Notes On Romans

Introduction.

The following little work is composed of notes taken down from lectures, which had an entirely practical object. They have been corrected, as such notes generally need to be; but I have thought, as the aim was entirely practical, a short analysis of the structure of the epistle might help the reader in understanding it.

There are two great subjects in scripture, when the truth is fully brought out as in the New Testament: the responsibility of the first Adam and his children; and the purposes of God in the last Adam. The work of Christ accomplished in His infinite love meets both for those that believe. He has met their responsibility in dying for them, and bearing their sins; and, glorifying God in that death, laid the ground of the accomplishment of those purposes in their favour. Of this latter part, the epistle to Romans only just leads us to the edge in chapter 8, and the very last verses of the epistle. The epistle to the Ephesians unfolds it fully. Hence the epistle to the Romans considers men as walking in sins—the Ephesians as dead in them, and establishes the truth of a new creation, not the justifying of a sinner, though sealing that truth. Colossians is between both. This I cannot go farther into here. These truths are incidentally mentioned in other parts of the New Testament. But the structure of the epistle to the Romans is very important as to the truth it contains, and this I will now endeavour to point out.

The first 17 verses of chapter 1 are a kind of preface, in which, in the first instance, the person of the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, is put forward as the primary subject of the gospel: seed of David according to the flesh, and so fulfilment of the promise, and proved Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, in which, while His fife was according to that power, resurrection was the proof of it, so that power was witnessed as well as promise fulfilled, and that in the place of man’s weakness and Satan’s power, and even where man in life was tempted.

At the close of this passage he declares he was not ashamed of the gospel, for it was God’s power to salvation to every one that believed, Jew first and then Greek. Because God’s righteousness was revealed in it on the principle of faith, and so to faith wherever that faith was found. He was a willing debtor in grace to all, according to this gospel. He then shews why God’s righteousness must be revealed, the only ground for man to stand on. Because the wrath of God was revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness where the truth was held in unrighteousness; not governmental judgments, as in the Old Testament, in Israel, and even in the flood, but the necessary rejection and judgment of all sin by the very nature of God. He then proceeds to shew the state of sinfulness which called for this wrath, and made this righteousness necessary.

All are under sin. This reaches from chapter i:19 to chapter 3:20, when he returns to the righteousness of God again. Gentiles are proved guilty, chapter 1:19 to the end; moralists, chapter 2:1-16, where responsibility and the place of conscience are dealt with; the Jews, chapters 2:17 to 3:20 (in the last section, verses 1-20, admitting their claim of the law as theirs, and addressed to them, and shewing what it said of them). Then, from verse 21, the righteousness of God is treated of, and declared in propitiation through Christ’s blood for Old Testament past sins of believers, and present revelation of it, so that God was just, and justified believers. This only confirmed law in its requirements.

Chapter 4. The resurrection of Christ is applied as the seal of this work, but it does not carry righteousness farther than forgiveness, and all applies to sins and offences—things done when each individual has his own place.

Chapter 5:1-11 draws the blessed conclusion, peace, favour wherein we stand, and hope of the glory of God; then glorying in tribulations, God’s love being known for the profit derived, and finally in God Himself, through Jesus, through whom we have received the reconciliation. Here first the Holy Ghost, as given to us, comes in.

From verse 12 of chapter 5, the apostle treats not of sins, where all must be individual, but of sin, and so heads all up in Adam and Christ, the disobedient man and the obedient man, and distinguishes the law as that which came in by the bye to make the offence abound; but what were really in question, were sin and grace—grace reigning through righteousness by the obedience of Christ. The question here is not of sins, but of sin; one man’s disobedience, not each man’s offences, though the obedient man had to meet these too. But if one man’s obedience made us righteous, might we live on in sin? This leads to the truth that the profession of Christianity was the profession of having a part in death, hence not of living on. Christ died to sin once and lives to God; we are to reckon ourselves dead and alive to God in Him. Thus the old man is counted dead: how shall we live in it? This sets us free—free to live to God.

Chapter 7 applies this to law, because law has power over a man only as long as he lives. We are dead to it by the body of Christ; and are married to another, Christ risen. The end of the chapter gives the salutary experience of the state of the renewed mind under the law, which leaves a man captive under the law of sin in his members. In Christ all is changed, the man is delivered, though the flesh, as such, would serve the law of sin; but (chapter 8) there is no condemnation in Christ, the power of life in Him has set us free, and sin in the flesh has been condemned when He died a sacrifice for sin. Then comes the Holy Ghost in us; first as the power of life and the new man, and deliverance into resurrection (v. 9-11), then His presence in us, a person dwelling in us. Being sons, He gives witness with our spirit that we are so, shews us the glory in hope, and helps us in our infirmities on the way, gives a voice in our hearts to the sorrows of a creation subject to vanity, of which we are a part as to our body.

From verse 28 we have the security and portion in every respect derived from God’s being for us, from His own foreknowledge, to glory itself.

Chapter 5:1-11 gives what God is for sinners in grace and its fruit; chapter 8, the state of the delivered soul before Him. What leads up to the former being our sins met in grace, in Christ’s propitiation—to the latter, our sin from which we are delivered by our having died with Christ, and so being freed from it, and alive in Him. In the former case the sins are forgiven,, in the latter the sin has been condemned, but in a sacrifice for sin, and we, having died with Christ, are delivered. This finishes the doctrine of the epistle—the way in which God in grace has met the sins, and the sinful nature of man, his whole condition in Adam, through Christ.

The place of chapters 9 to 11, as reconciling the obliteration of Jew and Gentile in Christ with the special promises to the Jews, is sufficiently indicated in the notes themselves. On the hortatory part which follows no notes were furnished me. I give here a general idea of the contents: the details must be learned from the chapters themselves.

It begins with the principle of all practice connected with the doctrine of the epistle, which supposes man a sinful creature, and dealt with in grace. The Ephesians takes higher ground, as the Christian is there simply a new creation, and so associated with God; and as dear children, God’s own ways and dealings are the principle and pattern of the Christian’s walk. His works are fore-ordained, as is his place. See chapters 4 and 5, where God, as love and light, gives the measure of our ways. In Romans we have sinful man dealt with in mercy, the death of the old man being alone the means of walking aright. In both Ephesians and Romans Christ is the pattern in absolute giving up of self. “I beseech you,” says the apostle, “by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice.” The two hinges of all Christian service—the mercies of God, and our presenting ourselves, made free by grace, as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. The unity of the body is then assumed, which is no part of the doctrine of the epistle; any more than our resurrection with Christ, which involves it; on this are grounded our duties within amongst the saints, and as such.

Chapter 13 gives our duties to those around, with a double motive: love to the neighbour fulfils the law, and the night far spent, the day at hand, full deliverance drawing near. Then in chapter 14 is our relation to Christ, and consequently to all who belong to Him, that we should not put stumbling-blocks before the feet of those with whom we are alike subject and responsible to Him, and for whom He died. This part goes down to the end of verse 7 of chapter 15. Then he sums up what he had been teaching concerning Jew and Gentile, to whom reference had been made in what precedes concerning the weak in faith.

The whole closes with the statement of his thoughts and plans, and his salutations, which are more numerous than usual, as forming a link between him and the saints at Rome, whom he had never seen. The last verses of all are a statement of what the work was that was going on by his means according to eternal counsels, and now made known for the obedience of faith by prophetic scriptures.

Chapter 1.

I take up this epistle to the Romans, not with intention of entering into every detail, but to trace the general idea of the purpose of the Spirit of God in it, and the course of the apostle’s reasoning. We have before noticed the distinction between the epistles of Paul and those of John. The main subject of John’s epistles being the character of the divine life which was with the Father, manifested in the Son, and communicated to us through the Spirit—so that the divine nature in us should be able to realise the affections of the child of God; of Paul’s, the presenting of man to God. Thus the general scope of John’s epistles is, first, the manifestation of the divine life; second, the communication of it; while Paul’s epistles have another character altogether—insisting on justification, and revealing the counsels and ways of God, and the consequent relationship in which the redeemed are put before Him.

The great subject of the New Testament, besides the blessed person of the Lord and the revelation of God in Him, is the manifestation and communication of the divine life, the making us partakers of the divine nature, and the bringing man to God according to His righteousness and counsels in Christ. The child derives his life from his father, and there results not merely likeness of character but a peculiar relationship.

I would just advert here to the four truths prominent in the New Testament: first, the manifestation and communication of life; second, the accomplishment in Christ of all the promises given from Adam downwards, presented in Christ to the Jews, His people; third, mercy to the Gentiles (as in Romans 15:8, 9, Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made to the fathers, and that the Gentiles should glorify God for His mercy); fourth, our place as sons, and the church as united to Christ,- its Head. The first is especially in John’s epistles—the manifestation, then the communication, of the divine life. The second and third are found in Romans, with the groundwork of our place as sons, and only a glance in the second part at the fourth, which is fully brought out in Ephesians. The character of this is only hinted at practically, not taught, in Romans. The fourth point of truth, which is revealed in the epistle to the Ephesians, is distinct from the promises to the Jews and the mercy to the Gentiles, being a new thing, though connected with the latter. The seeing these distinctions greatly facilitates the understanding of the epistles, and clears up passages, otherwise obscure.

In Romans we have two great subjects brought out: the accomplishment of the promises made to the Jews; and mercy to the Gentiles; and, in so doing this, Paul lays the foundation of all relationship between God and man. The beginning of this first chapter is thus an introduction to all that is afterwards unfolded in the epistle. Remark here, that in the first presentation of the gospel, it is the person, not the work, of Christ which is found in grace, but important as to the claim of subjection to Him, Son of David and Son of God with power. Then, in verse 16, he is not ashamed of the gospel, because the righteousness of God is revealed in it. The epistle to the Romans has this large character naturally enough, as it consists well with the address to the great centre of the world’s empire; for Paul was writing to the Romans, whom he had never seen, as the apostle of the Gentiles, and takes his stand on the high ground of being the one to whom God had committed His counsels. So Peter, in addressing the Jews already scattered in the world, presents resurrection as a living hope, and, speaking to them on this new principle of resurrection, says, “as strangers and pilgrims,” etc., thus carrying on what was consequent upon it, in reference to those who are to participate in it.

In a great many of the various epistles we see the instructions and exhortations suited to the varied need of those addressed and called out by their state: as, in Corinthians, moral evil is treated of; in Colossians, warning against slipping away from the Head; in Galatians, falling from grace through the adoption of the law, is insisted on; in Thessalonians, the coming of the Lord and the errors into which trouble of mind had thrown them in this respect. But the epistle to the Romans, being addressed to the capital of the world and to those with whose circumstances the apostle was not familiar, takes the wide scope of man’s responsibility, Jew and Gentile, and how grace has met it, and lays the sure foundation of the relationship of man to God.

There are two parts in the doctrinal teaching of this epistle. Up to the close of chapter 8 forms the first part; and chapters 9, 10, 11, form the second part; while the concluding chapters are occupied with precepts. In the first part you get Jews and Gentiles reduced to the common condition of sinners; but the Jew would object, and say, If this be so, that there is no difference between the Jew and the Gentile, how then is God to make good His promises to the Jews? This difficulty is answered in chapters 9-11, the infallibility of the promises of God being shewn in chapter 11. But the common ground, on which both Jews and Gentiles are set, is in perfect salvation in Christ Jesus, and remains in all its force. It is important to remark in this epistle the way in which Paul sets man aside as being proved a sinner, poor, vile, and lost, and that he does this to bring God in. It is not merely that he introduces man as a sinner, but man must be thoroughly put down, in order to bring in God Himself instead of man, that God may act toward man in His own way and according to His own character.

We see a striking example of the same way of exhibiting grace in Ephesians 2. After the Jews and Gentiles had been spoken of as alike children of wrath, all is passed over, and God is brought out in His own character as rich in mercy, shewing what He has done, and what He is to such as they are. We can have no settled peace or rest of heart till we are on this ground; nor can we know God so as to trust Him, to rest in Him, and adore Him, till we prove Him thus. Then it is a settled question: our hope and trust are in God, as it is written, “who by him do believe in God.” Therefore the apostle does not say we are justified before God, though it be true, but it is God who justifies, that the heart might be brought to rest in God Himself. Paul, though righteous as to legal righteousness, had gone to the extreme extent of what sin really is: it was not a mere looseness of expression when he called himself the chief of sinners, for Paul in heart was the wickedest man that ever trod the earth; not, of course, guilty of immorality (as he says of himself, as touching the righteousness which is of the law he was blameless) “After the strictest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee”; but he was the ardent enemy of Christ, and it was when he reached to the highest point of his wickedness, “being exceedingly mad against them,” that at that moment he was “separated unto the gospel of God.” He knew what grace was.

I will now rapidly go over, without entering into detail, what man is, and has shewn himself to be. Though cast out of paradise, God had borne with man, but at first left him to himself, though not without a testimony; but the result of leaving man to himself was such corruption and violence, that he must be destroyed from off the face of the earth. God put a close to his abominations by a flood. The promise having been given as a witness that grace was the true source of blessing, the law followed, and it was broken. The prophets came next, and they were rejected, stoned, and slain. And last of all God sent His Son: Him the world killed. It was not merely that man had broken the law, and slain the prophets, but when the goodness of God came, they hated Him revealed in goodness. Well, Jesus prays for His murderers, pleading their ignorance, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”; as in the case of one who owed ten thousand talents, and, forasmuch as he had nothing to pay, his lord forgave him the debt. (And this is what I take to be the meaning of the parable, though it has a general application.) So the Holy Ghost takes up again and carries on this very intercession of our Lord, when forgiveness of sins is preached by Peter at Jerusalem, saying, “And now brethren, I wot, that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers … repent ye therefore and be converted.” And what was the result? Did they repent? No; not only had they killed the Prince of Life, but they now fill up the measure of their iniquity in stoning Stephen, thus rejecting the testimony of the Holy Ghost to the grace and goodness of God in the gospel of Christ glorified, as in His humiliation.

At this point it is that Saul of Tarsus comes out, and so mad against the followers of Christ that he was the very apostle of the enmity in the heart of man against the testimony of the Holy Ghost to the grace and goodness of God. But here God meets him in the way, and his mouth is closed as to goodness in man; for while all God’s means were used to bring man’s heart to return to Himself in blessing, Paul was found in the most active hostility to Him, being determined to put a stop to this testimony of grace and goodness if he could. Then the Lord appears to him in glory in connection with the church, owning all the saints as Himself, “Why persecutest thou me?” — “for he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” Thus Paul sets out as being the leader of the actienve ergy of man in opposition to God, that he might be a perfect witness of the grace that overcame him, as he anew sets out on his way testifying that there is grace and forgiveness for one such as he. Everything that could have religiously sustained his heart was broken down when God met him by the way. Take conscience, for instance: outwardly he was blameless, yet thought he ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. How terrible must it have been to Paul to find that his natural conscience, blameless as it was, had left him all wrong, as of no avail! We know that he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink, so terrible was the upsetting of his soul. Then take the law, his boast and glory as divinely given: it had been his ruin before God in self-righteous enmity to Christ. The religious teachers he had looked up to, the priests and Pharisees, and his own zeal, had only brought him into opposition and open rebellion against God. Everything in which his heart had trusted left him a mere sinner, naked in the presence of the glory of God, his enmity only the greater by that trust. Thus ended all means, leaving Paul a “child of wrath,” as he says, “even as others.”

Thereupon Paul starts, not from what he is, but from what God is; he starts as the Lord’s servant: “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? “He starts as a called apostle, separated unto “the gospel of God.” It is not merely the gospel of Christ, but the gospel of God. It is a wonderful expression, as the gospel of God is the activity of God’s love going out into a world of men as hopeless and bad as Paul had been; it is now dealing with man, through Christ, on the ground of what God is. The gospel of God is God’s own good news in giving His Son to carry this message of mercy and grace to lost man, made effectual in His work.

The Jews accused the Lord of breaking the sabbath, the sabbath being the sign of the covenant between God and His people, and to be kept the seventh day, a rest connected with the first creation. God’s rest is at the end of labour. It was founded in Israel on the principle of the law. Man’s labour in righteousness gave him rest at the end. But in fact, when divine truth came in, we find in John 5:17 there was no sabbath for Christ in this world. Sin had come in, and there is no rest for God where sin is: “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” Thus He had come down where sin was, and He was working in the accomplishment of that grace, which gives a better rest to man. Paul comes in here as the servant, or slave, bound to the work: a bondman to Christ, separated unto the gospel of God; that was his business, and if he could further the gospel by making tents, of course he would continue to make them; but he was an apostle called to the gospel of God. And where God gives ministry, it is as the vessels of God’s activity in grace, for the calling of sinners and the building up and edification of His saints.

It is very important to distinguish between teaching the church, and the testimony of grace to the world. The Old Testament is full of mercy; but even so there could yet be no proclamation of an accomplished work of redemption. But further, that is not the church (nor indeed is the church the doctrinal subject in this epistle). It was what He had promised afore by His prophets in the holy scriptures. The church was not the subject of promise, but the “gospel of God” was: from the beginning it had been said, the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head. The Gentiles had not the promises, though there were special ones to the Jews. The promises of God were made to the second Adam, and not to the first; the promise in Genesis that the serpent’s head should be bruised was made to the Seed of the woman, which Adam was not. So it is said: to Abraham were the promises made, and to his seed; and that Seed was Christ. The promises, then, were entirely connected with Christ, who is the Seed in whom all these promises centre. The person of Christ, as we see here, is the great subject of the gospel even before His work, though we could have no part with Him without His work. This is of all importance, as God is now claiming subjection to His Son. There is not an infidel or a rebel, however great, who shall not bow the knee to Jesus; if in grace, it is salvation: but, if the heart does not bow to the grace, the knee must bow under the judgment.

In verse 3, “concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh,” the apostle is bringing out the double character of the Lord. In verse 1 we have the person of the Son as the subject of the gospel; then, secondly, as the seed of David according to the flesh, according to promise. Then Paul brings out definitely the character of the Son, “declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.” Thus we have the Son of God with divine power, though clothed with humiliation. Then, again, we have the Son coming down in the midst of defilement with divine power, passing through it according to the Spirit of holiness. This was shewn through all His life by absolute separation from all defilement. He passed through the whole scene of evil untouched and unsullied by sin, though in contact with it, touching those in it all around, yet separate Himself. He touches the leper, who saw His power, but was uncertain of His goodness: and was He defiled? No! but in touching it He chases away the uncleanness without becoming unclean Himself, and none but the Son of God could do this. But His was perfect grace coming down into the defilement, banishing and dispelling it, without receiving it Himself.

But, besides sin and defilement in us, the manifested power of Satan was this—that he had the power of death, and this Satan had on man by the judgment of God Himself; for God had said, “In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shak surely die.” Thus man was under the power of him who had the power of death, that is, the devil; and if the Son of God is to deliver man from under the power of Satan, He Himself must go down to his stronghold, this last citadel of Satan. He must Himself go down under the power of death, if He could not be holden of it, that He might “deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage”; and He, the Son of God, feared it, as He piously should, as the judgment of God (Heb. 5); but He was heard in that He feared; He bore it as the judgment of God, but He broke all the bars by which Satan held us, and He has set us free. Satan committed himself entirely by putting his hand on the spotless person of the Prince of Life, who bore our sins; and in His rising from the dead, the sins, and Satan’s power, were all gone before God and for faith.

The resurrection shews the divine power of the Son of God. When Peter said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God!” the Lord said, “Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” That is, all Satan’s power over the first man manifested in death shall not prevail against it: for that is the meaning of the gates of hell. Man had been tried by every means— without law, and he was lawless: by the law, but he only brought forth wild grapes: but all this depended on the responsibility of man, not on the power of God. Satan prevailed against man by his lusts, and led him on to the second death. But if it is the Son of the living God who has entered into the conflict, and founded the church on His work and victory, the gates of hell, the power of death, shall not prevail against it.

The Spirit of holiness always displayed in life is demonstrated by the resurrection from the dead, and here observe that it is “from amongst,” or “from out of,” the dead. The twelve believed, as did Martha, in the resurrection of the dead, as there will be a resurrection of all the dead, good and wicked; but they were questioning one with another what the rising from the dead should mean; Mark 9:10. It is the coming in of God’s own living divine power, breaking through the bands of death, and taking up those that are God’s from amongst the wicked dead. This resurrection, realised in the power of the Spirit, is our present standing, though we still wait for the redemption of the body. The very same power, we learn in Ephesians, which raised Christ from among the dead, has wrought in us— “quickened us together with Christ.”

The Son of God goes down in grace for us to the very place in which we were by sin, and by His own divine power breaks the bands of death, and takes us up from under its power, and places us, according to the efficacy of His own work, in the presence of God. Thus, all that my sin could do has been met by divine power and put away, rendering void of power him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. How marvellous the grace! The consequence is not merely that there ought to be holiness in us, but that there must be holiness in nature, though vigilance be needed to maintain it in practice.

How did Christ rise out of the grave? By His own divine power, as by the glory of the Father, and in the power of the Spirit; and it is the same divine energy which is the spirit of holiness in walk, raising me from the dead now in spirit, that is, the power of the new life in me, and by reason of which even the resurrection of my body will take place. All that He has done is mine, but I enter into it by virtue of a life which is a holy one. It is not merely a duty to be holy, but there is holiness in us, because we are partakers of justification, of the whole efficacy of His work, by means of a life which is essentially holy, for it is Christ’s.

This is the gospel of God, that He, in the activity of His own love, in the person of Christ, has come down here, and walked in holiness where sin was, and gone down under the power of death, though He could not be holden of it, that He might deliver us from the power of him who had the power of death. I am now raised spiritually and morally by the very same divine power that will raise up my body. “By whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith,” etc. All will be called to bow to the revelation of Christ, who was dead and is alive again for evermore.

“Called saints,” or “saints called,” v. 7. It is the same principle here as the apostle called. We are saints called, thus shewing the grace of God, as it is not to us by birth or descent as the Jews, but it is all of grace. So Abraham was called, and chosen, and faithful. If we are called, it is not of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of the will of God; and we are bound to give thanks, in that “God hath saved us and called us with an holy calling.” What a very different thing it is in our souls, for what a different thought we have of God when we believe the activity of God’s love! It is not only that “God is love,” but that God is active in His love.

“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Alas! we pass over these gracious words very lightly. The apostle felt what he said in the power of the Spirit; favour and peace from the Father and the Son. Mercy is only added when the epistles are addressed to individual saints, but when the saints are looked at as a whole, they are seen as the fruit of mercy shewn; being seen by the eye of God as under the influence and energy of the love and grace that had saved them: but as individual saints they need mercy every moment. The apostle looked at them as under the eye of a Saviour God, and he wished them to have the full manifestation of what was in the God that had saved them. All the effect of there being no cloud between them and God.

God is never called the God of joy, though He gives joy; but constantly the God of peace, and the apostle desires their peace from God should be undisturbed—having perfect peace in Him in the midst of this whirlwind of passion; he desired for them all the effect of the consciousness of their position, all the affections suited to this relationship. If a child feels towards his father as towards a master, he does not know his position; if we have not unlimited confidence, we have not found our place. The saints in filial love will address God as their Father. In the government of the church it is the Lord Jesus we shall address; this distinction should always be marked. In all our petitions, failures, confessions, and need, we go as individuals to God as our Father; but in everything relating to church conduct, we go to Him who is the Head of the church. If we have not the unlimited confidence in God to go to Him with our very follies even, we do not know Him as “the Father.”

If Christ said, “It is my meat to do the will of him that sent me,” Paul could say, through grace, “whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son.” It is not service at all, if it be merely outward; unless we can say, “Of thine own we have given thee.” All true service must flow from communion with the source of service; it is no service if we are not drinking in Christ, and conscious that we are doing His will; if I should take up any service, without being confident that God would have me do it, there would be no power in it. Service then, if real, must flow from direct communion with God. We may go on in a course of action as a consequence of communion for a good while. Thus, for instance, we may compare the state of the Thessalonians with that of the church of Ephesus in Revelation. To the Thessalonians it is said by Paul, that he knows their work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope: here we see the three cardinal points— faith, hope, and charity, as springs of work, labour, and patience; but not so in the address of the Lord to Ephesus—it was work, labour, and patience; but there was not the present spiritual power, which comes from God direct, therefore the candlestick was threatened to be removed. How often do our attempts at service flow more from thought of something we may have to do, than from direct communion with God! It then becomes, or is in danger of soon becoming, the mere activity of the flesh, and at any rate is the drudgery of duty without power, instead of serving with the spirit; what a comfort that all my life through I may be serving the Lord with my spirit!

This world is a wilderness, a labyrinth, but God is guiding us through it. When Israel were in the wilderness, was there any path for them? None! “They wandered in the wilderness where there was no way.” We read that Moses said to Jethro, “he might be to them instead of eyes.” No, says God, I will be as eyes to you; for as Israel departed from the mount a three days’ journey, the ark of the covenant of the Lord went before them, to search out a resting-place for them, not merely to bring them at last into the land. Now, the place of the ark was in the midst of the camp, and they were to keep the charge of the Lord; but when Israel journeyed from Sinai, it went before them. Again, God says of Israel,” Though I have scattered them amongst the countries, yet will I be to them a little sanctuary in the countries; Ezek. 11:16. Is God less than this to us? No; He is leading us through this world’s labyrinth, where there is no path, no way but Jesus; for He is our only track in this wilderness of sin and sorrow; but what an unspeakable comfort to have such an One! Yet we need perfect dependence that we may discern the perfect path that has in it the track of the Lord’s own footsteps: to this end, flesh must be mortified, and the will subdued.

“Without ceasing I make mention of you in my prayers.” See the apostle’s wonderful energy with God, and this is one mark of spiritual power, the capacity of keeping up our interest in all saints everywhere, in our soul, in intercession for all saints in every place; and this leaves us in entire dependence on the will of God, for no real spiritual power ever takes us out of the place of waiting on God: so with Eliezer, he says, “Lord, let the damsel to whom I say, Let down thy pitcher,” etc., “be the same thou hast appointed for thy servant Isaac”; and when the woman had given him drink and his camels also, he does not yet say, Oh, here is the answer to my prayer, but he is still waiting on God, and, wondering at her, held his peace, to wit, whether the Lord had made his journey to prosper or not; and when the camels had done drinking, he said, “Whose daughter art thou?” and when he found she answered the description of that which to him was divine direction, as the word is to us, he bowed his head and worshipped the Lord. Success often takes us out of the place of communion, because it is our success when we do not acknowledge God in it. The faith which waits on God turns to God when the blessing comes, and the joy is much greater.

“I am not ashamed of the gospel; for it is the power of God unto salvation.” God coming in, in power—this is the gospel character, it is complete, and it is of God; no mixture. The “wrath of God, moreover, is revealed from heaven”; not merely governmental wrath here on the earth, as bringing Nineveh against Israel, or carrying Judah to Babylon, but wrath from heaven. It is not yet manifested, though it was seen to a certain extent in the deluge; faith sees it in the cross.

Now, it is the nature and character of God that is brought out to meet what man is. God now looks upon what man is, in the presence of what He is, in respect to the very perfectness of His nature, and the activity of grace that has brought out what man is. This can only shew man utterly a sinner. Is it claiming righteousness? No; for now man’s righteousness is entirely set aside, as the ground of his standing before God. But we have God’s righteousness made known, meeting the necessity which the proof of man’s utter sinfulness brings before us, not something to grow up to righteousness, but perfect now. It is revealed from faith to faith, it is said, that is, faith is the principle on which it is revealed. God’s righteousness, being a perfect and an existing thing, complete in itself, is revealed, and that not on the principle of man’s working, but of faith, and so to faith; so that the man, be he who he may, that has faith, gets it. If it were given on the principle of human righteousness, the righteous man would have it, and the law be the rule; if on the principle of benevolence, the poor man would have it; but it is neither. It is on the principle of faith.

I would desire that our hearts might rest on this wonderful truth, the activity of God’s love coming down into a world ruined by sin, and under wrath. God Himself is the rest, as He is the guide all the way; His divine favour and unchanging love and goodness accompanying and abiding with us all the journey through. There is no rest but in His own way. The more pains God has taken to set man right, have only proved the more that the tree is bad; the more you dig around a bad tree, the more bad fruit it will produce. It is all God’s working and God’s righteousness, not of man’s working nor man’s righteousness, though that working of God will alone produce fruits of righteousness in man.

Chapters 2-4.

I take the close of chapter 3 as being the summing up, and application of the apostle’s argument, drawn from the sin of the Jews and Gentiles; then in chapter 4 he passes on to another principle, as brought out in the testimony of Abraham and David. But in this first part of the epistle the apostle opens out man’s need, and the way in which it had been met by redemption, as that on which alone the soul could rest. Having in chapter 1, from verse 18, gone through the horrible evil of the Gentiles and man generally throughout the world, and shewing that without any subsequent revelation, through the knowledge of God possessed by Noah, and God’s dealings with men through the creation, God being to be understood by the things that are made in His eternal power and Godhead, they were left (chap. 1) without excuse, conscience itself telling them what was right and wrong, and that hence, as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, He gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts; for if a man is left alone of God, he always turns to the lust of his own heart. Thus God in judgment brought upon them, that as they had not discerned what became God, they should not be able to discern what became man.

It is God’s way, when the light He gives is rejected, to give men up to blindness, and this giving up by God is an act of judgment on God’s part; as these Gentiles, not liking to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind. It was so with the Jews; rejecting the testimony God had given them, God says by the mouth of the prophets “make the heart of this people fat, and their ears heavy,” etc.; of the Gentiles it is said, “who changed the truth of God into a he”; so of the professing church, fallen from the light, God says, “I will send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.” Thus we see, whether Jews, or Gentiles, or nominal Christians, the effect of man being given up of God—what man is when left to himself, and the judgment of God in his neglect or abuse of light. Natural light was given in the beginning in the testimony of creation, and man began with the knowledge of God as thus dealing with him; but men did not like to retain God in their knowledge. There is the pleading, too, of conscience, for every man has a conscience, distinct from grace. But conscience cannot bring us to God. Conscience is the sense of responsibility, united to the knowledge of good and evil, and this last part acquired in the fall. But we must remember, if the conscience becomes awakened, it is not life and peace, and therefore only drives us away from God, like Adam in the garden hiding himself from God.

As the Gentiles did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind. So the Jews, having been disobedient to God’s testimony, sentence is passed upon them by Isaiah seven hundred years before it was accomplished: “Make the heart of this people fat,” etc., for such is the patience of God; as Stephen also says, “Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost, as your fathers did [in the past dispensation], so do ye [in this dispensation].” Both guilty of the same sin, and according to Peter’s testimony of the witness given to Jesus, those very things by which Christ was testified to have come from God, will be the very thing that will lead the Jews to receive the false Christ in the latter day. “Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles, and wonders, and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know,” Acts 2:22. Compare this with 2 Thessalonians 2:8, “Then shall that wicked one be revealed … with all power [miracles], and signs, and lying wonders.” Thus as the Jews rejected what God did in their midst by Jesus of Nazareth; so they will receive what Satan will do by that wicked one; and all this, as the apostle goes on to say, because they received not the love of the truth.

As in chapter 1:18-32; and chapter 2:1-16, all the Gentiles are brought in guilty, so, in spite of real privileges, the Jew: from chapter 2:17, and then from chapter 3:9-18, we find all are under sin—the Jew under law, as well as the Gentile without law. Both are alike equally guilty; for if the Gentiles be given over to a reprobate mind, the Jew is proved by his own scriptures, which he boasted belonged to him only, to be just as bad. Thus, there is none righteous, no, not one; there is no understanding; none that seeketh God, the will being gone wrong; blind in mind, and perverse in will, and guilty before God; not only as to the nature being sinful, but as slighting the testimony, rejecting the fight which God had from time to time revealed to them. But the God of judgment was there, and now it is proved that by the deeds of the law no flesh can be saved, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. Thus we see how those under the law are brought under condemnation, as well as the heathen they despised; it is useless for a Jew to attempt to get in by his own condition, for the law he boasted in condemns him. If it applied to him, it condemned him it applied to. The Gentiles have no right to put themselves under the law; but we all do so somehow or other; and as a process it may turn to good in the conviction of sin; but as a position, and if we stay in it, see where it brings us! “The Lord looked down upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand and seek after God.” No; they have all gone out of the way; and the Jew learnt by the law which he claimed, and with reason, to belong to him only, that on his own ground he was utterly guilty, though the apostle does not here bring against them their hardness of heart in rejecting Christ; and thus both Jew and Gentile are alike thoroughly guilty, and every mouth stopped. Such is the end of man’s righteousness.

But now by grace all is changed. The righteousness of God without law is revealed, and the apostle then develops this truth very fully, as far as its principles go. In point of fact, this joins on to chapter 1:17, the intermediate verses giving the proof of what made God’s righteousness necessary. He states the nature of this righteousness in a direct and absolute manner, and in contrast with man’s. It is altogether on a different principle; it is righteousness, not even mercy, though the fruit of grace, but it is a righteousness without law at all; it is God’s righteousness, and who can give law to Him? Had it been man’s righteousness, law would have been the measure and principle of it; but being God’s righteousness, it is altogether on a different principle from law. As man stood in sin, God’s law only condemned him, and it cannot give life. Put a man under righteous obligation, and it is all over with him, because man is a sinner. Man has a will (I speak practically, not metaphysically), and law brings it out; and man’s will never submits, for it would cease to be a will if it did; it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. God never meant righteousness to be by the law; it would have been cruelly mocking man, who is a sinner, to have proposed it to him. The law was given, that the offence might abound—not that sin might abound, for sin was there before the law was given; but it is not offence, or transgression, until there is a law; and thus it is that the law worketh wrath, for where no law is, there is no transgression.

It is not said there is no sin; but where there is nothing to transgress, there can be no transgression. Thus every mouth is stopped, and all the world becomes guilty before God. And now the righteousness without the law is manifested, not merely it exists, but it is manifested; it existed long before in the counsels of God, none being ever justified otherwise, but it was not manifested till the gospel was brought out and preached; therefore the apostle says, “to declare at this time his righteousness.” No sinner ever stood, or ever could stand, in God’s presence, from Adam downwards, save in God’s righteousness; but it had not been manifested until now. “But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.” Thus the law and the prophets only shewed what God was going to bring in, but did it not in themselves; but the gospel of God on the contrary is founded on God’s righteousness, and therefore it is manifested at this time, but witnessed by the law and the prophets; it was witnessed to, before it was manifested.

In chapter 3 we get all brought in guilty, and then it shews how we are to get into the presence of God. Can man that is a sinner approach God? No; nor can he make out a righteousness by law, by which he could; but then God’s righteousness appears in its stead. Christ has been made a sacrifice for us, He has answered for all we have done in the old man, and as man now He is in the presence of God for us, and we are there in Him, in all the favour and acceptance in which Christ Himself is—always there as He is. This is how man gets the righteousness of God; but in chapter 3 only the former part is distinctly stated. The claims of God against the old man have all been met in Christ Jesus, and we are made the righteousness of God in Him. God’s righteousness, though in fact including all, is yet more particularly viewed here as meeting the guilt of the old man. In the end of the chapter we have the answer to God’s perfect demands. The sin, whether of Jew or Gentile, is put away by the blood-shedding of Jesus, and God’s righteousness manifested in forgiving. This righteousness is now the starting-point of faith: we have met God here. But this shewed the righteousness of God in His patience with, and forgiveness of, the sins of Old Testament believers. The patience had been shewn of old. The work of Christ shewed the righteous ground of this patience. We, or they, are all fully justified by Christ’s blood.

In chapter 4 we have another thing, resurrection in principle. Abraham believed God. This is faith in its groundwork. God is believed. Next, in its object, not only did he believe in the resurrection, but in the God that raised. So with us; we do not merely believe in Jesus, who rose from the dead, but in the God who raised Him: the power that came in to give Christ, as man, a place before God, which was the plain witness to the value of His work, in putting away our sins.

In referring to Abraham, who had nothing to do with law, we find the double character of faith, its nature, and its particular object in the Christian; in the second character of justification, he says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.” It is not here said that he believed in God, but he believed God. Such is faith in its subjective elementary character; we set to our seal that God is true; and that is how Abraham got his righteousness. It was not man’s working, but one that worked not. But the word of God reveals God Himself, and God in grace; hence, though there may be much struggling first, when we simply believe God, we believe in Him that justifies the ungodly, and of such David describes the blessedness.

But the character of our faith is carried farther here; the object is God who raised the dead. Our confidence is a righteous one: we believe on One who raised up Him who had been delivered for our offences—raised for our justification. But there is this difference between Abraham’s faith and ours. He believed in God’s power to fulfil His word. We believe that God has raised up Jesus after He had stood in our place as sinners. We have thus the resurrection of Christ applied to our justification. Yet in all this part of the epistle justification does not go beyond forgiveness, as chapter 4 plainly shews. Righteousness goes farther, but not what we have here. Here we have the active clearing away of all the guilt that attached to the deeds of the old man. This completes the work of grace for us, as responsible beings. The effect is, we have peace, stand in divine favour, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God; we glory in tribulation by the way, for it is for our good, and we have the key to all in the love of God, shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given to us. Besides, we joy in God Himself, thus revealed in the perfectness of His grace towards us when we were sinners.

Having shewn thus the result of grace, in the beginning of chapter 5, in the way in which God justified each individual sinner, passing by sins, the apostle turns to the headship of the two Adams, and shews where the law came in. Our place is not in the first, not under the law, but in the second, according to the efficacy of the work He had wrought. What went before applied to our sins. Now he speaks of our nature and place.

I will summarily review his reasonings founded on this, before entering into detail. The disobedience of one made the many sinners—the obedience of One constitutes the many connected with Him righteous, and thus we are righteous by the work of another. In chapter 6 he goes on to notice that some will say, “Oh, if Christ has done all, it is no matter what I do: if it is righteousness without works, then we may walk as we like.” The answer is, not “That ought not to be,” but “That cannot be,” for we speak of death—I have part in righteousness by death. If the thing be real, I cannot live in what I am dead to, and that makes this become impossible; if I live, being thus dead, it is by being alive to God, in Jesus Christ our Lord. A new and holy life (for it is Christ in the power of resurrection) brings with it, not only hatred of sin, but deliverance; the same principle is applied to law in chapter 7. If I am dead to the law by the body of Christ, I am delivered from that which had power over me while I was alive, that I may walk in newness of life.

We have the application of Christ’s death and resurrection to man, for his justification before God, in the beginning of chapter 5; as dead to sin and consequently leading a holy life, in chapter 6; as dead to the law in chapter 7. The law, as Galatians also teaches us, has killed you, therefore it can do no more; its greatest work was, so to speak, to kill Christ, as in grace taking its curse; but He rose again, and we are in Him beyond the law—in Him who had borne its curse. Thereupon chapter 8 brings out the Christian in perfect liberty, in the last Adam of chapter 5 in virtue of His being risen. There is no condemnation for him who is in Christ. The Christian is necessarily viewed in Christ in chapter 8, but resurrection with Christ is not developed in Romans as a doctrine. The power of a new life in the Spirit is stated in verse 2; the condemnation of flesh on the cross, so as to put an end to that for faith and before God; our affections consequently shewing our life in Him. Being thus fully and freely justified and accepted in Christ, we are only waiting for the redemption of our bodies.

It is now not man’s righteousness; if it were, it must be by the law and for those who have it. It is God’s righteousness for all, and is upon all who believe, and no man can come in any other way; if it is God’s righteousness, He cannot accept a Jew in preference to a Gentile, and as it is His “to all,” it is as free for sinners of the Gentiles as the Jews. As regards the standing and peace of the soul, it is deeply important to see that while what we are ever struggling for is to get something in which we can come before God, it is God who comes before us in the gospel with His, as our only righteousness; it is unto all, but upon those who believe. Mark here another thing that is connected with peace of soul: some may say, “I do not deny His divine righteousness, I believe it; but how am I to know that I have a share in it? Is it applied to me? I want it applied to my soul.” Well, God has applied it to you, if you believe, if, in the consciousness of your sinfulness, you have believed the record that God has given of His Son, then you have had it applied to your soul, for it is upon all them that believe; you are righteous. If you go on tampering with sin, or the world, God must work this out of you, that is true; and the same is the case, if there be much of the pride of self-righteousness. But the thing that is believed is what His Son is, and has done; if there is tampering with sin or the world in our souls, it prevents our laying hold of the truth; nor even if we have found divine righteousness, can we have the joy of the Holy Ghost in our hearts, for God must be real to us. But what we have to rest on is Christ’s dying for our sins, and the acceptableness of Christ’s person.

Many a Christian would be glad to rest, and, as they think, to rest there. But in the last thought they deceive themselves; they look for something better in themselves than they found; but that is not submitting to God’s righteousness, not resting in what Christ is. They have not learnt the value of the cross, nor its meaning. If they had learnt its value, they would not be trembling for fear; for how could they be trembling if they knew that their sins are put away? How could they be looking for good in themselves, if they knew that the cross was the final condemnation of all flesh in itself? You say you have no other confidence than the cross; that may be as to your conviction of the truth, and you may feel your need of it in a certain sense, so as to know you cannot do without it. I suppose you do, or you would not look to it; but you have not yet learned the value of the cross, which purges the conscience by the absolute putting away of sin. And the secret of it is, that you still look for something besides sin in yourself; that is, there is still the looking for, still some hankering after, your own goodness lurking within; you do not think yourself as thoroughly bad as the cross proves you to be, for you are what needed it, you are sin in your nature as in your acts. God has condemned sin in the flesh, as needing that abhorrence on His part, and that is all you are in yourself, Rom. 8:3. You have yet to learn that it is the ungodly whom God justifies; you will have more than that, but you must come to that first. It is “being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus”; it is not mere justification from sins, but actual deliverance—entire redemption. Thus, in the figure of Israel, it was a question between God and Pharaoh: “Let my people go.” It is real positive redemption, not merely a forgiveness, but Christ has brought us out free from all the title Satan can have against us, or power he can have over us, according to the righteousness of God, and for Him. If I buy a slave, he is mine, and no one can have any right over him, and that is true with regard even to our poor bodies—they are to be free from Satan’s power: God will have us entirely for Himself, by the work of Christ, and that according to His own holy nature and life, and His divine righteousness in judgment. Not even the smallest particle of our dust shall remain in Satan’s kingdom, and this is why redemption is mentioned last in Corinthians 1:30: as it is brought out, too, in the similitude, as to this, of Israel in Egypt. It was one thing for them to be screened from the destroying angel by the blood on the door-posts in Egypt, and another and very different thing for them to be brought clean out of Egypt by the passage of the Red Sea; thus being entirely delivered from the power of Pharaoh. And more than this: Christ has broken and destroyed all the power of death by which Satan held us, and taken him captive whose captives we were, and made us, who were Satan’s captives, the vessels of God’s power and testimony against Satan. “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness.” Here we have the connection of the blood of Christ with God’s righteousness. It has been declared. It rested only in promise until Christ came in the flesh; it was not manifested till then: so that like Adam, Abel, or Job, they rested on the promises of righteousness, because the blood was yet to be shed. But now it is declared in having been fulfilled, in that Christ sits at the right hand of God, or rather, to confine myself to this epistle, that He is risen. And there is an amazing difference between resting on the promise (though this is most blessed) and on a fulfilment. A man in prison with a promise that his debt shall be paid is no doubt happy; but it is not the same thing as walking at liberty with the knowledge that it has been paid.

It is not forbearance now, but accomplished salvation, God’s own righteousness declared. Can He forbear with that? The time of forbearance was in the time of the Old Testament saints; then God was forbearing, because of what He was going to do, and has proved His righteousness in doing it by the death of Christ. But that is not our condition. We have God’s righteousness at this time, this present time. He is not speaking here of what is past before Christ’s death, but of the fact of righteousness, and our present state of conscience, of the better thing God has provided for us, as regards our standing before Him. For if I sin, I do not want a prophet to come and tell me my sin is just put away, I can say I know the blood has been shed; therefore I know as a present thing that every sin is put away. It is a settled question. We can add much more even; because, though the fact is assumed of our being in Christ, and His resurrection mentioned in chapter 8, the subject of this epistle is Christ’s death and resurrection, as justifying and delivering us, we can speak of being with Him. The Ephesians looks at us as dead in sin, and quickened with Him, and sitting in heavenly places in Him. Colossians takes up both, only it does not go on to our sitting in heavenly places in Him; but sets us as risen and looking up to heaven where He is. It is such a righteousness, that He, who accomplished that through which it was to be revealed and made good, has, in virtue of what He has done, sat down at the right hand of God; and our life is in Him there. Abraham could not say, “I am one with a man at God’s right hand,” for Christ was not there as man then. But the believer in Christ can say so; for as surely as the first Adam was turned out of paradise, so surely has the last Adam entered heaven, and that as man, in the glory He had with the Father before the world was; and I am as sure of my place in Christ, as of my place in Adam.

Well, then, it is such a work as God recognised in righteousness, and such an one as has fully satisfied God—nay, more, has glorified Him, as indeed it must have done, to satisfy Him in divine righteousness. Still, we can say it has glorified Him. See John 13:31, 32; and 17:4, 5. As regards the blood, He is just to forgive. It is His own righteousness which is upon the believer, and He must own it; and here too is the resting-place of faith. This is justice; but the opening of my heart is under the sunshine of grace at the outflowing of love. To see ourselves perfectly cleansed makes us hate sin, as a man who is thoroughly clean will not like to get a spot on his garment; while one who is already defiled will not care about getting a little more so. When the blood was put upon the lintels of the door-posts, it was to keep the judgment out, and God passed over; for had He come in, He must have judged them as they deserved, for they deserved judgment as much as the Egyptians, nay, more, for they knew better. Therefore it was grace keeping God out as a righteous judge, and according to His righteousness; but at the Red Sea they were to stand still, and see the salvation of God. It was God overriding every barrier, coming in and taking them completely out of the place of judgment and bondage, and bringing them to Himself. While the one was keeping God out, the other was bringing God in, or rather bringing them to God.

As an ungodly man I am justified by the blood; but as a Christian I am accepted in Him. But many, many Christians keep outside; looking at the cross only as an object of hope, they have not entered into God’s presence by it. Has the cross then left me outside? No; it has saved me from judgment, and I have entered into God’s presence by it, and therefore value it. How many do we see as sinners trembling at the foot of the cross, feeling their need of it, but getting no farther!

We are not under law as innocent beings, for man is a sinner, and the law cannot allow of even a lust; then where is the use of giving the law to man that is a sinner? What is the use of my giving a righteous measure to a man who is unrighteous? What the use of my giving a true measure to one who uses fraud in selling his goods, but to teach him where he is wrong? So God never gave the law to man to make him righteous, but to convict him and shew him where his sin is. Man may abuse the grace, to continue in sin; but that does not alter the nature of God’s righteousness. If a law is given to man already a sinner, it can only be to make him know himself a sinner.

“Is he the God of the Jews only?” He will justify the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumcision through faith; that is, the Jews who sought righteousness, obtained it only on the principle of faith; and the Gentiles, inasmuch as it was on that principle, possessed it through the faith that they had. Do we then make void the law, or more properly, law? No; we establish law, not Moses’ law, but the principle of law. If a thief is hanging on a tree, is that making void the law? No; so far from making it void, hanging establishes it. But if after the punishment he rose, the law would have inflicted its penalty, and he would be beyond its reach. So then Christ died, and He established the law, and faith comes in and says, So far from making void the law, when Christ died for my sins, He established the law. But that does not put me under it: if under it I am lost, not merely as a sinner, but by the law itself. Nothing establishes the law like the death of Christ.

The Gentiles having been proved lawless, chapter 3, gives the Jew under law, condemned out of the law. Christ was under the law; He kept it, and died under its curse. And is He under it now? No; He is dead to the law, and risen from the dead. I am the sinner He died for; He has borne the curse, and it is all gone, and it has lost all power to touch me, for I am one with Christ, I stand in Him, in the presence and favour of God, as dead and risen again in Christ. He gave all His sanction to the law—suffered it, if you will.

In chapter 4, in referring to Abraham and David as believing God, he then goes on to shew the ground on which Abraham gets the promises. The blessing belongs to me in uncircumcision, as righteousness was reckoned to him in uncircumcision, and that on the principle of faith, thus stopping the Jew’s mouth, and hence to the Gentiles. Then in David we have the same thing, “Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord will not impute sin.” The law on the contrary worketh wrath. Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace, not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of the faithful, before Him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead. The difference between us and Abraham is this: He believed God was able to perform; we believe He has raised up Christ from the dead. The deliverance has been effected, the power shewn, as well as our sins been put away. He was delivered for our offences. Was it effectual? He is raised again for our justification. All is complete and accepted, and Christ as man has left the dead—is out of and past all the consequences of sin; for judgment itself He has borne for us.

Beloved, in a day like this, what a thought it is for us that we are set in God’s righteousness before Him! His righteousness has set aside all man’s reasonings, as the rising sun not only dispels the darkness, but causes even the stars to vanish because of its brightness. When Christ is first revealed to the soul it is always humbling, because it displays what it really is before God, and brings the conscience into play, while the heart mourns its having despised and rejected such an One. I do not say that the affections may not be found towards Christ without this; but there must be sooner or later such a revelation of what Christ is, as to shew us what we are; and it is that which breaks down what is inside, foolish and vain desires, self-will, sinful thoughts and feelings, and everything that is the opposite of Christ, thus shewing us not only that we have committed sins, but that we are sin. Then He reveals to us the unclouded favour of God into which we are brought, according to the love which sought us, and gave His Son for us, and brought us there in righteousness.

Chapter 5.

How the heart must rejoice in the wonderful way in which scripture is made so plain, as to all that is of greatest importance to our souls! While our minds might be wondering and reasoning about many things that may be, scripture is simple and definite as to what is; although there are depths in it which we cannot fathom. All the simple truths which are necessary to our finding forgiveness and joy, being at peace with God, are contained in this chapter, as the result of what we have been already considering. The general subject of the epistle shews how God and man can be together—how man can come in peace to God. The object of the epistle is not to bring out truths connected with the church as such, but the relationship of individual souls with God.

In chapter 3 we saw the way in which the blood satisfied God, to save us from judgment. Christ came down and made propitiation for our sins in His blood, and having gone through all that sin deserved, He rose from the dead, and entered, an accepted man, into the presence of God; and now all that was His by right is made ours in Him. At the close of chapter 3 the instruction as to the blood, as the ground of acceptance, is finished; and the epistle goes on with the result of this, and passes to the resurrection of Christ as God’s public seal on the work so far.

Chapter 4 shews righteousness imputed through faith, but identifies it thus far with forgiveness; Abraham believed God, who could—we in God who has—raised up Jesus. Having exhibited the intervention of God in power in His love to bring Christ up out of the place in which He was for us, and so set us before God in righteousness, according to the efficacy of that which He has wrought (proved in the place He holds in resurrection) we have thus peace with God. We are indeed sitting together in Christ in heavenly places, but this is Ephesian truth, not entered on here; only we are said to live by Him, and it is assumed we are in Him. We stand in perfect favour, and rejoice in hope of glory.

This chapter 5 follows out the subject of our acceptance, as founded on the death and resurrection of Christ, shewing fully our condition before God. This, as founded on what precedes, closes with verse 11, and then begins quite a new subject; the contrast of our connection with the first and last Adam. This latter part treats of sin, not of sins; of man’s disobedience, and one Man’s obedience. Chapter 4:25 is properly in connection with the first eleven verses of chapter 5.

Remark, that it is not said, He was raised because of our justification, as is often said, and it is in a certain aspect a truth, but here it is, “for our justification “; and the next verse shews this, for God never separates justification from faith. We cannot have justification without having our souls brought into living connection with God by the exercise of individual faith. The first result of this faith will be peace with God; the second, we have access into the grace, that present divine favour wherein we stand; and third, we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. All the past connected with the old man, all our sins and offences being put away, and a new place given before God, instead of the judgment we deserved, there is perfect peace. Secondly, we have present personal introduction into the full favour of God, but not all yet in possession; therefore we rejoice in hope. Christ has borne all that deserved judgment, and entirely left our sins behind as regards the believer, who can never come into judgment before God for them, although of course there will be the Father’s chastening for sin. But it is impossible that judgment can be the portion of those whose sins Christ has wholly borne away, entering and placing them, in virtue of it, in a new place of righteousness before God. As impossible as it is that Christ’s work should be inadequate, or that God should punish the same sin twice over, so impossible is it for God to punish the sins of those who believe. If any one had to be shut out of heaven, so to speak, it must have been Christ, because He had taken the sins; but He was accepted, received up to glory; therefore the matter must be settled for me, if I believe; Heb. 9:27, 28. He did not hold back: our sins in all their horribleness were laid upon Him (as on the day of atonement the high priest confessed the sins of the people), when judgment was fully passed upon Him. The judgment of my sins has all been settled between the all-seeing God and His spotless Son. There we have not a hope merely, but settled peace. “He by himself purged our sins, and sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high.” He must have failed, or else I have perfect peace; and I know He did not fail. Romans 5:1. The reference to faith here often deceives people, who would make their faith the object, and so turn back upon themselves for something to give them peace. Peace never rests upon experience. There will be experience, but peace is the answer of God to all the exercises of my conscience. I cannot trust my own heart, but I can trust God’s heart, and it is in believing what this is that I find peace. The more Christ is worthy of being loved, if I bring my own selfishness into it, the more horrible must it be to God: “as dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour.” I cannot trust my own heart or its feelings, for it is deceitful above all things; but I can trust Christ’s—He has never deceived me. True, I shall have experiences—must have them, but I am not justified by experiences: it is the answer of God to them that gives peace. There may be joy at times, when there is not settled peace, but it rests on feeling. There is a joy which flows from a knowledge of forgiveness of sins, and this is justly called peace. But the solid security of the soul flows from the second subject of this epistle, beginning verse 12, not that Christ died for our sins, but that we have died with Him. Peace means that which is settled. Faith looks at its object, not on itself, and through our Lord Jesus Christ.

We are not called on to believe that we do believe, but to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, by whom we have access, and are brought into perfect present favour, every cloud that could hide God’s love removed, and can rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. “Thy favour is better than life, therefore I can praise thee while I live”; so that in the midst of wilderness weariness we can rejoice. There is a striking description in Revelation 4 of the scene in heaven—the twenty-four elders seated on their thrones in the presence of God revealed in this Sinai character. When terrible judgments are about to fall on the earth, they are sitting in perfect peace; and when it is said, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty,” instead of it making them tremble and fear, “they worship him that liveth for ever and ever.”

“Rejoicing in hope of the glory of God.” How could I think of being there, if it was not all of grace? He has not only given us blessings, but associated us with the Blesser. “The glory thou hast given me, I have given them.” Here is the Christian position as such, and then all brought out: for the past, the works of the old man, peace; for the present, favour; for the future, glory. What more do I want? What more can I have? Yes, there is more, “not only so”; there are present realities for the saint to learn in the wilderness— tribulation. The more faithful the saint is, the more trouble he will have; the more blessings he has, the more trial, because there is much to be removed that would hinder the blessing when given. What need, then, in all the tribulation of the way, to know that my peace is settled; that the matter of my justification is a finished thing! Else, when I come into the trial, I shall be likely to think, How can I suppose now that I have God’s favour. All seems against me, and I shall not be able to “glory in tribulation.”

But see what the result of tribulation is— “tribulation worketh patience.” I need my will to be broken, I shall expect to get a thing and never have it; I may have to cry to God three weeks, and fast, as Daniel: I have to learn patience, and in it learn the rashness of my heart that would expect everything at once. And so “patience works experience.” A man in earnest to do right will, if his will be at work, be in a hurry, but he will have to find out that he must wait for God’s help, as Moses had to do, who kills an Egyptian in his haste without God’s bidding, and Pharaoh hearing of it, off he goes. He has, in blessed true-heartedness, chosen to leave the court of Pharaoh’s daughter, where he had been brought up, and to take his place with the afflicted brickmakers. But though sincere and devoted, and with a right intention, giving up the high position in which providence had placed him, his flesh had to be broken down, and this was through forty years’ tribulation in the wilderness, keeping his father-in-law’s sheep. He was learning experience, and experience works hope; because what hindered and dimmed the hope is broken away by the process; earthly hope has died away, and the heavenly become more real and bright; and because in it I learn what God is. Moses had more knowledge of what the people were to be delivered for, when he went to Pharaoh by God’s sending; he knew nothing of the Canaan they were to go to when he slew the Egyptian.

“Hope maketh not ashamed.” In learning experience it may be I struggle against God; but we shall find it is of no use to struggle in tribulation against God’s hand, for He will hold us there until we submit; but in the end it will cause me to hope, “because the love of God is shed abroad in my heart.” This gives me the key to all the tribulation, and enables me to glory in it. It is the fruit of God’s own love. I confide in Him. How do I get this? By the Holy Ghost which is within me, “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost.” It is not mine but His, God’s love shed abroad; God, who is love, is in me, God’s own love: this brings us back to a strength of hope which nothing can shake. Notice, it is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, who maketh intercession for us.

A man may say in the face of all this, But suppose I do not feel it? Well, then, you are going back from faith, and looking to your feelings. How do I know that I have it? Am I perfect? No; the love is enjoyed within, but God has graciously put the proof of it without me; I know it, because I believe that Christ died for the ungodly. I am simply an ungodly one and have no strength at all, no feeling at all, and Christ died when I had no feeling at all. Christ died when-1 had no strength, and could do nothing at all. The greatest thing in heaven was given for the worst thing on earth, a sinner. I am a sinner, therefore Christ died for me. “for scarcely for a righteous man would one die.” This is what distinguishes God’s love from man’s: while man must have some motive on which to act, something to draw out his love, God’s love, on the contrary, springs from Himself; for God could find no motive in us, we were hateful.

How different is the Holy Ghost’s reasoning from that of the natural man, or even it may be of the quickened soul, who, judging of God by himself, would say, He must judge me, for I know I deserve it! But “God commendeth his love … much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.” The Holy Ghost reasons downwards from what God is in grace, to the full effect of that grace; not upwards as man does, from his responsibility to what God will be. The Holy Ghost unfolds what God is, to meet the wants of my soul. True it is, the sinner deserves judgment, he needs not merely to be made better (that will not do), he wants a Saviour. Here is reasoning God will allow, He will allow it till we have got a Saviour; but here, when the Holy Ghost reasons from what God has done for the sinner, it is quite another thing.

It is much harder to learn that we are without strength than that we are ungodly. If a dead Christ is made a Saviour, a living Christ will be a friend to you. A dying Christ for you (the weakest thing, as it appears in nature, though it was God’s strength), and now how will He not do all you want of Him in His life? If He died for you when your sins were on you, how much more will He care for you now your sins are gone! A living Christ cannot be to destroy you, if a dying Christ has saved you (mark, not only the power of the argument, but its grace in taking away all torment from the heart, for “fear hath torment”).

Verse 11. “Not only so, but we also joy in God,” not only joy and happiness for ourselves in our security and in what He has given, but we can joy in God. We first rejoice in the things given, but do not rest here, we rejoice in Him who gives them, and delight in the things that God is in Himself. He is holy; He is love; He is great in goodness. I can boast in Him who has so loved us, and say what a God I have, what a God to me. Holiness would naturally terrify us: but we are in the light, and we can sit down with joy in the presence of Him who is the source of all our blessings.

If my will is not broken, it is true I cannot joy in God, I cannot even joy in tribulations; because He has to deal with me in such a way as to break my will, and we never like that process; but afterwards, when we are walking with Him, when He has broken it down, we can joy in Him. And so if I stray in practical walk, I do not doubt my salvation, but I cannot joy in God, though we know joy is there; we only joy in God when walking with Him. If I stray I can reflect about the joy, but I must take a double step in getting back: I must judge the sin according to the judgment of sins on the cross, where the sin I have committed is put away, and return to God’s unchanging grace, before I can again joy in God.

This closes the whole subject of our sins, and God’s justifying us from them by the death and resurrection of Christ, and the blessed fruits which flow from it, which, as to the revelation of God, go higher than the demonstration of my state in Christ, which follows to the end of chapter 8. The Holy Ghost is going to shew in whom we get our place before God, and draws now the contrast between our headship in the first and in the last Adam, thus laying a great foundation for the principles He is going to bring out, and in which, having treated our sins and individual responsibility, He treats the question of sin, and the nature common to us all.

Verses 13-17 are in a parenthesis, and the notice of this makes the passage clear; read verse 18 in connection with verse 12. He heads all up in the obedient Man and the disobedient man. There is no longer the distinction between the Jews and Gentiles as families, nor even between man and man, each one of whom has his own sins and responsibility, but the living ones are all headed up in Christ, the unbelieving ones not, but in Adam only. We have no allusion to the bride, or union of that character here, but it is the individuals all seen in their Head. We get then the doctrine of these two men, from verses 12-18, sources of life to all connected with them, and the obedience of one, and the disobedience of the other, constituting us righteous or sinners, though each of us may have added his own sins.

But before turning more particularly to that, we will look at the contrast of grace with the law, of which the whole passage treats: “until the law sin was in the world,” but the times of this ignorance God winked at, inasmuch as He did not treat with them as breakers of the law, when there was no law; but when there was law, they were governed by the law, and therefore Israel had the rod held over them, they were to be chastened for breaking the law, and banished ultimately into captivity. But the Gentiles have sinned without law, and He will judge the secrets of men by Christ Jesus; law never made sin, the sin was going on all the time from Adam to Moses, but law made the transgression. The sign of sins was present when there was no law, for death was there. My child may have a bad habit of running about the streets, but if I command him not, it is another thing, it is disobedience then, but before it was only a wrong thing that needed to be corrected. Though not after the similitude of Adam’s transgression; that is, though not disobedience to a positive commandment men are sinners still, though they have not broken a given law. (It is a quotation from Hosea 6:6, “They, like Adam, have transgressed my covenant.”) Sin was always there, death was always there to prove it, but law was not always there. “Imputed,” in the phrase “sin is not imputed where there is no law,” is a different word from “imputed” for righteousness, and the like. It signifies a positive existing act reckoned to the account of a person, as in Philemon I:18.

The argument in this passage is, you are not going to shut up God to the Jews: sin was in the world before Moses, and the sin is not larger than God. If sin had been there God must go there. Christ did not come only for those under law; we must go up to the two heads, Adam and Christ, and so take in those who sinned without law, even between Adam and Moses. Grace overrides it all, “law entered that the offence might abound” —you (Jews) have added offence to offence, you need it all the more, for you have been guilty of positive transgression, but the free gift is of many offences. Verse 17. If God comes in, you will reign in life, not only sin having reigned, now life will reign, but you will reign in life. God’s heart comes in, and it is greater in its effects than all the evil there has been. Verse 18. See the generality of all this upon all to condemnation, not in result, but in desert, for grace comes in to deliver.

By one righteousness the free gift came towards all, not in the sense of application, the meaning in each case is to or towards all (Greek eis), not upon all (Greek epi). As the one offence did not rest in its effect on Adam only, but run over to all, so the effect of the one work of righteousness did not end in Christ, but passed on toward all, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” Verse 19. When it is a matter of application, it is the “many,” not “all,” that is, the many respectively connected with each head, therefore I can go to all to preach the gospel—to every creature, saying to the sinner, the blood is on the mercy-seat; but to the believer I can say, You are righteous, “so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.”

What comfort there is in the simplicity of scripture!

In the next chapter we get, as the certain effect of this newness of life, the principle of death and resurrection brought forward. But if you do not see the need of your having righteousness in Christ you do not know yourselves, you do not know the holiness of God’s heart, and the unholiness of your own. Christ’s death may be considered as in itself glorifying God, apart from its results; but we have the double effect or aspect of the death of Christ shewn in the two goats, one of which was the Lord’s lot, and the other was for the bearing away into a land of forgetfulness the sins of the people; the first was for the glory of God, the second for the sins of the sinner, in the conscience of what he had done—both were needed. I have sinned, says the awakened conscience; but all my sins were laid on Christ, says the believer.

Verse 20. The entering in of law was that the offence might abound; wherefore the law? not to make sin abound, but to make sin exceeding sinful, and that the offence might abound, “but where sin abounded, grace did much more abound,” and abounding grace has been shewn, for God gave His own well-beloved Son: and sin was suffered to rise up to its full wickedness, even in putting Christ to death, and then to shew how powerless sin is in the presence of God’s grace, that very thing, in which its greatest evil was shewn as hatred against God, is that which puts it all away; God’s grace rolls over it all, yet thus in righteousness. He has thus shewn the utter impotency of sin in His presence.

It is not said righteousness reigned: if it had, it would have been for the eternal condemnation of all (righteousness will reign when He comes in judgment), but now grace reigns through righteousness, grace goes on in spite of all the neglect in men’s hearts to it—it reigns; it does not give up its ways and purposes; grace reigns over sin, man is unable to get the mastery over Christ’s love but Christ’s love overcomes man— it overcame everything that lay in the way of His fulfilling His Father’s will, and His obedience overcame everything; grace reigned on the cross, yet righteousness was there; grace reigns in the subjection of our hearts—where sin did reign, grace reigns. Grace means love working where there is evil. How? By the obedience of One: hence, it is through righteousness.

Then if there is the reign of grace in the heart, there must be practical holiness, a righteousness consistent with it; if God’s love works in the heart, it is to produce in it something like Himself. His love is such as has never been seen before in heaven or on earth. His perfect love and grace, and righteousness bring out what God is, Christ is grace reigning: and God has the upper hand even as to our sins, and has put them away.

Chapter 6.

We get in this chapter the practical application of the great principle of which the apostle has been speaking at the end of the preceding chapter, namely, our connection with the second Adam, as previously with the first. We shall see that it is practical in its nature, and we shall do well to see the double aspect of it; the power of practice and the real groundwork of that power. Liberty is always the ground on which grace sets us, and liberty is the only ground of the Holy Ghost’s power. Liberty is that to which we are called, it is not slavery, even unto holiness, but liberty always, but that liberty death to sin. The apostle first sets forth the ground simply and clearly, and then proceeds to the fruits, for there is actual righteousness which bears fruit. As He says, “Now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.”

There is wonderful depth and value in this chapter, as there must be in that which comes from God. This practical righteousness does not merely produce a fruit down here, that is man’s thoughts, and man’s thoughts end always with himself; but flowing from Christian life, as we shall see, and walking in the path suited to it here below, it frees from obscuring lusts, and tends to purify the heart practically, so that we see God. It has fruit unto holiness. The daily details of a Christian’s life have thus the deepest importance, not only as doing right, but that this produces fruit that goes up in holiness to God, leads to a state of soul in which God is known and enjoyed, the soul being set apart for Him.

All that comes from God must go back to God again: so in the meat-offering—the frankincense which was laid on the meat-offering was burnt, and the savour of it all went up to God: the priest might eat of the meat-offering, but the sweet savour of all ascended up to God; just as Christ Himself came down from God, His whole hfe down here being one continued savour rising up to God, and at the end He offered up Himself, a sacrifice well-pleasing to God. The reality of the fruit of righteousness is that it is living to God, as the apostle says, “Be ye therefore followers of God as dear children, and walk in love, as Christ hath loved us, and given himself an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour.” This is Christian morality, it is God’s nature in man. Here, however, it is only seen as a fruit or effect—the divine life coming down from God, to God it must return, and where this is wanting, it is all nothing.

All the value of an action is in the motive. Fruit will be manifested; but it is not so much what a man does, as his motive for doing it. Even in nature, two men may do the same thing from very different motives; the motive of the one being himself and his own pleasure, will be evil; while the other, being the good father of a family, and doing it for their good, his motive will be good; it is in the motive of our ordinary actions that we have to be continually judging ourselves, that we be not judged of the Lord. The saint, in judging himself, must be grieved when he sees so many other things come in and mix up with that which he presents to God; self comes in, and like the dead flies, spoils the savour of the ointment. It may not be seen by others, but our own hearts before God know how very much of self comes in, making the ointment send forth a bad savour, yet we know God graciously and lovingly accepts all our service through Christ, being a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. The great principle laid down in chapter 3 is that the blood meets our sins.

Chapter 4 brings out faith in the God who had come in, in power, and raised the One who was under death—raised Him from the dead. “Believing on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead.” Christ was put to death in the flesh; looked at as man, we see Him going down into death, and a divine power coming in, and raising Him up again. It is precious to our souls to observe in scripture the same divine power is attributed to the three Persons, thus giving us a proof of the Trinity being engaged in the work. The Lord Jesus said, “Destroy this temple (this spake he of the temple of his body), and I will raise it up in three days”; and again, “Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father,” Rom. 6:4. And He was “quickened by the Spirit.”

In the former part of chapter 5 we get faith applied to justification; the conclusions from Christ’s being delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification, and the results of this are given: we have peace, present favour, and hope of glory; we rejoice in tribulations, for God’s love is shed abroad in our hearts, and finally, are able to joy in God.

Then comes, beginning with verse 12, the question of sin in our nature, where all heads up in Adam and Christ, and we see that the law was brought in by the bye, when man was already a sinner, with no thought of producing righteousness, but that the offence might abound and so manifest man’s sin. The law is righteous, and comes in, convicting of unrighteousness those to whom it was given, because those to whom it was given could not keep it.

Man’s only ways of being with God are, to be innocent, or to be saved. If a man is innocent, he does not want the law; Adam could not have known what it meant. If it had been said to Adam, “Thou shalt not lust, thou shalt not steal” —how would it have applied? Whom was he to steal from? But the law supposes lust to be there, therefore says, “Thou shalt not lust.” The commandment which forbids, supposes the forbidden thing to be there, or the tendency to it, where the thing prohibited is a sin in its nature. The fruit of the tree was in the garden, which was the very thing prohibited to Adam; but till Satan got hold of Eve, there was no lust to eat of it. “Thou shalt not eat of it,” was a simple test of obedience, but even then the object was before them. A right rule only proves a fraudulent thing to be fraudulent, it does not make it right.

It is impossible for a man to be saved by the law, as the law supposes the presence of sin; an innocent person does not know what sin is, but man by the law is addressed as a sinner, that he might be saved by grace; but God having now come in, He could not confine Himself to those merely under law, but extends His grace to all—grace is the only ground He can be upon. Again, the law was not given till four hundred years after the promise. The promise was first.

In chapter 5:19, we have the two headships brought out in their results. By one man’s disobedience, etc., and, note here, all are thus alike, the individual’s sins do not come into account, though they do in judgment, for we are judged according to our works. But here, one man’s, disobedience made us sinners, and one Man’s obedience makes us righteous. That seemed to make it no matter how we lived; but the subject of chapter 6 is just to meet such a thought as this. The perverseness of the flesh will turn the law to a different purpose from that for which God gave it, and grace for a different end from that for which God bestowed it. The law that was given to convict man of sin, man takes up to make a righteousness of his own out of it; and grace that was really given to make man holy, man turns into licentiousness. Though it is true that souls were quickened before Christ came, by virtue of His divine power to quicken whom He would, yet we get this great fact, that Adam became a fallen man, a sinner, and lost, before he was the head of the fallen family. So Christ finishes the work for righteousness before He becomes the head of the redeemed family.

We have not only come into the position of fallen Adam, but we have got a nature that likes sin; and where there is the life of Christ there is a nature which loves holiness: this is the argument of the apostle. But if a man naturally likes unholiness, how is he to get rid of this? His reply is, “How shall we that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? “It is not an argument as to what we ought to be. That which forms the groundwork of Christian life is that we have died with Christ. It is never said to man, You ought to die to sin. The believer is placed in Christ. How? In a Christ who has died and is risen. That life which I have in Christ is after Christ is dead and risen again; thus I have life in a Christ who has died (that is where I exist), in whom I have died unto sin, for if we are made partakers of justification through Him, it is because we are made partakers of His death. But, if, as regards the old sinful Adam, we are made partakers of death—have our part in and by it—we cannot live on.

To follow more precisely the apostle’s argument: If I am a Christian, justified by Him, it is that I have part in His death. It is my very profession. I have been baptised to His death. But if I have died to sin to be made righteous, I cannot live in it because I am righteous. You have died unto sin in Christ. There is more than that when we look into it, as to detail: the blood of atonement was put upon the tip of the right ear, the thumb of the right hand, and the great toe of the right foot of the priest, thus shewing that we are not only saved by the blood, but that nothing was to be allowed in thought, word, or deed, discordant with its holy claim. There is that which becomes a Christian, but that is not what is brought out here, but the truth of our having part in His death, so that we are to reckon ourselves alive to God through Him, not through the first Adam in his flesh.

How have you got your place, your life, your character in Christ, but through a dead and risen Christ? Well then, if I am dead, I am not still alive. Hence it is that the exhortation is never to us, to die, for we have died with Christ. How then can a man live in that to which he is dead? It cannot be. If I am dead to sin I cannot live in sin, God forbid! There is putting to death, for practically we are to mortify our members, that is power, but we are never told to die to sin. You may try to die to it, but it will not do. It is still there. But the cross of Christ has for faith killed your sin, when He put your sins away.

We first get a new life and a new nature, and then we can begin to kill the members of the old nature, reckoning oneself dead, otherwise it is hopeless. I can now deal with this old thing as not me, for now I have a new thing which is me, therefore I do not admit that old thing to be me at all. I have for ever done with it, having got this new thing by which the old is overcome. In this chapter 6, the apostle is speaking of our liberty, as scripture always addresses the believer as dead with Christ.

What Christ have you a part in? Not one living on the earth before death, but in His death, though He be now alive again. “Buried with him by baptism unto death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” Thus we get the glory of the Father as all engaged in the resurrection of Christ, and in result, as the measure of our walk down here. “By the glory of the Father.” I can rest upon that expression, because it is that which can feed the heart, for Christ, as man, is brought out by and into the full glory of the Father, and that which meets the subtlety of the world’s pretension (for the world had rejected Him), and the subtlety in our hearts, for all that leans to what obscures that, is the old man, which would have, not that which is of the Father, but of the world.

The Christian is fed and settled by what shews the perfection of Christ, as raised by the glory of the Father. There is not a single thing that was connected with the glory of the Father that was not made good by the death and sealed by the resurrection of Christ. Take death, for instance, God’s righteous judgment, but the ruin of His creature, and the present display of Satan’s power. We had all come under the power of death. Divine power comes in, and raises Him who, in grace towards us, went down under death, and by raising Him makes good God’s judgment, while it sets aside what it was exercised in, and destroys him that had the power of death, that is the devil. There was the power of God, the love of the Father shewn out besides, for it was the Son who was there; and yet His righteousness, too, for Christ had fully glorified Him there, where it would seem impossible, made sin—and in death, its wages—for us. Was ever the love of the Father drawn out in like manner, as in the resurrection of Christ? Never! There was in Christ’s death a fresh motive for the Father’s love, in the Son’s sacrificing Himself to shew forth the Father’s glory. Then the Father’s own glory was concerned in it, because it was the Father’s own Son, one with Himself, who was under death; therefore the Father must come in and raise Him up, for His own glory.

Then also the righteousness of God is concerned. The world was to be convinced of righteousness, therefore God could not leave His soul in hell, neither could He suffer His Holy One to see corruption. He was God manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, received up in glory. The angels must be witnesses of this great work of the resurrection of the Son of God. There would have been a hopeless gap in heaven, could it have been possible (which it was not, He could not be holden of it) for Christ not to have been raised from the dead and set at the right hand of God.

Now we see (I do not say realise) what this newness of life must be. The character of this newness of life is that I know the Father. Ought I not to see divine righteousness in it? Ought I not to see divine love in it? Ought I not to see the glory of His person in it? When I see Him who went down into the lowest parts of the earth, I see the Father’s glory going down, so to speak, there, to raise Him up to His own right hand, and this it is that associates my thoughts with, and gives me the knowledge of, the Father’s glory. The soul, in the power of the Holy Ghost, entering into the knowledge of the Person of Him who went down into the grave, must be filled with adoring wonder and praise, for the heart, seeing the Father concerned about Christ, goes up to the glory of the Father. Where God has thus made the soul to comprehend that a once dead Christ has ascended up to God, that is everything. For how could you or I rise up to see the glory of the Father? Impossible! But His glory is brought near to me, when I see the Father raising up a dead Christ, knowing that Christ was in the grave, because of sin, though Son of God, and that He is now with God in heaven.

Thus my affections are drawn out, when I see who it was that went down to death for me. For how came He there? Because I was a sinner, yet He glorified His Father in ail that He, the Father, was. And do I not see that He, who was there so laid, deserved to be raised? For who was it? The blessed Son of God, who had taken the form of a servant, and was found in fashion as a man. Do you think that a poor unconverted person sees that the Father must have raised up Jesus, even for His own glory, seeing who He was, and what He had done? No; and therefore, when speaking to the woman of Samaria, when He had said, “If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink,” and she replies, “Give me this water,” and there was no intelligence of what He presented to her; then He speaks to her conscience, “Go, call thy husband,” and that opens her understanding. “I perceive thou art a prophet”; but when Jesus saith unto her, “I that speak unto thee am he,” then the divine knowledge of the Person of the Son of God opens out to her soul. And the Person of the Lord filling her heart, she goes and tells others about Him. The revelation of the Person of the Son of God to this woman’s soul, was the turning-point in her history. So it is with us. When we have intelligently received the Person of the Son of God, not as a doctrine merely, but as the object and power of a new life in our souls, then our hearts follow Christ, as it were, and go up after Him in spirit in this new life, and everything is dead to us below. This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. I do not say there will be no conflict, but the heart has done with everything out of Christ. Then, how very near it comes to us, yea, is realised in us! “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death “; that is, entering into, and associated with Him in death down here. Grace comes down to us here, and Christ goes down to death for us.

Was divine love the less, because it was down here, and not above? No: it reached even to my state of sin, for it was to sin that Christ died, as He did for my sins. Was divine power the less? No: He has destroyed, on the contrary, the power of death, and him who held it. It is there I learn that the Son of God must go down unto death, if He is to deliver me from sin; and as His heart followed me down here to be made sin, so now my heart is to follow Him in resurrection (for if I have a portion in His death, I shall have also in His resurrection). For I cannot have a half Christ, and it is not merely that my sins are put away, because justification includes not merely the fact that He died, but also that He is personally accepted of God, and if He raised again, it is in the power of a new life. So that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin, or as the word is, that you should not be the slaves of sin, for you were slaves unto sin, but now you are freed (justified) from sin. He does not speak merely of sins. But no one can charge sin, the activity of lust and will, on a dead man. You were slaves, properly speaking, under the title of dominion by another, for the slave is ordered wherever his master pleases, not knowing at night what he should do in the morning; naturally we are slaves to sin.

The passage in John 8:33 is remarkable, as shewing that it was slavery to sin under the law, for the Jews being addressed as under the law, it says, the servant, or, slave, abideth not in the house for ever, but the Son abideth ever; if the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. So we are freed from the slavery in which we were held, and in perfect liberty, all having been left behind in death, for he that has done with sin must be dead to it. When a man is dead you cannot charge him with anything; his life has ceased to exist, he is out of the scene. If you say, How can I be free from sin, when I find it still in me? That is gone to which sin was attached. We are not told to die, for we are dead, and you cannot be charged with sin if you are dead, neither can you be under its power. Do you ask, How can that be, when I find I am not dead? Because it is in Christ you have died. Christ was put in your place. Is Christ in the grave? No; the thing to which sin is attached is gone, is done with, for He has died. Do not say it is not so. Are you wiser than God? for God says it is so. The tree and the fruit are both judged in God’s sight. Christ has died for the tree and its fruit, as that which could be charged on you, and died to sin, so that you may reckon yourself dead to it. Christ attached sin to Himself on the cross, and it is gone for ever; there is an utter end of sin for faith; it is the vile thing I hate. Am I distressed about my evil deeds? They are the very things that Christ’s death put away. Am I distressed about sin in the flesh? I am hot in the flesh, I have died to it, for I have my life in Christ, who has died. “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin.” I should have no need of such a word as reckon, if there was no more actual existence of sin in the flesh; I am called to mortify, in living power in Christ, the deeds of the body, not to die to sin, but to reckon myself dead. It is holy liberty from sin we have, and not liberty to sin. I am to reckon myself to be what faith shews me Christ is in my place; and walk in newness of life,¹ then there will be the fruit unto holiness.

I would make two remarks here. First, the fruits are produced; still, the grand doctrine of Christianity is, that I am saved by a mediator; if I have to answer for myself, I am lost; “Enter not into judgment with thy servant,” Psa. 143:2. If God enters into judgment with me, all is over with me. The whole doctrine of grace is, saved by a mediator; for, “if I wash myself in snow-water, and make my hands never so clean, yet wilt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me.” The instant I see God’s eye upon me, I shall see myself as one out of a ditch, yea, my clothes shall abhor me. Job wanted a daysman, to lay his hand upon both. My coming to God depends upon some one coming between.

The conscience should be delicate as to the slightest approach of evil, only let it be in hberty. The more delicate the conscience as to the sense of the least defilement, the more the need of a mediator is felt. But you say, I find that what ought to be dead in me is still alive. Well, did Christ die for the sin that you have not, or for the sin you have? The very sin you are daily finding out in yourself, this is the very sin for which Christ died.

Jealously of conscience about sin is right, the more the better, only with it remember the grace which has put it away. Christ has set me in a new life through Himself, raised from the dead, so that death cannot touch it, because He lives beyond its power; judgment cannot touch it, because He has borne it and died, there is not a single thing that could ever possibly come against me, that the blessed One did not allow to come against Him. Yea, He took it all upon Himself, and we are clean out of the Red Sea, on the other side; that life which we now live, we live by Him, reckoning ourselves dead to sin, because He died unto sin; He died not for Himself, but to sin, to enter into a new state of existence as man, and we live through Him. See the holiness of Him who was “made sin.” He was taken through everything, He was thoroughly tested in every way, to try if He were in anything unwilling to obey. What if He had shrunk? But no, every evil was refused by His blessed holy nature. He learned obedience by the things He suffered. He went through everything—the scorn of the world—the power of Satan, even to the wrath of God. He was tempted in all points, like as we are, sin apart—Satan found nothing in Him. It was His meat and His drink to do His Father’s will.

But it is never said He took delight in suffering for sin, but He says, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me”; the having His Father’s countenance withdrawn from Him, when bearing the sin, He could not find delight in; but He had said before, “I delight to do my Father’s will.” This cup, He asked that it might pass from Him; no other cup did He ever ask to be withdrawn, and now He said, “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.” He would rather suffer this than that God should not be glorified.

We can now share the suffering for righteousness’ sake, but the suffering for sin we cannot share; He made an end of that, and now He lives beyond it all in resurrection. He had the Spirit of holiness (all His life through this was true of Him), and during His life down here it was fully tested, but now we see Him alive again, “raised from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness “; therefore He is no half-Saviour, for He died unto sin, and now He liveth unto God. Therefore we are to reckon ourselves to be dead unto sin, and live unto God. This is a very practical question, for it is not that you are to say, if you have not the realisation of this, you cannot have the value of the blood; no; you must first know the value of the blood, and so have it all in Christ. The groundwork of living to Him is to be dead to sin; but we are to reckon ourselves dead to sin in Him. It can avail nothing to exhort you to live to God, if you have not the life of God in you. There is the double thing, the position in which God has set you, and the fact that people expect to see what you really are manifested.

It is not said experience yourself dead to sin, but reckon yourself; nor is it said you may reckon yourself so, when you see yourself walking with God; neither does He say, when sin does not reign in your mortal bodies, then reckon yourselves dead to sin. No; that is not grace; but the Holy Ghost draws the practical consequence from all which faith teaches. This is the only means of living godly before the world.

Righteousness, as stated in the end of chapter 5, shews me how I am enabled by it to live before God; I can only be living before the world, then, as belonging to God; so I can only be living before God in the sense of acceptance, being justified from sins by the blood, and now dead to sin, reckoning myself so, because Christ who is my life died unto sin, and I am free. Then how blessedly comes in “yield yourselves,” not merely to righteousness, though it be so, but to God, never stopping short of God. If I do a right thing, and do not do it to God, all is short of its true end and character; my heart is not right in its aim and motive. I should really therefore yield myself to God. Did Christ ever do anything for Himself? No; for in the gospels we see His was a life of love. He had not time even to eat; always living for others. He not only did things which were commanded, but because they were commanded; the will of God being not only the guide, but the motive of all He did. He gave Himself for us, but a sacrifice and offering to God.

Well, then, if you are delivered from sin, you are delivered from yourself, and what a blessed deliverance, to have a right to have done with myself! It is the best thing in the world to have done with myself. “Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace.” If we are under the law, we are under the dominion, as well as under the curse of sin. “Oh, but,” you say, “sin has dominion over me, therefore I am afraid God will not have me.” What are you doing with grace? How can you dare to come before God for anything, if you are not standing in grace? It is only as you are under grace, that you can have any power over sin. If you are standing in grace, you are under favour, because God is good—you are free, but you are under grace; therefore Romans 5 comes before chapter 6, righteousness before holy liberty in life, and if you try to reverse them, you get into chapter 7.

If, because I do not love Christ as I ought, which is a higher thing than the law, I then begin to doubt whether I am His or not, I am still under law, but with a higher standard, Christ being the law, instead of the ten commandments. It is not realising grace. God loves the holy angels, but that is not properly speaking grace. Grace is love towards those who do not deserve it. Oh! but you say, if a man is delivered from the law he may become careless; the subtlety of the heart is such that it is quite true it may abuse grace. Law is given to convict of sin; man uses it to make out righteousness; grace to free man from sin, and give him power over it, and he uses it to licentiousness. But a person is not to be licentious, because he is free from the law— “ye became the servants of righteousness.”

If we are led of the Spirit, we are not under the law, but we shall be led in holiness; we have liberty, and not slavery, but it is divine deliverance from the power of sin; we yield ourselves wholly to God, because we are free to do so, and if God has given you liberty, will you be a slave again to sin? But now being made free from sin and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness. What is holiness? Separation from, and abhorrence of what is evil, and for us by separation of heart to God. I should not call Adam holy, but innocent; God is holy, for God abhors evil, having full knowledge of it, and delights in good; Christ is holy; we, too, are holy, for in the new man which we have put on, we hate the evil and love the good, though we cannot do it as God does. Holiness in us must necessarily have God for its object. In walking in righteousness, the heart has to say to God obediently; the will is not in activity, the lusts not at work. The effect, through grace, is growing separation of heart to God, and acquaintance with Him. Thus you have your fruit unto holiness. What fruit does sin bear? None; it only brings to death. I walk in what is pleasing to God, and thus, the new man being active likes what God likes; and what will be the consequence of this? In the moral activities of this new life, I get separated from the influence of evil, increasing in the knowledge of God; not only actual fruits produced (though that is true, as the tree will be known by its fruits), but this practical bringing forth of internal fruit is connected with righteousness according to the will of God, and a walk with Him in the light.

The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him; I get drawn away from the spirit of the world—this practical walking with God is connected with growth in the knowledge of God, leads me on in likeness to Him: in every-day life to have a constant reference to God’s will, leads into the light practically. “If the eye be single, the whole body will be full of light.” Learning God—going on with God, not merely slipping and then getting on again. It is not simply desiring to live to Christ, but our hearts should be more withdrawn from everything around, a thorough consecration of the heart, a growing up in the knowledge of God in heart and spirit; and there will be this growing up unto God, if our life be yielded to Him—servants to God—having God’s will as our blessed privilege. God’s own will, flowing from His nature, should be our will. What is higher or more blessed than this? It is what Christ had; Christ thought it worth while to leave heaven to do God’s will, that we might be drawn up there, and made to bring forth fruit unto holiness down here.

There is a positive joy in pleasing God, it is perfect liberty. The gift of God is eternal life; and it is sweet to see that while grace leads us through the path of righteousness, it is still all grace. I would rather have eternal life as the gift of God, than ten lives of my own, because it is the proof of His love to me. The Lord grant that our hearts may be so grounded in grace, that we may indeed yield ourselves unto God, and be growing up in the doing of His will—remembering it is founded on reckoning ourselves dead to sin, and alive unto God; thus we live out of the world, as to separation from evil, as He is.

Chapter 7.

You will remember what we have been treating of up to the end of chapter 3, all under sin, and propitiation made for our sins by the precious blood of Christ. All our actual guilt dealt with; so that we cannot overrate the importance of the subject. So in chapter 4 we have seen the apostle developing the grand doctrine of the resurrection—the believing in God as the One who raised the dead. It is not merely putting away sin from the guilty person, but it is God acting on the very Person who was delivered for our offences, and for a little moment under death.

The power of this raising the dead was first exercised on the Person of Christ, here looked at as delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification—that is, the application does not go beyond the justifying effect of resurrection, the new position of Christ as delivered for our offences, and so raised again by God, a witness of the efficacy of His work, and the new place He has thus entered into as Man. Elsewhere we learn what the exercise of the same power of God is in us who believe, so that we are viewed as risen with Him, but this is Ephesian teaching. There we see the saints quickened by the Spirit of God, in the exercise of the very same divine power that raised Christ from the dead and quickened together with Christ, the same being thus associated with Christ in resurrection.

In chapter 5:1-11, we have the results of this resurrection of Christ. The justification of the sinner by faith, in putting away sins by the blood, and a full justification through the resurrection of Christ, peace, present favour, hope of glory, rejoicing in tribulations, rejoicing in God Himself.

From verse 12 to end of chapter, we get our connection with the first Adam, and the Last, so that not merely individual sins are in question, but a single head involving those connected with it in the consequences of his act, and in the partaking of a life or nature derived from that head—the one constituting his family, sinners; the other, righteous. The flesh says, if one man’s obedience makes me righteous, I may continue in the sin of my old nature! No: you are dead to sin, and what you are dead to, you cannot live in.

In chapter 6 the objections of the natural man to the obedience of Christ constituting us righteous are all met, as the apostle connects practical righteousness and a holy life with being dead with Christ, and the reception of a new life to God through Him as a necessary result. This important point we must pursue a little more fully. The Christ in whom we have part, as thus interested in His obedience, is Christ who has died and is risen; and if we are associated with Him, we are associated with Him in death. The public profession of Christianity was baptism to His death. We have been planted in the likeness of His death, we cannot live in what we have died to.

This treats of our continuance in sin, the principle and condition of our Adam nature. But more, if planted in the likeness of His death, we shall be of His resurrection; that is, the power of His life will shew itself in us.

He does not say we are risen with Him; which would in itself suppose full redemption, with life, and a place and condition before God. Here it is practical, a new character of life—we are to walk in newness of life. I am, then, to reckon myself dead, and alive unto God, through, or in, Jesus Christ our Lord. Yet it is not as raised with Him, but quickened by Him or in the power of His life. When quickened together with Him, He is looked at as dead, and union is involved in it; not “with” here, but we have the new life through Him. Hence, I am free, for I reckon the old nature dead.

Here comes in the second point of the chapter. To whom am I going to yield myself, if thus free in life—to sin again? God forbid. I am a slave, to use a human figure, says the apostle, to Him to whom I give myself up, not therefore surely to sin, but to God; and my members as instruments of righteousness to God. The law I am not under; that comes requiring, and really addresses itself to me as alive in the flesh. But the absence of legal requirement does not lead me to sin, my freedom is to serve God, to be obedient. Such is life through Christ.

But there is more: what fruit had we in the things we are now ashamed of? None; and they end in death. But now we have, in the path of obedience, fruit—fruit unto holiness. “Shew me thy way,” says Moses, “that I may know thee.” In the path of obedience will is not at work, lusts are not at work; we are with God, we have His mind, our hearts are separate to Him, we know Him better. Hence, in increased spiritual discernment of good and evil, and conscious knowledge of God, there is fruit unto holiness, intelligent separation of heart to Him, ever better known.

The beginning of the chapter raises the question of continuance in sin, when another’s obedience makes us righteous; the end, when set free, to what we yield ourselves, and its blessed fruit, yet bringing out all as grace. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. And let us remark, that while it is for righteousness and for obedience —for the new nature loves both—it is to God, we yield ourselves to God. What a blessed freedom of heart and position, to be able to give ourselves up, and up to God Himself, in the knowledge of Him! In the chapter which follows he shews how, as dead, we are not under law, which claims, and is not freedom, nor delivers at all, so as to be free to yield ourselves thus to God.

Chapter 7, then, applies this doctrine of being dead to our position in respect of the law. The practical effect of the new nature in me, if not freed from the law, is to give me such a sense of what God is, and what self is, as to make me perfectly miserable. It gives me the sense of good and evil, but good unattained, and evil to which I am a slave. But this chapter 7 shews the effect of my being dead, on my relationship with law: I am delivered from it. It is not merely that we are justified, nor yet merely that we have a new nature, but that we are delivered from the law. The apostle takes care to shew that there is no fault in the law, but that we are delivered from it.

As many as pretend to take their stand with God, as being under the law, are under the curse, “for as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse.” It is not that the works are bad, but the effect of our being under the law puts us under the curse. It is useless for you to talk of using the law, not for justification, but for sanctification, or as a rule of life: you cannot use the law for this or that according to your own fancies. It will use its rights over you as it pleases. God is saying by the law to those who are under it, “You have not obeyed Me, and I am going to curse you.” You cannot deal with God’s law as you like; for if you will have God’s law, you must take it with all the consequences God has attached to it.

There is no power whatever in the law to sanctify. It is not in the capacity of the law to sanctify a sinner. It is holy, just, and good, but when applied it must condemn the sinner. It must condemn all under it. It requires from themselves obedience to it. Nothing ever so fully established the claims of the law as God’s Son dying under it. Of course, the positive effect of our being under the law is, that it of itself puts us under the curse. But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully.

Assuredly, the law is good; it would be blasphemy to think otherwise. But the question is, what is the lawful use of it? It is never said that it is good to be under the law, though the law is good in itself. The law is good to detect the state of the heart. Who is there that has not broken the law? Who has not lusted? Who loves God with all his heart? No; you love yourselves better; and who loves his neighbour really quite as well as himself? Not one of us; then we are all under the curse, if we are under the law. The law is good, if a man use it lawfully; knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient.

The law is useful as a weapon, but it is one that has no handle; for if I, a man in the flesh take it to use against others, it pierces me through quite as much as those against whom I wield it. It is as sharp for me as for them. See John 8, where the scribes and Pharisees brought to Jesus a woman taken in adultery; their wicked hearts thought to prove Jesus to be in the wrong, whether in condemning or saving her. If He condemned, He was no Saviour—the law could do as much; if He let off, He had set aside the law— profound wickedness! They quote the law; very well; but it is as much a law to themselves as for her; for Jesus said unto them, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her,” “and they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one.” Christ having thus condemned them all by the law, He then takes up the woman in grace, and says to her, “Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more.” The law was made for unrighteous persons. Why do I say to you, that you must not lust? If lust were not there, where would be the use of it? But if lust is there, what can the law do but condemn it? As a system, the law was given 2,600 years after sin came in, and what could it do but condemn? It was never meant to do anything but to condemn, to prove the heart, and to give the knowledge of sin: we should thoroughly understand what deliverance from it is, if we would be truly free in Christ—children of the free woman. It is surely useful always, as God’s weapon to convince.

In chapter 7, the apostle applies the doctrine of death to the law, and he opens it in this way, “Know ye not that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?” It is true even of human law, and physical death. He proceeds with the analogy of husband and wife. You cannot have two husbands at one and the same time—we cannot have Christ and the law both at once. We are bound up with one or the other, as a principle, to God. The woman cannot have two husbands. “Wherefore ye are become dead to the law by the body of Christ.” It is not that the law has died, we are dead; the image, so far, changes, but the bond is broken; and this difference is blessed, because I hold also my old evil nature for dead, and this is by the body of Christ. In His death, as we have seen, I reckon myself dead. The law was never abrogated, and the principle of it was sanctioned as of God, and those that have sinned under it will be judged by it. Verse 6 correctly reads: “but now we are clear from the law, having died in that in which we were held.” It is not then, that the law is dead, but we are dead to that by which we were held. Hence, note, death to sin goes with it. Therefore, the apostle says, we are dead to the law by the body of Christ, because Christ was made a curse for us, and died under it, as bearing the curse. But how? Why the law applied its full curse to Him, as willingly offering Himself, and He died under it.

The law as a weapon took its full effect on Christ. It did everything it possibly could, by way of its curse coming on Christ. The curse of the law was the death of the sinner, and Christ in grace was made sin for us; therefore, what could the law do more than spend its full curse on the head of Him, who was made sin for us, who died under the law? Christ was born under the law and kept it. He puts Himself under its curse, and goes through it all, and rises entirely out of it. And faith applies Christ’s position to the believer. But alas! to how many Christians law is Christianity. But Christ comes as a Mediator, and takes my place, my whole cause: and faith has received all that. He thus was in my place, bringing all the good of it to myself, as if I were in His place. He is not speaking of union with Him now, as in Ephesians. I come and have my place actually and livingly in Christ, for He is the quickening Spirit, the last Adam, who comes and gives me a portion with Himself in His present position. All question of the claims of the law upon the believer has passed away in Christ, for in Christ he has died to the life and position in which he could be under it; and now I have a life in Christ after the whole question of law is settled before God. I am married to another husband, to Him who is raised from the dead.

The Jew is still fully under the law. The believer has died to it in Christ.. Does this weaken the power of the law? No, not at all, it has all its power. See Galatians 2:19, 20. I through the law am dead to the law. But it cannot put forth its killing power on me, if I am dead. It has killed me, and that is what delivers me, for I am in Christ, and it killed Him. The law found sin in me, and executed all its full curse upon Him, who was made sin for me; and now I can reason about it in peace, because its curse is gone, which has been fully borne by Christ.

The law was formerly the religious tie with God, but now another is our tie with God. For it is not now the law, but my new husband, Christ in resurrection; we are dead to the law by the body of Christ, that we should be married to another, even to Him that is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. And because of this new graft in the heart of the believer, God is looking for new fruit; for God has ceased to look for fruit from man’s nature, it has only brought forth wild evil fruit. This was fully brought out in the cross of Christ; but now there is the new thing, on which God’s mind is set. Well, then, as we cannot have the two husbands at once, so if in any wise we are under the law, we are under its curse; and what is more, you cannot get from under its curse, for you have sin in your flesh, and the law can never allow the working pf sin in the flesh, it must necessaily bring out its curse. You talk of sanctification, but you are not sanctified enough for the law, for it will not let you off in any wise. You may have the desire to be good, but you have not yet owned how thoroughly bad you are. God is not looking for any good in you, for He says, “There is none that understandeth, none that seeketh, none righteous, no, not one.” Now this you do not believe, for you are thinking there is some good in you, or hoping for it; you do not believe yourself to be thoroughly bad, as God says you are. And the very way God brings to our consciences what we really are, is that He often leaves us under the condemnation of the law, that it may prove to us what our true state by nature is; and when we have learnt this, we shall be glad enough to be delivered from the law.

Do you say, that being taken from under the law leads to licentiousness? What! do you mean to say, then, that Christ’s life in us leads to licentiousness? It is true that the flesh will abuse everything; but the living power of grace, the reality, what there is in the life of Christ, cannot be believed in by those who say, that if we are not kept under the law we shall sin.

If you use the law for sanctification, you do not know yourselves; and if you think you will be holier by living under the law, it is plain you do not know what it is. I dare any one of you to be under it in God’s presence. No; not one of you could stand under it in God’s presence for one single moment: “In thy sight shall no man living be justified.” This is the ground the law will take with you; it can take no other, for the law knows nothing of grace—it would not be law if it did. Again, I say, you are not really reduced to the sense of what it is to be brought under the law, if you present yourself to God to be judged by it, and the law always brings into judgment, and then all is over, all is lost. The law allows of no excuse. It will have a perfect righteousness in use.

But farther, when we were in the flesh, the motions of sin, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death; that was not the fault of the law, for while there is will in man, man can never produce what God desires. The law is applied to man as he is, it does not speak of the new nature. The law says, I must have obedience to God. You say, Oh! but I have flesh in me. I know nothing of that, says the law. I hate these lusts, you reply to it. So do I, says the law, and that is the reason I am cursing you, for you have them. The law allows of no excuses, and this is its value; it would not be a perfect law if it did, for it would be a bad law if it allowed any evil or failure. Do you love God with all your heart? No; you know you do not. Then you are under the curse. Do you love your neighbour as yourself? No; I do not deny there may be much kindness of feeling, sympathy, and the like; but if your neighbour loses his fortune, do you feel it just as much as if you had lost your own? No, you do not. Then you are under the curse. The effect of a law where there is a will is that it brings out the will; for it makes a man strive against that which checks his will, but that is not the fault of the law, but the fault of sin that there is in him. It is in fallen human nature to will to do a thing that is forbidden; for instance, if a cup were turned over on the table, and at the same time it was declared that no one must know what was under it, all in the room would desire to know it immediately. Thus sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me.

Now, we are delivered from the law. But do you really believe that it is deliverance? If not, you do not know what flesh is, neither do you know what holiness is. Still, the law is good of itself: that must ever be guarded. It would be blasphemy to speak ill of it as God’s law. But now we are delivered from the law, having died in that wherein we were held, that we should serve in the newness of the spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. The law is not dead. It is still in full force against the unrighteousness of the man who is under it; but I have died under it. The law has condemned me, and spent its full curse on me in Christ.

The moment I get life in Christ, I am in partnership with Him, and partnership involves participation in all the advantages of the one with whom we are admitted partners. All my debts having been discharged withal, I am brought into the position in which Christ is. I brought nothing in. His kindness brought me in. But then I speak as a partner would of his capital, customers, and the like; so we, of being dead, alive, and the like. And now I can serve in the newness of the spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. We do not blame the law. God forbid! But I had not known sin, but by the law, “for when the commandment came, sin revived and I died.” Thus death was brought into my soul by the knowledge of sin; but will that bring to God? Never! It shews my need of grace and a deliverer. The law says, Thou shalt not lust; then it is all over with me, for I am one with Adam, and I am full of lust. “Sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence”; that is, the law suggested it, by forbidding it.

Suppose a person to say, “I am going to do such and such a thing,” and I say, “Oh, don’t do that,” when self-will is at work, he desires the more to do it immediately. It is useless to try and combat with sin in this way. Yet the awakened conscience and the prohibition combine to make one know that it is wrong, and put me consciously guilty before God. The commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. This was not the fault of the commandment, but being a sinner, the commandment which should have been the ministration of life, which said, “Do this and live,” necessarily became the ministration of death.

Let me return now to verse 5, which contains an important principle, from which all this sorrow flows. “When we were in the flesh”: compare this with verse 9 of chapter 8, “But ye are not in the flesh” (though the flesh may be in you). Now this is the key to all that has been said, and gives it its full power. If you are dead with Christ, and have life through Him, you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. The natural man, we know, is in the flesh, nor does the law quicken him. But there is a further case. Suppose him quickened and under the law: still the law takes up man in the flesh, in principle, as to his position and conscience, and condemns him in the very thing in which he stands, as to his own consciousness before God, that is, his own personal responsibilities, but according to God’s intention.

Now, as regards my conscious position, I am always in the flesh, that is, as a child of Adam, on my own responsibility; till I know myself to be dead with Christ, and redeemed out of it. The being born again only makes me apprehend the spirituality of the law, the force of “Thou shalt not lust.” It does not shew me sin in nature, but it gives me the knowledge of it by its first movements, and the painful discovery that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. I still do what I hate, and do not do what I would. It does not give the Spirit, which does give power, as it is the witness of liberty, but leaves a man just where he was in his responsibility, according to the first Adam’s place, and says, “Keep the law, and there is life; do this, and live”; and if there be life communicated, it does not hinder the working of the flesh, which yet it still condemns, and our conscience says, rightly. Thus the fact of being quickened by God does not give deliverance, while the conscience is under the law, though such have really a part in it; but it gives through the law the deep sense of the need of deliverance, because we cannot succeed in what we really desire. The law and flesh, and sin and death, go together, they are correlative. But if I have died, the other three have lost their power over me. If dead I am clearly no longer in the flesh. I say, When we were in the flesh, the motions of sin which were by the law wrought in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But as to our conscious place, we all are in the flesh, unless the Spirit of God by virtue of redemption dwell in us. Redemption, therefore, and the knowledge of redemption (of our having died, moreover, with Christ), is what we need for this deliverance. The apostle, while ascribing the effect to the law, yet carefully guards the law: “Was, then, that which is good made death unto me? God forbid! But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.”

This brings us to the main point of the chapter, not only flesh, of which we have spoken, but the operation of the law, and its effect, and that even on those who can delight in it spiritually. It works death; for we, Christians, know it is spiritual, but I as a child of Adam, am carnal, sold, that is a slave, under sin; and sin only becomes exceeding sinful by the law, working in me all manner of concupiscence. It has not, then, as such, sanctifying power. It cannot make me holy. Is not the law good then? Yes! it is holy, just, and good. But I, as in the flesh, am not subject to it.

The apostle asks two questions here: Is the law sin? No, he says; but he would not have known sin, nor had sin on his conscience, but for it. Secondly, was it made death to him? No doubt sin wrought death in him by it. And this is its use. There is the knowledge of sin, and sin becomes exceeding sinful. Note here, it is all along sin, not sins. Paul had nothing externally on his conscience; but when the law became spiritual to him, then he found lusts and sin. That is what is discovered here, it is not what we have done, but what we are, that is, in the flesh.

There are three things in this chapter. In the first six verses, we have the doctrine—we have died to the law by the body of Christ, and we are married to another, even Christ risen from the dead; then verses 7-13, the conclusion, with the inquiry, is it sin? does it work death? and verses 14 to the end, experience, before being delivered from the law. And here it is of importance to mark how the apostle says “I” and “we.” When he says “I,” he is taking us in our individual state; but when he says “we,” then it is as Christians, as believers in Christ, that he is speaking of us. If he says “I,” then he is beginning to deal with individual members; for if I begin to talk of myself, then I find sin in myself every day. It is a personal, practical consciousness of what is working in my heart. But that is not my place in Christ, and there is the difference. And this gives us the key to the passage. It is one who has Christian knowledge, judging what flesh is, but what it is in its effect on me in the presence of, and under the law. It is what I am in myself, that is, in the flesh. I am carnal; in me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing. In this part of the chapter, all is “I” and “me” therefore, which are used some thirty times; but he never speaks of Christ or of the Spirit at all until the close of the chapter. It is the experience of what the flesh is, viewed in the light of the requirements of a spiritual law, deliverance being yet unknown, and not the knowledge by faith of what I am in Christ. It is the personal experience of myself in flesh, but mixed with the clear knowledge of a Christian, who looks back at it; but not the state of a man in Christ, whom the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made free.

What is in chapter 7, then, is a man under the law. It is not simply the effect of conflict between the new and the old nature, but the effect of being under the law when both are there. It does not say that Christ is good, but takes much lower ground, and says that the law is holy, just, and good. Chapter 7 is the discussion of the law applied to the practical experience of a man, struggling to live righteously under it. A natural man cannot delight in the law of God with his heart, the new nature does; but then, according to that nature, we see he always wills what is right, yet he never does it, because he has no power. Now, do you not find that, in a vast majority of cases, what you want is power to do what is right? Well, then, the law will never give it you; for the law is as weak to give you power to do right, as it is strong to condemn you when you do wrong. The secret of it all is, that when in the flesh there is no power, and it is all self till we see that; and till Christ is known as the Deliverer from the law, it is always I, I, I, and we shall be floundering about, and only getting deeper and deeper into it, like a man in a morass, who attempting to lift one leg out, only sinks the other deeper in the mire; there may be a desire to get out, but he must have a deliverer; there is ever the desire to be this or that, or to do this or that, being thus occupied with self instead of Christ. It is true you ought to desire holiness, but how are you to get power to be holy?

Suppose you were, what will never be, a great deal more holy than you are, would that give you peace, when you have not been brought to a righteous standing before God in Christ? If you think your own holiness could give you peace, you are not even depending on His blood, and certainly you do not know yourselves. What then is all this struggling meant for? Just to let you know you cannot have peace in this way, nor righteousness and holiness in the flesh and by the law, that you may know yourselves, and what flesh is.

There is such a tendency in us to be thinking of these I’s and me’s, thus to set up self in God’s place, that God says, Well, you shall have so much of self, that you shall be thoroughly glad to have done with yourself, and to this end, God often suffers us to be brought through all this, to be put under the law, with a new nature and a good will, which only leads to “O wretched man that I am,” for it is only man. There is the love of good, but no power to do it, for man is as powerless as he is wicked. He is, through labouring to do, brought to cry out, “Who shall deliver?” He is looking for another to deliver him; he gives it up as a hopeless thing, yet cannot, dare not, do without it. It is not that man is to get a better self, but a deliverance from self. This may be the work of a day or years, according to circumstances; man is brought to his own level, and then God in grace can come in. Then comes thanksgiving, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

The only way by which man gets power is by being shewn that he has none of himself, and then he is not delivered by getting victory, and so peace, but by finding he is in Christ, has died to and is out of the flesh, and only in Christ, through whom he fives before God. Then God can give him power. “When we were without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” Man must know God as his Saviour, before he knows Him as his strength. There must be salvation; then comes peace, and progress.

The doctrine, then, in chapter 7, is that we cannot have Christ and the law, or the two husbands at once; but, that we are dead to the law, and bound to Christ risen. The motions of sin which were by the law did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But it is not the fault of the law, yet it brings death into our consciences; the law, moreover, is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin; and it serves to the renewed man to teach him by practical experience what sin really is, and makes it exceeding sinful. The fruit of the experience gained under it is, first, to know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing—not what I have done, but what I am, that is my flesh; next, to distinguish between self and sin, for I hate it, its very pressure makes me know it, thus taught of God; but, thirdly, that if I do hate it, it is too strong for me, has still power over me; a law in my members bringing me into captivity. But this powerlessness, thus learned, when I feel the evil and the burden, leads me to have done with self, and look for a deliverer; a deep and weighty lesson; but having been crucified with Christ, I am delivered; hence, here he thanks God. The doctrine he had taught already; he is now come to the point where the effect is realised. The law has spent its full curse on the person of Christ, and so on us also, as reckoned to our favour, as associated with Christ in death; now we are married to Him risen.

The law is often applied by God to bring home to the soul a sense of its powerlessness, for it is easier to learn we are sinful, than to learn that we have no power. Conscience will soon tell us we are sinful, as regards acts, but it requires this divine teaching to know the sin in our nature. We often need to be brought through struggle after struggle, before we acknowledge that in our flesh dwells no good thing, that we have no power; we may assent to it as a doctrine, but we must also experience the truth of it in the secrecy of our own souls.

It is a humbling, but most profitable lesson; the difference is evident always to every experienced eye, indeed, to oneself, as to confidence in self, besides turning to the liberty wherewith Christ has set us free.

The Lord give you to weigh well this important principle, that there is no forgiveness of sins but of grace, through Christ’s death. For an evil nature, for sin—Christ having died for us, as “for sin,”—is condemned in His death, and we are set free, for we have died with Him. Also remember this, that it is the discovery of what we really are, that settles the question of the law. Then we shall be glad to get rid of what only can and ought to bring a curse upon us, and to be brought into fellowship with Christ the Lord.

Chapter 8.

In this well-known and remarkable chapter, we have the results of what we have been considering in what precedes. Chapter 5:1-11 gave us the peace, present grace, and hope, which Christ’s dying for our sins gave us, and what God is to us in and by it. This chapter gives our state and place before Him, and as such in the world, a kind of picture of what a Christian is.

There are three distinct parts in the detail of this chapter. First—Our state in Christ—the fruit of the grace of God. “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death,” brought out in its inward power and fruitfulness, and with that, sin in the flesh condemned, but in Christ’s death a sacrifice for it. This part goes down to verse 13. Second.—The person and presence of the Holy Ghost in us, down to verse 29. Third.—There is a transition from the work of God inwardly, in our souls, to the outward security, what God is for us, what we count upon Him for; and that makes it so sweet, for He says, “nor any other creature.” And surely any creature whatever must be inferior to God: therefore he says, “If God be for us, who can be against us? “So that from verse 29 to the end of the chapter it is God for us, the outward security, so to speak, unconnected with the work within us, that he had spoken of in the beginning of the chapter, though preserving them in divine love, in whom it is wrought, for the glory; and so entirely is this the case, that when he says, “whom he justified,” he does not add, “them he also sanctified” (though that be true), but “them he also glorified.”

I repeat again these three distinct parts in the chapter. First.—The inward effect of the living power of the Spirit of God in our souls, down to verse 13. Second.—The personal presence of the Holy Ghost in us, down to verse 29. Third.— From verse 29 to the end of the chapter, all the saving power of what God is, according to His counsel, for us outwardly, not looking at His work within the soul, but maintaining it to the end.

It may be noticed by some that I have said nothing on the last verse of chapter 7. “With the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.” Now a godly person might suppose having come to the deliverance there is in Christ Jesus, that conflict then was all entirely over. Now that is not the case, as it is after the soul has known deliverance by Jesus Christ that this great principle clearly comes out, “with the mind I serve the law of God”; as the apostle for the same reason could tell us what that state was. I cannot do this till I have known deliverance. I cannot calmly describe how one sinks, as I have said, in the morass, till I am out of it. I am crying out for help, for my safety; but this last verse states the abiding general principle (flesh remains in us after we have known deliverance), and hence the conflict to keep it down; therefore in chapter 7:25, we see there is conflict after deliverance, as before, because there are conflicting principles of nature contradictory one to another: but we are no longer under the law after deliverance, we belong to another. Moreover, the power of the Spirit is there in us.

Thus in chapter 7 the new nature and the flesh are opposed to each other, but under law, while in Galatians 5 it is the opposition of flesh and Spirit. “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh,” because in the Galatians it is about those who have the Spirit, and therefore you get real power here, after the deliverance, which you do not get in Romans 7, because they have not received the Spirit. So that in Romans 7 it is not flesh lusting against the Spirit, but man under the law; whereas in Galatians it is added, if we walk in the Spirit, we are not under law. Therefore he does not say here (Rom. 7), “the flesh lusteth against the Spirit,” but he cries out, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me? for what I would that I do not, but what I hate that do I.” But ye (that believe) are not in the flesh, but “in the Spirit.” “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” Therefore in Galatians, when they have got the Spirit, they are exhorted to walk in the Spirit. But if they have the Holy Ghost, why this exhortation to walk in the Spirit? Because the flesh is still there, and lusteth against the Spirit.

But when a man is led of the law, he is still, as to his standing and conscience, in the flesh, though, if really Christ’s, he cannot be entirely holden there. But you are not led of the law. “For ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be the Spirit of God dwell in you.” And if ye be led of the Spirit, ye cannot be under the law, for when really under the law, ye must be led of the flesh; for sin loses its dominion as well as its power to accuse only by our not being under law, but under grace, because the law can in no wise place us in known grace nor give the Spirit. Therefore if under it you cannot be led of the Spirit.

Now then we are prepared to see the deliverance and the extent of it, and also that it is God’s deliverance. In the first three verses of this chapter we have the results of the argument in the end of chapter 5, and in chapters 6 and 7. In verse 1 we have the result of chapter 5, as in the last Adam, then the displacing of the Adam nature by our being dead with Christ by the power of the Spirit of life in Him. In verse 2, and in chapter 6, dead to sin, and alive to God through Christ. In verse 3, as in chapter 7, dead to the law; and then in chapter 8, no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. Still he does not merely repeat what is there, but brings forward according to the full light of faith, and divine teaching, the actual condition of the believer, which that reasoning had brought him up to. That prepared the way, in contrast with the old state in Adam, and in replying to objections. This gives the actual condition of him who is delivered.

The conclusion is in the first verse by itself; “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” They have passed out of the flesh as before God and are in Christ who has died and risen again; and, having suffered for our sins, is past death and judgment and the whole condition of sin, even as having to say to it for others. There cannot therefore be condemnation for me in Him. The ‘therefore’ is not a consequence drawn as an argument, but a great moral result demonstrated by the condition of things developed in what precedes.

Verse 2 begins the full resulting view, as ‘for’ is constantly used by the apostle—the result of what is passing in the apostle’s mind—not the proof of his textual argument. The power of life in Christ, acting in and for itself, has set me free from the law of the old man altogether; I may foolishly listen to it, but I am not, really, at all under its power. Just as the breath which God breathed into Adam’s nostrils gave him power to use his previously formed body, so the power of life in Christ enables me to serve now in the liberty and power of that life. But another truth comes in to make this good— redemption and resurrection. If it were only a new nature, new in its desires, it would give the sense of responsibility, the conscience of sin, and, in the hatred of it, the knowledge that God must be against it, and thus fear and dread as regards God. This is Romans 7, and in principle, law; but what law could not do, God has sent His Son and accomplished. The blessed and sinless Lord has come, and in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, that is, as a sacrifice for sin. Thus God has condemned sin in the flesh. It has been dealt with; that which my conscience recognised, which held me in bondage, cannot accuse me any more. Its condemnation is past, but executed, and I have, in that same work of Christ, died to it. I live to God through Him that is risen, to whom I am bound. Thus verse 3 shews me that work of God which leaves me free to live in the life of verse 2. The actual requirements of the law will be thus fulfilled, because I am not under it, and I live by a life which does not do what is contrary to God’s will.

Under the first Adam, who brought in sin and death, there was nothing but what pressed down; while in the last Adam, the Lord from heaven, it is all lifting up, but lifting up from under the power of sin, as well as from its condemnation— perfect liberty. God has come in in delivering power; but you say, How is that? God’s Son went down under death for our sins, and rose in the power of the life of the Son of God without them, and by association with Him, we are taken from under our sins, and the law of sin in the old man, into resurrection-life with Him. Thus, then, if I am dead and in Christ risen, there can be no condemnation, for I have died under God’s judgment against sin, and am alive after the judgment has been executed for sin on Him who died for it. I am alive only to God in Him, not in the flesh in which sin is, the sense of sins put away; there can therefore now be no condemnation, for it is God Himself that justifies.

God came in in power when man was a sinner, by Christ’s coming and taking us out of the old, and putting us into the new condition altogether. Therefore now it is no question of hope, where faith is simple. I do not hope anything about the cross, because it is a past thing, executed and done. We do not now trust in a promise for salvation, but in the fact, the accomplishment of a promise (of course we do trust in a promise for every day’s need and deliverance, but that is quite another thing).

By one righteousness the free gift is of many offences unto justification of life. And the way He is bringing them is beyond death, and hence deliverance from the guilt of sin; but through death alive in God’s presence, and thus not in the flesh, in which the power of sin was, but in Christ, and there is no condemnation there; and then the reason he gives for this, saying, “The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” And here is the secret of the walk, “who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit,” for now he enters on the power of the Spirit, but still, first, on the power of life, for what we do not get in chapter 7, we get here fully, that is, Christ and the Spirit. Having laid the foundation in virtue of what Christ has done, and having given us life, He then works in us; for this is what we find, the living power of the Spirit of life in Christ setting us, as associated with Him, out of the sphere of the power of condemnation, death, and law; because my life, as a Christian, is through Christ, so that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. It is this which introduces the doctrine of the Spirit’s presence, of which this chapter now proceeds to speak. “What the law could not do” (that is, effect righteousness by keeping it in the flesh), he that walks in the Spirit does; he fulfils the law, and that is the practical result of our position, but the law could never give that power.

I desire to call attention again to verse 1: there is great force and power in it. It does not say you are not condemned, but, “there is now no condemnation,” and that goes much farther; for if there is any question of sin on the conscience, the nearer we are to God, the more distressed and anxious we shall be, and therefore the soul needs this full assurance. Could anyone say there was any condemnation for Christ? and that now even, as regards His connection with us? surely not! for He is the Holy One, the accepted Man in the presence of God, having perfectly glorified Him in His work for us. Then how can there be any condemnation for the one that is in Him, for whom this work was wrought? Therefore he says, “There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” This is more than saying to them for whose sins Christ died, than if it was said on Christ Jesus—as Aaron wore the breastplate as part of the vestment, so that the names of the children of Israel were borne on his heart; and when the light of Jehovah’s countenance fell on Aaron with full favour, the same light shone on the names engraved on the breast-plate. But this in Romans 8 is much more, being in the presence of God as Christ is; all the old sins gone; himself, as to the old man, dead with Christ, and he himself before God in perfect acceptance.

Verse 2. “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” The old man could never get rid of its law (law here is power, or nature acting uniformly), but here we have another man, the new man; and that has its law, and what is that? life in Christ: a law as uniform in its spirit of action as any natural law. And this law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus is godliness, associating with Him out of the sphere of sin and death. The law, dealing with the old man, had no power against this law of sin and death—this contrary spirit of action; but now there is the new man, with a new law, and that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus; but he does not speak of walking in the Spirit, till he has said, “no condemnation,” as there is no power for walk till that question is settled. We saw in chapter 7 the desires of the new life, but working towards the law, and, therefore, no power; but here it is life itself in Christ acting in its own law.

Verse 3. “For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh.” The law was not in fault. It failed through the weakness of the flesh; you cannot make anything perfect out of bad materials. A man may be a very skilful workman, but if you set him to work on bad materials, all his skilfulness would prove of no avail. If it is to carve on wood, for instance, he may display the most exquisite taste and workmanship, and produce that which all must admire, and declare to be perfect, and without a blemish or a fault: but if he were to attempt to do the same on clay instead of wood, or on rotten wood, it would crumble to pieces beneath his hand, and thus all his skill would go for nothing; so the law attempting to work on the flesh only crumbles it to pieces. The law never effected the giving of righteousness. It promises life to those who keep it, but it never gives life; what man could not do, God can do. “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh,” in dying the just for the unjust. God condemned, or, as you might say, executed sin in the flesh for us by the death of Christ. He did not die only for my sins (though that is true), but for my sin. The root of sin that is in my nature, and that which worries and distresses the heart of the sincere believer daily, is put away for faith by death, and we are dead to it, as well as those sins that are committed; for the heart says, and rightly too, that God ought to condemn it, and trembles; now how is this to be met? By God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, or as a sacrifice for sin.

Then He condemned sin in the flesh, and put it away in Christ’s sacrifice; thus the whole thing is settled, and that which was a weight on my spirit, and a thorn in my conscience is taken away by the very way in which the condemnation has run out in all its full force, in the crucifixion of Christ. God has settled the question, condemning the sin in you, which you condemn. But where has He done it? Outside of yourself altogether; for if God sets about delivering, He does it perfectly. If Christ has died, not only for your committed sins, but your sin in the flesh, it is real through redemption: for He does not leave us under our sins, but takes them away, and forgives them. And not only this, He takes away the condemnation of sin in the nature, by God’s judgment being executed on the sinless flesh of the person of His own Son. Thus sin in my flesh is judged, as well as my committed sins. This is what the heart wants to be delivered from, and what it is in conflict with every day. The tree and the fruit— the root and the sap, that harasses the heart, is settled, and that by God sending His own Son. There was the greatest grace to meet it; and the very thing that harasses you most God has provided for in sending His own Son.

Well, then, in verse 3, I get the result of chapter 7 met. “In that the law was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son,” etc. Well, but you say, I have sin working in me still, what am I to do? Why, the very thing that distresses you is the very thing that God gave His Son for, “and for sin” and so “condemned sin in the flesh.” This it is that gives the real liberty to the Christian, not liberty to sin, but liberty from sin.

Verse 4. “That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” He is not taking up the old man here, but the walk; and mark, there are two principles of walk—after the flesh, and after the Spirit. Flesh is not changed; if it were, why be exhorted not to walk after it? But no; the flesh is the same as ever, but the believer now has power over it, he does not walk after it, although it be there. The flesh is in him, but he is not in the flesh. There is no excuse for a Christian walking in flesh, because the Spirit of Christ is in him. But, mark further; we all, even as believers, have the flesh, but that does not necessarily make the conscience bad, but I must have conflict with it, then it is no hindrance to communion; but if I yield to it, I get a bad conscience and lose communion, and I have to confess my sin before communion can be restored. For instance, if I have pride in my nature, that does not hinder communion, if I go to my Father and plead with Him about it, and ask Him to help me to keep it down, and walk in gracious humility, to deliver me; instead of losing communion, I have communion with God about it. But if there be neglect, instead of getting strength from God to overcome it, I may go out in the morning without carefulness and get my pride wounded: for if a person does not shew me as much respect as I think he ought, then my pride comes out in some unhappy manifestation, and my conscience is defiled, and my communion with God hindered, and the Lord Himself dishonoured. The very fact of my having indwelling sin is but the occasion of communion, or a barrier to it, according as I am dead to it, seeking God’s face, or yield to it.

Verse 5. “They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.” It is “after the Spirit,” the man’s condition is looked at here as spiritual. Every nature has its object, which is its “mind.” There are two principles here, each having its own object; the very brute creation have their desires, the flesh its more deliberate objects. The spiritual man obeys the tastes and appetites of the Spirit instead of the flesh.

Verse 6. “To be carnally minded is death” (or, which is better, the mind of the flesh, and the mind of the Spirit. It is what each in its nature desires, not a state). If the flesh run its course, death, the seal of condemnation, must be upon it. “As it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment”; “but to be spiritually-minded is life and peace.” Now we are getting the real, practical, inward thing. There are two kinds of peace—peace in the conscience, and peace in the heart. “To be spiritually-minded is life and peace.” This is a far higher thing than simply peace in the conscience. It is peace in the heart and affections. The affections are at rest, and then there is the steady pursuit of things for which our consciences will not accuse us, for, delighting ourselves in the Lord, there will be peace. If you are restless and discontented in your mind, you are not at peace, you are thinking about yourselves! self has come in, so we want something for self. The Spirit turns the eye away from self towards the Lord. The things of the flesh are too small to fill the heart, and the heart likewise needs enlarging to grasp the things of the Spirit; and herein is the contrast between Ecclesiastes and Canticles on this very point.

In Ecclesiastes, Solomon says, “There is no good thing under the sun”; “All is vanity and vexation of spirit.” Why so? To him, self was seeking its own satisfaction. Here, then, was no rest, no peace; it could not be otherwise. No human object could satisfy an immortal soul, nor could a dying man get rest in what he was to die out of. Yet, when thinking of himself, it was all I, I, I, I did it, and I found it vanity; but in Canticles we see all his blessedness, because he speaks of Christ being all to him there. As it has been said, in Ecclesiastes the heart was too great for the object; in Canticles the object is too great for the heart. We want a largeness of capacity for the enjoyment of God Himself; a largeness of capacity which none but God can give, and none but God can fill. Where that is, “life and peace “are. What peace and joy and communion a Christian, so walking, has in his heart! But when self comes in, even if we have assurance, there is no peace of heart, because there is always a liability to have it wounded, and if it be not, self is never content. If we know ourselves, we shall soon see that it is the central thought of every irritated heart.

Verse 7. “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God,” etc. Now, here we get a deeper thing still than law-breaking in itself; an unsubject will always is the spirit of hatred against Him to whom we feel we ought to be subject, and this brings on the full judgment of self; for while there may be peace of heart and peace of conscience, yet a man finds that the mind of the flesh is enmity against God, for he finds that he, according to the flesh, has a will that will not be subject to God, and it would not be a will if it were. The flesh has not only desires, but a will that is not subject to the law of God, nor ever can be. The law not only declares right things, but also the authority of the Lawgiver, and that brings out the rebellion of the flesh, for the flesh immediately says, I will, and I won’t. If you are guilty of breaking one commandment, you are guilty of all; for the unwillingness to submit is as much shewn in the breaking one, as in breaking all. I may require my child to obey in three things, and in two of them he may obey me, because he does not want to do otherwise; but in the third he does not obey, not liking to do it, and therefore takes his own way instead of submitting; the sin was in the will, for he was as guilty in disobeying me, as if he had disobeyed in all: “So, then, they that are in the flesh cannot please God,” because of the will in the members.

Verse 9. “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.” Now we get the liberty, for you are not set in the flesh, but in the Spirit. This is the new nature having its source in the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost working in it. The man is not in the flesh, is not in that place, and standing, and nature before God (he does not say that flesh is not in the man), but in the Spirit; that is, all the Spirit delights in and descries, characterise the man before God, according to the nature and place he has in Christ, though there may be much failure in carrying it out. “If so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.” It is not merely God working for us, but in us. We are born of the Spirit, thus we get the new nature, but then, besides the new nature we want power and liberty, and therefore, consequent on redemption and our cleansing by blood, the Holy Ghost, who is God, dwells there to work in the new nature, and this gives living power. For if I have the new nature only, this gives good desires, but I do not accomplish them, as in chapter 7; but here it is “if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.” It is not merely that we have new thoughts and desires, but He, who is really God, dwells in us to give us power to accomplish them.

It is blessed to see how he brings in God as the real practical deliverance of the man who was before in the flesh. For it does not say, “if born of the Spirit,” though that is true, but, “if the Spirit of God dwell in you,” a truth founded on redemption, and our being delivered by it, cleansed through Christ’s blood, so that the Holy Ghost can dwell in us, the power of God Himself working in us. And if the Spirit of God works powerfully in a man, when did it first work and manifest itself in the true and perfect path of a man before God? In Christ; so this is called now the Spirit of Christ, because shewn in the fruit, in walking like Christ, in the practical formal characteristics of meekness, lowliness, gentleness, obedience, heavenly-mindedness, etc., which the Spirit took in Christ (for these were the natural found characteristics of the Spirit in Christ), but formative in us of that which was so perfectly in Him.

Verse 10. “But if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin,” that is, Christ being power and life in us, we take it for dead, for if alive, it only is and can be sin: “but the Spirit is life because of righteousness,” its natural practical fruit; I only am and own that as life. That is, the old man in us (the body with a will is called the flesh) is as dead, shorn of will, for I judge it: but the Spirit is life, already manifesting the fruits of righteousness in us, to the praise of the glory of God.

But, farther, the body itself will be raised. “He that raised up Christ from the dead, shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” How entirely are the saints separated from this world! Even their resurrection is different; the world; that is, the wicked dead, will not be raised by the Spirit of Christ, but the just will be raised by His Spirit, for He dwells in them. “If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you” (here is the link), you will be raised because of the same Spirit dwelling in you. “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” Thus we have three aspects of the Holy Spirit: the Spirit of God contrasted with the flesh; the Spirit of Christ as characteristic of our walk in the world; and the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus, pledge of our resurrection—the triple character of the Spirit of God as given to the Christian. At the end of verse 11 we get the answer to verse 24, of chapter 7, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Here there is full deliverance, not only for the soul now, but for the body also. “He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” We shall be brought up to the very image of Christ; even our mortal bodies shall be fashioned like unto His glorious body. The liberty of glory is contrasted with the liberty of grace. Now we are in the liberty of grace, then in the liberty of the glory, the creature being sharer in the latter.

In speaking of the Spirit of God, He is spoken of up to verse 11 as being life, and after that as distinct from one’s life in Christ, as a present Person, as dwelling in us and witnessing with our spirit. See how strikingly these two points of view are brought together in verse 27. It attributes the thoughts and feelings which God searches out to my heart, because it is in my heart that the Spirit works, but it goes on to the source: in my heart it finds the mind of the Spirit according to the doctrine of verses 5-7, which is wrought by the Holy Ghost; and lastly, it is the Holy Ghost Himself who makes intercession in the saints. It is me, because it is wrought in my new nature; but as to the power that wrought it, it is not me. The Holy Ghost does it in and by me. It is me as to the act, but it is He as to the source. We have the new nature given to us, and the Spirit is the source, nor is the stream separated from it; this is the teaching up to verse 11; but the Holy Ghost dwells in us. Well, a groan comes out, and I may not understand what to ask for, but through the Holy Ghost my groan is according to the mind of the Spirit, by the Spirit of God which is in me; but this brings in the last truth referred to, His intercession. It is the Spirit Himself in me; He makes intercession according to God, and “God that searcheth the heart knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit.” It is attributed to my heart, but to Him also that produced it. It is me, and at the same time it is the Holy Ghost. I have anticipated in my reference to this verse, because it made plain the doctrine of the indwelling of the Spirit of God. It is a sweet thing to know that the Searcher of hearts finds the Spirit’s mind and intercession in us, in place of sin and the flesh.

We will now open out the doctrine itself. “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit.” The Spirit is life, as we have seen, but we must understand that we are sealed after we have believed. It will be said, “Yet, I cannot believe without the Spirit.” Most true, it is His work, we are born of God by His quickening power, through the word, whence also it is by faith; but, then, because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts. The indwelling of the Holy Ghost is a very different thing from the quickening power of the Spirit. The Old Testament saints were the subjects of this quickening power of the Spirit, but the indwelling of the Holy Ghost could not be till Jesus was glorified. Instances are given in the Acts, where there was an interval in time to make us sensible of the distinction of the two.

Well, there is a new nature, but there is neither strength nor power in it. We cannot act without the Spirit. The very characteristics of the new nature are dependence and obedience, and the Holy Ghost is the power in answer to this dependence, and hence it is we are led by the Spirit. The Spirit does not lead the flesh, but it teaches me to reckon it dead, and to mortify my members upon earth. Yet it is the whole man He leads, for I do not call the flesh me, if I reckon myself dead, but that is “if the Spirit of God dwell in you.”

Then we are temples of the Holy Ghost, which is in us, which we have of God. A temple is that in which God dwells, and my body is this temple. Surely this is a most solemn motive against sin, for how can I go and defile God’s temple? In John 14:16 the Lord says, “I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever.” So also in John 16:7, He says, “It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you.” The first Comforter, Christ, did not dwell, that is, abide with them; He had to go away, and further, He was not in them, but the other Comforter was, as He said, to dwell or abide with them, and should be in them. Christ was with them and went away; but the Holy Ghost, the other Comforter, was to be in them, and abide for ever. There is no strength in us to give power to the truth we receive, or to enjoy the things we have believed. But the Holy Ghost not only presents the things of Christ to us, but at the same time enables us to enjoy them, and to walk in the power of them.

In 1 Corinthians 2:12-14 we find three things about the Spirit. First, divine instruction received by the Spirit’s revelation to the vessel of truth, verse 12, “Now we have received.” Second, communicated to others by the Spirit, v. 13, “Which things also we speak.” Third, spiritual capacity to discern; it also gives the truth living power in the souls of those who are taught, verse 14, “The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God.” There is a solemn truth connected with this, namely, that the Comforter is really come, for He could not come till Jesus was glorified; and if the Holy Ghost is dwelling in us, we are called to walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Being born of God, and sprinkled with the redeeming blood of Christ, we get the Spirit indwelling. This blood is the foundation of His presence, for by it we are clean, and He can dwell there, the seal and witness of the value of Christ’s work.

The Spirit was abundantly prophesied of in Ezekiel and Isaiah: “I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed.” Thus to the Jews there were abundant promises that there should be the pouring out of the Spirit; and the Spirit was the quickener of every saint in the Old Testament times: but now there is another thing, for the Holy Ghost is really given to us; and He could not be given till redemption was fully accomplished. It was only promised till then, as Israel well knew; but it was promised, and therefore Nicodemus ought to have known that, “except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” But there is another thing, besides being born again, upon the coming down of the Holy Ghost, the seal was upon the value of Christ’s work. The seal was not put upon what we had done (our real fruits are the fruits of the Spirit, when we already have it), but upon what Christ did. The Lord’s own anointing, when baptized, was the seal to His personal perfectness— “Him hath God the Father sealed.” But then, could He put the Holy Ghost on me? No; this would be sealing the flesh; but on Him: “After that ye believed, ye were sealed.”

The Holy Ghost was also given to testify of Christ’s glory as the risen Man. In Acts 2:33 we see Christ taking the place of the Head of the body, the church, at the right hand of God, having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost. Thus we see the gift of the Holy Ghost was entirely dependent on Christ taking His place at the right hand of God, as we read in John 15:26, “Whom I will send unto you from the Father”; and the effect of this was felt in the apostles. There was a total difference in them before and after Pentecost. They then preached Jesus crucified. Were they afraid? No; Peter goes and charges those who had denied Him with being guilty of a damning sin, when Peter had committed the same in a much worse way himself (having been His companion) in denying Him; and how could he do this? His own conscience was purged, for Christ had died in the interval, and the Holy Ghost had been given, and thus he, who before followed trembling (Mark 10:32), had power now; for he had none before. As it is said, “When they beheld the boldness of Peter and John, they marvelled,” Acts 4:13. I am not speaking of miracles, the mighty signs and wonders that were wrought by the power of the Spirit of God (Rom. 15: I9)j but of the boldness in which the apostles spake after that they received the Holy Ghost. As we see all through the Acts, the boldness in which the apostles spake and acted was not the boldness of the flesh, but that of the Spirit of God in them.

We have a beautiful type in Aaron (looked at as Christ) who was anointed without blood. But the sons of Aaron (the church) must be sprinkled with the blood and oil. So the leper was first sprinkled with blood, and then over that with oil. Christ was anointed down here, which was the seal of His own personal perfection before the blood had been shed. But we, when we believe the atonement, are anointed and sealed, because of, and as a testimony to, the value of His work; “He that establisneth us with you in Christ, and anointeth us, is God.” Christ sends the Holy Ghost, and the Father sends the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost is in us as the Spirit of adoption. The effect is to connect us with all the glory into which Christ will bring His church, and to associate us with Him now in the place where He is in the presence of the Father, and this as the children of the Father. And this truth, that the Spirit is sent to us and in us, gives the character of our walk down here.

We are to mind the things of the Spirit; and what are they? Anything in this world? No, nothing, if it be not His service there. “He shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you.” He gives us the knowledge of past redemption, present joy and peace, and future glory. The Holy Ghost teaches us the glory of the cross after we have known its saving power, for then we are inside the cross. Whatever is morally glorious: you see it in the cross—love, obedience, righteousness, holiness; law, and whatever was morally bad, met there too, condemnation, sin, and death. God and sin met together in the person of Christ on the cross, but in the way of redemption for us, while it enhances the iniquity of sin.

When I have found peace, then I can say, “Now is the Son of man glorified” (and so He ought to be), and now He has accomplished that work, and is gone on high, and we have glory in Him; and surely there is no joy like that into which we are brought, the joy of knowing that, in that act of deepest suffering for my salvation, Christ and God were most fully glorified. If Christ suffered all that agony for my sin and vileness, surely there never was a moment in which God could look on Him with greater delight than this. And I have now got all the effect of this; I am the fruit of the travail of Christ’s soul. The light of God’s love rests upon Christ Himself, and we are in Him— “I am in my Father, ye in me, and I in you.” We have the blessing of union with Him now, and there is but one thing more—to be with Him for ever. The Comforter is the perpetual remembrancer of that word, “So shall we ever be with the Lord.” The church is to be brought to Christ, as Eliezer went to fetch Rebekah to Isaac; and as all along the road he was telling her of the one to whom she was going, just so the Holy Ghost is leading us in the way, the cross being the starting-point, giving the whole character of the road all along the journey answering to it, while He is telling us of the Father’s house, and place of the heavenly Bridegroom.

There may be trial in the way, but what is all that but dung and dross to the heart whose affections are on Christ? Poor Rebekah, if she thought of her father’s house, where was she? In the wilderness, with a stranger, and an uncertain future; but if she thought of what was before her, then it was all joy and certainty as to the future. The cross is the very commencement of this journey, as separating us from the world, and if we would know the Spirit’s power in our souls, we must keep in the narrow path of separation from the world all the journey through. Do not make the wilderness the object of your hearts (Israel did this); or at least do not rest in it. You may desire earthly good, and you may get leanness into your soul: “If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die”; but let our walk down here be like Paul’s, “This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before.” Let us be so pressing on to the glory, that everything in this world may be things behind us, that we have left, turning our back on. We are going to Christ, and He will present us to Himself, and to the Father, without blemish and without spot, for He shall see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied.

We have before noticed that there are three parts in this chapter—three distinct subjects. First, the work of the Spirit of God in us, the effect produced in ourselves, as the power of life, even to the resurrection of the body; that it was the fruit and operation of God’s Spirit in us extending to the resurrection. Second, it is not only the effect that is produced in living power in us by the Holy Ghost, but the presence of the Holy Ghost Himself in us, distinguishing between that which is born of the Spirit and the personal indwelling of the Holy Ghost. Third, what God is for us in His outward operations. The moral effect of this is, not only that God has worked in me by the Spirit and thereby put me in a certain position, but that the Holy Ghost is with me in that position; what God is for me also, so as to secure and bless him in whom He has wrought. It is not merely that a certain work is wrought in me, but God is in me, for me, and with me. Thus, first, there is that which God has done with me; second, what God is in me; and third, what God is for me.

This last is brought out at the end of the chapter: what God is for man, and not what man is for God, but man looked at as a saint; for when the apostle has brought distinctly out what man is, then he brings out what God is for man, such as he is, as a sinner, summed up in chapter 5; and then what the position of the saint is in his life and trials, and God in and for him as such. Therefore God is fully set forth, that our hearts may rest in what He is, and not in what we are. The rejection of God’s Son proved what man is; but those who believe rest on what grace is, as we saw at the end of chapter 5; and now, made alive to God, they know their position with God according to His predestinating power, and the glory to come. Faith rests on what God is, and on what God has done, as shewing what He is withal; God has quickened us and sanctified us, and we have a place with God through this, but what is wrought in me is not the object of faith: faith rests on what God is, as thus revealed in His word, which is our warrant for believing.²

The witness in power is the Holy Ghost. It is not only believing that the Spirit quickens, but that we stand before God in the Spirit according to the place He has given us actually in Christ, and that if we believe in what God has done, in that He has quickened the dead, and brought into His presence with power Him who had gone down under death for our sins, when everything was against us (for sin can nowhere be shewn out as it was on the cross, when He who hung there was made sin and a curse for us), and that we know He is now the very delight of God—a man in heaven— not only as to His person, but His work, we are brought thus to see what sinners we were—lost sinners—transgressors from the womb; but at the same time, to see His grace which has wrought deliverance, and that we are placed in Him who is thus accepted. And God has so brought out and applied to our hearts all this grace, that we can now say, “God is for us,” for this is the great general truth at the end of chapter 8; the Holy Ghost giving us to understand it by bringing it home to our hearts, in the conviction of what we are in ourselves, and in Christ; what God is, and that He is for us, “What shall we say to these things? if God be for us, who can be against us?”

The testimony of the gospel always comes to convince of sin, but at the same time to speak of His grace—what God is for us; but then, it must be received by faith, for we have no power in ourselves to enjoy God, and it would never be properly faith if it were not by God’s power, as it is said, “We are kept by the power of God through faith,” but why through faith? Because faith leads my soul into the understanding of His love. Thus leading the heart to trust in Him, and not in ourselves, in a way that makes us understand and prize what God is (not in the heart’s love to Him, but in His love to it), as known in all the dealings of His grace, keeping us by His power; not keeping as we keep a precious jewel, which is unintelligent and uninterested in all our care, but as creating an answer in our hearts to what He does. His power never fails: we are kept by that, but it is through faith, that we may have the enjoyment of it, as being brought to delight ourselves in Him, by whom we are kept.

In the three things brought out in this chapter, we have, first, the new nature, which has spiritual faculties, capable of enjoying God; as a child, for instance, has the capacity of enjoying its relationship to the parent, but must also be in the relationship to have the affection in exercise; so we are conscious of our place through redemption, but then we want power, because the new nature is a dependent nature. The first man sought to be independent, and so became the slave of the devil; the second man did nothing of Himself, He came to obey—He took the form of a servant. It is the same place we are in, and having a dependent nature, we want power as we have seen in chapter 7, where there is a new nature “delighting in the law of God after the inward man,” but neither object nor power; for we must have something to love, and then power to love it, for in chapter 7 the soul has neither Christ nor the Holy Ghost till the end of it, when he finds the Lord Jesus Christ, and then exclaims, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” and because he can say, “There is no condemnation.” Now, the soul has got an object, and it has got power, Christ revealing the Father and the Spirit, and it is no longer a question of conscience. It is not that he is without a conscience, but his conscience is purged by the blood of Jesus, and then there is the power of the Spirit of God in him, and having the new nature, there is the development of God’s things in us, by the power of the Holy Ghost; for the Holy Ghost takes of the things of Christ and shews them to us, and is the power in us also to understand them, as the Lord said, “He shall take of mine and shew it unto you,” and “shall be in you.”

It is the presence of the Holy Ghost with a soul that has been quickened and knows redemption, having submitted to the righteousness of God, and not as quickening the soul at conversion, which is the subject here; nor is it the Spirit, as He is with the church, which truth is taught in another place, but it is the presence of the Holy Ghost in man, in the believer; as the great subject of the epistle to the Romans is, how God can be just and the justifier of the sinner, and man stand accepted before Him—the relation of an individual soul with God. Therefore the great fundamental truth is what man is for God, and what God is for man, and lastly, what through grace man becomes before God. In the early chapters we saw what man in his natural state is for God; in chapter 5 what God is for the sinner; but in chapter 8 what man is in Christ is brought out, and thus what God is for him, as in this place— “as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God”; he does not say as many as are quickened by the Spirit, though that is true, for they must be quickened, before they can be led by the Spirit. They are also sealed; then again, if they are led by the Spirit they are not under the law, but, being sons of God, they are led by the Spirit of God. For the Christian is looked at here in his own place, according to the word. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.

In John’s Gospel we see, as truly as the Son was sent from heaven, so truly was the Holy Ghost sent from heaven; the Father sent the Son, and the Father and the Son sent the Holy Ghost; the office of the Holy Ghost is quite distinct from the work of the Son come in the flesh. We will now refer to some passages in John’s Gospel, that we may understand it. In chapter 16:7, He says, “It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you: but if I depart, I will send him unto you” —a living mighty agent, God the Spirit, who comes down and dwells with you, and is in you, and He remains. Christ must go away, but He shall abide with us, and be in us.

Of the Holy Ghost the Lord says, “whom the Father will send in my name,” and again, “whom I will send from the Father”; that is, Christ obtains it for us, and the Comforter comes from the Father to put us, through that name, in relationship with the Father; then secondly, Christ sends Him from His Father, and the Holy Ghost comes to tell us all the glory into which Christ has entered as Man. But, that we may be distinct and clear upon the subject, we will look at John 14:16. “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever”; and then, verse 17, “for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you”; and then, in verse 20, “At that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” The Holy Ghost in thus coming down gives to the believer the consciousness of being in Christ, and His being in them, “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” The disciples ought to have known that He was in the Father, and the Father in Him, as He said, Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? (v. 10). But they could not know while He was on the earth of the fulfilment of these words, “ye in me, and I in you.” As He says, “At that day ye shall know,” etc.; then in verse 26, “The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name.” Here we have the Father sending in the Lord’s name; and in chapter 15:26, “When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father”; and then in chapter 16:13, “when he, the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak, and he shall shew you things to come.”

Here, then, in John 16 we get the fulfilment of this great promise, that the Holy Ghost was to come down to reveal Christ, and to abide for ever; for here the Holy Ghost is looked at as upon the earth, telling of the things He has heard, taking of the things of Christ, and shewing them unto us; thus carrying on the whole work in our hearts, and then that He is to abide with us for ever: for the efficacy of Christ’s work must fail, God must fail, before the Holy Ghost could be taken away, as it is in virtue of our being sprinkled with the blood of Christ, that the Holy Ghost is given. The Holy Ghost is in us, in virtue of the work of Christ, being the great testimony of God’s estimate of the value of the blood of Christ, and of the glorification of the Man Jesus. We may grieve Him, and hinder His operations in us (alas! we do grieve Him), nevertheless, that cannot drive Him from us, as His presence in the individual is not in consequence of the condition of the individual, but in virtue of the blood of Christ, and that must be given up before the Holy Ghost could be removed; for the anointing oil, when the leper was cleansed, was put upon the blood; as Peter also teaches when he says, 1 Peter 1:12, “By them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.” The Holy Ghost came down upon the person of the Lord when He was upon earth at His baptism, as a seal of His personal perfection, “him hath God the Father sealed”; but when He ascended up on high He received it for others (Acts 2:33), and therefore promised (Acts 1:5), “Ye shall be baptised with the Holy Ghost not many days hence”; which actually came to pass at Pentecost. See Acts 2. So also in John 7:39, “This spake he of the Spirit,” which, in virtue of redemption, they were to receive, “for the Spirit was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified.”

In Acts 19:2, Paul asks, “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?” They answer, “We have not yet heard whether the Holy Ghost is come.” They were John’s disciples, and therefore it was not that they questioned the existence of the Holy Ghost, for indeed, every thoughtful Jew acknowledged the Holy Ghost as spoken of by the prophets; but they had not heard whether the Holy Ghost had come in power, as spoken of in John 7; and according to the words of John the Baptist: “He shall baptise with the Holy Ghost,” Matt. 3:11. So again in Galatians, “Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father”; and in Ephesians, “After that ye believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.” In these two passages we have the same truth taught, having got redemption through His blood, they have the Holy Ghost as the seal and the earnest of the inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession.

The Holy Ghost was obtained by the work of Christ, and given to those who believe in consequence of faith, the seal of God set on those who believe in that work. Being sprinkled by that blood we can be sealed; the blood being that on which the anointing of oil comes,³ as the seal of that work, which God had wrought in Christ, and the earnest of the glory to come; while the soul rests on that work of which the Holy Ghost is the seal. The Holy Ghost is the strength of fellowship in two ways, giving us first the knowledge of present favour, as adopted children; and secondly, of our union with Christ_: our forming part of the body or bride of Christ. Thus we have seen redemption accomplished; the present work of the Holy Ghost in us; and glory in prospect. And if you are to bear fruit, you must be both quickened, and have the Holy Ghost; for others must see the fruit by my life, because they cannot see the faith.

In 2 Corinthians 1:20, 21, “All the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us.” And mark the power and blessing of these two little words, “by us.” Now, could this be said of us unless we had the Holy Ghost giving us the blessed knowledge and consciousness of our place? “Now he which establisheth us with you, in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts,” v. 22. He hath planted us in Christ, and hath anointed us, and hath sealed us for the day of redemption, and given the earnest of it in our hearts.

In verses 15 and 16 of Romans 8, he says, “Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” In these two verses the blessed Comforter, who dwells in us, associates Himself with us, to witness with our spirit that we are the children of God; working in our hearts, and creating in us the confidence and proper affections of a child to the Father. As the Holy Ghost in me is the power by which I cry, Abba, Father; so He also reveals the object that attracts my best affections.

The Holy Ghost always reasons downwards, from God to man, for He reveals what God is, and therefore He says, “If children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ.” If God has made you His children, will He leave you without an inheritance? In truth He will not; but the moment you bring God in, then you get the consequences down here. For if you get all this glory, you must have the cross here, for we do not have a half Christ; “If so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together”: and mark what stress he lays on the word with, “joint-heirs with Christ,” “suffer with Christ,” “glorified with him.” It is thought by some to be a great attainment to see the union of Christ and His church, but it was living association with Christ that was presented in the words, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” And Saul was arrested and converted along with the revelation of Jesus Himself, by the knowledge of the fact that those whom he was persecuting were the members of Christ’s body. It could not be said of Paul, “Ye have been with me from the beginning,” for Paul saw the Lord only in glory, and therefore he says, he did not know Christ after the flesh.

Well, then, you are members of Christ’s body, of His flesh, and of His bones; therefore you must have His portion down here, as well as up there. If we have fellowship with Him in the whole spirit and tone of our minds, we must suffer as Christ did in passing through this world, seeing the sin and misery all around us, or it may be sorrow on account of the state of the church. All this must make one go through the world as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; not merely suffering for Him, though that is the highest condition, no doubt, but suffering with Him; it is the necessary consequence of being associated with Christ.

The world’s joy can have no place in our hearts, if walking in fellowship with Christ, for if we go on with the world, Christ will not accompany us there. Jesus groaned down here, and deeply, in spirit, and so do we, as part, too, as regards our bodies, of the groaning creation; but does this set aside the word of our Lord, “that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves? “No, not in the least; for there is still joy by reason of the effect of God’s presence in the soul, as an earnest withal of the inheritance of glory, which makes me say, “I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that shall be revealed to us.” But, then, the effect of the blessedness of God’s presence gives a deep and sorrowful sense of God’s absence from those around, and of the passions and miseries which sin has brought in; every misery becomes a groan in my heart, every sorrow presses on my spirit, because it is a sign how sin has come in, and has ruined all man’s natural blessings, and made him more than a stranger to all spiritual ones.

The more my heart understands what God’s presence is, the more deeply my soul will understand the place the creature has got into. What a wonderful position this puts us into, one of association with God! When Christ passed through the world, did He screen Himself from sorrows? No, not even from death: “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels”; But did He do it? No; He went through the midst of it—suffered it all. He ate and drank with publicans and sinners; He went to the grave of Lazarus, and groaned, because He saw and felt the power of death on all around. But He passed through it all in the power of love. As to the condition of the world, we are glad in one sense, that as it is, it is not God’s, though we know it will be by-and-by, when taken out of the hands of the usurper. It would be too sorrowful to think it was God’s now.

Verse 23. “Even we ourselves groan within ourselves.” As far as the body is concerned, I am connected with the creation, and therefore subject to vanity, sickness, and death: but still, I have the Holy Ghost in me, and He groans in me, so that my groaning is not selfishness, but groaning in a divine way, according to God, which is the second effect of the power of the Holy Ghost in me. He bears witness to what we are, first, as children and heirs; and then, by the power of the Holy Ghost, I have a sense of the vanity of this perishing world and everything in it. Christ suffered for righteousness as well as for sin. In the first kind, we are called to have fellowship with Him. It is that which He endured through the whole of His course down here. The latter suffering, for sin, we could have no part in; this He endured alone upon the cross, as that beautiful passage in Peter suggests, “For it is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well doing than for evil doing. For Christ hath also once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.”

But our part in sorrow here flows thus also from the sense of the subjection of all around us to vanity and the bondage of corruption. It is a very sorrowful thought. We do not hear that Jesus ever smiled. Weep He did, He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. But it was because He was heavenly, and love, yet also because He was a man. And we have to remember that in us this feeling flows, when a right one, from the same causes. We are partakers of the divine nature by exceeding great and precious promises; the Spirit is life as the spring to the rill, and the Spirit of God dwells in us, making us know we are sons and heirs of God. This we have seen: as heirs, we shall be in glory like Christ, and the creation is waiting for our manifestation, for it was not by its will it was subjected, but through us. But to the groaning creation we are united in our bodies; we draw our sense of the sorrow from more than our being lookers on, and we feel for it from more than selfish grief, we feel for it through the Holy Ghost according to God. Our groans are well the groans of our hearts, but they are the mind of the Spirit, and more, the groans of the Spirit in us, a divine sense of the sorrow around us, yet in the sympathy of a human heart, the mind, too, of the Spirit as acting thus in man. Thus when God searches the heart, He finds my heart with divinely given feelings, and this He loves;’ the mind of the Spirit, which meets His holy requirements, is acceptable to Him, and the intercession of the Spirit itself for the saints. But it does not follow that our intelligence can estimate the evil or know a remedy, yea, till Christ comes, there may not be a remedy possible. But the heart is formed after God’s in respect of the need and sorrow, and this is very precious.

As regards ourselves, it leads to another clear judgment and consciousness as to our position. Our portion we have not, but our blessed apprehension of it by the Spirit, is what gives us the clear consciousness of the existing evil and sorrow, but then it gives us also the consciousness, that, while yet having it all only in hope, we await only the redemption of our body to be in our glorious estate. There is no doubt as to our title, no question as to the salvation of our souls, no uncertainty as to the possession of what we hope for. We do not see it, that is the reason we hope, not because it is doubtful. It rests on God’s word, and Christ’s work, and we have the seal and earnest of the Spirit. Further, the power of evil does not give weariness or impatience: we wait with patience for that we do not see, because it is settled; of that patience we have need. Meanwhile, as we have seen, the Spirit helps our infirmities; and this brings out another glorious and precious truth, and ground of assurance.

We have seen the spiritual man, feeling according to God the burden of corruption on creation, but not knowing what to ask as a remedy: yet if we do not know what to ask for, we do know that for those that love God all things work together for good, even for those who are called according to His purpose. For we have now brought before us not the state of things through sin, but the purpose of God as regards the objects of that purpose, in the midst of that state of things, and in bringing them to glory.

In general the epistle to the Romans deals with man’s responsibility, and God’s blessed remedy in Christ, but here the epistle rises up to the purpose of God formed before the responsibility began; it reaches to the point where that to the Ephesians begins. The saints are called according to this purpose. Compare Titus 1:1, 2; and 2 Tim. 1:9. God foreknew these persons and predestinated them to a state equally in His purpose, for the glory of Christ, namely, to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Wonderful place! but the place of God’s counsels for them, who works all things after the counsels of His own will, not relative to anything that we are, save as connected with Christ’s becoming a man; but the fruit of God’s will, so that we measure it by that. But how blessed for us, not only as intrinsic glory, but as likeness to, and association with, Christ, the Son of God! He is the firstborn among many brethren. Such is the counsel of God— to associate us with Christ, in the place of sons, and conform us to the image of Him, the firstborn. Our responsibility was as children of the first Adam; the purpose of God concerning us in connection with the last Adam. This is a glorious and blessed truth. “As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly; and as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” Being in this place, we are, then, anew responsible to shew forth the life of Christ, and glorify Him; but this is founded on the possession of life. This purpose God pursues and accomplishes. Whom He has predestinated to this, He calls; whom He calls, He justifies: whom He justifies, He glorifies. He carries it on to the end. We have nothing here of sanctifying. The true Christian life, the life of the Spirit, has been fully expounded in the early part of the chapter. Here it is God for us, not His living work in us, nor the presence of the Holy Ghost; these are the two subjects treated in the previous part of the chapter. We are now at the third part—God for us, His securing those thus quickened according to His purpose, from purpose before the world on to glory, the actual introduction to blessing being by God’s own calling: all is the blessed fruit of God’s being for us. This is the triumphant question of the apostle, “If God be for us, who can be against us? “The great and blessed truth, the result of all his inquiries and discussions, which have led him up from the responsibility of man through the activity of God in grace, bringing him out of the condition man was responsible in (while effectually meeting that responsibility by the precious work of Christ, maintaining it, but clearing us of our guilt) up to the purpose of God as to us, and thus closing with the blessed testimony that God is for us. But this last is also fully and beautifully developed. First, we have the great principle, and the absolute security it affords: “If God be for us, who can be against us?” His being for us precludes the thought of any being against us to any real effect.

But further—God being for us is considered, in giving, in justifying, and in all that, as difficulty or danger, might seem to hem our way, or separate us from His love. “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” See how again, as remarked elsewhere, the Spirit reasons from what God is and has done, to consequent blessing to us, not from us to God. That is true in judgment; but in grace it is from God in all its fruits to us. He has not spared His Son, to give everything else, is, after that, a simple thing.

Next, as to accusation. We are God’s elect: who shall lay anything to our charge? God will not be in fault in choosing us for blessing. It is He Himself that justifies (not here, note, justified in His sight, or before Him); but He justifies, who shall condemn? Little matter if anybody does. But then, as to the assurance of love in spite of the difficulties and dangers in the way, all is met, and the very witness of love is in it. It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from His love? He has considered our whole case, gone Himself into what was needed for it, but has triumphed, and is now risen, and sits as Man at the right hand of God, the sure guarantee of the full and blessed result, and is now occupied with carrying on our cause on high. He has gone down into the depths for us, He is at God’s right hand securing all for us; He enters now into all our case here in intercession.

What is to separate us from His love? Difficulties there may and will be, but we shall be more than conquerors through Him that loved us; they are but the occasion of a sure display of His faithfulness and love who has entered into all, and now lives for us. Death, life, angels, principalities, powers, things present, things to come, height, or depth, all may be passed in review; creatures high and low, death, or fife, which may seem ever so dangerous; but all creatures, or whatever may befall us, cannot separate from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord; creatures are less in power, are nothing compared with Him; death is the proof of His love, and of our being with Him, in life, living by Him, because He lives.

Divine love is above all, or proved in all, and in one who has shewn it in perfect interest in us. Nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. The triumphant security of God being for us, a God who gives His own Son, who justifies; and who shall condemn? A love almighty as God’s, but manifested in human sorrows, in Jesus, yet in Jesus the Overcomer, to whom all is subjected: such is the source and security of blessing which keeps and enriches our hope. God is for us. This closes the doctrinal part of the epistle; a supplementary instruction was needed and is given, before the apostle turns to practical exhortation.

Chapters 9-11.

What about the promises made to the Jews, that is, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? That the Jews had broken the law, and were guilty, was plain enough—guilty beyond the Gentiles: their mouth was stopped. But God’s mouth had spoken: what about His promises? “No difference” could not be said there; faithfulness could not be wanting on His part. This subject is now treated: how to reconcile the “no difference “doctrine, and special promises on God’s part to the Jews. Chapter 9, beginning with the deepest expression of heart interest in God’s people, of whom he was himself one, treats the question of Israel’s hereditary claim, and the admission of the Gentiles to blessing. Chapter 10 tells how Israel lost the blessing, and the plain testimonies of the prophets as to it. Chapter 11 presents the question: is their present rejection final? and shews it is not, and that they will be re-established as a nation.

In the beginning of chapter -9 the apostle recalls carefully all the privileges of the beloved people. Far from him was the wish to diminish their importance, or deny God’s delight in them; so far from indifference, in his ardent heart he had loved them as much as Moses, who would have been blotted out of God’s book rather than not see them forgiven. All divinely conferred privileges were really theirs: and it was not that the word of God had taken none effect; but all were not Israel who were of Israel; nor, because they were the natural seed of Abraham, were they all children, that is, according to promise. And here he has just glided, in admitting their privileges, into the heart of his whole argument. The natural seed were not heirs, because they were the natural seed. If that were so, the question was really solved. And this he goes on to prove. Ishmael was the natural seed, but sovereign grace maintained its prerogative. In Isaac shall thy seed be called; but the Jewish objector might say, Yes, but Hagar was a slave, and Ishmael slave-born. Well, but take Esau and Jacob of one mother, that is an unexceptionable case. Yet Jacob was chosen, not Esau, and it was of pure grace, before they had done good or evil. The circumstances were natural, but the principle, pure sovereign grace, is to set aside the national pretensions of the Jews. They must let in Ishmaelites and Edomites, or allow God to be sovereign.

Then they would, as now, accuse God of unrighteousness. His answer is, sovereign mercy alone has spared you. If God had not retreated into His own sovereignty, and said, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, all Israel, save Moses or Joshua, would have been cut off at Sinai. They existed as a people only by virtue of this sovereignty. That sovereignty God would now use in favour of Gentiles, whom He called along with Jews. As to the general question, it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy. He hardened, when He saw fit to display judgment, those who despised Him. And if one demanded, why He yet then found fault? The answer is, You judge God! Who are you, a man, to reply to Him, and find fault with God?

There is, then, the unqualified assertion of God’s power to make vessels of dishonour, if He pleased, but careful avoidance of the thought that He had made any. What if He had borne with vessels fitted to destruction, all ready for it; but made known the riches of His glory to vessels He had afore prepared for mercy? There is the maintenance of God’s absolute prerogative. No reasoning allowed to weaken, or even call in question, the patience of God, with vessels fitted for destruction; and purposes of glory, for which God prepares the vessels of mercy. Thus the claim of Israel to hereditary privileges— to the exclusion of the Gentiles, was barred. It involved the admission of those He would not hear of, races forbidden to enter to the tenth generation; and shewing also, that they were excluded themselves, if they did not admit the absolute sovereignty of God. The apostle applies this sovereignty to the call of the Gentiles along with the remnant of Israel, confirming his doctrine.

From verse 27 he confirms this reasoning by positive quotations from the prophets. Esaias declared that a remnant should be saved, that, if a very small one had not been left, Israel would have been as Sodom and Gomorrah; and shews the real cause of this. They had sought indeed righteousness, but it was by their own works, and rejected Christ, stumbling at the stumbling-stone, as it was written: while the Gentiles, who sought it not, had come in under mercy, for whosoever believed in Him would not be ashamed. Into this subject, in respect of Israel, and God’s ways with them, and His testimony to those ways, he enters more fully in chapter 10.

But a few remarks remain to be made on chapter 9, besides the general view I have taken of it. There is progress in the assertion of God’s prerogative, though the object of the assertion of it be His title to have mercy on the Gentiles. In Ishmael and Isaac it is the simple denial of hereditary right. All are not Israel who are of Israel; but it goes no farther than promise. It is not the children after the flesh, but according to promise—Isaac, not Ishmael. But in Esau and Jacob the principle of simple sovereignty comes in. Both were children of Isaac, and alike so, but the elder was to serve the younger. Jacob was chosen according to the purpose of God. And thereupon the principle of sovereignty is asserted in verse 15, still only in view of mercy. It is not of him that wills, nor him that runs, but of God that shews mercy. And this applies to hardening (not to making evil), so that He has mercy on whom He will, and hardens, to display His righteous judgment, whom He will. And the reply to objections is, not first, explanation, but putting man in his place, and God in His.

It is not man’s place to judge God: none can say to Him, What doest Thou? He is the potter, with power over the clay to make what He pleases. But once man is silenced, then there is explanation. What if He bears, with great long-suffering, with vessels fitted for destruction, as He did with Pharaoh; as He did with the Amorites and Canaanites; and prepared, as He had to do, if He would have any, vessels of mercy for glory? And so He called from among lost Gentiles, for that is the key to the exercise of His sovereignty, and Jews were really the same, to be His children in grace. Such is the unfolding of this principle of sovereign grace, without which not one soul would be saved, for none understand, none seek after God, not one of himself will come that he might have life. Judgment is according to works; salvation and glory are the fruit of grace.

But to return to God’s ways with Israel: chapter 10. The apostle now declares, not merely the privileges of Israel, but his earnest desire that they might be saved; they have zeal towards God, but not the knowledge of His ways. Their fall lay in this: they sought to establish their own righteousness by works, and did not submit to the righteousness of God. How strange, yet how fitting a word! If we are to go up, as responsible, to judgment, it must be by our works. We are judged according to them. But we are sinners, and there is no possibility of our standing on this ground; yet this our pride will not admit.; it will hope to bring it about, if it does not possess it. Grace provides righteousness for us. We have it not for God, He has it for us, and gratuitously in Christ; and we have to own that we cannot in any way make good our own case with God, and must submit to His righteousness. This, neither the Jew, nor man in any age, by his own spirit will do. He will blame it as a way of sin, as if he really cared for holiness; but finds he must come down, and confession come in.

Now the apostle shews that the ruin of Israel was supposed in their own law. The law gave the intelligible principle— “do and live”; but after having done that, and shewn ruin and judgment on failure, it speaks of the return of the heart to God, when under the effects of the judgment, and when the plainly revealed ground of legal righteousness was over (Deut. 30). And the apostle then introduces Christ, as the true object, when once this was the case; the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. Just as all hope of righteousness by doing was over in the case put in Deuteronomy, so in every heart, when honestly given up, as it must be by everyone that knows himself, instead of judgment, we have in grace, on the part of God, Christ for righteousness, and the law done with, an end to it; while its judgment was sanctioned, righteousness introduced by grace, on another ground, and as to this, an end of the law. And in fact, Christ is the end of the law, and another ground of relationship with God. So it is believing on, and confessing Him, the Lord Jesus, and we are saved. But then this lets in everyone that does so, and the national relationship drops. “Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.” And now, as before, we had “no difference,” in that all have sinned, now we have “no difference,” in that the same Lord is rich unto all that call upon Him. Sin had levelled all alike before God. Grace raises up all alike through faith. And so it is written, “Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved,” and so, a Gentile, if he call.

And this brings in the testimony and belief through the word, with the question of the bearing of this on Jew and Gentile. They must believe, to call; and hear, to believe. It is a report, a testimony, to the Jew as to the Gentile; and so their scriptures spoke of Him who brought good tidings, and hailed them. All had not believed; and this proved it was a report even to the Jew, and it was gone out into all the world. This is the general thought. Then, specifically applying it to Israel, Moses had plainly declared they would be provoked to anger by them that were no people, and God would be found of the Gentile who sought Him not. And as to Israel, there was no want of grace, but grace they had rejected. God had stretched out His hands all the day to a disobedient and gainsaying people.

We now come in chapter 11 to the assurance, that, in spite of all this, God has not cast away His people. All Israel, that is, Israel as a people, will be saved. In shewing this, the apostle gives most solemn instruction, and urgent warning to the Gentiles. The apostle’s own heart answers the question, and he is himself a proof that God had not cast away Israel; just as in Elias’s time, when he interceded against Israel, as wholly gone, God had an election out of it: so now the apostle was the proof of it, and there were others too, besides him. Only it was by grace, not works—the theme he ever insists on. The election had obtained what Israel was seeking for; the rest were blinded, as the prophets had said they would be. Was then this stumbling at the stumbling-stone, which brought in judicial blindness on the people, in order that they should fall, and be finally rejected? In nowise. Moses had told of old in Deuteronomy 32, that it would so happen, for the letting in of the Gentiles, to provoke Israel to jealousy. But if to provoke to jealousy, it was not to reject. This was second proof of his thesis—that God’s people Israel were not cast off. And if being brought low was for the blessing of the world, what would the future restoration and fulness be, but as life from the dead for this poor dark sin-stricken world?

The apostle magnifies his office of apostle to the Gentiles, by shewing its bearing thus on the Jews to put the Gentiles in their place, and guard them against the pride of supposed superiority in the flesh. And here comes in the solemn warning addressed to them. The stock of promise, beginning with Abraham, was naturally carried out in this world in the Jews; the root bore the branches, the Gentiles had no ground for pride. Abraham was the root of promise, and Israel the natural branches. Some had been broken off; true, because of unbelief, and the Gentiles had been graffed into a root to which they did not naturally belong; and they were graffed in on the principle of faith, contrary to nature, as the old branches had been broken off for unbelief. The Gentiles stood thus only on the ground of faith; if, therefore, as a body they departed from it—did not continue in God’s goodness, which, contrary to nature (for the question is not of the body of Christ, but their outward connection with the place of promise in this world) had graffed them into the olive tree of promise, to partake of its root and fatness, they would be in turn broken off.

We have here nothing to do with the church, or union with Christ; but with the tree of promise in this world, beginning with Abraham, to whom and to whose seed the promises were made. Goodness, on the principle of faith, had given Gentiles a part in these, which the Jewish branches had lost, but the stock was not Gentile, but Abrahamic and Jewish, and what the Gentiles had by faith, they would lose by the want of it. And such were God’s counsels. God was bringing in by this means a number of Gentiles, and for yet better things, and when by this outward system of Gentile association with the promises their number was complete, the time of the blindness which had come upon Israel as a nation, for that purpose, would be over, and Israel as a whole, as a nation, would be saved. God would give them, not then, as such, the heavenly portion of the church, which is not here in question, but graff them back into the place of promise, the enjoyment of what the root Abraham bore in blessing. And that would be by the coming of Christ, who would turn away ungodliness from Jacob. What is taught here, then, is a tree on the earth with Abraham for its root, who, when God had formed the nations, and all had fallen into idolatry, had been called out from among them, according to election, to be father (or root) of a race blessed with the promises of God.

Israel was the natural heir according to the flesh; but when He, in whom the accomplishment of these promises is, came, they rejected Him through unbelief, and were broken off, the election continuing in the place of promise (not added to the church here); Gentiles were graffed in contrary to nature, to enjoy the blessing of Abraham—those very nations out of which Abram had been called. This was by faith, not by descent of nature. If they left this, they would be cut off, cease to have, as so called, the promises on earth—at any rate, they were not to boast against the branches, for the root bore them, not they the root, and the cut-off branches could and would be graffed in again, that is, Israel restored in its original place in the enjoyment of promise. As regards the gospel, they are enemies as a people, in order to the bringing in of the Gentiles; but as touching the election of the people, they are beloved for the fathers’ sake. We see evidently here, it is the election of the people, it is in contrast with blessing by the gospel, and the ground of their being beloved is the fathers, as we find constantly in the Old Testament, as Exodus 32:13; Leviticus 26:42; and other passages. For of His gifts and calling God does not repent.

The Spirit of God shews out, then, the wonderful moral wisdom of God in these counsels. The Gentiles had of old been unbelieving, so now it was pure mercy to them; the Jews had rejected this mercy to the Gentiles, and were themselves in unbelief, so that it had become pure mercy now to them also. Thus God had concluded all in unbelief, that all might be mere objects of mercy. The Jews had promises, and if they had received Christ, faithfulness would have fulfilled them in Him. As is said in this epistle, “Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.” But the Jews rejected Christ, and so came under mercy like the Gentiles. This it is that makes the apostle cry out as to God’s deep wisdom, that this rejection of the Jews brought mercy to the Gentiles; and brought, seeing they rejected Christ in unbelief, the Jews on the footing of mere mercy also, though God only shewed Himself more abundantly true to His promise, which He accomplishes in spite of all. We have to read verse 31, “Even so have these also not believed your mercy, that they also might obtain mercy.”

This closes, and closes by a full exposition of God’s counsels as to His ways on earth, the doctrine of the epistle, and as the previous part had shewn how Jew or Gentile came alike upon a new footing. Justified by God, this shews His plans and counsels, according to which room was left, not only to admit Gentiles individually, but for the chain of promises to take a Gentile form, and withal a distinct system to be set up, the purposes of which being accomplished, the course of God’s dealings would flow back into the ancient channel of Jewish promise, and inheritance of blessing, but by grace. The church is not spoken of in teachings, but its existence assumed in practical exhortation in chapter 12. The rest of the epistle, save a verse or two of chapter 15, to which I have referred, is preceptual and hortatory, founded on the mercies revealed; mercy on which we entirely depend.

¹ Verse 1 of chapter 6 treats of continuing in sin, because of grace; since one Man’s obedience saves me, I cannot, for I have my part in death. That is not living in it. Verse 15 supposes me free in the power of a new life. Am I to sin in this freedom, or give myself up to God? Which is the meaning and character of this new life I have through Christ?

² Hence, in a certain sense, chapter 5 goes beyond chapter 8, as revealing what God is in Himself to a sinner, not what we are made before Him.

³ This refers to the cleansing of the Leper. In the consecration of priests: the oil and blood were sprinkled together on Aaron, his sons, and their garments, with him, after the blood was put on the ear, the hand, and the foot.