2. We are brought into sympathy with the Law, because we are brought into grateful and loving sympathy with the great Lawgiver. When He could not by His commandments over- come the evil that was in us, He has by the power of His love, revealed in His long-suffering patience and boundless sacrifice, brought us into willing subjection to Himself, the subjection of a grateful love that will withhold nothing from Him, but will gladly give up everything for His sake. It is not the power of authority, but that of a transforming love, that brings into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. The devil rises up within us when it is mere force that speaks to us, but when love speaks in infinite sacrifice we are shamed out of all our indifference, and conquered in all our rebellion. The mind which was also in Christ Jesus takes possession of us, imparting new desires and new motives, so that all resistance is gone, and obedience becomes a joy and duty a privilege. This is true to the extent that we are the recipients of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, though rich, yet for our sakes became poor.
As the waxing moon can take
The tidal waters in her wake
And lead them round and round to break
Obedient to her drawings dim; So may the movements of His mind, The first Great Father of mankind, Affect with answering movements blind,
And draw the souls that breathe by Him.1
1 Jean Ingelow.
The Carnal and the Spiritual.
ACTS & ROM. — 25
Literature.
Bright (W.), The Law of Faith, 234.
Brooks (P.), Christ the Life and Light, 41.
Campbell (A.), Spiritual Understanding, 83.
Gamier (J.), Sin and Redemption, 131.
Hopkins (E. H.), The Law of Liberty in the Spiritual Life, 55.
Hort (F. J. A.), The Way, the Truth, the Life, 97.
Huntington (F. D.), Sermons for the People, 362.
Hutton (W. R.), Low Spirits, 81.
Kennedy (H. A. A.), St. Paul's Conceptions of the Last Things, 154.
Pope (R. Martin), The Poetry of the Upward Way, 79.
Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, viii. 89.
Pulsford (J.), Our Deathless Hope, 62.
Swing (D.), Sermons, 269.
Thomas (H. Arnold), The Way of Life, 100.
Williams (T. Rhondda), God's Open Doors, 116.
Christian Age, xliii. 98 (Baldwin).
Homiletic Review, lvi. 135 (Cruttv.ell).
Treasury (New \Tork), xix. 477 (Hallock).
The Carnal and the Spiritual.
To be carnally minded (R.V. "the mind of the flesh") is death; but to be spiritually minded (R.V. "the mind of the spirit") is life and peace.— Rom. viii. 6.
This is one of St. Paul's keen contrasts. It is expressed in language that is difficult to translate. The most literal trans- lation possible is actually given in the Eevised Version — "The mind of the flesh is death ; but the mind of the spirit is life and peace." (This is the translation also of the American Eevised Version, except that " Spirit " is spelt with a capital.) But such a phrase as " the mind of the flesh," or " the mind of the spirit " is scarcely English. The translation of the Authorized Version (though it is rather a paraphrase than a translation) is perhaps as intelligible as any that can be made — " To be carnally minded is death ; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace."
I.
Carnal Mindedness.
"To be carnally minded is death." The literal words are "the mind of the flesh is death." Let us consider (1) what is meant by " the flesh " ; (2) by " the mind of the flesh " ; and (3) by " death."
i. The Flesh.
Here, as elsewhere in these chapters of Eomans, the flesh is that side of human nature on which it is morally weak, the side on which man's physical organism leads him into sin.
The word " flesh " occurs twenty-eight times in Eomans, and
frequently in St. Paul's other Epistles, especially Galatians : it has
various meanings which must be carefully distinguished, if we
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388 THE CARNAL AND THE SPIRITUAL
wish to have a clear understanding of the Apostle's teaching in many important passages.
1. In its original and proper meaning "flesh" denotes the material of the living body, whether of man or of other animals, as in Lev. xvii. 11. In this sense it occurs in Eom. ii. 28, " cir- cumcision which is outward in the flesh."
2. In the common Hebrew phrase " all flesh " (Gen. vi. 12, 13, 19, vii. 21), all earthly living things are included with man, except where the context limits the meaning to mankind (Job xii. 10 ; Ps. lxv. 2 ; Joel ii. 28).
3. " Flesh " is applied by St. Paul to human kindred, as in Eom. ix. 3, " My brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh " ; xi. 14, " My flesh." This usage, like the preceding, is derived from the Old Testament : see Gen. xxxvii. 27, " He is our brother and our flesh." In Eom. ix. 8, on the other hand, there is an express contrast made between the " children of the flesh," and the " children of the promise," equivalent to the contrast in Gal. iv. 29 between him " that was born after the flesh " and him " that was born after the Spirit." In this usage " flesh " represents man's purely natural, earthly condition, a condition in which he is subject to infirmity, suffering, and death, subject also to the temptations which work through the senses and their appetites, but not originally or essentially sinful. It is in this sense that Christ is said in Eom. i. 3 to have been "made of the seed of David as to the flesh," and in ix. 5 to have sprung " as concerning the flesh " from Israel. In both passages " flesh " denotes what was simply and solely natural in His earthly life.