is identified with the Spirit, and in the following verse the two are combined in one title, "The Lord Spirit." Indeed, it may be said that the terms "Spirit," "Spirit of God," and "Spirit of Christ," are practically identical in the Pauline epistles. Again and again he places the two expressions, "Spirit of God" and "Spirit of Christ" side by side, and, indeed, seems to attribute to them a similar value in regard to their influence upon Christians. Whether or no we can say with Wernle, "Paul spares no effort to bring the spirit under the influence of Jesus," and that it is "the apostle's merit to have Christianized the spirit," it may not be too much to say that in his frequent use of the term "Spirit of Christ," he has given definiteness and personality to an idea which from its previous employment, both in Greek philosophy and Jewish scripture, might have been misleading and vague. We owe it to Paul that the expression "Spirit of Christ" is the peculiar possession of Christians, and that when we as Christians attribute our renewal to the Spirit of God, or to the Holy Spirit, we are justified in recognizing in the divine influence the presence of the living Christ. In the making of a Christian all three persons of the Holy Trinity are engaged; and it would be a bold man who would say, "This I owe to the Spirit of God, this to Christ, and this to the Holy Ghost." Each works through all, and all work through each. God works for us, and upon us, and in us. The threefold doxology with which Paul closes so many of his epistles is the expression of our faith, but the secret of our life, and the inspiration of our activity, must ever be that sublime word in which Paul sums up his Christian experience-" the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me." 1 1 Gal. ii. 20. The new creature then is the work of Christ. But His creative power is not an external influence, but an inner spirit of life. He Himself is the head, and Christians are members of His body, in vital union with which they find their peace and joy. All that makes life, life indeed-an exalted, harmonious and completed existence-is derived from union with Christ. But this life in Christ, complete and perfect though in one sense it is, is only the starting-point of the ethical life. The dynamic force is there: it has to be appropriated and realized. It is just here that we see the greatness of Paul as an ethical teacher. It would have been easy for him to say, "Nothing more is required of the Christian. It is enough to know that the Spirit of God has taken possession of a man. Jesus Christ dwells in him as a new energy, quickening his mortal body and delivering him from the guilt and dominion of sin. What need is there of more?" "There is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." But it is just here that the apostle asserts his moral claim. Possession of power implies obligation to use it. The Spirit of Christ is not given to free us from the duties of the moral life. It is the basis upon which that life is to be reared, and the power by which it is to be realized. Paul knew human nature, and how easily a man might rest in the indolence of spiritual pride, and so turn his very privileges into occasions of evil. Hence he says to the Galatians, "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit." To the Romans he writes, "Now we are delivered from the law . . . that we should serve in newness of spirit"; and to the Colossians, "As ye have received Jesus Christ, the Lord, so walk ye in Him"; and once more to the Romans, "Put ye on the Lord 1 2 Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.” 1 It is true that all is of God, who worketh in us both to will and to do, yet the Christian is exhorted to work out his own salvation with fear and trembling, lest the great work of God in him and through him should prove of none effect. II. This brings us naturally to consider the subjective or personal element in the creation of the new life. We have to study at this point the relation of the Spirit of Christ to the human personality-the relation of the divine and human in the ethics of Paul. From what we have said of the influence and possession of the indwelling spirit in man, it might appear as if, in the apostle's view, there was no room for self-determination on man's part. Man is simply the passive recipient of the divine-the vessel into which God pours His spirit, and which henceforth takes whatever shape and character the new content gives it. Sometimes, indeed, Paul does speak of the spirit under the image of a material effusion, as when he says the love of God is shed abroad or poured forth into our hearts. But innumerable passages in which the action of the spirit is referred to, preclude such a crude and materialistic interpretation of the apostle's meaning. It is true, indeed, that Paul nowhere attempts to solve the antinomy which lies in the notion of freedom. He does not once discuss the problem of free-will. It causes him no difficulty. He simply places side by side the two moments of the antithesis-divine power and human determination. On the one hand, he states in the most emphatic way that every moral impulse and act on the part of man is due 1 Rom. xiii. 14. 2 Wernle, vol. i. p. 257. 3 Rom. v. 5. to the working of God. "If in simplicity and godly sincerity we have had our conversation in the world, it is by the grace of God."1 "It is God that worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure.' It is the very God of peace who is to sanctify the Thessalonians through and through. It is God who, having begun a good work in the Philippians, will perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ. But, on the other hand, no less emphatic is he in ascribing to the individual full freedom of action. The Spirit of Christ is not conceived as a mechanical force or irresistible influence. Renewal takes place, indeed, by the working of God, but it cannot come about without the personal co-operation of man. recognizes a latent activity even in the very passivity of the receptive subject. Man has his part to play, both at the beginning and in the subsequent course of the new life. Not only is he "to put on the new man," "to put on the armour of light," "to put on the Lord Jesus Christ"; but he is "to stand fast in the Lord." 5 Paul We pass from the "life in the spirit" to the "walk in the spirit" by an act of free resolution. If Christians have put on Christ, then the obligation rests upon them to do so continually, so that they may be gradually assimilated to His image. "The flesh lusteth against the spirit," but it behoves man "not to fulfil the lusts thereof." It is the work of the Christian continually to mortify his members." If, therefore, the motive power of the Christian ethical life is the Spirit of Christ, it must not be conceived as operating by an irresistible necessity. It must rather be 12 Cor. i. 12. 31 Thess. v. 23. 5 Eph. iv. 22; Col. iii. 3, 10; 2 Phil. ii. 13. Phil. i. 6. Rom. xiii. 12-14; Phil. iv. 1. 7 Col. iii. 5; Rom. viii. 13. thought of as a power which is to be appropriated by man's moral nature and conditioned by his free action. In his ethical teaching at least, Paul is no determinist.1 As an evangelist he is constrained to reckon on the liberty of his hearers. His missionary zeal and fiery eloquence would have no meaning if he did not believe that men were free to accept or refuse his message. As a preacher the refrain of his appeal is "let not the grace of God be offered to you in vain." Freedom is, indeed, the distinctive note of Paul's ethical conception of life. Life is a great and solemn trust committed to each by God, for the use or abuse of which every man will be called to account. The new life is a life of liberty as the old life was a life of bondage. "If ye are led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law." 2 "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." He bids the Galatians "stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made them free." 4 3 When we enquire what constitutes the subjective or human element, we find in the New Testament generally two actions which belong to the soul entering upon the new world in Christ-repentance and faith. These two words are complementary and correlative, and constitute together what is commonly called conversion. Repentance in the New Testament, and particularly in Christ's teaching, is a change of mind, the turning away from a life of sin, the breaking off from evil, because a better standard of life has been accepted. The change may be calm or "The ethical sense of responsibility, the energy for struggle, and the discipline of will was not paralysed or absorbed in Paul's case by his consciousness of redemption and his profound spiritual experiences." Joh. Weiss, Paul and Jesus, p. 113. 'Cp. W. N. Clark, Outlines of Theol., pp. 402 ff. Gal. v. 1. |