The resurrection had marked out Jesus to be the Son of God, according to the Spirit of holiness, tie might be of the seed of David according to the flesh, but He was the Son of God according to entirely another life, spirit, and energy. Of this, His resurrection was at once the proof and the glorious character. for it was triumph over death, of which, according to that life and holiness which was in Him, if was not possible (though He might imputatively take sin) that He could be holden. In this resurrection and power of accomplished and triumphant liberty—liberty of perfectness and sanctification of man to God in a new state of life, in which man had never been—He became the Head of a new family, the Firstborn from the dead, the Head of the body, the Church, having in all things the preeminence, and the Son, taking His place now, as such, in resurrection. Thus our justification became in fact identified with our position as sons, and as risen (i.e. with holiness, according to its character in resurrection) before God as children. Therefore it was that, if the Apostle had known Christ Jesus after the flesh, henceforth he knew Him no more. He now knew Him in this character of resurrection, the Head of the new creation—the new family of God—the Second Man, and so to us the quickening Spirit, when our living souls had spiritually died in the first Adam in sin—the head of a new family of men, with whom, in the close, the tabernacle of God should be.
The justification of the Church having been first reasoned out by the Spirit, the Apostle turns to this: first, as regards death and resurrection, in Rom. 6; then, as regards the law, chapter 7; that is, first, "nature" or "the flesh" in se, then the operation of the law on the question into which spiritual understanding and a new will brought the conscience. In chapter 8, he takes up the presence of the Spirit in moral operation and witness. Having stated the source of this mighty change and holy liberty, in "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" (the breath of life to our souls being the very same power in which Christ was raised from the dead, and our partaking in all the consequences of that resurrection, God having done what the law could not do, that is, condemned sin in the flesh, and that in atonement, in grace to us), the Apostle proceeds to instruct us what the power and the character of the Spirit in this new nature is.
It is the Spirit of God, as contrasted with man in the flesh. It is the Spirit of Christ, in respect of the form and character of this new man. It is the Spirit of Him that raised up Christ from the dead, according to the power and energy in which it works full deliverance as a result. Thus its moral character and operation were unfolded, as a Spirit of power and deliverance and character in us, in answer to the question. Who shall deliver us from the body of this death?
But there was also the doctrine of the relationship which we have in the new man, as well as moral character and power. As many as are led of it are sons; sons, and therefore "heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together." And here the groaning is not the question of what we are as to God's judgment of evil in us, a spirit of bondage to fear, but our own judgment of it in its effects because we are sons, and arc certain that we are, and know that we are heirs. We take up the groaning of the whole creation, of which we are part, as in the body, and express it to God in sympathy, in the sense of the blessedness of the glorious inheritance when the creation shall be delivered. Suffering with Christ in the present sorrow by His Spirit, we express it in the Spirit of God. even though we have no intelligence to ask for any actual remedy. In this, then, the Spirit has a double office: the witness with us, for joy, that we are sons and heirs, and helping us in the infirmities lying on creation and on us in the body. When He, the Holy Spirit, acting in us in sympathy thus groans in us, expressive of the sorrow, He who searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession for us according to God.
J.N. Darby