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Henceforth Sin can lay no claim against Him. Neither can it lay any claim against the believer ; for the believer also has died with Christ. Henceforth when Sin comes to prosecute its claim, it is cast in its suit and its former victim is acquitted. The one culminating and decisive act by which this state of things was brought about is the Death of Christ, to which all the subsequent immunity of Christians is to be referred.
^f Sin in the flesh was tolerated and condoned before Jesus came down to live His sinless life amongst men. It was accepted everywhere as a necessity inherent in the visible organic frame- work of things. It is interesting to think that the old tradition which makes a Persian king one of the Magi lends itself to an instructive interpretation, because the religion of the ancient Persians held that matter was inherently evil and could never by any possibility become good. The Babe before whom he bowed was to prove in His personal history and example that it was not so.
^ Men often go on sinning, avowing that sin is no sin, for want of hope. They accept it as part of the inevitable order when no remedy appears. It is despondency which marks out much of our social wreckage as irretrievably derelict. Many unhappy beings around us have given up the fight and see no encouragement to attempt better things. They justify themselves in wrong-doing and invert all ethical classifications, because it seems no longer possible, at least for such as they are, to reap the rewards of virtue. The new voice of hope which speaks in the heart, the voice of the Incarnate and sin-atoning Saviour, is a sentence of death upon the evil which has so long been rampant in the flesh. God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh wrote a sentence of final condemnation upon sin in the flesh. Through our union with the Eedeeming Head, sin in us is sentenced to its final overthrow.
ii. That the Requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us.
That unreserved consent of Christ to the full demands of the law which gave His death its atoning value and efficacy was not an act of merely negative value — valuable, that is to say, in the way of annulling and abolishing the evil which sin had wrought. It was at the same time an act of the highest positive worth, the one transcendent act in which the entire moral force of the new spiritual humanity concentrates and embodies itself, the absolute perfection of righteousness. And this righteousness
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of God is revealed to faith ; by faith we appropriate it and make it in very truth our own.
1. The one righteous demand of the law, which includes all its other demands, is holy obedience inspired by the love of God (Luke x. 27). That this "righteous demand of the law might be fulfilled in us," was the great final cause of God's sending His Son into the world.
2. Christ came not to insist upon a lower code of morals. It is His will not that we should be less holy, but that we should be holy as God is holy, and perfect as He is perfect. At the out- set of His public ministry, He announced that not one jot or tittle of the law should pass away, but that its commandments should be obeyed far more perfectly than ever before, by conformity to its spirit rather than by dull and superficial obedience to its external demands. Only in this way would the righteousness of the law be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit.
Tj Love makes obedience natural and inevitable. So Jesus taught. "If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments." " He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me." " If a man love me, he will keep my word." Paul expresses it thus : " Love, therefore, is the fulfilment of the law." It is only to the loveless heart that the law is irksome. Obedience is a pleasure when we love. The man who loves God does not need to have the decalogue read every day. Because love is in his heart, he simply cannot break the commandments. He will obey tbem all, not by mere compliance with the negative restrictions, but by loving fidelity to their spiritual intent. The home where love is has no need for domestic legislation. The father's word is law. The mother's wish is a command.
iii. Who walk not after the Flesh, but after the Spirit.
This clause defines the character of those in whom the righteous requirement of the law is to be fulfilled ; namely, such as " walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit." They " walk not after the flesh" — the flesh with its affections and lusts rebels against the law — a but after the spirit."
1. By the entrance of the Spirit of holiness into a human spirit, the usurper is driven from the central fortress : and though
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he may linger in the outworks and keep up a guerilla warfare, that is all he can do. We never truly apprehend Christ's gift to man until we recognize that He not merely " died for our sins," but lives to impart the principle of holiness in the gift of His Spirit. The dominion of that imparted Spirit is gradual and progressive. The Canaanite may still be in the land, but a growing power, working in and through us, is warring against all in us that still owns allegiance to that alien power, and there can be no end to the victorious struggle until the whole body, soul, and spirit be entirely under the influence of the Spirit that dwells in us, and nothing shall hurt or destroy in what shall then be all God's holy mountain.