1. Having died unto sins. — Every Christian is like Christ. He was born to die for our sins ; and we are born again to die to sin. Our death to sin is like His death for sin ; our new life is like His new life when He rose from the grave. Until we have died to sin, we have not begun really to live. We live truly only when we live together with Him.
^ " Dead to sins." What a change it speaks of ! Offer gold to a corpse. The man may have been a miser all his lifetime, but his eye glistens not now at the sight of the yellow heaps. Place before him the delicacies of the table ; he needs them not. Sound in his ear the sweetest strains that the genius of the musician ever gave birth to ; they do not touch a single responsive chord ; they float by unnoticed, uncared for, unheard.^
^ A fellow-student, who was a Jew by birth, once gave me the story of his life. By reading the New Testament he was convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah promised to
^ G. Calthrop, Pulpit Recollections, 141,
I PETER II. 24 III
» his fathers. He was converted, forsook the synagogue, and was baptized. His parents were shocked, legally disowned and dis- inherited him, held him as a dead man, and went the length of having a form of burial, and a funeral service over what passed as his coffin. By his conversion he became dead to Judaism, and alive unto Christianity. He was dead to Judaism every way ; in law, in love, in life. He was dead in law, for he had lost all his lawful rights as a Jew and the son of a Jew, and Judaism could no longer claim him as its own ; he was dead also in love, for his affections had entirely changed, and their love for him was also clean gone ; he was dead also in life, for Judaism was as a dead thing to him, and he to Judaism. What cared he for their phylacteries, and new moons, and carnal ordinances ? He gloried only in the cross of Christ, by which Judaism was crucified unto him, and he unto Judaism. But he was alive unto Christianity, for he had devoted himself to the work of Christ. On the day of his conversion he died as a Jew, and began to live as a Christian.^
2. St. Peter's phrase is in the plural : " dead to sins " — it is not " sin " ; and this is even better yet, and more gracious and more satisfying to the soul. The difference between "sins" in the plural and " sin " in the singular may be stated thus : " Sin " refers to our sinful nature, the sin in which and into which we were born, while " sins " refers to the consequences or fruits of that nature in the actual transgressions of our lives. How wonderful, therefore, that the atonement of Christ covers not only our sin but our sins, that in Him we are not only dead to sin in our nature but dead to sins in our everyday life.
^ What we mostly fail to understand is the measure and extent to which that sacrifice of Christ has to be made practically potent to enable us to cease from sin in its activities, its deter- minations, its intentions, and in the knowledge of it. We were intended by God to cease from sin. And why ? Because, as the Apostle says, " Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind " ; that is, once for all put on the armour which you have given to you now by God — the mind and purpose and determination — and you shall be enabled, by arming yourself with this determination — which is not merely a will, but a reasonable ground of expectation — to cease from sin, as your Saviour, Christ, hath ceased from sin. That it is not an absolute deliverance 1 affirm; that it is not
* James Wells, Bible Echoes, 147.
112 THE ETHICS OF THE ATONEMENT
an absolute deliverance that I will affirm to the last breath I draw in this life, for I think I should dishonour my Lord if I were to say I had ever seen a man whom I could speak of as being altogether without sin. I remember (and I speak it tenderly but firmly) some who have claimed to be free from sin, and my only utterance in my heart has been, " God help me if I had no better Christianity than yours; if I could not find One to look at with greater admiration, I would hardly care to leave this world." But because we yearn in vain after perfection, it does not follow that we need not, and ought not, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, to be getting nearer to Christ now, and be more and more reflecting His image. Because we cannot attain to the absolutely perfect is the very reason why we should seek to attain the relatively perfect, and have the ambition of being conformed to that Perfect One, that we may live according to His example, and tread in His steps. Is there nothing beyond the judicial in ch. iii. v. 18 — " That he might bring us to God"? Thanks be to God, there is something more than the substitutionary, the representative, the vicarious; there is the drawing up until every faculty of the being is made to approach to God, until we draw nigh to God ; and you cannot draw nigh to God except as being "pure in heart"; and the measure of the vision is exactly as we are pure in heart.^