We may remark that in Rom. 8:2, 32For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. 3For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: (Romans 8:2‑3), we have the two parts of the Christian treated of. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus in verse 2, and sin in the flesh in verse 3; by the first which is a holy thing in power, I am free from the law of sin and death; it is the liberty of the new man perfect from God in itself but still sin in the flesh (of which I have learned however to say, not I) is there, but then it has been condemned when Christ was for sin. Hence freedom in the new man, perfect before God, and the old condemned in that by which I have a title to hold it dead. Further, I say, as a truth known in Christ has made me free. This is not expressive of myself but the truth for faith according to verse 6. The experience ought to follow. This is the moral ground of no condemnation. Forgiveness and justification and righteousness we have had before.
In Phil. 2, we have the twofold principles which lead to likeness to Christ as in verse 15; first, self abasement, giving up self, as Christ came from the divine glory to the cross. Love coming down to serve, secondly, and it applies specially to our case in the absence of manifested apostolic power, obedience in the seriousness of a conflict to which we have to make good the path and victory of faith ourselves, as contrasted with that power but that which is ever true and our sure and infallible strength, God working in us to will and to do. The result is the likeness to Christ of verse 16 and all gracious thoughtfulness of others-not love of self.
In Heb. 5, is not verse 5 which does not institute priesthood, connected with verse 4 and in contrast though He must be a man to be a priest, (for contrast is the character of the Hebrews) with verse