Incidentally meantime, the Apostle, in this passage which so curbs "the strong," lets fall maxims which for ever protect all that is good and true in that well-worn and often misused phrase, "the right of private judgment." No spiritual despot, no claimant to be the autocratic director of a conscience, could have written those words, "_Let every man be quite certain in his own mind_"; "_Who art thou that judgest Another's domestic?_" Such sentences assert not the right so much as _the duty_, for the individual Christian, of a reverent "_thinking for himself_." They maintain a true and noble individualism. And there is a special need just now in the Church to remember, _in its place_, the value of Christian individualism. The idea of the community, the society, is just now so vastly prevalent (doubtless not without the providence of God) in human life, and also in the Church, that an assertion of the individual, which was once disproportionate, is now often necessary, lest the social idea in its turn should be exaggerated into a dangerous mistake. Coherence, mutuality, the truth of the Body and the Members; all this, _in its place_, is not only important but divine. The individual must inevitably lose where individualism is his whole idea. But it is ill for the community, above all for the Church, where in the total the individual tends really to be merged and lost. Alas for the Church where the Church tries to take the individual's place in the knowledge of God, in the love of Christ, in the power of the Spirit. The religious Community must indeed inevitably lose where religious communism is its whole idea. It can be perfectly strong only where individual consciences are tender, and enlightened; where individual souls personally know God in Christ; where individual wills are ready, if the Lord call, to stand alone for known truth even against the religious Society;--if there also the individualism is not self-will, but Christian personal responsibility; if the man "thinks for himself" _on his knees_; if he reverences the individualism of others, and the relations of each to all.
The individualism of Rom. xiv., asserted in an argument full of the deepest secrets of cohesion, is the holy and healthful thing it is because it is _Christian_. It is developed not by the assertion of self, but by individual communion with Christ.
Now he goes on to further and still fuller statements in the same direction:
[Sidenote: Ver. 7.] =For none of us to himself lives, and none of us to himself dies.= How, and wherefore? Is it merely that "_we_" live lives always, necessarily, related _to one another_? He has this in his heart indeed. But he reaches it through the greater, deeper, antecedent truth of our relation _to the Lord_. The Christian is related to his brother-Christian through Christ, not to Christ through his brother, or through the common Organism in which the brethren are "each other's limbs." "_To the Lord_," with absolute directness, with a perfect and wonderful immediateness, each individual Christian is first related. His life and his death are "to others," but through Him. THE MASTER'S claim is eternally first; for it is based direct upon the redeeming work in which He bought us for Himself.
[Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =For whether we live, to the Lord we live; and whether we be dead (ἀποθνήσκωμεν), to the Lord we are dead;= in the state of the departed, as before, "relation stands." =Alike therefore whether (ἐαν τε οὖν) we be dead, or whether we live, the Lord's we are;= His property, bound first and in everything to His possession. [Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =For to this end Christ both died and lived again,[236] that He might become Lord= (κυριεύσῃ, not κυριεύῃ) =of= us =both dead and living.=
Here is the profound truth seen already in earlier passages in the Epistle. We have had it reasoned out, above all in the sixth chapter, in its revelation of the way of Holiness, that our only possible right relations with the Lord are clasped and governed by the fact that to Him we rightly and everlastingly _belong_. There, however, the thought was more of our surrender under His rights. Here it is of the mighty antecedent fact, under which our most absolute surrender is nothing more than the recognition of His indefeasible claim. What the Apostle says here, in this wonderful passage of mingled doctrine and duty, is that, whether or no _we are owning_ our vassalage to Christ, we are nothing if not _de jure_ His vassals. He has not only rescued us, but so rescued us as to buy us for His own. We may be true to the fact in our internal attitude; we may be oblivious of it; but we cannot get away from it. It looks us every hour in the face, whether we respond or not. It will still look us in the face through the endless life to come.