To men innumerable the discovery of this ancient truth, or the fuller apprehension of it, has been indeed like a beginning of new life. They have been long and painfully aware, perhaps, that their strife with evil was a serious failure on the whole, and their deliverance from its power lamentably partial. And they could not always command as they would the emotional energies of gratitude, the warm consciousness of affection. Then it was seen, or seen more fully, that the Scriptures set forth this great mystery, this powerful fact; our union with our Head, by the Spirit, for life, for victory and deliverance, for dominion over sin, for willing service. And the hands are lifted up, and the knees confirmed, as the man uses the now open secret--Christ in him, and he in Christ--for the real walk of life. But let us listen to St Paul again.
[Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =For if we became vitally connected (σύμφυτοι),= He with us and we with Him, =by the likeness of His Death,= by the baptismal plunge, symbol and seal of our faith-union with the Buried Sacrifice, =why (ἀλλὰ), we shall be= vitally connected with Him by the likeness =also of His Resurrection,= by the baptismal emergence, symbol and seal of our faith-union with the Risen Lord, and so with His risen power.[87] [Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =This knowing, that our old man,= our old state, as out of Christ and under Adam's headship, under guilt and in moral bondage, =was crucified with= Christ, was as it were nailed to His atoning Cross, where He represented us. In other words, He on the Cross, our Head and Sacrifice, so dealt with our fallen state for us, =that the body of sin,= this our body viewed as sin's stronghold, medium, vehicle, =might be cancelled,= might be in abeyance, put down, deposed, so as to be no more the fatal door to admit temptation to a powerless soul within.
"_Cancelled_" is a strong word. Let us lay hold upon its strength, and remember that it gives us not a dream, but a fact, to be found true in Christ. Let us not turn its fact into fallacy, by forgetting that, whatever "_cancel_" means, it does not mean that grace lifts us out of the body; that we are no longer to "_keep under the body, and bring it into subjection_," in the name of Jesus. Alas for us, if any promise, any truth, is allowed to "cancel" the call to watch and pray, and to think that in no sense is there still a foe within. But all the rather let us grasp, and use, the glorious positive in its place and time, which is everywhere and every day. Let us recollect, let us confess our faith, that thus it is with us, through Him who loved us. He died for us for this very end, that our "_body of sin_" might be wonderfully "_in abeyance_," as to the power of temptation upon the soul. Yes, as St Paul proceeds, =that henceforth we should not do bondservice to sin;= that from now onwards, from our acceptance in Him, from our realization of our union with Him, we should say to temptation a "_no_" that carries with it the power of the inward presence of the Risen Lord. Yes, for He has won that power for us in our Justification through His Death. He died for us, and we in Him, as to sin's claim, as to our guilt; and He thus died, as we have seen, on purpose that we might be not only legally accepted, but vitally united to Him. Such is the connexion of the following clause, strangely rendered in the English Version, and often therefore misapplied, but whose literal wording is, [Sidenote: Ver. 7.] =For he who died,= he who has died, =has been justified from his (τῆς) sin;= stands justified from it, stands free from its guilt. The thought is of the atoning Death, in which the believer is interested as if it were his own. And the implied thought is that, as that death is "fact accomplished," as "our old man" _was_ so effectually "crucified with Christ," therefore we may, we must, claim the spiritual freedom and power in the Risen One which the Slain One secured for us when He bore our guilt.