That cry will not be in vain. The King will take a double line of action in response. While his soldier-bondservant is yet in the body, "the body of this death," He will throw HIMSELF into the narrow hold, and wonderfully turn the tide within it, and around it. And hereafter, He will demolish it. Rather, He will transfigure it, into the counterpart--even as it were into the part--of His own Body of glory; and the man shall rest, and serve, and reign for ever, with a being homogeneous all through in its likeness to the Lord.
[108] See J. B. Mozley's _Lectures, etc._, ix, x.
[109] Exod. xx. 17.--Observe here that great fact of Christian doctrine; that desire, bias, gravitation away from God's will, is sin, whether carried into act _or not_. Is not St Paul here recalling some quite special spiritual incident?
[110] Ἀφορμὴν λαβοῦσα διὰ τῆς ἐντολῆς.
[111] Ἐμοὶ is slightly emphatic; as if to say, "_at least in my case_."
[112] For this meaning of θέλειν see the closely parallel passage, the almost sketch or embryo of this paragraph, Gal. v. 17.
[113] Read not οὐχ εὑρίσκω, but simply οὔ.
[114] Again ποιῶ and πράσσω, as in ver. 16.
[115] In itself, the phrase ὁ ἔσω ἄνθρωπος is neutral. By usage it attaches itself to ideas of regeneration. See 2 Cor. iv. 16, Eph. iii. 16.
[116] Αἰχμαλωτίζοντα: "Making me prisoner of _war_." Observe the present tense, which indicates not necessarily the full success of the strategy, but its aim.
[117] The Greek equally allows the rendering "_out of this body of death_."
[118] Read χάρις τῷ Θεῶ.