Chapter 5:1 There is a slight difference between justification and peace, though in simple souls these two blessings go on together. Peace is the consequence of justification. “Having been justified, we have peace with God.”
Though it be by faith alone that we are justified, God, in justifying us, sets the soul in connection with the grace received. One must take account of that in evangelization and the care of souls. Experience, it is true, is not faith—we are not justified by experience; and yet if the state of the soul rests outside what faith has received, true peace cannot be enjoyed.
Ver. 2. But not only is the work done and he who receives God's testimony (i.e., the believer) justified. Three privileges follow justification by faith. 1St, as we have seen, we have peace; 2nd, we are in the grace or favor of God; and 3rd, we boast (or rejoice) in the hope of His glory. Peace is the end of war; grace goes farther; we are actually in the enjoyment of God's favor. As regards the past, (the old man and his acts,) we have peace; as to the present, we are in favor before God; for the future, we await glory. In a certain sense the entire Christian position is given in these three things—peace, grace, and hope. Nevertheless, there is more, for we find farther on, and twice, the expression, “And not only so” (3, 11).
Ver. 3. “We boast (or rejoice) in tribulations also.” The ways of God towards us during the crossing of the wilderness are designed to mortify the flesh, to break the man, and thereby to form us for the knowledge of God. The flesh is a veil which hides heavenly things from us. God acts in our interest, as to this veil, and afterward we see better throughout. In this verse 3 it is in view of the subjective fruit, which results from the tribulation that we boast. In v. 11 we boast in view of the objective blessing—we joy or boast in God. By objective blessing is meant the blessing which specially belongs to faith, as the knowledge of God, His work of grace accomplished outside us in Christ, &c. Subjective blessing is said of the effects of grace produced in us.
Ver. 4. The result of tribulation is experience, and that works hope. While experience in affliction is an inner thing and productive of experience, it is not on this inner feeling that one can lean. The sole support given to our faith is the love of God, that love which He showed in Christ toward us. It is there that experience and faith meet. Accordingly there are two aspects in which Paul presents the love of God: -
Ver. 5, His love in us, as a subjective thing; and Ver 6-8, His love for us, objectively.
As soon as the apostle has named the love of God in us, He immediately goes back to God's love for us, the first spring of every blessing. This is the inverse of the human mind. Man is so quick to put himself at the center and to seek in God only what may correspond with the order of things where he finds himself placed. But if we have such a privilege as that of knowing the love of God, it is because God first loved us, even when we were only worthy of his hatred.
Ver. 9, 10. The Holy Ghost reasons not from what is in man, but from what God is (the only certainty for man), and shows us the consequences of the work Christ has done for the believer. Having been justified in the power of His blood, we shall be saved from wrath. For if while enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved in the power of His life—that endless life in which the Son lives eternally.
Ver. 11. The consequence is that we boast not only in this full and assured salvation, but in God Himself. If we boast in the things received, we also boast in Him who has given them. We enter thereby into the blessed ocean of the knowledge of God.
Ver. 12. It seems that this verse, which introduces us to a new subject, is linked with what precedes, by the fact that it is by our Lord Jesus Christ that we have now received the reconciliation. Since it is by Him, we are thus carried back to Christ, and to Adam by contrast, beyond the limits of a question of law, Jews, &c.
Ver. 1 2-1 9. The general idea in these verses is that, as Adam introduced sin into the world, Christ has brought righteousness therein. The apostle takes up the subject in Adam at the beginning of the ways of God with man. What he says amounts to this: it is no longer a question of you, Jews, only, but of man, of sin, and consequently of grace. Nor is it you alone who are to be benefited by Christ's work, but Gentiles—sinners. In Adam sin entered the world, and it is for sin committed then and since that Christ came. The work He accomplished is as valid for others as for you.
The meaning of these verses is not that people are condemned solely by the imputation of Adam's sin. It is true that his sin is imputed to his race, but there is also the personal state of the individuals, who are condemned for their own sins. We are under the consequences of Adam's sin in two respects, as to position and as to nature. We are born far from God, and we have borne a nature at enmity with Him. The son of a man given up to dissipation is found in this double misfortune, that he is born fortuneless, and that he has a nature disposed to dissipation. As another comparison, suppose the Czar, for example, sends a man to Siberia because of rebellion, and he has a son born there, and of course fallen from the rights of a Russian subject. There, however, is the limit of the penalty he endures for the conduct of his father. But if he happens to show the enmity to the Czar which brought his father to exile, the Czar leaves him also in exile: this son of the proscribed abides in disgrace because of his personal enmity. Just so, we are born under guilt, but we cannot be guilty without sinning. The apostle avoids separating our fall in Adam—our state under the fall—from the state of the heart estranged from God. He does not sever guilt from the presence of sin in the individual. In the mystical sense employed about Levi in Heb. 7:9, 10,9And as I may so say, Levi also, who receiveth tithes, payed tithes in Abraham. 10For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchisedec met him. (Hebrews 7:9‑10) there need be no difficulty in saying that we sinned in Adam. However, this is evidently not the sense of the passage. Exclusively understood, it is contradicted by such scriptures as Ezek. 18:20,20The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. (Ezekiel 18:20) and Jer. 31:29, 3029In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge. 30But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge. (Jeremiah 31:29‑30). Further, remark that there remains nothing to guard the conscience, the moment we make the sin of Adam the sole cause of our condemnation; for if we die for that sin, our conduct matters little!
Paul mentions here, as an existing fact, the presence of sin in the world. The twelfth verse gives the positive proof of the existence of sin in the world by the fact that death is there. Death is the sign of sin for which man is condemned, law or no law. The following verses appeal to the early inspired history which no Jew would dispute. Until law sin was in the world. There was then something more than Adam's sin. It is true that sin is not put to account where there is no law: still death reigned from Adam to Moses; and this demonstrated that sin was there, for death is the wages of sin, and not only of transgression. If man is under a law given by God and infringes it, his death is the necessary consequence. But without that, without law, when there was not this rule whereby God, in His government, imputes sin by virtue of a given law, it was clear that death reigned equally—that it attacked individuals who were not under the law: the proof too that they were under everlasting ruin also. Death reigned, he says, over those who had not sinned in the likeness of Adam's transgression (that is, over those who, in a different position from that of Adam and of the Jews, had sinned without the law). Paul groups together the position of the Jews and Adam, according to the true sense of Hos. 6:7,7But they like men have transgressed the covenant: there have they dealt treacherously against me. (Hosea 6:7) which charges the people with having acted like Adam. “But they, like (not “men,” but) Adam, have transgressed the covenant.” Both of these had a positive command, which each violated. But it was not so with sinners between the two points. They had died because they sinned, but it was not after the resemblance of Adam's transgression.
Adam is the type or the figure of the coming one—of Christ. Like the disobedience of Adam, the work of Christ has an effect on a great number of individuals. If death struck all men, as well those who sinned like Adam in the way of transgressing commands, as those who sinned otherwise, the remedy which the Lord Jesus Christ brings for sin has no less universal effects. The work of His death has a value which answers to man's state, whatever may be the form of the sin. The Jew died under the curse of the law—Christ has borne this curse. The Gentile, without law, died under sin—Christ by His death delivers him.
Ver. 15-17. There is, in these verses, a parallel instituted between sin in Adam and righteousness in Christ, a parallel by which are shown the extent and the excellency of Christ's work. As to the details we may remark the order as follows:-
Ver. 15. The roots of sin and grace. The subject is not shut up within the bounds of a Jewish question (Moses, the law, the prophets, &c.): it embraces a vaster extent. To judge of sin and grace, it is to Adam and Christ that we must go back.
Ver. 16. If the judgment was from one to condemnation, the free gift is from many offenses to accomplished righteousness. The principle of grace extends to the things as well as persons.
Ver. 17. The issues are then given. By one offense death reigned: much more shall those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life by the one, Jesus Christ. How rich the contrast! Not merely life reigns, but we shall reign ourselves in life.
The parenthesis which began with verse 13 closes here. In verse 18 the general reasoning is taken up in a peculiarly abstract way. “So then as [the bearing was] by one offense toward all men to condemnation, so by one accomplished righteousness [it is] toward all men to justification of life.” It is the direction of either act expressed abstractedly. We are always here in the parallel between Adam and Christ. Their acts have a bearing toward all men; but the tendency of Adam's act is to condemn, that of Christ's work is to justify.
It must be borne in mind that the point in this verse is not the application or actual effect; for in that case all men would be justified in justification of life, which is not the fact. All men are condemned; but it is for more than the simple imputation of Adam's sin, as the preceding chapters have shown. Likewise, as to justification, if there are individuals placed in the state which it indicates, this is in virtue of a moral fact which corresponds to it—even faith. From what sources flow these two conditions of man? From Adam and Christ, only while the acts of the one and the other are of similar bearing, we find that, when we come to fact, condemnation weighs on all, while justification is only the portion of some. Hence we see that after having said “all men” in verse 18, Paul changes his phrase and speaks of the “many” in verse 19. “For as by the disobedience of the one man the many have been constituted sinners, so also by the obedience of the one the many were constituted righteous.” This is because “all” are not definitively justified in Christ, though all are made sinners. Using the word “many,” or rather “the many,” in the second term of the parallel, he employs it in the first also for the correspondence of the subjects.
Ver. 20-21. But why, then, law? It “came in that (not sin but) the offense might abound; but where sin abounded, grace still more abounded, that as sin reigned in (the power of) death, so also grace might reign through righteousness, to everlasting life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” If justice reigned, as sin has reigned by death, it would have been all over with us: we should have been under the penalties. But grace reigns. The contrast is established between God and man, not between sin and righteousness, and God exercises His sovereign right in grace; and this to life everlasting, instead of governing this world according to the Jewish system. Save certain glimmerings in eternal life, the Jews in general looked at life on this side of death. Here God, far from sanctioning unrighteousness, justifies in His grace through Jesus, and gives eternal life above and beyond death.
Chap. 6. We have in this chapter the second of the three things we have already indicated—the life. The apostle's doctrine is, that we are brought into God's presence by death and resurrection in virtue of the work which Christ therein accomplished. We believe in Him who raised up Christ from among the dead: Can we live in the sin to which we are dead? It is to contradict oneself and one's baptism. But if I am baptized into Christ, it is as having part in His death (for there it is that I have this righteousness in which He appears before God, and I in him), Now it is to sin that He is dead; and I am brought into the participation of this divine and perfect righteousness by having part in death unto sin. It is impossible, therefore, that it should he to live in sin, though, no doubt, the flesh would like that. “Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” All that is in God was interested in the resurrection of Christ. At the cross, God (not the Father, as such, but God) was glorified; His holiness, love, righteousness, plainly witnessed by the death of the just one, were there fully magnified. But in the resurrection of Christ all that God was in His glory, and the Father in His relationship as Father, was displayed and put in exercise.
The question here is not motive, nor duty merely but the nature of the blessing in which we participate, and of which Christian baptism is the expression. The Christian's life is quite new and the walk flows from it. Death and resurrection with Christ is his present portion. Our old man (ver. 6) has been crucified with him, that the body of sin might be rendered null, that we might no longer serve sin. Death gives quittance from sin (ver. 7).
Ver. 10. The obedience of Christ was put to the proof up to the end, till there rested no more than death; and He preferred to die rather than fail in obedience, which would have been yielding to sin. Far from yielding, He died; He completed His obedience in death; and by it He has done with sin in every way. He has only to do with God. We, too, should appropriate this by faith (ver. 11), and reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Hence the clear and solemn exhortations of verses 12, 13, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.” But mark well that the source of practical power (and that is the question) is in grace: “sin shall not have dominion over you, FOR you are not under grace.” If God and sin are in question, doubtless God is found the strongest!
Ver. 15. It is owned that grace is an occasion for the flesh, not for the Christian to walk according to the flesh. Observe how, in this chapter, Paul reduces the flesh to silence: Shall we sin (ver. 1) to show greater grace? No, for that would be no longer the grace which annulled our sins to save us. Shall we sin (ver. 15) since grace delivers from the law, and we are no longer under its slavery? No, for in that we should become slaves in another way.
Ver. 16. While it is by righteousness outside us that we are justified, this righteousness is identified in us, notwithstanding, with practical righteousness. Its character is obedience, and obedience is learned of Christ. If 1 forbid my son to do something he would like to do, and I am heeded, I say, There is an obedient child; but Christ's obedience is quite another thing. Never had God to stop Him in the movement of His soul, for that movement was always the very will of God. Our obedience is on the same principle. We are elect to the obedience of Jesus Christ, i.e., to that same obedience (1 Peter 1). We have also to obey Jesus; but here it is the obedience of Jesus Christ. Obedience owns the authority of another, binding to the person, and not merely to the precept. So 1 Cor. 9:21,21To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. (1 Corinthians 9:21) “lawfully subject to Christ.”
Ver. 19. The contrary is here spoken of—lawlessness—the act not only of disobeying a recognized authority, but of not owning the authority itself. The lawlessness produced nothing, but stops in itself. Obedience bears fruit unto holiness. By it one is in connection with God, and its effect is holiness. In verse 20 there is an “end” but no fruits. The end is death.
Ver. 22. The present fruit of obedience is holiness. and the end eternal life. We possess eternal life and we make towards it for the end. Such is the enigma of Christianity: we have not and we have.
Chap. 7. We have seen the deliverance of the believer as to guilt (chap. 5), and as to life (chap. 6). In the seventh chapter we have deliverance with regard to the law. Thus these three chapters give, taken together, deliverance as to the guilt of sin, as to the power of sin, and as to the law which binds upon us both these things From the details of chaps. 5, 6 we have also seen that it is always on the principle of death and resurrection that our deliverance rests. It is the same in the seventh chapter.
The Christian, or, to say better, the believer, has part in Christ as a dead Christ, and lives, in that' Christ is raised from the dead. Now the law has only power over a man as long as he lives. In bringing out the effect of this truth, the apostle uses the example of the law of marriage. The woman would be an adulteress if she were married to another while her husband was alive, but when her husband is dead she is free. In this illustration, the husband died; but in application to us, the law does not lose its force, its rights, by dying, but by our dying. The law does not die (for in that case sin would be free), but we, by the body of Christ, are dead to the law.
Ver. 6. “But now we are dead from the law, having died in that in which we were held, so that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in oldness of letter.” in Gal. 2:1919For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. (Galatians 2:19) it is the same thing differently expressed. There our death to the law is attributed to the law itself. “I through the law am dead to the law.” A man suffocated in a room owes his death to the room itself, but by the very fact he is also dead to this room. We are dead to the law; it has no more rights over us. Notwithstanding, if we were freed from it without a sufficient authority, we should become ἄνομοι,without law, without restraint. But in Christ we have a good authority for being free. In Him, on the cross, our responsibility before God was settled. In Him risen, we partake of a new life which bears its fruits, and for which the system of law no longer exists.
We must not confound the principle of law, under which the responsibility of man before God, as to righteousness, is guarded, with the system of ordinances blotted out by the death of Christ. There is the authority of God, and the authority of the lawgiver. As to man, he is necessarily under responsibility before God, whatever may be the particular circumstances which are attached to that responsibility. The law of Moses, for example, is an application of man's responsibility; it is by it that God has illustrated, on a large scale, this principle of law. And what we almost always find in the Old Testament is the law. In the subject which occupies us Paul generalizes; he reasons on the principle of law, without confining himself to the law of Moses, although he sometimes quotes it. The Romans, to whom he says, “ye have been made dead to the law by the body of Christ,” had never been put under Moses' law, with the exception of a few Jews among them.
God could never do otherwise than give a law which man could not possibly accomplish, seeing that when He gave it, man was already under sin; and God could not give a law which should tolerate sin. Moreover, whatever rule He gives to man, it is always according to the divine perfection, and consequently a rule that man cannot accomplish.
After the seventh verse, we have the details of the experience which is made of the law when it acts on a man in whom are found the two natures—the flesh and the inner man Is the law sin, that we are withdrawn from its authority? But it gave the knowledge of sin and imputed it. The apostle says that he would not have understood that the mere impulse of his nature was sin if the law had not said, “thou shalt not covet.” But the commandment gave sin the occasion to attack the soul. Sin, that evil principle of our nature, making use of the commandment to provoke the soul to the sin that is forbidden, (but which it took occasion to suggest by the interdiction itself, acting also on the will which resisted the interdiction,) produced all manner of concupiscence.
Ver. 9. “I was alive without law once.” Paul does not mean to indicate by this a state in which he himself had been. It is a great principle which he demonstrates by personifying it, as he says elsewhere, “these things I have in a figure transferred to myself and Apollos.” That does not designate any individual—it is every man.
We may remark three characters of sin—lawlessness, transgression, and hatred. These characters, for instance, might be seen in the following circumstances of the conduct of a child. First, he runs about the streets, instead of going to school. His father forbids him to leave the house, and the child, without taking heed to the interdiction, runs in the streets all the same. Lastly, his father entreats him, on the ground of his love as a father, and the son replies by giving him a blow. In these three cases, he has successively followed his wrong desires, and infringed his father's order, and despised his love. This last case is the consummation of sin.
Ver. 9, 10. If one calls oneself under law, without acknowledging oneself condemned, it weakens the authority of the law. One sometimes hears this profession from the mouths of Christians, “I am saved by grace, I am not under the law except for my conduct; doubtless, I fail in it, but God is merciful.” That is not the question. The law condemns. You have sinned, and you are cursed. “The commandment which was for life was found by me itself [to be] unto death.” “Do this and live” became death, by showing the exigencies of God to a sinful nature, whose will rejected them and to a conscience which could not but accept the just condemnation. Therefore the law is good and holy, since it forbade the sin, but in condemning the sinners. “Did then that which is good become death to me? Far be the thought. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death to me by that which is good; in order that sin might, by the commandment, become exceedingly sinful (13). “For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am fleshly, sold under sin.” (14). This last is individual experience. Speaking of Christians, as such, Paul would not say, “we are fleshly,” because he ought always to see the saints in Christ. In the case where, addressing the Corinthian believers, he said, “you are carnal,” it was when he had to look at them in a particular circumstance—when they walked as men of this world. To be in the flesh is to be before God in the condition of the first Adam. We are in the Spirit when we are in the second Adam, because it is in this position that we receive the Spirit.
The first thing, then, noticed is the attack of sin, personified as one that seizes the opportunity of the law to drive him in the contrary direction, and thus on God's part slay him in the conscience of what the law forbade. Next the apostle presents the experience of a soul under the law—not the conflict between the two natures, which still goes on when the Holy Ghost dwells in us, as shown in Gal. 6 but the effect of the law if permitted to have its way even where the heart is renewed. It will be remarked, accordingly, that neither Christ nor the Spirit is named till the question of deliverance appears. In verses 14, 17, and 20, the I is emphatic. It is the individual case which is supposed and reasoned out. The evil here is want of power where the desires are good: so that the better they are, the more miserable the person is. The question of guilt is over, but the soul discovers that it has no strength. In verse 23, the law means, not a rule imposed, but one acting always in the same way.
Ver. 24. “O wretched man that I [am]! who shall deliver me out of this body of death?” The soul sees that it has neither righteousness nor power: it is in despair as to this, and looks around, not saying, How shall I? but Who shall deliver me?” It finds at once in God a deliverance already prepared in Jesus. It is not even that God will deliver: the deliverance is wrought, and he gives thanks. Such is what happens always when, in the travail of conscience, there is the action of the Holy Spirit: then one is in quest of God, even when one is yet shrouded in a great deal of darkness.
It is, on one side, remarkable to see how, in order to get free from its embarrassment, this troubled soul cries out, “Who shall deliver me?” “It ceases saying, “Who will make me better?” It seeks nothing more in itself; it wants and asks a deliverance to come from without—a deliverance indeed. On the other side, it is also remarkable to see how suddenly it can say with joy, “I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
What is described here is the natural and necessary result of the law, when the conscience is awakened. The sense of unanswered responsibility, and the lack of peace, turns the soul in upon itself. Hence self is so prominent from verse 14, after speaking of general Christian knowledge (“we know”). It is introduced as a sort of parenthesis, to show the wretched condition to which grace applies, and from which it only can deliver, through Jesus Christ. Ver. 25 is the Christian state, characterized by deliverance. But the fullness of it is developed in the next chapter.
Chap. 8. This chapter is divided into three parts, and presents the following subjects:-1St, the Spirit considered as life (1-15); 2nd, the Spirit seen personally dwelling in the Christian—God in us (16-27); and 3rd, God for us (28-39).
Ver. 1. “There is therefore” The beginning of the chapter is a consequence of all that has been proved in chaps. 5, 6, and 7. Deliverance in Christ (chap. 5) is not touched by the flesh (chap. 6) nor by the law (chap. 7). As to these different points, all is ordered in the way of deliverance. Observe, too, that the three first verses of our chapter answer to the three preceding chapters—first to chap. 5, second to chap. 6., and third to chap. 7. The great point here is the justification of life—our new position in Christ outside the judgment of God, which has, as it were, spent itself for us in the blood and cross. Condemnation fell on Christ crucified; but now He is risen, God being glorified in the way in which He suffered and atoned for our sins, and not a debt of ours unpaid.
Ver. 2. As Christ now stands, all wrath past, in the full favor of God, such is the position of the Christian before God; “for the law of the Spirit of life has set me free from the law of sin and death.” It is not a question of experience, but the fruit of what God has wrought in Christ and given to us in the new life wherewith we are quickened.
Ver. 3, 4. “For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God having sent his own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin (i.e., as a sacrifice for sin), has condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to flesh but according to Spirit.” The Greek phrase, “for sin,” is an expression derived from the Septuagint (Leviticus Num. 8, &c. Comp. also Heb. 10:66In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. (Hebrews 10:6)). The grand thing here is not merely the forgiveness of sinful acts, but the deliverance which God has wrought for the believer in respect of the sin which is in his nature. God has, in Christ, executed sentence upon this root of sin; so that this sin has no title whatever against us; nay, it exists no more for the conscience between the soul and God, however we have to watch, and judge, and fight against it. Thus the Christian life is united inseparably with deliverance from condemnation by grace, and this in virtue of the resurrection of Christ. The law could only condemn the sinner God, acting in grace, has condemned the sin, and delivered the sinner. The practical result for him is that, being freed, he walks in love, and that is the fulfilling of the law. Holiness is produced by the Spirit in the ways; for it is the Spirit, not the law, which characterizes the Christian and gives him power. Ver. 4, then, is a transition from the position in which grace has set us before God to the practical life in which this grace places and conducts the Christian. While they are distinct, absolute righteousness and practical righteousness cannot be severed. The first comes to us from Christ dead on the cross; the second from Christ living in us.
Ver. 5 indicates the moral categories—not the duty merely, but the tendency and sure action of the nature whether in those according to the flesh, or in those according to the Spirit.
Ver. 6 gives the respective results—death, and life, and peace: as 7 presents the deep, moral reason—the mind of the flesh is enmity against God, and hence necessarily rebellious when tested by His law. The conclusion, ver. 9, is clear: those that are in flesh (i.e., natural men) cannot please God. The law could only regulate their responsibility and condemn their failure, instead of delivering them.
Ver. 9 puts us, Christians as such, entirely outside the first Adam. We belong no more to that existence. The principle of our relations with God is not the flesh but the Spirit. If God's Spirit dwell in us, we are not in flesh but in Spirit, though the flesh is still in us. Thus is a new life given, a new man formed. The man has the Spirit of Christ: if not, he is none of His. Whatever be the sovereign grace of God, there is in Christianity a practical realization through the Spirit of Christ. We “are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works.”
Ver. 10. “If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin.” The body can only produce sin. Now, on account of Christ, the Christian accounts it as dead. If it act in its living will, there is nothing but sin. The body is only an instrument of righteousness so far as it is dead. But the Spirit is life because of righteousness. By the fact that Christ is in us, the Spirit is our life. He produces only righteousness.
Ver. 11. The resurrection of the saints falls under a spiritual principle which distinguishes it entirely from the resurrection of the rest of men. Three things may be remarked in these verses relating to the Spirit, (1) He is called “the Spirit of God” abiding in us, so that we are not in the flesh. It is the Holy Spirit in opposition to the old man. (2) The Spirit of Christ as the formal character of the life morally. It is the Spirit, as the formative agent of the new man, or the perfect life of Christ in man. And (3) He is the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead; not only the opposition to the flesh of man—not only effects in man; but a state perfect and definitive in resurrection. In this way we are finally delivered from this body of death, and get the full answer to the question of chap. 7:24, “Who shall deliver me?” The very body is to be set free by the power of God acting as He did in Christ's resurrection by the Spirit.
Ver. 12,13. Whatever be His gifts and favors toward man, God never changes in the first elements of righteousness and holiness. It is extremely important to maintain these great principles in all their force.
Ver. 14, 15. But those led by God's Spirit are sons of God. We have received a spirit of sonship, whereby we cry, Abba Father.
Ver. 16-26. We are arrived at that part of the subject which considers the Spirit as personally indwelling in the saints. Two things are said of His operations in them. First, inasmuch as He has made us His dwelling, He is the power which introduces us into the knowledge and enjoyment of our privileges. Next, since we, through our bodies, suffer in the midst of a suffering creation, He takes part in our infirmities. He is the power of that which is new, namely of grace and its riches, and He is the consolation of that which is old, namely, the consolation of our souls in the midst of a state of things resulting from the fall.
Ver. 16. “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.” This passage, which, in experience leaves no difficulty, presents one when it is a question of saying what it means. If I separate from my spirit the witness of the Spirit of God, I leave no witness at all. If I receive the witness of the Spirit, then I have two; I have the certainty in my own spirit that I am a child of God, and I have besides the witness of that Spirit which works in us as the Spirit of adoption. It is the Spirit of God in us who gives to our spirit the strength to say that we are children of God.
Ver. 17. The relation of child of God, formed in our hearts by the Spirit of adoption, having been named, the privileges which belong to children are afterward brought out. The first of the privileges mentioned is that of our participation in the inheritance of God. We are “heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.” But the saints, before they receive the inheritance, have to tread a road which is sown with sorrows. Sufferings mark their path towards the glory which is to come. Suffering for Christ is not exactly the subject here; it is suffering with Christ. A spiritual man cannot do other than suffer with Christ, because he will feel things as Christ felt them.
Ver. 19-21. We are brought into liberty; this is the subject of the chapter. But creation has nothing to do with the liberty of the grace which we enjoy. In order that it may be delivered, glory must come. Then the creation, brought into captivity through the sin of man, will be delivered from the bondage of corruption. Meanwhile it groans and travails. The Christian is the channel through which these groans ascend to God. The Lord Himself, when upon earth, knew what were these groans. He groaned at the tomb of Lazarus and was heard.
Ver. 22. There is something unutterable in the condition of the Christian. On the one hand he is connected with the dust; on the other he bears within him the divine nature. He can thus, in a practical manner, express before God all the sufferings of this creation.
Ver. 26. This is a wonderful experience of the child of God, in which meet, at the same time, our heart, the new life, and the Holy Ghost. In the midst of the confusion of visible things, our hearts, under the impression received from them, and in the consciousness of the good which is in God, send forth groans. But God gathers up these groans, for they are an intercession which is pleasing to Him. They come from the Holy Spirit dwelling in our hearts quickened by grace. And the vessel into which the Holy Ghost puts so excellent a thing is, nevertheless, a human heart.
Ver. 27. “He maketh intercession for the saints according to God” —not in a selfish manner, which would lead one only to think of oneself, but associating us with the groans of creation.
Ver. 2S. So far we have seen in this chapter the work of God in us. We pass now to another point; the work of God for us.
Ver. 29. He has predestinated them “to be conformed to the image of his Son.” This counsel is not at all dependence upon a foresight by which God would know that we should succeed in becoming conformed to Christ. It is a purpose which was reserved in God—a purpose which He has had of rendering us conformed to the image of His Son. It is very sweet to see our happiness thus flowing from the divine will.
Ver. 30 “Whom he called, them he also justified; whom he justified, them he also glorified.” All these blessings belong to the work of God for us—to His acts accomplished outside us, according to His determinate counsel. In this list, sanctification is not mentioned. It is not said, as in 1 Cor. 6:2,2Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? (1 Corinthians 6:2) “washed, sanctified, justified.” We see by this verse of the epistle to the Corinthians, that sanctification takes its place before justification. As soon as truth has reached us, the first effect that it produces is to set us apart; an operation which is accomplished by the action of the word upon us, by regeneration, &c. Thus set apart by divine action, we are sanctified; after that, God justifies us. Three facts are to be remarked in sanctification—we are sanctified by God the Father, sanctified through the blood of Christ, and sanctified by the Holy Ghost. The Father, in the thoughts of His sovereign grace, has determined this condition for us; the blood has redeemed us, and the Holy Spirit forms us in holiness. Practical sanctification must be added; the stone taken from the quarry is afterward fashioned for taking its place in the building Ver. 31-32. In these words, the Holy Spirit brings out the full extent of the liberality and the free-giving of God. He draws consequences from this liberality, and he concludes by the certainty of grace, and of the security of the saints. “God is for us.” He has shown it by giving His Son, and delivering Him up to death for us all. When man reasons upon sacred things, he arrives at different conclusions. Making himself the starting point, he judges of God by himself, and finds in result uncertainty. Here there is nothing vague; faith is surrounded with certainties.
Ver. 33-38. The Holy Ghost is still drawing consequences from the perfect grace of God. Taking in the circumstances of the saints, their weakness, &c., and measuring the extent of the difficulties that they may meet with in this world, he concludes once more with their perfect security. No accusation against them is possible: they are the elect of God; nor any condemnation, for it is God Himself who has justified them. And as to the difficulties which may arise on their way, there are none which are not known to Christ, and subordinate to the power of that Savior who loved these chosen ones and gave Himself for them.
Ver. 39. “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?” Paul here puts forth a challenge, as we see the Lord giving one to Satan in favor of Joshua (Zech. 3). “Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?” The answer is in the question, “who will dare to accuse these persons before God? It is God who justifies” —God who has elected them.
Ver. 33, 34. Read, punctuating as follows— “It is God who justifies; who is he that condemns?” Justification and condemnation are put in contrast.
Ver. 35 and 37. These three verses are delicious. In the midst of so many sorrows, calculated to separate us from the love of Christ, it is precisely there that we meet with this faithful Savior. In tribulation..... He has passed through it, He is with us in it, &c.
Ver. 38, 39. Paul, in terminating this unfolding of the Christian condition, names the strongest things which could dare to rise up against the saints, and only sees in them powerless obstacles in presence of the love that God has shown us in Jesus Christ. This eighth chapter, as it has been expressed, sets out by saying “no condemnation,” and ends by adding “no separation.”