Ver. 12.Ver. 13.
So then, brethren, debtors are we—not to the flesh, with a view to living flesh-wise;but to the Spirit—who is now both our law and our power—with a view to living Spirit-wise.For if you are living flesh-wise, you are on the way(μέλλετε)to die. But if by the Spirit you are doing to death[131]the practices,the stratagems, the machinations,of the body, you will live.Ah, the body is still there, and is still a seat and vehicle of temptation. "It is for the Lord, and the Lord is for it" (1 Cor. vi. 13). It is the temple of the Spirit. Our call is (1 Cor. vi. 20) to glorify God in it. But all this,from our point of view, passes from realization into mere theory, wofully gainsaid by experience, when we let our acceptance in Christ, and our possession in Him of the Almighty Spirit, pass out of use into mere phrase. Say what some men will, we are never for an hour here below exempt from elements and conditions of evil residing not merely around us but within us. There is no stage of life when we can dispense with the power of the Holy Ghost as our victory and deliverance from "the machinations of the body." And the body is no separate and as it were minor personality. If the man's body "machinates," it is the man who is the sinner.
But then, thanks be to God, this fact is not the real burthen of the words here. What St Paul has to say is that the man who has the indwelling Spirit has with him, in him, a divine and all-effectual Counter-Agent to the subtlest of his foes. Let him do what we saw him above (vii. 7-25) neglecting to do. Let him with conscious purpose, and firm recollection of his wonderful position and possession (so easily forgotten!), call up the eternal Power which is indeed not himself, thoughin himself. Let him do this withhabitualrecollection and simplicity. And he shall be "more than conqueror" where he was so miserably defeated. His path shall be as of one who walks over foes who threatened, but who fell, and who die at his feet. It shall be less a struggle than a march, over a battlefield indeed, yet a field of victory so continuous that it shall be as peace.
"If by the Spirit you are doing them to death." Mark well the words. He says nothing here of things often thought to be of the essence of spiritual remedies; nothing of "will-worship, and humility, and unsparing treatment of the body" (Col. ii. 23); nothing even of fast and prayer. Sacred and precious is self-discipline, the watchful care that act and habit are true to that "temperance" which is a vital ingredient in the Spirit's "fruit" (Gal. v. 22, 23). It is the Lord's own voice (Matt. xxvi. 41) which bids us always "watch and pray"; "praying in the Holy Ghost" (Jude 20). Yes, but these true exercises of the believing soul are after all only as the covering fence around that central secret—our use by faith of the presence and power of "the Holy Ghost given unto us." The Christian who neglects to watch and pray will most surely find that he knows not how to use this his great strength, for he will be losing realization of his oneness with his Lord. But then the man who actually, and in the depth of his being, is "doing to death the practices of the body," is doing so,immediately, not by discipline, nor by direct effort, but by the believing use of "the Spirit." Filled with Him, he treads upon the power of the enemy. And that fulness is according to surrendering faith.
Ver. 14.Ver. 15.
For as many as are led by God's Spirit, these are God's sons; for you did not receive a spirit of slavery,to take youback again(πάλιν)to fear; no,you received a Spirit of adoption to sonship, in whichSpirit, surrendered to His holy power,we cry,with no bated, hesitating breath,"Abba, our(ὁ)Father."His argument runs thus; "If you would live indeed, you must do sin to death by the Spirit. And this means, in another aspect, that you must yield yourselves to be led along by the Spirit, with that leading which is sure to conduct you always away from self and into the will of God. You must welcome the Indweller to have His holy way with your springs of thought and will. So, and only so, will you truly answer the idea, the description, 'sons of God'—that glorious term, never to besatisfiedby the relation of mere creaturehood, or by that of merely exterior sanctification, mere membership in a community of men, though it be the Visible Church itself. But if you so meet sin by the Spirit, if you are so led by the Spirit, you do shew yourselves nothing less than God's own sons. He has called you to nothing lower than sonship; to vital connexion with a divine Father's life, and to the eternal embraces of His love. For when He gave and you received the Spirit, the Holy Spirit of promise, who reveals Christ and joins you to Him, what did that Spirit do, in His heavenly operation? Did He lead you back to the old position, in which you shrunk from God, as from a Master who bound you against your will? No, He shewed you that in the Only Son you are nothing less than sons, welcomed into the inmost home of eternal life and love. You found yourselves indescribably near the Father's heart, because accepted, and new-created, in His Own Beloved. And so you learnt the happy, confident call of the child, 'Father, O Father; Our Father, Abba.'"[132]
So it was, and so it is. The living member of Christ is nothing less than the dear child of God. He is other things besides; he is disciple, follower, bondservant. He never ceases to be bondservant, though here he is expressly told that he has received no "spirit of slavery." So far as "slavery" means service forced against the will, he has done with this, in Christ. But so far as it means service rendered by one who is his master's absolute property, he has entered into its depths, for ever. Yet all this is exterior as it were to that inmost fact, that he is—in a sense ultimate, and which alone really fulfils the word—the child, the son, of God. He is dearer than he can know to his Father. He is more welcome than he can ever realize to take his Father at His word, and lean upon His heart, and tell Him all.
Ver. 16.
The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit, that we are God's children,born children,τεκνά. The Holy One, on His part, makes the once cold, reluctant, apprehensive heart "know and believe the love of God." He "sheds abroad God's love in it." He brings home to consciousness and insight the "sober certainty" of the promises of the Word; that Word through which, above all other means, He speaks. He shews to the man "the things of Christ," the Beloved, in whom he has the adoption and the regeneration; making him see, as souls see, what a paternal welcome theremustbe for those who are "inHim." And then, on the other part, the believer meets Spirit with spirit. He responds to the revealed paternal smile with not merely a subject's loyalty but a son's deep love; deep, reverent, tender, genuine love. "Doubtless thou art His own child," says the Spirit. "Doubtless He is my Father," says our wondering, believing, seeing spirit in response.
Ver. 17.
But if children, then also heirs; God's heirs, Christ's co-heirs,possessors in prospect of our Father's heaven (towards which the whole argument now gravitates), in union of interest and life with our Firstborn Brother, in whom lies our right. From one hand a gift, infinitely merciful and surprising, that unseen bliss will be from another the lawful portion of the lawful child, one with the Beloved of the Father. Such heirs we are,if indeed we share His sufferings,those deep but hallowed pains which will surely come to us as we live in and for Him in a fallen world,that we may also share His glory,for which that path of sorrow is, not indeed the meriting, but the capacitating, preparation.
Amidst the truths of life and love, of the Son, of the Spirit, of the Father, he thus throws in the truth of pain. Let us not forget it. In one form or another, it is for all "the children." Not all are martyrs, not all are exiles or captives, not all are called as a fact to meet open insults in a defiant world of paganism or unbelief. Many are still so called, as many were at first, and as many will be to the end; for "the world" is no more now than it ever was in love with God, and with His children as such. But even for those whose path is—not by themselves but the Lord—most protected, there must be "suffering," somehow, sooner, later, in this present life, if they are really living the life of the Spirit, the life of the child of God, "paying the debt" of daily holiness, even in its humblest and gentlest forms. We must observe, by the way, that it is tosuchsufferings, and not to sorrows in general, that the reference lies here. The Lord's heart is open for all the griefs of His people, and He can use them all for their blessing and for His ends. But the "sufferingwith Him" must imply a paindue to our union. Itmust be involved in our being His members, used by the Head for His work. It must be the hurt of His "hand" or "foot" in subserving His sovereign thought. What will the bliss be of the corresponding sequel! "That we mayshare His glory"; not merely, "be glorified," but share His glory; a splendour of life, joy, and power whose eternal law and soul will be, union with Him who died for us and rose again.
Ver. 18.Ver. 19.
Now towards that prospect St Paul's whole thought sets, as the waters set towards the moon, and the mention of that glory, after suffering, draws him to a sight of the mighty "plurity" of the glory.For I reckon,"I calculate"—word of sublimestprose, more moving here than any poetry, because it bids us handle the hope of gloryas a fact—that not worthyof mentionare the sufferings of the present season(καιροῦ, notχρόνου; he thinks of time not in its length but in its limit),in view of the glory about to be unveiled upon us(εἰς ἡμᾶς), unveiled, and then heaped upon us, in its golden fulness.[133]For—he is going to give us a deep reason for his "calculation"; wonderfully characteristic of the Gospel. It is that the final glory of the saints will be a crisis of mysterious blessing for the whole created Universe.[134]In ways absolutely unknown, certainly as regards anything said in this passage, but none the less divinely fit and sure, the ultimate and eternal manifestation of Christ Mystical, the Perfect Head with His perfected members, will be the occasion, and in some sense too the cause, themediating cause, of the emancipation of "Nature," in its heights and depths, from the cancer of decay, and its entrance on an endless æon of indissoluble life and splendour. Doubtless that goal shall be reached through long processes and intense crises of strife and death. "Nature," like the saint, may need to pass to glory through a tomb. But the issue will indeed be glory, when He who is the Head at once of "Nature,"[135]of the heavenly nations, and of redeemed man, shall bid the vast periods of conflict and dissolution cease, in the hour of eternal purpose, and shall manifestly "bewhat Heis" to the mighty total.
With such a prospect natural philosophy has nothing to do. Its own laws of observation and tabulation forbid it to make a single affirmation of what the Universe shall be, or shall not be, under new and unknown conditions. Revelation, with no arbitrary voice, but as the authorized while reserved messenger ofthe Maker, and standing by the open Grave of the Resurrection, announces that there are to be profoundly new conditions, and that they bear a relation inscrutable but necessary to the coming glorification of Christ and His Church. And what we now see and feel as the imperfections and shocks and seeming failures of the Universe, so we learn from this voice, a voice so quiet yet so triumphant, are only as it were the throes of birth, in which "Nature," impersonal indeed but so to speak animated by the thinking of the intelligent orders who are a part of her universal being, preludes her wonderful future.
Ver. 19.toVer. 23.
For the longing outlook of the creation is expecting—the unveiling of the sons of God.For to vanity,to evil, to failure and decay,the creation was subjected not willingly, but because of Him who made it subject;its Lord and Sustainer, who in His inscrutable but holy will bade physical evil correspond to the moral evil of His conscious fallen creatures, angels or men. So that there is a deeper connexion than we can yet analyse between sin, the primal and central evil, and everything that is really wreck or pain. But this "subjection," under Hisfiat, wasin hope, because the creation itself shall be liberated from the slavery of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God,the freedom brought in foritbytheireternal liberation from the last relics of the Fall.SFor we know,by observation of natural evil, in the light of the promises,that the whole creation is uttering a common groanof burthen and yearning,and suffering a common birth-pang, even till now,when the Gospel has heralded the coming glory.Nor only so, but even the actual possessors of the firstfruits of the Spirit,possessors of that presence of the Holy One in them now, which is the sure pledge of His eternal fulness yet to come,even we ourselves,richly blest as we are in our wonderful Spirit-life,yet in ourselves are groaning,burthened still with mortal conditions pregnant of temptation, lying not around us only but deep within (ἐν ἑαυτοῖς),expecting adoption,full instatement into the fruition of the sonship which already is ours, eventhe redemption of our body.
From the coming glories of the Universe he returns, in the consciousness of an inspired but human heart, to the present discipline and burthen of the Christian. Let us observe the noble candour of the words; this "groan" interposed in the midst of such a song of the Spirit andof glory. He has no ambition to pose as the possessor of an impossible experience. He is more than conqueror; but he is conscious of his foes. The Holy Ghost is in him; he does the body's practices victoriously to death by the Holy Ghost. But the body is there, as the seat and vehicle of manifold temptation. And though there is a joy in victory which can sometimes make even the presence of temptation seem "all joy" (Jas i. 2), he knows that something "far better" is yet to come. His longing is not merely for a personal victory, but for an eternally unhindered service. That will not fully be his till his whole being is actually, as well as in covenant, redeemed. That will not be till not the spirit only but the body is delivered from the last dark traces of the Fall, in the resurrection hour.
Ver. 24.Ver. 25.
For it is as to our(τῇ)hope that we were saved.When the Lord laid hold of us we were indeed saved,[136]but with a salvation which was only in part actual. Its total was not to be realized till the whole being was in actual salvation. Such salvation (see below, xiii. 11) was coincident in prospect with "the Hope," "that blessed Hope,"[137]the Lord's Return and the resurrection glory. So, to paraphrase this clause, "It was in the sense of the Hope that we were saved."[138]But a hope in sight is not a hope; for, what a man sees, why does he hope for?Hope, in that case, has, in its nature, expired in possession. And our full "salvation"isa hope; it is bound up with a Promise not yet fulfilled; therefore, in its nature,it is still unseen, still unattained. But then, it is certain; it is infinitely valid; it is worth any waiting for.But if, for what we do not see, we do hope,looking on good grounds for the sunrise in the dark east,with patience we expect it."With patience," literally "through patience,"δι' ὑπομονῆς. The "patience" is as it were the means, the secret, of the waiting; "patience," that noble word of the New Testament vocabulary, the saint's active submission, submissive action, beneath the will of God. It is no nerveless, motionless prostration; it is the going on and upward, step by step, as the man "waits upon the Lord, and walks, and does not faint."
[130]2 Kings xx. 12, 13.[131]Θανατοῦτε: observe the present tense, the process is a continuing one.[132]The Aramaic "Abba," used by our Lord in His hour of darkness, had probably become an almost personal Name to the believers.[133]With this verse on his lips, unfinished, Calvin died, 1564.[134]We cannot think that theκτίσιςof this passage refers only, as some would have it,to humanity(as Mark xvi. 15, Col. i. 23). Theκτίσιςis a something which was "subjected"involuntarily, and so, surely, not guiltily. This could not be said of humanity.[135]See Col. i. 15, 16. The Lord's Headship of Creation, explicitly revealed there, is seen as it were only just below the surface here.[136]See theperfectparticiple,σεσωσμένοι, Eph. ii. 5, 8.[137]Isἡ ἐλπὶςever used in the N. T. in any other connexion than this?[138]Luther's rendering is good as a paraphrase,Wir sind wohl selig, doch in der Hoffnung.
[130]2 Kings xx. 12, 13.
[131]Θανατοῦτε: observe the present tense, the process is a continuing one.
[132]The Aramaic "Abba," used by our Lord in His hour of darkness, had probably become an almost personal Name to the believers.
[133]With this verse on his lips, unfinished, Calvin died, 1564.
[134]We cannot think that theκτίσιςof this passage refers only, as some would have it,to humanity(as Mark xvi. 15, Col. i. 23). Theκτίσιςis a something which was "subjected"involuntarily, and so, surely, not guiltily. This could not be said of humanity.
[135]See Col. i. 15, 16. The Lord's Headship of Creation, explicitly revealed there, is seen as it were only just below the surface here.
[136]See theperfectparticiple,σεσωσμένοι, Eph. ii. 5, 8.
[137]Isἡ ἐλπὶςever used in the N. T. in any other connexion than this?
[138]Luther's rendering is good as a paraphrase,Wir sind wohl selig, doch in der Hoffnung.
THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER IN THE SAINTS:THEIR PRESENT AND ETERNAL WELFARE IN THE LOVE OF GOD
Romansviii. 26-39
IN the last paragraph the music of this glorious didactic prophecy passed, in some solemn phrases, into the minor mood. "If we share His sufferings"; "The sufferings of this present season"; "We groan within ourselves"; "In the sense of our hope we were saved." All is well. The deep harmony of the Christian's full experience, if it is full downwards as well as upwards, demands sometimes such tones; and they are all music, for they all express a life in Christ, lived by the power of the Holy Ghost. But now the strain is to ascend again into its largest and most triumphant manner. We are now to hear how our salvation, though its ultimate issues are still things of hope, is itself a thing of eternity—from everlasting to everlasting. We are to be made sure that all things are working now, in concurrent action, for the believer's good; and that his justification is sure; and that his glory is so certain that its future is, from his Lord's point of sight, present; and that nothing, absolutely nothing, shall separate him from the eternal Love.
But first comes one most deep and tender word, the last of its kind in the long argument, about the presenceand power of the Holy Ghost. The Apostle has the "groan" of the Christian still in his ear, in his heart; in fact, it is his own. And he has just pointed himself and his fellow believers to the coming glory, as to a wonderful antidote; a prospect which is at once great in itself and unspeakably suggestive ofthe greatnessgiven to the most suffering and tempted saint by his union with his Lord. As if to say to the pilgrim, in his moment of distress, "Remember, you are more to God than you can possibly know; He has made you such, in Christ, that universal Nature is concerned in the prospect of your glory." But now, as if nothing must suffice but what is directly divine, he bids him remember also the presence in him of the Eternal Spirit, as his mighty but tenderest indwelling Friend. Even as "that blessed Hope," so, "likewise also," this blessed present Person, is the weak one's power.Hetakes the man in his bewilderment, when troubles from without press him, and fears from within make him groan, and he is in sore need, yet at a loss for the right cry. And He moves in the tired soul, and breathes Himself into its thought, and His mysterious "groan" of divine yearning mingles with our groan of burthen, and the man's longings go out above all things not towards rest but towards God and His will. So the Christian's innermost and ruling desire is both fixed and animated by the blessed Indweller, and he seeks what the Lord will love to grant, even Himself and whatever shall please Him. The man prays aright, as to the essence of the prayer, because (what a divine miracle is put before us in the words!) the Holy Ghost, immanent in him, prays through him.
Thus we venture, in advance, to explain the sentences which now follow. It is true that St Paul does notexplicitly say that the Spirit makes intercessioninus, as well asforus. But must it not be so? Forwhere is He, from the point of view of Christian life, butin us?
Ver. 26.Ver. 27.
Then, in the same way, the Spirit also—as well as "the hope"—helps,as with a clasping, supporting hand (συναντιλαμβάνεται),our weakness,[139]our shortness and bewilderment of insight, our feebleness of faith.For what we should pray for as we ought, we do not know; but the Spirit Itself interposes to intercede(ὑπερεντυγχάνει)for us, with groanings unutterable; but(whatever be the utterance or no utterance)the Searcher of our(τὰς)hearts knows what is the mind,the purport,of the Spirit; because God-wise,[140]with divine insight and sympathy, the Spirit with the Father,He intercedes for saints.
Did He not so intercede for Paul, and in him, fourteen years before these words were written, when (2 Cor. xii. 7-10) the man thrice asked that "the thorn" might be removed, and the Master gave him a better blessing, the victorious overshadowing power? Did He not so intercede for Monnica, and in her, when she sought with prayers and tears to keep her rebellious Augustine by her, and the Lord let him fly from her side—to Italy, to Ambrose, and so to conversion?[141]
But the strain rises now, finally and fully, into the rest and triumph of faith. "We know notwhat we should pray for as we ought"; and the blessed Spirit meets this deep need in His own way. And this, with all else that we have in Christ, reminds us of a somewhatthat "we know" indeed; namely, that all things, favourable or not in themselves, concur in blessing for the saints. And then he looks backward (or rather, upward) into eternity, and sees the throne, and the King with His sovereign will, and the lines of perfect and infallible plan and provision which stretch from that Centre to infinity. These "saints," who are they? From one view-point, they are simply sinners who have seen themselves, and "fled for refuge to the" one possible "hope"; a "hope set before" every soul that cares to win it. From another view-point, that of the eternal Mind and Order, they are those whom, for reasons infinitely wise and just, but wholly hidden in Himself, the Lord has chosen to be His own for ever, so that His choice takes effect in their conversion, their acceptance, their spiritual transformation, and their glory.
There, as regards this great passage, the thought rests and ceases—in the glorification of the saints. What their Glorifier will do with them, and through them, thus glorified, is another matter. Assuredly He willmake useof them in His eternal kingdom. The Church, made most blessed for ever, is yet beatified, ultimately, not for itself but for its Head, and for His Father. It is to be, in its final perfectness, "an habitation of God, in the Spirit" (Eph. ii. 22). Is He not so to possess it that the Universe shall see Him in it, in a manner and degree now unknown and unimaginable? Is not the endless "service" of the elect to be such that all orders of being shall through them behold and adore the glory of the Christ of God? For ever they will be what they here become, the bondservants of their Redeeming Lord, His Bride, His vehicle of power and blessing; "having of their own nothing, in Him all, and all for Him." No self-fullexaltations await them in the place of light; or the whole history of sin would begin over again, in a new æon. No celestial Pharisaism will be their spirit; a look downward upon less blessed regions of existence, as from a sanctuary of their own. Who can tell what ministries of boundless love will be the expression of their life of inexpressible and inexhaustible joy? Always, like Gabriel, "in the presence," will they not always also, like him, "be sent" (Luke i. 19) on the messages of their glorious Head, in whom at length, in the "divine event," "all things shall be gathered together"?
But this is not the thought of the passage now in our hands. Here, as we have said, the thought terminates in the final glorification of the saints of God, as the immediate goal of the process of their redemption.
Ver. 28.
But we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, even for those who, purpose-wise, are His called ones."We know it," with the cognition of faith; that is to say, because He, absolutely trustworthy, guarantees it by His character, and by His word. Deep, nay insoluble is the mystery, from every other point of view. The lovers of the Lord are indeed unable to explain, to themselves or others, how this concurrence of "all things" works out its infallible issues in them. And the observer from outside cannot understand their certainty that it is so. But the fact is there, given and assured, not by speculation upon events, but by personal knowledge of an Eternal Person. "Love God, and thou shalt know."[142]
They "love God," with a love perfectly unartificial, the genuine affection of human hearts, hearts not the less human because divinely new-created, regenerated fromabove. Their immediate consciousness is just this; we love Him. Not, we have read the book of life; we have had a glimpse of the eternal purpose in itself; we have heard our names recited in a roll of the chosen; but, we love Him. We have found in Him the eternal Love. In Him we have peace, purity, and that deep, final satisfaction, that view of "the King in His beauty," which is thesummum bonumof the creature. It was our fault that we saw it no sooner, that we loved Him no sooner. It is the duty of every soul that He has made to reflect upon its need of Him, and upon the fact that it owes it to Him to love Him in His holy beauty of eternal Love. If we could not it was because we would not. If you cannot it is because, somehow and somewhere, you will not; will not put yourselves without reserve in the way of the sight. "Oh taste and see that the Lord is good"; oh love the eternal Love.
But those who thus simply and genuinely love God are also, on the other side, "purpose-wise, His called ones"; "called," in the sense which we have found above (p. 19) to be consistently traceable in the Epistles; not merely invited, but brought in; not evangelized only, but converted. In each case of the happy company, the man, the woman, came to Christ, came to love God with the freest possible coming of the will, the heart. Yet each, having come, had the Lord to thank for the coming. The human personality had traced its orbit of will and deed, as truly as when it willed to sin and to rebel. But lo, in ways past our finding out, its free track lay along a previous track of the purpose of the Eternal; its free "I will" was the precise and fore-ordered correspondence to His "Thou shalt." It was the act of man; it was the grace of God.
Can we get below such a statement, or above it?If we are right in our reading of the whole teaching of Scripture on the sovereignty of God, our thoughts upon it, practically, must sink down, and must rest, just here. The doctrine of the Choice of God, in its sacred mystery, refuses—so we humbly think—to be explained away so as to mean in effect little but the choice of man. But then the doctrine is "a lamp, not a sun." It is presented to us everywhere, and not least in this Epistle, as a truth not meant to explain everything, but to enforcethisthing—that the man who as a fact loves the eternal Love has to thank not himself but that Love that his eyes, guiltily shut, were effectually opened. Not one link in the chain of actual Redemption is of our forging—or the whole would indeed be fragile. It is "of Him" that we, in this great matter, will as we ought to will. I ought to have loved God always. It is of His mere mercy that I love Him now.
With this lesson of uttermost humiliation the truth of the heavenly Choice, and its effectual Call, brings us also that of an encouragement altogether divine. Such a "purpose" is no fluctuating thing, shifting with the currents of time. Such a call to such an embrace means a tenacity, as well as a welcome, worthy of God. "Who shall separate us?" "Neither shall any pluck them out of My Father's hand." And this is the motive of the words in this wonderful context, where everything is made to bear onthe safetyof the children of God, in the midst of all imaginable dangers.
Ver. 29.
For whom He knew beforehand,with a foreknowledge which, in this argument, can mean nothing short of foredecision[143]—no mere foreknowledge of what they would do, but rather of what He woulddo for them—those He also set apart beforehand, for conformation,deep and genuine, a resemblance due to kindredbeing,[144]to the image,the manifested Countenance,of His Son, that He might be Firstborn amongst many brethren,surrounded by the circling host of kindred faces, congenial beings, His Father's children by their union with Himself. So, as ever in the Scriptures, mystery bears full on character. The man is saved that he may be holy. His "predestination"[145]is not merely not to perish, but to be made like Christ, in a spiritual transformation, coming out in the moral features of the family of heaven. And all bears ultimately on the glory of Christ. The gathered saints are an organism, a family, before the Father; and their vital Centre is the Beloved Son, who sees in their true sonship the fruit of "the travail of His soul."
Ver. 30.
But those whom He thus set apart beforehand, He also called,effectually drew so as truly and freely to choose Christ;and those whom Hethuscalledto Christ,He also justifiedin Christ, in that great way of propitiation and faith of which the Epistle has so largely spoken;but[146]those whom Hethusjustified, He also glorified."Glorified": it is a marvellous past tense. It reminds us that in this passage we are placed, as it were, upon the mountain of the Throne; our finite thought is allowed to speak for once (however little it understandsit) the language of eternity, to utter the facts as the Eternal sees them. To Him, the pilgrim is already in the immortal Country; the bondservant is already at his day's end, receiving His Master's "Well done, good and faithful." He to whom time is not as it is to us thus sees His purposes complete, always and for ever. We see through His sight, in hearing His word about it. So for us, in wonderful paradox, our glorification is presented, as truly as our call, in terms of accomplished fact.
Here, in a certain sense, the long golden chain ofthe doctrineof the Epistle ends—in the hand of the King who thus crowns the sinners whose redemption, faith, acceptance, and holiness, He had, in the Heaven of His own Being, fore-willed and fore-ordered, "before the world began," above all time. What remains of the chapter is the application of the doctrine. But what an application! The Apostle brings his converts out into the open field of trial, and bids themusehis doctrinethere. Are they thus dear to the Father in the Son? Is their every need thus met? Is their guilt cancelled in Christ's mighty merit? Is their existence filled with Christ's eternal Spirit? Is sin thus cast beneath their feet, and is such a heaven opened above their heads? "Then what have they to fear," before man, or before God? What power in the universe, of whatever order of being, can really hurt them? For what can separate them from their portion in their glorified Lord, and in His Father's love in Him? Again we listen, with Tertius, as the voice goes on:
Ver. 31.toVer. 33.
What therefore shall we say in view of these things? If God is for us, who is against us?He[147]who did not spare His own true(ἰδίου)Son, but for us all handed Him overto that awful expiatory, propitiatory, darkness and death, so thatHewas "pleased to bruise Him, to put Him to grief" (Isai. liii. 10), all for His own great glory, but, no whit the less, all for our pure blessing;how(wonderful "how"!)shall He not also with Him,becauseallis included and involved in Him who is the Father's All,give us also freely all things(τὰ πάντα, "the allthings that are")? And do we want to be sure that He will not, after all, find a flaw in our claim, and cast us in His court?Who will lodge a charge against God's chosen ones?WillGod—who justifies them?[148]Who will condemn them,if the chargeislodged? WillChrist—who died, nay rather who rose, who is on the right hand of God, who is actually(καὶ)interceding for us?(Observe this one mention in the whole Epistle of His Ascension, and His action for us above, as He is, by the fact of His Session on the Throne, our sure Channel of eternal blessing, unworthy that we are.) Do we need assurance, amidst "the sufferings of this present time," that through them always the invincible hands of Christ clasp us, with untired love? We "look upon the covenant" of our acceptance and life in Him who died for us, and who lives both for and in us, and we meet the fiercest buffet of these waves in peace.|Ver. 35.toVer. 38.|Who shall sunder us from the love of Christ?There rise before him, as he asks, like so many angry personalities,[149]the outward woes of the pilgrimage.Tribulation? or Perplexity? or Persecution? or Famine?or Nakedness? or Peril? or Sword? As it stands written,in that deep song of anguish and faith (Psal. xliv.) in which the elder Church, one with us in deep continuity, tells her story of affliction,"For Thy sake we are done to death all the day long; we have been reckoned,estimated,as sheep of slaughter."Even so.But in these things, all of them, we more than conquer;not only do we tread upon our foes; we spoil them, we find them occasions of glorious gain,[150]through Him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life,life with its natural allurements or its bewildering toils,nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers,[151]whatever Orders of being unfriendly to Christ and His saints the vast Unseen contains,nor present things, nor things to come,in all the boundless field of circumstance and contingency,nor height, nor depth,in the illimitable sphere of space,nor any other creature,no thing, no being, under the Uncreated One,shall be able to sunder us,"us" with an emphasis upon the word and thought (ἡμας χωρίσαι),from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord—from the eternal embrace wherein the Father embosoms the Son, and, in the Son, all who are one with Him.
So once more the divine music rolls itself out into the blessed Name. We have heard the previous cadences as they came in their order; "Jesus our Lord, who was delivered because of our offences, and was raised again because of our justification" (iv. 25); "That grace might reign, through Jesus Christ our Lord" (v. 21); "The gift of God is eternal life, in Jesus Christ our Lord" (vi. 23);"I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord" (vii. 25). Like the theme of a fugue it has sounded on, deep and high; still, always, "our Lord Jesus Christ," who is all things, and in all, and for all, to His happy believing members. And now all is gathered up into this. Our "Righteousness, and Sanctification, and Redemption" (1 Cor. i. 33), the golden burthens of the third chapter, and the sixth, and the eighth, are all, in their living ultimate essence, "Jesus Christ our Lord."Hemakes every truth, every doctrine of peace and holiness, every sure premiss and indissoluble inference, to be life as well as light.Heis pardon, and sanctity, and heaven. Here, finally, the Eternal Love is seen not as it were diffused into infinity, but gathered up wholly and for ever in Him. Therefore to be in Him is to be in It. It is to be within the clasp which surrounds the Beloved of the Father.
Some years ago we remember reading this passage, this close of the eighth chapter, under moving circumstances. On a cloudless January night, late arrived in Rome, we stood in the Coliseum, a party of friends from England. Orion, the giant with the sword, glimmered like a spectre, the spectre of persecution, above the huge precinct; for the full moon, high in the heavens, overpowered the stars. By its light we read from a little Testament these words, written so long ago to be read in that same City; written by the man whose dust now sleeps at Tre Fontane, where the executioner dismissed him to be with Christ; written to men and women some of whom at least, in all human likelihood, suffered in that same Amphitheatre, raised only twenty-two years after Paul wrote to the Romans, and soon made the scene of countless martyrdoms. "Do you want arelic?" said a Pope to some eager visitor. "Gather dust from the Coliseum; it is all the martyrs."
We recited the words of the Epistle, and gave thanks to Him who had there triumphed in His saints over life and death, over beasts, and men, and demons. Then we thought of the inmost factors in that great victory; Truth and Life. They "knew whom they had believed"—their Sacrifice, their Head, their King. He whom they had believed lived in them, and they in Him, by the Holy Ghost given to them. Then we thought of ourselves, in our circumstances so totally different on the surface, yet carrying the same needs in their depths. Are we too to overcome, in "the things present" of our modern world, and in face of "the things to come" yet upon the earth? Are we to be "more than conquerors," winning blessing out of all things, and really living "in our own generation" (Acts xiii. 36) as the bondmen of Christ and the sons of God? Then for us also the absolute necessities are—the same Truth, and the same Life. And they are ours, thanks be to the Name of our salvation. Time hath no more dominion over them, because death hath no more dominion over Him. For us too Jesus died. In us too, by the Holy Ghost, He lives.
[139]Readἀσθενείᾳ.[140]So we venture to renderκατὰ Θεόν.[141]Confessiones, v. 8.[142]See a noble poem by James Montgomery,The Lot of the Righteous.[143]Seee.g.xi. 2; Acts ii. 23; 1 Pet. i. 2, 20.[144]Συμμόρφους:μορφὴis likeness not by accident but of essence. The Greek here is literally, "conformed onesofthe image, etc."; as if their similitude made them part of that which they resembled.[145]Let us banish from the idea of "predestination" all thought of a mechanical pagandestiny, and use it of the sure purpose of the living and loving God.[146]Δέ: the "but" of logic. He isprovingthe security of the prospect ofglory.[147]Ὅς γε: the particle deeplyunderlinesthe pronoun.[148]Ὁ δικαιῶν: we adopt the interrogative rendering of all the clauses here. It is equally good as grammar, and far more congenial to the glowing context.[149]Observe theτίςof the question, notτί.[150]Cp. 1 Cor. iii. 22: "All thingsare yours, whether lifeor death."[151]Strong documentary evidence favours the transference of "powers" to a place after "things to come." But surely rhythm, and the affinity of words, look the other way.
[139]Readἀσθενείᾳ.
[140]So we venture to renderκατὰ Θεόν.
[141]Confessiones, v. 8.
[142]See a noble poem by James Montgomery,The Lot of the Righteous.
[143]Seee.g.xi. 2; Acts ii. 23; 1 Pet. i. 2, 20.
[144]Συμμόρφους:μορφὴis likeness not by accident but of essence. The Greek here is literally, "conformed onesofthe image, etc."; as if their similitude made them part of that which they resembled.
[145]Let us banish from the idea of "predestination" all thought of a mechanical pagandestiny, and use it of the sure purpose of the living and loving God.
[146]Δέ: the "but" of logic. He isprovingthe security of the prospect ofglory.
[147]Ὅς γε: the particle deeplyunderlinesthe pronoun.
[148]Ὁ δικαιῶν: we adopt the interrogative rendering of all the clauses here. It is equally good as grammar, and far more congenial to the glowing context.
[149]Observe theτίςof the question, notτί.
[150]Cp. 1 Cor. iii. 22: "All thingsare yours, whether lifeor death."
[151]Strong documentary evidence favours the transference of "powers" to a place after "things to come." But surely rhythm, and the affinity of words, look the other way.
THE SORROWFUL PROBLEM:JEWISH UNBELIEF; DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY
Romansix. 1-33
WE may well think that again there was silence awhile in that Corinthian chamber, when Tertius had duly inscribed the last words we have studied. A "silence in heaven" follows, in the Apocalypse (viii. 1), the vision of the white hosts of the redeemed, gathered at last, in their eternal jubilation, before the throne and the Lamb. A silence in the soul is the fittest immediate sequel to such a revelation of grace and glory as has passed before us here. And did not the man whose work it was to utter it, and whose personal experience was as it were the informing soul of the whole argument of the Epistle from the first, and not least in this last sacred pæan of faith, keep silence when he had done, hushed and tired by this "exceeding weight" of grace and glory?
But he has a great deal more to say to the Romans, and in due time the pen obeys the voice again. What will the next theme be? It will be a pathetic and significant contrast to the last; a lament, a discussion, an instruction, and then a prophecy, about not himself and his happy fellow-saints, but poor self-blinded unbelieving Israel.
The occurrence of that subject exactly here is true to the inmost nature of the Gospel. The Apostle has just been counting up the wealth of salvation, and claiming it all, as present and eternal property, for himself and his brethren in the Lord. Justifying Righteousness, Liberty from Sin in Christ, the Indwelling Spirit, electing Love, coming and certain Glory, all have been recounted, and asserted, and embraced.Is it selfish, this great joy of possession and prospect? Let those say so who see these things only from outside. Make proof of what they are in their interior, enter into them, learn yourself what it is to have peace with God, to receive the Spirit, to expect the eternal glory; and you will find that nothing is so sure to expand the heart towards other men as the personal reception into it of the Truth and Life of God in Christ. It is possible to hold a true creed—and to be spiritually hard and selfish. But is it possible so to be when not only the creed is held, but the Lord of it, its Heart and Life, is received with wonder and great joy? The man whose certainties, whose riches, whose freedom, are all consciouslyin Him, cannot but love his neighbour, and long that he too should come into "the secret of the Lord."
So St Paul, just at this point of the Epistle, turns with a peculiar intensity of grief and yearning towards the Israel which he had once led, and now had left, because they would not come with him to Christ. His natural and his spiritual sympathies all alike go out to this self-afflicting people, so privileged, so divinely loved, and now so blind. Oh that he could offer any sacrifice that would bring them reconciled, humbled, happy, to the feet of the true Christ! Oh that they might see the fallacy of their own way ofsalvation, and submit to the way of Christ, taking His yoke, and finding rest to their souls! Why do they not do it? Why does not the light which convinced him shine on them? Why should not the whole Sanhedrin say, "Lord, what wouldst Thou have us to do?" Why does not the fair beauty of the Son of God make them too "count all things but loss" for Him? Why do not the voices of the Prophets prove to them, as they do now to Paul, absolutely convincing of the historical as well as spiritual claims of the Man of Calvary? Has the promise failed? Has God done with the race to which He guaranteed such a perpetuity of blessing? No, that cannot be. He looks again, and he sees in the whole past a long warning that, while an outer circle of benefits might affect the nation, the inner circle, the light and life of God indeed, embraced "a remnant" only; even from the day when Isaac and not Ishmael was made heir of Abraham. And then he ponders the impenetrable mystery of the relation of the Infinite Will to human wills; he remembers how, in a way whose full reasons are unknowable, (but they are good, for they are in God,) the Infinite Will has to do with our willing; genuine and responsible though our willing is. And before that opaque veil he rests. He knows that only righteousness and love is behind it; but he knows thatit isa veil, and that in front of it man's thought must cease and be silent. Sin is altogether man's fault. But when man turns from sin it is all God's mercy, free, special, distinguishing. Be silent, and trust Him, O man whom He has made. Remember, Hehas madethee. It is not only that He is greater than thou, or stronger; but He has made thee. Be reasonably willing to trust, out of sight, the reasons of thyMaker.
Then he turns again with new regrets and yearnings to the thought of that wonderful Gospel which was meant for Israel and for the world, but which Israel rejected, and now would fain check on its way to the world. Lastly, he recalls the future, still full of eternal promises for the chosen race, and through them full of blessing for the world; till he rises at length from perplexity and anguish, and the wreck of once eager expectations, into that great Doxology in which he blesses the Eternal Sovereign for the very mystery of His ways, and adores Him because He is His own eternal End.