The Pulpit Commentary — Romans — Section 258

neceeer.ry power. On the other he.nd, the Spirit takes Christ's life, applies it, and produces the emancipation through it. '£he grace of God is seen in "senciin" his own Son," that is, "the Bon of himself;" and he made his advent "in the likenes; of sinful flesh," that is, he came not as an appariUon, but in a real body, yet it differed from other human bodies in that it was not" sinful flesh." And his purpose in assumin"' sinless flesh was that he might be "an Offering for sin" (Revised Version), and thereby might" condemn sin in the flesh." His whole life in the flesh was, indeed, a condemna- tion of sin; but the condemnation reached its climax when on the cross Jesus expiated human guilt. As a powerful writer has well stated the truth of the passage," believers are me.de 'pe.rte.kers of the Divine nature.' The nature of the Father through the Bon is made known unto them-and as the rays of light which pass throu!:!;h a coloured medium take the hues of the medium through which they come, so the Spirit of God coming to us through Christ incarnate, is baptized in the humanities of his Person: and hence becomes the Dispenser of the Divine mercy, as that mercy was revealed in the flesh. So that 'what the Law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh [had no sympathetic power to touch the emotional nature), God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh; that the righteousness of the Law [which requires love, but cannot produce it] might be fnlfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.'" 1 2. The Spirit enables the soul to fuifil the righteousness of the Law by walking, not aft,er the flesh, but after the Spirit. "The righteousness of the Law," in ver. 4, is given in the Revised Version as "the ordinance of the Law" (B<1«1fr11µ,z, not 811,,.(ouvl'f/). But the idea is clear. The perfect life is the ideal of the Spirit. He accordingly comes to inspire as well a.a to condemn. He prompts us to "walk after the Spirit," in the spiritual path our Saviour trod, and so we find ourselves, through the appreciation of the life of Jesus, becoming progressively holy in character, approximating steadily towards the perfect righteous- ness which dwelt in him. It is this inspiration to holy living which defeats the law of sin. This is the real victory. Salvation is not so much from the uncomfortableneM of bell, as from the greater misfortune of sin. As one has very properly said, " If my religion is to make me comfortable in spite of ill temper, and slipshod ways of business, and words that are not exactly true,-then I say deliberately, better the very fires of hell than that comfort, if they could only burn into me and through and through me a great abhorrence of all that is evil." II. THROUGH DESTROYING BIN, THE SPIBrr DESTROYS DEATH. (Vers. 5-11.) For as long as we "mind the things of the flesh," that is, are occupied with them to the exclusion or subordination of spiritual things, we are, BS "carnally minded," in a state of spiritual death. '!'his "mind of the flesh is death" (so Revised Version). And when we ana.lyze this death of the soul, we find it consists in a.t least these three things: (1) Enmity to God (ver. 7); (2) rebellion against his Law; a.nd (3) separation from him as those that are not pleasing in his sight (ver. 8). The result of such a state is misery. "Paradise lost" is the true expression for the carnal state. It is into this state of misery, then, the.t God's Spirit inserts himself, a.ad proposes: 1. To destroy thia spiritual death by destroying sin. 'l'he moment we become" spiritually minded,n we have passed the boundary between "Paradise lost" and "Paradise regained." We find tha.t both "life and peace " result from spiritual-mindedness. "Here," says De Rougemont, "we nre in full life a.nd in full peace; there is in some we.y upon the mountain of God the terrestrial paradise of faith and of hope; there is the sweet sun of Eden, there are its sweet shades, there are its limpid waters which murmur, there is its tree of life whoso fruits are the envy of the angels, if they have not similar ones in abundance. No one before Jesus Obrist had known the way and passed the portal of this garden of delight, The Son of God descended to the lowest parts of the earth, and taught the existence of it to his disciples. They were suddenly transported there on \he Day of Pentecost by the impetuous brenth of tho Spirit of God.'' 2. TM Spir-iC also proposei to destroy the mo1·talit1J of the body by resurrection. All\S ! at conversion we do not become immortal. The chnnge of heart has doubtless it.s good elf.let on the body, but it does not replace a bnd constitution by a good one, nor rehabilitate the body. The body remains dead because of siu, even when the spirit has become lifo 1 Of. Wnlker's 'Philosophy of tho Divine Operotion,' pp. 8¼, 85: 11t1e alllo Julius Miiller'1 Zeugiiisa von Ohristo,' ss. 142-170, 256 THE EPISTLE OF PAUL TO THE RO:MA~B. [on. vm.1-39,