* It may be noted that under the pressure of this vivid ex- perience St. Paul sometimes goes very far in the sharpnetJS with which ne draws the line between the regenerate and the un- regenerate man ; he hardiy regards the new life as the quiclten- inff of a spark which already burns, however feebly, in all men ; it IS an entirely new thing ab extra. It is true that in Ro 7 he represents the flesh and the spirit as already in conflict before conversion, but at other times the natural man would seem to be abandoned to ' the flesh ' (S-*tf-). From such a point of view it must be either one or the other ; they cease to be two tendencies at work in every one. See Flesh.
t It has sometimes been argued, on the basis of expressions in Ro 6 and 8, as well as m other Epistles, that St. Paul
part of the Kpistle. But tlie stress is not on works as the starting-point ; St. Paul always goes deeper down to the power and motive from which they will inevitably spring.
It is in the liglit of these doctrines that we ma^ best understand St. Paul's attitude to what is superlicially the central problem of the Kpistle, viz. the relation between Jew and Gentile. It is obvious that considerations such as a man's physical descent and his obedience to external requirement.s such as circumcision and a ceremonial Law, or indeed any law, considered as such, become irrele- vant. Kxperience was in fact proving dailj' that the new life was open to the Gentile at least as freely as to the Jew. But at once there arose a ilitliculty. It requires some ellort of .sympathetic imagination to enter into the feelings of a Jew brought up to regard his people as tlie favourites of God, and the Law as the Divine means by which life was to be won. No doubt he might hope for the Gentiles to be converted to Judaism, but if they could obtain all the privileges of the Messianic kingdom without this, what became of his Scrip- tures with their promises to the children of Abraham? Why had God chosen them or given the Law at all? St. Paul, as a .lew, was bound to meet the objectors on their own ground ; he appeals to the Scriptures themselves, to the story of Abraham justified by faith before the giving of circumcision or the Law (ch. 4), and to the purpose of the Law as revealing sin. He argues on the analogies of slavery and marriage that its sway is abolished by the death to the old self (7'), and, more etfectivelj', he shows its practical failure (v.'^-). It is well to admit frankly that St. Paul's arguments do not always appeal to us so directly on these points ; he is arguing as a Rabbi brought up to use a certain method of interpretation, which is not our own to-day. The real proof of the truth of his position lies in the appeal to spiritual experi- ence and history, and that is even stronger than when he wrote. The supreme value of the Epistle is to be found in the imperishable passages, such as chs. 6-8, in which the facts of the spiritual life are described in language which must remain classical for all time.
There still, however, remained the problem of God's choice of the Jews and their apparent abandonment. Under this new method of salva- tion, which has been proved from the Scriptures themselves to be the right one, what is the mean- ing of the past history of Israel and what is to be its fate in the future? Chs. 9-11 deal specifically with these difficulties,* resuming the question of 3'. In them St. Paul shows that there had always been a principle of selection and rejection in God's dealings with His people, a principle resting on His inscrutable will (ch. 9). And in fact the Jews were themselves to blame ; they had adopted a wrong method of seeking righteou.sness, in spite of the teaching of their own Moses, and when the Messiah came they rejected Hiiu, though they had full opportunity of hearing the message (ch. 10).
expected the Christian to be actually sinless, an idea of which we have traces in 1 Jn. and in Hernias. Observation of life in the early Christian communities must have at once made it difficult to hold any such theory, and it is contradicted by the whole tone of the exhortations of the Kpistles. The expressions which suggest it belong to the sharp dichotomy between the regenerate and unregenerate already noticed ; they are part of the theory of the Christian life, unhappily at once negatived by experience. St. Paul found, in fact, that it took more to kill tile ' old Adam ' than he had expected ; the crucifixion of the tlesh and the old self was a gradual process, not something comiileted at a definite moment. This truth has an important lie.iring on the difficulty which arises from tbe slow working of the leaven of Christianity.
* Baur regarderi these as the central portion of the Epistle, for the sake of which all the rest was written ; this, however, is to go too far, though it is probable that they are not an after- thought or an appendix, as the niwlern reader is sometimes inclined to think.