Romans 2:6

6. Every man Of the human race at the one day of judgment.

According to his deeds Rightly considered all true faith is a graciously acceptable work, and all true works are acceptable acts of faith. Works not of faith are dead works and sin, and no works truly at all. In form faith and works are permanently distinct; in essence they are one. Hence the two doctrines that salvation is of faith alone, and yet that we are rewarded according to our works, are not two doctrines only but also one. Those works by which man can never be justified are faithless doings and no true works at all.

But how can faith be attributed to the heathen included by Paul in the present passage? We reply that no one can understand Paul’s idea of faith who has not well studied the eleventh chapter of his Epistle to the Hebrews. Of the illustrious ancient heroes of the faith there commemorated, perhaps not one fully understood Christ as the atoning object of saving faith. Yet they had a true faith in that of which Christ is the reality and impersonation. Faith, in its essential temper, is that elevation of soul by which it aspires to the good, the true, and the divine; and the soul who possesses it tends upward to glory, honour, and immortality, while the soul that possesses it not tends downwardly to animalism, scepticism, and eternal death. To that aspiring faith God is a sought necessity, and Christ, when rightly presented is the one supremely lovely; so lovely, indeed, that even when the aspiring but dimly seeing soul catches but a glimpse of Him it feels a divine attraction. (See our work on “The Will,” pp. 349-351.) And so at the present time of scepticism and rebuke, Christ, even to the sceptical, is a strangely fascinating problem, which they cannot banish from their thoughts. (See note Romans 4:24.)