SALVATION MEANS NEW MEN IN A NEW WORLD. THE DOMINANT HOPE OF ISRAEL WAS THAT OF A NEW WORLD, A WORLD in which her foes would be overthrown, in which God's rule would come bringing justice and righteousness and peace. Jesus began his preaching with the word: "The kingdom of God is at hand"; but he saw that the coining of the kingdom required a new spirit in men. Beginning with the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount portrays the new world in terms of the spirit and character of those who belong to it. The rule of God means a new life in men.

Man's Making and Remaking

The hope of a coming new world remained vivid in the early church, but increasingly it was realized that the salvation of God meant the making of new men. And this salvation did not lie in the future. Here and now, in forgiveness and reconciliation, through the Holy Spirit given to men, in the reality and power of a new life, God was making men over. Here were new men, and for them there was already a new world, "If any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come" (2 Cor. 5:17. Cf. Matt. 5:3-9, 45; 18:3; John 1:12-13; 3:3-5). Indeed, there were those under the old covenant who had seen that the new world meant new men with a new spirit. So Jeremiah proclaims the new covenant when God will write his law in human hearts. And in Ezekiel we read: "I will. .. put a new spirit within them." A new heart I will give you" (11:19; 36:26; Jer. 31:33-34).

Man needs remaking. The individual enters life as a child. He is here to be made a man. He must gain insight and understanding, the knowledge of God and truth and righteousness, the mastery of himself and his world in the freedom which God gives. But he may deny his calling. He may refuse to grow up. He may choose evil instead of God and the good, and sink to the level of the beast—and lower. He becomes a slave of the evil which he has chosen. He needs more than growing up, more than reform; he must be made over from within. The problem is heightened, though it is not altered, when we look beyond the individual. For no man is merely an individual. He comes into the world with a heredity of impulse and instinct waiting for expression. His environment shapes and molds him from his first days. The basic fact remains: whether we go back to a primal fall and resultant corruption, to social environment or to individual decision, man is sinful in spirit and life and needs remaking.

Two convictions have marked Christian thought in this matter: first, that such change is needed; second, that it comes from God. But there have been widely different views as to the nature of this change and as to the way in which it is achieved. Among the terms used to describe the former are conversion, rebirth (regeneration), growing up (maturity), sanctification, perfection. In connection with the latter the discussion has commonly centered on the work of the Spirit, the means of grace, and the place of the Church.

It is necessary here to distinguish between fact and theory. They are not separable, but here, as elsewhere, the theory or theology may easily limit or obscure the reality instead of interpreting it. The facts are plain. Men can be changed. They must be changed if our world is not to be destroyed. They are being changed, and Christian history is replete with the evidence of changed human lives.

What is it that marks a "new man"? Let us ask first what makes a man. What elements go to constitute a given individual? Many elements enter in: physical constitution, instinct and impulse, selfconsciousness, ability to reflect, freedom to choose, acquired habits of every kind, knowledge, skills, social relations. But the real man is not found until we inquire as to the goals that he sets, the ideals which shape his conduct, the power in which he trusts, and his inner spirit and attitude. This is the real man. And this man can be changed, not just his ideas and activities, but the very core of his being—heart and mind and will This is regeneration. William James gives abundant illustration of this in his Varieties of Religious Experience. Masefield pictures it simply but vividly in his Everlasting Mercy:

I did not think, I did not strive,

The deep peace burnt my me alive;

The bolted door had broken in,

I knew that I had done with sin.

I knew that Christ had given me birth

To brother all the souls of earth. ¹

The important fact is not that of dramatic examples such as Paul and Francis of Assisi but that this has happened through the centuries in countless lives.

Conversion — Regeneration

Conversion has been the common word for this change in evangelical circles. Taken strictly the word means simply a turning, or a turning about, much the same as is suggested by the word "repentance." The text appealed to was Matt. 18:3 (KJ.V.): "Except ye be converted, and become as little children." The newer versions translate this more accurately: "unless you turn." But the Christian meaning of this simple picture, or analogy, is far more than a human decision to reform. Adding another picture, Jesus says you must become like children or "you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." So the use of the word "conversion" in this deeper sense, as employed in the notable works of William James and A. C. Underwood (Conversion, Christian and Non-Christian), will doubtless continue.

More significant is the picture used in the word "regeneration," or "rebirth." This is the common theological term. It has had a wide use in religion. In the mystery religions we find the phrase in aeternum renatus. The classical passage is John 3, which speaks of man being "born anew," or "born of the Spirit." The figure of birth, or rebirth, carries various meanings. (1) Man has a dual nature, body and spirit; he belongs to two worlds. As he is born of the flesh and enters the physical world, so he must be spiritually born and enter the world of the spirit. (2) This second birth is a being "born of the Spirit." We do not simply become aware of this other world; there is a new life given to us, a life from God given by his Spirit, a life of faith in God and fellowship with him, of love and righteousness, of trust and power and peace. (3) This new birth, or new life, means a transformation; it is a re-creation, not merely a creation. This is what regeneration means in common speech. In Paul's words the Christian is "a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come" (2 Cor. 5:17). The Greek word for regeneration, or rebirth (palingenesis), occurs but twice in the New Testament. In Tit. 3:5 it is applied to the individual. In Matt. 19:28 Jesus speaks of "the regeneration" in reference to the renewed, or reborn, world whose coming he proclaimed, (So, literally translated, in the KJ.V. and A.S.V. The R.S.V. renders the word "the new world.") The hope is that of "a new heaven and a new earth." The faith is in him who says, "Behold, I make all things new" (Rev. 21:1, 5).

Sanctification: The Meaning

What is the goal of this remaking? What is the way to its achievement? Can that goal be reached in this life? Sanctification is the term which theology has used to designate this aspect of man's salvation, but it has been discussed under other terms such as holiness, perfection, or maturity.

The New Testament gives a large place to this matter. For Paul Sanctification is as vital a doctrine as justification. First in his gospel came God's gracious deed in Christ, offering men forgiveness and fellowship. Then came the high demand, the ethical note which was as strong with Paul as ever with the prophets or Jesus, holding up no less an ideal than that of life according to the spirit of Christ. Such a demand would mean condemnation and despair if it stood alone, but Paul joined to it the third element: this higher life is God's gift. God makes men over by his Spirit and gives to us the life that he asks.

Protestant theology in the main has not given much attention to the doctrine of sanctification. It reacted against the form which this doctrine had taken in the Roman Catholic Church, with its ideas of saints and sainthood. Equally it feared the teaching of those Protestant groups which stressed a special experience of sanctification, commonly with a strong emphasis on the subjective and emotional. The Methodist movement in its beginnings paid special attention to this theme. Wesley was strongly influenced by Luther, especially by the commentary on Romans; yet he noted at the same time Luther's neglect of this Christian teaching. He found himself indebted to the smaller groups, but he was saved from their excesses by his insistence upon the ethical test as applied to any experience of sanctification. The Methodism of today in the main shares with other Protestant bodies in the neglect of this doctrine.

There are, however, marks of an increased attention to this matter. It is seen in the persistence within the churches of groups and special movements concerned with the question of a deeper and richer Christian experience. Even more important is the realization that if the Church is to be a real power in the pagan world, there must be more than correct teaching, growth in numbers, or social zeal. It must have more moral-spiritual power in its membership, a greater spiritual dynamic, and reveal a more obvious difference between the avowed followers of Christ and those who make no such claim.

The word sanctification has a double meaning, that of dedication and of transformation, of belonging and of being made over. Our primary concern here is with the second meaning. It may be defined as that making holy of the Christian believer by which he is freed from sin and enabled in inner spirit and in outward conduct to realize the will of God in his life. The alternative term is holiness. We have two groups of English words here: holy, holiness, hallow, hallowed; and saints, sanctification, consecration. Both groups stem from the same original, the Hebrew kadash and the Greek hagiadzo.

Rudolf Otto has pointed out how basic the idea of the holy is in religion, alike in its lower and its highest forms. ² The Holy refers primarily to God. Religion rests on the belief in a holy, or numinous, being. Common to all its forms is the idea of a transcendent power. To sanctify God, in Old Testament phrase, is to recognize his supreme and absolute claim upon man, to ascribe to him all honor and glory, to bow in awe and reverence before him. Significant is the way in which, while the primary meaning of power and mystery remains, the rational and ethical are added. Other religions had the idea of a transcendent (holy) Being. What marks the Old Testament prophetic faith is the way in which the transcendent God of majesty and might and righteousness is equally marked by goodness and mercy. The God who is far, before whom men are to bow in reverence and awe, is the God who draws near in mercy, the God whom men are to love and trust. Such passages as Isa. 40; 55:6-9; Psalms 90, 103, show how these two aspects are joined. So in the Lord's Prayer: God is the Father who forgives men and cares for them; he is the Father in heaven whose name is to be hallowed (held holy), whose will is to be done. It is the paradox of the God who dwells in the high and holy place but also with him who is of a humble and contrite spirit, who smites and heals, who is wroth with man's sin but who also restores and gives peace.

The idea of holiness in man is derived and secondary. It varies with the concept of the holiness of God. Where the holiness of God is conceived in terms of majesty and sovereignty, there holiness in man means primarily dedication or belonging. The ethical aspect is not essential. Hence holiness may belong to things as well as persons. Thus Israel is a holy people, as chosen by God for himself. The priesthood is holy in a special sense. But the land is holy as well, as are the temple and its vessels, the garments of the priests, the Sabbath and various other days, the tithe, and the first-born of man and of the flocks.

This meaning of belonging is retained on the higher levels of religion. In the New Testament the followers of Christ are called saints, or holy ones (hagioi). They are those who are surrendered, dedicated, or consecrated. This is the primary meaning of holy as applied to the Church ("the holy catholic Church"); it is a fellowship, or a communion, of saints, or holy ones, of those who belong to God by deed and confession.

This may be called the formal aspect of holiness, but it gains a rich and positive content as soon as God's holiness is seen to be that of goodness as well as power. Holiness is still devotion, but it is more than a giving of tithes or a hallowing of days. It is loving God with heart and mind and soul and strength. So there appears the second meaning of holiness in man: a belonging which means vital union, a union which brings transforming power, a holiness which means likeness of spirit with God. The Old Testament speaks of the children of Israel as children of God, sons and daughters of Jehovah, called forth and cared for by his love (Hos. 1:10; Isa. 43:6). The New Testament uses the same figure, but now it means likeness in character and life. "Love, ... so that you may be sons of your Father.... You ... must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. 5:43-48). Belonging means no longer merely possession by God and privilege for man. Holiness means an inner belonging, a belonging in heart and mind and will by which man is made over into God's likeness.

How then is this transformation brought to pass? How are we to be made over or, to use Jesus' daring word, to become perfect as God is perfect?

Sanctification: The Way

The goal of the Christian life is to be freed from the domination of sin and to be made over in the spirit of Christ, to become sons of God not only by his forgiving mercy but by his redeeming and re-creating Spirit. Two facts must first be faced. Man is finite, sinful, and enmeshed in a sinful world; God is the Holy One, transcendent in power and righteousness. But if we stop here, as some incline to do in their stress on the wholly other God, we shall miss something that is at the very heart of the gospel. The holy God is a God of love who draws near not only to forgive but to receive into saving fellowship. The God who is other is not totally other; God and man are akin, so a saving fellowship and a true sonship are possible. The New Testament is equally insistent upon our duty to pursue this high goal and upon God's gracious will to give us this life.

What then is the way to its attainment? All are agreed that it is God's deed; the question is as to how God works. The problems involved are the same as those considered in the preceding study of salvation.

The Roman Catholic Church stands for the thoroughgoing sacramentarian position. Through the sacraments grace is infused into the soul. This "effects at once the remission of original and mortal sin, and inaugurates the condition or state of holiness." "Justification consists of an actual obliteration of sin and an interior sanctification." ³ Here, as elsewhere in Roman Catholic teaching, the divine grace which brings the new life is thought of in terms of substance, in a metaphysical manner,

It was the work of the Reformation to restore the place of the personal-ethical-spiritual in the conception of religion and of salvation. When a man is justified, he enters into a personal fellowship with God, marked by God's grace and man's responding faith; in that fellowship he receives God's Spirit and a new life. Sanctification is thus the fruit of justification.

The Reformers, however, paid little attention to the doctrine of sanctification or to the development of this higher life—that is, to sanctification in personal experience. Their interest was in God's grace as forgiving mercy (justification) rather than as enabling and transforming power. This latter was the special concern of certain smaller circles, pietistic groups within the Church or independent bodies like the Moravians. In this concern the Methodist movement shared, especially in its beginnings. Wesley called for a renewal of the New Testament type of religion with the stress on a conscious personal experience of fellowship with God and of the presence and work of his Spirit. He wanted more than doctrinal definitions or a sharing in the rites of the Church. He pointed to the New Testament insistence upon our being perfect as God is perfect, being sanctified wholly, "filled with all the fullness of God." He summoned men to press on toward this higher level of the Christian life. But his special stress was on the work of the Spirit. God gives what he demands. What he asks is entire freedom from sin and a life that shall be perfect in love, and this he accomplishes in us through the work of the Spirit.

The strength of Wesley's position was in his union of the ethical with this insistence on the divine deed. The gift is of God, but what he gives is deliverance from sin and a life of love. This position, evangelical and ethical, was not consistently carried through; and Wesley's limitations here became more pronounced in some of his followers. Influenced by traditional forms of conceiving original sin, they declared that sin in man could be extirpated completely by a single act of the Spirit. Such biblical figures as washing, burning, and uprooting were literalized and absolutized. Here was the error of the metaphysical or material in the conception of sin and of the mechanical in the idea of the work of the Spirit. So there was the idea of attainable perfection in this life and too often the negative stress on the absence of sin and even of temptation, since evil within had been removed. Wesley did not make this claim for himself, and he insisted upon a growth in perfection. A common defect, extending far beyond all these groups, was the method of settling questions by citing biblical texts, treating them literally, and absolutizing their meaning. Thus Wesley cites the prayer, "Deliver us from evil," and the prophetic word, "He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities as proof of his doctrine. The basic weakness, however, lay in the failure to distinguish between the "what" and the "how" of sanctification. It is clear that God purposes to redeem us from evil and to give us a life of righteousness and love; that is the simple meaning of salvation. How he does this is a further question.

Sanctification is not a separate deed or experience. There is no salvation, no Christian life which does not involve deliverance from sin and the attainment of holiness in spirit and life. There is no justification which does not include sanctification, as Luther rightly insisted; for justification implies the turning from sin, the yielding to God in surrender and trust, the opening of the life to God, and the beginning of a living fellowship in which God gives his saving help. Sanctification is no one-time event. It is no "thing" bestowed upon us once for all. It is no "state" in which, once attained, we may rest satisfied. It is something given and yet waiting to be achieved. There is a "mature manhood" which we are to attain. We are no longer to "be children," but are "to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ" (Eph. 4:13-15; cf. Phil. 3:12-16).

As to the way, the basic aspects have already been considered in our study of salvation.

1. Man must turn from evil and set his heart and mind and will upon God and the good. This is the meaning of repentance, of conversion in its primary sense of "turning," and of faith as supreme trust and total surrender. It may occur at some decisive moment, as with the twice-born men of whom William James writes. So Francis of Assisi turned from his home of wealth, discarding the very garments that he wore. So Paul looked back to the hour when Christ spoke to him on the Damascus road. Yet even here it is no matter of a single act. Every day man must say "No" to the old and "Yes" to the new. And this clearly obtains with those who are nurtured from childhood in the Christian way. Such a life is not free from times of crisis and decision, nor from experiences of wrongdoing and the need of repentance and renewed devotion.

2. We are made new men by coming into life-giving fellowship with God, by receiving from him the new spirit and the new life. The new man becomes such by being born into a new world, the world of the Spirit. To this world and its realities his whole life is now oriented. He looks at the ''things that are unseen"; he walks in the presence of the Eternal; a new loyalty determines his life. But there is more than vision and obedience: the life, the spirit, the power, of this new world are given to him; and these become his true being and life. "We all, ... beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness . . . ; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit" (2 Cor. 3:18),

3. There is something divine here, but nothing magical or mysterious. We may not be able to explain it, but the experience is open to everyone. When we open our life to God in faith and fellowship, he enters and makes it over. There are analogies for this, beginning with the level of the physical. All life depends upon the capacity of the living organism to take that which is not itself—food, drink, air, sunshine—and have it made over into its own life and being. On a higher level, in personal fellowship, it is possible for one person to enter into the life of another, for one to receive from others that which goes to make his inmost personal being: ideas and ideals, spirit and attitude, goals and loyalties. So in richer and deeper fashion the God who made us can give to us, not simply physical existence, but the inner life of truth and love and righteousness, of strength and peace. More than the closest of friends he by his Spirit can enter into our life when we really open the door to him.

4. This life-giving and remaking has its conditions. It comes in and through personal relations—between God and man, between man and his fellows (in the home, in the Church, elsewhere). It is ethical: it depends upon our understanding and response. It is not something magical. It is not by a deed of sheer power, as has been sometimes conceived in teachings about grace and the Spirit. Its beginning is our response as God speaks to us. That may be very simple, almost unnoticed, as with the little child in the Christian home. But with the mature person as with the child it involves continuance as well as beginning. We "are being changed into his likeness."

1) Copyright 1911 by John Masefield. Used by permission of The Macmillan Company.

2) In his Das Heilige; English tide, The Idea of the Holy.

3) The Catholic Encyclopedia, VI, 706, 701. 140