2.—Sin
BUT what of the sin which dwells in us, the evil root which produces the terrible fruits called sins? These, we have seen, God has forgiven on faith; but how has He dealt with the corrupt nature, "the flesh,"—with that bad principle which I see at work within me, as it came in by the first man's unrighteous act? The Epistle to the Romans meets and removes these difficulties in the section following Rom. 5:1111And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. (Romans 5:11), and which closes with the eighth chapter. God, in Christ crucified, "condemned sin in the flesh" (chap. 8:3), setting it aside as hopelessly evil, incapable of improvement, and withal impotent against the believer who rests on Christ's sacrifice for sin.
It may be that I, as a quickened soul, have been able to rejoice for a time in the apprehension of the means by which God can righteously forgive my sins. But before long how distressed and wretched I become! For I make the discovery, being now born of the Spirit, that my old self, my very nature, the flesh, can do nothing but sin. If bethink myself of God's holy law, my inward man, which is born of God, delights in its requirements; but to my unspeakable concern I find that "the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do."
Now grace foresaw this dilemma, and provided perfectly for it. For the salvation of God is a complete deliverance, and altogether worthy of Himself. Hence we have set forth in Rom, 5:8-12. God's means of deliverance, in chap'. 6. from sin or the sinful nature, and in chap. 7. from the law which required from one under it a righteousness which his old nature made him utterly unable to produce.
How immense the relief when by grace one is enabled to lay hold on the truth here set forth! Now I cease to count any longer upon any good in myself; for I have learned that "in my flesh dwelleth no good thing," and that "it profiteth nothing." I learn that I am privileged to reckon myself "dead to sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." Henceforth, instead of wearing myself out in a useless effort after a righteousness of my own by law-keeping, I am enabled to avail myself of God's own deliverance in Christ dead and risen from all condemnation, and "to thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Therefore for those in Christ Jesus "there is no condemnation.”
There was individual experience in the misery of sin, and the killing power of the law. There is now individual deliverance by faith of what God wrought and gives me in Christ. "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and death" (lb. 2). Risen life in Christ is mine, which God will never condemn; and sin in the flesh, which is mine, God condemned on the cross when Christ was a sacrifice for sin (lb. 3).
Hence too "we have received the Spirit of adoption or sonship whereby we cry, Abba, Father (Ib. 15). Brought thus into a new and near relationship in Christ," The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together." (lb. 16, [7).
As a child and son of God, there is now for me a new responsibility. How inconsistent on my part, how unworthy of the place into which I am brought in Christ, would it be if I continued in sin! But far be it from us that we should so continue, for "how shall we, who died to sin, live any longer therein?" In my baptism I confessed that the old thing had passed away. In a figure I washed away my sins, and confessed my old man crucified with Christ, "that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth I should not serve sin."
There my old self by grace in Christ came to its end and was buried, "that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (1 b. 4). “For as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness." Moreover, God holds us responsible that if we live by having the Spirit we should also walk in the Spirit.
God gives me, a Christian, the privilege of having died to sin with Christ; and He calls on me to reckon myself dead unto sin and alive to Himself in Christ Jesus. Not that sin is not still in me, nor that it would not reign did I not keep it under as a condemned evil thing. May He give me and my fellow believers grace to be "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we that live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be manifested in our mortal flesh."