By WILLIAM G. T. SHEDD, D.D.
In asking their question, the Jews intended to inquire of Christ
what particular things they must do, before all others, in order to
please God. The “works of God,” as they denominate them, were not any
and every duty, but those more special and important acts, by which
the creature might secure the Divine approval and favor. Our Lord
understood their question in this sense, and in his reply tells them,
that the great and only work for them to do was to exercise faith in
him. They had employed the plural number in their question; but in
his answer he employs the singular. They had asked, “What shall we do
that we might work the works of God,” as if there were several of them.
His reply is, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he
hath sent.” He narrows down the terms of salvation to a single one;
and makes the destiny of the soul to depend upon the performance of a
particular individual act. In this, as in many other incidental ways,
our Lord teaches his own divinity. If he were a mere creature; if he
were only an inspired teacher like David or Paul; how would he dare,
when asked to give in a single word the condition and means of human
salvation, to say that they consist in resting the soul upon him? Would
David have dared to say: “This is the work of God,—this is the saving
act,—that ye believe in me?” Would Paul have presumed to say to the
anxious inquirer: “Your soul is safe, if you trust in me?” But Christ
makes this declaration, without any qualification. Yet he was meek and
lowly of heart, and never assumed an honor or a prerogative that did
not belong to him. It is only upon the supposition that he was “very
God of very God,” the Divine Redeemer of the children of men, that we
can justify such an answer to such a question.
The belief is spontaneous and natural to man, that something must be
done in order to salvation. No man expects to reach heaven by inaction.
Even the indifferent and supine soul expects to rouse itself up at
some future time, and work out its salvation. The most thoughtless
and inactive man, in religious respects, will acknowledge that
thoughtlessness and inactivity if continued will end in perdition. But
he intends at a future day to think, and act, and be saved. So natural
is it, to every man, to believe in salvation by works; so ready is
every one to conceive that heaven is reached, and hell is escaped, only
by an earnest effort of some kind; so natural is it to every man to ask
with these Jews, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?”
But mankind generally, like the Jews in the days of our Lord, are under
a delusion respecting the nature of the work which must be performed in
order to salvation. And in order to understand this delusion, we must
first examine the common notion upon the subject.
When a man begins to think of God, and of his own relations to him,
he finds that he owes him service and obedience. He has a work to
perform, as a subject of the Divine government; and this work is to
obey the Divine law. He finds himself obligated to love God with all
his heart, and his neighbor as himself, and to discharge all the duties
that spring out of his relations to God and man. He perceives that
this is the “work” given him to do by creation, and that if he does
it he will attain the true end of his existence and be happy in time
and eternity. When therefore he begins to think of a religious life,
his first spontaneous impulse is to begin the performance of this work
which he has hitherto neglected, and to reinstate himself in the Divine
favor by the ordinary method of keeping the law of God. He perceives
that this is the mode in which the angels preserve themselves holy
and happy: that this is the original mode appointed by God, when he
established the covenant of works; and he does not see why it is not
the method for him. The law expressly affirms that the man that doeth
these things shall live by them; he proposes to take the law just
as it reads, and just as it stands,—to do the deeds of the law, to
perform the works which it enjoins, and to live by the service. This
we say, is the common notion, natural to man, of the species of work
which must be performed in order to eternal life. This was the idea
which filled the mind of the Jews when they put the question of the
text, and received for answer from Christ, “This is the work of God,
that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.” Our Lord does not draw out
the whole truth, in detail. He gives only the positive part of the
answer, leaving his hearers to infer the negative part of it. For the
whole doctrine of Christ, fully stated, would run thus: “No work of
the kind of which you are thinking can save you; no obedience of the
law, ceremonial or moral, can reinstate you in right relations to God.
I do not summon you to the performance of any such service as that
which you have in mind, in order to your justification and acceptance
before the Divine tribunal. This is the work of God,—this is the sole
and single act which you are to perform,—namely, that you believe on
him whom he hath sent as a propitiation for sin. I do not summon you to
works of the law, but to faith in me, the Redeemer. Your first duty is
not to attempt to acquire a righteousness in the old method, by doing
something of yourselves, but to receive a righteousness in the new
method, by trusting in what another has done for you.”
I. What is the ground and reason of such an answer as this? Why is man
invited to the method of faith in another, instead of the method of
faith in himself? Why is not his first spontaneous thought the true
one? Why should he not obtain eternal life by resolutely proceeding to
do his duty, and keeping the law of God? Why can he not be saved by the
law of works? Why is he so summarily shut up to the law of faith?
We answer: Because it is too late for him to adopt the method of
salvation by works. The law is indeed explicit in its assertion,
that the man that doeth these things shall live by them; but then it
supposes that the man begin at the beginning. A subject of government
can not disobey a civil statute for five or ten years, and then put
himself in right relations to it again, by obeying it for the remainder
of his life. Can a man who has been a thief or an adulterer for twenty
years, and then practices honesty and purity for the following thirty
years, stand up before the seventh and eighth commandments and be
acquitted by them? It is too late for any being who has violated a law
even in a single instance, to attempt to be justified by that law. For,
the law demands and supposes that obedience begin at the very beginning
of existence, and continue down uninterruptedly to the end of it. No
man can come in at the middle of a process of obedience, any more than
he can come in at the last end of it, if he proposes to be accepted
upon the ground of obedience. “I testify,” says St. Paul, “to every man
that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law” (Gal.
v: 3). The whole, or none, is the just and inexorable rule which law
lays down in the matter of justification. If any subject of the Divine
government can show a clean record, from the beginning to the end of
his existence, the statute says to him, “Well done,” and gives him the
reward which he has earned. And it gives it to him not as a matter of
grace, but of debt. The law never makes a present of wages. It never
pays out wages, until they are earned,—fairly and fully earned. But
when a perfect obedience from first to last is rendered to its claims,
the compensation follows as matter of debt. The law, in this instance,
is itself brought under obligation. It owes a reward to the perfectly
obedient subject of law, and it considers itself his debtor until it is
paid. “Now to him that worketh, is the reward not reckoned of grace,
but of debt. If it be of works, then it is no more grace: otherwise
work is no more work.”
[_End of Required Reading for April._]
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TRANSLATION.—A Welsh curate having preached several sermons which were
considered superior to his own powers of composition, was asked by a
friend how he managed? He replied: “Do you see, I have got a volume of
sermons by one Tillotson, and a very good book it is; so I translate
one of the sermons into Welsh, and then back again into English; after
which the devil himself would not know it again.”