Thus, as we shall see in detail as we proceed, the Apostle, while he still firmly keeps his hand, so to speak, on Justification, is occupied fully now with its issue, Holiness. And this issue he explains as not merely a matter of grateful feeling, the outcome of the loyalty supposed to be natural to the pardoned. He gives it as a matter of divine power, secured to them under the Covenant of their acceptance.
Shall we not enter on our expository study full of holy expectation, and with unspeakable desires awake, to receive all things which in that Covenant are ours? Shall we not remember, over every sentence, that in it Christ speaks by Paul, and speaks to us? For us also, as for our spiritual ancestors, all this is true. It shall be true in us also, as it was in them.
We shall be humbled as well as gladdened; and thus our gladness will be sounder. We shall find that whatever be our "_walk according to the Spirit_," and our veritable dominion over sin, we shall still have "_the practices of the body_" with which to deal--of the body which still is "_dead because of sin_," "_mortal_," not yet "_redeemed_." We shall be practically reminded, even by the most joyous exhortations, that possession and personal condition are one thing in covenant, and another in realization; that we must watch, pray, examine self, and deny it, if we would "be" what we "are." Yet all this is but the salutary accessory to the blessed main burthen of every line. We are accepted in the Lord. In the Lord we have the Eternal Spirit for our inward Possessor. Let us arise, and "walk humbly," but also in gladness, "with our God."
St Paul speaks again, perhaps after a silence, and Tertius writes down for the first time the now immortal and beloved words. [Sidenote: Ver. 1.] =So no adverse sentence is there now,= in view of this great fact of our redemption, =for those in Christ Jesus.[120]= "_In Christ Jesus_"--mysterious union, blessed fact, wrought by the Spirit who linked us sinners to the Lord.[121] [Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =For the law of the Spirit of the life which is in Christ Jesus[122] freed me,= the man of the conflict just described, =from the law of sin and of death.= The "law," the preceptive will, which legislates the covenant of blessing for all who are in Christ, has set him free. By a strange, pregnant paradox, so we take it, the Gospel--the message which carries with it acceptance, and also holiness, by faith--is here called a "law." For while it is free grace to us it is also immovable ordinance with God. The amnesty is His edict. It is by heavenly _statute_ that sinners, believing, possess the Holy Spirit in possessing Christ. And here, with a sublime abruptness and directness, that great gift of the Covenant, the Spirit, for which the Covenant gift of Justification was given, is put forward as the Covenant's characteristic and crown. It is for the moment as if this were all--that "_in Christ Jesus_" we, I, are under the _fiat_ which assures to us the fulness of the Spirit. And this "law," unlike the stern "letter" of Sinai, has actually "_freed me_." It has endowed me not only with place but with power, in which to live emancipated from a rival law, the law of sin and of death. And what is that rival "law"? We dare to say, it is the preceptive will of Sinai; "Do this, and thou shalt live." This is a hard saying; for in itself that very Law has been recently vindicated as holy, and just, and good, and spiritual. And only a few lines above in the Epistle we have heard of a "law of sin" which is "served by the flesh." And we should unhesitatingly explain this "law" to be identical with that _but for the next verse here_, a still nearer context, in which "the law" is unmistakably the divine moral Code, considered however as _impotent_. Must not this and that be the same? And to call that sacred Code "_the Law of sin and of death_" is not to say that it is sinful and deathful. It need only mean, and we think it does mean, that it is sin's occasion, and death's warrant, by the unrelieved collision of its holiness with fallen man's will. It must command; he, being what he is, must rebel. He rebels; it must condemn. Then comes his Lord to die for him, and to rise again; and the Spirit comes, to unite him to his Lord. And now, from the Law as provoking the helpless, guilty will, and as claiming the sinner's penal death--behold the man is "_freed_." [Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =For=--(the process is now explained at large) =the impossible of the Law=--what it could not do, for this was not its function, even to enable us sinners to keep its precept from the soul--=God, when He sent His own Son in likeness of flesh of sin,= Incarnate, in our identical nature, under all those conditions of earthly life which for us are sin's vehicles and occasions, =and as Sin-Offering,[123]= expiatory and reconciling, =sentenced sin in the flesh;= not pardoned it, observe, but sentenced it. He ordered it to execution; He killed its claim and its power for all who are in Christ. And this, "_in the flesh_," making man's earthly conditions the scene of sin's defeat, for our everlasting encouragement in our "life in the flesh." And what was the aim and issue? [Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =That the righteous demand (δικαίωμα) of the Law might be fulfilled in us, us who walk not flesh-wise, but Spirit-wise;= that we, accepted in Christ, and using the Spirit's power in the daily "walk" of circumstance and experience, might be liberated from the life of self-will, and meet the will of God with simplicity and joy.