Ver. 7.toVer. 13.
What shall we say then,in face of the thought of our death-divorce, in Christ, from the Law's condemning power.Is the Law sin?Are they only two phases of one evil?Away with the thought! But—here is the connexion of the two—I should not have known,recognized, understood,sin but by means of law. For coveting,for example,I should not have known,should not have recognized as sin,if the Law had not been saying, "Thou shalt not covet."[109]But sin, making a fulcrum of the commandment,[110]produced,effected,in me all coveting,every various application of the principle.For, law apart, sin is dead—in the sense of lack of conscious action. It needsa holy Will, more or less revealed, to occasion its collision. Given no holy will, known or surmised, and it is "dead"as rebellion, though notas pollution.But I,the person in whom it lay buried,was all alive(ἔζων), conscious and content,law apart, once on a time(strange ancient memory in that biography!).But when the commandment cameto my conscience and my will,sin rose to life again,("again"; so it was no new creation after all)and I—died;I found myself legally doomed to death, morally without life-power, and bereft of the self-satisfaction that seemed my vital breath.And the commandment that was life-wards,prescribing nothing but perfect right, the straight line to life eternal,proved(εὑρέθη)for me deathwards. For sin, making a fulcrum of the commandment, deceived me,into thinking fatally wrong of Godand of myself,and through it killed me,discovered me to myself as legally and morally a dead man.So that the Law, indeed(μὲν),is holy, and the commandment,the special precept which was my actual death-blow,holy, and just, and good.(He says, "the Law,indeed" (μὲν), with the implied antithesis that "sin,on the other hand," is the opposite; the whole fault of his misery beneath the Law lies with sin.)The good thing then,this good Law,has it to me[111]become death? Away with the thought! Nay, but sindid so becomethat it might come out as sin, working out death for me by means of the goodLaw—that sin might prove overwhelmingly sinful, through the commandment,which at once called it up, and, by awful contrast, exposed its nature. Observe, he does not say merely that sin thus "appeared" unutterably evil. More boldly, in this sentence of mighty paradoxes, he says that it "became" such. As it were, it developed itscharacterinto its fullestaction, when it thus used the eternal Will to set creature against Creator. Yet even this was overruled; all happened thus "in order," so that the very virulence of the plague might effectually demand the glorious Remedy.
Ver. 14.toVer. 17.
For we know,we men with our conscience, we Christians with our Lord's light,that the Law,this Law which sin so foully abused,is spiritual,the expression of the eternal Holiness, framed by the sure guidance of the Holy Spirit;butthenI,I Paul, taken as a sinner, viewed apart from Christ,am fleshly,a child of self,sold to be under sin;yes, not only when, in Adam, my nature sold itself at first, but still and always, just so far as I am considered apart from Christ,and just so far as, in practice, I live apart from Christ, "reverting," if but for a minute, to my self-life.For the work I work out, I do not know,I do not recognize; I am lost amidst its distorted conditions;forit isnot what I will that I practise(πράσσω),butit iswhat I hate that I do(ποιῶ).But if what I do is what I do not will, I assent to the Law that it,the Law,is good;I shew my moral sympathy with the precept by the endorsement given it by my will, in the sense of my earnest moral preference.[112]But now,in this state of facts,it is no longer I who work out the work, but the indweller in me—Sin.
He implies by "no longer" that once it was otherwise; oncethe centralchoice was for self, now, in the regenerate life, even in its conflicts, yea, even in its failures, it is for God. A mysterious "other self" is latent still, and asserts itself in awful reality when the true man, the man as regenerate, ceases to watch and to pray. And in this sense he dares to say "it is no more I." It is a sense the very opposite to the dream of self-excuse; for though theEgoas regenerate does not do the deed, it has, by its sleep, or by its confidence, betrayed the soul to the true doer. And thus he passes naturally into the following confessions, in which we read at once the consciousness of a state which ought not to be, though it is, and also the conviction that it is a stateout of characterwith himself, with his personality as redeemed and new-created. Into such a confession there creeps no lying thought that he "is delivered to do these abominations" (Jer. vii. 10); that it is fate; that he cannot help it. Nor is themiserable dream present here that evil is but a phase of good, and that these conflicts are only discordant melodies struggling to a cadence where they will accord. It is a groan of shame and pain, from a man who could not be thus tortured if he were not born again. Yet it is also an avowal,—as if to assure himself that deliverance is intended, and is at hand,—that the treacherous tyrant he has let into the place of poweris an aliento him as he is a man regenerate. Not for excuse, but to clear his thought, and direct his hope, he says this to himself, and to us, in his dark hour.
Ver. 18.Ver. 19.Ver. 20.
For I know that there dwells not in me, that is, in my flesh, good;in my personal life, so long, and so far, as it "reverts" to self as its working centre, all is evil, for nothing is as God would have it be. And that "flesh," that self-life, is ever there, latent if not patent; present in such a sense that it is ready for instant reappearance, from within, if any moral power less than that of the Lord Himself is in command.For the willing lies at my hand; but the working out what is right, does not.[113]"The willing" (τὸ θέλειν), as throughout this passage, means not the ultimatefiatof the man's soul, deciding his action, but his earnest moral approbation, moral sympathy,the convictionsof the enlightened being.For not what I will, even good, do I; but what I do not will, even evil, that I practise.[114]Now if what I do is what I do not will, no longer,as once,do I work it out, but the indweller in me, Sin.
Again his purpose is not excuse, but deliverance.No deadly antinomianism is here, such as has withered innumerable lives, where the thought has been admitted that sin may be in the man, and yet the man may not sin. His thought is, as all along, that it is his own shame that thus it is; yet that the evil is, ultimately, a thing alien to his true character, and that therefore he is right to call the lawful King and Victor in upon it.
And now comes up again the solemn problem of the Law. That stern, sacred, monitor is looking on all the while, and saying all the while the things which first woke sin from its living grave in the old complacent experience, and then, in the regenerate state, provoked sin to its utmost treachery, and most fierce invasions. And the man hears the voice, and in his new-created character he loves it. But he has "reverted," ever so little, to his old attitude, to the self-life, and so there isalsorebellion in him when that voice says "Thou shalt."|Ver. 21.toVer. 23.|So I find the Law—he would have said, "I find it my monitor, honoured, aye and loved, but not my helper"; but he breaks the sentence up in the stress of this intense confession;so I find the Law—for me,mewith a will to do the right,—that for me the evil lies at hand. For I have glad sympathy with(συνήδομαι)the Law of God;what He prescribes I endorse with delight as good,as regards the inner man,that is, my world of conscious insight and affection[115]in the new life;but I see(as if I were a watcher from without)a rival(ἕτερον)law,another and contradictory precept, "servethyself,"in my limbs,in my world of sense and active faculty,at war with the law of my mind,the Law of God, adoptedby my now enlightened thinking-power as its sacred code,and seeking to make me captive in that war[116]to the law of sin,the lawwhich is in my limbs.
Ver. 24.Ver. 25.
Unhappy man am I. Who will rescue me out of the body of this death,[117]out of a life conditioned by this mortal body, which in the Fall became sin's especial vehicle, directly or indirectly, and which is not yet (vii. 23) actually "redeemed"?Thanks be to God,[118]who giveth that deliverance, in covenant and in measure now, fully and in eternal actuality hereafter,through Jesus Christ our Lord.
So then,to sum the whole phenomenon of the conflict up, leaving aside for the moment this glorious hope of the issue,I, myself, with the mind indeed do bondservice to the law of God, but with the flesh,with the life of self, wherever and whenever I "revert" that way, I do bondserviceto the law of sin.
Do we close the passage with a sigh, and almost with a groan? Do we sigh over the intricacy of the thought, the depth and subtlety of the reasoning, the almost fatigue of fixing and of grasping the facts below the terms "will," and "mind," and "inner man," and "flesh," and "I"? Do we groan over the consciousness that no analysis of our spiritual failures can console us for the fact of them, and that the Apostle seems in his last sentences to relegate our consolations to thefuture, while it is in the present that we fail, and in the present that we long with all our souls to do, as well as to approve, the will of God?
Let us be patient, and also let us think again. Let us find a solemn and sanctifying peace in the patience which meekly accepts the mystery that we must needs "wait yet for the redemption of our body"; that the conditions of "this corruptible" must yet for a season give ambushes and vantages to temptation, which will be all annihilated hereafter. But let us also think again. If we went at all aright in our remarks previous to this passage, there are glorious possibilities for the present hour "readable between the lines" of St Paul's unutterably deep confession. We have seen in conflict the Christian man, regenerate, yet taken, in a practical sense, apart from his Regenerator. We have seen him really fight, though he really fails. We have seen him unwittingly, but guiltily, betray his position to the foe, by occupying it as it were alone. We have seen also, nevertheless, that he is not his foe's ally but his antagonist. Listen; he is calling for hisKing.
That cry will not be in vain. The King will take a double line of action in response. While his soldier-bondservant is yet in the body, "the body of this death," He will throwHimselfinto the narrow hold, and wonderfully turn the tide within it, and around it. And hereafter, He will demolish it. Rather, He will transfigure it, into the counterpart—even as it were into the part—of His own Body of glory; and the man shall rest, and serve, and reign for ever, with a being homogeneous all through in its likeness to the Lord.
[108]See J. B. Mozley'sLectures, etc., ix, x.[109]Exod. xx. 17.—Observe here that great fact of Christian doctrine; that desire, bias, gravitation away from God's will, is sin, whether carried into actor not. Is not St Paul here recalling some quite special spiritual incident?[110]Ἀφορμὴν λαβοῦσα διὰ τῆς ἐντολῆς.[111]Ἐμοὶis slightly emphatic; as if to say, "at least in my case."[112]For this meaning ofθέλεινsee the closely parallel passage, the almost sketch or embryo of this paragraph, Gal. v. 17.[113]Read notοὐχ εὑρίσκω, but simplyοὔ.[114]Againποιῶandπράσσω, as in ver. 16.[115]In itself, the phraseὁ ἔσω ἄνθρωποςis neutral. By usage it attaches itself to ideas of regeneration. See 2 Cor. iv. 16, Eph. iii. 16.[116]Αἰχμαλωτίζοντα: "Making me prisoner ofwar." Observe the present tense, which indicates not necessarily the full success of the strategy, but its aim.[117]The Greek equally allows the rendering "out of this body of death."[118]Readχάρις τῷ Θεῶ.
[108]See J. B. Mozley'sLectures, etc., ix, x.
[109]Exod. xx. 17.—Observe here that great fact of Christian doctrine; that desire, bias, gravitation away from God's will, is sin, whether carried into actor not. Is not St Paul here recalling some quite special spiritual incident?
[110]Ἀφορμὴν λαβοῦσα διὰ τῆς ἐντολῆς.
[111]Ἐμοὶis slightly emphatic; as if to say, "at least in my case."
[112]For this meaning ofθέλεινsee the closely parallel passage, the almost sketch or embryo of this paragraph, Gal. v. 17.
[113]Read notοὐχ εὑρίσκω, but simplyοὔ.
[114]Againποιῶandπράσσω, as in ver. 16.
[115]In itself, the phraseὁ ἔσω ἄνθρωποςis neutral. By usage it attaches itself to ideas of regeneration. See 2 Cor. iv. 16, Eph. iii. 16.
[116]Αἰχμαλωτίζοντα: "Making me prisoner ofwar." Observe the present tense, which indicates not necessarily the full success of the strategy, but its aim.
[117]The Greek equally allows the rendering "out of this body of death."
[118]Readχάρις τῷ Θεῶ.
THE JUSTIFIED: THEIR LIFE BY THE HOLY SPIRIT
Romansviii. 1-11
The sequence of the eighth chapter of the Epistle on the seventh is a study always interesting and fruitful. No one can read the two chapters over without feeling the strong connexion between them, a connexion at once of contrast and of complement. Great indeed is the contrast between the paragraphs vii. 7-25 and the eighth chapter. The stern analysis of the one, unrelieved save by the fragment of thanksgiving at its close, (and even this is followed at once by a re-statement of the mysterious dualism,) is to the revelations and triumphs of the other as an almost starless night, stifling and electric, to the splendour of a midsummer morning with a yet more glorious morrow for its future. And there is complement as well as contrast. The day is related to the night, which has prepared us for it, as hunger prepares for food. Precisely what was absent from the former passage is supplied richly in the latter. There the Name of the Holy Spirit, "the Lord, the Life-Giver," was unheard. Here the fact and power of the Holy Spirit are present everywhere, so present that there is no other portion of the whole Scripture, unless we except the Redeemer's own Paschal Discourse, which presents us with so great a wealth of revelation on thisall-precious theme. And here we find the secret that is to "stint the strife" which we have just witnessed, and which in our own souls we know so well. Here is the way "howto walk and to please God" (1 Thess. iv. 1), in our justified life. Here is the way how, not to be as it were the victims of "the body," and the slaves of "the flesh," but to "do to death the body's practices" in a continuous exercise of inward power, and to "walk after the Spirit." Here is the resource on which we may be for ever joyfully paying "the debt" of such a walk; giving our redeeming Lord His due, the value of His purchase, even our willing, loving surrender, in the all-sufficient strength of "the Holy Ghost given unto us."
Noteworthy indeed is the manner of the introduction of this glorious truth. It appears not without preparation and intimation; we have heard already of the Holy Ghost in the Christian's life, v. 5, vii. 6. The heavenly water has been seen and heard in its flow; as in a limestone country the traveller may see and hear, through fissures in the fields, the buried but living floods. But here the truth of the Spirit, like those floods, finding at last their exit at some rough cliff's base, pours itself into the light, and animates all the scene. In such an order and manner of treatment there is a spiritual and also a practical lesson. We are surely reminded, as to the experiences of the Christian life, that in a certain sense we possess the Holy Ghost, yea, in His fulness, from the first hour of our possession of Christ. We are reminded also that it is at least possible on the other hand that we may need so to realize and to use our covenant possession, after sad experiments in other directions, that life shall be thenceforth a new experience of liberty and holy joy. We are reminded meanwhilethat such a "new departure," when it occurs, is new rather from our side than from the Lord's. The water was running all the while below the rocks. Insight and faith, given by His grace, have not called it from above, but as it were from within, liberating what was there.
The practical lesson of this is important for the Christian teacher and pastor. On the one hand, let him make very much in his instructions, public and private, of the revelation of the Spirit. Let him leave no room, so far as he can do it, for doubt or oblivion in his friends' minds about the absolute necessity of the fulness of the presence and power of the Holy One, if life is to be indeed Christian. Let him describe as boldly and fully as the Word describes it what life may be, must be, where that sacred fulness dwells; how assured, how happy within, how serviceable around, how pure, free, and strong, how heavenly, how practical, how humble. Let him urge any who have yet to learn it to learn all this in their own experience, claiming on their knees the mighty gift of God. On the other hand, let him be careful not to overdraw his theory, and to prescribe too rigidly the methods of experience. Not all believers fail in the first hours of their faith to realize, and to use, the fulness of what the Covenant gives them. And where that realization comes later than our first sight of Christ, as with so many of us it does come, not always is the experience and action the same. To one it is a crisis of memorable consciousness, a private Pentecost. Another wakes up as from sleep to find the unsuspected treasure at his hand—hid from him till then by nothing thicker than shadows. And another is aware that somehow, he knows not how, he has come to use the Presence and Power as a while ago he did not; he has passed a frontier—but he knows not when.
In all these cases, meanwhile, the man had, in one great respect, possessed the great gift all along. In covenant, in Christ, it was his. As he stepped by penitent faith into the Lord, he trod on ground which, wonderful to say, was all his own. And beneath it ran, that moment, the River of the water of life. Only, he had to discover, to draw, and to apply.
Again, the relation we have just indicated between our possession of Christ and our possession of the Holy Ghost is a matter of the utmost moment, spiritual and practical, presented prominently in this passage. All along, as we read the passage, we find linked inextricably together the truths of the Spirit and of the Son. "The law of the Spirit of life" is bound up with "Christ Jesus." The Son of God was sent, to take our flesh, to die as our Sin-Offering, that we might "walk according to the Spirit." "The Spirit of God" is "the Spirit of Christ." The presence of the Spirit of Christ is such that, where He dwells, "Christ is in you." Here we read at once a caution, and a truth of the richest positive blessing. We are warned to remember that there is noseparable"Gospel of the Spirit." Not for a moment are we to advance, as it were, from the Lord Jesus Christ to a higher or deeper region, ruled by the Holy Ghost. All the reasons, methods, and issues of the work of the Holy Ghost are eternally and organically connected with the Son of God. We have Him at all because Christ died. We have life because He has joined us to Christ living. Our experimental proof of His fulness is that Christ to us is all. And we are to be on the guard against any exposition of His work and glory which shall for one moment leave out those facts. But not only are we to be on our guard; we are to rejoice in the thought that the mighty, the endless, work of theSpiritisall done always upon that sacred Field, Christ Jesus. And every day we are to draw upon the indwelling Giver of Life to do for us His own, His characteristic, work; to shew us "our King in His beauty," and to "fill our springs of thought and will with Him."
To return to the connexion of the two great chapters. We have seen how close and pregnant it is; the contrast and the complement. But it is also true, surely, that the eighth chapter is not merely and only the counterpart to the seventh. Rather the eighth, though the seventh applies to it a special motive, is also a review of the whole previous argument of the Epistle, or rather the crown on the whole previous structure. It begins with a deep re-assertion of our Justification; a point unnoticed in vii. 7-25. It does this using an inferential particle, "therefore,"ἄρα—to which, surely, nothing in the just preceding verses is related. And then it unfolds not only the present acceptance and present liberty of the saints, but also their amazing future of glory, already indicated, especially in ch. v. 2. And its closing strains are full of the great first wonder, our Acceptance. "Them He justified"; "It is God that justifieth." So we forbear to take ch. viii. as simply the successor and counterpart of ch. vii. It is this, in some great respects. But it is more; it is the meeting point of all the great truths of grace which we have studied, their meeting point in the sea of holiness and glory.[119]
As we approach the first paragraph of the chapter, we ask ourselves what is its message on the whole, itstrueenvoi. It is, our possession of the Holy Spirit of God, for purposes of holy loyalty and holy liberty. The foundation of that fact is once more indicated, in the brief assertion of our full Justification in Christ, and of His propitiatory Sacrifice (ver. 3). Then from those words, "in Christ," he opens this ample revelation of our possession, in our union with Christ, of the Spirit who, having joined us to Him, now liberates us in Him, not from condemnation only but from sin's dominion. If we are indeed in Christ, the Spirit is in us, dwelling in us, and we are in the Spirit. And so, possessed and filled by the blessed Power, we indeed have power to walk and to obey. Nothing is mechanical, automatic; we are fully persons still; He who annexes and possesses our personality does not for a moment violate it. But then, Hedoespossess it; and the Christian, so possessing and so possessed, is not only bound but enabled, in humble but practical reality, in a liberty otherwise unknown, to "fulfil the just demand of the Law," "to please God," in a life lived not to self but to Him.
Thus, as we shall see in detail as we proceed, the Apostle, while he still firmly keeps his hand, so to speak, on Justification, is occupied fully now with its issue, Holiness. And this issue he explains as not merely a matter of grateful feeling, the outcome of the loyalty supposed to be natural to the pardoned. He gives it as a matter of divine power, secured to them under the Covenant of their acceptance.
Shall we not enter on our expository study full of holy expectation, and with unspeakable desires awake, to receive all things which in that Covenant are ours? Shall we not remember, over every sentence, that in it Christ speaks by Paul, and speaks to us? For usalso, as for our spiritual ancestors, all this is true. It shall be true in us also, as it was in them.
We shall be humbled as well as gladdened; and thus our gladness will be sounder. We shall find that whatever be our "walk according to the Spirit," and our veritable dominion over sin, we shall still have "the practices of the body" with which to deal—of the body which still is "dead because of sin," "mortal," not yet "redeemed." We shall be practically reminded, even by the most joyous exhortations, that possession and personal condition are one thing in covenant, and another in realization; that we must watch, pray, examine self, and deny it, if we would "be" what we "are." Yet all this is but the salutary accessory to the blessed main burthen of every line. We are accepted in the Lord. In the Lord we have the Eternal Spirit for our inward Possessor. Let us arise, and "walk humbly," but also in gladness, "with our God."
Ver. 1.Ver. 2.
St Paul speaks again, perhaps after a silence, and Tertius writes down for the first time the now immortal and beloved words.So no adverse sentence is there now,in view of this great fact of our redemption,for those in Christ Jesus.[120]"In Christ Jesus"—mysterious union, blessed fact, wrought by the Spirit who linked us sinners to the Lord.[121]For the law of the Spirit of thelife which is in Christ Jesus[122]freed me,the man of the conflict just described,from the law of sin and of death.The "law," the preceptive will, which legislates the covenant of blessing for all who are in Christ, has set him free. By a strange, pregnant paradox, so we take it, the Gospel—the message which carries with it acceptance, and also holiness, by faith—is here called a "law." For while it is free grace to us it is also immovable ordinance with God. The amnesty is His edict. It is by heavenlystatutethat sinners, believing, possess the Holy Spirit in possessing Christ. And here, with a sublime abruptness and directness, that great gift of the Covenant, the Spirit, for which the Covenant gift of Justification was given, is put forward as the Covenant's characteristic and crown. It is for the moment as if this were all—that "in Christ Jesus" we, I, are under thefiatwhich assures to us the fulness of the Spirit. And this "law," unlike the stern "letter" of Sinai, has actually "freed me." It has endowed me not only with place but with power, in which to live emancipated from a rival law, the law of sin and of death. And what is that rival "law"? We dare to say, it is the preceptive will of Sinai; "Do this, and thou shalt live." This is a hard saying; for in itself that very Law has been recently vindicated as holy, and just, and good, and spiritual. And only a few linesabove in the Epistle we have heard of a "law of sin" which is "served by the flesh." And we should unhesitatingly explain this "law" to be identical with thatbut for the next verse here, a still nearer context, in which "the law" is unmistakably the divine moral Code, considered however asimpotent. Must not this and that be the same? And to call that sacred Code "the Law of sin and of death" is not to say that it is sinful and deathful. It need only mean, and we think it does mean, that it is sin's occasion, and death's warrant, by the unrelieved collision of its holiness with fallen man's will. It must command; he, being what he is, must rebel. He rebels; it must condemn. Then comes his Lord to die for him, and to rise again; and the Spirit comes, to unite him to his Lord. And now, from the Law as provoking the helpless, guilty will, and as claiming the sinner's penal death—behold the man is "freed."|Ver. 3.Ver. 4.|For—(the process is now explained at large)the impossible of the Law—what it could not do, for this was not its function, even to enable us sinners to keep its precept from the soul—God, when He sent His own Son in likeness of flesh of sin,Incarnate, in our identical nature, under all those conditions of earthly life which for us are sin's vehicles and occasions,and as Sin-Offering,[123]expiatory and reconciling,sentenced sin in the flesh;not pardoned it, observe, but sentenced it. He ordered it to execution; He killed its claim and its power for all who are in Christ. And this, "in the flesh," making man's earthly conditions the scene of sin's defeat, for our everlasting encouragement in our "life in theflesh." And what was the aim and issue?That the righteous demand(δικαίωμα)of the Law might be fulfilled in us, us who walk not flesh-wise, but Spirit-wise;that we, accepted in Christ, and using the Spirit's power in the daily "walk" of circumstance and experience, might be liberated from the life of self-will, and meet the will of God with simplicity and joy.
Such, and nothing less or else, was the Law's "righteous demand"; an obedience not only universal but also cordial. For its first requirement, "Thou shalt have no other God," meant, in the spiritual heart of it, the dethronement of self from its central place, and the session there of the Lord. But this could never be while there was a reckoning still unsettled between the man and God. Friction there must be while God's Law remained not only violated but unsatisfied, unatoned.[124]And so it necessarily remained, till the sole adequate Person, one with God, one with man, stepped into the gap; our Peace, our Righteousness, and also by the Holy Ghost our Life. At rest because of His sacrifice, at work by the power of His Spirit, we are now free to love, and divinely enabled to walk in love. Meanwhile the dream of an unsinning perfectness, such as could make a meritorious claim, is not so much negatived as precluded, put far out of the question. For the central truth of the new position is thatthe Lordhas fully dealt, for us, with the Law's claim that man shalldeserveacceptance. "Boasting" is inexorably "excluded," to the last, from this new kind of law-fulfilling life. For the "fulfilment" which means legal satisfaction is for ever taken out of our hands by Christ,and only that humble "fulfilment" is ours which means a restful, unanxious, reverent, unreserved loyalty in practice. To this now our "mind," our cast and gravitation of soul, is brought, in the life of acceptance, and in the power of the Spirit.|Ver. 5.toVer. 8.|For they who are flesh-wise,the unchanged children of the self-life,think,"mind," have moral affinity and converse with,the things of the flesh; but they who are Spirit-wise, think the things of the Spirit,His love, joy, peace, and all that holy "fruit." Their liberated and Spirit-bearing life now goes that way, in its true bias.For the mind,the moral affinity,of the flesh,of the self-life,is death;it involves the ruin of the soul, in condemnation, and in separation from God;but the mind of the Spirit,the affinity given to the believer by the indwelling Holy One,is life and peace;it implies union with Christ, our life and our acceptance; it is the state of soul in which He is realized.Because—this absolute antagonism of the two "minds" is suchbecause—the "mind" of the flesh is personal hostility(ἔχθρα)towards God; for to God's Law it is not subject. For indeed it cannot besubject to it;those[125]who are in flesh,surrendered to the life of self as their law,cannot please God,[126]"cannot meet the wish" (ἀρέσαι) of Him whose loving but absolute claim is to be Lord of the whole man.
"They cannot": it is a moral impossibility. "The Law of God" is, "Thou shalt love Me with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself"; the mind of theflesh is, "I will love my self and its will first and most." Let this be disguised as it may, even from the man himself; it is always the same thing in its essence. It may mean a defiant choice of open evil. It may mean a subtle and almost evanescent preference of literature, or art, or work, or home, to God's will as such. It is in either case "the mind of the flesh," a thing which cannot be refined and educated into holiness, but must be surrendered at discretion, as its eternal enemy.
Ver. 9.Ver. 10.
But you(there is a glad emphasis on "you")are not in flesh, but in Spirit,surrendered to the indwelling Presence as your law and secret,on the assumption that(εἴπερ: he suggests not weary misgivings but a true examination)God's Spirit dwells in you;has His home in your hearts, humbly welcomed into a continuous residence.But if any one has not Christ's Spirit,(who is the Spirit as of the Father so of the Son, sent by the Son, to reveal and to impart Him,)that man is not His.He may bear his Lord's name, he may be externally a Christian, he may enjoy the divine Sacraments of union; but he has not "the Thing." The Spirit, evidenced by His holy fruit, is no Indweller there; and the Spirit is our vital Bond with Christ.But if Christ is,thus by the Spirit,in you,dwelling by faith in the hearts which the Spirit has "strengthened" to receive Christ (Eph. iii. 16, 17)—true(μὲν),the body is dead, because of sin,the primeval sentence still holds its waythere; the body is deathful still, it is the body of the Fall;but the Spirit[127]is life,He is in that body, your secret of powerand peace eternal,because of righteousness,because of the merit of your Lord, in which you are accepted, and which has won for you this wonderful Spirit-life.
Ver. 11.
Then even for the body there is assured a glorious future, organically one with this living present. Let us listen as he goes on:But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus,the slain Man,from the dead, dwells in you, He who raised from the dead Christ Jesus,the Man so revealed and glorified as the Anointed Saviour,shall also bring to life your mortal bodies, because of(διὰ τὸ κτλ[128])His Spirit, dwelling in you.That "frail temple," once so much defiled, and so defiling, is now precious to the Father because it is the habitation of the Spirit of His Son. Nor only so; that same Spirit, who, by uniting us to Christ, made actual our redemption, shall surely, in ways to us unknown, carry the process to its glorious crown, and be somehow the Efficient Cause of "the redemption of our body."
Wonderful is this deep characteristic of the Scripture; its Gospel for the body. In Christ, the body is seen to be something far different from the mere clog, or prison, or chrysalis, of the soul. It is its destined implement, may we not say its mighty wings in prospect, for the life of glory. As invaded by sin, it must needs pass through either death or, at the Lord's Return, an equivalent transfiguration. But as created in God's plan of Human Nature it is for ever congenial to thesoul, nay, it is necessary to the soul's full action. And whatever be the mysterious mode (it is absolutely hidden from us as yet) of the event of Resurrection, this we know, if only from this Oracle, that the glory of the immortal body will have profound relations with the work of God in the sanctified soul. No mere material sequences will bring it about. It will be "because of the Spirit"; and "because of the Spiritdwelling in you," as your power for holiness in Christ.[129]
So the Christian reads the account of his present spiritual wealth, and of his coming completed life, "his perfect consummation and bliss in the eternal glory." Let him take it home, with most humble but quite decisive assurance, as he looks again, and believes again, on his redeeming Lord. For him, in his inexpressible need, God has gone about to provide "so great salvation." He has accepted his person in His Son who died for him. He has not onlyforgiven himthrough that great Sacrifice, but in it He has "condemned," sentenced to chains and death,his sin, which is now a doomed thing, beneath his feet, in Christ. And He has given to him, as personal and perpetual Indweller, to be claimed, hailed, and used by humble faith, His own Eternal Spirit, the Spirit of His Son, the Blessed One who, dwelling infinitely in the Head,comes to dwell fully in the members, and make Head and members wonderfully one. Now then let him give himself up with joy, thanksgiving, and expectation, to the "fulfilling of the righteous demand of God's Law," "walking Spirit-wise," with steps moving ever away from self and towards the will of God. Let him meet the world, the devil, and that mysterious "flesh," (all ever in potential presence,) with no less a Name than that of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Let him stand up not as a defeated and disappointed combatant, maimed, half-blinded, half-persuaded to succumb, but as one who treads upon "all the power of the enemy," in Christ, by the indwelling Spirit. And let him reverence his mortal body, even while he "keeps it in subjection," and while he willingly tires it, or gives it to suffer, for his Lord. For it is the temple of the Spirit. It is the casket of the hope of glory.
[119]"In this surpassing chapter the several streams of the preceding arguments meet and flow in one 'river of the water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb,' until it seems to lose itself in the ocean of a blissful eternity."—David Brown, D.D., "The Epistle to the Romans," in "Handbooks for Bible Classes."[120]There can be no reasonable doubt that the words "who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit," should be omitted. They are probably aglossfrom ver. 4; inserted (perhaps first as a side-note) by scribes who failed to appreciate the profound simplicity of the Apostle's dictum.[121]We thus indicate the thought given by the otherwise difficult "For" of ver. 2. That "for" cannot mean to imply that there is no condemnationbecause the Spirit has enabled us to be holy; this would stultify the whole argument of chapters iii.-v. What, in that context, it must imply is the complex fact (1) thatwe are in Christ—where there is no condemnation, and (2) that we are thereby the Holy Spirit, who brought us to saving faith. Now we are to learn (3) what that Spirit has donealsofor us in giving us union with Christ.[122]Τοῦ πνεύματος τῆς ζωῆς ἐν Χπριστῷ Ἰησοῦ. In the Greek of the N. T. it is possible so to interpret. Classical Greek would requireτῆς ζωῆς τῆς ἐν Χ. Ἰ.The rendering, however, "the law of the Spirit of life, in Christ Jesus," (making the last three words govern the whole previous thought,) is amply admissible.[123]Περὶ ἁμαρτίας: the phrase is stamped with a sacrificial speciality by the Greek of the O. T. Seee.g.Levit. xvi. 3, 5, 6, 9, 11, 15, 16, 25, 27. And cp. Heb. x. 8.[124]"The way of him that is laden with guilt is exceeding crooked." Prov. xxi. 8 R.V.[125]We do not translate theδὲ. It seems to be best represented in English by connecting the clause only by position with what goes before.[126]The Greek lays a solemn emphasis by position onΘεῷ.[127]We refer the wordπνεῦμαhere, as throughout the passage, to the Holy Ghost. No other interpretation seems either consistent with the whole context, or adequate to its grandeur.[128]We read thus, notδιὰ τοῦ κτλ("by means of, by the agency of, His Spirit"). The two readings have each strong support, but we think the balance of evidence is for the accusative not the genitive. Happily the exegetical difference is not serious. The accusative gives indeed a meaning which may well include that given by the genitive, while it includes other ideas also.[129]We are aware that ver. 11 has been sometimes interpreted of present blessings for the body; as if the fulness of the Holy Ghost was to effect a quasi-glorification of the body's condition now; exempting it from illness, and at least retarding its decay. But this seems untenable. If the words point this way at all, ought they not to mean a literal exemption from death altogether? But this manifestly was not in the Apostle's mind, if we take his writings as a whole. That spiritual blessings may, and often do, act wonderfully in the life of the body, is most true. But that is not the truth of this verse.
[119]"In this surpassing chapter the several streams of the preceding arguments meet and flow in one 'river of the water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb,' until it seems to lose itself in the ocean of a blissful eternity."—David Brown, D.D., "The Epistle to the Romans," in "Handbooks for Bible Classes."
[120]There can be no reasonable doubt that the words "who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit," should be omitted. They are probably aglossfrom ver. 4; inserted (perhaps first as a side-note) by scribes who failed to appreciate the profound simplicity of the Apostle's dictum.
[121]We thus indicate the thought given by the otherwise difficult "For" of ver. 2. That "for" cannot mean to imply that there is no condemnationbecause the Spirit has enabled us to be holy; this would stultify the whole argument of chapters iii.-v. What, in that context, it must imply is the complex fact (1) thatwe are in Christ—where there is no condemnation, and (2) that we are thereby the Holy Spirit, who brought us to saving faith. Now we are to learn (3) what that Spirit has donealsofor us in giving us union with Christ.
[122]Τοῦ πνεύματος τῆς ζωῆς ἐν Χπριστῷ Ἰησοῦ. In the Greek of the N. T. it is possible so to interpret. Classical Greek would requireτῆς ζωῆς τῆς ἐν Χ. Ἰ.The rendering, however, "the law of the Spirit of life, in Christ Jesus," (making the last three words govern the whole previous thought,) is amply admissible.
[123]Περὶ ἁμαρτίας: the phrase is stamped with a sacrificial speciality by the Greek of the O. T. Seee.g.Levit. xvi. 3, 5, 6, 9, 11, 15, 16, 25, 27. And cp. Heb. x. 8.
[124]"The way of him that is laden with guilt is exceeding crooked." Prov. xxi. 8 R.V.
[125]We do not translate theδὲ. It seems to be best represented in English by connecting the clause only by position with what goes before.
[126]The Greek lays a solemn emphasis by position onΘεῷ.
[127]We refer the wordπνεῦμαhere, as throughout the passage, to the Holy Ghost. No other interpretation seems either consistent with the whole context, or adequate to its grandeur.
[128]We read thus, notδιὰ τοῦ κτλ("by means of, by the agency of, His Spirit"). The two readings have each strong support, but we think the balance of evidence is for the accusative not the genitive. Happily the exegetical difference is not serious. The accusative gives indeed a meaning which may well include that given by the genitive, while it includes other ideas also.
[129]We are aware that ver. 11 has been sometimes interpreted of present blessings for the body; as if the fulness of the Holy Ghost was to effect a quasi-glorification of the body's condition now; exempting it from illness, and at least retarding its decay. But this seems untenable. If the words point this way at all, ought they not to mean a literal exemption from death altogether? But this manifestly was not in the Apostle's mind, if we take his writings as a whole. That spiritual blessings may, and often do, act wonderfully in the life of the body, is most true. But that is not the truth of this verse.
HOLINESS BY THE SPIRIT, AND THE GLORIES THAT SHALL FOLLOW
Romansviii. 12-25
NOW the Apostle goes on to develop these noble premisses into conclusions. How true to himself, and to his Inspirer, is the line he follows! First come the most practical possible of reminders of duty; then, and in profound connexion, the inmost experiences of the regenerate soul in both its joy and its sorrow, and the most radiant and far-reaching prospects of glory to come. We listen still, always remembering that this letter from Corinth to Rome is to reach us too, by way of the City. He who moved His servant to send it to Aquila and Herodion had us too in mind, and has now carried out His purpose. It is open in our hands for our faith, love, hope, life to-day.
St Paul begins with Holiness viewed as Duty, as Debt. He has led us through our vast treasury of privilege and possession. What are we to do with it? Shall we treat it as a museum, in which we may occasionally observe the mysteries of New Nature, and with more or less learning discourse upon them? Shall we treat it as the unwatchful King[130]of old treated hissplendid stores, making them his personal boast, and so betraying them to the very power which one day was to make them all its spoil? No, we are to live upon our Lord's magnificent bounty—to His glory, and in His will. We are rich; but it is for Him. We have His talents; and those talents, in respect of His grace, as distinct from His "gifts," are not one, nor five, nor ten, but ten thousand—for they are Jesus Christ. But we have them allfor Him. We are free from the law of sin and of death; but we are in perpetual and delightful debt to Him who has freed us. And our debt is—to walk with Him.
"So, brethren, we are debtors." Thus our new paragraph begins. For a moment he turns to say what we owenodebt to; even "the flesh," the self-life. But it is plain that his main purpose is positive, not negative. He implies in the whole rich context that we are debtors to the Spirit, to the Lord, "to walk Spirit-wise."
What a salutary thought it is! Too often in the Christian Church the great word Holiness has been practically banished to a supposed almost inaccessible background, to the steeps of a spiritual ambition, to a region where a few might with difficulty climb in the quest, men and women who had "leisure to be good," or who perhaps had exceptional instincts for piety. God be thanked, He has at all times kept many consciences alive to the illusion of such a notion; and in our own day, more and more, His mercy brings it home to His children that "this is His will, even the sanctification"—not of some of them, but of all. Far and wide we are reviving to see, as the fathers of our faith saw before us, that whatever else holiness is, it is a sacred and bindingdebt. It is not an ambition; it is a duty. We are bound, every one of us who names the name of Christ,to be holy, to be separate from evil, to walk by the Spirit.
Alas for the misery of indebtedness, when funds fall short! Whether the unhappy debtor examines his affairs, or guiltily ignores their condition, he is—if his conscience is not dead—a haunted man. But when an honourable indebtedness concurs with ample means, then one of the moral pleasures of life is the punctual scrutiny and discharge. "He hath it by him"; and it is his happiness, as it is assuredly his duty,notto "say to his neighbour, Go and come again, and to-morrow I will give" (Prov. iii. 28).
Christian brother, partaker of Christ, and of the Spirit, we also owe, to Him who owns. But it is an indebtedness of the happy type. Once we owed, and there was worse than nothing in the purse. Now we owe, and we have Christ in us, by the Holy Ghost, wherewithal to pay. The eternal Neighbour comes to us, with no frowning look, and shews us His holy demand; to live to-day a life of truth, of purity, of confession of His Name, of unselfish serviceableness, of glad forgiveness, of unbroken patience, of practical sympathy, of the love which seeks not her own. What shall we say? That it is a beautiful ideal, which we should like to realize, and may yet some day seriously attempt? That it is admirable, but impossible? Nay; "we are debtors." And He who claims has first immeasurably given. We have His Son for our acceptance and our life. His very Spirit is in us. Are not these good resources for a genuine solvency? "Say not, Go and come again; I will pay Thee—to-morrow.Thou hast it by thee!"
Holiness is beauty. But it is first duty, practical and present, in Jesus Christ our Lord.