10. * This whole struggle of one who is _under the law_, under the _spirit of fear and bondage_, is beautifully described by the apostle in the foregoing chapter, speaking in the person of an awaken’d man. _I_ (saith he) _was alive without the law once_, ver. 9. I had much life, wisdom, strength and virtue; so I thought: _but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died_. When the commandment, in its spiritual meaning, came to my heart, with the power of God, my inbred sin was stirred up, fretted, inflamed, and all my virtue died away. _And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me_, ver. 10, 11. It came upon me unawares, slew all my hopes, and plainly shewed, in the midst of life I was in death. _Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just and good_, ver. 12. I no longer lay the blame on this, but on the corruption of my own heart. I acknowledge that _the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin_, ver. 14. I now see both the spiritual nature of the law, and my own carnal, devilish heart; _sold under sin_, totally inslaved: (like slaves bought with money, who were absolutely at their master’s disposal.) _For that which I do, I allow not; for what I would, I do not; but what I hate, that I do_, ver. 15. Such is the bondage under which I groan; such the tyranny of my hard master. _To will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good, I find not. For the good that I would, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do_, ver. 18, 19. _I find a law_, an inward constraining power, _that when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in_ (or consent to) _the law of God, after the inward man_: (ver. 21, 22.) In my mind: (so the apostle explains himself in the words that immediately follow: and so ὁ ἔσω ἄνθρωπος, _the inward man_, is understood in all other Greek writers.) _But I see another law in my members_, another constraining power, _warring against the law of my mind_, or inward man, _and bringing me into captivity to the law_, or power, _of sin_, ver. 23, dragging me as it were at my conqueror’s chariot-wheels, into the very thing which my soul abhors. _O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!_ ver. 24. Who shall deliver me from this helpless, dying life: from this bondage of sin and misery! Till this is done, I _myself_ (or rather, _that I_, αὐτὸς ἐγὼ, _that man_ I am now personating) _with the mind_, or inward man, _serve the law of God_; my mind, my conscience is on God’s side: _but with the flesh_; with my body, _the law of sin_, ver. 25, being hurried away by a force I cannot resist.
11. How lively a portraiture is this of one _under the law_! One who feels the burthen he cannot shake off; who pants after liberty, power and love, but is in fear and bondage still! Until the time that God answers the wretched man, crying out, _Who shall deliver me_, from this bondage of sin, from this body of death? _The grace of God, through Jesus Christ thy Lord._
III. 1. Then it is, that this miserable bondage ends, and he is no more _under the law, but under grace_. This state we are, Thirdly, to consider, the state of one who has found _grace_ or favour, in the sight of God, even the Father, and who has the _grace_, or power of the Holy Ghost, reigning in his heart: who has received, in the language of the apostle, _the Spirit of adoption, whereby_ he now _cries, Abba, Father_!
2. _He cried unto the Lord in his trouble, and_ God _delivers him out of his distress_. His eyes are opened in quite another manner than before, even to see a loving, gracious God. While he is calling, _I beseech thee shew me thy glory_, he hears a voice in his inmost soul, _I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord: I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will shew mercy to whom I will shew mercy_. And it is not long before _the Lord descends in the cloud, and proclaims the name of the Lord_. Then he sees, (but not with eyes of flesh and blood) _The Lord, the Lord God: merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth: keeping mercy for thousands, and forgiving iniquities and transgression and sin_.