The subjects treated in this part of the Romans are entirely distinct. The apostle here takes up the condition of man before God. You get his responsibility; first the guilt, and then the state, and after that comes another question—being delivered out of the state, not merely out of the guilt. Both are in every Christian, but one is not the other.
Suppose any one of us owed a thousand pounds, if someone comes forward and pays it all, well he is cleared, but then he is ruined, he has not got a thing; he cannot set up for anything. We see God for us, carrying the person on until he joys in God; God is for us all through as sinners. Until I get that, I have that same grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. I am rejoicing in hope all the past, present, and future. In the grace of God for us we are able to rejoice in tribulation; and then he continues, “And not only so, but we also joy in God.” Persons who were shiners are reconciled to God.
Then comes another question, that is, not what we have done, but our state. “By one man’s disobedience many were made sinners.” That is not what I have done; that is Adam’s guilt. If men had not the law, they were lawless and wicked; if they had the law, they had broken it. He gives the law its place, but He goes farther back-up to the first Adam—and puts all in the same place; not guilty, but lost. Guilty refers to the day of judgment, but lost is what I am now. I look back to the first man, and see where we all are; and then I look up and find a new man, and see that I have died in Christ; and this brings me to my state. The moment I see that one man’s obedience has made me righteous, how can I live on, if I am dead, in the very thing I have through death been brought out of? I cannot live on in it.
Well, what is the law to do here? By it I have knowledge of sin, not sins-quite another thing. I am in such a state that, even if I have the will to do good, I cannot do it, for I have in me another will which I cannot succeed in mastering. He learns first that “In me—that is, in my flesh dwelleth no good thing;” the tree is bad, not the fruit merely—that is what he has been treating of all along; he cannot get any better, so he is cast upon this, “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” It is a much more difficult thing to believe, and much more difficult to see deliverance from.
You do not find forgiveness in the eighth chapter; it has nothing to do with forgiveness; it is, you are free. Now there are two ways of using the word “free.” I say, “That horse is free from vice;” that means he has not any. But we also say of a slave in the West Indies, “That man is free.” Now it is in the last sense that the word is used here. We were captives, now we are free. He kills the flesh and gives you a new life; or, rather, He gives you a new life and kills the flesh.
I am both guilty and lost. After a man finds forgiveness when he does not know himself, and then afterward, when he finds sin in himself, he begins to think, Oh, I must have deceived myself, whereas he is really just finding it his state; before he only knew his guilt. If, to begin with, you get, by a full, free Gospel the forgiveness of your sins, then you will just have to learn yourself after it. You may go through it before you find forgiveness; but you must go through it sometime; and what is more, if you do not learn yourself what you are, you will make ether people learn it! If I have got a rogue in my house, and I trust him, he will pilfer me with pleasure; but if I do not trust him, I just lock up all my things. It may be very uncomfortable, but still I am safe.
As to the Holy Ghost, you may lose the gifts of the Holy Ghost, but not the gift. As we read this morning, He abides forever. The Holy Ghost “distributes gifts to every man severally as He will.” A man may not have the gifts of the Holy Ghost, but he must have the gift, for he has the Holy Ghost. As to gifts, the Holy Ghost gave tongues to one, healing to another, and so on.
What I find in the 4th of Ephesians is Christ caring for the Church, and there you have no miraculous gifts, but those which are continued “till he comes,” for He must cherish His Church. So I find them in Ephesians, continuing till He comes, whilst in Corinthians I find, as of tongues, &c., “they shall cease;” it does not say when, but so it is.