1. Of all questions that can occupy the mind of man none is more important than this: “How do I stand with God? “To dismiss it as unimportant and unpractical, is to dismiss as unreal the one great Reality to which our personality, as distinct from our senses, responds. To evade it by vague statements about an All-loving Father, who will put things right in the end, is to dishonour God. A generation brought up on these statements is now groping painfully to restore its sense of “the Majesty and Mastership of God.” If “the modern man does not worry about his sins,”this is a proof not of his progress, but of retrogression. With all its faults and mistakes the sixteenth century was alive to the reality of God, and it is our wisdom to discover the great truths which underlay its scholastic terminology, and to state them afresh to ourselves in terms of modern thought. This appears to be all the more necessary now that the Church is attempting through the influence of the war to discharge its duty of witness to the world. If God is real, and I am real, every other inquiry is in fact secondary to the inquiry, “How do I stand with God?”
What does a man mean then who says he feels his sin and wants relief? I think the analysis is very clear, though it leads us to the brink of unfathomable things and unutterable agonies and longings. Such a man means, to begin with, that he is awake to the reality of God, and that he has at least in some degree the feeling that nothing really matters save a right relationship to Him. The sense of sin, that is to say, has its whole root from first to last in an awakened desire for God and goodness.
God may be little known and vaguely realized. His name may be hardly more than a symbol for the spiritual and the unseen, for what is permanent and perfect. But none the less He is desirable and desired, not for His gifts or favours but for Himself. The psalmist’s cry, “My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living God,” may be, at this first stage, far beyond the power of the awakened sinner, but at least it is no longer alien to him. It has become intelligible and congenial. God is the true end; goodness the true life; and sin has come to block the way and cheat him of the prize. [Note: P. M. Rhinelander, The Faith of the Cross, 39.]
2. By universal consent of all who have tried to think it out, the answer to the question “How do I stand with God?” can only be “I am a sinner and need forgiveness of my sin.” But it is also clear that this is a very insufficient answer. There are many kinds of forgiveness. There is forgiveness of the rebel who obtains an amnesty, but retains rebellion in his heart. There is forgiveness of a friend, who is warned at the same time that friendship on its old footing can never be restored. There is forgiveness of a child, who is told that any repetition of his fault will bring down immediate punishment. In each of these cases forgiveness leaves a sting in the heart of the forgiven. He is not punished, but he is not reconciled. If the Divine forgiveness is on these lines, the question “How do I stand with God?” is very far from being a message of peace. It is a message of remission of punishment, which rests on no true conception of the nature of God; and only in an age of slipshod thinking could it obtain any currency.
(1) Notice two things: First, a simple pardon, bestowed without any accompanying circumstances, must have drawn some degree of gratitude from the criminal, if he knew his danger; and this would have been all. But when he views the perfect and holy obedience of a great benefactor as the ground of his pardon, he is induced to look with love and admiration towards that obedience which gained the Divine favour, as well as towards the friend who paid it.
(2) Again, the sinner does not want God without God’s goodness. No passing over, no good-natured tolerance, no kind indulgence will suffice; it is real godliness, real fellowship he wants. And how can he be in fellowship with God unless he is identified with goodness? unless God can look on him, with all the rest of His dependent creatures, and see that he, the sinner, is actually very good?
3. There is a better answer, known commonly as the doctrine of Justification by Faith, which teaches that God has provided for sinners not only a full forgiveness, not only the power to overcome sin, but also a complete, a Divine righteousness. In that righteousness man has no share but that of accepting it by faith. “Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace” (Rom_4:16). So, accepting it, he makes it his own, and is able to answer the question “How do I stand with God?” with the simple reply: “I am at peace, entirely at peace, with Him. By faith I am one with Christ, and Christ with me, and all that is His is mine.” This is the doctrine of Justification by Faith.
To St. Paul the question presented itself at the first (in pre-Christian days) in the “Jewish” form. For he was born “privileged,” even beyond the common run of his countrymen. He possessed advantages innumerable. “Philippians” tells us how (in his regenerate days) he regarded these advantages. By a vigorous oxymoron he counted them “less than nothing.” Like the character in Hans Andersen who asks contemptuously, “Do you call that a hill? We should call it a hole,” St. Paul declares he reckoned his “gain” as mere “dung.” No more would he go about (as he did in these old days) to keep himself “right with God,” by doing and doing and doing. He would not even assume that he started “right with God,” and only had to keep so, by loyalty to the Covenant. His point of view was transformed. All was merged in one great question, How shall I become right with God—right once for all? And the answer came, “Through Christ.” Here was the new way, the God-appointed way. Henceforth he never wavered in heart and soul conviction that “justification” for him was an accomplished fact. He had “become right” with God, “in Christ Jesus,” as a result of “faith.” It was the wholly new beginning of a wholly new existence. [Note: F. B. Westcott, St. Paul and Justification, 15.]
