A. (1) Isa. 53:8⁸He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. (Isaiah 53:8). Differing interpretations of this clause are by no means wanting. But if the words preceding indicate the wicked travesty of our Lord’s trial before the Roman governor” his judgment was taken away” —so it would appear that the prophet, under the sense of the nation’s overwhelming wickedness in compassing the rejection and death of Jehovah’s Righteous Servant, is led to cry out, “Who shall declare” such a generation as could be so guilty— “for he was cut off out of the land of the living”! (2, 3 and 4). Rom. 7:24, 25; 8:2²⁴O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? ²⁵I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. (Romans 7:24‑25)
²For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:2). The converted or renewed soul—not yet brought into the Christian state of liberty and peace, but nevertheless truly born of God, as were also the Old Testament saints—has a new and holy nature not previously possessed (i.e. when unconverted), and delights in the law of God, yet finding itself powerless for good, because of indwelling sin (ver. 20). To will is present, but to work out the good is not. The body being thus under the power of, and enslaved by this fatal “law of sin and death,” is here called “this body of death,” dead because of sin. Hence the cry, when the soul’s powerlessness is felt and acknowledged, for a deliverer—found in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Looking to self for power has ceased; another is the Object before the soul, and so deliverance is found, and strength. “So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God,” whereas before, as sold under sin, it was no longer “I” but “sin” that dwelleth in me!

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