This is the necessary completion of Chap. 5. We find here the connection between sin and the law. People would say the strength of righteousness is the law. The apostle says it is the strength of sin. Paul takes up the question of law here, to look at it from the side of experience, how it works. In Galatians he takes it up from the divine side, how God gave it. Thus He brings into prominence the four hundred and thirty years between the promise and the law, which the latter could not therefore add to nor disannul. Entirely apart from it, the promise of blessing to the world was in Abraham and his seed, in Christ, and on the principle of faith. Law came in by-the-bye, to be a handmaid to the gospel, as Hagar to Sarah, and to raise the question of what man is, and shut him up to blessing through another.
Q. What Is Conversion in Scripture?
Ans. It is any turning to God out of evil, and so may be repeated a number of times, but we use it ordinarily for the first turning of a man's heart to God.
Q. Does Repentance Come Before Faith?
Ans. There is none without it, for " without faith it is impossible to please God." A man may believe in Christ and yet not know the gospel, because he has not in the full sense repented. Repentance is the soul bowing under the judgment of God as to its condition. Here in Romans it is scarcely named, and yet the whole tenor of the first three chapters is to produce it. "Repent ye and believe the gospel," is in perfect order, for if Christ came to save the lost, one must take one's place as lost in order to find the salvation. Acts 10 illustrates the difference between life and salvation. A man is there shown us who fears God and works righteousness, and is accepted of Him' he is therefore converted, but has yet to hear words where- by he shall be saved. Salvation is a conscious thing. New birth is not necessarily so. A saved man is a different thing from being safe. Salvation is what the gospel only produces, deliverance, conscious liberty, and peace with God.
The law as the " ministration of death and condemnation," is designed to work repentance. The word "ministration" means that it does service in condemning and putting us to death. The law is not dead, but we are. (See margin ver. 6.) If we put ourselves under-it we shall find it living enough. We were married -to. the law naturally. We take the law to be fruitful to God, but find that its effect is the very opposite. All question of justification is settled before this, both of-sins and sin. People say that the law is the strength. of holiness, and that if you are free from it you will go, into unholiness. Scripture says that we are free from it to bring forth fruit to God. You cannot rightly have-Christ for fruitfulness except as dead to the law.
Q. in What Respect Is the Law a Schoolmaster?
Ans. Just as with a man who has a paralyzed, hand, if you tell him to lift it up he finds it is powerless.
Verse 5. " When we were in the flesh "-a simple expression in view of death having come in. A dead man is not in the flesh. " In the flesh" is the condition in which we were, and there the law only produced the motions of sins. It set sin working; which was,, the purpose God gave it for, to discover it. We are delivered from the law that we should serve God; not do our old will.
" The oldness of the letter" is a stopped will, answering to the fold of Judaism (John 10). " Newness, of spirit " is a changed will-Christianity. The Lord, does not come and ''break down the fold, and say you can go free, but enters into it to call the sheep to, Himself, and then sets them free to follow Him.
Verse 7. " Is the law sin? God forbid." Law gives the practical acquaintance with sin by its opposition to it.
Verse 8. "Sin was dead "-lay quiet and still as if so.
Verse 9. "Ordained to life "-proposed to live by, but you find death by it. The practical experience is the opposite of what it was proposed for.
Verse 11. The law occupies me with myself. I try to bring about in myself a condition that I can be satisfied with. We try to say with the Pharisee, " God, I thank Thee," etc. He was not a godless man, but one thanking God for what he is, just what people want to do and are troubled about if not able. People think "of holiness as something that has to be a conscious thing. They say God would never give commandments that He does not give power to fulfill, and we ought to know that we are fulfilling them. God says we are " to be clothed with humility." Are we to get that as a condition, so that we shall be able to thank God that we are so humble?
God does not want us to go on in sin, but does not want to build us up in complacency either. Self-occupation is not holiness, but occupation with Christ is. To have Him before us keeps us holy and humble. " We all with open face beholding the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image." We shine by reflection, when our faces are turned toward Him, like the moon; if we went up there to see how bright it was we should find ourselves looking in the face of the sun.
Precepts come in to bring us up sharp if we are in the wrong way, but power to obey them is only found in turning to Christ. Occupation with myself is only unhappiness, and therefore it is unholiness.
In Neh. 8. they are all weeping because of the broken law. The Levites still the people, for the day is holy. " Go your way; eat the fat," etc., " for the joy of the Lord is your strength." To be occupied with our badness is not true self-judgment, but turning away from it to Christ is.
Verse 21. " A law " is not merely a tendency, but a ruling principle. " A law of sin in my members" is not the Christian condition. In that case sin is my master, and I am not freed from it.
Verse 22. "I delight in the law," shows it is a converted man; it is not merely conscience approving it, but the heart changed. Here is a converted man taking God's law, and under it finding himself unable to keep it. The very thing he delights in is actually power against him. The position of this experience in the epistle decides that it is a converted man. We have had man justified, dead to sin, etc., and then to come back to an unconverted state would be monstrous.
Then again, as to being the proper Christian condition: When we get two distinct states, the one bondage, the other deliverance, which must be the proper one for the Christian? The law helps a man to find out himself, never to get out of himself.
Verse 24. Now he cries out, " Who shall deliver me? " " This body of death " is the body of sin, as death to him. " Who shall deliver me? " is self-despair. Before he has been saying, "How shall I deliver myself? " He is now reduced to utter helplessness, even as a believer.
Verse 25. "I thank God." Now he finds the deliverance. " So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God," etc., shows there is no change in himself. It is not an infusion of strength into him which helps him to break his bonds.
In Ex. 12 Pharaoh lets them go. They go out with a high hand, but God " leads them about by the way of the sea," till, with death before them and Pharaoh behind, they stand still and see the salvation of God. God's way for them is through the sea, not by strengthening them to fight Pharaoh. A path is made through it; Christ's death for us carrying us -through death dry shod. What perishes in the sea is Pharaoh, the old man. The cross of Christ is my deliverance; whatever I find in myself is merely an Egyptian carcass.
[To be concluded.]