Romans, (Continued.)
WE have already had the assurance, “sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace” (chapter 6:14). This is now fully opened up to us in the seventh and first four verses of the eighth chapters. We are now taught how the death of Christ for us has delivered us from the law itself; and that, in order “that we might bring forth fruit to God” (4). The point is here, — and a greatly disputed one, — Nor that the law cannot justify us, (which was settled as far back as chapter 3:20) but that it is, as 1 Corinthians 15:5656The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. (1 Corinthians 15:56) teaches, “the strength of sin.” That we may be holy, we must he “delivered from “‘and “dead to the law” (4, 6.)
It is a doctrine still so strange to many, and yet so essential to the proper liberty and power which Christians ought to know and walk in, that I beg the earnest attention of the reader to it. I shall follow out as simply as possible the statements of scripture here before us, convinced that they are neither so doubtful nor so difficult, but that the mere babe in Christ may learn; if he will, the precious, comforting lessons of the inspired Word.
We have learned already what our place is, as believers, before God. It is “in Christ,” as the One who having died for us as sinners, appears for us now in the presence of God, — the Representative of His people. His death in our stead was thus our death; we are “dead with Christ” (6:8). “Our old man wits crucified with Him” (6:6). We as sinners, having received our judgment in His cross, pass away as sinners from before God forever. We are now “saints;” and, as that, represented to the eye and heart of God in His own beloved Son. Hence our security; for he can never fail. The evil that dwells in you and me, is not “in Him” on whom the whole favor of God rests in infinite delight, which embraces thus equally the poorest, weakest, unworthiest of all those for whom He stands.
The first necessity of believers is that our hearts be established in this grace of God. Then we may talk of practice. Otherwise the attempt at holiness is necessarily mere legality, — self-righteous effort to make our peace with Him, as most people speak; self and not Christ the root and spring of all. But “He died, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them, and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:1111Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are made manifest unto God; and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences. (2 Corinthians 5:11)). The heart at rest from all need for this, — at rest as to the past, the present, and the future, — and owing all to a love which brought Him from the heights of heavenly glory, down to the place of wrath and curse — to the cross; the heart that has received this love, loves: and the walk and life become the expression and the outflow of devotedness to Him. The miserable man, who boasts of his place in Christ, and uses it to live carelessly unto himself, only shows thereby how little he knows of what he boasts of.
As believers then, (for God and for faith) we are “dead;” we are “not in the flesh” (8:9). The latter expression is a very simple one to one who has grasped the reality of being “dead with Christ.” A man who has died is not in the flesh. Every, thing turns upon this, that we have died. Thus as the apostle shows here (7:1-3), the law applies only to the living; death sets free from it. The woman who has an husband, if that husband dies, is free from the law of her husband, and may be another’s. Believers are thus set free from the law which belongs only to living men, but not by the death of the law, the first husband, but by themselves dying. “Ye are become DEAD TO THE LAW by the body of Christ, that ye should be married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead:”— and for what purpose? Mark it well: “that we should bring forth fruit unto God” (4).
Yes, God got no fruit by the first marriage. Man under the authority of the law produces no fruit to God, but “fruit unto death” (5); a very solemn assurance! And how was this? Because of the “motions of sin which were by the law.” We see how, then, it is “the strength of sin.” The heart frets against and is irritated by its restrictions; and although it commands love, love is never produced by a command. Hence, under its authority, the motions of sin brought forth fruit only unto death.
Deliverance from the law, then, is a first necessity for holiness. “But now we are delivered from the law, being dead to that wherein we were held” (6, margin). And once again, why? “that we should serve in newness of spirit, not in the oldness of the letter.” No law can give, for instance, honesty, by enforcing it on men that they shall be honest. For that the heart must be reached and set right; while the man who acts honestly because he is commanded, is never really at heart an honest man. “Newness of spirit” is what is needed; but that must be reached another way than by a law.
But an objection is started (7): “Why, you put the law along with sin as a tiling to be delivered from; is the law, then, sin?” Not so, says the apostle, but in thorough opposition to it, searching it out and making me aware of its existence where I never suspected it. For I should not have known “lust” to be that, only that the law forbade it, saying, “Thou shalt not lust.” And thereupon, “sin taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of lust(7, 8). Sorrowful but perfect revelation of the heart of man in its opposition to God which, knowing not His love, deems a thing forbidden to be a thing therefore specially to be desired. This began in Eden, where one tree alone prohibited to man, hid all the beauty of the garden God had planted for him from his eyes.
But thus, by the law, the sin which lay unconsciously in the soul, as dead, was roused, and revived. The man, before with life and strength for good, as he imagined, found it all wither and collapse utterly. Sin became consciously the only living power in him: “sin revived; I died” (8, 9). And so “the commandment which was to life,” if man but kept it, he who proved it, found to be “to death.” But the law thus remains a holy law; the commandment holy, and just, and good (10-12).
But, says the soul in its perplexity, “is, then, that which is good made the death of that which is good, to me?” “Again, no, says the apostle. It is sin that works death; sin which, shown in its opposition to the holy law of God, is seen to be exceeding sinful (13). It is only the real condition of things with me which the law has shown.
And then follows, from verse 14-25, that chapter from the personal experience of one vainly but earnestly seeking after the righteousness of the law, which has found such contradictory interpretations at the hands of theologians. The connection, however, with what has preceded, is not obscure, and should guard from all mistake as to the general meaning. As we have already seen, the apostle is not here showing the impossibility of the law justifying, but of its enabling us to bring forth fruit to God. The experience before us is not therefore the experience of a man seeking justification by it, but holiness. That it is not the state of an unconverted man, “dead in sins,” is very plain. That he should be able to say, “it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me” (17), or again, “I delight in the law of God after the inward man” (22) is simply impossible. Conscience might, even in the unconverted, assert the rightness of the law, it is true but that is not the man hang “delight” in it. To have that, the soul must have been quickened; a new nature must have been received. And this agrees with the place in the epistle which this experience occupies.
On the other hand, that we have not here the proper condition of a Christian, should be just as plain. If a Christian is “carnal” (14) it is not his necessary or proper condition surely. If he is “sold under in” — a slave to it, as that means, — then he does not yet know “redemption,” which is release from it. It could not be said to such, “being then made free from sin” (6:18), which chapter 8:2 gives us as the termination of the condition here described: “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.”
But take the truth comprised in chapter 6:14, and all is plain. “Sin shall not have dominion over you, because you are not under the law, but under grace.” Here we have a soul proving the opposite of this. Sin has dominion, because he is under the law. It is not given as the condition of all Christians, but the contrary. The change from “we” to “I” shows this. “We” know that the law is spiritual — all know that; “but I am carnal,” — not all Christians but a person’s case supposed. It is a soul in its experience under law, not dead to it. The man is renewed, and the bent of his mind is changed. The goodness of the law he consents to; keep it, he cannot (14-16). Sin dwelling in him masters him, spite of himself. He repeats in his earnestness, that it is spite of himself (19, 20). Although converted, and renewed in desire, he is occupied with himself and so finds nothing but the “flesh,” the old nature, and no good dwells there (18). There is a law of sin in his members (21-23). He is captive to it, — unwillingly; and that is the felt misery of his condition. Helpless utterly himself, he has to cry out for deliverance to one outside himself (24).
All this is the necessary effect of a position under law. It occupies you with yourself. It says, “Thou shalt,” and “Thou shalt not.” And it puts you upon working yourself out of a bad condition of soul into a better one. On the other hand, God’s plan is never to occupy or satisfy you with yourself, but with Christ first and last; and when you find you cannot mend yourself, to leave self under the condemnation of the cross of Christ. He died for you, and that was therefore your death — judgment pronounced and executed upon you. If you live now, it is in Christ alone you live. God has given you a place of acceptance with Himself in the Son of His love. See yourself by faith as what he has made you in the Beloved, and you cannot want to better that. Instead of trying to improve self, you have but to yield yourself up unreservedly to the enjoyment of what Christ is and has done, for you. It is while “we with open face behold the glory of the Lord,” that we “are changed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3:1818But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. (2 Corinthians 3:18)).
Self-occupation is the necessary result of legality, — of being in conscience under law, for “the law is not of faith” (Gal. 3:1212And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them. (Galatians 3:12)). “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” is the only proper result. From this point the new experience — the experience of faith — begins: “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (8:25). But wherein, then, does the deliverance consist? In this, that while “with the mind I myself am serving the law of God,” and yet “with the flesh the law of sin” (7:25), I find that “there is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus (8:1). For faith the old self I was occupied with, and trying to improve, is gone. I see myself alone in Christ. Thus my condition is indeed changed, for now I can say, “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (8:2). But a moment since it was self and its misery — no power but that of sin; now, the power of the Spirit, of Him through whom life in Christ is mine, lifting me up into the reality of what I am in Him, has broken the power of sin and of death. “The law could not do” this: “it was weak” for holiness, because of the flesh, the “sin in me” which rebelled against it. God has come in in another way. He has sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, but as a sacrifice for sin. That which I find in me has had its condemnation on the cross. When we see that, and the meaning of it, “the righteousness of the law”― the thing it aimed at, but could not produce — “is fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit” (8:3, 4).