But more than this:—(1) sin has oceupied the body and become a sort of ‘law in the members’ (Ro 7'4-2), so that human flesh is ordinarily, though not essentially, ‘ flesh of sin’ (Ro 8%, cf. 715 ἐγὼ σάρκινοΞ). The same disvetag mene is extended to the body : qua ‘body of sin’ it must be ‘nullified,’ that we may no longer be ‘ bondmen to sin,’—a deliverance effected by the crucifixion of ‘the old man’ with Christ (Ro 65 7%-% 8185. Col 35). In man’s proper Christian state his spirit, aided by the Spirit of God, rules his body and makes its ‘members instruments of righteousness unto Ged’ (Ro 62°, 1 Co 9*-*7); in his natural unrenewed state the
flesh preponderates. (2) The heredity of sin is ἴῃ.
volved in Ro 5” (comp. Jn 3°); its taint is asso- ciated with fleshly descent, while the children of God are ‘begotten κατὰ πνεῦμα᾽ (Gal 4”). As the term ‘spirit’ rose in the NT vocabulary and came to be appropriated for the Holy Spirit of God, so ‘flesh’ sank to its lowest sieniiftamnce as denoting the antagonistic evil nature in man (Gal 5!* "7, ταῦτα ἀλλήλοις ἀντίκειται). When Paul describes ‘ the first man, Adam’ as ‘ earthy’ (xotxés), as a ‘ living soul’ wearing a ‘ natural body’ (σῶμα ψυχικόν), in contrast with ‘the second man,’ the risen Christ who is the ‘life-giving Spirit’ already clothed with the
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‘spiritual body’ (σῶμα πνευματικόν), these former terms do not signify a fallen condition but a gross and cunerelenet condition—the ‘natural’ (sensu- ous) as it precedes the ‘spiritual,’ not the ‘carnal’ as the negation of it.
(c) Sin and Death dominate man’s existence (Ro 5-21), They set at war his flesh and spirit, and destroy both in turn. ‘Sin reigned in death,’ is St. Paul’s epitome of human history: ‘Sin came to life, and I died. . . . Wretched man that I am, who will rescue me out of this body of death ?’— his crisps A of personal experience out of Christ. Sin (ἡ ἁμαρτία) is thus personified, in contrast with
’s grace or righteousness, as the master prin- ciple of unredeemed humanity. Its seat is the flesh. ‘ Ungodliness’ (ἀσέβεια) and ‘ unrighteous- ness’ (ἀδικία, Ro 118) are its chief forms, as it is related to God Himself or to His law for men: sin 1s irreligion, or immorality, or both at once,— : enmity against God’ and insubordination to His law ( 87). Moral corruptions have, in the apostle’s view, a religious root; heathen vice is the product of idolatry ; ἀδικία is the nemesis of ἀσέβεια (Ro 1'8®, Eph 417-9), and wilful ignorance of God the prime cause of moral disorder. Sin is at the bottom a ‘ disobedience,’ to be rectified only in the way of ‘reconciliation,’ of ‘justification’ rough an adequate ‘obedience’ (Ro 5!*), The act of sin is transgression or trespass (παράβασις, παράπτωμα, e.g. Ro 2%, Gal 6), when it is a conscious beach of law or lapse from rectitude. ‘Ayapria includes whatever is ethically amiss in nature or conduct, tendency or action. Sin is not defect or weakness ; itis Busine and culpable depravation. It has ‘ passed along’ from the progenitor of the race ‘unto all men.’ aaa ta it has robbed ‘all men’ of ‘the glory of God,’—that splendid image in which man was formed; positively, it makes ‘all the world guilty before God,’—a conse-
uence dreadfully r in the universality of
eath (Ro 3! 3 512-21, 1] Co 157%), In ‘the ful- ness of time’ sin has reached its climax. ‘The wisdom of the world’ that ‘ knew not God’ is thus proved by its fruits to be utter folly (1 Co 1'**; comp. Ro 131-33, And ‘the [Mosaic] law’ prohibiting sin, has a: gravated it to the utmost. his was, in truth, its hidden purpose: it ‘came in by the way, in order that the trespass might multiply,’ that ‘sin might become exceeding sinful’ (Ro 5”: 31. 7}%, Gal 3'*-),—that, in short, sin ‘might be shown to be sin,’ the ineffectual restraint stimulating sin’s violence while it deepened the consciousness of guilt, thus ripening the disease for the application of the remedy.
Sin and death gohandinhand. ‘ Death entered’ at the door of Adam’s transgression : ‘Sin came to reign in death.’ Bodily death is the fruit and penalty of sin in man, and evidences its universal sway. Not that Paul supposes the termination of our present bodily existence to be due to sin: ‘flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God’; the ‘earthy man’ must in any case have been changed to ‘the image of the heavenly,’ and ‘the natural’ was bound to give place to the ‘spiritual body’ (1 Co 15“), But death, as known in this ‘body of humiliation’ and ‘of death,’ gets its ‘sting’ from sin. Under this doom ‘the body is’ virtually ‘dead because of sin,’ even when ‘ the spirit is life because of righteousness’ (Ro 8"). Sin brings death upon the entire man: when ‘sin came to life, J died’ (Ro 7°); till the life of the risen Christ was theirs, Gentiles and Jews alike were ‘dead by reason of their trespasses and sins,’ since they lay under God’s ‘anger’ and were ‘alienated from his life’ (Eph 2'* 4'*), This is no
figurative death,—a state of apathy and impotence,