ROMANS vi. ii 337
have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts." A true and deep faith in Christ, a recognition by mind and heart of the work of Christ, is such an intuition of law, such a sense of God, such a revelation of the evil of sin, such a burning of the heart against self and the flesh, and the world and the devil, that the Apostle was justified in saying, that through faith in Christ our Lord, Roman Christians might reckon themselves dead unto sin.1
^ When Jesus Christ died, every member of His body died too. That follows logically. His hands, His feet, His head, were all dead. Hence, if you are a member of Jesus Christ spiritually, when Jesus Christ died you died too. That is what St. Paul is arguing. It is because of your union with Him, as a living newborn soul, that you look back upon His death and say, " I have died." A friend of mine, who is a missionary, had once witnessed a public flogging, and he turned to his wife and said : " That man committed a theft with his hands. How was it then that his back was flogged ? " She saw what he was aiming at, and said: "I think, John, it is the union that does it." Precisely. How is it that you suffer with Jesus Christ, the Head ? It is the union that does it. And in Jesus Christ's death, I who have thought that I was alive, if I will begin where St. Paul begins, will say, " I died too." That is the first great fundamental point. Our old man was crucified when Christ was crucified.2
2. The life to God is in Christ Jesus. This is more obvious, for — (1) Christ is the revelation of the Father, the organ and chief minister of God ; the highest manifestation of the righteousness, of the mercy, of the wisdom and truth of God. By faith in Him we have the highest opportunities for the recognition of the character and nature of God. Christ is not a rival to the God of nature and providence ; if He were so, if the Christian conscious- ness had made of Him a second God, if the Catholic Church had suffered the Gnostic schism in the Divine manifestation and attributes to have stolen into its creed, if the Arian delusion had not been driven off from the Church by deeper views of both God and man, the language of the text would have been very perplexing. As it is, Christ is no rival to God. The Divine element in the Christ is the eternal Son of God; the whole of the Divine nature manifests itself to us under the aspect of the
1 H. R. Reynolds. a H. C. Lees.
ACTS & ROM. — 2 2
338 A GOOD RECKONING
eternal Son. God is manifest therefore in the flesh. The Word that is God has been incarnate, and "we have beheld his glory, the glory of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." It is by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ that we are alive to God, because it is in Him that we can " see the Father," and because " no man knoweth the Son but the Father ; and no man knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him."
(2) Faith in Christ is, further, a resurrection with Christ from the death to sin. The illustrations which Paul draws from the resurrection of Christ to throw light on our divine life are very numerous. The new life of the soul is a resurrection-life, charged with all the associations and aspirations which would be possessed by one who had passed, through dying, from death to life.
(3) The life to God flows out of the life of God in the soul. It cannot be that the life of the soul will be characterized by deep perceptions of God, that the delighting in God, resting in God, hoping in God, will be the characteristics of the human spirit, unless God Himself create within us the new life by His Holy Spirit. This Holy Spirit is the dispensation of the exalted Christ. The new germ of life in our humanity is planted there by the risen Jesus. The new vision of God is the work of Him who is the life of our life, the strength of our heart, and our portion for ever.
IV
Reckoning.
When the Apostle bids us reckon ourselves to be dead to sin and alive to God, of course he is telling us to reckon ourselves to be what we really are — not something different from what we are. It is not that we are to suppose or imagine ourselves to be dead to sin in some figurative or fictitious sense, but that being so, we are to recognize the truth, and make it a conviction. If we are not dead to sin and alive to God, there would be absolutely no meaning at all in this precept and no possible effect from it.
1J You could not say to a blind man, " Reckon yourself to be one possessed of sight " ; or to a paralysed man, " Eeckon yourself to have the use of your limbs " ; or to an ignorant man, " Reckon