here
be faith, no work. Unless you are a Christian, the passage has nothing
to do with you.

But now, if this injunction be addressed to those who are looking for
their salvation only to the perfect work of Christ, how can they be
exhorted to work it out themselves? Is not the oft-recurring burden of
Paul's teaching 'not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but
by His mercy He saved us'? How does this text harmonise with these
constantly repeated assertions that Christ has done all for us, and
that we have nothing to do, and can do nothing? To answer this question,
we have to remember that that scriptural expression, 'salvation,' is
used with considerable width and complexity of signification. It
sometimes means the whole of the process, from the beginning to the end,
by which we are delivered from sin in all its aspects, and are set safe
and stable at the right hand of God. It sometimes means one or other of
three different parts of that process--either deliverance from the
guilt, punishment, condemnation of sin; or secondly, the gradual process
of deliverance from its power in our own hearts; or thirdly, the
completion of that process by the final and perfect deliverance from sin
and sorrow, from death and the body, from earth and all its weariness
and troubles, which is achieved when we are landed on the other side of
the river. Salvation, in one aspect, is a thing _past_ to the Christian;
in another, it is a thing _present_; in a third, it is a thing _future_.
But all these three are one; all are elements of the one
deliverance--the one mighty and perfect act which includes them all.

These three all come equally from Christ Himself. These three all depend
equally on His work and His power. These three are all given to a
Christian man in the first act of faith. But the attitude in which he
stands in reference to that _accomplished_ salvation which means
deliverance from sin as a penalty and a curse, and that in which he
stands to the continuing and progressive salvation which means
deliverance from the power of evil in his own heart, are somewhat
different. In regard to the one, he has only to take the finished
blessing. He has to exercise faith and faith alone. He has nothing to
do, nothing to add, in order to fit himself for it, but simply to
receive the gift of God, and to believe on Him whom He hath sent. But
then, though that reception involves what shall come after it, and
though every one who has