of all true and fixed point of view, a
'darkening of the understanding,' an inherent 'ignorance'; and
accompanying this loss of real intelligence has been a loss of what is
the true go