BS2665 .M585 1886 Morison, James, 1816-189i. St. Paul's teaching on sanctif ication : a practical exposition of Romans VI / ST. PAUL'S TEACHING SANCTIFICATION. ST. PAUL'S TEACHING ON SANCTIFICATION A PRACTICAL EXPOSITION OF ROMANS VI. BY JAMES MORISOjN, D.D., A iithor of Practical Commentaries on Matthew, Mark, etc. IToiibon : HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. MDCCCLXXXVI. [All rights reserved.] Butler &• Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frame, and London. PREFACE. By Practical Exposition I do not mean Free and Easy Observations, or Pious Reflections, carried Ho^ the sacred text, and there suspended on pegs of Scripture Phraseology. All Scripture-Exposition — inclusive of that which is designated Practical — is, or ought to be, Scripture-Explication. It is, or ought to be, the unfolding and exposing-to-view of the thoughts which had been infolded in the origination of the sacred text. It belongs to the ideal of such Exposition as is fitly called Practical, to speak directly to the unprofessional intelligence, and as much as possible in the accredited dialect of culture. When thus speaking the Expositor should pre- sent to the public, not so much the processes as the results of scientific exegesis. VI PEEFACE. Men in masses may be expected to take in- terest in such literature, when men individually succeed in verifying for themselves the contents of the sacred writings, as constituting a mes- sage of * good news ' that comes home to every one's 'business and bosom.' The topic treated by the Apostle in Romans vi, is certainly exceedingly practical. It is hence all the more likely to take us near and nearer still to the heart of our duties, necessities, and privileges. It is full of counsel to which it would be well were all the world to listen and take earnest heed. There is not much of special literature con- nected with Romans vi, in the department either of Introduction or of Exposition. The Chapter has, on the whole, been found to be, in several of its elements, somewhat perplexing, though profoundly interesting. Then, unlike Chapters V, vii, and ix, it has not, to any appreciable extent, been turned into an arena of theological gladiatorship. There is scope for a good deal of fresh exegesis. One charm of the Chapter is imperishable : — Its entire contents are the genuine literary pro- duct of the Apostle's own mind and heart. The PEEFACE. Vll authenticity of the Epistle to the Romans, like that of the ' perfervid ' Epistle to the Galatians, is, by the unanimous verdict of critics, unchal- lengeable, so that, when we reach the writer's standpoints, we tread the very ground on which the Apostle himself stood, and which he turned into a * clearing ' for our occupation. While we read, and ponder, and reflect, we think some of the choicest of his thoughts. Florentine Bank House, HiLLHEAD, Glasgow. 1886. ST. FA UL'S TEACHING IN ROMANS VI V. 1. " What then shall ive saij ? " (T/ ovv epoufxev ;) A transition-expression, and a debater's phrase. It was a favourite with the Apostle, who alone of all the New Testament writers makes use of it. Here it serves as a logical bridge, by means of which his discursive mind passes into a new domain of discussion. It is the Ethics of Ghristianitij , or the Doctrine of Sanctification as distinguished from Jiistifica-j tion, of which the Apostle is about to treat. He does not feel that it is in a spirit of lone- liness that he enters into a consideration of this great and most practical theme. His enthusi- asm is infectious ; and he is confident that his readers will go along with him, and surge around him, so that unitedly they and he will have fellowship together. Hence the plural expression epovfj-ev. But the writer is not about to isolate the dis- cussion of the great theme. He is not intending to compose a distinct Dissertation on Sanctifica- 2^ ST. PAUL S TEACHING ON SANCTIFICATION. Hon, whicli miglit be thrust into his doctrinal letter. His discussion is to be part and parcel of a larger discussion on Christian Salvation. Hence the illative particle ' then ' (ow) in the transition-phrase : What ' then ' shall we say ? It looks back to the discussion that precedes, and on the crest of which the reader is, with the Apostle himself, carried forward to a doc- trinal stage, that is clearly in advance of the positions reached in what goes before. In view of the discussion immediately preceding, what, in consistency -with logical thought, shall we 'pro- ceed to say ? Shall it be, ^^ Let us persist in sin that grace may increase ? " Shall we say that ? ISTote the substitution, in our translation, of the hortative expression Let us persist in sin, for the future expression in King James's Version, Shall we continue in sin ? There can be no doubt that in the Greek text we should, instead of the future eiri/uievov/uieu, read the subjunctive einiuepcofxep. It is the reading of Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott-and-Hort ; and it may be rendered either, according to its deliberative usage, Should we persist in sin ? or, according to its hortative usage. Let us persist in sin. The two usages coalesce in substantive import. (See Matt. vi. 31; xvii. 4; Mark iv. 30; 1 Cor. xv. 32.) It was said in the immediately preceding con- IIOMANS VI. 1, 2. 3 text that " where sin abounded grace abounded more exceedingly." Tlie sphere of man's sin was encompassed by the vaster sphere of God's grace. AVhile m-an's sin was exceedingly great, Grod's grace was still greater. Man's transgression was incalculably multiplied by the formal introduction of the Law (see chap. v. 20) ; but this multiplica- tion and increase gave occasion to a still greater multiplication and increase of the grace and com- passion of Grod. Well, ivJiat now shall loe say ? Shall Ave say this, Let us persist in sinning that grace may he multiplied a7id abound ? Y. 2. " Far he it.^' (M^ yeuoiro.) Let aversion to such an idea be accentuated to the utmost degree. " Hoio shall ive, who died to sin, still live in it ? " (o'tTives aireQavoixev ti] aixaoTia, TriJos €Tl o/cro/xeJ' €V avTrf 'A It is assumed that it may be said of all truej Christians, They once died to sin, i.e. in relation'\ to sin. The idea is, that, when they became united to Christ, they died in relation to sin. In becoming united to Christ, they were united to Him in His death. They were, so to speak, absorbed into His personality, and thus identified with Him in His death. His death was theirs. It was as much theirs as it would have been, 4 ST. Paul's teaching on sanctification. had tliey, when He died, been literally members of His body, parts of His person. They get the benefit of His death just as if they had literally endured the dying. Now, when Christ died. He died in relation to sin. He died hy it indeed. He also died on account of it. But He likewise died to it ; so that, if human sin should or could be regarded as impersonated, it would yet have no farther claims against Him. Viewed vicariously, as the representative of sinful men, Christ was freed, when He died, from farther penal claims on the part of sin. And we, who believe in Him, go back to the same great crisis of His being and die with Him. Hence the Apostle says, lue died to sin. It is not a state of sanctification that is described ; it is not a daily dying to the seductive influence of sin that is referred to. It is death as the exhaustion of penalty that is spoken of. M. le Cene, though representing quite a host of expositors, is on the wrong lines entirely when he bodies forth, as the purport of the first paragraph of this chapter, the following heading : " The baptised ought to he dead to sin for ever. The neiu life."" But what is the Apostle's argument ? He finds in the fact that lue died in Jesus to sin, a reason why we should not continue unsanc- tified, or, as he expresses it, why we should not " persist in sinning," — why we should not " live ROMANS VI. 2. 5 in sin." Tlie force of the reasoning resolves itself into tbe might of the motive to holiness, which is involved in the fact that the believer in Christ obtains immunity from the penalty of the sins of which he has been guilty. This im- munity is under another phase 'forgiveness.' It is forgiveness for the sake of Christ ; for- giveness based on the mediatorial suffering of Christ, as its " meritorious cause." It is for- giveness assured to the believer by his union, through faith, with Christ. The might of the moral motive consists in the magnitude and excellency of the blessing that is realised. " We love Him because He first loved us," — a wonder- ful and unspeakable blessing. "She," whose for- given sins are many, " loveth much." The love of Christ, and of God in Christ, " constraineth the believer to live, not to himself, but to Christ."' That is to say, it constrains him to " follow holiness," and to run in the way of God's com- mandments. Hoiu then shall ive, who died to sin, and whose characteristic it is that ive thus died (o'lrive?), live any longer in it ? How shall we, who have got forgiveness of sin in so wonderful a way, and at so wonderful a cost, be indifferent in our hearts to the will of God, and give our- selves up to sinning ? 6 ST. Paul's teaching on sanctification. Y. 3. " Or" (-;). It is as if the Apostle were to say, or J let me put the case somewhat differ- enily. There is not much of ' disjunction ' in the Apostle's representations, and nothing of * antithesis.' Hence Luther, and Tyndale, and other translators, leave the particle untranslated. The Yulgate, followed by Erasmus and Beza, translates it by the Latin 'aJ^.' ^^ Know ye not?" (J Ay voelre ;) Surely it is the case that ye know. The Apostle is about to make a statement, which he expected to be instantly endorsed by his Roman brethren ; and that, not simply out of their confidence in his present teaching, but out of the resources of their pre- vious knowledge in reference to the nature of Christianity and its institutions. " That all ive luho tvere baptized into Christ JesUSf^ {on ocroi ejSaTTTicrOtjjULeu eh ^picrrov ^lijcrovv,^ i.e. who were united to Christ Jesus by baptism. The expression eh X^ofcrroV is not to be rendered, with Oltramare, in Christ; nor, with Meyer, in reference to Christ; nor, with Darby and the Geneva, unto Christ ; nor, with Beet, for Christ ; nor, with Tyndale, in the name of Christ. Luther and Myles Ooverdale give it correctly, into Christ. The phrase is a Pauline idiom, but it simply denotes inward union with Christ, effected through inward baptism. That is the Apostle's idea. He is thinking of such union as qualifies ROMANS VI. 3. 7 believers of the gospel for afiSrEQing, we died to sin; we died, namely in Christ. We needed to he in Christ, in order that in Him ive might die to sin. The expression (rviu(pvToi jeyovaixev in V. 5, ive have become grown together, makes it evident that the Apostle is thinking of the vital union that subsists between Christians and Christ. How can such a vital union be effected through baptism ? ' Never through the baptism of water. It is a spiritual union. It is a union that is realisable and realised in, for example, holy and consistent members of the Society of Friends, although they observe no water- baptism at all. It is realised equally in those who are baptised by immersion, and in those who have been baptised under the form of some other mode. It is a union which is not determined in its date by the date of the administration of the outer ordinance. The baptism of water in infancy dqes not secure its realisation, either then or at any subsequent period of life. The baptism of water, adminis- tered in mature life on the warrant of actual faith and conversion, is an anachronism, if in- tended to secure vital union with Christ. That vital union is, by hypothesis, already secured. It is therefore quite irrespective of outward baptism. It has been realised by the holy in O ST. PAUL S TEACHING ON SANCTIFICATION. all ages, and under all dispensations. In no age or dispensation has forgiveness or salvation been, in any single case, realised apart from Christ. It is utterly unrealisable except in union with Christ. The name Christ, and the history of Christ, may not be universally known. But they are known to God. And it is on the footing of what Christ is, and did, and does, that the Great Father deals propitiously with men every- where, and thus makes known, evangelistically, His propitiousness. When, then, the Apostle says lue were hap. Used into Christ Jesus, he refers exclusively to that spiritual or mystic baptism which has been common to all ages and dispensations, and which is expressly spoken of in Matt. iii. 11, " I indeed baptise you with water unto repent- ance : but He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear : He shall baptise you ivith the Holy Spirit and tuithfire." The same distinction is implied in what is written in John i. 26, in answer to the question " Why then baptisest thou, if thou art not the Christ, neither Elijah, nor the prophet ? " John answered them saying, *' J baptise ivith ivater: in the midst of you standeth one whom ye know not, even He that cometh after me, the latchet of whose shoe I am not worthy to loose." It EOMANS VI. 3. 9 is antithetically implied tliat the Baptist's great successor would baptise with something trans- cendentlj superior to water. We read again in the Acts of the Apostles i. 4, 5, that Jesus charged His disciples "to wait for the promise of the Father, which, said He, ye heard frpm Me, for John indeed baptised with water : hut ye shall be baptised with the Holy Spivit not many days hence.'* There is then, over and above the baptism of water, a spiritual baptism. In its administration there will no doubt be various aims and adaptations. But if a baptismal in- fluence be indispensable for faith, repentance, conviction, conversion, sanctification, then doubt- less it will not be wanting in the Providence of Grod; nor will it be behindhand, when souls are being savingly united to the Saviour. There is a statement made by the Apostle in his first Epistle to the Corinthians, which casts a clear and st&ady light upon the passage before us. It occurs in chap. xii. 12, 13 : " For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body ; so also is Christ (viz. in His mystic or ideal personality) ; for in one Spirit were we all baptised into one body, ivhether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free ; and ivere all made to d,rinh of *one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many." V. 27. "Now ye are the 10 ST. Paul's teaching on sanctifioation. body of Christ and, severally, the members thereof r To be baptised into Christ, tlien, is to be iinited to Him spiritually and vitally by that spiritual influence that baptises souls. ^^ Know ye not that as many of us as luere bap- tised into Christ, loere baptised into His death ? " The Apostle is throwing light on the expression in the 2nd verse, " we died to sin." Yes, there is * death ' in the case. It was primarily the death of Christ, But secondarily it is the death o£ all those who are " in Him." For they, who have been spiritually united to Him by spiritual baptism, have been, by their spiritual baptism, spiritually united to Him in His death. Had it not been for His death they would never have been united to Him at all. He came into the world to "give His life" as a ransom. He came into our human nature to " cZi'e." He was delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God that He might " die." His death is the pivot of Christianity. And hence if men are to be in vital union with Him at all, it is fit and meet that they should be baptised into His ^' death." V. 4. " We ivere buried therefore with Him by our baptism into His death." {(jvveTa(prjij.ev ovv avrS) EOMANS VI. 4. 11 Sia rod (BaTTTicriuaTO? eig tov Qavarov.^ Very literally, and un-idiomatically, the statement would run thus: " We were buried therefore ivitli Him through' * the' baptism into ' the' death." The two articles, before baptism and death respectively, may, in our English idiom, be fittingly rendered as pro- nouns. They refer to ' the ' baptism and ' the ' death, which are specified in the immediately preceding context. It is to be noted that it is not into Christ's burial that believers are baptised. It is into His death, His crucifixion. (See Gral. ii. 20.) But the believer's death, like his Lord's, is not an ultimate state or stage. There was to Christ and there is to us, something beyond death, to which we advance. There is much, — much too that is great, and bright, and good. The Apostle, in the striking representation that lies before us, traces the course of our Lord's progressive experience, and of the kindred ex- perience of those who have been baptised into Him. After death, burial naturally follows. There was burial in the case of our Lord. It was a quiet pause between the pathos of His crucifixion and the triumph of His resurrection. So far as its connection with His decease is concerned, its chief value resolves itself into its evidential relationship. It is evidence of the reality of the 12 ST. Paul's teaching on sanctieication. death. No mere siuoon, such as Bunsen conjec- tured, no mere lethargy, such as Schleiermacher fancied, had taken place. Christ literally died and was literally buried. But His burial, like His death, was only a stepping-stone to an ulterior condition. While His body was in the grave, and His soul was in Hades — " the world of the disembodied," He looked calmly forth, anti- cipating translation to the glory that is beyond, and to the "fulness of joy" that is "for ever- more." A corresponding spiritual experience is the prerogative of all His people. In the first moment of their faith they are — so to speak — absorbed into the Saviour's ideal personality. They are " in Him " for participation in the decease which He accomplished. "In Him" they "died to sin," and were thus freed from its penalty on the ground of His vicarious dying. Hence, while consciously realizing this marvellous mani- festation of Divine goodness and mercy, they can pause a little for contemplation " aft and afore." They are, for a brief space, put apart and " buried with Christ." The spiritual death is past. The spiritual resurrection is about to be. And meanwhile, between the two there is, in the Christian consciousness, the vital touch and feel- ing of that link that binds into unity an un- speakably momentous past and an unspeakably momentous future. Hence, in the Apostle's EOMANS VI. 4. 13 actual and practical preaching of the gospel, he went into consecutive detail, and, wherever he unfurled his blood-stained banner, he proclaimed, " Christ died for our sins according to the Scrip- tures : and He toas huried ; and He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures" (1 Cor. XV. 3, 4). That announcement, said he, " is the gospel which I preached " (1 Cor. xv. 1). ^^ In order that ^ as Christ was raised from the dead hy means of the glory of the Father, so ive also might loalh-ahout in neivness of life.^' (lua axnrep ijyepOr] Xotcrro? e/c veKpcov oia r?}? oo^tjs tou TraTjOO?, ouTO)? Kai rj/mei? ev KaiPOTtjTi yo*y? TrepiTraTi/- crooixev). This is the end intended by God in our union 'with Christ as regards His death, burial, and resurrection : — that ive should ivalk-ahout in neivness of life. Our Lord's resurrection is rather assumed than directly asserted. But He did rise from among the dead and walk-about. It was neivness of life to Him, — a new state and style of life. He was no longer exposed to the penalty of human sin. His agony was past. The whole confluence of sufferings that dragged their slow length along the career of His humili- ation, and that finally discharged themselves into His agony, and then into His crucifixion, and thence into the sacrificial surrender of His life when " His heart was broken," * — all this had * See Stroud's Physical Cause of Christ's Death. 2nd Edit. 14 ST. Paul's teaching on sanctipication. passed away for ever. There were to be no more hidino^s of His Father's countenance behind the accumulated fogs and clouds of human sins. Never again would there be, to the sensibility of His heart, a feeling as of dereliction. The joy of absolute complacency had arisen in His soul, like a sun, and was hasting to its eternal zenith. It was the life of infinite bliss, on which our Lord had, in His humanity, entered. It was " glorifi- cation." Somewhat similar is the new life of believers ; only it is but in epitome and miniature. They walk-about in this world as heirs of the world that is to come, — the world of glory. All good things are theirs. They are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ : — so great, so grand is their heritage. Their very trials are turned into ialessings and made to work together for their good. (See Rom. viii. 28.) The believer's newness of life, as is evidenced by our Lord's newness of Ufe, is not a peculiarity of ethical character, but a peculiarity of personal privilege and estate. It was hy the glory of the Father that the Saviour was raised from among the dead. There was the occurrence of a glorious exertion of potver. The power employed was the Father's ; though in no such exclusive sense as to debar the co-opera- tion of the Son (John ii. 19). As the Supreme ROMANS VI. 4, 5. 15 Magistrate of the universal moral empire, tlie Father was most emphatically well-pleased with the self-sacrifice of the Son. And hence " He raised Him up, having loosed the pains of death " (Acts ii. 2-i). " This Jesus did God raise up, whereof" — says St. Peter — "we all are wit- nesses" (Acts ii. 32). "Ye killed the Prince of Life" — said the same Apostle again — ''luhom God raised from the dead, whereof we are wit- nesses " (Acts iii. 15). He says again in chapter iv. 10, " Whom God raised from the dead.'' St. Peter thus agrees with St. Paul in ascribing the eventuation of the Saviour's resurrection to " the glory of the Father." The believer in Christ, who has realised his union with the Saviour in death and burial, will, without difficulty, or hesitancy, still farther realise his union in resurrection, pregnant, as that resurrection is, with "newness of life" and "joy that is unspeakable and full of glory." When the Apostle says " we were therefore buried," the " therefore " links the burial to the preceding death, and leaves it to be inferred that there is, in Christian experience, another link in advance that unites to resurrection-life. Y. 5. This is an exceedingly compressed verse. The ideas are crowded and, as it were, crammed 16 ST. Paul's teaching on sanctification. together, with the effect of so inter-twisting the phraseology that very careful analysis is re- quired. The original Greek runs thus, Ei" yap crviucpvroi yeyova/xev tw o/ULoicojULari rod Oavarou avrou, aWa koi T?/? avacTTacreci)? ecro/uieOa. The For or yap indicates that the Apostle desires to confirm the declaration, that it is divinely contemplated that we, who believe in Christ, should walk-about in newness of life. " For if — says he — we have become united ivith Him i7i death, ■we shall assuredly be united with Him in His resurrection liheiuise.^' The word a-u/ucpvToij grown together, in its rela- tion to -TrepiTrar/ja-cofxei^, that we should walJc-about, exhibits a marked mixture of metaphors, which a .fastidious rhetorician would not unlikely have avoided. The idea, however, is suflficiently trans- parent. Believers have become grown together with Christ. The translation of the Vulgate is free, si conplantati facti sumus. The Eheims trans- lation is, if ive be become complanted ; and, accor- dantly, that of our public English version is, if we have been planted together. The Geneva is, if ive be grafted ivith Him,. Tyndale's is simply if lue be graft. But a-v/xcpvroi is rather grown together, than either planted or graffed together. The real idea is, intimately united, so intimately as to be vitally one. Such is the relation of KOMANS VI. 5. 17 Christians to Christ. They have become inti- mately and vitally united to Him in His death. And, says the Apostle, if this be the case, as it really is, then it follows that they shall be also intimately and vitally united to Him in His resurrection. Death without resurrection would be, to Christ, but one-half of the arch of His glory, a fragment riven off and torn from the unity of His mediatorial enterprise. It would be as a hemisphere of impenetrable gloom, with no hemisphere of light and lustre beyond, like day succeeding night, or sunshine after storm. To Christ the resurrection was indispensable, unless death, darkness, and defeat were to be the ultimate condition and fate of the universe. But if re- surrection be to Christ an ethical necessity and an' assured reality, then its bright and blissful issue will be part and parcel of the joint-heirship of believers. " If they be united to Christ in His death, then they ivill he liJcewise united to Him in His resurrection." It is a finely pictorial, or hieroglyphical, and figurative way of saying, that if deliverance from the woful penal effects of sin be assured, through Christ, to those who believe in Him as their Saviour, so will be their admission into participation with Him of the glorious reward of His perfect offering of righteousness. The Apostle, however, does not simply say, if ive have become intimately united ivith Him 18 ST. Paul's teaching on sanctification. in His death, so shall we also he in His resurrec- tion ; he introduces tlie idea oi likeness (pixolwixa), and says, if ive have become most intimately united with Sim in the ' likeness ' of His death, so shall we also he in that of His resurrec- tion. It is two distinct representations which he welds together. The one we have been considering ; the other is to the effect that if 2ve have hecome ' like ' to Christ in death, so shall lue he in resurrection. Likeness to Christ in death is distinguished from identification. It is a difference in ideal representation. But both views are admirably harmonious with the concrete reality to which they are applied. Believers of the gospel can say of themselves, we died in Clirist to sin. Here is identification. But they can likewise say, our death to sin is ' like ' the death of Christ to sin. Here is similitude. There is scope for this representation of similitude. Christ's death to sin was both out- ward and inward in its peculiarity. It was both physical and spiritual. But the believer's death to sin is inward only, and spiritual. The two representations are not identical, but like. Each of the deaths represented is a death to sin. The real idea is, that for the sake of the death of Christ there is deliverance from the penalty of sin. There is what is equivalent to pardon. EOMANS VI. 5, 6. 19 And if there be, then there is likewise some- thing more. There is life, positive life. There is the fulness of bliss in expectancy. There is the inheritance of glory and honour coupled with immortality (Romans ii. 7-10). The aWd or hut, that leads the ' apodosis ' of the sentence, is the survival of a fuller re- presentation that had hovered in the mind of the writer : "If we were united with Him in the likeness of His death, that will not he the full extent of the unmi ; hut we shall be also united in the likeness of His resurrection." The future ea-o/j-eBa, lue shall he, is not intended to be historically predictive. It simply denotes a relation of logical sequence. If union in the death of Christ be postulated, it follows that union in His resurrection may likewise be as- sumed. He who is sure of the first phase of union has equal reason to be sure of the other. Y. 6. "Knowing this " (rovro yivdoa-Kovreg). The this, the TovTo, is prospective, pointing forward to the statements lying on the other side of the verb yivcoa-Kovre?. The participle introduces a clear subjective certainty, that is additional to the assurance that is involved in the hypothetical proposition of the preceding verse : " knowing this that our old man was crucified loith (Rim).'^ 20 ST. Paul's teaching on sanotifioation. yoTi 6 TraXato? ^/ixcov apOpooirog (TwecrTaupdoOt].^ By the expression our old man the Apostle means our former self, our self such as ive ivere before con- version. The phrase is relative to the antithetic phrase the new man. See Eph. iv. 22-24 ; Ool. iii. 9, 10. In consequence of this reciprocal re- lativity of the two phrases, neither of them is strictly applicable or realisable in the case of the unconverted. It is the presence of the new man that turns the other self into the old man. The word old in the phrase does not mean aged ; and neiD is not youthful or young. There are shreds, indeed, of these meanings in the two terms. But the old man is the former uncon- verted self ; the neiv man is the man that is the present and converted self. The representation must not be pared to the quick. In the Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians the will- endowed self-hood of Christian believers is repre- sented as acting, or as having acted, in reference to both the old and the new self-hood, as if there were three self-hoods in the unity of the one personality. But of course the self-hood is only one. And the old and new self-hoods are but the subjective or ideal relativities of the personal unity. The believer's former self was — says the Apostle — crucified ivith Christ. The idea is that on the occurrence of faith in Christ, as Christ is EOMANS VI. 6. 21 revealed in the gospel, a union supervened. The man was taken up " into Christ " so as to be *' in Christ." The glorious Being, who was the object of the man's faith, absorbed him into His Crucified Self. Such and. so intimate was their union. As far as resultant privileges were con- cerned, the crucifixion belonged to the sinner as well as to the Sufferer. The man was " crucified with Christ." He was no sharer — so far as con- sciousness was concerned — of the pangs of penal crucifixion as endured on Calvary. But he enjoyed, the immunity, consequent on the ex- haustion of the penalty, just as if he had been literally crucified in Christ. The Apostle says our old man was crucified. The representation is a variation from that which is found in Galatians ii. 20, " I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ liveth in me." The Christ-element in the life of the Apostle was supreme. But in the passage before us it is not at all the present life of the Apostle or his peers that is referred to. It is the old man who is represented as co-crucified. Crucifixion with Christ is not the antecedent, it is the consequent, of ' saving faith.' There is not, first, conscious union with Christ, and then faith. The order is the reverse of that. It is first faith, and then union with Christ. But union with Christ is essential to immunity 22 ST. Paul's teaching on sanctifioation. from sin's penalty and to the inheritance of glory and honour coupled with immortality. It is not, first, immunity and inheritance, and then union with Christ. It is, first, union with Christ and then immunity and inheritance. It is '* in Christ " that we get pardon, justification, and glorifica- tion. Hence it is tlie old man that was co- crucified with Christ. There was no new man till the co-crucifixion was consummated. But why this crucifixion of the old man with Christ ? V^hj should there be any such union with Christ ? What is the grand aim ? the "final cause"? Is it that believers of the gospel, attaining the specified union with all its immunities and prospective inheritances, may rest for ever and be thankful ? Is it that their self-hood may be filled and gorged with unlimited gratification ? Away for ever he the thought ! (M;; yevoiTo.) Such selfism would be selfishness in infinite degree. It is an end that would be utterly unworthy of both God and man. And far other was the conception of the Apostle. He explains his teleology thus : " in order that the body of sin might he utterly disabled, so that it may no longer he able to tyrannise over us Civa KarapytjO^ to crcojua rJ?? ajuLapTiag, tov ixrjKeri SovXeveiv ^/mag ryj a/mapTia). Such is God's aim in our co-crucifixion with Christ. The Apostle's representation is highly figurative. He thinks EOMANS VI. 6. 23 of sin as a tyrant. It rules the sinner with a rod of iron. It is with no gentle hand that it wields its massive sceptre. The tyrant is hard and harsh. The Apostle ascribes to it a hoclij. It is the vehicle of the tyrant's tyranny. All ^ the members are sedulously, unfeelingly, cruelly vs) employed in carrying out his unreasoning and unreasonable will. But it is in vain that ex- positors debate with one another what this body realistically is. The Apostle is drawing on the canvas of his imagination the picture of a tyrant. He is thinking, for the moment, in the figures of a fertile fancy. Every tyrant has a body of one description or other, and tyrannises in it and through it. But let us not abandon the Apostle's generic idealism for a narrowly specific or in- dividualising representation. Christianity has to do with this hoclij of sin. The end contemplated in reference to it is that it might he mortally disabled. Hence the co- crucifixion. When the old man is crucified with Christ, tlie body of sin, as ensphered within him, is transfixed upon the cross. The figures are not drawn with absolute literary nicety and art. The Apostle is not seeking for " the wisdom of words." The old man and the body of sin are in reality, as he draws them, not perfectly identi- cal in character. The neiu man has special rela- tions to each ; and thus, in both cases a difference 24 ST. Paul's teaching on sanctifioation. is involved. Tliere is, however, on either side of tlie involution the * promise and the potency ' of a grand final result. That is the burden of the doctrinal import. And hence, when the Apostle speaks of the union of believers with the Saviour, a union in virtue of which -His immunities and prospective privileges become theirs, the language conveys the assurance that the union will be regulated and dominated by an aim grandly ethical and Divine. The aim is this, that by the might of matchless generosity and loving- kindness on the part of God, the delusive and seductive power of sin may, on the part of men, be broken in their hearts. Men's " sanctifioa- tion " is God's aim ; and His principal ethical leverage within the heart is the noble principle of gratitude for grace received. KarapyijO^. This picturesque term is one of the Apostle's favourites, and is here rendered in the authorized English Version, might he destroyed. In no other author, sacred or secular, is the term wielded with so much zest. It means to render idle, to make ineficient or inoperative, to disahle. It reveals that it is part and parcel of the Divine ethical aim to break the power of sin. To the believing, sin is like a crucified tyrant. It may linger on for a period, and, by force of habit, authority may be conceded to it for a limited time ; but its power is mortally EOMANS VI. 6. 25 broken. Soon must it altogether cease to annoy or deceive. It is doomed ; and by and by it will be " brought to nought." Karapyeco is rendered to destroy in 1 Cor. vi. 13; XV. 26 ; 2 Thess. ii. 8 ; Heb. ii. 14. It is rendered to abolish in 2 Cor. iii. 13 ; Eph. ii. 15 ; 2 Tim. i. 10. Sin will yet be ahoUsJied and destroyed. What henceforward is the relation of believers to the tyrant ? The Apostle reveals the Divine aim, " that so %ve should no longer he in bondage to sin^^ (tov jUit]K€Ti SovXeueiv ijfxag Trj afiaprla^. There had been already too much bondage. The tyrant had got his own way too long. And the poor serfs had not had the manliness to strike off their fetters when they had the power. They were willing to be slaves, leading a grovelling life, and refusing to be free. The moral infatuation was profound. Such was the condition of men everywhere | when the Divine Deliverer appeared on the scene. \ He struck a blow for freedom, that has been, all down through the ages, reverberated in millions of human hearts, and in millions more. He died in the conflict; but He triumphed as He died, and by His dying. He took men up with Him into His death, so that they were co-crucified. And the grand ethical aim of the Great Grod was that the body of sin might be utterly disabled^ so that they should be no longer in bondage to sin. 26 ST. Paul's teaching on sanctification. The category of time must in some respects be merged in the Apostle's representation. The old man ivas co-crucified. The old man is co-crucified. The union between Christ and Christians %vas. And it is. Since the life and death of Jesus liave entered into the historical evolution of the human race, there is Divine provision, available to all men, for emancipation from the penalty, as also, and thence, for emancipation from the degradation and folly of sin. Such was, such is, the ethical aim of the Great God. And such is the substrate of import in the verse we have been considering. V. 7. ^^For lie who died has been justified from his sin J" ('O yap airoOavcov SeSiKaicorai airo Trjg afxapTia?.) The Apostle reiterates the great evan- gelical blessing conferred upon the believer — the blessing that carries in its bosom the grand motive power for sanctification. The believer has been justified from his sin. The Apostle's for^ or yap, should be noticed. It confirms the immediately preceding statement concerning the believer's privilege. The discourse is dialectically knit together, but not simply with a bare sufiSciency of rigidly logical coherence. The writer recurs with epistolary freedom to the details of his theme, and adds ex abundanti link to link. EOMANS VI. 7. 27 'O airoQavwv, is qui mortuus est, he luJio died, namely in Christ. See both the preceding and the succeeding context. It is the Christian be- liever who is referred to. His spiritual hopes repose upon the fact of his union with Christ. And the Christ with whom he is in unison and union is the Christ ivho died, He is " Christ the crucified." The believer thinks of Him as such; and still as such he thinks of Him, and has faith in Him. Remove, indeed, Christ the Crucified from the believer's faith, and there remains a mere and empty husk of thought. But when the act of faith is present, and likewise the great object, namely, Christ the Crucified, then the conditions are present that warrant the identifi- cation, in ethical privilege, of the believer and his Lord. Hence the remarkable expression, he has been justified from his sin : (^SeSiKalwrai aTro tJ?? aixapria's). The idea of liberation is subsumed in the idea of justification. Hence the a-n-o, or ' from.' A similar subsumption is found in Acts xiii. 39 : " and by Christ every one who believeth is justified from all things, from which he could not be justified by the law of Moses." The sinner who has — through faith — died with Christ, or who has — through faith — got into union with Christ, is judicially freed from the power of sin to condemn to the endurance of sin's penalty. His title to the inheritance of bliss is, notwith- \ 28 ST. Paul's teaching on sanotification. standing his sins, judicially assured to him. He is judicially vindicated, and thus justified as one having in his possession the " righteousness " which is the sinner's all-sufficient plea. (See Rom. ix. 30 ; x. 3-8 ; iii. 21, 22 ; i. 16, 17.) The old Authorized Version of the memorable affirma- tion of the Apostle entirely hides out of sight the judicial character of the act that is signalised. It leaves indeterminate the nature of the freedom asserted. Is it the freedom of justification or the freedom of sanctification, to which the Apostle refers? His own Greek leaves no room for doubt. He speaks here of justification, not of sanctification, though of justification as leading to sanctification. « Y. 8. The Apostle passes on to look at his fascinating subject from another ' coign of vantage.' Hence the initial Se is, as Meyer remarks, ' metabatic' It is transitive, and effects transition. We have no better rendering for it in English than our imperfect hut, and this is the rendering given in the Revised Version, replacing the less perspicuous now of the Old Version. Tyndale and the G-eneva have therefore; Wycliffe and the Rheims have and ; Luther has hut (aber) ; and so has the Vulgate (autem) ; and so has Myles Coverdale. EOMA^JS VI. 8. 29 " But if we died with Christ^' — a better transla- tion than that of King James's Version, if ive be dead ivith Christ. The Apostle views the death of believers as an event, not as a continuous state. But the distinct relations of the category of time are held by him in abeyance. Believers died with Christ, but not necessarily at the historic moment of Christ's own historic death. Believers died with Christ at the moment when^ first they were vitally united to Him. They were vitally united to Christ at the moment when they believed the gospel concerning Him. It ivas then, therefore, that they died. It was then that they became co-crucified- When we speak of believers who are at present on the scene of life, and who have only now, as the spiritual children of a day, or an hour, or of a moment, " come to the knowledge of the truth " ; then we may say, with reference to the event that has occurred in the crisis-moment of their spiritual experience, they have died with Christ : they are crucified with Christ. The Apostle, when saying of himself and his brethren, hut ive died in Christ, does not go back in thought, and date from the historic decease of our Lord, as an event now remote in the area of things past. He only goes back to the epoch of the personal experience of himself and his brethren; and finding that in the consciousness 30 ST. Paul's teaching on sanctipioation. of that experience tlie clock of advancing time had struck, he does not say ive die, except when merely narrating the logical sequence of events, but we died. We died ivith Christ. " But if we died with Him, we believe that tve shall also live ivith Him." [el Se aireQavoixev (Tvv ^oicttS), Tria-Teuofxev on Koi (TuvCi}(roixev avTW.\ The reference is not to the "life" that was terminated by our Lord's death, — the wonder- ful "life" that was spent on earth amid men's sorrows and sins. It is to the " life " that, suc- ceeding His death, replaced it, burst its bonds, and utterly "abolished" it. The Apostle speaks of our Lord's resurrection-life; and he says that if we were united to the Saviour in His death, we believe that we shall also be united with Him in His resurrection-life. He employs the future tense, we shall live, because the fact of Christ's resurrection is one thinof, and His " resurrection-life " is another. The fact of the resurrection transpired on earth and was the event of a moment. The resurrec- tion-life runs on continuously from age to age, and yet to farther ages of ages. It is to us in the future. It is the object of our hope as long as we live (Rom. viii. 24). It is " reserved in heaven for us " (1 Pet. i. 4) ; and our prospect is to be " for ever with the Lord." The heavens have " received Him," and will " retain Him," EOMANS VI. 8. 31 " until the time of the restitution of all things " (Acts iii. 21). When the fragile terrestrial taber- nacle ceases to be habitable, the emancipated spirit, being "absent from the body," ascends to be "present with the Lord" (2 Cor. v. 1—12). The holy patriarchs, and all Christian pilgrims who have gone on before, " looked for a country." " They sought a city which hath foundations, whose architect and builder is God " (Heb. xi. 10, 14). It is there where Christ is; and it is there where believers of God's gladdening evan- gel, and just because they give credence to its message of mercy, hope to be. " For," as says the Apostle, " if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him." Divine consistency in mercy is the warrant for the assured belief. The blessing that is conferred, in virtue of union with Christ in His death, would be incomplete and fragmentary without the blessing that is conferred in virtue of union with Christ in His resurrection-life. Our union indeed with Christ, in His death, is security for our immunity from the wages of our iniquity. We died to sin. But this death is only half the blessing required for human bliss. It is merely the arrest and negation of merited penalty. Is there to be no loving-kindness and tender-mercy beyond ? No heaven ? No glory and honour coupled with immortality ? No participation with Christ iu the 32 ST. Paul's teaching on sanctifioation. reward of His spotless rigliteousness and perfect self-sacrifice ? Are we not to rise with Christ and soar into " the heavenlies " ? Are we not to be " made to sit with Him " ? and to " reign with Him " ? Are there not " pleasures for ever- more" at the right hand of the Majesty, enougli for Christ, enough for us too " in Christ" ? Does not the full river of God carry water of life suffi- cient to quencli the thirst of every longing soul ? The Apostle reasons that if the negative blessing be generously conferred, the positive will not be grudgingly withheld. If in Christ we die as regards the endurance of the penalty of our sins, in the same Christ we shall live as regards the enjoyment of the reward of His righteous- ness. If in the case of Christ Himself it would be utterly unnatural to break off abruptly the sequence of resurrection-life from the crisis of His atoning death, not more truly incomplete and unnatural would it be to render us parti- cipants in our Saviour's death while withholding from us participation in the glory of His sub- sequent life. There should be consummation as well as commencement. Christ should be to us, in the matter of our spiritual experience, omega as well as alpha. V. 9. ^^ For ive hioiv.^' (eiSore?.) It is as if the EOMANS VI. 9, 10. 33 writer were to say — yes, loe shall continuously live mith Him, subject to no fears of interruption to the life that is lived, ^' for lue Jcnoiv that Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more ; death hath no more dominion over HimJ' It was fitting that He should die. He came into our dislocated human world that He might suffer in the friction and die. From the moment that His Divine con- sciousness dipped down into, and blended with, His human consciousness, He saw looming in the distance the tokens of absolute self-sacrifice. His heart beat funeral marches toward a goal of endurance, that could not be farther post- poned, or longer sustained. It was the climax of innocent suffering, and will never be repeated. Christ being raised from the dead, dieth no more ; death has no farther claim on His endurance ; it has dominion over Him no more. What then is our prospect ? We shall see. y. 10. ^'^ For in that He died, He died unto sin once; but in that He liveth. He liveth unto God." ( o yap aireOaueu, rrj a/xapTia aTvlQamv ecpaira^.) The o is, of course, the accusative of the relative pronoun, although it is peculiarly and emphatically tilted up at the commence- ment of the sentence. For lohat He died, that is, for the thing lohich He died,^ and that is, D 34 ST. Paul's teaching on sanctification. for the death which He died. The Greeks, like the English, could speak of living a life, and dying a death. The relative pronoun in the Apostle's conception is, notwithstanding the ab- sence of the anticipative /weV, oppositive to the o Se in the next clause. For the death vMch on the one hand He died. He died to sin; hut the life ivhich on the other hand He lives, He lives to God. The Saviour's death indeed was a death by sin; but that, as we have already seen (v. 2), is not the Apostle's idea here, nor does he here mean that the Saviour's death was for sin or on account of si7i. His idea is this — Our Saviour died '^o' sin; and He thus died once for all. The conception of sin as a tyrant is still looming over the mind and heart of the writer, and swaying his representation (see v. 6). The tyranny of sin is the oldest of all the tyrannies ; and the direst. All men have suffered severely in consequence. They have been ruthlessly mis- used as serfs and slaves, and beasts of burden (Matt. xi. 28). The degradation that is the effect of sin is immeasurable; correspondingly incom- mensurable is the woe. Hence the compassion of God, and the mission of the Saviour. When the Saviour came into our nature, and became, as far as might be, our Surety and our Substitute, He was at once rough-handled by our tyrannous sin. He was " wounded for our transgressions; EOMANS VI. 10. 35 He was bruised for our iniquities." " He was oppressed and He was afflicted." " His visage was marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men" (Isa. lii. 14; liii. 5, 7). It was as if blood-hounds had been let loose on Him. The leash of the blood-hound- spirit was let slip. Our Saviour was truculently hunted down as one not fit to live. He died. But in the very act of dying He conquered and triumphed. For He did not merely die. He died ' to ' sill. He died ' to ' the sin that sought to murder Him. By His death He became free from all farther inflictions on account of sin, and all liabilities of the nature of woe. He became free for ever from all farther contact with sin's tyranny or penalty. The idea of freedom is in- eradically inherent in the representation. Christ entered into a far higher plane of freedom than what is described by the patriarch Job, when he says of the state of death — " There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary be at rest ; there the prisoners rest together ; they hear not the voice of the oppressor ; the small and great are there : and the slave is free from his lord" (iii. 17-19). The freedom, into which Christ was introduced when He died to sin, was, unlike the freedom described by Job, realised in consciousness ; and was and is available to all, who, groaning under degrading servitude, are 36 ST. Paul's teaching on sanotifioation. willing and eager to be free. The freedom thus obtained is for perpetuity. Its " meritorious cause " is indiminishable in merit ; and hence, as well as for other reasons, " the death which Christ died, He died once for all." It is on a different but affiliated line of repre- sentation that the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says, " By His own blood he entered ' once for all ' into the Holy Place, having ob- tained eternal redemption" (chapter ix. 12). The Apostle, turning to the other side of his subject, says, hut the life which He is living, He is living to God (o Se ^f, ^J rw 9e«). The death signalised in the preceding clause was a momen- tary event ; the contradistinguished life is a thing of continuity. It has been, and is, and will be ; running on from age to age. It is Christ's resurrection-life (see verse 9). He is living it to God. Although it is the case that He really died and was dead; yet it is likewise, and as really, the case, that He is alive, and alive to Grod. In the life, which He lived in our nature before He died. He was doomed to die. Death was imminent all along His career. It impended, loweringly, over His head and heart. He was unavoidably ob- noxious to it. Having clothed Himself in the garb of our humanity, He had to suffer in it on account of our human sin*. There was no alternative, if salvation was ever to be achieved EOMANS VI. 10. 37 and enjoyed. Hence He patiently endured the appointed suffering, till it culminated in the endurance of a violent death, to which He succumbed on Calvary. In the article of that death. He drained to its dregs the bitter cup of human liability on account of sin ; and having drained it, He died. He " tasted death for every man" (Heb. ii. 9). In dying, He died, not to Grod, but to sin : He was freed for ever, — not from God — but from sin and from all judicial exactions on account of sin. Hence He lives. Not indeed to the tyrant sin, to be exposed to those tyrannous inflictions which are in accordance with the very nature of sin and tyranny. He lives a far other style of life. He lives to God. Cognizance is taken of him in the conscious observation of God, who knew the end from the beginning, and who in truth raised Him up from among the dead ; and was thereupon ready to deal with Him, and act by Him, in accordance with his peerless Messianic and Re- demptive deserts. Within the sphere of the life that preceded His death, Christ had to do with the liabilities of sin. But within the sphere of the life that succeeded His death, His resurrection-life, He had and has to do with the fruition of those rewards of righteousness which it is joy to the heart of the Righteous Ruler of the universe to confer. 38 ST. Paul's teaching on sanotiftcation. In the expression, alive to God, it is not the Saviour's ethical character that is described. It is the fact of the continuance of His mediatorial life. Though He died and disappeared from the observation of men ; yet death did not end Him, nor did it hide Him from God. He rose into "newness of life," and lived on with God. He lived and still lives to God. If there be non- believers and disbelievers to whom He is Nothing, and who consequently care for none of His things, the loss is theirs. They are coming, in consequence of their culpable ignorance, into collision with realities which are as stable as the foundations of the Universe. Christ, though dead, is living. Yea, He is living because He died. He is living His resurrection-life. God is taking cognizance of Him and rewarding Him with the " fulness of joy," that is reached by "the path of life" (Psa. xvi. 11). Our Saviour is thus living to God, because He died to sin. He has been exalted into the highest glory of "life eternal," because, though "being in the form of God, He counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men ; and, being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea the death of the rvoss." (Phil. ii. 6, 8). ROMANS VI. 11. 39 Y. 11. "^o" (Oi/Tco?). A spiritual parallelism is opened up to the mind of the writer. " Beckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, hut alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord " {km vfxeig Xoyi^ecrOe eavrom eivai v€Kpov? fxev rri a^apria ^wura? Se tw Gew ev ^piiTTu>'lT](Tou). Do ye, on your part, reckon yourselves. There is a parallelism between the spiritual state of Christ and the spiritual state of those who are vitally united to Him (see ver. 5). The Apostle deemed it a mat- ter of moment that they should realise the fact. Christ on His part died to sin and lives to God. Do ye on your part — says the Apostle exhortingly to his brethren — consider yourselves to be dead to sin, and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Their state — in virtue of their union with Christ Jesus — was pre-eminently one of privilege ; and the Apostle desired that they should realise it as such. Their sanctification to a large extent, depended on the realisation. Consider yourselves to be dead on the one hand to sin, and alive on the other to God, in Christ Jesus. The expression in Christ Jesus conditions both of the preceding clauses, and not merely the latter of the two, as Riickert and Kollner suppose. It is in Christ Jesus that we are dead to sin, just as really as it is in Him that we are alive to God. In Christ Jesus dead to sin ! In what respect ? 40 ST. Paul's teaching on sanctification. Not, as has been too often supposed, in respect to character or ethical demeanour. What then ? In respect to freedom from penal liability. The state described is indeed a steppiDg- stone to an all-important result in character. But it is not itself that result. It is in Christ Jesus that believers are dead to sin, because it is in virtue of their connection with Him by faith, that they are in such a state of union with Him, as regards His meritorious death, that the im- munity from future suffering for sin, which is His by desert, becomes theirs by grace. The word dead is in the Apostle's expression, because of the peculiar significance of the death of our Lord in the great economy of salvation. The very essential principle of the Grospel is that Christ ^^ died for our sins and rose again" (1 Cor. XV. 3, 4). " In due time Christ died for the ungodly " (Rom. v. 6). " God coramendeth His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. v. 8). "We are justified by His hlood " (Rom. v. 9), and, " We were reconciled to God by the death of His Son" (Rom. V. 10). "I," says our Lord, " if I he lifted up from the earth will draw all men unto me ; this He said signifying what death He should die " (John xii. 32, 33). 'No wonder therefore that the Apostle so manipu- lated and moulded his phrases that he inserted EOMANS VI. 11. 41 tlie word ' dead ' into one of the most significant of them. Believers are warranted and encou- raged to " reckon themselves to be dead to sin.'" They are thus to reckon themselves " in Christ Jesus"; and it is because of His singular self- sacrifice in taking the place of the guilty, and stooping to tJie abasement of death, even " the death of the cross " (Phil. ii. 8), that there is " in Christ Jesus " deliverance from the fatal " wrath that is to come." ^^And living to God" (^wj^ra? ^e rw Qecp). This is not something in antithesis to the statement in the preceding clause. And hence, in our English idiom, it is preferable to connect the two state- ments with the conjunction and, rather than with the somewhat oppositive hut. They who are dead in relation to sin are, for that very reason, not absolutely dead, but adive or living in relation to God. Death in relation to sin is entirely consist- ent with life in relation to Grod. The one relation- ship is complementive of the other. And both are charged with mighty moral motive-power, con- straining to holiness of conduct and character. When the Apostle says, reckon yourselves ' alive' he does not think of life apart from Christ. Ifc is " life in Christ Jesus " of which he speaks, and which he desired his disciples to realise. "If," says he, "we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live tvith Him.'' It is Christ 42 ST. Paul's teaching on sanctipioation. who is our life. He and He only is tlie living " Meritorious Cause " of our bliss. When speaking of the relation of Christ to life, we might refer either to the life which He lived before His death, — a life of ineffable good- ness and ethical glory ; or we might refer to the life which He has been living since His death, — a life of incommensurable exaltation in glory and honour. It is to this latter life, the award of the Father to the Son, and thence the gift of the Son to the multitude of His 'brethren,' that the Apostle refers. The life spoken of is the life consequent on the Saviour's crucifixion. Let all Christians reckon themselves as its participants. G-od takes note of the vital in- terlinking relationship, and acknowledges its validity. And hence it matters little that some men deny the reality of the life, " hid " as it is " with Christ in God." God owns it ; and its beneficiaries enjoy it. No amount of confident denial, or subtle reasoning, or bitter scorning, or cruel persecution, or obloquy, can deprive them of that of which they are conscious. If the disciples referred to had been ' dead ' in relation to God, instead of ' alive,' the case would have been far other and lamentable. They would have been destitute of the power of recipiency that is needful in order to take advantage of Divine blessings. EOMANS VI. 11. 43 But not only is God Himself in His essential nature, the living God who has life in and for Himself; He also has had, and yet has, and ever will have, " life " to give. He had it to give to His Son in infinite plenitude. " For as the Father hath life in Himself, even so gave He to the Son also to have life in Himself" (John v. 26). The Son has received as the Father gave, and hence the life that is in Him is all-sufficient, in plenitude, for the life of men. God the Father gives, and God the Son too. The " fulness of the Godhead " is in the Son, in order that " out of His fulness we all may receive grace for grace." Hence, " God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life " (John iii. 16). They who have the Son " have life," and are " alive to God." Whatever they may be to men around them, however ignored and spurned as Nobodies or as " Things that are not," still before God they live, and will live for ever. The thought of such inestimable privilege should not be stowed away into the dim re- cesses and unconsciousnesses of the mind. Con- trariwise, the blessings involved should be held forth to catch and reflect the clearest sunlio^ht that can get admission into the human intelli- gence. The benefits are fraught with remarkably 44 ST. Paul's teaching on sanctification. transformative moral potency, — potency that can turn the whole manhood of a man into " a new creation," and convert his surroundings, far as his ethical influence extends, from a waste state of wilderness and weeds into a scene of beauty, budding all over, and blossoming " like the rose." In other words, there is provision for " the beauty of holiness " in the experience of all who, through faith in the Gospel, take home to their hopes and their hearts the blessings of pardon and eternal life. V. 12. " Let not sin then reign^ The infer- ential conjunction ' then ' turns back the attention to the scope of the preceding discussion ; and fittingly introduces the cardinal subject of " sanctification," in its logical sequence to the subject of the lofty privileges as to state, which are assured to those who are *' in Christ Jesus." " Let not sin reign." Sin is again personified (ver. 6), and represented as a sovereign. It cannot sway its sceptre, however, without the consent of the manhood of the man. That man- hood may, in self- degrading folly, vote sin into the throne of its being. Or, it may dethrone the usurping tyrant, and come under the sway of a reign, at once most righteous and most benign. A reign, however, of one kind or ROMANS VI. 12. 45 another there must be. Every man, whether he think it or not, must be subject to some regnant principle and personality. But having free-will, man may choose his king. Hence the Apostle's exhortation, Let not sin reign. There is no latent antithesis between reigning and existing. The antithesis that is subtended is between the reigning of sin, and the reigning of righteousness or of the righteous God. It should be noticed that the imperative fj-h ^aa-iXeverco, let it not reign, is addressed grammatically to sin, but in doctrinal import to the believer. " In your mortal body." This is the domain of the royal ruler, whoever he may be. There is significance in the word ^'mortal." It indicates that " the time is short," and it would therefore be folly and a shame if it were to be wasted and squandered. "irt the body." The Apostle did not forget that it might be said to all believers, " Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit ; perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord " (2 Cor. vii. 1). Still he had, in accordance with a profound physiology and philosophy, strong ideas in reference to the mighty influence of the body on the spirit. In some respects the spirit nobly dominates the body; in others the body rudely thrusts itself into the foreground 46 ST. Paul's teaching on sanctifioation. of influence, and tlie spirit, instead of domin- ating, is ignobly dominated. The 20th verse of the 6th chapter of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians runs thus in our public English version : " Ye are bought with a price : there- fore glorify Grod in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." But in the more correct text, given by the critical Editors, and accepted by the Revisionists, the exhortation runs thus: "Ye were bought with a price : glorify God therefore in your body." Far-reaching ethical results are determined by the body. Hence the Apostle's entreaty in a succeeding part of the Epistle to his fellow-Christians in Rome, " I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of G-od, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, and acceptable to Grod, your rational service" (xii. 1). If the body be laid upon the altar of consecration, the ' informing ' spirit will not be withheld. If sin be not allowed to reign in the body, there is but little likelihood of its iron sceptre being reverenced in the spirit. eh TO viraKoveLV Tah eiridvixlai? avrou. It is im- possible to render these words literally into English. " There are," says Dr. Jelf, " even in classical writers, slight beginnings of the ten- dency which we find fully developed in the Greek of the New Testament, to confound the notions of the aim, the cause, the result, and the infini- ROMANS VI. 13. 47 tival object of a verbal notion, on the ground of their common property of following more or less closely on the verb, and their being depen- dent thereon " {Gh. Gram., § 803). The Apostle's idea might be represented thus : — " Let not sin reign in your mortal body, unto this being the effect, that ye obey its lusts." The lusts referred to are not the lusts of sin, but the lusts of the body (aCrov). They are the inordinate desires that are experienced in consciousness, in virtue of physical peculiarities interpenetrating in their effect the region of the mind. Such desires, unfed and unfanned, are not sinful. It is not sinful for them to be. Their existence is beyond the sphere of free-will. Sin begins when they are no longer controlled, restrained, denied. When not inordinate they are easily guided and are potent for good. When inordinate, and therefore " lusts," or, as the French say, convoitises, rather than simple desires, they are the wild animal in our nature, and need the strongest reins of reason and conscience laid upon their neck. It is reversing the order of nature and of Grod for the man to obey the lusts ; the lusts should be obedient to the man. Y. 13. " Neither present your members to be weapons of unrighteousness to sin " (^nrj^e irap- 48 ST. Paul's teaching on sanotifioation. icTTaveTe to. fxeXr] vjuicov oifKa aoiKia^ T>i ajmapriaj. The Apostle's figurative representations are some- what mixed ; but they are emphatically graphic. He does not work out complete pictures, but contents himself with a minglement of hints and suggestions, not rhetorically rounded ofi" by the help of " the wisdom of words." In the preceding verse he had, in an earnest hortatory spirit, lifted up a warning voice against the reign of sin. Let not sin reign in your mortal body. In this verse he retains the conception of sin as a regnant principle. He likewise assumes that it is actually engaged in warlike operations. It fights for its throne : and is intolerant of opposition. The spirit of a tyrant is in it. Hence it seeks military submission on the one hand, and military subsidies on the other. But, says the Apostle, present not your members as weapons of unrighteousness to sin. In the preceding verse the mortal body is represented as the domain over which the reign of sin may be extended. In this the members of the body are regarded as weapons which may be wielded in battle, either on the side of righteousness against unrighteousness, or on the side of unrighteousness against righteousness. Put them not, says the Apostle, at the service of sin. The word members, so far as enumeration ROMANS VI. 13. 40 is concerned, would, to tlie writer's mind, be somewhat indefinite. The right eye would be thought of, and. the right hand ; the mouth also ; and. the tongue, and the throat — so often an " open sepulchre " ; the feet likewise, which may be swift to convey either to the right place or to the wrong. The hand may be lifted, up either to smite down defiant wickedness, or to shed innocent blood. Men may with their tongues either use deceit or plead the righteous cause of the widow and the fatherless. The eye may roam in wantonness, or gaze in rapture on both heaven and earth. Take into account all the members of the body, and every man's character may be deter- mined by the use that he makes of his physical organism. Use it not^ says the Apostle, in the service of sin. Assist not the tyrant to intensify his tyranny. " Bat present yourselves to God as alive from the dead^ and your members to he weapons of righteousness to God." ('AAA a irapaa-rrja-aTe eavrovg TM QeM m e/c veKpwu ^wuras /cat to. ixeXrj vjulcov oirXa In the preceding clause the Apostle dissuades : in this he persuades. In the sphere of the former his representation is negative; in this it is positive. The two clauses are mutually com- plementive. 50 ST. Paul's teaching on sanctification. Present yourselves to God. There is a pecu- liarity in the hortatory imperative. It is ' aoristic ' in tense (TraparTricrare) ; whereas in the antithetical clause the tense is ' present ' (Trapic-Tdvere) . The force of the two imperatives might be thus represented : " Neither he ye presenting your members to be weapons of un- righteousness to sin ; but present yourselves at once to God." Make no delay. Let there be no indecision. If already there has been the least wavering, let there be not a moment longer of hesitancy. Fut yourselves instantly at the service of God. Tender yourselves, enlist in His military service, and go in bravely to take part in the "holy war" for the overthrow and destruction of sin. As alive from among the dead ; that is, as partakers of the resurrectio7i-life of Christ. The Apostle calls upon his brethren to appear before God for service, under their true colours, and in their true character, as they really were. They were actually, by means of faith, united to Christ. They had been united to Him in His death. They were now united to Him iu His subsequent life, and are heirs with Him of all the blessings and the glory that belong to that life. Their fellow- men around them might not recognise the reality of such a glorious union. But God recognised it. To Him, as well as to themselves, it was ROMANS vr. 13. 51 real. To His all-seeing eye, as well as to tlieir own self-conscious faith, they were alive from among the vast masses of the dead. In their every-day experience they had earnests of the grandeur of their destiny. It well became them, therefore, to be lifted up into a lofty mood of gratitude, and thus to consecrate ungrudgingly their most devoted and loyal service to their infinite benefactor. Instead of the expression w? e/c veKpujv ^wi/ra?, the important uncial manuscripts ^