1 T. G. Selby.
380 LAW OR LOVE
Love kindled at His love makes likeness and transmutes the out- ward law into an inward " spirit of life in Christ Jesus."
Tf It is of great importance that you see the sacrificial character of Christ's condemnation of sin in the flesh — that besides seeing that Christ clearly declared the flesh to be evil, and, in so declaring, did manifest God's righteous condemnation of sin, and completed this testimony in giving Himself to die, you must also see that He did this as a sacrifice for sin. If not done as a sacrifice, the fact itself would merely leave us where we were. It would shed light on the evil of our state, but would not grant us deliverance from evil. But when we see Christ doing this as a sacrifice for sin — when we see Him coming into our nature, and taking it up, and presenting it holy to Cod, and doing this as a sacrifice for sin — then our thoughts are turned to the history of sin, and to the fact that He is not the only being who has this flesh. Our thoughts are turned to the whole human race ; and we are taught concerning them that this deed has reference to them, and that it was not for a mere display of the power of the Son of God, taking an unclean thing and making it clean, that Christ came and took our flesh, but that He came with reference to those who were dwelling in this flesh, and for them shed His blood.1
III.
The Success of Love.
i. He condemned Sin in the Flesh. He condemned sin in the flesh, in which sin exercises its usurped dominion. And how did God condemn sin in the flesh, i.e. in human nature generally ? (1) By exhibiting in the person of His Incarnate Son the same flesh in substance, but free from sin, He proved that sin was in the flesh only as an unnatural and usurping tyrant. Thus the manifestation of Christ in sinless humanity at once condemned sin in principle. But (2) God con- demned sin practically and effectually by destroying its power and casting it out ; and this is the sense especially required by the context. The law could condemn sin only in word, and could not make its condemnation effectual. Christ, coming " for sin," not only made atonement for it by His Death, but, uniting man to Himself " in newness of life," gave actual effect to the condemna- tion of sin by destroying its dominion " in the flesh " through the life-giving sanctifying power of His Spirit.
1 J. M'Leod Campbell.
ROMANS viii. 3, 4 381
1. God's condemnation of sin, understood in this light, comes to us, indeed, in other ways than through the death of Christ. It comes in the constitution of nature, in which, binding sin and misery together in a nexus more firm than iron, and which no power of man can dissolve, He has revealed from heaven, for all the ages of time, His wrath " against all ungodliness and unrighteous- ness of men." It comes through the conscience, that sensitive magnet in man's soul which ever points (very feebly indeed in many) to the pole of God's own righteousness, and which, until utterly darkened and perverted by sin, ever condemns sin. It comes through His revealed law, whose very office it is to con- demn sin, and in every denunciation of sin in His written Word. But at last it came in another and entirely different way — through the suffering and death of the righteous Christ, God's own Divine Son. And it was evidently in this new way of declaring the mind or judgment of God against sin that Christ could do what the law was impotent to accomplish.
2. God condemned sin by allowing it to condemn itself. Just as some atrocious act of wrong, of violence, or of shame condemns crime, in the eyes of men, by showing them what crime can do, so He allowed sin to condemn itself by showing for ever what sin can do. It could reject and cast out the Divine Christ, the Holy One of God, and nail Him to a malefactor's cross. And this itself proclaimed, and proclaimed for ever, sin's need of atonement. But this was not the only way in which our Lord condemned sin by His death. He became " obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the Cross," which marks the extent of His obedience. His act of obedience even unto death, yea, the death of the Cross, must have been, therefore, an act of obedience to God. And why did God require this act of obedience ? The only answer is that of the Apostle : to " show his righteousness " ; to " condemn sin in the flesh " (by Christ's dying a sacrifice for sin in the flesh) ; to condemn it, not by a blind act of suffering and death, but through the mind and will of His own Son expressing themselves through voluntary suffering and death.
3. By the Death of Christ upon the Cross, a death endured in His human nature, He once and for ever broke off all contact with Sin, which could touch Him only through that nature.