Ver.6. νυνὶ δὲ but as things stand, con- sidering what weareas Christians. κατηρ- γήθηµεν : cf. ver. 2. We are discharged from the law, by our death to that in which we were held. But what is this? Most expositors say the law; Philippi even makes τοῦ νόµον the antecedent of ἐν ᾧ, rendering, we have been delivered,’ by dying, from the law in which we were held. This construction is too artificial to be true; and if we supply τούτῳ with ἀποθανόντες, something vaguer than the law, though involving and involved by it (the old life in the flesh, for instance) must be meant. ὥστε δουλεύειν κ.τ.λ. : ‘enabling us to serve” (S. and H.): for ὥστε with inf. in N.T., see Blass, Gramm. des N.T. Griech., § 219. ἐν καινότητι πνεύματος κ.τ.λ. = in a new way, which only the possession of the spirit makes possible, not in the old way which alone was possible when we were under the letter of the law. For the Pauline contrast of πνεῦμα and γράμμα, see 2 Cor. iii.; for ev in this expression. see Burton, § 481.
5—8.
‘
ἤδειν, εἰ μὴ
δὲ λαβοῦσα ἡ ἁμαρτία διὰ τῆς ἐντολῆς κατειργάσατο 1 ἐν ἐμοὶ πᾶσαν
1 κατειργασατο NACFGKL ; κατηργασατο BIDP.
6 νόμος ἔλεγεν, ''Οὐκ ἐπιθυμήσεις”.
639
οὰ ‘yc 2 Cor. xi. 8. ἀφορμῆν 12; Gal.
ν. 13; 1 Tim. v.14.
In chap. xv. 18 all editors
with SABCP read κατειργασατο, and this is preferred here by Lachm., W. and H., and by Weiss in all places; but here Tischdf., Treg. and Alford read κατηργασατο. Variations in the treatment of the augment are very frequent in the MSS.
Vers. 7-13. The actual working of the law. A very close connection between the law and sin is implied in all that has preceded : especially in vi. 14, and in such an expression as Ta παθήµατα τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν τὰ διὰ τοῦ vopov in vii. 5. This connection has to be examined more closely. The object of the Apostle, according to Weiss, is not to answer a false inference from his teaching, zviz., that the law is sin, but to conciliate for his own mind the idea of liberation from the law with the recognition of the O.T. revelation. But the difficulty of con- ciliating these two things is not peculiar to the Apostle ; it is because we all feel it in some form that the passage is so teal to us. Our experience of law has been as tragic as his, and we too ask how this comports with the idea of its Divine origin. The much discussed question, whether the subject of this passage (vers. 7-24) is the unregenerate or the regenerate self, or whether in particular vers. 7-13 refer to the un- regenerate, and vers, 14-24 to the re- generate, is hardly real. The distinction in its absolute form belongs to doctrine, not to experience. No one could have written the passage but a Christian: it is the experience of the unregenerate, we may say, but seen through regenerate eyes, interpreted in a regenerate mind. It is the Apostle’s spiritual history, but universalised ; a history in which one stage is not extinguished by the next, but which is present as a whole to his consciousness, each stage all the time determining and determined by all the rest. We cannot date the things of the spirit as simply as if they were mere historical incidents. Tt οὖν ἐροῦμεν, cf. vi. 1: What inference then shall we draw ? sc. from the relations of sin and law just suggested. Is the law sin? Paul tepels the thought with horror. ἀλλὰ τὴν ἁμαρτίαν οὐκ ἔγνων: ἀλλὰ may con- tinue the protest = On the contrary, I should not have known sin, etc. ; or it may be restrictive, abating the completeness of the negation involved in the protest. The law is not sin—God forbid; but, for all that, there is a connection: I should