From the 4th chapter of this epistle the apostle develops the great doctrine of the power of the resurrection in deliverance and righteousness: not only God's taking the blood of Jesus for our sins, but God acting in power on man even when dead; first, in raising Christ, and then in the quickening of a saint by tile Spirit of God, by the same divine power by which Christ was raised from the dead. In taking up this great principle, he applies it in the 5th chapter, not only to the putting away of sin, but to the acceptance of the person of the believer. In the 6th chapter he applies it to the practical walk-" Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? " No: a dead man will not go on in sin, or else he is not dead. He connects our not continuing in sin-not with motive, from the love of Christ constraining-but with death and resurrection.
In this 7th chapter he applies the same doctrine of death and resurrection to the law. This is the great point under discussion, and not whether we have a renewed man's experience or not. Let me have never so new a nature, yet if I am still under law, the law will condemn me. The only effect will be to give me such a sense of the holiness of God as to make me miserable. Put any person under law, and you put him under the curse: not that the law is bad, but that no one can keep it.
But one will say, I use the law, not for justification, but for sanctification. I answer, you cannot use the law as you please; the law will use you as it pleases. If you do not obey it, it will curse you. It is holy itself, but it has no power to sanctify. The effect of using it is to put a man under the curse; as it is written, " Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them." The law is good, if a man use it lawfully. You will never say it is good, if you are under it; for who has not broken it? -who has not lusted? It is a good weapon, but it has no handle? If I take it to condemn others, I must first condemn myself. It is as sharp for the person using it as for him against whom it is used. Thus, in the case of the woman taken in adultery, they thought that in whatever way Christ should act, He would be in a dilemma. But they find that the law, which they were to use against the woman, condemn themselves as well as her. Christ lets them use it; and when it condemns all, He then takes up grace. The law is adapted to the unrighteous. Of what use is it to say to a righteous man, " lust not? " If he has no lust, he does not need it; and if lust is there, what can the law do but condemn him and deny his righteousness? It was never meant to do anything else. Well, we should thoroughly understand what deliverance from it is.
" Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth? For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to/another man. Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God." (Verses 1-4.) What the apostle does here is to take the principle of resurrection and apply it to the law. The law, says he to the Jew, or to any one thus under it, was your first husband; but you have now another, being freed by death from the first, and you are risen in Christ. We are not physically risen, but we have a part in the death and resurrection of Christ. The law is the one husband-Christ risen the other. Now we cannot have both at once. We are bound by law to have only one. Well, the law was my first husband, but I am freed from it by death. The law kills me. I die, and the law's title is gone-the tie is gone. How? for it is blessed to trace the manner. It is not that we have died personally. It is not that the law was ever abrogated. It could not be. But we are dead to the law by the body of Christ, because the full curse of the law was attached to Christ. He died under the curse. The law spent its weapons on Christ. It did everything it could in the way of curse against Christ-it spent itself entirely on Christ, and Christ has risen out of it. He was perfect, yet, having been made sin for us, the law brought a curse on Him; and what can it do more than spend its curse on Christ. And now that He has risen out of it, what can it do to Him? Nothing. Is Christ under it now? Oh no. He is in an entirely new position-" Set down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." There is the position of Christ now. Now this position of Christ is applied to the Christian by faith. For whilst Jews were actually under the law, almost all who are called Christians are under it virtually:-alas! that is in their thoughts and apprehensions. But here I see how God has set us free. Here I see Christ coming and taking up my cause. I see Him, as mediator, taking my place, and faith applies to me everything that He has done, and into which He has come for me. I find my place in Christ as the Second Adam risen. He comes and gives me a portion in His place. What is the law to me? It condemned me, it is true; but then God has settled every claim the law had against me in the body of Christ; and now I have a life in Him beyond the reach of law. Now I have life in Him; for the tie with my first husband is broken by death, and is gone. Hence the believer is dead to the law.
Does this take away its power and authority? By no means. People say to me, do you know the killing power of the law? Yes-but I know it as freed from it, for it has killed me. It cannot kill me again. You cannot make a dead man feel. The law found sin in me, and it has not merely pronounced the curse, but executed it in Christ. And now I can talk about it in peace. It is not to the law that I am now joined, but to my new husband, to whom I am tied by faith; not to exact fruit from a bad tree by commanding it, but to graft a new graft-Christ as our life-" that we may bring forth fruit unto God."
Thus you see that if you are under the law in any sense, you are under the curse. You have sin in your flesh. Will the law allow it? Do you think it will let you off? Can it deliver you from it? Do not talk of the sanctifying power of the law. Your putting yourself under law is not wanting to be good, but your unwillingness to own how bad you are. You hope to get good out of your heart, if you have not yet succeeded. Now, if God require anything from me, I cannot give it. God does in fact leave us often under law. What is the consequence? The sin which works against the law becomes positive transgression, and sin by the commandment becomes exceeding sinful. Not only so, but the motives of sin are stirred up in us by the prohibition of the law, and the will works against the barrier to work to death and condemnation.
Persons say, take away a man from under law, and you leave him without restraint. Of course, if there be no reality in the life of Christ-but He liveth unto God, and unto God we too live with Him. I dare you to be under the law with a sense of God's holiness. You could no more stand one moment in the presence of His holiness than compete with His power. The law will have righteousness and true holiness. It will not ask you if you take it as justification or a rule of life. It will take you on its own ground. " For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members, to bring forth fruit unto death." This was not the law's fault. God's law is holy. " But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence." While there is a will in us, the law must condemn us, for it resists the law and authority of God. Law does not talk of a new nature. It asks, do you produce the thing that God demands. It will allow of no excuse. It would be a bad law if it did. Do you love God with all your heart? No, you do not. Well that is sin, and you are cursed. The effect of a will in us, restrained by the law, is to urge the will against the law which checks it.
"But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter." It is a deliverance. You do not know that you are slaves to the law if you do not know that it is a deliverance. How do we obtain it? By dying to the law. "Being dead to that wherein we were held." (margin) I died under it, and that is the way I got deliverance. The law is not dead. It is in full force against all who are under it. But we have died under it. It has killed us by its righteousness. It is the ministry of death. It was written on stones in its requirements, and I have a nature which does not meet them. It will not neglect-not modify them. It condemned me because not obedient, and now it has had its full effect-of course in Christ. By faith I find my place there. I get by faith into Christ-I get part with Him. One man takes another into partnership, and gives him all the benefit of the connection, and the advantages the firm already had acquired, though he had no part in acquiring them. So we all come into partnership with Christ. All debts are discharged, and I have a part in all that is His. It was all kindness on His part, for I had brought nothing.
" We are delivered from the law, that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter." It is not a letter demanding, but a spirit making me walk in that which is agreeable to God, as partaking of His nature-its desires and delights -in the power of the Spirit of God. It is not a law delivering up to a curse for breaking its requirements; but that which makes me partaker of righteousness as it is in Jesus before God.
" What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law." But it did not cure me of sin, but provoked it; and then it came and brought death to my soul. It is thus good in the way of showing the need of Christ.
But will bringing death to the soul convert a man? Never. When he says, I had not known sin but by the law, he means in conscience: of course he knew sin; and was sinning every day. " For I was alive without the law once;" that is, going on quietly, without any thought of its bringing death and condemnation on his soul. " But when the commandment came, sin revived and I died." He found it was of no use to be combating sin in this way; that is, by thinking on the prohibition of' the object, and of course of the object prohibited, with the lust in the soul. Victory over it is obtained by looking away from it altogether, and. this we are enabled to do in the power of a new object, Christ possessing the heart by the Holy Ghost.
" And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death." This was not the fault of the commandment. It was given for life if men had kept it; but man being a sinner, it was a commandment unto death.
The source of all this we find in the 5th verse, in which we get a most important truth. " When we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death." In chap. 8:9 we see the contrast. But here "being in the flesh" gives the whole position and standing of' the man. He stands as before God in the flesh-in the helpless sinful nature of fallen man. That is the case, the condition the man is in. He is not a dead and risen man. Does the law quicken him? No; the law could not give life. (Gal. 3) It proposes life when man is at a certain point; that is, when he has already kept and obeyed it. But how can a man get to this without life? How obey in sinful flesh? Can we while in the flesh and under law? Hear the judgment of the word. "They that are in the flesh cannot please God. For it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." The law does not give life or the Spirit; but to obey I must have both. Now we are all " in the flesh" until we are " dead and risen with Christ." Compare Rom. 7:55For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. (Romans 7:5), and Rom. 8:99But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. (Romans 8:9), and see the difference. In the one we have, " For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death:" in the other, "But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of' God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his." Now the law and the flesh go together; they are correlatives. The law deals with man as man-with man in the flesh-man ere he gets the Spirit, which he receives in virtue of redemption. And what is the effect of' its operation? "The motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death." "Sin taking occasion by the commandment, wrought all manner of concupiscence." "Sin by the commandment becomes exceeding sinful." Is that the way- to get holiness?
Verse 14. "For we know that the law is spiritual, But I am carnal, sold under sin." He could not say, we are carnal. For of whom is he speaking when he says "we"? of Christians. Hence they are viewed in what they have as such in common; that is in their spiritual standing, so viewed in Christ. "We" know that the law leaves nothing untouched respecting a man's standing in the sight of God. It judges everything in the motives and intents of the heart, according- to the searching judgment of the Spirit, and to the light of God's nature. But when he says, "I am carnal," he is talking of individual conscience. Christians, as such, are in the Spirit. They are not carnal. " Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit." (Rom. 8:99But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. (Romans 8:9).) The flesh is in us, it is true, but if walking in the Spirit we are not in the flesh: for in the Spirit is power and liberty according to God. Here, however, man is not set free, but is viewed in his own capacity to deal with evil when his will is set right, and seeking to attain righteousness according to the desires of a new nature. It is personal individual conscience making the discovery of what is in his heart, but in the presence of the law which judges the whole result. You will find, at the end of the chapter, that he speaks constantly of I, I, I; and never once of Christ or of the Spirit. It is the experience of what the human heart is, and not the knowledge of what the heart of God is. It is the experience of what I am, as acquainted with good and evil, and not the knowledge of my position by faith. This we get in the 8th chapter, and there we are not under law.
What is our subject all through the chapter? The question is not whether it is a renewed man or not. I believe it is a renewed man, for he delights in the law of God after the inner man. But it is the case of a man under law. It is the effect of the law, as a measure of righteousness, on the conscience, where there is no power. You will never understand the end of this 7th chapter of Romans until you see that it is the discussion of law dealing with a man under it. He always wills what is right and never does it. There is a total want of power. Do you not want power for holiness? The law will never give you that. It is as feeble to do that, as it is strong to curse. What the apostle is here saying is all about self. Till Christ is known as a deliverer, and the power of the Spirit comes in, giving liberty, and occupying the soul with all that God is, has done, and sets before us, in the love which secures us for the enjoyment of it, all that the soul can say is, I am this, and I am that. And while it is what you are to do and to be, you are occupied with yourself. There you are floundering, like a man in a morass, because of the kind of ground you are on. If you think to pull one foot out, you have only the other deeper in. Now you want a deliverer.
Take the question of peace with God. If you were more holy, do you not think you would have more peace with God? Oh yes, you reply. Then your holiness increases the value of the blood of Christ, or you are not resting on that blood as that which makes peace fully and absolutely. Your answer shows that. Is holiness then not necessary? Most surely it is. But I thus speak to show you that you cannot have peace in this way, because the result of holiness in you does not reach the holiness of God, and God forbid that that measure should be lowered. We are made partakers of His holiness. I say it to make you know that you cannot have holiness in this way. That is given us in nature, in the communication of the divine nature. It is practically maintained through the knowledge that God is "for us," in the peace with Him which Christ has perfectly wrought and gives to the believer.
In verses 15 to 23 it is I, I, I; and God says, ' I will give you enough of it; you will get tired of it, and then you will be glad to be beholden to me in grace, and to be done with law and self.' Now what is the end of all his laboring? " O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Divine power is needed. If you have got a good will through grace, you must get power too.
Is he brought by progress to peace? No; but he is brought to give up the effort to bring flesh up to it, and to the knowledge that no good thing is in him-that he has no power to do good. So now he says, " Who will deliver? " He learns that he has got a bad self, and that he must get a deliverer. All is now changed. He looks on another to do that which he cannot do, and he finds it all done. Man is brought to his real level, and then God is brought in, and he thanks God through Jesus Christ. Thus he gets power by learning that he has none, and by receiving peace with God through the blood of Jesus, while knowing that he has none. He is brought low-finds that he is a sinner incapable of getting better and reaching God thus; and then Christ dies. " For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." But this is not merely giving strength for the struggle, so as to make a man content with his success, and so get peace, but it is the knowledge of a complete salvation, wrought by God in view of what we were, and to the sense of which we were reduced-salvation and peace. I come to know what I am as man and I am wretched: I come to know what God is for me, and I am happy. Moreover, the resurrection, which has obliterated every trace of condemnation, brings into a new sphere where the Spirit gives liberty, and the hope of glory to which it leads on.
Thus we have, first, that you cannot have two husbands at once. Then the doctrine that the law provokes sin. Then we have man put under the law, that he may have what is called experience. It is all about I and self; and not till the end do you get Christ and a deliverer, and thus, "thank God," though the two natures remain the same; the new, however, walking in grace, the old being held for dead. Thus, as a doctrine, we get entire deliverance from the law; not weakening it, but giving it its whole power-but that power kills. The person who weakens the authority of the law is he who puts man or any one under it, and leaves him any hope. For sin is in the flesh, and the law will allow of no sin, but curses all who take up its works to do them. To mingle grace with it is to destroy its obligation, and undo its authority, which is righteously exercised in condemning. We die to the law; and then we get Christ's position, being delivered by death and resurrection. Then we get the law applied as a matter of experience in this holy way, to bring home to the soul the want of its power to keep it. It is a great deal more difficult to know our want of power here than to know our sin. Conscience will tell you of sin, but it requires long experience, though we know it is true, to learn that we have no strength, and to have flesh so broken that we have no confidence in it; to learn that there is no power, just as there is no forgiveness, but in grace; and to find that it is the discovery of what we are that settles the question of peace and power, for then it is God Himself.