Then we find ourselves, we hardly know how, in a range of confessions of a different order. There is a continuity. The Law is there, and sin is there, and a profound moral conflict. But there are now counter-facts. The man, the _Ego_, now "_wills not_," nay, "_hates_," what he practises. He wills what God prescribes, though he does it not. His sinful deeds are, in a certain sense, in this respect, not his own. He actually "_delights, rejoices, with the Law of God_." Yet there is a sense in which he is "_sold_," "_enslaved_," "_captured_," in the wrong direction.
Here, as we have admitted, there is much which is appropriate to the not yet regenerate state, where however the man is awakening morally, to good purpose, under the hand of God. But the passage as a whole refuses to be satisfied thus, as we have seen. He who can truly speak thus of an inmost sympathy, a sympathy of delight, with the most holy Law of God, is no half-Christian; certainly not in St Paul's view of things.
But now observe one great negative phenomenon of the passage. We read words about this regenerate sinner's moral being and faculties; about his "_inner man_," his "_mind_," "_the law of his mind_"; about "_himself_," as distinguished from the "_sin_" which haunts him. But we read not one clear word about that eternal SPIRIT, whose glorious presence we have seen (vii. 6), characterizing the Gospel, and of whom we are soon to hear in such magnificent amplitude. Once only is He even distantly indicated; "the _Law_ is _spiritual_" (ver. 14). But that is no comfort, no deliverance. The Spirit is indeed in the Law; but He must be also in the man, if there is to be effectual response, and harmony, and joy. No, we look in vain through the passage for one hint that the man, that Paul, is contemplated in it as filled by faith with the Holy Ghost for his war with indwelling sin working through his embodied conditions.
But he was regenerate, you say. And if so, he was an instance of the Spirit's work, a receiver of the Spirit's presence. It is so; not without the Spirit, working in him, could he "delight in the law of God," and "with his true self serve the law of God." But does this necessarily mean that he, as a conscious agent, was fully using his eternal Guest as his power and victory?
We are not merely discussing a literary passage. We are pondering an oracle of God about man. So we turn full upon the reader--and upon ourselves--and ask the question, whether the heart cannot help to expound this hard paragraph. Christian man, by grace,--that is to say, by the Holy Spirit of God,--you have believed, and live. You are a limb of Christ, who is your life. But you are a sinner still; always, actually, in defect, and in tendency; always, potentially, in ways terribly positive. For whatever the presence of the Spirit in you has done, it has not so altered you that, if He should go, you would not _instantly_ "revert to the type" of unholiness. Now, how do you meet temptation from without? How do you deal with the dread fact of guilty imbecility within? Do you, if I may put it so, use regenerate faculty in unregenerate fashion, meeting the enemy _practically_ alone, with only high resolves, and moral scorn of wrong, and assiduous processes of discipline on body or mind? God forbid we should call these things evil. They are good. But they are the accidents, not the essence, of the secret; the wall, not the well, of power and triumph. It is the Lord Himself dwelling in you who is your victory; and that victory is to be realized by a conscious and decisive appeal to Him. "Through Him you shall do valiantly; for He it is that shall tread down your enemies" (Psal. lx. 12). And is not this verified in your experience? When, in your regenerate state, you use the true regenerate way, is there not a better record to be given? When, realizing that the true principle is indeed a Person, you less resolve, less struggle, and more appeal and confide--is not sin's "reign" broken, and is not your foot, even yours, because you are in conscious union with the Conqueror, placed effectually on "all the power of the enemy"?