CHAPTER 2.—GOD'S WAY OF DELIVERANCE,
GOD has provided for deliverance in the Epistle to the Romans, showing us in chap. 6. how we may get deliverance from the power of sin, of the presence of which every believer soon becomes painfully conscious. We have died to sin (6:2), we are here taught. By the death of Christ for us we have a perfect standing before the throne of God. By His death, as a practical truth applied to us, we get free from the power of sin. But this part of the teaching of the Romans flows out of our being in Christ, who has actually died, and has risen. Hence, as in Him, His condition as regards sin is ours. He has died to it once for all (10). We as in Him, have died with Him (8). Starting from this we are exhorted to carry it out practically in our walk, reckoning " ourselves dead indeed unto it, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus our Lord;" the assurance being added for the saints comfort and encouragement, " Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under law, but under grace" (19). Now this condition, viz., that we have died to sin, is true of every Christian, however little he may have known it, or heard of it. It is not a question of attainment, though the practical carrying out of it is a matter of experience. All the saints in Rome, once bondsmen to sin, were bondsmen unto righteousness, having obeyed from the heart the form of doctrine into which they were instructed (17). Hence they were exhorted to yield their members in bondage to righteousness unto holiness. Their condition, and that of every Christian, as regards sin, depends on the condition of Christ, in whom we are. The walk, the practice, is to be in conformity with it. We are not exhorted to walk so as to attain to it.
Then chapter 7. tells of our deliverance from the law as a husband, and our being married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead " that we might bring forth fruit unto God," and " serve in newness of spirit." To this is added in the end of the chapter an illustration of how deliverance from the body of sin and death is accomplished, or rather it gives us the experience of a quickened soul struggling with sin under law, and always failing to do the good which is, with the mind, approved of and aimed at. “Now it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me." The effect is to give a true knowledge of one's self. “For I know that in me (that is in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing; for to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not," &c. " I delight in the law of God after the inward man; but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. Oh! wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" The struggle is given up in despair, for deliverance from captivity is hopeless, as well as of being good or doing good. It is more difficult to convince a soul of being "without strength" than of being guilty: it must wade through the morass of its own experience to convince it of being " without strength: " and the more thoroughly the utter worthlessness and weakness of our own selves is learned experimentally, and the hopelessness of self-effort to give deliverance, or the possibility of deliverance being achieved while struggling against sin under law, the more entirely shall we abandon the conflict, and seek a deliverer. This struggle ends only in despair and wretchedness. But when the eye turns to God in Christ, thankfulness possesses the despairing struggler. “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." For what the law could not do, God has done in Christ when made a sacrifice for sin. He condemned sin in the flesh by making Christ sin for us, that we might be made righteousness of God in Him, and thus find that deliverance is secured by our being in Him, and having in Him life and righteousness where no condemnation is. " In Christ Jesus," our new risen Head, we have life not in the flesh, and we have deliverance in the power of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus: and this is made good to us practically as it was to the apostle—"The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of s in and death." The law's righteous requirements that never were yielded while the bootless struggle continued, are now forthcoming. God has condemned sin in the flesh “in order that the righteous requirements of the law should be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to flesh, but according to Spirit."
I have gone into the subject of deliverance in Christ from our sinful and lost condition more fully than I intended to do; but it is never out of place to " have these things al ways in remembrance, though ye know them and be established in the present truth." But the special pur pose of my referring to it is to bring out this fact, that when we come to despair of ourselves,, God undertakes for us. Whenever the man in the morass said, Who shall deliver me? he found a deliverer in God: and he says immediately, " I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." He is a delivered. man, and " in Christ Jesus " risen from the dead, in whom there is "no condemnation, " and from whose love there will be no separation. "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? “None “shall be able to-separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." The love of God in Christ Jesus hath given us this new place, and this love will keep us in it. “It is God that justifieth, who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again who is even at the right hand of God, and who maketh intercession for us." Our place is now in Christ risen, and this is known in the Spirit who characterizes it. “For ye are not in flesh, but in spirit, if, indeed, God's Spirit dwell in you." But if that Spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwell in you,. He will at length give life to our mortal bodies, and there will be complete deliverance at the Lord's coming. " Because whom he has foreknown he has also predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son that he might be the firstborn among many brethren." This conformity will be in glory and in body as well as soul. " Beloved, now are we children of God, and what we shall be it has not yet been manifested; we know that if He is manifested, we shall be like him, for we shall see Him as He is; and every one that has this hope in Him purifies himself even as He is pure." All is thus secured for eternity; and all is of God who "hath commended his own love towards us," wrought out all for us through His Son, and is Himself "for us." What shall we then say to these things? "If God be for us, who can be against us?"