Ver. 12.Ver. 13.Ver. 14.
On this account,on account of the aspects of our justification and reconciliation "through our Lord Jesus Christ" which he has just presented, it is[75]just as through one man sin entered into the world,the world of man,and, through sin, death, and so to all men death travelled,διῆλθε, penetrated, pervaded,inasmuch as all sinned;the Race sinning in its Head, the Nature in its representative Bearer. The facts of human life and death shew that sindidthus pervade the race, as to liability, and as to penalty:For until law came sin was in the world;it was present all along, in the ages previous to the great Legislation.But sin is not imputed,is not put down as debt for penalty,where law does not exist,where in no sense is there statute to be obeyed or broken, whether that statute takes articulate expression or not.[76]But death became king(ἐβασίλευσεν),from Adam down to Moses, even over those who did not sin on the model of the transgression of Adam—who is(in thepresent tense of the plan of God)pattern of the Coming One.
He argues from the fact of death, and from its universality, which implies a universality of liability, of guilt. According to the Scriptures, death is essentiallypenalin the case of man, who was created not to die but to live. How that purpose would have been fulfilled if "the image of God" had not sinned against Him, we do not know. We need not think that the fulfilment would have violated any natural process; higher processes might have governed the case, in perfect harmony with the surroundings of terrestrial life, till perhaps that life was transfigured, as by a necessary development, into the celestial and immortal. But however, the recorddoesconnect, for man, the fact of death with the fact of sin, offence, transgression. And the fact of death is universal, and so has been from the first. And thus it includes generations most remote from the knowledge of a revealedcode. And it includes individuals most incapable of a conscious act of transgression such as Adam's was; it includes the heathen, and the infant, and the imbecile. Therefore wherever there is human nature, since Adam fell, there is sin, in its form of guilt. And therefore, in some sense which perhaps only the supreme Theologian Himself fully knows, but which we can follow a little way, all men offended in the First Man—so favourably conditioned, so gently tested. The guilt contracted by him is possessed also by them. And thus is he "the pattern of the Coming One."
For now the glorious Coming One, the Seed of the Woman, the blessed Lord of the Promise, rises on the view, in His likeness and in His contrast. Writing to Corinth from Macedonia, about a year before, St Paulhad called him (1 Cor. xv. 45, 47) "the Second Adam," "the Second Man"; and had drawn in outline the parallel he here elaborates. "In Adam all die; even so in Christ all shall be made alive." It was a thought which he had learned in Judaism,[77]but which his Master had affirmed to him in Christianity; and noble indeed and far-reaching is its use of it in this exposition of the sinner's hope.
Ver. 15.
But not as the transgression, so the gracious gift(χάρισμα).For if, by the transgression of the one, the many,the many affected by it,died, much rather did the grace of God.His benignant action,and the gift,the grant of our acceptance,in the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ,("inHis grace," becauseinvolved inHis benignant action, in His redeeming work)abound unto the manywhom it, whom He, affected.
We observe here some of the phrases in detail. "The One"; "the One Man":—"theone," in each case, is related to "themany" involved, in bane or in blessing respectively. "The OneMan":—so the Second Adam is designated, not the First. As to the First, "it goes unsaid" that he is man. As to the Second, it is infinitely wonderful, and of eternal import, that He, as truly, as completely, is one with us, is Man of men. "Much rather didthe grace, and the gift,abound":—the thought given here is that while the dread sequel of the Fall was solemnlypermitted, as good in law, the sequel of the divine counter-work was gladlyspedby the Lord's willing love, and was carried to a glorious overflow, to an altogether unmerited effect, in thepresent and eternal blessing of the justified. "The many," twice mentioned in this verse, are the whole company which, in each case, stands related to the respective Representative. It is the whole race in the case of the Fall; it is the "many brethren" of the Second Adam in the case of the Reconciliation. The question is not of numerical comparison between the two, but of the numerousness of each host in relation to the oneness of its covenant Head. What the numerousness of the "many brethren" will be we know—and we do not know; for it will be "a great multitude, which no one can number." But that is not in the question here. The emphasis, the "much rather," the "abundance," lies not on the compared numbers, but on the amplitude of the blessing which overflows upon "the many" from the justifying work of the One.
He proceeds, developing the thought. From the act of each Representative, from Adam's Fall and Christ's Atonement, there issued results of dominion, of royalty. But what was the contrast of the cases! In the Fall, the sin of the One brought upon "the many" judgment, sentence, and the reign of death over them. In the Atonement, the righteousness of the One brought upon "the many" an "abundance," an overflow, a generous largeness and love of acceptance, and the power of life eternal, and a prerogative of royal rule over sin and death; the emancipated captives treading upon their tyrants' necks. We follow out the Apostle's wording:
Ver. 16.
And not as through the one who sinned,who fell,so is the gift;our acceptance in our Second Head does not follow the law of mere and strict retribution which appears in our fall in our first Head.(For,he adds in emphatic parenthesis,the judgmentdid issue,from onetransgression,[78]in condemnation,in sentence of death;but the gracious giftissued,from many transgressions,—not indeed as if earned by them, as if caused by them, but asoccasionedby them; for this wonderful process of mercy found in our sins, as well as in our Fall, areasonfor the Cross—in a deed of justification.)[79]|Ver. 17.|For if in one transgression,[80]"in" it, as the effect is involved in its cause,death came to reign(ἐβασίλευσε)through the oneoffender,[81]much rather those who are receiving,in their successive cases and generations,that(τὴν)abundance of the gracejust spoken of (ver. 15:χάρις, ἐπερίσσευσε),and of the free gift of righteousness,of acceptance,shall, in life,life eternal, begun now, to end never,reignover their former tyrantsthrough the One,their glorious One,Jesus Christ.
And now he sums up the whole in one comprehensive inference and affirmation. "The One," "the many"; "the One," "the all"; the whole mercy for the all due to the one work of the One;—such is the ground-thought all along. It is illustrated by "the one" and "the many" of the Fall, but still so as to throw the real weight of every word not upon the Fall but uponthe Acceptance. Here, as throughout this paragraph, we should greatly mistake if we thought that the illustration and the object illustrated were to be pressed, detail by detail, into one mould. To cite an instance to the contrary, we are certainly not to take him to mean that because Adam's "many" are not only fallen in him, but actually guilty, therefore Christ's "many" are not only accepted in Him, but actually and personally meritorious of acceptance. The whole Epistle negatives that thought. Nor again are we to think, as we ponder ver. 18, that because "the condemnation" was "to all men" in the sense of their being not only condemnable but actually condemned, therefore "the justification of life" was "to all men" in the sense that all mankind are actually justified. Here again the whole Epistle, and the whole message of St Paul about our acceptance, are on the other side. The provision is for thegenus, for man; but the possession is for men—who believe.[82]No; these great details in the parallel need our reverent caution, lest we think peace where there is, and can be, none. The force of the parallel lies in the broader and deeper factors of the two matters. It lies in the mysterious phenomenon of covenant headship, as affecting both our Fall and our Acceptance; in the power upon the many, in each case, of the deed of the One; and thenin the magnificent fulness and positiveness of result in the case of our salvation. In our Fall, sin merelyworked itself outinto doom and death. In our Acceptance, the Judge's award is positively crowned and as it were loaded with gifts and treasures. It brings with it, in ways not described here, but amply shewn in other Scriptures, a living union with a Head who is our life, and in whom we possess already the powers of heavenly being in their essence. It brings with it not only the approval of the Law, but accession to a throne. The justified sinner is a king already, in his Head, over the power of sin, over the fear of death. And he is on his way to a royalty in the eternal future which shall make him great indeed, great in his Lord.
The absolute dependence of our justification upon the Atoning Act of our Head, and the relation of our Head to us accordingly as our Centre and our Root of blessing, this is the main message of the passage we are tracing. The mystery of our congenital guilt is there, though it is only incidentally there. And after all what is that mystery? It is assuredly a fact. The statement of this paragraph, that the many were "constituted sinners by the disobedience of the one," what is it? It is the Scripture expression, and in some guarded sense the Scripture explanation, of a consciousness deep as the awakened soul of man; that I, a member of this homogeneous race, made in God's image, not only have sinned, but have been a sinful being from my first personal beginning; and that I ought not to be so, and ought never to have been so. It is my calamity, but it is also my accusation. This I cannot explain; but this I know. And to know this, with a knowledge that is not merely speculative butmoral, is to be "shut up unto Christ," in a self-despair which can go nowhere else than to Him for acceptance, for peace, for holiness, for power.
Let us translate, as they stand, the closing sentences before us:
Ver. 18.Ver. 19.
Accordingly therefore, as through one transgressionthere came a resultto all men, to condemnation,to sentence of death,so through one deed of righteousness[83]there came a result to all men,(to "all" in the sense we have indicated, so that whoever of mankind receives the acceptance owes it always and wholly to the Act of Christ,)to justification of life,to an acceptance which not only bids the guilty "not die," but opens to the accepted the secret, in Him who is their Sacrifice, of powers which live in Him for them as He is their Life.For as, by the disobedience of the one man, the many,the many of that case,were constituted sinners,constituted guilty of the fall of their nature from God, so that their being sinful is not only their calamity but their sin,so too by the obedience of the One,"not according to their works," that is, to their conduct, past, present, or to come, but "by the obedience of the One,"the many,His "many brethren," His Father's children through faith in Him,shall be,as each comes to Him in all time, and then by the final open proclamation of eternity,constituted righteous,qualified for the acceptance of the holy Judge.
Before he closes this page of his message, and turns the next, he has as it were a parenthetic word to say,indicating a theme to be discussed more largely later. It is the function of the Law, the moral place of the preceptiveFiat, in view of this wonderful Acceptance of the guilty. He has suggested the question already, iii. 31; he will treat some aspects of it more fully later. But it is urgent here to enquire at least this, Was Law a mere anomaly, impossible to put into relation with justifying grace? Might it have been as well out of the way, never heard of in the human world? No, God forbid. One deep purpose of acceptance was to glorify the Law, making the preceptive Will of God as dear to the justified as it is terrible to the guilty. But now, besides this, it has a function antecedent as well as consequent to justification. Applied as positive precept to the human will in the Fall, what does it do? It does not create sinfulness; God forbid. Not God's will but the creature's will did that. But it occasions sin's declaration of war. It brings out the latent rebellion of the will. It forces the disease to the surface—merciful force, for it shews the sick man his danger, and it gives point to his Physician's words of warning and of hope. It reveals to the criminal his guilt; as it is sometimes found that information of a statutory human penalty awakens a malefactor's conscience in the midst of a half-unconscious course of crime. And so it brings out to the opening eyes of the soul the wonder of the remedy in Christ. He sees the Law; he sees himself; and now at last it becomes a profound reality to him to see the Cross. He believes, adores, and loves. The merit of his Lord covers his demerit, as the waters the sea. And he passes from the dread but salutary view of "the reign" of sin over him, in a death he cannot fathom, to submit to "the reign" of grace, in life, in death, for ever.
Ver. 20.Ver. 21.
Now law came sideways in;law in its largest sense, as it affects the fallen, but with a special reference, doubtless, to its articulation at Sinai. It came in "sideways," as to its relation to our acceptance; as a thing which shouldindirectlypromote it, by not causing but occasioning the blessing;that the transgression might abound,that sin, that sins, in the most inclusive sense, might develop the latent evil, and as it were expose it to the work of grace.But where the sin multiplied,in the place, the region, of fallen humanity,there did superabound the grace;with that mighty overflow of the bright ocean of love which we have watched already.That just as our(ἡ)sin came to reign in our(τῷ)death,our penal death,so too might the grace come to reign,having its glorious way against our foes and over us,through righteousness,through the justifying work,to life eternal,which here we have, and which hereafter will receive us into itself,through Jesus Christ our Lord.
"The last words of Mr Honest were,Grace reigns. So he left the world." Let us walk with the same watchword through the world, till we too, crossing that Jordan, lean with a final simplicity of faith upon "the obedience of the One."
[75]It will be seen that we assume, betweenδιὰ τοῦτοandὥσπερ, some such implied thought as "the case stands." We think it may be thus grammatically; and that even if a less simple explanation of theconstructionis adopted, such an insertion gives the import of the whole passage aright.[76]It will be seen that the rapid steps of thought lead, in this one verse, from one meaning of the word "law" to another. He means that there was sin before the Code of the Decalogue, but not therefore before God had, in some degree, expressed His royal will, and man had broken it.[77]See Schöttgen,Horæ Hebraicæ, on 1 Cor. xv. 45. He quotes from the Rabbis: "As the First Adam was one, was first,אחד, in sin, so Messiah shall be the last,האחרן, for the utter taking away of sins."[78]So we interpretἑνὸς, in the light of theπολλὰ παραπτώματαjust below.[79]Δικαίωμα: the form of the word indicates not a process, or a principle, but an act. Apparently, by context, it may mean either a moral act of righteousness (see Rev. xix. 8, and perhaps below, ver. 18), or a legal "act and deed" of acceptance. The parallel withκατάκριμαpleads here for the latter.[80]We adopt the readingἐν ἑνί. The other,τῷ τοῦ ἑνός, amounts to the same import, but without the pregnant force of the word "in."[81]We supply this word, and not "transgression," because of the parallel just below, "the One, Jesus Christ."[82]As to the universality ofthe offer, it is interesting and important to find Calvin thus writing, on ver. 18:—Communem omnium gratiam fecit, quia omnibus exposita est, non quod ad omnes extendatur re ipsa. Nam etsi passus est Christus pro peccatis totius mundi, atque omnibus indifferenter Dei benignitate offertur, non tamen omnes apprehendunt. "The Lord," thus says the great French expositor, "suffered for the sins of the whole world," and "is offered impartially to all in the kindness of God."[83]Δικαίωμα: see note above, p. 150. It seems to us almost equally possible to explain this word here (as in our translation) of the Lord's Atoning Act, satisfying the Law for us, and of the Accepting "Act and Deed" of the Father, declaring Him accepted, and us in Him.
[75]It will be seen that we assume, betweenδιὰ τοῦτοandὥσπερ, some such implied thought as "the case stands." We think it may be thus grammatically; and that even if a less simple explanation of theconstructionis adopted, such an insertion gives the import of the whole passage aright.
[76]It will be seen that the rapid steps of thought lead, in this one verse, from one meaning of the word "law" to another. He means that there was sin before the Code of the Decalogue, but not therefore before God had, in some degree, expressed His royal will, and man had broken it.
[77]See Schöttgen,Horæ Hebraicæ, on 1 Cor. xv. 45. He quotes from the Rabbis: "As the First Adam was one, was first,אחד, in sin, so Messiah shall be the last,האחרן, for the utter taking away of sins."
[78]So we interpretἑνὸς, in the light of theπολλὰ παραπτώματαjust below.
[79]Δικαίωμα: the form of the word indicates not a process, or a principle, but an act. Apparently, by context, it may mean either a moral act of righteousness (see Rev. xix. 8, and perhaps below, ver. 18), or a legal "act and deed" of acceptance. The parallel withκατάκριμαpleads here for the latter.
[80]We adopt the readingἐν ἑνί. The other,τῷ τοῦ ἑνός, amounts to the same import, but without the pregnant force of the word "in."
[81]We supply this word, and not "transgression," because of the parallel just below, "the One, Jesus Christ."
[82]As to the universality ofthe offer, it is interesting and important to find Calvin thus writing, on ver. 18:—Communem omnium gratiam fecit, quia omnibus exposita est, non quod ad omnes extendatur re ipsa. Nam etsi passus est Christus pro peccatis totius mundi, atque omnibus indifferenter Dei benignitate offertur, non tamen omnes apprehendunt. "The Lord," thus says the great French expositor, "suffered for the sins of the whole world," and "is offered impartially to all in the kindness of God."
[83]Δικαίωμα: see note above, p. 150. It seems to us almost equally possible to explain this word here (as in our translation) of the Lord's Atoning Act, satisfying the Law for us, and of the Accepting "Act and Deed" of the Father, declaring Him accepted, and us in Him.
JUSTIFICATION AND HOLINESS
Romansvi. 1-13
IN a certain sense, St Paul has done now with the exposition of Justification. He has brought us on, from his denunciation of human sin, and his detection of the futility of mere privilege, to propitiation, to faith, to acceptance, to love, joy, and hope, and finally to our mysterious but real connexion in all this blessing with Him who won our peace. From this point onwards we shall find many mentions of our acceptance, and of its Cause; we shall come to some memorable mentions very soon. But we shall not hear the holy subject itself any more treated and expounded. It will underlie the following discussions everywhere; it will as it were surround them, as with a sanctuary wall. But we shall now think less directly of the foundations than of the superstructure, for which the foundation was laid. We shall be less occupied with the fortifications of our holy city than with the resources they contain, and with the life which is to be lived, on those resources, within the walls.
Everything will cohere. But the transition will be marked, and will call for our deepest, and let us add, our most reverent and supplicating thought.
"We need not, then, be holy, if such is your programmeof acceptance." Such was the objection, bewildered or deliberate, which St Paul heard in his soul at this pause in his dictation; he had doubtless often heard it with his ears. Here was a wonderful provision for the free and full acceptance of "the ungodly" by the eternal Judge. It was explained and stated so as to leave no room for human virtue as a commendatory merit. Faith itself was no commendatory virtue. It was not "a work," but the antithesis to "works." Its power was not in itself but in its Object. It was itself only the void which received "the obedience of the One" as the sole meriting cause of peace with God. Then—may we not live on in sin, and yet be in His favour now, and in His heaven hereafter?
Let us recollect, as we pass on, one important lesson of these recorded objections to the great first message of St Paul. They tell us, incidentally, how explicit and unreserved his delivery of the message had been, and how Justification by Faith, by faith only, meant what was said, when it was said by him. Christian thinkers, of more schools than one, and at many periods, have hesitated not a little over that point. The medieval theologian mingled his thoughts of Justification with those of Regeneration, and taught our acceptance accordingly on lines impossible to lay true along those of St Paul. In later days, the meaning of faith has been sometimes beclouded, till it has seemed, through the haze, to be only an indistinct summary-word for Christian consistency, for exemplary conduct, for good works. Now supposing either of these lines of teaching, or anything like them, to be the message of St Paul, "his Gospel," as he preached it; one result may be reasonably inferred—that we shouldnot have had Rom. vi. 1 worded as it is. Whatever objections were encountered by a Gospel of acceptance expounded on such lines, (and no doubt it would have encountered many, if it called sinful men to holiness,) it would not have encountered this objection, that it seemed to allow men to be unholy. What such a Gospel would seem to do would be to accentuate in all its parts the urgency of obedience in order to acceptance; the vital importance on the one hand of an internal change in our nature (through sacramental operation, according to many); and then on the other hand the practice of Christian virtues, with the hope, in consequence, of acceptance, more or less complete, in heaven. Whether the objector, the enquirer, was dull, or whether he was subtle, it could not have occurred to him to say, "You are preaching a Gospel of licence; I may, if you are right, live as I please, only drawing a little deeper on the fund of gratuitous acceptance as I go on." But just this was theanimus, and such were very nearly the words, of those who either hated St Paul's message as unorthodox, or wanted an excuse for the sin they loved, and found it in quotations from St Paul. Then St Paul must have meant by faith what faith ought to mean, simple trust. And he must have meant by justification without works, what those words ought to mean, acceptance irrespective of our recommendatory conduct. Such a Gospel was no doubt liable to be mistaken and misrepresented, and in just the way we are now observing. But it was also, and it is so still, the only Gospel which is the power of God unto salvation—to the fully awakened conscience, to the soul that sees itself, and asks for God indeed.
This undesigned witness to the meaning of the Pauline doctrine of Justification by Faith only will appearstill more strongly when we come to the Apostle's answer to his questioners. He meets them not at all by modifications of his assertions. He has not a word to say about additional and corrective conditions precedent to our peace with God. He makes no impossible hint that Justification means the making of us good, or that Faith is a "short title" for Christian practice. No; there is no reason for such assertions either in the nature of words, or in the whole cast of the argument through which he has led us. What does he do? He takes this great truth of our acceptance in Christ our Merit, and puts it unreserved, unrelieved, unspoiled, in contact with other truth, of coordinate, nay, of superior greatness, for it is the truth to which Justification leads us, as way to end. He places our acceptance through Christ Atoning in organic connexion with our life in Christ Risen. He indicates, as a truth evident to the conscience, that as the thought of our share in the Lord's Merit is inseparable from union with the meriting Person, so the thought of this union is inseparable from that of a spiritual harmony, a common life, in which the accepted sinner finds both a direction and a power in his Head. Justification has indeed set him free from the condemning claim of sin, from guilt. He is as ifhehad died the Death of sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction; as ifhehad passed through theLama Sabachthani, and had "poured outhissoul" for sin. So he is "dead to sin," in the sense in which his Lord and Representative "died to" it; the atoning death has killed sin's claim on him for judgment. As having so died, in Christ, he is "justified from sin." But then, because he thus died "in Christ," he is "in Christ" still, in respect also of resurrection. He is justified, not that he may go away, but that in His Justifier he maylive, with the powers of that holy and eternal life with which the Justifier rose again.
The two truths are concentrated as it were into one, by their equal relation to the same Person, the Lord. The previous argument has made us intensely conscious that Justification, while a definite transaction in law, is not a mere transaction; it lives and glows with the truth of connexion with a Person. That Person is the Bearer for us of all Merit. But He is also, and equally, the Bearer for us of new Life; in which the sharers of His Merit share, for they are in Him. So that, while the Way of Justification can be isolated for study, as it has been in this Epistle, the justified man cannot be isolated from Christ, who is his life. And thus he can neverultimatelybe considered apart from his possession, in Christ, of a new possibility, a new power, a new and glorious call to living holiness.
In the simplest and most practical terms the Apostle sets it before us that our justification is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. We are accepted that we may be possessed, and possessed after the manner not of a mechanical "article," but of an organic limb.[84]We have "received the reconciliation" that we may now walk, not away from God, as if released from a prison, but with God, as His children in His Son. Because we are justified, we are to be holy, separated from sin, separated to God; not as a mere indication that our faith is real, and that therefore we are legally safe, but because we were justified for this very purpose, that we might be holy. To return to a simile we haveemployed already, the grapes upon a vine are not merely a living token that the tree is a vine, and is alive; they are the product for which the vine exists. It is a thing not to be thought of that the sinner should accept justification—and live to himself. It is a moral contradiction of the very deepest kind, and cannot be entertained without betraying an initial error in the man's whole spiritual creed.
And further, there is not only this profound connexion of purpose between acceptance and holiness. There is a connexion of endowment and capacity. Justification has done for the justified a twofold work, both limbs of which are all important for the man who asks,How canI walk and please God? First, it has decisively broken the claim of sin upon him as guilt. He stands clear of that exhausting and enfeebling load. The pilgrim's burthen has fallen from his back, at the foot of the Lord's Cross, into the Lord's Grave. Hehaspeace with God, not in emotion, but in covenant, through our Lord Jesus Christ. He has an unreserved "introduction" into a Father's loving and welcoming presence, every day and hour, in the Merit of his Head. But then also Justification has been to him as it were the signal of his union with Christ in new life; this we have noted already. Not only therefore does it give him, as indeed it does, an eternal occasion for a gratitude which, as he feels it, "makes duty joy, and labour rest." It gives hima new powerwith which to live the grateful life; a power residing not in Justification itself, but in what it opens up. It is the gate through which he passes to the fountain; it is the wall which ramparts the fountain, the roof which shields him as he drinks. The fountain is his justifying Lord's exalted Life, His risen Life, poured into the man's being bythe Spirit who makes Head and member one. And it is as justified that he has access to the fountain, and drinks as deep as he will of its life, its power, its purity. In the contemporary passage, 1 Cor. vi. 17, St Paul had already written (in a connexion unspeakably practical), "He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit." It is a sentence which might stand as a heading to the passage we now come to render.
Ver. 1.toVer. 4.
What shall we say then? Shall we cling to(ἐπιμενοῦμεν, ἐπιμένωμεν)the sin that the grace may multiply,the grace of the acceptance of the guilty?Away with the thought! We, the very men who[85]died to that(τῇ)sin,—when our Representative, in whom we have believed, died for us to it, died to meet and break its claim—how shall we any longer live,have congenial being and action,in it,as in an air we like to breathe? It is a moral impossibility that the mansofreed from this thing's tyrannic claim to slay him should wish for anything else than severance from it inallrespects. Ordo you not know that we all, when baptized[86]into Jesus Christ,when the sacred water sealed to us our faith-received contact with Him and interest in Him,were baptized into His Death,baptized as coming into union with Him as, above all, the Crucified, the Atoning? Do you forget that your covenant-Head, of whose covenant of peace your baptism was the divine physical token, is nothing to you if not your Saviourwho died, and who died because of this very sin withwhich your thought now parleys; died because onlysocould He break its legal bond upon you, in order to break its moral bond?We were entombed therefore with Him by means of our(τοῦ)baptism,as it symbolized and sealed the work of faith, intoHis(τὸν)Death;it certified our interest in that vicarious death, even to its climax in the grave which, as it were, swallowed up the Victim;that just as Christ rose from the dead by means of the glory of the Father,as that death issued for Him in a new and endless life, not by accident, but because the Character of God, the splendour (δόξα) of His love, truth, and power, secured the issue,so we too should begin to walk(πετιπατήσωμεν)in newness of life,should step forth in a power altogether new, in our union still with Him. All possible emphasis lies upon those words, "newness of life." They bring out what has been indicated already (v. 17, 18), the truth that the Lord has won us not only remission of a death-penalty, not only even an extension of existence under happier circumstances, and in a more grateful and hopeful spirit—but a new and wonderful life-power. The sinner has fled to the Crucified, that he may not die. He is now not only amnestied but accepted. He is not only accepted but incorporated into his Lord, as one with Him in interest. He is not only incorporated as to interest, but, because His Lord, being Crucified, is also Risen, he is incorporated into Him as Life. The Last Adam, like the First, transmits not only legal but vital effects to His member. In Christ the man has, in a sense as perfectly practical as it is inscrutable, new life, new power, as the Holy Ghost applies to his inmost being the presence and virtues of his Head. "In Him he lives, by Him he moves."
To men innumerable the discovery of this ancienttruth, or the fuller apprehension of it, has been indeed like a beginning of new life. They have been long and painfully aware, perhaps, that their strife with evil was a serious failure on the whole, and their deliverance from its power lamentably partial. And they could not always command as they would the emotional energies of gratitude, the warm consciousness of affection. Then it was seen, or seen more fully, that the Scriptures set forth this great mystery, this powerful fact; our union with our Head, by the Spirit, for life, for victory and deliverance, for dominion over sin, for willing service. And the hands are lifted up, and the knees confirmed, as the man uses the now open secret—Christ in him, and he in Christ—for the real walk of life. But let us listen to St Paul again.
Ver. 5.Ver. 6.
For if we became vitally connected(σύμφυτοι), He with us and we with Him,by the likeness of His Death,by the baptismal plunge, symbol and seal of our faith-union with the Buried Sacrifice,why(ἀλλὰ),we shall bevitally connected with Him by the likenessalso of His Resurrection,by the baptismal emergence, symbol and seal of our faith-union with the Risen Lord, and so with His risen power.[87]This knowing, that our old man,our old state, as out of Christ and under Adam's headship, under guilt and in moral bondage,was crucified withChrist, was as itwere nailed to His atoning Cross, where He represented us. In other words, He on the Cross, our Head and Sacrifice, so dealt with our fallen state for us,that the body of sin,this our body viewed as sin's stronghold, medium, vehicle,might be cancelled,might be in abeyance, put down, deposed, so as to be no more the fatal door to admit temptation to a powerless soul within.
"Cancelled" is a strong word. Let us lay hold upon its strength, and remember that it gives us not a dream, but a fact, to be found true in Christ. Let us not turn its fact into fallacy, by forgetting that, whatever "cancel" means, it does not mean that grace lifts us out of the body; that we are no longer to "keep under the body, and bring it into subjection," in the name of Jesus. Alas for us, if any promise, any truth, is allowed to "cancel" the call to watch and pray, and to think that in no sense is there still a foe within. But all the rather let us grasp, and use, the glorious positive in its place and time, which is everywhere and every day. Let us recollect, let us confess our faith, that thus it is with us, through Him who loved us. He died for us for this very end, that our "body of sin" might be wonderfully "in abeyance," as to the power of temptation upon the soul. Yes, as St Paul proceeds,that henceforth we should not do bondservice to sin;that from now onwards, from our acceptance in Him, from our realization of our union with Him, we should say to temptation a "no" that carries with it the power of the inward presence of the Risen Lord. Yes, for He has won that power for us in our Justification through His Death. He died for us, and we in Him, as to sin's claim, as to our guilt; and He thus died, as we have seen, on purpose that we might be not only legally accepted, but vitally united to Him. Such is the connexionof the following clause, strangely rendered in the English Version, and often therefore misapplied, but whose literal wording is,|Ver. 7.|For he who died,he who has died,has been justified from his(τῆς)sin;stands justified from it, stands free from its guilt. The thought is of the atoning Death, in which the believer is interested as if it were his own. And the implied thought is that, as that death is "fact accomplished," as "our old man"wasso effectually "crucified with Christ," therefore we may, we must, claim the spiritual freedom and power in the Risen One which the Slain One secured for us when He bore our guilt.
Ver. 8.toVer. 11.
This possession is also a glorious prospect, for it is permanent with the eternity of His Life. It not only is, but shall be.Now if we died with Christ, we believe,we rest upon His word and work for it,that we shall also live with Him,[88]that we shall share not only now but for all the future the powers of His risen life. ForHelives for ever—and we are in Him!Knowing that Christ, risen from the dead, no longer dies,no death is in His future now;death over Him has no more dominion,itsclaimon Him is for ever gone.For as to His dying(ὃ ἀπέθανε),it was as to our(τῇ)sin He died;it was to deal with our sin's claim; and He has dealt with it indeed, so that His death is "once,"ἐφάπαξ,once for ever;but as to His living(ὃ ζῇ),it is as to God He lives;it is in relation to His Father's acceptance, it is as welcomed to His Father's throne for us, as the Slain One Risen.Even so must you too reckon yourselves,with the sure "calculation" that His work for you, His life for you, is infinitely valid,to be dead indeed to your(τῇ)sin,dead in His atoning death, dead to the guilt exhausted by that death,but living to your(τῷ)God, in Christ Jesus;[89]welcomed by your eternal Father, in your union with His Son, and in that union filled with a new and blessed life from your Head, to be spent in the Father's smile, on the Father's service.
Let us too, like the Apostle and the Roman Christians, "reckon" this wonderful reckoning; counting upon these bright mysteries as upon imperishable facts. All is bound up not with the tides or waves of our emotions, but with the living rock of our union with our Lord. "In Christ Jesus":—that great phrase, here first explicitly used in the connexion, includes all else in its embrace. Union with the slain and risen Christ, in faith, by the Spirit—here is our inexhaustible secret, for peace with God, for life to God, now and in the eternal day.
Ver. 12.
Therefore do not let sin reign[90]in your mortal body,mortal, because not yet fully emancipated, though your Lord has "cancelled" for you its character as "the body of sin," the seat and vehicle of conquering temptation. Do not let sin reign there,so that you should obey the lusts of it,[91]of the body. Observe theimplied instruction. The body, "cancelled" as "the body of sin," still has its "lusts," its desires; or rather desires are still occasioned by it to the man, desires which potentially, if not actually, are desires away from God. And the man, justified through the Lord's death and united to the Lord's life, is not therefore to mistake alaissez-fairefor faith. He is tousehis divine possessions, with a real energy of will. It isfor him, in a sense most practical, to see that his wealth is put to use, that his wonderful freedom is realized in act and habit. "Cancelled" does not mean annihilated. The body exists, and sin exists, and "desires" exist. It is for you, O man in Christ, to say to the enemy, defeated yet present, "Thou shalt not reign; I veto thee in the name of my King."
Ver. 13.
And do not present[92]your limbs,your bodies in the detail of their faculties,as implements(ὅπλα)of unrighteousness, to sin,to sin regarded as the holder and employer of the implements.But present[93]yourselves,your whole being, centre and circle,to God, as men living after death,in His Son's risen life,and your limbs,hand, foot, and head, with all their faculties,as implements of righteousness for God.
"O blissful self-surrender!" The idea of it, sometimes cloudy, sometimes radiant, has floated before the human soul in every age of history. The spiritual fact that the creature, as such, can never find its true centre in itself, but only in the Creator, has expressed itself in many various forms of aspiration and endeavour,now nearly touching the glorious truth of the matter, now wandering into cravings after a blank loss of personality, or however an eternalcomaof absorption into an Infinite practically impersonal; or again, affecting a submission which terminates in itself, anislam, a self-surrender into whose void no blessing falls from the God who receives it. Far different is the "self-presentation" of the Gospel. It is done in the fulness of personal consciousness and choice. It is done with revealed reasons of infinite truth and beauty to warrant its rightness. And it is a placing of the surrendered self into Hands which will both foster its true development as only its Maker can, as He fills it with His presence, and will use it, in the bliss of an eternal serviceableness, for His beloved will.
[84]Not that the imagery of the limb appears here, explicitly. But it does appear below, xii. 5, and in the contemporary passage 1 Cor. vi. 15; and more fully in the Epistles of the First Captivity.[85]Οἵτινες: the paraphrase is perhaps a slight exaggeration of the force of the pronoun.[86]Ὅσοι ἐβαπτίσθημεν: we give a paraphrase, not a translation, to shew the meaning practically.[87]We thus paraphrase a difficult sentence. It seems to us that theὁμοίωμα τοῦ θανάτου Αὐτοῦmust refer to the baptismal rite. If so, our paraphrase as a whole will be justified.—As to the "plunge" and "emergence," we would only say, without entering further on an agitated question, that it seems to us clear that baptism was at first,theoretically, an entire immersion, but that, also primevally, the theory was allowed to be modified in practice;the pouringof water in such casesrepresentingthe ideal immersion. As early as "the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," cent. i. (ch. vii.), there are signs of this.[88]More literally, perhaps, "shall also come to life with Him." If we read this aright, it points to the prospectfuture at the moment of the atoning Death, when, ideally, we died. It does not therefore mean, practically,that we do not live with Him now, as we certainly do (see just below, ver. 11). But it is as if to say, "we believe that our share in His risen Lifesurely follows, now and always, our share in His atoning Death."[89]The wordsτῷ Κυρίῳ ἡμῶνare to be omitted from the text.[90]Μὲ βασιλευέτω: possibly the present imperative may imply, "do notgo on lettingit reign."[91]Omitαὐτῃ ἐνfrom the text.[92]Παριστάνετε: we may perhaps explain this present imperative also to mean "do notgo on so doing."[93]Παραστήσατε: the aorist certainly implies a critical resolve, adecisionof surrender.
[84]Not that the imagery of the limb appears here, explicitly. But it does appear below, xii. 5, and in the contemporary passage 1 Cor. vi. 15; and more fully in the Epistles of the First Captivity.
[85]Οἵτινες: the paraphrase is perhaps a slight exaggeration of the force of the pronoun.
[86]Ὅσοι ἐβαπτίσθημεν: we give a paraphrase, not a translation, to shew the meaning practically.
[87]We thus paraphrase a difficult sentence. It seems to us that theὁμοίωμα τοῦ θανάτου Αὐτοῦmust refer to the baptismal rite. If so, our paraphrase as a whole will be justified.—As to the "plunge" and "emergence," we would only say, without entering further on an agitated question, that it seems to us clear that baptism was at first,theoretically, an entire immersion, but that, also primevally, the theory was allowed to be modified in practice;the pouringof water in such casesrepresentingthe ideal immersion. As early as "the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," cent. i. (ch. vii.), there are signs of this.
[88]More literally, perhaps, "shall also come to life with Him." If we read this aright, it points to the prospectfuture at the moment of the atoning Death, when, ideally, we died. It does not therefore mean, practically,that we do not live with Him now, as we certainly do (see just below, ver. 11). But it is as if to say, "we believe that our share in His risen Lifesurely follows, now and always, our share in His atoning Death."
[89]The wordsτῷ Κυρίῳ ἡμῶνare to be omitted from the text.
[90]Μὲ βασιλευέτω: possibly the present imperative may imply, "do notgo on lettingit reign."
[91]Omitαὐτῃ ἐνfrom the text.
[92]Παριστάνετε: we may perhaps explain this present imperative also to mean "do notgo on so doing."
[93]Παραστήσατε: the aorist certainly implies a critical resolve, adecisionof surrender.
JUSTIFICATION AND HOLINESS: ILLUSTRATIONS FROM HUMAN LIFE
Romansvi. 14—vii. 6
AT the point we have now reached, the Apostle's thought pauses for a moment, to resume.[94]He has brought us to self-surrender. We have seen the sacred obligations of our divine and wonderful liberty. We have had the miserable question, "Shall we cling to sin?" answered by an explanation of the rightness and the bliss of giving over our accepted persons, in the fullest liberty of will, to God, in Christ. Now he pauses, to illustrate and enforce. And two human relations present themselves for the purpose; the one to shew the absoluteness of the surrender, the other its living results. The first is Slavery, the second is Wedlock.