pears to emphasize strongly the power of
the human will to refuse the light and turn God's blessing into a
curse. If the 'savour' of the apostle's preaching is to 'those who are
being saved a savour proceeding from life and tending to life,' even
eternal life, it is for the wilful who are perishing in their
wilfulness 'a savour as from death and tending to death': for they
shall 'suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from the face of the
Lord, and from the glory of his might[22].' What this eternal
destruction means, and how it is to be harmonized with the vision of
unity, we cannot precisely tell. Verily, 'we know' but 'in part.' But
at least we must recognize that St. Paul asserts both sides of the
picture: and that the 'terror' and the hope are not dissociable.

6. We must also notice, before we leave the {203} passage, that the
application of the word justification receives a certain extension. As
the 'grace' of God is associated with a 'gift of righteousness[23],'
that is to say, of real fellowship in the life of God, so the
preliminary 'justification of sinners,' in which the divine grace first
of all conspicuously shows itself, is to pass into a 'justification of
life' (or 'a justification taking effect in life'); that is to say, the
actual life is to become acceptable. God begins with accepting sinners
and dealing with them as if they were righteous if only they will
believe. But it is in view of a moral process which is to produce a
new life, and is to end in making acceptable not themselves only, in
spite of their lives, but their life itself. The object of the
justifying faith is, and must be, as we saw, a living person. It is
Christ who was 'raised again for our justification.' And the living
Christ can be satisfied with nothing short of a living fellowship
between us and Himself in His own life and spirit.

[1] An _a fortiori_ argument means an argument with a 'still more' in
it:--If something is so then _still more_ something else.

[2] The words in brackets are the suppressed premise in the
argument--suppressed, but none the less evident.

[3] Acts xvii. 26.

[4] ver. 20.

[5] ver. 13, 14, 19.

[6] 1 Cor. xi. 3; 1 Tim. ii. 13-15.

[7] Rom. iv. 15; v. 13.

[8] Much more (the argument implies) after the law had been given and
sin could be 'imputed' as sin again.

[9] The references in Hos. vi. 7, Isa. xliii. 27, Job xxxi. 33, are not
certainly, or even probably, to Adam. T