But when God sees that truth is ascribed to Him, and that in the faith
of our hearts He is honoured with all the honour of which He is worthy,
then in return He honours us on account of that faith, attributing to
us truth and righteousness. For faith does truth and righteousness in
rendering to God what is His; and therefore in return God gives glory
to our righteousness. It is true and righteous that God is true and
righteous; and to confess this and ascribe these attributes to Him, this
it is to be true and righteous. Thus He says, "Them that honour Me I
will honour, and they that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed" (1 Sam.
ii. 30). And so Paul says that Abraham's faith was imputed to him for
righteousness, because by it he gave glory to God; and that to us
also, for the same reason, it shall be imputed for righteousness, if we
believe (Rom. iv.).
The third incomparable grace of faith is this: that it unites the soul
to Christ, as the wife to the husband, by which mystery, as the Apostle
teaches, Christ and the soul are made one flesh. Now if they are one
flesh, and if a true marriage--nay, by far the most perfect of all
marriages--is accomplished between them (for human marriages are but
feeble types of this one great marriage), then it follows that all they
have becomes theirs in common, as well good things as evil things; so
that whatsoever Christ possesses, that the believing soul may take to
itself and boast of as its own, and whatever belongs to the soul, that
Christ claims as His.
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