True, the experience of history, so far, has been that of a world-wide heritage of death and sin. But the act of weakness m liich bequeathed that heritage to man has now been superseded by an act of Divine power fraught with the promise of Righteousness and Life to all who receive the abundance of its grace (.i"'").
In this great twofold division of human history, how subordinate a part was played by Law ! It forms the last episode of tlie heritage of death, aggravating the disease in order to intensify man's want of the Remedy (5-").
St. Paul has done half his work, and what he has done is ' more than half of the whole.' He has shown that the wall of sin no longer shuts out the soul from (!od, that access to God is ours, that the Christian Life is made possible.
But it remains for liiin to place the Christian Life itself before our eyes, and this he does in the second great section. And, first of all, he takes it in the concrete (ch. 6). The twofold question, 'Shall we sin?' (vv.'"'") at first sight answers itself— no one would say that the Christian is to sin. But the weight of the question re.ally turns on the reason why ? These cliapters (6-8) give us the fundamental principles of Christian ethics. And, first of all, he shows us that ' I he grace wherein we stand,' which he has hitlierto viewed negatively as Justification, i.e. forgiven e.ss of sin, is on its positive side union with Christ. If we were united to Him by Baptism, the rite resembling His Death, we shall further be united with Him by something corresponding to His Resurrection, viz. a new vital energy — Kaivl>Ti)Ti i'uijt ; only, we must realize this — allow the new life of Christ to wield our limbs. For we are no longer under an external compulsion, but instinctwith an indwelling I'orce— 'not under law, but under grace.'
Our obedience to the will of God will be not less complete for this rea.son, — hut far vmrc. ' If,' he continues, 'you seem to take what I have said as a paradox, I will make my mcanin" plain by an unworthy metaphor. You hnve to choose between slavery and slavery — nay, >oii have made your choice — you have renounced slavery to sin. WelL then, you are slaves of righteousness, slaves oi
300 ROMANS, EPISTLE TO THE
KOMANS, EPISTLE TO THE
God: you cannot, if you look back on the past, repent your choice. You are dead in Christ, and Avhen a person dies, lie passes out of the control of law. You then, in dying with Christ, died to the law, and are alive to Christ alone ' (G''^-;-').
St. Paul passes from the concrete picture of the Christian life to the consideration of the forces which are at work in it (T'-S). He employs the method of difference, comparing the pre-Christian life at its very best, i.e. as lived under Divine law, ^vith the Christian life ; the old life under the letter with the new life in the Spirit. This contrast is tersely stated in 7=-«, then life under law is characterized in 7'"^, and life in the Spirit in ch. 8. In S'-''- the question asked in 6', so far as it needs an explicit answer, is formally answered.
The connexion of 9-11 with the general argument of the Epistle may be best seen if we consider how thev are anticipated in 3>-8. That this is so can bo readily proved. The Rejection of Israel, then, was a fact which apparently collided mth the main thou-ht of the first section— the Righteousness of God The Righteousness of God was apparently, to St Paul, above all God's consistency with, or truth to. His revealed character and j>urpose. And the absolute levelling of Jew and Gentile— especially the levelling doion of the Jew to the position of the Gentile as the object of God 9 wTath —had the look of a revocation of express promise, the going back upon God's own covenant. \V as, then, God a ' covenant- breaker ' l—iJ-v yivoiTo. Yet to St. Paul the difficulty was a very real one, and had to be explained. His fundamental explana- tion is found in 9'*--* and Ip-^"— viz. that the proper party to the Divine covenant, the true heir to the Promises, is not Israel after the flesh, but the believing few— or, rather, all who by their faith i.rove themselves true sons and heirs of Abrahsim see ch. 4), and tluit this has been made plain by (Jod all along. But there is the equally iniportant thought that the calling in of all nations- without which the Divine promises from Abraham down- wards would not be satisfied, nor the Truth of God really maintained — would have been impossible but for the rejection of the Jews. ' By their fall, salvation liad come to the Gentiles,' their un- ri-htcousness had established the Righteousness of God (3°) This is the great paradox of the third section. Still, even with St. Paul, rb <rv,-r€>'{t to. Sfixiv, V e' 6^una, blood is thicker than water, and he will not .surrender tlie hope of the ultimate conversion of the apostate people, con.secrated as they are by the root whence they had sprung