Or don’t you know that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will also be part of his resurrection; knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be in bondage to sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. But if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him; knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over him! For the death that he died, he died to sin one time; but the life that he lives, he lives to God. Thus consider yourselves also to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Therefore don’t let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. Also, do not present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin will not have dominion over you. For you are not under law, but under grace.
What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under law, but under grace? May it never be! Don’t you know that when you present yourselves as servants and obey someone, you are the servants of whomever you obey; whether of sin to death, or of obedience to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that, whereas you were bondservants of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were delivered. Being made free from sin, you became bondservants of righteousness.
I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh, for as you presented your members as servants to uncleanness and to wickedness upon wickedness, even so now present your members as servants to righteousness for sanctification. For when you were servants of sin, you were free from righteousness. What fruit then did you have at that time in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now, being made free from sin and having become servants of God, you have your fruit of sanctification and the result of eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv3–23 3. Know ye not, etc. What he intimated in…
3. Know ye not, etc. What he intimated in the last verse — that Christ destroys sin in his people, he proves here by mentioning the effect of baptism, by which we are initiated into his faith; for it is beyond any question, that we put on Christ in baptism, and that we are baptized for this end — that we may be one with him. But Paul takes up another principle — that we are then really united to the body of Christ, when his death brings forth in us its fruit; yea, he teaches us, that this fellowship as to death is what is to be mainly regarded in baptism; for not washing alone is set forth in it, but also the putting to death and the dying of the old man. It is hence evident, that when we become partakers of the grace of Christ, immediately the efficacy of his death appears. But the benefit of this fellowship as to the death of Christ is described in what follows.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 20, 21, 23 To the end that growing up in one with…
To the end that growing up in one with him, we should receive his strength to quench sin in us, and to make us new men.
There are three parts of this Sanctification, to wit, the dead of the old man or sin, his burial, and the resurrection of the new man, descending into us from the virtue of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, of which benefit our baptism is the sign and pledge.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv3–23 3 Know ye not, that so many of us…
3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?
Ver. 3. Baptized into his death] Hoc est baptizari pro mortuis, saith Beza, to be buried with Christ in baptism, Col 2:12, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, Rom 6:11.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv3–23 Know ye not? q.d. This is a truth which…
Know ye not? q.d. This is a truth which you ought not to be ignorant of and which confirms what I say.
Baptized into Jesus Christ: to be baptized into Christ, is either to be baptized in the name of Christ; see Act 10:48, and Act 19:5; or else it is, incorporated, ingrafted, or planted into Christ, and so to be made members of his mystical body by baptism.
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Baptized into his death: to be baptized into the death of Christ, is to have fellowship with him in his death, or to have the efficacy of his death sealed up to us; and that is the blessed privilege of as many as are baptized or planted into Christ; they are not only partakers of the merit of his death for justification, but of the efficacy of his death for mortification. See a parallel place, Gal 3:27.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23 To be baptized into Christ, is by baptism to…
To be baptized into Christ, is by baptism to take the name of Christ upon us, to be incorporated, ingrafted, and implanted into the church of Christ, being made visible members of his mystical body by baptism. To be baptized into Christ’s death, imports, our being conformed to him in the likeness of his death; our being engaged to die unto sin; as Christ died for sin.
Learn hence, That the death of Christ was a lively representation of the death of sin; and believers are to imitate his death, in their dying daily unto sin.
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Did Christ die for us a painful, shameful, and accursed death? such a death must sin die in us. Was his death for sin free and voluntary?
so must we die to sin.
Was his death an universal crucifixion, did no life, sense, or motion remain with him?
thus must we imitate the likeness of his death, by an universal mortification of every known sin, which occasioned his dying.
In a word, did Christ die and rise again, never to die more?
so must we die unto sin, and walk in newness of life.
How shall we that are dead unto sin, live any longer therein?
Thus it appears the indispensible duty of all Christians, to transcribe the copy of Christ’s death in their hearts and lives.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv3–23 Know ye not that so many of us as,…
Know ye not that so many of us as, You must know this, you cannot be ignorant of it, that whoever
were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death: and therefore must be dead to sin, and consequently ought not to live, nor can they live in sin. This does not suppose, that some of this church were baptized persons, and others not; but that some might be baptized in water who were not baptized into Christ: there is a difference between being baptized in water in the name of Christ, and being baptized into Christ, which believers in their baptism are; by which is meant, not a being brought by it into union with Christ, which is either secretly from eternity, or openly at conversion, and both before the baptism of true believers; nor a being brought by it into the mystical body of Christ the church, for this also is before it; but rather it designs a being baptized, or a being brought by baptism into more communion with Christ, into a participation of his grace and benefits; or into the doctrine of Christ, and a more distinct knowledge of it: the power of which they feel upon their hearts, and so have really believed in Christ, heartily love him, and make a sincere profession of him; though rather the true meaning of the phrase "baptized into Christ", I take to be, is to be baptized purely for the sake of Christ, in imitation of him, who has set us an example, and because baptism is an ordinance of his; it is to submit to it with a view to his glory, to testify our affection for him, and subjection to him, without laying any stress or dependence on it for salvation; such who are thus baptized, are "baptized into his death"; they not only resemble Christ in his sufferings and death, by being immersed in water, but they declare their faith in the death of Christ, and also share in the benefits of his death; such as peace, pardon, righteousness, and atonement: now this proves, that such persons are dead to sin, who are so baptized; for by the death of Christ, into which they are baptized, they are justified from sin; by the death of Christ, their old man is crucified, and the body of sin destroyed; besides, believers in baptism profess themselves to be dead to sin and the world, and their baptism is an obligation upon them to live unto righteousness.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23 As many as have been baptized into Jesus Christ…
As many as have been baptized into Jesus Christ have been baptized into his death - In baptism we, through faith, are ingrafted into Christ; and we draw new spiritual life from this new root, through his Spirit, who fashions us like unto him, and particularly with regard to his death and resurrection.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv3–23 Verse 3. Know ye not, &c.] Every man who…
Verse 3. Know ye not, &c.] Every man who believes the Christian religion, and receives baptism as the proof that he believes it, and has taken up the profession of it, is bound thereby to a life of righteousness. To be baptized into Christ, is to receive the doctrine of Christ crucified, and to receive baptism as a proof of the genuineness of that faith, and the obligation to live according to its precepts.
Baptized into his death?] That, as Jesus Christ in his crucifixion died completely, so that no spark of the natural or animal life remained in his body, so those who profess his religion should be so completely separated and saved from sin, that they have no more connection with it, nor any more influence from it, than a dead man has with or from his departed spirit.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv3, 5, 8, 12, 15, 19, 23 Rom 6:3-4. Know ye not — Can any of…
Rom 6:3-4. Know ye not — Can any of you be ignorant of this great and obvious truth, that so many of us as were baptized into Christ — That is, into the profession of the Christian faith; or implanted into and made a part of the mystical body of Christ by baptism, (as εις Χριστον seems to imply,) were baptized into his death — Engaged by baptism to be conformed to his death, by dying to sin, as he died for it, and crucifying our flesh with its affections and lusts, as his body was crucified on the cross; and also were made partakers of the benefits thereof, one of which is the mortifying of sin, and all sinful passions. Being baptized into Christ, or ingrafted into him through faith, we draw new spiritual life from this new root, through his Spirit, who fashions us like unto him, and particularly with regard to his death and resurrection. Therefore we are buried with him — Alluding to the ancient manner of baptizing by immersion; by baptism into death — That is, to engage us to die unto sin, and to carry on the mortification and death of it more and more: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory — That is, the glorious power; of the Father, even so we also — In conformity thereto, should rise again by the same power; and should walk in newness of life — As Christ being raised from the dead lives a new life in heaven. From all this it appears, that baptism, the rite of initiation into the Christian Church, is an emblematical representation of our dying to sin, and living to righteousness, in consequence of our union with Christ as members of his body; as also of the malignity of sin, in bringing death upon Christ, (Rom 6:10,) and upon all mankind, and of the efficacy of Christ’s death, in procuring for all pardoning mercy, renewing grace, and future glory; a resurrection both from spiritual and temporal death, to spiritual and eternal life.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 Know ye not - This is a further appeal…
Know ye not - This is a further appeal to the Christian profession, and the principles involved in it, in answer to the objection. The simple argument in this verse and the two following is, that by our very profession made in baptism, we have renounced sin, and have pledged ourselves to live to God.
So many of us ... - All who were baptized; that is, all professed Christians. As this renunciation of sin had been thus made by all who professed religion, so the objection could not have reference to Christianity in any manner.
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Were baptized - The act of baptism denotes dedication to the service of him in whose name we are baptized. One of its designs is to dedicate or consecrate us to the service of Christ: Thus 1Co 10:2, the Israelites are said to have been “baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea;” that is, they became consecrated, or dedicated, or bound to him as their leader and lawgiver. In the place before us, the argument of the apostle is evidently drawn from the supposition that we have been solemnly consecrated by baptism to the service of Christ; and that to sin is therefore a violation of the very nature of our Christian profession.
Into - εἰς eis. This is the word which is used in Mat 28:19, “Teach all nations, baptizing them into εἰς eis the name of the Father,” etc. It means, being baptized unto his service; receiving him as the Saviour and guide, devoting all unto him and his cause.
Were baptized unto his death - We were baptized with special reference to his death. Our baptism had a strong resemblance to his death. By that he became insensible to the things of the world; by baptism we in like manner become dead to sin. Further, we are baptized with particular reference to the design of his death, the great leading feature and purpose of his work. That was, to expiate sin; to free people from its power; to make them pure. We have professed our devotion to the same cause; and have solemnly consecrated ourselves to the same design - to put a period to the dominion of iniquity.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv3, 7, 10, 12, 14, 17, 19, 20, 23 We...are baptized in his death. Greek, unto his death.…
We...are baptized in his death. Greek, unto his death. The apostle here alludes to the manner of administering the sacrament of baptism, which was then done by immersion or by plunging the person baptized under the water, in which he finds a resemblance of Christ’s death and burial under ground, and of his resurrection to an immortal life. So must we after baptism rise to lead a quite different life: having been also, when we were baptized and made Christians, planted as branches ingrafted in Christ, let us endeavour to bring forth the fruits of a virtuous life. (Witham) --- Old man...body of sin. Our corrupt state, subject to sin and concupiscence, coming to us from Adam, is called out old man, as our state, reformed in and by Christ, is called the new man. And the vices and sins which then ruled in us, are named the body of sin. (Challoner) --- The old and sinful man we must look upon as crucified with him, and the body of sin, or our sinful body, destroyed. We must look upon ourselves as dead to sin, and that we must sin no more, as Christ being once risen, dies no more. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v12 Third Section.—The principial freedom of Christians from the service…
Third Section.—The principial freedom of Christians from the service of sin to death, and their actual departure there from and entrance into the service of righteousness unto life by the power of the death of Jesus. (Believers should live in the consciousness that they are dead to sin, just as even the slave is freed by death.)
Rom_6:12-23
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12Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in13[omit it in]28 the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye [Nor render]29 your members as instruments [or weapons] of unrighteousness unto [to]30 sin: but yield [render] yourselves unto [to] God, as those that are alive [as being alive]31 from the dead, and your members as instruments [or weapons] of righteousness unto [to]God. 14For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the [omit the]32 law, but under grace.
15What then? shall [may]33 we sin, because we are not under the [omit the]law, but under grace? God forbid. [Let it not be!] 16Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether [either] of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?17But God be thanked [thanks to God], that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have [omit have] obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine [teaching]34 which18was delivered you [whereunto ye were delivered;].35 Being then [And being]made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. 19I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded [rendered] your members [as] servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield [render] your members [as] servants to righteousnessunto holiness [or sanctification].36 20For when ye were the [omit the] servantsof sin, ye were free from [as regards] righteousness. 21What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? [What fruit had ye then therefore? Things whereof ye are now ashamed;]37 for38 the end of those thingsis death. 22But now being [having been] made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness [or sanctification], and the endeverlasting life. 23For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ [in Christ Jesus]39 our Lord.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Rom_6:12. Let not sin therefore reign [Μὴ οὖν βασιλευέτω ἡ ἁμαρτίᾳ]. The Apostle conducts the following discussion in a hortatory manner, but without actually “entering the sphere of exhortation,” as Tholuck thinks. [The negative part of the exhortation, Rom_6:12-13, corresponds to νεκροὺς μέν τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ, Rom_6:11; the positive part, ἀλλὰ παραστήσατε, Rom_6:13, answers to ζῶντας δὲτῶ̣ Θεῶ̣. So Meyer, Philippi, Alford, Hodge, &c.—P. S.] In a didactic respect he teaches that believers, by their transition from a state under the law to a state under grace, are first properly qualified and pledged to the service of righteousness, but are not free for the service of sin. That is, the true emancipation from outward legalism leads to an inward and free legalism, but not to Antinomianism. The οὖν indicates that Rom_6:11 shall be elaborated. But as the previous section has shown what is conformable to the state of grace in itself, the present section shows what is according to freedom from the hard service of sin, which was presupposed by bondage under the law. Let not sin now reign (imp.). The true sovereign command of grace is opposed to the false sovereign command of sin, which is still present as a broken power (Luther: Observe that holy people still have evil lusts in the flesh, which they do not follow). Tholuck: “Philippi and Meyer correctly remark, that the Apostle does not expressly make any concessions to the concupiscentia [ἐπιθυμίαις]; yet his admonition does not extend any farther than that lust must not become a deed. Sin is represented as ruler in the body, which ruler is served by the μέλη as organs.” That is, however, as the one who has been the ruler; and the methods are at the same time given for destroying the lusts of the flesh, that they—by the life in the Spirit, which also changes the members into instruments of righteousness—should not only be continually ignored, but also annulled. [Alford, in opposition to Chrysostom, who lays stress on βασιλευέω, says: “It is no matter of comparison between reigning and indwelling merely, but between reigning and being deposed.”—P. S.]
In your mortal body [ἐν τῷ θνητῷ ὑμῶν σὡματι]. The σω̅μα as θνητόν must be distinguished, on the one hand, from the σῶμα τῆς ἁμαρτίας of Rom_6:6, and, on the other, from the σῶμανεκρόν of Rom_8:10. The σῶμα τῆς ἁμαρτ. is the pseudo-plastic apparent body of the old man, and, as the sensual side of all sinfulness, is devoted with it to destruction. The body is a σῶμα νεκρόν so far as it no more asserts itself as a second principle of life with, or even superior to, the principle of the Spirit, but yields itself purely to the service of the Spirit. But a σῶυα θνητόν is the body so far as it, as the sensual organism of the earthly existence, has living organs, which shall be purified from the former service of sin and transferred to the service of righteousness. The σῶμα as a false principle is destroyed; the σῶμα as a secondary principle is dead, absolutely helpless; and the αῶμα as the organ of the spiritual principle is transformed into instruments of righteousness. It is called mortal, because its earthly propensity is toward sin and death, and it must be compulsorily brought into the service of righteousness, and exercised as for a spiritual military service in antithesis to the body of the resurrection, which will be the pure power and excellence of righteousness. Meyer is therefore correct in rejecting the interpretation, that θνητόν is the same as νεκρόν (dead to sin; Turretin, Ernesti, and others).
But it may be asked, For what purpose is the adjective θνητὸν?
1. Calvin: per contemptum vocat mortale [ut doceat totam hominis naturam ad mortem et exitium inclinare]. Köllner: It is dishonorable to make the spirit subject to this frail body.
2. Grotius: De vita altera cogitandum, nee formidandos labores hand sane diuturnos. [Chrysostom, Theodoret, Reiche, likewise suppose that the word reminds us of the other life, and of the shortness of the conflict.—P. S.]
3. Flatt: Reminder of the brevity of sensual pleasure. [Comp. Theophylact].
4. Meyer, obscurely: It is absurd to make sin reign in the mortal body, if the Christian is dead to sin and alive to God.
5. Philippi: To call to mind that the wages of sin is death. [Philippi takes σῶμα in opposition to πνεῦμα.]
6. Tholuck, with Bullinger and Calixtus: Because sensual enticements are regarded as inseparable from the present sensuous organism, &c.
[7. Photius, Turretin, Ernesti: θνητόν is figuratively = dead; i. e., corrupt (in which sense νεκρός is often used).]
In all these definitions the relative dignity and estimate of the “mortal body,” which are definitely declared in Rom_6:13, are not regarded; the same members, which until then had been instruments of unrighteousness, henceforth being instruments of righteousness. The organism of earthly existence and action, which has become mortal by sin, is naturally an organism for the service of the spirit. By the dominion of sin in it, its morality became still more intense; but by the normal subjection of sin to the service of the Spirit, it shall be brought with it on the course toward everlasting life (Rom_6:22).
That ye should obey the lusts thereof [εἰς τό ὑπακούειν ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις αὐτοῦ]. According to the sense, we must supply ὑμᾶς to ὑπακούειν. To the end that ye obey its lusts. Even if the body were holy, its impulses would have to be subject to the dominion of the spirit; much more must they be subject to the spirit, since they are diseased, irritable, excitable, and inclined to self-assertion and demoniacal self-distraction.
Rom_6:13. Nor render your members [Μὴ περιστάνετε τὰ μέλη ὑμῶν]. Without doubt παριστάνειν has reference here to enlistment or delivery for military service. The Apostle is writing to Rome, the metropolis of military affairs, and therefore derives his figure from Roman customs (comp. Rom_13:12); just as he admonishes the Corinthians by expressions that call up the Isthmian games (1Co_9:24), and speaks to the spiritual city of Ephesus concerning the battle with spirits (Eph_6:11-12). Sin is already distinguished as the false ̀βασιλεύς, who causes the false summons to be promulgated that the members shall be ordered into his warfare against righteousness.—Your members. If the body has ceased to be an independent principle, only its members come into consideration (in the good sense of the principle: Divide et impera). According to Erasmus, Philippi, and others, the intellectual forces and activities (perception, will, understanding) are included in the term. According to Meyer, only the physical members are meant (the tongue, hand, foot, eye, &c.), “for which, however, intellectual action is a necessary supposition. The physical members are plainly meant as organs and symbols of ethical conduct (different from the pseudo-plasmatic members; Col_3:5).
As weapons [or instruments] of unrighteousness [ὅπλα ἀδικίας]. Meyer says, of immorality. But, in war, people contend for the right or the wrong; therefore the expression ἀδικία must be strictly retained.—“̔́Οπλα, according to the Vulgate, Theodoret, Luther, Calvin, Bengel, and Meyer: weapons. Calixtus and De Wette [Stuart, Reiche, Hodge, Ewald, Alford], on the other hand: instruments. The former construction can by no means be favored by appealing to the fact that the βασιλεύειν suggests warriors in service, for the trope is already obliterated (?) in that term; but it is favored by the consideration that the Apostle also elsewhere—when he uses ὅπλα in the ethical sense—employs it in the meaning of ‘weapons;’ Rom_13:12; 2Co_6:7; 2Co_10:4” (Tholuck). [Meyer insists that ὅπλα, while so frequently used in the sense of instruments by classical authors, is never thus used in the New Testament.—R.]
To sin [τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ]. Personified as the presumptively false ruler (see Rom_5:12 ff.).
But render yourselves [ἀλλὰ παραστήσατε ἑαυτούς]. We must observe here a double antithesis: first, the aorist παραστήσατε in opposition to the previous present, παραστάνετε; second, ἑαυτούς in connection with the following χαὶ τὰμέλη, in opposition to the previous τὰ μέλη. Both are quite in harmony with the antithesis. For believers have already fundamentally placed themselves as such in the service of righteousness, and in complete unity with the centre of their life, while the man in the opposite service of sin yields his members individually to a foreign power. At all events, the Christian, as the servant of sin, would be led into the contradiction of wishing to remain free himself while he placed his members at the service of sin. On the aorist παραστήσατε, comp. Winer, p. 293; and Tholuck, p. 311. (It denotes, “according to Fritzsche, what happens in the moment; according to Meyer, that which occurs forthwith; and according to Philippi, that which appears once;” Tholuck). Tholuck does not attach importance to the difference between the aorist imperative and the present imperative, since he concurs with those who disregard the temporal reference. We hold, with Herm. Schmidt (De imperativis; Wittenberg, 1833): “The imperative present commands to occupy one’s self with something; the imperative aorist, to accomplish something.” We add to this: That something already under consideration, or already undertaken, must be carried through. [The greater definiteness implied in the aorist must not be lost sight of, whatever view be adopted.—R.]
As being alive from the dead [ὡς ἐκ νεκρῶν ζῶντα̣ς. The ὡς does not introduce a figure, but means rather (comp. Rom_6:11): regarding yourselves as those who are alive, almost = since you are. The phrase is a condensed description of the state of ἑαντούς. While the reference is undoubtedly ethical, yourselves must be taken in its widest meaning—body, soul, and spirit; and the implication is, that the whole man was once dead in sin (not to sin, as Rom_6:11), but now is alive; hence the pertinence of the exhortation. The reference to a field of battle is extremely doubtful, since it introduces a new figure so soon after Rom_6:2-11.—R.] Meyer: Those who, from dead persons, have become living. We assume the figure of a field of battle. The Christians lay there as dead or slain persons, and from dead persons they became alive; therefore they can and should go over to the banner of righteousness.
And your members [καὶ τὰ μέλη ὑμῶν. Hodge paraphrases and: and especially; but καί seems to have an inferential force here.—R.] Because they have become themselves the warriors of God, they must also regard their members as God’s weapons, the weapons of righteousness for God.40
Rom_6:14. For sin shall not have dominion over you [ἁ μαρτίᾳ γὰρ ὑμῶν οὐκυριεύ ει]. The future, according to Melanchthon: dulcissima consolatio; erroneously regarded by Rosenmüller, Flatt, and others, as imperative. If we were to distinguish between the expression of confident supposition (Calov. and De Wette) and consoling promise (Chrysostom, Grotius, and Tholuck), we would prefer the former meaning, since the predominant train of thought throughout is didactic; yet the latter is also included.
For ye are not under law [οὐ γάρ ἐστεὑπὸ νόμο ν]. Notwithstanding the preceding declaration in Rom_5:20, the expression continues to be an oxymoron, since the law is recognized as a barrier to sin. The sense is: freedom from the law gives you so little freedom to sin, that it is only by the exercise of grace upon you that your freedom from sin has begun. [Meyer: “Were they under the law, Paul could not have given this promise (i. e., in the preceding clause), for the law is the strength of sin (1Co_15:56), multiplies sin (Rom_5:20), in which aspect he intends to explain it further in chap. 7.” Law is here used in its widest signification. See Hodge.—R.]
Under the dominion of grace [ὑπὸκάριν], which operates as an inward and new principle of life; while the law, as such, confronted the inward life only as an outward demand—threatening, arousing, and casting down; and in this form it presupposed the dominion of sin. Bondage under the law betokened bondage under sin, without being able to remove it; but it is removed by the dominion of grace, which has become an inward law of life. [The general idea undoubtedly is: “Ye are not under a legal dispensation, but a gracious one” (Stuart); yet the whole context forbids the exclusive reference to the method of justification. “Grace” is here used in its widest sense; “the Divine grace, shown in Christ, is the power under which ye stand” (Meyer), and which assures that ye shall not be under the dominion of sin.—”Gratia non solum peccata diluit, sed ut non peccemus facit” (Augustine).—R.]
Rom_6:15. What then? May we sin [Τί οὖν; ἁμαρτήσωμεν. See Textual Note6Vr—R.]. According to Rückert, Meyer, and others, a new section should commence here; which Tholuck is right in opposing. The unity of the following with the foregoing is the fundamental thought: freedom from sin. Also the reference to the members continues throughout what follows (Rom_6:19). There is, however, a modification. Down to Rom_6:14 the antithesis was rather an ethical demand; but now a religious confirmation predominates. There, the new life was contrasted with the old as a voluntary entrance into the military service of righteousness over against the wicked, mercenary service of sin; here, the Apostle (speaking according to human analogy) presents the obligation of a new service in contrast with the old service. In the present verse Paul therefore brings out prominently the fearful consequence of the impure Antinomian view of the state of grace, in order to condemn it forthwith. To this earnest rejection of a horrible consequence, arising so frequently in ancient and modern times, the conjunctive ἁμαρτήσωμεν corresponds better than the future. [Dr. Hodge well remarks: “Such has been the objection to the doctrines of grace in all ages. And the fact that this objection was made to Paul’s teachings, proves that his doctrine is the same with that against which the same objection is still urged.” This consideration should also prevent any limitation of “grace” to justification.—On μὴ γένοιτο, see Rom_3:4, Textual Note 6, p. 112; comp. Comm. Gal., p. 49, foot-note.—R.]
Rom_6:16. To whom ye yield yourselves. With the know ye not,41 the Apostle points to the analogy of a principle of civil law; but he gives the application in the same sentence with it. To whom you once voluntarily gave and pledged yourselves for obedience [with a view to obedience; Alford] as servants (slaves), his servants ye are, and him ye obey; be it as servants of sin unto death, &c. Thus the two services preclude each other, since the masters deny each other (Mat_6:24). According to De Wette, Philippi, and Tholuck, the emphasis rests on ἔστε; according to Meyer, on δοῦλοι. But the actual being and availing, with its consequence, is plainly the principal idea here; the being servants is at the same time connected with it. The ῷὑπακ. is explained by Reiche: to whom you have to obey. But this weakens the sense.
[Either, or. The disjunctive ἤτοι occurs only here in the New Testament. It lays special emphasis on the first alternative (Meyer). “Either this alone, or that; there is no third;” Hartung, ii. p. 356 f.—R.] The ἤτοι, ἤ, a strong either, or. Sin is personified here too. But the ὑπακοή is personified in opposition to it as the παρακοη (1Pe_1:14); and this is a beautiful expression for the Christian’s freedom in his obedience.42 Plainly, the Apostle here makes the freedom of choice precede the servum arbitrium; according to Rom_6:17, the former was bound a long time ago.
Of sin unto death [ἁμαρτίας εἰς θάνατο ν.] According to Fritzsche and Reiche, physical death is meant; but according to Meyer and Tholuck (the early view of which latter was that it is spiritual death), after Chrysostom, eternal death is spoken of. Meyer’s ground against the acceptance of physical death is that it is not the consequence of individual sin, and cannot be averted from the δοῦλος ὑπακοῆς—an argument which Tholuck accepts. But how could this occur, if there were not in earthly life a hundred-fold gradations of physical death? The death of the suicide, for example, is not to be explained simply by the fall of Adam. And thus spiritual death has its degrees also. Therefore the Apostle speaks of death in general (so also Philippi);43 as, according to 1 Corinthians 15, his thorn is sin, which has eternal death in prospect. Even the forms of the misery of sin which precede death are not to be excluded.
Of obedience unto righteousness [ὐπακοῆς εἰς δικαιοσύνην.] Meyer, just as incorrectly, presents the διχαιοσύνη as the final result for the servants of obedience, in contrast with exclusively eternal death. The righteousness of faith is certainly assumed here; but the “uprightness which is adjudged to believers in the judgment” is gradually developed to its completion from obedience as the form of the new life.44 (On the construction of this verse with Rom_6:17-18 [Rückert and Reiche], by which Rom_6:16 is the propositio major, Rom_6:17 the minor, and Rom_6:18 the conclusion. Comp. Tholuck.)45
Rom_6:17 But thanks to God, &c. [κάρις δὲτῷ Θεῷ, κ.τ.λ.]. It may be asked, whether the first proposition is a mere introduction to the second as the principal proposition, so that the thanksgiving refers merely to obedience (Grotius, Estius, and others); or whether the thanksgiving refers to both propositions (Meyer, Tholuck).46 Tholuck says, in favor of the latter view: “Since ἦτε precedes, and μέν is wanting, ἦτε must be read with all the more emphasis; as 1Co_6:11 : καὶ ταῦτα τίνες ἦτε; Eph_5:8 : ἦτε γάρ ποτε σκότος; and the immediate object of thanksgiving is that this time of the bondage to sin is past.” Evidently, the deliverance from the service of death is in itself already a satisfactory ground for praise and thanksgiving; yea, we naturally thank God for this with the greatest emotion (God be praised: delivered!), although this negative side of salvation cannot be regarded as separate from the positive.
But ye obeyed from the heart [ὑπηκούσατε δέ ἐκκαρδίας]. They were only conditionally voluntary in their bondage to sin; but they have become obedient from the very bottom of their heart.
That form of teaching whereunto ye were delivered [εἰς ὓν παρεδόθητε τύπον διδακῆς]. The simplest solution of the attraction εἰς ὃν παρεδ. is τῷ τύπω̣ τη̅ς διδαχ., εἰς ὃν παρεδόθητε.47 Explanations:
1. Christian doctrine in general (the most common). Meyer says properly to the contrary: By this the expression τύπος would not be explained. Beza, indeed, explains it: A seal under which we are placed to receive its impression.48
2. The doctrinal form of the gospel according to Paul, in opposition to anti-Paulinism (De Wette, Meyer, and others).49
3. Œcumenius, Calvin, and others, have taken the word in the sense of the ideal which the doctrine holds up. For a still more untenable explanation by Von Hengel, see Meyer.
Tholuck first repudiates the presumption of anti-Paulinism. Yet it does, indeed, come into consideration, so far as it judaistically obscured the Pauline doctrine of free grace. Tholuck is then inclined to accept the explanation of Beza, and says “that it is by no means a common expression ‘to be delivered to a doctrine,’ even if, with Chrysostom and Olshausen, we consider at the same time the guidance of God as the active factor.” But the Apostle says, in Gal_1:6, what he holds concerning this type of doctrine in opposition to its obscurations.
God himself has committed them to this school of faith.
Παρεδόθητε is not middle (Fritzsche), but passive. [Winer, p. 245, seems to justify the change to the active form which the E. V. adopts, but there is a good reason for the choice of the passive, viz., the activity of God in committing them to this type of teaching. This thought appropriately follows “Thanks to God.” So Meyer, comp. Philippi.—R.] It follows, from what has been said, that the Church was already won over by the Apostle’s friends to the Pauline form of the gospel. But here the matter treated of is the essential element; the true energy of freedom from the law is the true energy of life in obedience unto righteousness.
Rom_6:18 And being made free from sin [ἐλευθερωθέντε ςδ έἀπὸ τῆς ἁμαρτίας. Aorist participle, referring to the definite act of deliverance. The clause stands in close connection with Rom_6:17, not as a conclusion (since οὖν would occur in that case), but rather as an expansion.—R.]. The δέ leads us to emphasize the expression: ye are enslaved, or made servants, &c. From the nature of the case, they knew the negative past—free from sin—earlier and better than this full consequence: ye became the servants of righteousness.
Rom_6:19. I speak after the manner of men. The ἀνθρώπινον is analogous to the κατ’ ἄνθρω πον in Rom_3:5.50 By slavery, which was in full bloom in Rome, the Apostle clearly explains to them the absolute force of the new principle of life.
Because of the infirmity of your flesh [διὰ τὴν ἀσθένειαν τῆςσάρκος ὑμῶν]. The flesh, or the sensuous and susceptible fulness of the body, is not only negatively weak, but also positively diseased and disturbed, both of which facts are expressed by the ἀσθένεια. It may be asked, however, whether the Apostle means here the weakness of intelligence arising from this infirmity, by which he was compelled to represent to them the highest liberty under the figure of servitude (Bengel, Meyer, and De Wette, with reference to 1Co_3:1); or whether he meant their practical infirmity. The first view—that is, the reference to intelligence—appears also in the intimation that the Apostle announces a popular explanation (Vatable, Ernesti, and Rosenmüller). The latter view is favored by Origen, Chrysostom, Theodoret, Calvin, &c.: “I require nothing which your fleshly weakness could not do,” or the like. The thought here could not be unintelligible to the Roman Christians; therefore the practical reference by all means preponderates; but not in the sense already given: “I require of you nothing too difficult; I require only the degree of obedience which you formerly rendered to sin.” The Apostle’s thought can rather be explained by what follows: “Yield your members servants,” &c. That is, even if, in your spiritual life, you feel that you are as freemen, you must nevertheless restrain your members strictly in discipline and obedience on account of the infirmity of your flesh. With all freedom, the question in reference to the bodily members is an appropriate ascetic discipline, such as the Apostle exercised in reference to his own body (1Co_9:27; comp. Gal_5:24); and therefore the figurative form of his expression does not merely correspond to the antithesis as denoting an unlimited obedience, but is established in a more special sense as the requirement of a strict discipline. This view obviates Meyer’s reminder: λέγω cannot mean require. The Apostle does not express a requirement, but a principle; by which analogy the Christian, in his freedom, has to make his bodily life absolutely subject. Lachmann [apparently Olshausen] and Fritzsche unjustifiably make a parenthesis of this clause, ἀνθρώπινον, κ.τ.λ..
[With Bengel, Olshausen, De Wette, Hodge, Alford, and many others, I am disposed to give a decided preference to the first view, viz., that this clause refers to what precedes. Commentators differ as to the force of the terms, but the following positions seem most tenable. Infirmity means intellectual weakness, growing out of their carnal condition (σάρκος, gen. auctoris.) The ethical reference is in σάρξ, not in ἀσθένεια. On σάρξ, see chap. 7.—R.]
For as ye have rendered your members [ὥσπερ γαρ παρεστήσατε τὰμέληὑμῶν. is explicative (Tholuck, Meyer). Δοῦλα, used as an adjective, only here in New Testament (Hodge).—R.] To servitude. The apparently free pleasure was, in fact, a hard bondage under sin.—To uncleanness [τῇ ἀκαθαρσίᾳ.] We hold that ὰκαθαρσία has especial reference to the heathen portion (according to chap. 1.), and to iniquity, ὰνομία, on the contrary, to the Jewish portion (according to chap. 2). Meyer makes this distinction: ἀκαθ. is sin as ethically defiling man; and ἀνομ. is sin as violation of the Divine law. Spener, De Wette, and others, distinguish thus: Uncleanness as defilement of themselves and of sin toward others. Tholuck considers ἀκαθ. as species, and ἀνομία as the generalizing genus of sin. But the genus is declared in what follows. The ἀχαθ., or fleshly sin in the narrower sense, and the ἀνομία, or violations of the law in the narrower sense, converge in the ἀνομία in the wider sense in guilt and condemnation before the law—which constitute the antithesis to ἁγιασμός. Therefore the explanation of unto iniquity,51 εἰς τὴν ἀνομ., as from one sin to others, is incorrect (Œcumenius, Erasmus, Luther, and Grotius). The duality of the service of sin is worthy of note: a service in part to uncleanness and in part to insubordination. This could not be the case (according to the axiom that no man can serve two masters) if both were not connected.
Even so now render your members as servants to righteousness unto sanctification [οὕτως νῦν παραστήσατε τὰ μέλη ὑμῶν δοῦλα τῇ δικαιοσυνῃε ἰς ἁγιασμόν]. Righteousness, as the new principle of life, should bear unconditional sway over the members; holiness should be the end and result. Meyer translates ἁγιασμός, holiness. To present holiness. Even Tholuck does not understand the word to mean an effort to be holy. He refers to Rom_6:22; but there ἁγιασμός is still distinct from the τέλος as movement toward the τέλος. He then quotes Heb_12:1-4. But this passage does not decide positively for the expression holiness. For completed holiness is not the preliminary condition for beholding the Lord, but its fruit. But, according to this very passage, ἁγιασμός cannot mean a striving; otherwise we would have to translate: strive after the striving of holiness. The expressions quoted by Tholuck from Basil and Œcumenius do not both prove the same thing. Œcumenius understands by the word, absolute purity; Basil, thorough consecration to the holy God. And this is the sense, ̔Αγιασμός means, first of all, the act of consecration (“According to Bleek, on Heb_12:14, it does not occur among the classics; but Dion. Halic., Rom_1:21, as in the Sept., has it of acts of consecration;” Tholuck), then the condition of being consecrated, or of holiness—an idea which does not perfectly coincide with the idea of completed holiness, and in which there is at once expressed the constant ethical movement, rather than a substantial and quiescent condition.
[On the lexical grounds Lange advances, sanctification is the preferable meaning—one which accords with the context. The issue (not, the end; the use of the phrase in Rom_6:22 is against this) is sanctification, which indeed results in perfect holiness, but comes into view here rather as a progressive state than as an ultimate one. Undoubtedly righteousness describes the principle, and ἁγι. the actual condition (Philippi), but in the sense given by Lange above. Meyer says the word always means holiness—never sanctification—in the New Testament. Compare, on the contrary, Bengel, Rom_1:4.—R.]
Rom_6:20. For when ye were servants of sin [ὅτε γὰρ δοῦλοι ἧτε τῆς ἁμαρτίας]. According to Fritzsche, the γάρ indicates the elucidation of Rom_6:19; but according to Meyer and Tholuck, it announces the establishing of it. It is, however, rather a continued elucidation of the preceding than an establishment of what follows.52 The Apostle answers the question: wherefore should the service of righteousness be a bond-service? Answer: because ye, who were formerly the servants of sin, became free in relation to righteousness. They were not the freemen of righteousness, as though it had made them free, but in relation to it; therefore the dative. The argument lies in the necessity of the complete reversion of the earlier relation. Since sin and righteousness preclude each other, they were free in relation to righteousness, because they were the bondmen of sin. Therefore, since they have now become free from sin, they must be the bondmen of righteousness. The fearful expression, free as regards righteousness [ἐλεύθεροι ἦτεͅ τῇ δικαιοσύνη, dative of reference], does not mean that righteousness had no claims upon you (Tholuck), but that it had no part in you.53 According to Koppe and Reiche, this is ironical; a position opposed by Meyer, and now also by Tholuck. There is certainly nothing ironical in the sentence, but there is in the word ἐλεύθεροι. For we can no more accept it in a strict sense, than that they should be the slaves of righteousness. As this latter bondage is not only freedom, but also spontaneity, so was that freedom the deepest slavery. [That was a sorrowful freedom! Why find irony, then?—R.]
Rom_6:21. What fruit had ye then therefore? Things whereof ye are now ashamed [τίνα οὖν καρπὸν εἴχετε τότε; ἐφ’ οἷς νῦν ἐπαισχύνεσθε. See Textual Note 10.—R.]. Here are two divergent constructions:
1. The question closes with τότε. Then follows the answer. (Thus the Pesh., Theodore of Mopsvestia, Theodoret, Erasmus, Luther, and many others, down to De Wette, Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Philippi.) [So Alford, Webster and Wilkinson.]
2. The question continues to ἐπαισχύνεσθε. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? Answer: None; for the final result of them (these things) is death (thus Chrysostom, Œcumenius, Beza, Calov., Grotius, &c.; Bengel, Meyer). [So Stuart, Hodge, Wordsworth.]
3. Reiche, in conjunction with the latter construction, explains thus: What deeds, of which ye are now ashamed, proceeded from your service of sin (namely, your bringing forth fruit)? This third construction is utterly untenable; χαρπός would then recur as plural in ἐφ̓ οἷς, and χαρπ. ἔχειν would mean: to bring forth fruit.
There are the following reasons against Meyer’s explanation: 1. First of all, he must insert an ἐχείνων before ἐφ’ οἷς, and introduce a negation into the question, in order to explain the form of the answer, τὸ γάρ, &c. 2. The question is, What fruit had ye then? not, What will ye have finally? 3. After the antithesis, it should be made emphatic that they had formerly no fruit, but rather pernicious and horrible deceptions, but that now they bring forth their fruit. 4. By Meyer’s construction, ἐφ’ οἷς νῦν ἐπαισχύνεσθε would be converted into an enervating remark. Meyer says, against explanation No. Rom_1:1. According to Rom_6:22, the question, in antithesis to Rom_6:21, is the having the fruit, and not the quality of it. This is wrong: the χαρπός is qualified, εἰς ἁγια·σμόν. 2. Paul must have written τίασ χαρπούς or ἐφ̓ ὧ̣; as if the metaphorical idea of fruit, or gain, could not be represented in a variety of things. 3. Paul never ascribes χαρπούς to immorality; he attributes ἔργα to it (Gal_5:19); he predicates χαρπός of only what is good (Gal_5:22; Eph_5:9; Php_1:11); indeed, he even designates the ἔργα τοῦ σχότους as ἄχαρπα. But the Apostle says the same thing here, when he asks, What fruit had ye then? He even denies that they had real fruit—the true gain of life. On the other hand, they reaped, instead of true fruit, base deceptions, things of which they are now ashamed, and in which their future death is announced. Comp. Gal_6:8. Tholuck thinks that between the two constructions there is no demonstrative decision.
For the end of those things is death [τὸ μὲν γὰρ τέλος ἐχείνων θάνατος]. Death must be understood here in its complete and comprehensive meaning; not eternal death exclusively (Meyer).
Meyer, with Lachmann, accepts μέν, and translates: for the end is indeed death; but without observing that this contradicts his own construction of the passage. It is only on the first construction that μέν has any meaning. [See Textual Note11. Having already accepted μέν on diplomatic and critical grounds, before carefully considering the exegetical results, I am now disposed to insist upon retaining it, and using it as decisive in regard to the construction of the verse.—R.]
Rom_6:22. But now having been made free from sin [νμνὶ δὲ ἐλευθερωθέντες ἀπὸ τῆς ἁμαρτίας]. The evil relation has been completely reversed by faith.—And become servants to God [δουλωθέντες δὲ τῷ θεῷ Notice the definiteness of the aorist participles.—R.]. God himself here takes the place of διχαιοσύνη, for their relation is now one of personal love.—Ye have your fruit unto sanctification [ἔχετε τὸν καρπόν ὑμῶν εἰς ἁγιασμόν. The present indicates fruit already. The sense: have your reward, seems unjustifiable here. Εἰς is consecutive here (Meyer), as I hold it to be in Rom_6:19 also. ̔ Αγιασμὸν, sanctification, as above, a progressive state, the immediate issue of the fruit of their personal relation to God, the final issue follows.—R.] They have fruit already in this new relation. Meyer: the χαινότης ζωῆς, Rom_6:4.—Or the peace, Rom_5:1. But as, in the Old Testament, the firstlings served for the ἁγιασμός so, in the New Testament, this is done by the whole fruit of the life of faith. Tholuck translates here also: holiness [without excluding the idea of sanctification, however.—R.]
And the end everlasting life [τὸ δὲ τέλος ζωὴν αἰώνιον]. That is, ye have everlasting life. Meyer says, this possession is still an ideal one. It is rather an essential one; Joh_3:36; Mat_5:8; Heb_12:14; 1Jn_3:2. [We must take “life” here in its most extended sense, as “death” in Rom_6:21. Meyer’s difficulty arises from his limiting the meaning of these two words throughout. We have already eternal life in germ; in its fulness it is the τέλος of all our fruit and fruitfulness. Not, however, by natural, inherent laws of development. The next verse sets forth anew the two ends, and the inherent difference.—R.]
Rom_6:23. For the wages of sin is death [τὰ γὰρ ὀψώνια τῆς ἁμαρτίας θάνατος]. Tholuck: “̓͂ Οψώνιον, and in the plural ὀψώνια, wages of the servant and the soldier; therefore possibly, though not necessarily, a continuation of the figure of military service; comp. ὅπλα, Rom_6:13. Under this supposition, Grotius, Bengel, and Wetstein made χάρισμα to mean the donationum militare. Yet the technical word for such a gift is ἡἐπίδοσις (Fritzsche).” The figurative character of the antithesis lies in the fact that sin pays its soldiers and slaves miserable wages (Erasmus: ὀψώνια, vile verbum), namely, death; but God (as King) pays His children and servants, not a reward, but the honor-gift of His favor, which is eternal life. Tholuck defines the antithesis thus: as far as sin is concerned, her due is according to justice; but, on the other hand, what is received by the believing acceptance of God’s saving blessings can be regarded only as a gift—namely, the imparting of salvation, the eternal completion of life. This antithesis is correct so far as it is not pushed beyond the proper measure, so that justice does not appear as mere arbitrary authority. In the present passage, however, this antithesis recedes; for the question is not concerning the righteous punishment of sin, but the way in which sin itself, regarded as false dominion, pays the reward. The gift of God also, at all events, presupposes the merit of believers, but yet remains a gift, because the whole idea of gain falls to the ground where merit is not considered, and where even the preliminary conditions of good conduct are bestowed as a gift.54 For the idea of wages, see 1Co_9:7. “The plural (more usual than the singular) may be explained from the manifold elements of original natural reward, and from the numerous coins of later money-wages;” Meyer.
In Christ Jesus our Lord [ἐν Χριστῷ Ιησοῦ τῷ κυρίω̣ ἡμῶν. Stuart follows the inexact sense of the E. V.: “through the redemption or atonement of Christ.” True; but not what Paul says here. In Christ Jesus is an expression which has a full, rich meaning of its own. In this case, we may ask whether the phrase limits God, or gift of God, or is used more generally. Meyer says: in Christ it rests, is causally founded, that the gift of God is eternal life. Webster and Wilkinson: in Him, by virtue of His relation to Deity, God is the giver; in Him, we, as united with Him, having an interest in Him, are recipients.—R.]. He is not only the source, but also the central treasure of our eternal life.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. It is certainly not accidental that the word to rule, βασιλεύειν, occurs so frequently in the Epistle to the Romans (Rom_5:14; Rom_5:17; Rom_5:21; Rom_6:12); likewise the word weapons, ὅπλα, here, and in Rom_13:12. See the Exeg. Notes, where reference is made to the Apostle’s similar allusions to local relations in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, as well as in the Epistle to the Ephesians. His epistles in general abound in these evidences of truth to life. In the Epistle to the Galatians, for example, we see very plainly the Galatian fickleness; in the Epistles to the Corinthians, we see the city of Corinth portrayed; and in the Epistle to the Colossians, the Phrygian popular spirit, &c. Such evidences of authenticity are regarded by the critics of Baur’s school as mere cobwebs, while they convert cobwebs of the barest probability into important and decisive evidence.
2. In this section the Apostle passes from the figure of military service to that of servitude, in order to portray, in every relation, Christian freedom in its contrast with the bondage of man in sin.
3. On Rom_6:12. The despotic dominion of sin in the mortal body of the unregenerate, is an ethical copy of physical demoniacal possession. Sin, as a foreign force, has penetrated the individual life, and riots there as lord and master. Christianity now consists essentially in raising the shield of the Spirit against this usurping despotism, in the power of the triumph, dominion, and fellowship of Christ.
4. Rom_6:13. If the real Christian should again serve sin, his conduct would be a voluntary, cowardly, and inexcusable surrender of his arms to a hostile power already overthrown. But, according to the Apostle’s view, the whole life of humanity is a moral struggle of the spirit between righteousness and unrighteousness, in which all the human members are arms that contend for either righteousness or unrighteousness. Man, physiologically regarded, is born naked, without weapons or arms; ethically considered, he is “armed to the teeth;” his members have throughout the significance of moral arms.
5. The conclusion made by non-legal impurity, that sin is made free, because we are not under law, but under grace, is reversed by Paul, who says that, for this reason, sin is to be regarded as abrogated and excluded. The law does not make sinners, but it suits sinners; bondage under the law corresponds to bondage under sin, and the law cannot annul this bondage. To him who stands under the law, his own inmost nature is still a strange form; for the inmost nature, in its living character, signifies the inwardness of the law, freedom from the letter of the law, liberty. To be estranged from one’s self is, therefore, to be still in the bondage of sin, and therefore under that of the law also, as the foreign form of the inmost norms of life. But in grace, man has become at once free from sin and the law, because by grace he has come to himself (Luk_15:15), and because it has written the law, as the word of the Spirit, on his heart.55 On the power of sin, see Tholuck, p. 313; on the nova obedientia, p. 314.
6. On Rom_6:16. Life is throughout a consequence of an established principle, either for death or for life, whether man may have made this principle—his self-determination—more or less clear to himself. Christianity is a thoroughly synthetical view of life—a view of life in its grand, complete, and fundamental relations. Adam, Christ—the state of bond age, the state of freedom, &c.
7. On Rom_6:17. When the Apostle thanks God that the Romans have not merely become Christians in a general sense, but have become obedient to the doctrinal form of the freedom of the gospel from the law, the application of this to the evangelical confession lies very near. The Apostle speaks here of definite doctrinal types, not so much in the formal as in the material sense. The antithesis is judaizing Christianity.
8. On Rom_6:19-20. That the members should be servants to righteousness, is not merely a figurative expression arising from the antithesis that they were enslaved to sin. Rather, this is a demand which follows from the fact that, in consequence of serving sin, they are afflicted with weakness of the flesh; and therefore, notwithstanding the freedom of the Christian spirit—yea, by virtue of it—the morbid and blunted natural forces, the animal natures, must be subjected, watched over, and controlled. Augustine teaches that the little tree, which has grown crooked on one side, is thereby stretched so that it can be bent a little toward the other side.
9. The fruit of the service of sin is first of all represented in bitter disappointments, confusion, disgrace, and shame; finally, in death. The reward of sin is, from its very nature, the low wages for slavish or military service, and in addition to this, further contemptible pay, viz., death. How glorious does the honorable gift of eternal life appear in comparison with this wretched reward! See the Exeg. Notes. We must here reject the exaggerations of the idea of gracious retribution, as well on the side of arbitrary authority as on the side of reward. In human relations, gain is a lower form than merit; but the donation goes far beyond the merit, since it, as the gift of personal magnanimity, will more than outweigh the work of personal worth. Everywhere in the kingdom of love, to say nothing of the kingdom of grace, all idea of merit falls to the ground; but the appropriateness of the reward to the dignity of the child and the worthiness of the servant, which are bestowed by God and religiously and morally appropriated, do not fall to the ground. Grace is not thereby so glorified that it is absolved from justice.56 On the ζωὴ αἰώνιος, see Comm. on the Gospel of Joh_3:15.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
The well-established apostolical admonition to a moral course of life: 1. To whom is it directed? 2. What does it require? 3. By what is it established?—Our body is mortal (Rom_6:12).—In whose service should our members be? 1. Not in the service of unrighteousness; but, 2. In the service of righteousness (Rom_6:13).—In which service do our weapons hold out better? 1. Many believe in the service of unrighteousness; but there they are destroyed; 2. Christian experience teaches, on the other hand, that it is in the service of righteousness, for there they remain untouched (Rom_6:13).—Under the law there is death, but under grace there is life (Rom_6:14).—Law and grace.
Should we sin, since we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid! Because freedom from the law is (1) not lawlessness, but (2) obedience to righteousness [comp. Luther’s work, on the Freedom of a Christian Man], (Rom_6:15-23).—What is it to be obedient in heart to the form of doctrine with which we are connected? 1. Not only to be orthodox, but also believing (Rom_6:17).—The form of apostolical doctrine. 1. What must we understand thereby? (The Apostle Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith.) 2. How far is this form of importance for us? (Rom_6:17).—Christian preachers should never forget to so speak after the manner of men that everybody can understand, Rom_3:5 (Rom_6:19).—The fruits of serving sin and serving God: 1. The fruit of the former is death; 2. The fruit of the latter is eternal life (Rom_6:21).—What is the fruit of sin? 1. A fruit of which one must be ashamed; 2. One whose end is death (Rom_6:21).—What is the fruit of righteousness? 1. One of holiness; 2. One whose end is eternal life.—The precious fruit of holiness. It is not only to be regarded as (1) lovely, but (2) it makes wise, and joyous, and blessed (Rom_6:21-22).—Death, and eternal life. 1. The former is the wages of sin; the latter is God’s gift in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Luther: In His death, that even we should die like Him. Observe that believers have still wicked lusts in the flesh, which they do not obey (Rom_6:12).—So long as grace rules, the conscience remains free and controls sin in the flesh; but without grace, sin rules, and the law condemns the conscience (Rom_6:14).
Starke: Sin still arises even in the regenerate, and they can again fall under its dominion; therefore they need the warning (Rom_6:12).—The pious are never without law, and yet not under the law, but in it (Rom_6:14).—Whoever still permits sin to rule over him, cannot be under grace (Rom_6:14).—To be a servant of sin, is the greatest misery; but to have been a servant of sin is the greatest blessedness (Rom_6:17).—Justification impels, moves, and powerfully awakens toward the exercise of godliness; Psa_130:5 (Rom_6:18).
Hedinger: To have piety from compulsion, fear, or politeness, in order to please others, or through one’s own inclination, desire, praise, and advantage, was the delusion and bondage of Ishmael. The children of God are not under the law; 1Jn_4:18 (Rom_6:15).—Christians are not libertines, who can do what they please: they are servants, but servants of God! But where are such servants? How great is their number? Servants of court, fashion, passion, men, the state, self, and the devil, can be seen in abundance.
Cramer: We shall never have a better fate than Paul, all of whose words have been perverted, misinterpreted, and made sinful.—Nothing is more becoming in a servant than obedience. Because we are now the servants of God, we must be steadfastly obedient from the heart until the end, according to God’s word, and not according to our own notion (Rom_6:16).—Quesnel: As the heart is, so is the use of the body. He serves the Lord who has chosen Him from the heart. A true Christian dedicates himself wholly to God, his heart by love, and his body by good works (Rom_6:13).—O blessed servitude with which we serve God! The service of men makes miserable people; but the service of God makes us saints in time and kings in eternity; Isa_14:3 (Rom_6:22).—Müller: God will have no compulsory service; a willing heart is the best offering; in the weak flesh a willing spirit, in the small work a great will; Psa_110:3 (Rom_6:19).—He who is free from righteousness has no part in Christ (Rom_6:20).—As the fruit grows from the seed, so does ignominy grow from sin, outwardly before the world and inwardly in the conscience before God (see Rom_6:21).
Spener: Earnest and true Christianity consists herein: although sin is present, it does not reign (Rom_6:12).—We dare not think, that though the wages of sin is death, Christ has redeemed us from death, so that it will not finally injure us. For the redemption wrought by Christ will not help us any, if we do not become obedient to Him (Rom_6:23).
Gerlach: The body, with its impulses and members, is like a house full of arms or implements, for war or every kind of labor. In the service of sin, these members, the sinful impulses, then become themselves members unto sin (Rom_6:13).—The servitude of obedience is also true freedom (Rom_6:17).—Since, by the gospel, man becomes a servant as well as a freeman, license is just as much excluded as slavish obedience to a foreign power (Rom_6:18).—If righteousness, so rules in us that all our members become its instruments, they will work together for the increase of our holiness (Rom_6:19).—A single glance at the fruit and the reward of sin must fill the Christian with shame, and therefore with abhorrence of the false freedom which abuses grace (Rom_6:21).—The perfect sanctification of man in body and soul is also his true, eternal life; for by the perfect communion of his whole nature with the Fountain of all life, God himself pervades him spiritually and bodily with the fulness of everlasting life (Rom_6:22).
Lisco: Earnest admonition to holiness of life (Rom_6:12-23): 1. Its import (Rom_6:12-14); 2. The impulse to a more zealous sanctification is the grace of redemption (Rom_6:15-23).
Heubner: Freedom from the law is not liberty to sin, or lawlessness (Rom_6:15).—In Christianity, the law of the letter, with its worldly power, does not rule, but the free law of love (Rom_6:15).—Obedience, the practice of God’s will, awakens in us increasingly the spiritual power of life, and obtains spiritual health (Rom_6:16).—Purity and beauty of soul arise only from sinlessness (Rom_6:19).—The remembrance of earlier sins never becomes wholly effaced, but, 1. It keeps the converted person humble and watchful; it awakens, 2. thankfulness for the love and grace of God; 3. sympathy for others.
Besser: Believers are servants of righteousness (Rom_6:12-23).—Unrighteousness is a tyrannical master, who does not release his slaves according to their pleasure, but drives them ever farther from God’s commandments (Rom_6:19).—Servitium Dei summa libertas (Rom_6:19.)—The wages of sin is as manifold as the wages with which a general rewards his soldiers (bread, clothing, money); but its sum is death, empty death.
Lange: The service of sin, at first apparently a voluntary life of warfare, but afterwards plainly a mercenary condition, and finally a state of slavery.—The fearful self-deception in surrendering one’s self to sin: 1. At the outset, slavery instead of freedom; 2. In continuance, always backward instead of forward; 3. Finally, death instead of life.—Voluntary return to bondage is the deepest guilt of sin.—Real death is explained by its opposite. It is not contrasted with the present, but with eternal life.—Eternal life as the fruit of the true service of God in righteousness: 1. As redemption; 2. As gift.
[Tillotson: Sin is the blindness of our minds, the perverseness and crookedness of our wills, and the monstrous irregularity and disorder of our affections and appetites, the misplacing of our powers and faculties, and the setting of our wills and passions above our reason; all which is ugly and unnatural; and, if we were truly sensible of it, a matter of great shame and reproach to us.—Burkitt: Sin, as a raging and commanding king, has the sinner’s heart for its throne, the members of the body for its service, the world, the flesh, and the devil for its grand council, lusts and temptations for its weapons and armory; and its fortifications are ignorance, sensuality, and fleshly reasonings.—Death, as the punishment of sin, is the end of the work, though not the end of the worker.—Grotius: It is the nature of all vices to grow upon a person by repetition.—Clarke: Let God have your hearts, and, with them, your heads, your hands, and your feet. Think and devise what is pure; speak what is true, edifying, just, and good; and walk steadily in the way that leads to everlasting felicity.—Every sinner has a daily pay, and this pay is death.—The sinner has a hell in his own bosom; all is confusion and disorder where God does not reign. If men were as much in earnest to get their souls saved as they are to prepare them for perdition, heaven would be highly peopled; and devils would have to be their own companions.—Hodge: The motive to obedience is now love, and its aim the glory of God.—When a man is the slave of sin, he commonly thinks himself free; and, when most degraded, is often the most proud. When truly free, he feels himself most strongly bound to God, and when most elevated, is most humble.—J. F. H.]
Footnotes:
[28] Rom_6:12.—[The correct reading seems to be: ὑπακούειν ταῖς ἔπιθ υμίαιςαὐτοῦ, found in א. A. B. C1., many cursives, most versions and fathers; adopted by Lachmann, Tischendorf, Meyer, Alford et al. Griesbach, on insufficient authority, omits all after ὑπακούειν. D. F. insert αὐτῇ, omitting the rest. C3. K. L., some further insert αὐτῇ ἐν before ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις. So Rec.; hence it in of the E. V. All these variations are accounted for by Meyer, who supposes that αὐτῇ was added, first as a marginal gloss, to direct attention to sin as the source of “the lusts,” then incorporated in the text, and subsequent changes made to avoid confusion.
[29]Rom_6:13.—[The idea of military service found in παριστάνετε is better expressed by render, since yield implies a previous resistance, not found in the Apostle’s thought.
[30]Rom_6:13.—[To is the better rendering of the simple datives here, as in Rom_6:19. Unto has a telic force, which makes it equivalent to εἰς. This distinction is preserved in Rom_6:19, but lost sight of by the English translators here.
[31]Rom_6:13.—[As being alive from the dead (Amer. Bible Union) is a good version of ὡσεὶ ἐκ νεκρῶν ζῶντας; but the paraphrase of Alford: as alive from having been dead, conveys the full meaning. Still better is the Revision by Five Anglican Clergymen: as those that were dead, and are alive.
[32]Rom_6:14.—[The article of the E. V. is not only unnecessary, since the Greek phrase is ὑπὸ νόμον, but perhaps incorrect; for the reference may be to “law” in general, rather than to “the (Mosaic) law.” So in Rom_6:15.
[33]Rom_6:15.—[The reading ἁμαρτήσ ο μεν (Rec.) is weakly supported. א. A. B. C. D. E. K. L., have ἁμαρτή σωμεν; adopted by Lachmann, Tischendorf, Meyer, and others. This is the deliberative subjunctive; hence: “may we sin.”
[34]Rom_6:17.—[Teaching is preferable to doctrine. See Exeg. Notes.
[35]Rom_6:17.—[To which ye were delivered, εἰς ὂν παρεδ όθητε, is literal, and corresponds with the figure implied in τύπον.—The full stop of the E. V. is unnecessary, as the next verse is closely connected with this one. The form of Rom_6:18 is altered, to make this connection more obvious.
[36]Rom_6:19.—[Ἁγιασμόν may mean holiness, Heiligkeit, or sanctification, Heiligung. Bengel, however, discriminates between ἁγιότης and ἁγιασμός, the former “holiness,” the latter “sanctification.” See i. 4, p. 62, and Exeg. Notes, where Lange contends for the latter meaning here (against Meyer).
[37]Rom_6:21.—[Lange adopts the punctuation of Lachmann, Griesbach, and many others, placing the interrogation after τότε, and making what follows the answer. A great array of authorities can be cited in support of each way of pointing, but this seems to give a better sense to καρπός. Comp. Alford in loco.
[38]Rom_6:21.—[א3. B. D. F1., Lachmann, Meyer, Alford, insert μέν before γάρ. Wordsworth does not insert it in his text, but favors it in his notes. It is omitted by א1. A. C. D3. K. L. It seems more probable that it was carelessly omitted by some transcribers than inserted for any special reason.
[39]Rom_6:23.—[The E. V. again loses the point of the closing phrase, by rendering ἐν, through. The life is emphatically in Christ Jesus our Lord. Hence perhaps Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ.—R.]
[40][The German commentators generally take the second τῷ Θεῷ as dat. commodi, and render für Gott. They advance no special reason for it. This view unnecessarily disturbs the parallelism of the clauses, since the second τῷ θεῷ is in strict verbal contrast with τῇ ἁμαρτία. The first τῷ θεῷ is undoubtedly the simple dative after παριστήσατε, but as the same verb must be supplied in this clause, it seems unnecessary to substitute any other regimen here. We render to God in both clauses; the more confidently, since the second clause is but a particularization of the first, to carry out the antithesis. Comp. Stuart.—R.]
[41][Stuart: “I take it for granted that ye know and believe.” Jowett paraphrases thus: “Know ye not that what ye make yourselves, ye are?” This view he takes to avoid tautology, yet this seems to depart from the Apostle’s line of thought.—R.]
[42][Forbes calls attention to the deviation from the strict parallelism in this verse: “of obedience unto righteousness,” instead of “of righteousness unto life.” He intimates that thus Paul marks this distinction: To sin we give ourselves of our own free choice and power as bondsmen, but we cannot of our own free choice, and by any effort of will, give ourselves to the service of righteousness; hence all we can do is to yield ourselves up to God’s grace, to save us, as servants of obedience, for or unto righteousness, as a “gift” to be bestowed upon us, and inwrought into us by His Spirit. He also notices that the direct expression: servants to righteousness does not occur until Rom_6:19—the caution being attributable to anxiety lest such an expression be turned to legalistic account.—R.]
[43][De Wette: “Sündenelend überhaupt.” So Alford: “The state of misery induced by sin, in all its awful aspects and consequences.” The wider view is necessary, since the word occurs frequently, in the remainder of the chapter and in chap. 7., in such a connection that a limitation is unfortunate. Meyer’s exegesis is hampered throughout by his view of θάνατος.—R.]
[44][Prof. Stuart here also confounds δικαιοσύνη with δικαίωσις, and unfortunately paraphrases: obedience which is unto justification. This is open to lexical as well as theological objections. Δικ. is subjective (Hodge).—R.]
[45][Tholuck agrees with Meyer, who takes Rom_6:16 as the major, Rom_6:17 as the minor, but regards the conclusion as self-evident, and hence not expressed.—R.]
[46][So Philippi, Hodge, Alford, and modem commentators generally, taking the first clause as meaning: that it is over. Wordsworth, however, finds here “a mode of speaking, where a bad thing is represented as comparatively good, so that the superiority of what is contrasted with it may appear more clear.” This seems totally irrelevant.—R.]
[47][Stuart prefers to find no attraction, since ὑπακούειν governs the accusative, but there seems to be a modification of the meaning in such cases. On the grammatical difficulty, see Meyer in loco, Winer, p. 155.—R.]
[48][Wordsworth thus carries out the metaphor of the verse: “You readily obeyed the mould of Christian Faith and Practice, into which, at your baptism, you were poured, as it were, like soft, ductile and fluent metal, in order to be cast, and take its form. You obeyed this mould; you were not rigid and obstinate, but were plastic and pliant, and assumed it readily.”—R.]
[49][Adopting this view in the main, we prefer teaching to doctrine. The latter is more abstract, but the reference here seems to be to definite forms of instruction.—R.]
[50][Hodge: “The former characterizes as human the thing said, and the other the manner of saying it.” Comp. Meyer, however.—This apologetic form of expression concerns the description of “true freedom” as a δουλεία.—R.]
[51][A question arises as to the exact meaning of the phrase εἰς τὴν ἀ νομίαν. It may mean, for the purpose of iniquity—i.e., in order to work iniquity (Stuart, Hodge, Meyer), in order that this shall be actually presented, or issuing in iniquity, ἀν indicating the resultant state (Tholuck, De Wette, Alford, Lange). The latter is preferable, because the word seems to refer to a state rather than an act. Besides, its antithesis is εἰς ἁγιασμίν, which indicates the result, as we infer from its use in Rom_6:22.—R.]
[52][The difficult connection of the verse is satisfactorily explained in Webster and Wilkinson: “γάρ restates the view given of their former condition in respect to sin and righteousness, in preparation for the final and most accurate statement of their present spiritual condition (Rom_6:22).” Meyer (who has changed his views), in 4th ed., also finds in this verse a preparation for the full statement of a motive for obeying the precept of Rom_6:19. He groups Rom_6:20-22 as one in thought, calling attention, however, to the somewhat tragical force of our verse, with its emphatic words in the parallel clauses.—R.]
[53][Stuart: “counted yourselves free.” This is an implied irony, and objectionable, for it is not strictly true.—R.]
[54][On χάρισμα, see Rom_5:15 ff.—The antithesis is different here, yet related—there, fall, transgression; here, wages, but of sin.—R.]
[55][Stuart: “Christians are placed in a condition of which grace is the prominent feature: grace to sanctify as well as grace to renew the heart; grace to purify the evil affections; grace to forgive offences though often repeated, and thus to save from despair, and to excite to new efforts of obedience. Viewed in this light, there is abundant reason for asserting that Christians, under a system of grace, will much more effectually throw off the dominion of sin, than they would do if under a mere law dispensation.” Yet, if there be one point where there is most obscurity in the minds of the majority of professing Christians, it is here. That it has largely arisen from an obscuration of the doctrine of sanctification by grace, or rather the unwise sundering of justification and sanctification in discussing this Epistle, is painfully true.—R.]
[56][It is well to note here the saying of Augustine: Gratia non erit gratia ullo modo, nisi sit gratuita omni modo; “Grace is not grace in any sort, if it be not free in every sort.—R.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv3–23 Know ye not, that so many of us as…
Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ--compare Co1 10:2.
were baptized into his death?--sealed with the seal of heaven, and as it were formally entered and articled, to all the benefits and all the obligations of Christian discipleship in general, and of His death in particular. And since He was "made sin" and "a curse for us" (Co2 5:21; Gal 5:13), "bearing our sins in His own body on the tree," and "rising again for our justification" (Rom 4:25; Pe1 2:24), our whole sinful case and condition, thus taken up into His Person, has been brought to an end in His death. Whoso, then, has been baptized into Christ's death has formally surrendered the whole state and life of sin, as in Christ a dead thing. He has sealed himself to be not only "the righteousness of God in Him," but "a new creature"; and as he cannot be in Christ to the one effect and not to the other, for they are one thing, he has bidden farewell, by baptism into Christ's death, to his entire connection with sin. "How," then, "can he live any longer therein?" The two things are as contradictory in the fact as they are in the terms.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 23 3. Baptized into Jesus Christ—Of this self-consecrating act of…
3. Baptized into Jesus Christ—Of this self-consecrating act of faith baptism is the external manifestation and profession. The apostle, therefore, holds that our act of baptism consecrates us into Christ, as if our persons mystically became particles and parts incorporated into the holy person of the blessed Jesus, so that we are figured as identified with his body.
Baptized into his death—This same faith, symbolized by baptism, incorporates the points of our history into the most eminent points of Christ’s history. We are made in a manner to die in his death.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv3–23 3. so many of us, &c.] Not implying that…
3. so many of us, &c.] Not implying that some were, and some were not. This is plain from the Gr. All Christian believers are contemplated; for each his baptism was all this, if a true baptism.—This and Rom_6:4 contain the only mentions of Baptism in the Epistle. He refers the converts to their baptism as to the great crisis of their lives, when, having already, by Divine grace, “turned from idols to serve the living God,” they made (so to speak) their formal self-surrender to their Redeemer, and received His formal acceptance of them as His own.
into Jesus Christ] i.e. so as to belong to Him, to obey Him, and to learn of Him. Cp. the parallel phrase “baptized into Moses,” 1Co_10:2.
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into his death] i.e. so as to come into special relations with it. We may paraphrase, “into Him as the Slain One.” His atoning death was the primary point of apostolic teaching. See 1Co_15:3.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23 (3) Know ye not.—It should be as in the…
(3) Know ye not.—It should be as in the Greek, Or know ye not. Do you not admit this principle; or am I to suppose that you are ignorant? &c.
Were baptized into Jesus Christ—i.e., “into communion with Him and incorporation in His mystical body” (Ellicott on Gal_3:27). “As many of you as have been baptised in Christ have put on Christ.” Your baptism signified an intimately close and indissoluble attachment to Christ.
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Were baptized into his death.—And this attachment had a special relation to His death. It involved a communion or fellowship with His death. This fellowship is ethical, i.e., it implies a moral conduct corresponding to that relation to Christ which it assumes.
Why has baptism this special connection with the death of Christ? In the first place, the death of Christ is the central and cardinal fact of the Christian scheme. It is specially related to justification, and justification proceeds from faith, which is ratified in baptism. In the second place, the symbolism of baptism was such as naturally to harmonise with the symbolism of death. It was the final close of one period, and the beginning of another—the complete stripping off of the past and putting on of the “new man.”
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20 Or know ye not that so many of us…
Or know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death! h , if taken in the sense of "or," at the beginning of ver. 3, will be understood if we put what is meant thus: Do you not know that we have all died to sin? Or are you really ignorant of what your very baptism meant? But cf. Rom_7:1, where the same expression occurs, and where h appears only to imply a question. The expression bapptizesyai eiv occurs also in 1Co_10:2 and Gal_3:27; in the first of these texts with reference to the Israelites and Moses. It denotes the entering by baptism into close union with a person, coming to belong to him, so as to be in a sense identified with him. In Gal_3:27 being baptized into Christ is understood as implying putting him on (enedusasye) The phrases, baptixein epi tw onomati , or en tw onomati , or eiv to onoma , were understood to imply the same idea, though not so plainly expressing it. Thus St. Paul rejoiced that he had not himself baptized many at Corinth, lest it might have been said that he had baptized them into his own name (eiv to emo ), i.e. into such connection with himself as baptism implied with Christ alone. Doubtless in the instruction which preceded baptism this significance of the sacrament would be explained. And if "into Christ," then "into his death." "In Christum, inquam, totum, adeoque in mortem ejus baptizatur" (Bengel). The whole experience of Christ was understood to have its counterpart in those who were baptized into him; in them was understood a death to sin, corresponding to his actual death. This, too, would form part of the instruction of catechumens. St. Paul often presses it as what he conceives to be well understood; and in subsequent verses of this chapter he further explains what he means.
HOMILIES BY S.R. ALDRIDGE Vers. 3, 4. The significance of baptism.
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To suppose that the acceptance of the grace of God in Christ renders us careless about the further committal of sin is to misapprehend the nature of redemption. We cannot dissociate the external results of Christ"s work from a consideration of its inward effects upon the mind and heart of the man who profits by it. For a practical refutation of the supposition, the apostle points to the acknowledged meaning of the ceremony wherein each believer indicates his close relationship to the Saviour.
I BAPTISM THE SYMBOL OF AN ALTERED LIFE. What can more forcibly set forth an abandonment of former feelings and, behaviour than being "dead and buried"? The allusion here to immersion is questioned by none, and a water grave speaks eloquently of a changed attitude to sin and the world. We are so constituted that this appeal to the senses powerfully impresses both the actual participator in the act and the spectators of the living picture.
II A SYMBOL OF COMPLETE FELLOWSHIP WITH CHRIST. The follower of Christ repeats in his inward experience the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Christ. These were necessitated by the presence and enormity of sin, and to "put on Christ" as our Redeemer is to adopt his crucifixion and subsequent triumph as our expression of hatred against all that perverts the moral order of the world. To be immersed into the death of Christ is to be completely surrendered to the claims of the Son of God, and to share his hostility to evil, rejoicing in his conquest over death and the grave, and the adversary of mankind. By compliance with his commandment does the disciple signify his entire dedication to his Master"s service.
III CHARACTERISTICS OF THIS NEW LIFE. Emerging from the Burial, the candidate rises with Christ as his Example and Companion. His is to be an active life, "a walk," not a dreamy repose of self-absorption into the bliss of Nirvana. The contrast to the old career was exemplified in the resurrection gladness and glory of the Lord. No more was sin to exert its baleful influence; the body of the risen Lord no longer could be tortured with hunger and thirst and suffering. The Saviour was limited no longer by material barriers; he was endowed with full authority from on high, and crowned with ever-increasing splendour. When the Apostle Paul saw his Lord, the Brightness excelled the noonday sun. These triumphs are in their degree repeated in the spiritual life of the baptized believer. He casts off the works of darkness and puts on the armour of light. He keeps his body under, so that the spirit rules. The voice from heaven proclaims him God"s beloved son. Instead of anguish there is peace and joy. He sits in heavenly places, and God causeth him always to triumph in Christ Jesus. Such is the ideal life of fellowship with Christ in his resurrection, shadowed forth By the ascent from the baptismal waters. S.R.A.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv3, 5, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 21, 22, 23 Know ye not that as many as were baptised…
Rom_6:3-4
Know ye not that as many as were baptised into Jesus Christ were baptised into His death?
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Christian baptism
I. What it is--
1. A sign of grace.
2. A mystery of faith.
3. A seal of the covenant.
II. What it requires. The death of the old man.
III. What it is intended to secure.
spiritual and eternal life. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
Christian baptism
I. Its significance and nature.--
1. It was no novelty. Pious lustrations had been practised for ages among the Hindoos, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. The Jews also, in addition to the legal ablutions, baptised proselytes. John practised the same ceremony. And when Christ adopted this ordinance, it must have been with the same general significance, viz., initiation into a new mode of life. The past was to be renounced and forgotten, and a new, higher and holier career entered upon. Hence baptism was regarded among the philosophers and Rabbis as a new birth: not that it produced any real change of heart, but was a solemn and public separation from a former course of life, and a new start on a more hallowed career. Now, this is exactly the idea of baptism in the New Testament. It is like a Rubicon crossed: or a river which divides two continents occupied by hostile nations.
2. Such being the general idea of baptism, what is its specific meaning in the Christian system? Christian baptism generally is baptism into Christ. Just as one may be baptised into Hindooism, Judaism, or Mahometanism, so may a man be baptised into Christianity, or Christ. But Paul describes it as baptism into Christs death: and here we shall see how essentially it differs from baptism into any other form of religion. To be baptised into Moses or Mahomet would not signify to be baptised into his death, but only the acknowledgment of their authority. Baptism into Christs death is expressed four times, and by as many different phrases, in this passage.
(1) Baptised into His death. We think of the death of Christ as the central and most momentous event of His mediatorial mission. He was put to death by wicked men, the representatives of the world in its depraved condition; but He also died in the sinners stead, and for sin, that He might condemn and cancel it, and deliver His people from its curse. By it, therefore, we express our acquiescence in that death, both as a protest against the wickedness of the world, and as an atoning sacrifice for human sin. If so, we are expected to be dead to the world which slew Him; and to the sins for which He died.
(2) Buried with Him by baptism. The interment of Christ gave conclusive evidence of the reality of His death. The world had done with Him, and He with it. To denote therefore the absoluteness of our death in Christ, we are said to be buried with Him--as a man who is completely done with this life is said to be dead and buried.
(3) Planted together in the likeness of His death. The idea is that of growing together into one, as a new branch grafted into an old stock. Our death is entirely owing to the death of Christ; yet it is only in the likeness of His death that we die. There are points of difference as well as of resemblance. He died for sin, we die to sin; He died vicariously, we for ourselves. His death was to cover the guilt of sin; ours is to escape from its pollution and power; His death was physical, ours spiritual.
(4) Our old man is crucified, that the body of sin might be destroyed. By the old man we understand our unrenewed moral disposition (Eph_4:22-23); by body of sin, the fact that our lower animal nature is the great occasion and instrument of sin. Jesus died a death of slow, lingering torment and ignominy. And our death to sin is one of corresponding painfulness, difficulty, and seeming dishonour. So Paul, in the Galatians, twice declares that he is crucified with Christ (Gal_2:20; Gal_6:14). Indeed the whole idea of this passage is repeated in several others (see Col_2:11-13; 1Pe_3:18-22; 1Pe_4:1-6). How the world scoffs at a man who gives up his sins!
II. The subsequent state of the baptised as dead to sin. Now we are said to be dead to anything when we have ceased to be under its influence, and have become indifferent to it. Thus many a passion of human love or hate dies away, and the heart is perfectly unmoved by the presence of its once exciting object. Or a man utterly alters his studies and pursuits, and becomes callous to speculations or adventures which once had fired him with uncontrollable ambition. In like manner a converted man is dead to his former life of sin. He is a new creature in Christ Jesus. Old things have passed away, and all things have become new (2Co_5:17).
1. He is indifferent to its pleasures (Gal_5:19-26).
2. He has renounced its principles and practices.
3. These things he has been enabled to do. Dead to sin, he is emancipated from its bondage. He is raised up from the death of sin, as Christ from the grave, by the glorious power of the Father, and so, filled with the Spirit, he is able to walk in newness of life.
Christian baptism
I. The moral significance of our baptism into Christ--our baptism into His death.
1. The forms of expression are elliptical. For just as Christ gave commandment to baptise into the name of the Father, etc., the meaning was that they were to be baptised into the faith and for the service of the Triune God; so here, to be baptised into Christ and His death is to be baptised into the faith of Christ crucified.
2. Regarded from its human side baptism is an act by which a man makes open profession of faith in Christ as his Saviour and Lord; an act in which he makes full renunciation of self and sin, and unites himself to the Church (1Co_12:12, etc.). It does not, however, constitute its subject a really living member; it is but a material act which cannot possibly of itself have any moral effect. Thus, though Simon bad been baptised, he had neither part nor lot in the Christian salvation. But the faith of which baptism is the profession does bring its possessor into living fellowship with Christ.
3. This faith is in Christs death, and really brings its possessor into union with Christ. Hence by our baptism into Christs death, we were buried with Him. It is very commonly supposed that there is here a reference to immersion: but the apostle does not say that we were buried in baptism, but that we were buried together with Christ by means of the baptism into His death. That is to say, if we have that faith of which baptism is the open profession, then are we brought into such legal and effective union with Christ as that we are treated by God as though we had been crucified when Christ was crucified, and buried when He was buried.
4. But there is yet a further moral significance in this act of faith, viz., a confession that the believer himself, because of his sins, deserves to die; that but for the death of his Divine Substitute he must himself have died; that he hates and renounces those sins which thus imperilled his own soul and caused such agony to his Redeemer; and that he thankfully and with all his heart avails himself of this provision of salvation from sin. It is not consistent with our profession of faith that we should continue in sin. For how shall we that died to sin, live any longer therein?
II. Its purpose--that like as Christ was raised, so we, being quickened together with Him, should walk in newness of life.
1. Though Jesus died, He does not continue dead. He died unto sin once. By that one death He satisfied the demand of the law, and having satisfied that demand, He could legally claim a complete justification from sin (verse 7). But, being so justified, death had no further dominion over Him. He was therefore raised on account of our justification by the glory of the Father, i.e., by His power, working out His will and purpose, according to the demands of His glory.
2. For the glory of the Father demanded the resurrection of His Son on two accounts.
(1) To clear Him from false accusations. The Jews condemned Him as a blasphemer, because that He had called God His own Father, making Himself equal with God. No doubt the Jews were right, if the claim had not been true. But it was true. And to prove its truth, and vindicate His Son, the glory of the Father raised Him from the dead.
(2) To attest the sufficiency of His atoning death. Not according to mans arrangement, but by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, Jesus was delivered to death to expiate sin. It was declared that His death should effectually accomplish this purpose. But, in proof thereof, it was needful that He should rise again. For how could we have trusted in Him for salvation, and how could it have been consistent with the glory of the Father, if the sinless One had continued under the power of death after the demands of justice had been fully satisfied? Therefore the glory of the Father could not suffer that Holy One to see corruption.
3. But we are baptised into Christs death, and by that baptism buried with Him, in order that we also might participate His restored and glorious life. For, as in our Representative, so also in us these things of necessity go together, namely--
(1) Death to sin and burial in death;
(2) Justification from sin in consequence of that death; and--
(3) Restoration to holy and prevailing life. If in Christ we have not been made alive to God, then it is quite certain that we have not been justified in Christ.
4. Thus it comes to pass that, both by profession and by privilege, Christian men are bound to renounce a life of sin, and to live a life of holiness. That we may do this effectually, we have but to attend to two things; namely--
(1) To be indeed what we profess ourselves to be, believers in the saving work and power of Jesus; and--
(2) To do, with resolute courage, what we are bidden to do, even to yield ourselves to the service of God as those who are alive from the dead. Doing these things, we shall no longer continue in sin, but shall reign in life by One, Jesus Christ. (W. Tyson.)
Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death.--
Baptism--a burial
1. Paul does not say that all unbelievers and hypocrites, etc., who are baptized, are baptized into our Lords death. He intends such as come to it with their hearts in a right state.
2. Nor does he intend to say that those who were rightly baptized have all of them entered into the fulness of its spiritual meaning; for he asks, Know ye not? Some perhaps saw in it only a washing, but had never discerned the burial. I question if any of us yet know the fulness of the meaning of either of Christs ordinances. Baptism sets forth the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, and our participation therein. Its teaching is two fold. Consider--
I. Our representative union with Christ as a truth to be believed. Baptism as a burial with Christ signifies--
1. Acceptance of the death and burial of Christ as being for us. We are not baptized into His example, or His life, but into His death. We hereby confess that all our salvation lies in that which we accept as having been incurred on our account.
2. An acknowledgment of our own death in Christ. My burial with Christ means not only that He died for me, but that I died in Him, so that my death with Him needs a burial with Him. Suppose that a man has actually died for a certain crime, and now, by some wonderful work of God, he has been made to live again. Will he commit that crime again? But you reply, We never did die so. But that which Christ did for you comes to, and the Lord looks upon it as, the same thing. You have died in Christs death, and now by grace you are brought up again into newness of life. Can you, after that, turn back to the accursed thing which God hates?
3. Burial with a view to rising. If you are one with Christ at all, you must be one with Him all through. Since I am one with Christ I am what Christ is: as He is a living Christ, I am a living spirit. So far the doctrine: is it not a precious one? Shall the members of a generous, gracious Head be covetous and grasping? Shall the members of a glorious, pure, and perfect Head be defiled with the lusts of the flesh and the follies of a vain life? If believers are indeed so identified with Christ that they are His fulness, should they not be holiness itself?
II. Our realised union with Christ as a matter of experience. There is--
1. Death--
(1) To the dominion of sin. If sin commands us we will not obey, for we are dead to its authority. Sin cannot reign over us, though it may assail us and work us harm.
(2) To the desire of any such power. The law in the members would fain urge to sin, but the life of the heart constrains to holiness.
(3) To the pursuits and aims of the sinning life. We are in the world, and have to live as other men do, carrying on our ordinary business; but all this is subordinate, and held in as with bit and bridle.
(4) To the guidance of sin. Our text must have had a very forcible meaning in Pauls time. An average Roman of that period was a man accustomed to the amphitheatre. Taught in such a school, he was cruel to the last degree, and ferocious in the indulgence of his passions. A depraved man was not regarded as being at all degraded; not only nobles and emperors, but the public teachers were impure. When those who were regarded as moral were corrupt, you may imagine what the immortal were. See here a Roman converted by the grace of God! What a change is in him! His neighbours say, You were not at the amphitheatre this morning. No, he says, I am totally dead to it. If you were to force me to be there, I must shut my eyes, for I could not look on murder committed in sport! The Christian did not resort to places of licentiousness; he was dead to such filthiness. The fashions of the age were such that Christians could not consent to them, and so they became dead to society.
2. Burial. This is--
(1) The seal of death, the certificate of decease. There have been instances of persons being buried alive, and I am afraid that the thing happens with sad frequency in baptism, but it is unnatural, and by no means the rule. But if I can say in very truth, I was buried with Christ thirty years ago, I must surely be dead.
(2) The displaying of death. When a funeral takes place, everybody knows of death. That is what baptism ought to be. The believers death to sin is at first a secret, but by an open confession he bids all men know that he is dead with Christ.
(3) The separateness of death. The dead man no longer remains in the house. A corpse is not welcome company. Such is the believer: he is poor company for worldlings, and they shun him as a damper upon their revelry.
(4) The settledness of death; for when a man is dead and buried you never expect to see him come home again. They tell me that spirits walk the earth; I have my doubts on the subject. In spiritual things, however, I am afraid that some are not so buried with Christ but that they walk a great deal among the tombs. The man in Christ cannot walk as a ghost, because he is alive somewhere else; he has received a new being, and therefore he cannot mutter and peep among the dead hypocrites around him.
3. Resurrection.
(1) This is a special work. All the dead are not raised, but our Lord Himself is the first fruits of them that slept. He is the First-begotten from among the dead. As to our soul and spirit, the resurrection has begun upon us, and will be complete as to our body at the appointed day.
(2) By Divine power. Christ is brought again from the dead by the glory of the Father. Why did it not say, by the power of the Father? Ah, glory is a grander word; for all the attributes of God are displayed here. There was the Lords faithfulness; for He had declared that His Holy One should not see corruption. His love. I am sure it was a delight to the heart of God to bring back life to the body of His dear Son. And so, when you and I are raised out of our death in sin, it is not merely Gods power, or Gods wisdom that is seen, it is the glory of the Father. If the tiniest spark of spiritual life has to be created by the glory of the Father, what will be the glory of that life when it comes into its full perfection, and we shall be like Christ, and see Him as He is!
(3) This resurrection life is--
(a) Entirely new. We are to walk in newness of life.
(b) Active. The Lord does not allow us to sit down contented with the mere fact that we live, nor allow us to spend our time in examining whether we are alive or no; but He gives us His battle to fight, His house to build, His farm to till, His children to nurse, and His sheep to feed.
(c) Unending. Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more.
(d) Not under the law or under sin. Christ came under the law when He was here, and He had our sin laid on Him, and therefore died; but after He rose again there was no sin laid on Him. In His resurrection both the sinner and the Surety are free. What had Christ to do after His rising? To bear any more sin? No, but just to live unto God. That is where you and I are. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Buried alive
(Psa_31:12; Rom_8:6, and text):--The subject would perhaps suggest a terrible physical calamity, such as the closing of a coal pit upon toiling miners; or of an interment ere life was extinct. But there are other senses in which men are buried alive.
I. In an unfortunate sense. Men are often buried alive--
1. For the want of opportunities of mental development. How frequently we hear men say in certain spheres and conditions that they are buried alive! There is an amount of mental life in all men. But the development of that life requires certain external conditions and favourable opportunities. Sometimes, indeed, but rarely, we find men, through the force of genius, breaking through the most unfavourable circumstances; but the millions remain in the mental grave of thoughtlessness and ignorance. Englishmen have at last realised the magnitude of this calamity; the loss which it involves to commerce, literature, and moral influence.
2. Through the infirmities of age. Some, thirty or forty years ago, played prominent parts in the drama of public life; but where are they today? We are constantly reading of the death of an old Waterloo hero, or Trafalgar veteran, or distinguished statesman, or great scholar, who have not been heard of for years. This is a sad entombment, one that awaits us all if we live long enough.
3. Through the envy of their contemporaries. This was perhaps what David meant. Malice always wishes to murder, and to bury. Many a noble man in Church and State, who is too truthful to temporise, too independent to cringe, is kept in the background by envy. No invitation shall be given to him to take a prominent part in the movements of his party, no mention shall be made of his doings in the organs of their clique.
II. In a criminal sense (Rom_8:6). In the case of all unrenewed men, the soul, the conscience with all its Divine instincts and sympathies, is buried in the flesh, in the sense in which a slave is buried who has no liberty of action. Hence Paul speaks of it as carnally sold under sin. A man may be a merchant, artist, author; but, the inspiration of his business, the glow of his genius, the tinge and form of his thoughts, will be flesh rather than spirit. Nay, he may be a religionist, and that of the most orthodox stamp: but his creed and devotions will be after the law of a carnal commandment, and his Christ known only after the flesh.
III. In a virtuous sense. We are buried with Him by baptism unto death. Not the baptism of water, but of that holy fire that burns up all corrupt carnalties. What is buried here? Not the mental faculties, for these are quickened into action; not the conscience--no, this is brought out of its grave and put upon the throne. But the old man with its corruptions and lusts. Whilst this carnal I is buried, the moral I is quickened and raised. Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. Now, this is a virtuous burying alive. It means being dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto righteousness. As you must bury the seed in the earth before you can have the living plant, so you must bury the carnal nature before you have spiritual life. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
Dead and buried with Christ
In the fourth century, when the Christian faith was preached in its power in Egypt, a young brother sought out the great Macarius. Father, said he, what is the meaning of being dead and buried with Christ? My son, answered Macarius, you remember our dear brother who died, and was buried a short time since? Go now to his grave, and tell him all the unkind things you ever heard of him, and that we are glad he is dead, and thankful to be rid of him, for he was such a worry to us, and caused so much discomfort in the Church. Go, my son, and say that, and hear what he will answer. The young man was surprised, and doubted whether he really understood; but Macarius only said, Do as I bid you, my son, and come and tell me what our departed brother says. The young man did as he was commanded, and returned. Well, and what did our brother say? asked Macarius. Say, father! he exclaimed; how could he say anything? He is dead. Go now again, my son, and repeat every kind and flattering thing you have ever heard of him; tell him how much we miss him; how great a saint he was; what noble work he did; how the whole Church depended upon him; and come again and tell me what he says. The young man began to see the lesson Macarius would teach him. He went again to the grave, and addressed many flattering things to the dead man, and then returned to Macarius. He answers nothing, father; he is dead and buried. You know now, my son, said the old father, what it is to be dead with Christ. Praise and blame equally are nothing to him who is really dead and buried with Christ.
That like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.--
Christs resurrection and ours for the glory of God
It glorifies His omnipotence. For if creation required omnipotence, so does the new creation. It glorifies His wisdom; for what wisdom is required to bring a clean thing out of an unclean! To reconcile sinful man to a holy God. It glorifies His justice; for how could God have forgiven us, except at the expense of His justice, had He not received atonement in the person of Jesus; and how could He have given us any comfort in that atonement, if He had not raised Jesus from the dead, and thus show us that the price of our redemption was fully paid, and we were set free? It glorifies His truth; for God had said that it should be so, and we had to wait for the fulfilment of His promise, and in the fulness of time Jesus came, died, and rose again. (Bp. Montagu Villiers.)
Resurrection life
1. The chapter connects the historical resurrection of Christ with the spiritual resurrection of the heart by the golden link of baptism.
2. We have to consider what is the newness of life in which we are to walk, or walk about, the metaphor referring to our ordinary walk in the beaten track of everyday life; for this is the newness of life which God loves--not the striking out of some novel path, but the old path trodden every day with new affections and new attainments. And may we not all say that there has been now quite enough of old, dull, religious duties, enough of worldly-mindedness, enough of things which have done nothing else but disappoint us, enough of things that die? And could there be a better season than this Easter for starting afresh upon the journey of life? Look at this life as new--
I. In the method of its formation.
1. There is a natural life which we all obtain from our father and mother. It carries an entail from Adam--a stream of corruption and a carnal-mindedness. But Jesus took manhood, and did His mediatorial work, that He might become, like another Adam, the root of another pedigree. Our entrance into the lineage takes place by an act of spiritual union to Christ.
2. Now see the processes of that life. When Christ died on the Cross our nature died in Him. And now Christ, being the Head, rising, draws up the body. First, in this present life, our souls begin to be drawn up to ascending desires, to nearer communion, to loftier enjoyments, to a more heavenly-mindedness. Afterwards, at the resurrection, by the same process, our bodies will be raised up.
II. In its own constitution. Gods way of making a new thing is not mans way. God uses up the old materials; but, by His using and moulding them, makes them new. Thus, the new heavens and the new earth will only make another heaven and earth formed out of the old materials. Or, take that expression, a new heart. God does not annihilate a mans original temperament--remove his old habits, and tempers, and feelings, and make another man with him; but He restrains, sanctifies, and elevates the mans primary character. The characteristic of his unconverted state is the characteristic of his converted condition; but new feelings have given new directions to old things; and new principles have given another development; and new grace has given new power: and so, though he is the new man, he is the old man still!
III. The new element thrown in to make a new man. Love. Of this command we read that it is old and new. St. John in a breath calls it both. Old, in the letter; new, in the spirit. Old, as an universal obligation; new, in the standard. Old, in the fact; new, in the motive. As I have loved you, that ye also love one another. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
Christs resurrection and our newness of life
I. The resurrection of our Lord was attended with glory. It was glorious--
1. In itself the most marvellous occurrence in history.
2. In contrast with Christs humiliation.
3. In its effects. He was raised--
(1) For our justification.
(2) To secure our own resurrection.
(3) That through His life of intercession He might save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him.
4. As to its cause, for it was a display of the glory or power of the Father. But it was more than a miracle of power, for all the attributes of God united their glory in it, love, wisdom, justice, and mercy. The veil which concealed the sacred presence was rent from top to bottom; and the glory of the Lord was seen in the resurrection of Christ from the dead.
5. Because of its sequel in reference to our Lord. Once hath He suffered, but it is once for all. His victory is final. And now, therefore, to the child of God death furnishes a couch of rest, and is no longer a dark and noisome prison cell. The body is sown in corruption, but it is raised in incorruption and immortality.
II. The parallel in our experience is also full of glory. Partakers of His death, we are also partakers of His resurrection. This body of ours will have its share in it in due time. The spirit has its resurrection even now; but we are waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.
1. It is a blessed thing that we should be made alive in Christ.
2. This quickening is a needful part of sanctification. Sanctification, in its operation upon our character, consists of three things. First, Jesus strikes at the heart of evil. His death makes us die to sin. After this we are buried with Christ, and of this burial baptism is the type and token. To complete our actual sanctification we receive heavenly quickening, for he that believeth in Him hath everlasting life.
3. Being thus quickened you are partakers of a new life. You are not like Lazarus, who had the same life restored to him. True, you have that same life about you. But your true life has come to you by your being born again from above. In this there is a striking display of the glory of God. It is one of the highest displays of Divine power.
4. Thus we have a preeminent security for future perfection. If He raised us up when we were dead in sin, will He not keep us alive now that we live unto Him? This life springeth up unto eternal life. You shall surely behold His face whose life is already within your breast.
III. The life is emphatically new. I expect to read, even so we also should be raised by the glory of the Father; but it is not so. It is in Pauls mind that we are raised together with Christ; but his thought has gone further, even to the activity which comes of life; and we read, that we also should walk in newness of life. As much as to say, I need not tell you that you have been quickened as Christ was; but since you have been made alive, you must show it by your walk and conduct. But he reminds us that this life has much newness about it. This new life is--
1. A life which we never before possessed--an exotic, a plant of another clime. It is not written, You hath He fostered, who had the germs of dormant life; but, You hath He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins. You had no life, you had nothing out of which life could come. Eternal life is the gift of God.
2. New in its principles. The old life at its very best only said, I must do right that I may win a reward. Now you are moved by gratitude, now you serve not as a servant, but as a child. It is your joy to obey out of love, and not from slavish fear.
3. Swayed by new motives. You live now to please God; aforetime you lived to please yourself, or to please your neighbours.
4. One which has new objects. You aim higher; yea, at the highest of all; for you live for Gods glory.
5. One of new emotions. Your fears, hopes, sorrows, and your joys are new.
6. One of new hopes; we have a hope of immortality; a hope so glorious, that it causes us to purify ourselves in preparation for its realisation.
7. One of new possessions. God has made us rich in faith. Instead of groaning that life is not worth having, we bless God for our being, because of our well-being in Christ. We have peace like a river, and a secret joy which no man taketh from us. We drink of a well which none can dry up; we have bread to eat that the world knows not of.
8. One by which we are brought into a new world. I often compare myself to a chick, which aforetime was imprisoned in the shell. In that condition I neither knew myself, nor aught that was about me, but was in a chaos, as one unborn. When the shell was broken, like a young bird I was weak and full of wonderment at the life into which I had come. That young life felt its wings and tried them a little. It moved with trembling footsteps, essaying a new walk. It saw things it never dreamed of.
IV. The walk which comes out of this life is new.
1. The new life that God gives us is exceedingly active. I have never read that we are to lie down and sleep in the newness of life. I greatly question whether you have new life if you do not walk.
2. This activity of life induces progress. If we are really quickened we shall march on, going from strength to strength.
3. This walk is to be in newness of life. I see a Christian man coming back from a place of question amusement. Did he go there in newness of life? The old man used to go in that direction. When a man has made a bargain which will not bear the light; is that done in newness of life? When an employer grinds down the workman; is that done in newness of life? Put off the old man. If Christ has quickened you, walk in newness of life.
4. This life should be one of joyful vivacity. A healthy Christian is one of the liveliest creatures on earth. Newness of life means a soul aglow with love to God, and therefore earnest, zealous, happy. Come, my soul, if Christ has raised thee from the dead, do not live after the fashion of the dark grave which thou hast quitted. Live a God-like life; let the divine in thee sit on the throne, and tread the animal beneath its feet. It is easier said than done, cries one. That depends upon the life within. Life is full of power. I have seen an iron bar bent by the growth of a tree. Have you never heard of great paving stones being lifted by fungi, which had pushed up beneath them? If you choose to contract your souls by a sort of spiritual tight lacing, or if you choose to bend yourselves down in a sorrow which never looks up, you may hinder your life and its walk; but give your life full scope, and what a walk you may have! Conclusion: I have seen boys bathing in a river in the morning. One of them has just dipped his toes in the water, and he cries out, as he shivers, Oh, its so cold! Another has gone in up to his ankles, and he also declares that it is fearfully chilly. But see! another runs to the bank and takes a header. He rises all in a glow. You Christian people are paddling about in the shallows of religion, and just dipping your toes into it. Oh, that you would plunge into the river of life! How it would brace you! What tone it would give you! In for it. Be a Christian, out and out. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Newness of life
When the gospel was first preached, its novelty must have impressed both Jew and Gentile. Not only was the Christian doctrine something fresh in the history of human thought; the Christian morality was something new in the sphere of the individual and social existence of mankind. The novelty may not strike us as it struck the men of the first century, but still Christianity summons all men to newness of life. The new life--
I. Commences with a new birth. Every human life has a beginning, so with the spiritual life; there is what is called regeneration, in which the birth of the body is followed by that of the soul.
II. Is quickened by a new power. Mysterious even to the present men of science is the secret of vitality. We can only account for the new and spiritual life of Christianity by accepting the doctrine that the Holy Spirit takes possession of the nature, vivifying it with a celestial vitality and energy.
III. Is inspired by a new principle. What is it which distinguishes the life of the Christian from that of the worldly, unspiritual man? It is the prevalence and power of Divine love in his nature.
IV. Is perfected in an ever new immortality. The life of the body perishes; but the life of the Christian is renewed day by day; age and infirmity have no power over it; even death fails to destroy it; in fact, its fairest blossom and its richest fruit appear only beneath celestial influences, and when the Omnipotent makes all things new. (Family Churchman.)
Newness of life
1. We are called upon this Easter morning to contemplate the master miracle of Divine love as set against and triumphing over the masterpiece of Satans malignity. As death must be regarded as the supreme development of evil, so resurrection must be regarded as the highest triumph of good. Now not only does God triumph over death, but He actually employs the enemy to produce this greater benefit.
2. The question of Nicodemus is a natural one. He might well conclude, I must of necessity carry my old self along with me to the grave. Not so, Ye must be born again. But what form of birth is there for the man grown old in habits of sin? The great discovery was not made until from the womb of death there arose the newborn man, the first-begotten of the dead, the first born of many brethren! and from that time forward it became possible for the sinner to be severed from the incubus of the past, and to rise into newness of life in virtue of his union with Christ.
3. Now, observe the difference between Gods way of dealing with fallen man, and ours. Nicodemus objects, How can a man be born when he is old, etc. A moments reflection will show us that the change in itself is exceedingly desirable. But all that we can suggest is to patch up the old creature; but a thing seldom looks well after it is mended, and it becomes less and less serviceable the more frequently it is mended; and the fact of its being patched indicates that it is nearly worn out, and will soon be laid aside. But a man with a new garment makes a fresh start. Now God does not mend--He recreates, and He presses death into the service, and through that we rise to newness of life, in which we are able to stand free from sin.
4. As we go into the country at this springtime, and gaze on the opening leaves and flowers, the newness of everything powerfully impresses us. God might have restored nature by a process of repair; but no! until the withered dead leaf is swept away into the tomb of corruption the new leaf does not unfold itself; but as soon as the old is dead and buried there arises a newness of life. How like the work of God! The most skilful artist who endeavours to imitate nature cannot reproduce natures freshness. So there are many imitations of religion, but they are all devoid of that virgin freshness which is only produced by the touch of the Life-giver.
5. As the Lord teaches us this lesson in nature, so He enforces it by the striking symbolism of one of the sacraments. Baptism is not a mere washing; it is a burial and a resurrection. Not that the mere outward observance of the ordinance can ever produce this; there must be faith in the operation of God. When I have this whether it takes place at the moment of baptism, or after, or before, makes no difference. The point is this, that when my faith lays hold on the operation of God, manifested in the resurrection of Christ, and which is symbolised in baptism, then that ordinance in itself is a pledge that the reality of the blessing which the ordinance typifies is actually mine.
6. With these thoughts in our minds, I want you to observe that Paul says that we are buried and raised up again with a definite object, viz., the walk in newness of life. You cannot walk inn place if you do not reach that place; and I cannot walk in newness of life without having first of all been introduced into a condition of newness of life. As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, even so walk in Him. And now what are the distinguishing characteristics of this newness of life?
I. The newness of relationship to God. In the old life we felt there was something wrong between God and us; we desired that that something should be set right, and we hoped gradually to win His approval by a life of consistency. Some of us laboured very hard, and yet the end was disappointment. How was all this to be changed, and every barrier to confidence and love swept away? Not by patching ourselves up. We saw ourselves, represented by Christ, as enduring the penalty of the law; and were content to reckon ourselves as crucified with Christ; but he that is dead is justified from sin, and so we found that there was now no further condemnation for us who are in Christ Jesus. From the grave we rose into newness of life, and our first experience was the discovery that God was a reconciled Father.
II. Newness of power. Faith introduced me into this blessed condition; faith is to be the law of my experience in it. There is a power now working within me; the power of God, whose mighty Spirit has taken possession of me, and is working out His purposes within me. Electricians tell us that our nervous system is so constituted that under the force of electricity we can perform prodigies of strength and endurance which would be impossible under ordinary circumstances. We will suppose this book to contain a weight of several pounds. I hold it out at arms length. Presently the sense of fatigue comes insupportable, and my arm must fall to my side; but turn on a current of electricity to the outstretched arm, and I am able to sustain the weight indefinitely, without any such sense of fatigue. Where does my part in the matter lie?--not in struggling to force my arm to do what it is too weak to do, but in yielding my member to the power which can enable it to accomplish what is otherwise impossible. I have to see to it that no non-conductor breaks the invisible stream of power; and that is just what I have to see to in my spiritual experience. Am I in full connection with Divine Omnipotence? I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me. Now do you not see the difference between going about the work of life flurried with anxiety and weighted with care, now straining every nerve in an agony of effort, and now, weary and discouraged, sinking into lethargy, and the quiet, happy confidence of him who is walking in newness of life, assured that, whatever may arise, the new life within him is equal to any and every emergency.
III. Newness of character. I meet with a great many who do not seem to expect this. How many of us are there who have so very much of the old self about us that even our fellow Christians cannot help being distressed and pained at it? Are we walking in newness of life? Are the old features passing away?--have they passed away? You who were naturally uncontrolled, are your natural passions well in hand?--not in your hand--in Christs hand? You who were ready to say a bitter word without thinking how much pain it might give, who rather plumed yourself on being blunt even to rudeness, is the beauty of the Lord our God beginning to rest upon you? You, whose gifts of conversation were apt to degenerate into idle gossip, have you learned to keep the little member in its place? Are you doing all to the glory of God? What manner of man are we? We are children of the resurrection. When we get down to the exchange, to the workshop, do we forget that? The glorious beauty of the Lord our God is for us; His freshness, purity, the very bloom of newness of life, is ours. Shake yourself loose of every encumbrance, turn your back on every defilement, give yourself over like clay to the hand of the Potter, that He may stamp upon you the fulness of His own resurrection glory, that we, beholding as in a mirror the glories of the Lord, may be changed from glory unto glory as by the Spirit of God. (W. Hay Aitken, M. A.)
Newness of life
I. Its connection with Christs resurrection. Like as--
1. Material things may be compared to material and spiritual to spiritual; but is not this comparison of a moral revelation to a physical transaction arbitrary and fanciful? The answer is that the source and motive power of the two are the same. The manner and proportion of the Divine action at the tomb of Christ, when they are addressed to sense, enable us to trace and measure them in the mystery of the souls life when they are addressed to spirit.
2. Something of the same kind may be observed in the case of the human mind. A mind capable of writing a great poem or history, and of governing at the same time a great country, is not to be met with every day. But when we do find the two things combined it is reasonable to compare the book with the policy of the king or statesman, on the ground that both are products of a single mind; and it is further reasonable to expect certain qualities common to the two forms of work. This is Pauls position; Christs resurrection and the souls regeneration are works of one powerful, wise, and loving will.
3. Nature can no more give us newness of life than a corpse can raise itself. Prudence, advancing years, the tone of society, family influences, may remodel our habits, but Divine grace alone can raise us from the death of sin to the life of righteousness. Reflect on that terrible reality--spiritual death. The body is in the full flush of its powers, the mind is engaged with a thousand truths, but neither boisterous spirits nor intellectual fire can galvanize the spirit into life. The spiritual senses do not act--the eyes, ears, mouth, of the soul are closed. Its hands and feet are bandaged with the grave clothes of selfish habit. It cannot rise, and must lie on in its darkness, and the putrefaction of its spiritual tomb. And a great stone has been rolled to the door--the dead weight of corrupt and irreligious opinion which bars out the light and air of heaven and makes the prison house secure. How is such an encumbrance to be thrown off? Even if angels should roll away the stone, how can life be restored, unless He who is its Lord and Giver shall flash into this dead spirit His own quickening power?
II. The characteristics common to both.
1. Reality.
(1) Christ really died. The piercing of His side proves this; and being truly dead He really rose.
(a) Some say only in the heart of His disciples. But supposing such a process of imagination to have taken place in the case of two or three, is it reasonable to suppose that it could have occurred simultaneously to many.
(b) Nor was it a phantom that rose. Had that been the case it would surely have been found out, by the women, by Peter, by the eleven to whom He said, A spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see Me have, and by Thomas. Undoubtedly His risen body had added qualities of subtlety and glory; but these did not destroy its reality. It had been sown in dishonour; it was raised in glory, etc.
(2) So the souls newness of life must be, before everything, real.
(a) What avails it to be risen in imagination and in the good opinion of others, if having a name that we live while yet we are dead? Is it well for a dead soul to be periodically galvanised by unmerited flattery into awkward mimicries of the language and action of Christian life?
(b) What is the value of the mere ghost of a moral renewal; of prayers without heart, actions without religious principle, religious language in advance of conviction and feeling? Ah, the phantoms of a renewed life stalk through the world and the Church--picturesque in the distance, and like waxwork figures hard to distinguish from the living. There is the phantom life--
(i) Of imagination when a lively fancy has thrown around religion the charm of an intense interest without touching religious principle.
(ii) Of strong physical feeling where occasional bursts of religious passion are mistaken for discipline and surrender of the will.
(iii) Of sheer good nature, when however much is done, it is done without inward reference to God and His law.
(iv) Of good taste, where it is simply taken for granted that certain religious properties belong to a particular social position--phantoms each and all; for they melt into thin air under the harder stress of service or sorrow. They may not safely challenge the Handle Me of the risen Jesus. So then the first lesson is genuineness. Feel more deeply than you talk--act as you feel in your best moments.
2. Durability.
(1) Jesus did not rise that, like Lazarus, He might die again. I am alive for evermore. Death hath no more dominion over Him. His triumphant life could not be exchanged again for a life of sin and suffering.
(2) So should it be with the Christian. His, too, should be a resurrection once for all. I say should be, for Gods grace does not put force upon us. The Christian must reckon himself to be dead indeed unto sin, etc. And if this seems hard to flesh and blood the Christian will remember that he has forces at his command equal to cope with them. If the risen Christ be in us the body is dead because of sin, etc. Once risen with Christ we need die no more. God will certainly be true, and we have but to cling to Him and keep a tight hand upon ourselves. Nothing from without can avail to destroy our life if it be not seconded from within. Louis XIV went year by year through his Lenten and Easter duties and then fell back into debauchery--a hideous libel on the teaching of Christs resurrection. And yet what if we with slighter temptations repeat his experiences?
3. Secrecy.
(1) Much of Christs risen life was hidden from the eyes of men. His visible presence after His resurrection was the exception rather than the rule; and by this the disciples were gradually trained for their future. It was a gentle passage from the days of Christs ministry to the days of that invisible presence which was to last to the end of time. But who can doubt what the risen Christ was doing? He needed not strength as we need it, but communion with the Father was His one glory and joy.
(2) Who can fail to see here a lesson and a law for Christian life? Much and the more important side of it must be hidden. No doubt our business, families, etc., have their claims; but where there is a will there is a way, and time must be made for prayer, self-questioning, etc. Alas for souls who shrink from solitude and secret communion with God. Does not the forest tree, while flinging its trunk and branches high towards the heavens, strike its roots for safety and nourishment ever deeper into the soil beneath? (Canon Liddon.)
The several degrees of personal religion
Progress in the new life, commenced at the time of the second birth, is more desirable than success in business, or growth from infancy to manhood. It is in this text urged as a duty, and proposed as a favour, in consideration of the resurrection of our Redeemer from the dead.
I. I explain the words of my text. The Apostle Paul, who experienced in his own progressive attainments the influence of Christs resurrection, holds it up to the view of the believing Romans as the reason and the means of their walking forward in newness of life. Walking indicates not only vital action, but also progress from one place to another. That walking in newness of life which is urged in the text, in consideration of the resurrection of our Lord, must of course signify both the exercise of the Christian life in all its parts and relations and our progressive improvement in piety.
II. I describe, from the Scriptures, the several distinct degrees of personal attainment in true religion.
1. The state of mind which exists in the earliest stage of true religion is characterised by anxiety to escape from evil and enjoy salvation. The anxiety of the young believer must be distinguished from that of unconverted minds. This is easy in theory, but difficult in practice. When we act, it is with imperfect instruments; with faculties corrupted by sin and disordered by our passions. It is the Spirit, however, that helps our infirmities. The Christian is anxious to be delivered from sin; the unrenewed man cares only for its consequences. The anxiety of the believer if from the Holy Spirit, is exercised with a spiritual discernment of the covenant of grace, and is influenced by an ardent desire to enjoy righteousness, and holiness, and happiness in Christ; the anxiety of the unconverted is a blind, unholy passion, pungent indeed, but indefinite, and equivocal in respect to all these objects.
2. The state of mind enjoyed by the Christian in the second grade of spiritual attainments is characterised by admiration of Jesus Christ and the salvation which He administers. Great power, magnanimity, and condescension are in their own nature admirable: infinite perfection is an object of the admiration of all intelligent creatures; and, in a certain sense, the Divine excellency is admired by the unregenerate. Christians, too, from the very commencement of their new life, and throughout every stage of their progress, feel an admiration for God in Christ: nor does it cease in heaven; but in this stage, after having ascertained their own interest in the grace of God, it becomes the most prominent part of their character. They admire the dignity of the mediatory Person, God manifested in the flesh: the attributes and, especially, the love of God in Him; the wisdom of the plan devised for our redemption through a covenant ordered in all things and sure; and His fitness in everything to our condition, in whom it pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell. They admire the tenderness of His compassion, the fortitude displayed in His sufferings, the gracious Spirit which rests upon Him, and which He liberally communicates, grace for grace, from His own fulness to our wants. They admire the place on high, where He is enthroned in light, and into which they have now themselves a sure hope of admission.
3. The third period of Christian progress is characterised by a thirst for religious knowledge. In every art or science, the period most favourable to the ardent pursuit of knowledge is immediately after the habits and the language peculiar to it, and at first strange, have become familiar and easy; after a high admiration of the objects of study is felt by the learner; and before the actual business of life demands his chief attention. There is a similar period in the religious life of man. The knowledge of Divine things, always desirable and useful, is pursued with peculiar ardour so soon as we have attained to that patient admiration of its glorious objects which accompanies the full assurance of hope. Then the speculative powers of the mind, enlightened by the Holy Ghost, search for knowledge, and procure it on account of its own intrinsic worth.
4. The fourth period of Christian progress is characterised by public spirit in promoting the interests of the Church. A benevolent disposition towards mankind, and a special regard for the godly, are coeval with the Christian life; and wheresoever these exist, there will also be some exertions for promoting the good of the house of the Lord: but it requires great progress in the new life before anyone is characterised by self-denial in the Churchs service similar to that of Moses, who chose affliction with the people of God; by an enlightened ardour in the work of righteousness, like Elijah the prophet; and by such disinterestedness as was practised by Paul the apostle. This is not a blind devotion to the interests of party, but a spirit of magnanimity and liberality, fostered and directed by the Word of God.
5. The fifth degree of progress in personal piety is characterised by heavenly-mindedness.
6. The highest rank in personal godliness on earth is attained by those who willingly suffer for Christs sake. Voluntary martyrdom for any cause is an evidence of personal resolution and sincerity--the highest which man can give of his attachment to the cause he has espoused. And it is easy to show that the disciple who willingly carries the cross, for which he is misrepresented and maligned by his contemporaries, rises far superior in heroism to the patriot soldier who, encouraged by the honours of a military life, and cheered by the voice of applause loudly raised by his country, exposes himself to danger and to death. Reason, as well as Divine revelation, of course, justifies the Christian in sacrificing cheerfully the honours and comforts of this life, and even life itself, when they come in competition with the honour which cometh from God and with the never-ending enjoyments of the heavenly life. The duty and the reward of such a sacrifice are sufficiently obvious: Whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gospels, the same shall save it; but the disposition of mind to perform the duty in view of the high reward is a rare attainment in grace. The Lord Himself will, however, bestow it according to His good pleasure, in those extraordinary times of trial which call for it, upon them whom the King delighteth to honour. (A. McLeod, D. D.)
Freshness of being
1. In everything which is really of God there is a singular freshness; it is always like that tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; there is a continual novelty. And yet some people speak of the sameness of a religious life.
2. Through a new spirit, endowed with a new heart, by a new and living way, in obedience to a new commandment, with mercies new to us every morning, carrying a new name, we travel to a new heaven and a new earth, where we shall sing a new song forever and ever. Well might Christ say, Behold I make all things new.
3. If there be a time when we ought specially to study newness, surely it is now in this springtime, when the resurrection of Christ is telling us of risen beings coming forth to new affections, and higher enterprises. Therefore let us study newness.
4. For who has not a great deal which he would get rid of? Old levels of thought, old appetites, clingings, selfishnesses, prejudices, sins! And may we not be thankful that we have to do with a religion which is always giving grace through new opportunities, for new actions, whose very essence is a daily renovation, and whose keynote all along is resurrection?
I. What is newness?
1. It is better than creation. Beautiful as must have been the Holy Child, as He lay a babe at Bethlehem, the same form, risen from the tomb, was lovelier. The heavens and the earth of innocence were fair. But the new heavens and the new earth which are to be, shall exceed the glories of Eden.
2. The good that comes out of evil is better than the good which has never been soiled. The old goes to make the new. The old passions, the old bias, the old elements of the natural man, go to make the strength, the elevation of the new creation, the same, yet not the same.
II. Let us trace where the newness lies.
1. There is set a new motive, God loves me. How can I show Him that I do indeed love Him who has been so exceedingly kind to me?
2. Bars and fetters have been falling off from that mans soul, and he feels a new principle. He is emancipated from a long, dark bondage. And he goes forth into the old world, its scenes are just the same, but a new sunshine lies upon everything, it is the medium of his newborn peace, it is a smile of God. And oh! how changed that world looks to him.
3. And so his standard is always rising. He leaves the past attainments behind, as nothing to the heights which are opening before him. He has ever a new ambition, therefore he enterprises new works for God. And all the while, Christ reveals Himself to him with ever-increasing clearness. Some new view of some old truth, some yet untasted sense of his own pardon, is always breaking upon his wondering mind. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
Christianity the renewal of the race
1. Christianity has become to us such an everyday and old thing, so different from the amazing, respiring miracle which once it was, that we fail to realise how Divine a revolution it was intended to effect. Yet Christ and His apostles tried to impress upon us that the gospel was not a slightly improved Judaism, not a mere scheme to produce the average morality of men, but a vast reversal of the past, a fresh beginning for the future. May we know what this new teaching is? cried the votaries of obsolete philosophics on Mars Hill. The writer to the Hebrews describes Christ as a new and living way to God. St. Paul describes conversion as putting off the old man, with his affections and lusts, and putting on the new man, and says: If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away, behold they are come new. And St. Peter speaks of a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. And St. John in the Apocalypse talks of a new name and a new song, and a new Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God, and He that sitteth on the throne said: Behold, I make all things new. Life from the dead--newness of life--that was the conception which the apostles and evangelists had formed of Christianity.
2. It was not that any ostensible change had taken place in the world around them. Men married, and gave in marriage, and sinned, and suffered, and lied, as before. Heathenism hardly deigned to cast one single glance upon Christianity, or, if so, simply scorned it as an insane enthusiasm or hated it as an execrable superstition. And that despised handful of artisans and fishermen was right, and the world, with all its powers, and splendours, was wrong. Not with the diadem, and the purple, the wisdom of Greece, the venerable institutions of Jerusalem, were the truth, and the force, and the glory of the future. With them was the ebbing, with these was the flowing tide. The peopled walls of the amphitheatre broke into yells of sanguinary exultation when the tiger sprang upon some aged martyr; but the hope and the meaning of all human life were with him, and not with them.
3. Yes, the cynic will coldly answer, the world goes mad at times, and this was one of the worlds strange delusions; but we have changed all that. Now we have come to the time when every little nobody can pose in the attitude of immense superiority to the ignorant superstition of Christians. First comes the materialist, who thinks himself great because he cannot believe in anything which he cannot grasp with both hands. Why should I accept, he asks, anything which I cannot verify? But he forgets to ask whether for the truths which he rejects there can be any verifying faculty but that spiritual faculty of which he denies the very existence. When we are assured by the materialist that man is but an animal, that he is a chance product of evolution; that what he takes for his thoughts are only a chemical change of the molecules in the grey substance of his brain--at everything of this kind Christians can only smile, not in anger, but in deep sorrow. If a man resolutely closes his eyes we cannot greatly respect his asseveration that there is no sun in heaven; if a man declares that there is no God, are we astonished if he has purposely atrophied within himself the faculty by which alone we are able to believe that God is? Christianity has less than nothing to dread from this dry and dusty system which supremely fails to account for the human consciousness and the moral nature, and which offers to mens unquenchable spiritual yearnings nothing but a chaos of brute forces blindly evolving order out of mazy dream. But next we have the pessimist telling us, with a bitter sneer, that, after all, our Christianity has hopelessly failed. It is one of the notes of condemnation of these moral systems that they all, unlike Christianity, despair of man. Pessimism tells us by the voice of Schopenhauer that the human race always tends from bad to worse, and that there is no prospect for it but ever-deepening confusion and wretchedness. It asserts with Von Hartmann that existence is unspeakably wretched, and society will ever grow worse; and with Carlyle, More dreary, barren, base, and ugly seem to me all the aspects of this poor, diminishing, quack world, doomed to a death which one can only wish to be speedy.
4. To all such slanders and caricatures of humanity Faith gives her unwavering answer. To the materialist she opposes her unalterable conviction that the worlds were made by the Word of God, and that He is the Governor among the nations. To the pessimist she answers that though the road trodden by the long procession of humanity seems often to be rough and devious, and often even to sweep down into the valley of the shadow of death, it is yet a road which does not plunge into the abyss, but is ever leading us nearer to our God.
5. But Faith can appeal not only to intuition, but to reason, to experience, and to history. Admitting that change does not always or necessarily imply advance, she can yet show that even amid the most vehement moral earthquakes of history mankind has still ever found in Christianity the secret of rejuvenescence and of victory. Humanity may sometimes advance over ruins, but humanity advances still. The Church tamed the barbarians and silenced the scoffers; upon the disencumbered debris of past superstition she rebuilt the fairer and firmer fabric of her reformed faith; and now whatever ruins may ensue, we feel secure that God will once again, as ever heretofore, lay the stones of His Church with fair colours, and her foundations with sapphires, and that her walls should be salvation and her gates brass.
6. But after so many splendid victories, when it has undoubtedly blessed the world, how is it that men allow themselves so easily to speak slightingly and scornfully of Christianity as they do? I answer, it is our fault. A man must be ignorant indeed if he does not know how Christianity changed the life and character of the whole civilised pagan world. What need have I to tell you how it rescued the gladiator, how it emancipated the slave, how it elevated womanhood, how it flung over childhood the aegis of its protection, how it converted the wild, fierce tribes from the icy steppes and broad rivers of the North, how it built from the shattered fragments of the Roman empire a new created world, how it saved learning, how it baptized and recreated art, how it inspired music, how it placed the poor and the sick under the angel wings of mercy, and entrusted to the two great archangels of reason and conscience the guidance of the young? And is not Christianity exactly what it ever was? Is her force spent? Where is the Lord God of Elijah? Is His hand shortened that it cannot save, or His ears heavy that they cannot hear? God is where and what He was. It is not the I am that I am who has changed, but it is we who are dead, faithless, hollow and false. The new life of the gospel is as full of fire as it ever was; but because we have never truly felt and tested it we work no miracles, we cast out no devils, we subdue no kingdoms. God never does for man the work which He has assigned to man himself to do. It is of no use for us to say, Well, God will mend all. We must help Him. A handful of peasants, beaten, imprisoned, treated as the offscouring of all things, faced pagan Rome in the plenitude of her despotism, made whole armies drop their weapons before their defenceless feet. If they, with so little, did so much, how is it that we, with so much, do so little? Of what use is it for us to cry, Awake, O arm of the Lord? It is we who must awake. If Christianity does not prosper, it is only because the vast majority of us are Christians in name alone. We no longer feel that newness of life; we multiply organisations, but we enkindle no enthusiasm: we posture, and pray, and boast, and babble, and rail at one another, and Christ stands far away; we give a guinea to a missionary society, and think that we have discharged all our responsibilities to the heathen world. Thus our Christianity is smitten with vulgarity; it is commonplace, tamed out of its heroic faith and its splendid passion. If in one single congregation the fire of God burst forth again in every heart as in some of those congregations of the early Christians--yea, if there were but one man here and there capable of a God-like and absolute self-sacrifice--how would such a man flash the vivid thrill of nobleness into ten thousand hearts; how would life move again among the dry bones of the valley of vision! To very few in the long generations is it given to achieve a mighty work like this; but to every one of us it is given to help it forward and to carry it on. Every one of us can at least catch some faint and feeble and twinkling spark from that unemptiable fountain of eternal light. (Archdn. Farrar.)
The new life in the nation and the fatally
1. The prophets were interested not only in their own nation, but in the world around them. Christianity always suffers when it is dwarfed into individualism, or when it is made simply selfishness expanded to infinity. If Christianity was meant to be a new life in the world, it surely ought to exercise a profound influence upon every nation. But can we honestly say that in any lofty sense even those kingdoms which call themselves Christian have become the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ?
2. The earliest of the prophets is Amos, and he begins his book by looking at the seven neighbouring nations, each of which he is compelled to condemn, and then turning to his own. The voice of prophecy has long dwindled down into smooth generalities; but suppose one true prophet were living, and were to turn his gaze upon the nations of Europe, would he be content to indulge in the song of Peace on earth? Strange peace, when there are in Europe upwards of thirteen millions of men under arms. Look at the relations of European nations. The Kaffir, the Hindu, the Australian, etc., have not the footsteps of our race among them been dyed in blood? Two crimes fling their lurid light over every land. There is the crime of the man stealer, which makes whole regions of Africa red with human blood; and the yet more ruinous crime of selling to the natives a filthy poison christened gin or rum. We, the Pharisees of the world, in the name of Free Trade, are inoculating the world with a virus of a deadly pestilence. It is greed which prevents Germany and England and America from combining at once as righteous and noble nations ought to do, to prevent this decimation of the Dark Continent.
3. If Amos were alive in these days would he not cry, Thus saith the Lord, For three transgressions of Russia, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof, because her Church is torpid, and her upper classes unbelieving. For three transgressions of Germany, and for four, will I not turn away the punishment thereof, because she has the spirit of militarism, and is grasping and insolent. For three transgressions of France, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof, because, unwarned by the collapse and catastrophe of twenty years ago, she still suffers her sons to flood Europe with filthy literature, and has erased from her statute book the name of God? Might not such a prophet also proceed to mention the names of Spain, Italy, and Turkey, and after looking around at these nations, what would he say of England? Thus saith the Lord, For three transgressions of England, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof. Are not men estimated for what they have far more than for what they are? Are there not spurious goods and lying advertisements? Are there no sweaters dens? Is not Christ sold for filthy lucre? Are not thousands ruined by gambling? Are there not in London alone a number equal to the whole population of Norwich of lost, degraded beings? Are there not streets as full as Sodom of youths who have poisoned their own blood and the blood of generations yet to come? Is it no crime that in spite of the warning of fifty years, drink should still continue to be the potent curse which has folded this nation round and round in its serpent coils?
4. Dare we say otherwise than that Christian nations are not walking in newness of life? Let none of you say, It does not concern me. It does concern you; and every one of us is guilty and responsible so far as we have suffered Christ in our lives to become nothing but a name, and Christianity in our examples to be dwarfed and dwindled into a sectarian squabble or a paltry form. Look at America sixty years ago. One boy--William Lloyd Garrison--confronts enraged statesmanship, and alone, with the dagger of the assassin flashing every day across his path, proclaimed to the slave States of America the duty of emancipation, and lived to carry the great plan which as a boy he had devised. Look at England fifty years ago--filled with sullen discontent, with starving poor; children in factories were made a holocaust to Mammon; women bent double; half-naked men dragging wagons of coal, like beasts of burden, in wet, black collieries; the streets were alive with ignorance and vices. Then arose Anthony Astley Shaftesbury. We cannot all be great heroes, but we may be humble soldiers in that great army when the Son of God goes forth to war.
5. For is there not one of us who does not belong to some family? And always the cornerstone of the commonwealth is the hearthstone. The chief hope for any country, the chief element for Englands safety, now lies in the purity of her homes. If you can do nothing more, every one of you may perform in your home the high duty of patriotism. If the Spartans were invincible, if the Romans carried into the world their majestic institutions, it was because Spartan and Roman mothers would tolerate no effeminate sons, no lackadaisical daughters. Let us each try so to illustrate the workings of the new life that by thus kindling throughout the length and breadth of England myriads of twinkling points of light there may be one broad glow of Christianity throughout the world. (Archdn. Farrar.)
The new life in the individual
1. As the family is the unit of the nation, so the individual is the unit of the family. We get at the inmost meaning of what the gospel was intended to achieve when we ask, What should the new life effect for each separate soul?
2. Look out into the world around you and see, as Ezekiel saw, the torn and wandering flock, sheep without a shepherd, scattered on the dark hills in the dark and cloudy day. Many simply shrug their shoulders at the sight in despair. They say all this curse is irretrievable. Some have nothing but scorn and contempt. Not so Christ. There is nothing irretrievable with God.
3. And how did the Lord of Mercy work? It was not in accordance with the laws of the Divine will to convert the whole world, as it were, by one lightning flash. Such compulsory conversion is no conversion. Christs word was, as ours ought to be, largely with the individual. He came to a land full of misery. He saw the blind, the halt, the leper, etc., and He cured the incurable who came to and believed on Him. But far Diviner was the miracle which He wrought upon the souls of all who received Him. The official religionism and ritual and priestliness had wholly failed to touch this mass of sin and misery. But He turned the wretched to his Father in heaven, and shed on the souls of the humble and the penitent the pure eternal ray of His transcendent love. Then each soul, however lost and fallen, revealed the beauty which was in it; and as when one uplifts a torch in a cavern full of gems, and they awaken into million-fold lustre, so at the touch of Christs heavenly sympathy each soul flashed back its inward gleam of peculiar light.
4. Herein lies the secret of our regeneration, and of the regeneration of the world. The publicans were hated, and naturally hated, as the greedy jackals of a distasteful oppression. Yet even of these wretches Christ did not despair. One loving word to Zaccheus, and lo! one half of his goods he gives to the poor; one loving word to Matthew, and lo! he springs up an evangelist and an apostle. And so it was with yet more miserable outcasts. The woman that was a sinner, lost to purity, to innocence, to womanhood--yet He suffered her to wash His feet with her tears and to wipe them with the hairs of her head. The dying malefactor, even he repented and heard the gracious words, This day shalt thou be with Me in paradise. And, as though to show us that these were not accidental cases, He, the Friend of publicans and sinners, embraced the degradation of all sinners alike in His pearl of parables--the parable of the prodigal son. It was the revelation of God as a loving Father; it was not any weak and beggarly observances, it was not any threats of a bodily hell which made multitudes holy in a world of paganism, where heretofore the very ideal of holiness had been unknown. And herein lies the essential and the irrevocable evidence of Christianity--the changed lives of multitudes of Christian men.
5. But here we come back to the momentous question--Christ has saved a multitude whom no man can number, but are we saved? The work of salvation is, and it must be personal; it must be not only Christ for us, but Christ in us. Alas, multitudes know nothing of personal salvation--because they love their sins better than their Saviour, or out of carelessness, defiance, or despair, and some because of the religiosity which they mistake for religion have been ossified into mere function and routine, and their souls are rotting asleep amid formula and rites; but the vast majority, I think, chiefly because they have not faith to believe that they can be healed and Christ can heal them. You know, many of you, that you are living in a state of sin--sloth, or dishonesty, or hatred, or falsehood, or impurity, or habitual discontent. You do not love your sin; it may be that you loathe it, and yet you have become a slave to it. You are like the leper, who thinks his leprosy is altogether incurable. I bid you shake off this despair; I bid you hope. Fly into the stronghold. You are the slaves of sin; but Christ came to ransom you from sin. You think that you can never be born again when you are old. So did Nicodemus; yet he became a servant of Christ. Christ is mighty to save.
6. He saves in many ways. Sometimes gently and gradually He wins the soul with cords of love; sometimes He rends from the destroyer; sometimes He breaks the hard soul with the blows of affliction; sometimes He makes it soft with the gracious rain of sorrow; but so long as there is one sign of hope He will not break the bruised reed nor quench the smouldering wick. (Archdn. Farrar.)
The new life in religion
1. Can we say Christianity still is a new life? Does it achieve one thousandth part of what it was intended to achieve; and if not, what is the reason? Why has the Church been smitten with the curse of a spiritual sterility? It is one of the sophisms of infidel argument to charge upon Christianity the crimes and faults of men who have acted in flagrant contradiction to its spirit. The representatives of the Church have in many an age condoned vice, leagued with tyranny. But to charge these crimes on Christianity is absurd and false; they are to be charged on anti-Christ. Satan is ten-fold Satan when he dons the cowl or the mitre, and would pass himself off as an angel of light. And a religion may retain the name and the semblance of a religion long after it is dead; and when a religion has lost its life how deep the death! If the light that is within us is darkness, how great is that darkness! Christianity was meant to be the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its savour wherewith shall it be salted? He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire; but when men have ceased to believe that there is so much as a Holy Ghost, how shall spiritual miracles be wrought?
2. Now, the one peril of all religions is to lose their life, to lose their fire. We talk of false religions, but no religion worthy of the name can be wholly false. The value of religions may sometimes be more easily tested by their results than by their doctrines, by their fire than by their abstract truths. Confucianism, for instance, is now arid and empty enough, and yet Confucius once taught great truths. Buddhism is the religion of masses of the human race, and is rife with error; and yet Buddhism is still kept alive by its great demand for self-conquest and self-sacrifice. Mahomedanism, notwithstanding all its deadly degeneracies, saved Arabia from idolatry, and its demand for abstinence has been to many nations an inestimable boon. Each of these religions has sunk into inanition, because their priests have suffered their votaries to make a mere fetish of their formulae, and to violate their essential life. Judaism stood incomparably above other religions in its Divine origin, but it proved to be no exemption from this law of decay. Is it possible that Christianity could undergo a fate so terrible, and become no better than a phantom? Yes. Many a time has nominal Christendom been tamed out of its splendid passion, and sunk into Pharisaism, and lost its renovating power.
3. Now, when any faith has sunk into this condition, when it has got to rely mainly upon worthless symbols and pompous claims, it is for the time dead. It needs resurrection and a new Pentecost. And the Christian Church has had many such. The work of Benedict, Wycliffe, Huss, Savonarola, and Francis of Assisi, was but a successful rekindling of dead or dying claims. So, too, it was when Luther disinterred the true gospel from the heaped debris of priestly falsehoods. So, too, was it when George Fox made men believe once more in the living power of the Spirit of God with every human soul. So, too, was it when Wesley and Whitefield awoke the full-fed and torpid Church of England. And so it would be now if among the many echoes God would send us one voice--but one man with his soul so electric with the fire of God that he would make us feel that God is face to face with every one of us.
4. The real question to ask about any form of religious belief is, Does it kindle the fire of love? Does it make the life stronger, sweeter, more noble? Does it run through society like a cleansing flame? There is no error more fatal than the notion that correct belief or church membership are of any value whatever in comparison with righteousness of life. Just as a living dog is better than a dead lion, so a good heretic or a righteous schismatic may be immeasurably dearer to God and nearer to heaven than is, or can be, a bad Christian.
5. How necessary is it, then, that our religion, which is so Divinely great and true, should not degenerate in our hands into a pompous system or an outward formalism. And yet is there no danger of this? What is the state of things in Christian England, and what is predominantly occupying its attention? You know that of all the fifteen hundred millions now alive only one in three is even yet a nominal Christian; that in Europe at this moment thirty-six millions of men are in arms. You know the vice, the squalor, the misery of these great cities; you know how in this awful city there are tens of thousands of the unemployed, of paupers, of criminals, of drunkards, of prostitutes; and that there are at least two millions and a half who scarcely ever enter any house of God. And when you have gazed long enough on this weltering sea of shame and misery, you turn to the professors of religion and find two hundred and seventy rival sects, and the Church of the nation rent asunder by questions as to who can fail to ask, Is this the outcome of nineteen centuries of Christianity? Is it about such questions that the new life is concerned? Is Nero fiddling during the burning of Rome a sadder spectacle?
6. Oh, if Christianity as ever fully to be what it was meant to be, if it is to be something more than a clamour of contending sects and contending parties; if it is to be a new life and a new walk, then it must inspire once more such a sense of eternity, such a sense of the near, immediate presence of God, such a belief in the infinite love of Christ and the power of His resurrection, such a consciousness of the Spirit, as shall restore it once more to its olden glory, and make it adequate to fulfil the vast promise of its Lord, He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also, etc. (Archdn. Farrar.)
The present pledge of life to come
1. The argument of the text is that the hope of a new life, like Christs, beyond the grave ought to find its justification in a new life here; that on either side of the grave the life of the spirit is the same.
2. It is commonly supposed that the fact of immortality can only be established by some external evidence such as the resurrection of Christ; but the text refers us to the ultimate proof both of that and of the resurrection of all in whom a life like Christs dwells. And here the eyewitnesses of Christs resurrection have no advantage over us, and the unlearned man is on a level with the critic.
3. The peculiarity of man is the blending in him of two kinds of life. There is, first, that the lower animals possess; but in this there is for man no more than the lowest animals. It seeks nothing, sees nothing, and says there is nothing beyond. One who has not first come to the truth of immortality in a higher line of thought can never discover it by any process of physiological explanation. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. From things that are merely temporal we can never attain to certainty of things eternal. The life of flesh and blood has here all its satisfactions, its goal and end. It is as perishable as the things on which it feeds.
4. But on the stock of this animal life is manifest a bud prophetic of an unfolding which is independent of the material world. What the apostle calls newness of life is not merely new, but radically distinct from all other life, and unfolds itself in an opposite way. Search its annals, and you will find them luminous with the names of those who, for the sake of living in a world of higher satisfaction, refused to live in a world of inferior content. From the Good Shepherd giving His life for the sheep to the martyr of Erromanga perishing in his mission to cannibals, we see a moral life developing in a way diametrically opposite to the animal life, declaring itself independent of the material things that are sought by a life which is for this world alone.
5. Will this life, then, survive? The answer must come from the life itself. Life is a conclusive witness to the nature of life, as Jesus said, Though I bear record of Myself, yet My record is true, for I know whence I came, and whither I go. We accept the witness which the animal life bears to its perishable nature, when we see it shrink instinctively from death as its destruction. We must equally accept the witness of the moral life to its imperishable nature, when we see it instinctively welcome death as its deliverer. What is it, then, that we see in the multitude who in the spirit of Christ have turned their backs on a transitory world in preference for that which they seek as eternal? Evidently a mighty, vital force overmastering the imperious dictates of a lower life. Now is this a delusion, a dream? Look at this newness of life, walking down the ages with the torch of truth and the gifts of love; look at the transcendent inspirations by which it transforms brutish into Christly natures! See now what would follow on the hypothesis of its termination at death, viz., that the self-preserving instinct of the lower life of selfish appetite is trustworthy, but that the self-preserving instinct of the moral life catches at a shadow; that the highest and holiest aspirations of Jesus, and of all who, like Jesus, have sought a higher world through the sacrifice of a lower, have only been a deceitful lure to an utter loss.
6. Our own personal certitude of immortality depends on the development which we give to this newness of life in ourselves. Long ago was this pointed out in Ciceros remark that the presage of a future life takes the deepest root in the most exalted souls. To one, therefore, who seeks to be convinced of his immortality, I would say not Hear or read this, but Be this. He who lacks a working belief of his immortality cannot borrow it, but must cultivate it by creating the moral soil in which it grows. The actual resurrection of Christ is something, but that newness of life which is the earnest of the inheritance is better. But let the old life get uppermost, with its selfish desires and gratifications, and the inward witness which the new life bears to an eternal hope will grow faint and mute (Rom_8:13). (J. M. Whiton, Ph. D.)
Newness of life
I understand, said this chief to a congregation which he was called to address at Plymouth, in the year 1837, that many of you are disappointed because I have not brought my Indian dress with me. Perhaps if I had it on you would be afraid of me. Do you wish to know how I dressed when I was a pagan Indian? I will tell you. My face was covered with red paint, I stuck feathers in my hair, I wore a blanket and leggings, I had silver ornaments on my breast, a rifle on my shoulder, a tomahawk and scalping knife in my belt. That was my dress then. Now, do you wish to know why I wear it no longer? You will find the cause in 2Co_5:7, Therefore, if any man, etc. When I became a Christian, feathers and paint were done away; I gave my silver ornaments to the mission cause; scalping knife done away, tomahawk done away--that my tomahawk now, said he, holding up at the same time a copy of the Ten Commandments, in his native language. Blanket done away. Behold! he exclaimed, in a manner in which simplicity and dignity of character were combined, Behold! all things are become new.
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v14 Chapter 15
Chapter 15
JUSTIFICATION AND HOLINESS: ILLUSTRATIONS FROM HUMAN LIFE
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Rom_6:14-23 - Rom_7:1-6
AT the point we have now reached, the Apostles thought pauses for a moment, to resume. He has brought us to self-surrender. We have seen the sacred obligations of our divine and wonderful liberty. We have had the miserable question, "Shall we cling to sin?" answered by an explanation of the rightness and the bliss of giving over our accepted persons, in the fullest liberty of will, to God, in Christ. Now he pauses, to illustrate and enforce. And two human relations present themselves for the purpose; the one to show the absoluteness of the surrender, the other its living results. The first is Slavery, the second is Wedlock.
For sin shall not have dominion over you; sin shall not put in its claim upon you, the claim which the Lord has met in your Justification; for you are not brought under law, but under grace. The whole previous argument explains this sentence. He refers to our acceptance. He goes back to the justification of the guilty, "without the deeds of law," by the act of free grace; and briefly restates it thus, that he may take up afresh the position that this glorious liberation means not license but divine order. Sin shall be no more your tyrant creditor, holding up the broken law in evidence that it has right to lead you off to a pestilential prison, and to death. Your dying Saviour has met your creditor in full for you, and in Him you have entire discharge in that eternal court where the terrible plea once stood against you. Your dealings as debtors are now not with the enemy who cried for your death, but with the Friend who has bought you out of his power.
What then? are we to sin, because we are not brought under law, but under grace? Shall our life be a life of license, because we are thus wonderfully free? The question assuredly is one which, like that of ver. 1, and like those suggested in Rom_3:8; Rom_3:31, had often been asked of St. Paul, by the bitter opponent, or by the false follower. And again it illustrates and defines, by the direction of its error, the line of truth from which it flew off. It helps to do what we remarked above, to assure us that when St. Paul taught "Justification by faith, without deeds of law," he meant what he said, without reserve; he taught that great side of truth wholly, and without a compromise. He called the sinner, "just as he was, and waiting not to rid his soul of one dark blot," to receive at once, and without fee, the acceptance of God for Anothers blessed sake. Bitter must have been the moral pain of seeing, from the first, this holy freedom distorted into an unhallowed leave to sin. But he will not meet it by an impatient compromise, or untimely confusion. It shall be answered by a fresh collocation; the liberty shall be seen in its relation to the Liberator; and behold, the perfect freedom is a perfect service, willing but. absolute, a slavery joyfully accepted, with open eyes and open heart, and then lived out as the most real of obligations by a being who has entirely seen that he is not his own.
Away with the thought. Do you not know that the party to whom you present, surrender, yourselves bondservants, slaves, so as to obey him, -bondservants you are, not the less for the freewill of the surrender, of the party whom you obey; no longer merely contractors with him, who may bargain, or retire, but his bondservants out and out; whether of sin, to death, or of obedience, to righteousness? (As if their assent to Christ, their Amen to His terms of peace, acceptance, righteousness, were personified; they were now the bondsmen of this their own act and deed, which had put them, as it were, into Christs hands for all things.) Now thanks be to our God, that you were bondmen of sin, in legal claim, and under moral sway; yes, every one of you was this, whatever forms the bondage took upon its surface; but you obeyed from the heart the mould of teaching to which you were handed over. They had been sins slaves. Verbally, not really, he "thanks God" for that fact of the past. Really, not verbally, he "thanks God" for the pastness of the fact, and for the bright contrast to it in the regenerated present. They had now been "handed over," by their Lords transaction about them, to another ownership, and they had accepted the transfer, "from the heart." It was done by Another for them, but they had said their humble, thankful that as He did it. And what was the new ownership thus accepted? We shall find soon (Rom_6:22), as we might expect, that it is the mastery of God. But the bold, vivid introductory imagery has already called it (Rom_6:16) the slavery of "Obedience." Just below (Rom_6:19-20) it is the slavery of "Righteousness," that is, if we read the word aright in its whole context, of "the Righteousness of God," His acceptance of the sinner as His own in Christ. And here, in a phrase most unlikely of all, whose personification strikes life into the most abstract aspects of the message of the grace of God, the believer is one who has been transferred to the possession of "a mould of Teaching." The Apostolic Doctrine, the mighty Message, the living Creed of life, the Teaching of the acceptance of the guilty for the sake of Him who was their Sacrifice, and is now their Peace and Life-this truth has, as it: were, grasped them as its vassals, to form them, to mould them for its issues. It is indeed their "tenet." It "holds them"; a thought far different from what is too often meant when we say of a doctrine that "we hold it." Justification by their Lords merit, union with their Lords life; this was a doctrine, reasoned, ordered, verified. But it was a doctrine warm and tenacious with the love of the Father and of the Son. And it had laid hold of them with a mastery which swayed thought, affection, and will; ruling their whole view of self and of God. Now, liberated from your sin, you were enslaved to the Righteousness of God. Here is the point of the argument. It is a point of steel, for all is fact; but the steel is steeped in love, and carries life and joy into the hearts it penetrates. They are not for one moment their own. Their acceptance has magnificently emancipated them from their tyrant enemy. But it has absolutely bound them to their Friend and King. Their glad consent to be accepted has carried with it a consent to belong. And if that consent was at the moment rather implied than explicit, virtual rather than articulately conscious, they have now only to understand their blessed slavery better to give the more joyful thanksgivings to Him who has thus claimed them altogether as His own.
The Apostles aim in this whole passage is to awaken them, with the strong, tender touch of his holy reasoning, to articulate their position to themselves. They have trusted Christ, and are in Him. Then, they have entrusted themselves altogether to Him. Then, they have, in effect, surrendered. They have consented to be His property. They are the bondservants, they are the slaves, of His truth, that is, of Him robed and revealed in His Truth, and shining through it on them in the glory at once of His grace and of His claim. Nothing less than such an obligation is the fact for them. Let them feel, let them weigh, and then let them embrace, the chain which after all will only prove their pledge of rest and freedom.
What St. Paul thus did for our elder brethren at Rome, let him do for us of this later time. For us, who read this page, all the facts are true in Christ today. Today let us define and affirm their issues to ourselves, and recollect our holy bondage, and realise it, and live it out with joy.
Now he follows up the thought. Conscious of the superficial repulsiveness of the metaphor-quite as repulsive in itself to the Pharisee as to the Englishman-he as it were apologises for it; not the less carefully, in his noble considerateness, because so many of his first readers were actually slaves. He does not lightly go for his picture of our Masters hold of us, to the market of Corinth, or of Rome, where men and women were sold and bought to belong as absolutely to their buyers as cattle, or as furniture. Yet he does go there, to shake slow perceptions into consciousness, and bring the will face to face with the claim of God. So he proceeds. I speak humanly, I use the terms of this utterly not-divine bond of man to man, to illustrate mans glorious bond to God, because of the weakness of your flesh, because your yet imperfect state enfeebles your spiritual perception, and demands a harsh paradox to direct and fix it., For-here is what he means by "humanly"-just as you surrendered your limbs, your functions and faculties in human life, slaves to your impurity and to your lawlessness, unto that lawlessness, so that the bad principle did indeed come out in bad practice, so now, with as little reserve of liberty, surrender your limbs slaves to righteousness, to Gods Righteousness, to your justifying God, unto sanctification-so that the surrender shall come out in your Masters sovereign separation of His purchased property from sin.
He has appealed to the moral reason of the regenerate soul. Now he speaks straight to the will. You are, with infinite rightfulness, the bondmen of your God. You see your deed of purchase; it is the other side of your warrant of emancipation. Take it, and write your own unworthy names with joy upon it, consenting and assenting to your Owners perfect rights. And then live out your life, keeping the autograph of your own surrender before your eyes. Live, suffer, conquer, labour, serve, as men who have themselves walked to their Masters door, and presented the ear to the awl which pins it to the doorway, each in his turn saying, "I will not go out free."
To such an act of the soul the Apostle calls these saints, whether they had done the like before or no. They were to sum up the perpetual fact, then and there, into a definite and critical act (παραστησατε, aorist) of thankful will. And he calls us to do the same today. By the grace of God, it shall be done. With eyes open, and fixed upon the face of the Master who claims us, and with hands placed helpless and willing within His hands, we will, we do, present ourselves bondservants to Him; for discipline, for servitude, for all His will.
For when you were slaves of your sin, you were freemen as to righteousness, Gods Righteousness. It had nothing to do with you, whether to give you peace or to receive your tribute of love and loyalty in reply. Practically, Christ was not your Atonement, and so not your Master; you stood, in a dismal independence, outside His claims. To you, your lips were your own; your time was your own; your will was your own. You belonged to self; that is to say, you were the slaves of your sin. Will you go back? Will the word "freedom" (he plays with it, as it were, to prove them) make you wish yourselves back where you were before you had endorsed by faith your purchase by the blood of Christ? Nay, for what was that "freedom," seen in its results, its results upon yourselves? What fruit, therefore, (the "therefore" of the logic of facts,) used you to have then, in those old days, from things over which you are ashamed now? Ashamed indeed; for the end, the issue, as the fruit is the trees "end," the end of those things is-death; perdition of all true life here and hereafter too. But now, in the blessed actual state of your case, as by faith you have entered into Christ, into His work and into His life, now liberated from sin and enslaved to God, you have your fruit, you possess indeed, at last, the true issues of being for which you were made, all contributing to sanctification, to that separation to Gods will in practice which is the development of your separation to that will in critical fact, when you met your Redeemer in self-renouncing faith. Yes, this fruit you have indeed; and as its end, as that for which it is produced, to which it always and forever tends, you have life eternal. For the pay of sin, sins military stipend (οψωνια), punctually given to the being which has joined its war against the will of God, is death; but the free gift of God is life eternal, in Jesus Christ our Lord.
"Is life worth living?" Yes, infinitely well worth, for the living man who has surrendered to "the Lord that bought him." Outside that ennobling captivity, that invigorating while most genuine bondservice, the life of man is at best complicated and tired with a bewildered quest, and gives results at best abortive, matched with the ideal purposes of such a being. We "present ourselves to God," for His ends, as implements, vassals, willing bondmen; and lo, our own end is attained. Our life has settled, after its long friction, into gear. Our root, after hopeless explorations in the dust, has struck at last the stratum where the immortal water makes all things live, and grow, and put forth fruit for heaven. The heart, once dissipated between itself and the world, is now "united" to the will, to the love, of God; and understands itself, and the world, as never before; and is able to deny self and to serve others in a new and surprising freedom. The man, made willing to be nothing but the tool and bondman of God, "has his fruit" at last; bears the true product of his now recreated being, pleasant to the Masters eye, and fostered by His air and sun. And this "fruit" issues, as acts issue in habit, in the glad experience of a life really sanctified, really separated in ever deeper inward reality, to a holy will. And the "end" of the whole glad possession, is "life eternal."
Those great words here signify, surely, the coming bliss of the sons of the resurrection, when at last in their whole perfected being they will "live" all through, with a joy and energy as inexhaustible as its Fountain, and unencumbered at last and forever by the conditions of our mortality. To that vast future, vast in its scope yet all concentrated round the fact that "we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is," the Apostle here looks onward. He will say more of it, and more largely, later, in the eighth chapter. But as with other themes so with this, he preludes with a few glorious chords the great strain soon to come. He takes the Lords slave by the hand, amidst his present tasks and burthens, (dear tasks and burthens, because the Masters, but still full of the conditions of earth,) and he points upward-not to a coming manumission in glory; the man would be dismayed to foresee that; he wants to "serve forever"; -but to a scene of service in which the last remainders of hindrance to its action will be gone, and a perfected being will forever, perfectly, be not its own, and so will perfectly live in God. And this, so he says to his fellow servant, to you and to me, is "the gift of God"; a grant as free, as generous, as ever King gave vassal here below. And it is to be enjoyed as such, by a being which, living wholly for Him, will freely and purely exult to live wholly on Him, in the heavenly places.
Yet surely the bearing of the sentences is not wholly upon heaven. Life eternal, so to be developed hereafter that Scripture speaks of it often as it began hereafter, really begins here, and develops here, and is already "more abundant" {Joh_10:10} here. It is, as to its secret and also its experience, to know and to enjoy God, to be possessed by Him, and used for His will. In this respect it is "the end," the issue and the goal, now and perpetually, of the surrender of the soul. The Master meets that attitude with more and yet more of Himself, known, enjoyed, possessed, possessing. And so He gives, evermore gives, out of His sovereign bounty, life eternal to the bondservant who has embraced the fact that he is nothing, and has nothing, outside his Master. Not at the outset of the regenerate life only, and not only when it issues into the heavenly ocean, but all along the course, the life eternal is still "the free gift of God." Let us now, today, tomorrow, and always, open the lips of surrendering and obedient faith, and drink it in, abundantly, and yet more abundantly. And let us use it for the Giver.
We are already, here on earth, at its very springs; so the Apostle reminds us. For it is "in Jesus Christ our Lord"; and we, believing, are in Him, "saved in His life." It is in Him; nay, it is He. "I am the Life"; "He that hath the Son, hath the life." Abiding in Christ, we live "because He liveth." It is not to be "attained"; it is given, it is our own. In Christ, it is given, in its divine fulness, as to covenant provision, here, now, from the first, to every Christian. In Christ, it is supplied, as to its fulness and fitness for each arising need, as the Christian asks, receives, and uses for his Lord.
So from, or rather in, our holy bondservice the Apostle has brought us to our inexhaustible life, and its resources for willing holiness. But he has more to say in explaining the beloved theme. He turns from slave to wife, from surrender to bridal, from the purchase to the vow, from the results of a holy bondage to the offspring of a heavenly union. Hear him as he proceeds:
Or do you not know, brethren, (for I am talking to those acquainted with law, whether Mosaic or Gentile,) that the law has claim on the man, the party in any given case, for his whole lifetime? For the woman with a husband is to her living husband bound by law, stands all along bound to him. "His life," under normal conditions, is his adequate claim. Prove him living, and you prove her his. But if the husband should have died, she stands ipso facto cancelled from the husbands law, the marriage law as he could bring it to bear against her. So, therefore, while the husband lives, she will earn adulteress for her name if she weds another ("a second") husband. But if the husband should have died, she is free from the law in question, so as to be no adulteress, if wedded to another, a second, husband. Accordingly, my brethren, you too, as a mystic bride, collectively and individually, were done to death as to the Law, so slain that its capital claim upon you is met "and done," by means of the Body of the Christ, by the "doing to death" of His sacred Body for you, on His atoning Cross, to satisfy for you the aggrieved Law; in order to your wedding Another, a second Party, Him who rose from the dead; that we might bear fruit for God; "we," Paul and his converts, in one happy "fellowship," which he delights thus to remember and indicate by the way.
The parable is stated and explained with a clearness which leaves us at first the more surprised that in the application the illustration should be reversed. In the illustration, the husband dies, the woman lives, and weds again. In the application, the Law does not die, but we, its unfaithful bride, are "done to death to it," and then, strange sequel, are wedded to the Risen Christ. We are taken by Him to be "one spirit" with Him. {1Co_6:17} We are made one in all His interests and wealth, and fruitful of a progeny of holy deeds in this vital union. Shall we call all this a simile confused? Not if we recognise the deliberate and explicit carefulness of the whole passage. St. Paul, we may be sure, was quite as quick as we are to see the inverted imagery. But he is dealing with a subject which would be distorted by a mechanical correspondence in the treatment. The Law cannot die, for it is the preceptive will of God. Its claim is, in its own awful forum domesticum, like the injured Roman husband, to sentence its own unfaithful wife to death. And so it does; so it has done. But behold, its Maker and Master steps upon the scene. He surrounds the guilty one with Himself, takes her whole burthen on Himself, and meets and exhausts her doom. He dies. He lives again, after death, because of death; and the Law acclaims His resurrection as infinitely just. He rises, clasping in His arms her for whom He died, and who thus died in Him, and now, rises in Him. Out of His sovereign love, while the Law attests the sure contract, and rejoices as "the Bridegrooms Friend," He claims her-herself, yet in Him another-for His blessed Bride.
All is love, as if we walked through the lily gardens of the holy Song, and heard the call of the turtle in the vernal woods, and saw the King and His Beloved rest and rejoice in one another. All is law, as if we were admitted to watch some process of Roman matrimonial contract, stern and grave, in which every right is scrupulously considered, and every claim elaborately secured, without a smile, without an embrace, before the magisterial chair. The Church, the soul, is married to her Lord, who has died for her, and in whom now she lives. The transaction is infinitely happy. And it is absolutely right. All the old terrifying claims are amply and forever met. And now the mighty, tender claims which take their place instantly and of course begin to bind the Bride. The Law has "given her away"-not to herself, but to the Risen Lord.
For this, let us remember, is the point and bearing of the passage. It puts before us, with its imagery at once so grave and so benignant, not only the mystic Bridal, but the Bridal as it is concerned with holiness. The Apostles object is altogether this. From one side and from another he reminds us that "we belong." He has shown us our redeemed selves in their blessed bondservice; "free from sin, enslaved to God." He now shows us to ourselves in our divine wedlock; "married to Another," "bound to the law of" the heavenly Husband; clasped to His heart, but also to His rights, without which the very joys of marriage would be only sin. From either parable the inference is direct, powerful, and, when we have once seen the face of the Master and of the Husband, unutterably magnetic on the will. You are set free, into a liberty as supreme and as happy as possible. You are appropriated, into a possession, and into a union, more close and absolute than language can set forth. You are wedded to One who "has and holds from this time forward." And the sacred bond is to be prolific of results. A life of willing and loving obedience, in the power of the risen Bridegrooms life, is to have as it were for its progeny the fair circle of active graces, "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, fidelity, meekness, self-control."
Alas, in the time of the old-abolished wedlock there was result, there was progeny. But that was the fruit not of the union but of its violation. For when we were in the flesh, in our unregenerate days, when our rebel self, the antithesis of "the Spirit," ruled and denoted us, (a state, he implies, in which we all were once, whatever our outward differences were,) the passions, the strong but reasonless impulses, of our sins, which passions were by means of the Law, occasioned by the fact of its just but unloved claim, fretting the self-life into action, worked actively in our limbs, in our bodily life in its varied faculties and senses, so as to bear fruit for death. We wandered, restive, from our bridegroom, the Law, to Sin, our paramour. And behold, a manifold result of evil deeds and habits, born as it were into bondage in the house of Death. But now, now as the wonderful case stands in the grace of God, we are (it is the aorist, but our English fairly represents it) abrogated from the Law, divorced from our first injured Partner, nay, slain (in our crucified Head) in satisfaction of its righteous claim, as having died with regard to that in which we were held captive, even the Law and its violated bond, so that we do bondservice in the Spirits newness, and not in the Letters oldness.
Thus he comes back, through the imagery of wedlock, to that other parable of slavery which has become so precious to his heart. So that we do bondservice, "so that we live a slave life." It is as if he must break in on the heavenly Marriage itself with that brand and bond, not to disturb the joy of the Bridegroom and the Bride, but to clasp to the Brides heart the vital fact that she is not her own; that fact so blissful, but so powerful also and so practical that it is "worth anything" to bring it home.
It is to be no dragging and dishonouring bondage, in which the poor toiler looks wistfully out for the sinking sun and the extended shadows. It is to be "not in the Letters oldness"; no longer on the old principle of the dread and unrelieved "Thou shalt," cut with a pen of legal iron upon the stones of Sinai; bearing no provision of enabling power, but all possible provision of doom for the disloyal. It is to be "in the Spirits newness"; on the new, wonderful principle, new in its full manifestation and application in Christ, of the Holy Ghosts empowering presence. In that light and strength the new relations are discovered, accepted, and fulfilled. Joined by the Spirit to the Lord Christ, so as to have full benefit of His justifying merit; filled by the Spirit with the Lord Christ, so as to derive freely and always the blessed virtues of His life; the willing bondservant finds in his absolute obligations an inward liberty ever "new," fresh as the dawn, pregnant as the spring. And the worshipping Bride finds in the holy call to "keep her only unto Him" who has died for her life, nothing but a perpetual surprise of love and gladness, "new every morning," as the Spirit shows her the heart and the riches of her Lord.
Thus closes, in effect, the Apostles reasoned exposition of the self-surrender of the justified. Happy the man who can respond to it all with the "Amen" of a life which, reposing on the Righteousness of God, answers ever to His Will with the loyal gladness found in "the newness of the Spirit." It is "perfect freedom" to understand, in experience, the bondage and the bridal of the saints.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv3–23 3–5. So many of us as were baptized into…
3–5. So many of us as were baptized into Christ, etc. The fact that every follower of Christ has died to sin is shown by his baptism. All its symbolism points to death. To be baptized into Christ means to enter into a vital union with him, so as to be found in him (Gal. 3:27). But this baptism into Christ implies death, for it is a baptism into the death of Christ. That the subjects of baptism are partakers of his death is shown by the form of baptism. It is a burial.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv12, 22 Rom_6:12.—Sin works bodily desires as the utterances of itself,…
CRITICAL NOTES
Rom_6:12.—Sin works bodily desires as the utterances of itself, obedience to which gives it its domain in the body (Wordsworth). Sin personified as a sort of rival sovereign or deity.
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Rom_6:13.—Do not wield arms for sin. Be as one who has come out of the world of the dead into that of the living, and whose present life has nothing in common with the former.
Rom_6:14. Under grace.—Both justifying and renewing. In the evangelical state in which grace is offered and bestowed the law is fulfilled and sin overcome. It is from the law as inadequate to effect the sanctification and secure the obedience of sinners that the apostle here declares us to be free.
Rom_6:15.—Christ has freed believers from the curse of the law as a covenant, but not from obedience to the law as a rule. We are now translated from the covenant of the law to the covenant of grace (Bishop Sanderson).
Rom_6:16.—Whoever wishes to be free, let him neither wish nor show any of those things which depend upon others, otherwise he must be a slave.
Rom_6:17. That form of doctrine.—τύπον διδαχῆς. Metaphor suggested by the city where the epistle was written. Corinth famous for casting statues in bronze.
Rom_6:18.—Emancipated, as a slave receiving his liberty.
Rom_6:19.—Meyer renders εἰς ἁγιασμόν, in order to attain holiness, to be ἄγιος in mind and walk. Meyer lays it down that in the New Testament ἁγιασμός is always “holiness,” not “sanctification”; Godet also prefers “holiness.” On the other hand, Dr. Clifford gives “unto sanctification,” and says that ἁγ includes the sanctifying act or process as well as result. Mr. Moule also gives “unto sanctification,” and says that the word indicates rather a process than a principle or a condition—a steady course of self-denial, watchfulness, diligence. Dean Vaughan says that ἁγ indicates an act rather than quality. Bishop Westcott says it may be most simply described as the preparation for the presence of God.
Rom_6:20.—Had neither learned to revere nor obey the commands.
Rom_6:21.—In those things ye had your fruit of which now ye are ashamed. What fruit? None, worse than none; “for,” etc.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Rom_6:12-21
Two services contrasted.—Sin and righteousness are the two claimants for the moral service of man. They are the two forces battling, one for the destruction and the other for the salvation of the race. Sin finds an ally in the fallen nature of man; righteousness appeals to the nobler nature, is supported by the better instincts, and is on the side of the divine order and fitness of things. Nevertheless sin reigns in a very extensive sphere; and every effort is required, and every argument and consideration must be adduced in order that sin may not reign in the mortal body of the believer. Contrast, then, the two services:—
I. The service of sin.—
1. The pleasure of this service is short-lived. Whatever view may be taken of the expression “mortal body,” we shall do no violence to the phrase by making it set forth the short-lived pleasure of sin. The greater part of sin’s pleasure arises from the lusts of the flesh. When the body is worn out, when the physical powers are decaying, sin has no fascinating baits to allure. The old sinner may curse the service in which he has engaged. Why, indeed, should a Christian be under any temptation to let sin reign in his mortal body?
2. The effect of this service is degrading and weakening. Said the old heathen, “I am nobler and born to nobler things than that I should make the soul the servant of the body.” Surely the Christian is born by his spiritual birth to nobler things than the man can be by natural birth, and far be it from him to obey the lusts of the carnal nature. Let him understand the greatness of his moral manhood; let him feel the dignity which grace confers; let him realise the teaching that the service of sin is both degrading and weakening. It is a service of uncleanness. It moves downward from iniquity to iniquity. No chance of promotion in this service—no high ambitions to stir the soul to deeds of lofty emprise. Whatever beauty the soul possesses is destroyed by sin’s handiwork.
3. The fruit of this service is shame and death. This is a kind of fruit which the sinner is compelled to gather, and gather it even in this world. It is an awfully bad sign when shame does not attend and follow the sinner’s course. Indeed, he is dead while he lives. Souls alive to the beauty and glory of goodness feel bitter shame and remorse when they have fallen under the power of evil passions. Why should the man who has tasted the delights of freedom go back to slavery? Why should the man who has trod the mountain heights where God’s pure breezes blow descend to the dungeons where foul miasma swelters? Why should the man who has been entranced by the comely form of righteousness embrace the loathsome carcass of sin?
II. The service of righteousness.—
1. The pleasure of this service is eternal. It is the service rendered by the moral nature, and that is immortal. Righteousness is eternal, and the pleasure which it imparts to its adherents is ever abiding. Soul pleasure is the highest good.
2. The effect of this service is ennobling and strengthening. Man is a temple in ruins. The image has been defaced, the glory has departed. Ichabod is written on the desolation, and the temple is to be rebuilt and the glory regained by yielding ourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and our members as instruments of righteousness unto God. The noblest heroes have been the men of righteousness. God crowned men, the glory of the race. The bright gems of humanity have been the truth-lovers and the truth-servers. The practice of righteousness is strengthening. To do good is the way to be good, to be morally strong. It is always strengthening to follow lofty ideals, and striving continually to realise. Obedience to a form of noble teaching is glorious and enriching. The molten metal run into the form becomes strong and beautiful. The ductile heart run into the form of sound doctrine becomes strong and beautiful.
3. The fruit of this service is lustre and life. “The path of the just is as the shining light.” A bright lustre marks the pathway which they tread. In dark days of the world’s history the sons of righteousness have shone out like lustrous stars from a dark sky. True honour is the crown of goodness. Life in all its fulness is the heritage here and hereafter of those who make for, and zealously pursue after, and perseveringly practise righteousness. We ought then to resist all the efforts made by sin to reign in our mortal bodies. We ought to wage incessant war against sin; and we are encouraged to be brave and bold in the conflict by the reflection that sin cannot gain the mastery except from our own fault. “For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.” Let not the members of our bodies become the arms or weapons of unrighteousness which sin may use to our undoing. Remember that the moral and material are connected, that body and soul are united. Body and soul, all the members of the body, all the powers and faculties of the soul, all from the lowest to the highest, must be yielded unto God as instruments of righteousness.
Rom_6:21. The future state of the heathen.—In contemplating the future state and prospects of the heathen, it is proposed to show:—
I. That the heathen are sinners against God.
II. That, being sinners, they are justly exposed to the penalty of the divine law.
III. That from this penalty they cannot be delivered without repentance and reformation.
IV. That the heathen in general exhibit no satisfactory evidence of repentance, but the contrary; and
V. The Scriptures teach directly, and not by mere inference, that the end of heathenism is eternal death.
I. I am to show that the heathen are sinners against God. We might infer as much as this from the fact that, like us, they are the children of a fallen father and belong to a depraved and corrupted race. Are not the heathen human beings? Do they not belong to the “one blood” of which God hath made “all men for to dwell on the face of the whole earth”? Are they not the posterity of Adam? If so, then undoubtedly they are depraved and sinful, for this is true of all Adam’s posterity. “By the offence of one the many were made sinners.” “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death hath passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” The Scriptures assert frequently and positively that the heathen are sinners. Thus Paul says to the converted heathen in verses already quoted, “Ye were the servants of sin.” “Ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness, and to iniquity unto iniquity.” That the heathen of our times, like those of whom Paul speaks, are “all under sin” is proved by the testimony of missionaries and of other competent and impartial witnesses. Every command of the Decalogue, every precept, whether of natural or revealed religion, is openly and shamelessly violated among them. They are, almost without an exception, idolaters. They are, to a shameful extent, the profaners even of their own sacred things. Instead of honouring and protecting their aged parents, they in some instances abandon them to perish with hunger, in others they burn them or bury them alive, and in others slaughter and devour them. Their murders are frequent and of the most horrible description. “Their lewdness,” says one who had long resided among them, “is such as can never be described by a Christian writer.” Their sacred books rather encourage than prohibit theft. In some places they even “pray that they may become expert in it, boast of it when successfully accomplished, and expect to be rewarded for it in the future world.” “Among the common people of India,” says a veteran missionary, “lying is deemed absolutely necessary, and perjury is so common that no reliance whatever can be placed upon the testimony of heathen witnesses. For a piece of money not larger than a fourpenny-piece they can be hired to swear to anything which their employer requires.” The same missionary adds, “The characters of the heathen have not at all improved since the days of the apostle Paul.”
II. But if the heathen have broken the law of God, then they have justly incurred its penalty. This is my second proposition. The law of God, like every other good law, has a just penalty annexed to it. Nor are we left in ignorance as to what the penalty of the divine law is. It is called in the Scriptures death—the second death. Now this penalty the heathen, by transgressing the law of God, have justly incurred. Accordingly Paul says, referring especially to the case of the heathen, “As many as have sinned without law”—that is, a written law—“shall also perish without law.” Of course the guilt and the future punishment of the heathen will be in proportion to the light they have resisted. It will be far less in degree than though they had slighted the Bible and rejected a freely offered Saviour.
III. But this brings me to my third proposition, in which I am to show that the terrible penalty of the divine law, which the heathen have justly incurred by sin, cannot be remitted to them, or to any other sinners, without repentance and reformation. In the Scripture God makes repentance not only the condition but the indispensable condition of forgiveness. He not only says, “Repent, and ye shall be forgiven,” but “Except ye repent, ye shall all perish.” Of what avail would it be to impenitent sinners were God to pardon them? Retaining their hard and unsanctified hearts, they would instantly and continually repeat their transgressions, and fall again and again under the sentence which had been remitted. And were God to pardon them finally and receive them up to heaven, it would be no heaven to them. They would have no meetness for such a heaven.
IV. And now we come to the question under our fourth proposition—a question on the decision of which the future condition of the heathen most essentially depends. Do they, in their heathen state, repent of their sins? Do they furnish any satisfactory evidence of repentance? Most gladly would we accept such evidence if it were furnished. But where shall we look for it? Is it to be found? Did Paul find the heathen among whom he went publishing the gospel of the grace of God penitently prepared to welcome the truth? Do our missionaries find the same? I would not say that there never was a pious heathen. I hope there may have been some of this character. And as to the final salvation of pious heathen, I do not entertain a doubt. They will be forgiven as soon as they repent. They will be saved through Christ, though they may not have heard of Him in the present life. But do the heathen, in frequent instances, repent? Do they give satisfactory evidence of repentance? These questions I am constrained to answer in the negative. With such facts as these standing out before us and staring us in the face, how can we resist the conclusion that the heathen in general are impenitent, hard-hearted, not only ignorant but perverse, in love with sin, and resolved to persist in it to the bitter end? Such certainly is the conclusion to which our modern missionaries have come. They have the best possible opportunities for forming a judgment in the case, and their deliberate judgment is such as I have stated.
V. I only add that this painful conclusion is sustained by the current representations of Scripture. “The wicked shall be turned into hell, with all the nations that forget God.” I know that plausible objections are urged against this scriptural conclusion; but they are all based on false assumptions, and of course vanish as soon as they are brought into the light of truth. It is said, for example, that the heathen are in a state of invincible ignorance, that they do as well as they know. It is not true that the heathen do as well as they know or as well as they can. They know a great deal better than they do, and might do better if they would. They are criminal, culpable in the sight of God. They feel and know that they are. They know that they are deserving of punishment, and hence the various expedients to which they resort to pacify conscience and appease the anger of their gods. The heathen do not deserve so great punishment indeed as though they had resisted greater light; but they are guilty of resisting and abusing the light they have, and unless they repent and are forgiven must receive a just punishment at the hands of God. Show me that the sinner in the other life, whether Christian or heathen, will ever relent and be humble and begin to feel after God, and I will admit that there may be hope in his case. But the truth is, he will never do this. Let us contemplate that not less than six hundred millions of the present inhabitants of our globe are heathens. Each one of these is an immortal creature, destined to live for ever. Now they have a season of probation. In a mighty stream they are pouring over the boundaries of time; and when once they have leaped those boundaries, where do they fall? They fall to rise no more. There is a remedy for all this evil, and this we have in our own hands. It is the gospel. This offers peace and pardon to those who are guilty and ready to perish. Let the gospel be universally diffused and embraced, and the broad road to ruin is no longer frequented.—Enoch Pond, D.D.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Rom_6:12-21
What is the meaning of “mortal”?—The epithet θνητῷ, “mortal,” must bear a logical relation to the idea of the passage. The object of this term has been understood very variously. Calvin regards it as expressive of contempt, as if Paul meant to say that man’s whole bodily nature hastens to death, and ought not consequently to be pampered. Philippi thinks that the epithet refers rather to the fact of sin having killed the body, and having thus manifested its malignant character. Flatt thinks that Paul alludes to the transient character of bodily pleasures. Chrysostom and Grotius find in the word the idea of the brevity of the toils which weigh on the Christian here below. According to Tholuck, Paul means to indicate how evil lusts are inseparable from the present state of the body, which is destined by-and-by to be glorified. According to Lange and Schaff, the sanctification of the mortal body here below is mentioned as serving to prepare for its glorification above. It seems to us that this epithet may be explained more naturally: it is not the part destined to die which should rule the believer’s personality; the higher life awakened in him should penetrate him wholly, and rule that body even which is to change its nature. The apostle does not say now, “that grace may abound,” words which could only come from a heart yet a stranger to the experiences of faith; but he says here, “because we are under grace.” The snare is less gross in this form. Vinet one day said to the writer of these lines, “There is a subtle poison which insinuates itself into the heart even of the best Christian; it is the temptation to say, Let us sin, not that grace may abound, but because it abounds.” Here there is no longer an odious calculation, but a convenient let alone. Where would be the need of holding that the apostle, to explain this question, has in view an objection raised by legal Judeo-Christianity? The question arises of itself as soon as the gospel comes in contact with the heart of man. What proves clearly that the apostle is not thinking here of a Jewish-Christian scruple is the fact that in his reply he does not make the least allusion to man’s former subjection to the law, but solely to the yoke which sin laid upon him from the beginning. And the literal translation of our verse is not, “For ye are no more under the law,” but “For ye are no more under law, but under grace.” It is understood, of course, that when he speaks of law he is thinking of the Mosaic dispensation, just as, when speaking of grace, he is thinking of the revelation of the gospel. But he does not mention the institutions as such; he designates them only by their moral character.—Godet.
Bold metaphors.—The metaphors in this chapter are extremely bold; yet being taken from matters well known, they were used with great advantage. For the influence of sinful passions, in constraining wicked men to commit evil actions, could not be better represented to those who were acquainted with the condition of slaves, and with the customs by which their lives and services were regulated, than by the power which a tyrannical lord exercised over his slaves. Neither could anything more affecting be devised to show the miserable condition of a person habitually governed.—Macknight.
Paul speaks after the manner of men.—“I speak after the manner of men, because of the weakness of your flesh.” This is an epanorthosis, in which he corrects the phraseology which he has just made use of, in saying that those who are “under grace are made over unto righteousness,” since, on the contrary, they are set at liberty to serve God; and he lays the blame of this catachresis on their weakness as the occasion of it. For as they would not understand him expressing heavenly things in the language of heaven, he is compelled, in teaching them, to employ these similitudes of servitude and liberty borrowed from the intercourse of men: “For as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness, and iniquity unto iniquity, even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.” In these words we have the conclusion of the syllogism—viz., that those who are under grace should not sin—illustrated by a comparison of similarity with their previous conduct, both the protasis and apodosis of which are illustrated by their end.—Ferme.
Sin as a king.—Sin, as a raging and commanding king, has the sinner’s heart for its throne; the members of the body for its service; the world, the flesh, and the devil for its grand council; lusts and temptations for its weapons and armoury; and its fortifications are ignorance, sensuality, and fleshly reasonings. Death, as the punishment of sin, is the end of the work, though not the end of the worker.—Burkitt.
“Let not sin therefore.”—As if the apostle should say, We preach purity, and not liberty, as the adversary suggesteth (Rom_6:1 of this chapter with Rom_3:8). Let not sin reign; rebel it well; but do not actively obey and embrace the commands of sin, as subjects to your king. Let sin be dejected from its regency, though not utterly ejected from its residency. Give it such a deadly wound that it may be sure to die within a year and a day. Sprunt it may, and flutter as a bird when the neck is broken; but live it must not.
“That form of doctrine.”—Gr., “That type or mould”; the doctrine is the mould, hearers the metal, which takes impression from it in one part as well as another. And as the metal hath been sufficiently in the furnace, when it is not only purged from the dross, but willingly receiveth the form and figure of that which it is cast and poured into, so here.—Trapp.
Christians by grace throw off sin.—“Christians are placed in a condition of which grace is the prominent feature: grace to sanctify as well as grace to renew the heart; grace to purify the evil affections; grace to forgive offences, though often repeated, and thus to save from despair, and to excite to new efforts of obedience. Viewed in this light, there is abundant reason for asserting that Christians, under a system of grace, will much more effectually throw off the dominion of sin than they would do if under a mere law dispensation.” Yet if there be one point where there is most obscurity in the minds of the majority of professing Christians, it is here. That it has largely arisen from an obscuration of the doctrine of sanctification by grace, or rather the unwise sundering of justification and sanctification in discussing this epistle, is painfully true.—Stuart and Lange.
The sense of sin and guilt the foundation of all religion.
I. That the shame and rem rse which attend upon sin and guilt arise from the natural impressions on the mind of man.—It is certain from experience that we can no more direct by our choice the sensations of our mind than we can those of the body. We are taught by the sense of pain to avoid things hurtful or destructive to the body; and the torments and anxiety of mind which follow so close and so constantly at the heels of sin and guilt are placed as guardians to our innocence, as sentinels to give early notice of the approach of evil which threatens the peace and comfort of our lives. If we are perfect masters of the sensations of our mind, if reflection be so much under command, that when we say “Come,” it cometh, when we say “Go,” it goeth, how is it that so many suffer so much from the uneasy thoughts and suggestions of their own hearts, when they need only speak the word and be whole? Whence the self-conviction, the self-condemnation of sinners, whence the foreboding thoughts of judgment to come, the sad expectations of divine vengeance, and the dread of future misery, if the sinner has it in his power to bid these melancholy thoughts retire, and can when he pleases sit down enjoying his iniquities in peace and tranquillity? These considerations make it evident that the pain and grief of mind which we suffer from a sense of having done ill flow from the very constitution of our nature, as we are rational agents. Nor can we conceive a greater argument of God’s utter irreconcilableness to sin than that He has given us such a nature that we can never be reconciled to it ourselves. We never like it in others where we have no interest in the iniquity, nor long approve of it in ourselv s when we have The hours of cool reflection are the sinner’s mortification, for vice can never be happy in the company of reason, which is the true cause why profligate sinners fly to any excess that may help them to forget themselves and hide them from the light of reason, which, whenever it ceases to be the glory of man, will necessarily become his shame and reproach. No vice is the better for being found in the company of intemperance, but becomes more odious in the sight of God and man. And yet how often does vice fly to intemperance for refuge?—which shows what miserable company sinners are to themselves, when they can be content to expose themselves to the contempt of all about them, merely for the sake of being free from their own censure for a season. Were it in the power of men to find any expedient to reconcile their reason to their vices, they would not submit to the hard terms of parting with their reason for the sake of being at ease with their vices. But there is no remedy: as long as we have the power of thinking, so long must we think ill of ourselves when we do ill. The only cure for this uneasiness is to live without thought; for we can never enjoy the happiness of a brute till we have sunk ourselves into the same degree of understanding.
II. That the expectation of punishment for sin is the result of the reason given unto us. The end of those things is death.—There are no certain principles from which we can infer the nature and sort of punishment designed by God for sinners; and as reason has left us in the dark in this particular, so neither has revelation clearly discovered this secret of providence. The representations of Scripture upon this head are metaphorical: the images are strong and lively, full of horror and dread, and lead us to this certain conclusion, that endless misery will be the lot of the unrighteous. But they do not lead us to a solution of all the inquiries which an inquisitive mind may raise upon this occasion. We read of the fire that never goes out, of the worm that never dies, both prepared to prey upon the wicked to all eternity. But what this fire is, what this worm is, that shall for ever torture, and never destroy the wicked, we are nowhere informed. Among the ancient heathens we find variety of opinions, or, to speak more properly, of imaginations, upon this subject; and though none of them can make any proof in their own behalf, yet they all prove the common ground upon which they stand, the natural expectation of punishment for iniquity. The atheistical writers of antiquity entertain themselves with exposing the vulgar opinions of their time; and the unbelievers of our time have trodden in their steps, and pleased themselves mightily with dressing up the various and uncertain imaginations of men upon this subject. But what is this to the great point? If nature has rightly instructed us in teaching us to expect punishment for our sins, what signifies it how far men have been mistaken in determining the kinds of punishment that are in reserve for sinners? Let the learning of the Egyptians pass for superstition, and the wisdom of the Greeks for folly; yet what has the sense of nature to do with them, which teaches us to expect punishment for sin from the hand that made us? And when once the time comes in which that hand shall exert itself, this we may be sure of, that the sinner will find no further subject for laughter and diversion. Men think they gain a great point by bringing plausible reasons against the common notions of future punishment; but suppose these notions to be indeed mistakes, yet if it remains certain from the light of reason, as well as of revelation, that God will punish sin, what does the cause gain by this argument? Will you suppose that God intends to punish wickedness, and yet that He has no possible way to do it? Where lies the defect? Is it want of wisdom to contrive proper means for the punishment of sin, or is it want of power to put them in execution? If he wants neither the one nor the other, we have nothing to inquire after in this case but what His will is; and of that He has given us such evidence that we can never lose sight of it as long as we continue to be reasonable creatures. The power of conscience which every man feels in himself, the fear that pursues every sin, that haunts the most secret and most successful offenders, are great evidences of the common expectation of a judgment to come.
III. That these common notions are the foundation of all religion, and therefore must be supposed and admitted in revealed religion, and cannot be contradicted by it.—Some there have been who, finding no hopes for impunity to sinners under the light of reason and nature, have taken shelter in revelation; not desiring to correct and reform their vices, but to enjoy them, and yet to hide them from the wrath to come. These are great extollers of the mercy and goodness of God displayed in the gospel, great assertors of the extensive and unbounded merits of the blood of Christ, so far as to think it a reproach to their Saviour for any one to teach that the hopes of Christians may be destroyed for sin, since Christ has died to make an atonement for it. Such as these are much pleased with the thought that they do great honour to God by opening to the world the inexhaustible treasures of His mercy, the attribute in which He delights; and think they have some merit and service to plead on account of such pious labour. They imagine they pay great regard to our Redeemer, and are the only true believers in the efficacy of His death, the virtue of which was so great as to draw out the sting of sin, and leave all the pleasures of it behind to be enjoyed by the world. But would these men consider, they would find that they are offering up to God the sacrifice of fools, whilst they divest Him of wisdom and justice, and all other moral attributes, in compliment to His mercy, and represent Him to the world as a good-natured, indolent, inactive Being, unconcerned at what passes among His creatures, and prepared to receive to equal degrees of favour the righteous and the sinner. It is beside my present purpose to show how inconsistent these notions are with the true doctrine of the gospel; and yet I cannot satisfy myself without observing that all the precepts, all the representations of Scripture, all the hopes and fears proposed to Christians, teach us another lesson, and confirm to us this great article of all religion: “that God hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness.” This is the gospel doctrine; nor can a true revelation possibly teach otherwise; for God cannot contradict Himself, nor gainsay by His prophets that common light of reason which He has planted in men to be their guide and director. Natural religion is the foundation and support of revelation, which may supply the defects of nature, but can never overthrow the established principles of it; which may cast new light upon the dictates of reason, but can never contradict them. I cannot listen to revelation but in consequence of the natural notion I have of God, of His being, His wisdom, power, and goodness: destroy, then, the principles of reason, and there is no room left for revelation. I see and feel the difference between good and evil, virtue and vice: what spirit must that be which teaches me that there is no such difference? Shall I believe it to be a spirit come from God, when I know that the Spirit He has placed within me speaks the contrary? In which case there is only this choice: either to disown God for my creator, or to reject the spirit which contradicts the law of my creation and the light of reason which God has placed in the minds of men.—Sherlock.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 6
Rom_6:13. Yield your members unto God.—
Take my hands, and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love;
Take my feet, and let them be
Swift and beautiful for Thee.
Take my voice, and let me sing
Always, only for my King;
Take my lips, and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee.
Take my will, and make it Thine—
It shall be no longer mine;
Take my intellect, and use
Every power as Thou shalt choose,—
So that all my powers combine
To adore Thy grace divine,
Heart and soul a living flame
Glorifying Thy great name.
F. R. Havergal.
Rom_6:21. What profit?—“What fruit had ye then?” (Rom_6:21). Walking in the country (says a correspondent) I went into a barn, where I found a thresher at his work. I addressed him in the words of Solomon: “My friend, ‘in all labour there is profit.’ ” But what was my surprise when, leaning upon his flail, he answered, and with much energy, “No, sir; that is the truth, but there is one exception to it: I long laboured in the service of sin, but I got no profit from my labour.” Then answered I, “You know something of the apostle’s meaning, when he asked, ‘What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?’ ” “Thank God,” he replied, “I do; and I also know that now, being freed from sin, and having become a servant unto righteousness, I have my fruit unto holiness; and the end, everlasting life.”
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On vv3–23 3. “Do you not know that so many of…
3. “Do you not know that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?” While there is a beautiful symbolism in water baptism, typifying the baptism of the Holy Spirit by which sin is exterminated, God forbid that we should run into papistical dogmas of baptismal regeneration by giving a materialistic interpretation to this passage. It does not say “baptized into water,” but “into Jesus Christ.” Hence, the construction of it simply to mean water baptism materializes God and runs into idolatry. This baptism, which is none other than that of the Holy Ghost, actually puts you in Christ, where there is no sin, thus utterly and eternally annihilating sin, as we have indicated by our baptism into His death. Just as Christ died on the cross, so do we die to sin in this baptism, when by the Holy Ghost we are baptized into the death of Christ, when we are as free from sin as the dead body of Jesus was from life while lying in the tomb.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v17
Romans
‘THE FORM OF TEACHING’
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Rom 6:17.
There is room for difference of opinion as to what Paul precisely means by ‘form’ here. The word so rendered appears in English as type, and has a similar variety of meaning. It signifies originally a mark made by pressure or impact; and then, by natural transitions, a mould, or more generally a pattern or example, and then the copy of such an example or pattern, or the cast from such a mould. It has also the other meaning which its English equivalent has taken on very extensively of late years, such as, for instance, you find in expressions like ‘An English type of face,’ meaning thereby the general outline which preserves the distinguishing characteristics of a thing. Now we may choose between these two meanings in our text. If the Apostle means type in the latter sense of the word, then the rendering ‘form’ is adequate, and he is thinking of the Christian teaching which had been given to the Roman Christians as possessing certain well-defined characteristics which distinguished it from other kinds of teaching-such, for instance, as Jewish or heathen.
But if we take the other meaning, then he is, in true Pauline fashion, bringing in a vivid and picturesque metaphor to enforce his thought, and is thinking of the teaching which the Roman Christians had received as being a kind of mould into which they were thrown, a pattern to which they were to be conformed. And that that is his meaning seems to me to be made a little more probable by the fact that the last words of my text would be more accurate if inverted, and instead of reading, as the Authorised Version does, ‘that form of doctrine which was delivered you,’ we were to read, as the Revised Version does, ‘that form whereunto ye were delivered.’
If this be the general meaning of the words before us, there are three thoughts arising from them to which I turn briefly. First, Paul’s Gospel was a definite body of teaching; secondly, that teaching is a mould for conduct and character; lastly, that teaching therefore demands obedience. Take, then, these three thoughts.
I. First, Paul’s Gospel was a definite body of teaching.
Now the word ‘doctrine,’ which is employed in my text, has, in the lapse of years since the Authorised Version was made, narrowed its significance. At the date of our Authorised translation ‘doctrine’ was probably equivalent to ‘teaching,’ of whatever sort it might be. Since then it has become equivalent to a statement of abstract principles, and that is not at all what Paul means. He does not mean to say that his gospel was a form of doctrine in the sense of being a theological system, but he means to say that it was a body of teaching, the nature of the teaching not being defined at all by the word.
Therefore we have to notice that the great, blessed peculiarity of the Gospel is that it is a teaching, not of abstract dry principles, but of concrete historical facts. From these principles in plenty may be gathered, but in its first form as it comes to men fresh from God it is not a set of propositions, but a history of deeds that were done upon earth. And, therefore, is it fitted to be the food of every soul and the mould of every character.
Jesus Christ did not come and talk to men about God, and say to them what His Apostles afterwards said, ‘God is love,’ but He lived and died, and that mainly was His teaching about God. He did not come to men and lay down a theory of atonement or a doctrine of propitiation, or theology about sin and its relations to God, but He went to the Cross and gave Himself for us, and that was His teaching about sacrifice. He did not say to men ‘There is a future life, and it is of such and such a sort,’ but He came out of the grave and He said ‘Touch Me, and handle Me. A spirit hath not flesh and bones,’ and therefore He brought life and immortality to light, by no empty words but by the solid realities of facts. He did not lecture upon ethics, but He lived a perfect human life out of which all moral principles that will guide human conduct may be gathered. And so, instead of presenting us with a hortus siccus, with a botanic collection of scientifically arranged and dead propositions, He led us into the meadow where the flowers grow, living and fair. His life and death, with all that they imply, are the teaching.
Let us not forget, on the other hand, that the history of a fact is not the mere statement of the outward thing that has happened. Suppose four people, for instance, standing at the foot of Christ’s Cross; four other ‘evangelists’ than the four that we know. There is a Roman soldier; there is a Pharisee; there is one of the weeping crowd of poor women, not disciples; and there is a disciple. The first man tells the fact as he saw it: ‘A Jewish rebel was crucified this morning.’ The second man tells the fact: ‘A blaspheming apostate suffered what he deserved to-day.’ The woman tells the fact: ‘A poor, gentle, fair soul was martyred to-day.’ And the fourth one tells the fact: ‘Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for our sins.’ The three tell the same fact; the fourth preaches the Gospel-that is to say, Christian teaching is the facts plus their explanation; and it is that which differentiates it from the mere record which is of no avail to anybody. So Paul himself in one of his other letters puts it. This is his gospel: Jesus of Nazareth ‘died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and He was buried, and rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures.’ That is what turns the bald story of the facts into teaching, which is the mould for life.
So on the one hand, dear brethren, do not let us fall into the superficial error of fancying that our religion is a religion of emotion and morality only. It is a religion with a basis of divine truth, which, being struck away, all the rest goes. There is a revolt against dogma to-day, a revolt which in large measure is justified as an essential of progress, and in large measure as an instance of progress; but human nature is ever prone to extremes, and in the revolt from man’s dogma there is danger of casting away God’s truth. Christianity is not preserved when we hold by the bare facts of the outward history, unless we take with these facts the interpretation of them, which declares the divinity and the sacrifice of the Son of God.
And on the other hand, let us keep very clear in our minds the broad and impassable gulf of separation between the Christian teaching as embodied in the Scripture and the systems which Christianity has evolved therefrom. Men’s intellects must work upon the pabulum that is provided for them, and a theology in a systematised form is a necessity for the intellectual and reasonable life of the Christian Church. But there is all the difference between man’s inferences from and systematising of the Christian truth and the truth that lies here. The one is the golden roof that is cast over us; the other is too often but the spiders’ webs that are spun across and darken its splendour. It is a sign of a wholesome change in the whole sentiment and attitude of the modern Christian mind that the word ‘doctrine,’ which has come to mean men’s inferences from God’s truth, should have been substituted as it has been in our Revised Version of my text, by the wholesome Christian word ‘teaching.’ The teaching is the facts with the inspired commentary on them.
II. Secondly, notice that this teaching is in Paul’s judgment a mould or pattern according to which men’s lives are to be conformed.
There can be no question but that, in that teaching as set forth in Scripture, there does lie the mightiest formative power for shaping our lives, and emancipating us from our evil.
Christ is the type, the mould into which men are to be cast. The Gospel, as presented in Scripture, gives us three things. It gives us the perfect mould; it gives us the perfect motive; it gives us the perfect power. And in all three things appears its distinctive glory, apart from and above all other systems that have ever tried to affect the conduct or to mould the character of man.
In Jesus Christ we have in due combination, in perfect proportion, all the possible excellences of humanity. As in other cases of perfect symmetry, the very precision of the balanced proportions detracts from the apparent magnitude of the statue or of the fair building, so to a superficial eye there is but little beauty there that we should desire Him, but as we learn to know Him, and live nearer to Him, and get more familiar with all His sweetness, and with all His power, He towers before us in ever greater and yet never repellent or exaggerated magnitude, and never loses the reality of His brotherhood in the completeness of His perfection. We have in the Christ the one type, the one mould and pattern for all striving, the ‘glass of form,’ the perfect Man.
And that likeness is not reproduced in us by pressure or by a blow, but by the slow and blessed process of gazing until we become like, beholding the glory until we are changed into the glory.
It is no use having a mould and metal unless you have a fire. It is no use having a perfect Pattern unless you have a motive to copy it. Men do not go to the devil for want of examples; and morality is not at a low ebb by reason of ignorance of what the true type of life is. But nowhere but in the full-orbed teaching of the New Testament will you find a motive strong enough to melt down all the obstinate hardness of the ‘northern iron’ of the human will, and to make it plastic to His hand. If we can say, ‘He loved me and gave Himself for me’ then the sum of all morality, the old commandment that ‘ye love one another’ receives a new stringency, and a fresh motive as well as a deepened interpretation, when His love is our pattern. The one thing that will make men willing to be like Christ is their faith that Christ is their Sacrifice and their Saviour. And sure I am of this, that no form of mutilated Christianity, which leaves out or falteringly proclaims the truth that Christ died on the Cross for the sins of the world, will ever generate heat enough to mould men’s wills, or kindle motives powerful enough to lead to a life of growing imitation of and resemblance to Him. The dial may be all right, the hours most accurately marked in their proper places, every minute registered on the circle, the hands may be all right, delicately fashioned, truly poised, but if there is no main-spring inside, dial and hands are of little use, and a Christianity which says, ‘Christ is the Teacher; do you obey Him?’ is as impotent as the dial face with the broken main-spring. What we need, and what, thank God, in ‘the teaching’ we have, is the pattern brought near to us, and the motive for imitating the pattern, set in motion by the great thought, ‘He loved me and gave Himself for me.’
Still further, the teaching is a power to fashion life, inasmuch as it brings with it a gift which secures the transformation of the believer into the likeness of his Lord. Part of ‘the teaching’ is the fact of Pentecost; part of the teaching is the fact of the Ascension; and the consequence of the Ascension and the sure promise of the Pentecost is that all who love Him, and wait upon Him, shall receive into their hearts the ‘Spirit of life in Christ Jesus’ which shall make them free from the law of sin and death.
So, dear friends, on the one hand, let us remember that our religion is meant to work, that we have nothing in our creed that should not be in our character, that all our credenda are to be our agenda; everything believed to be something done; and that if we content ourselves with the simple acceptance of the teaching, and make no effort to translate that teaching into life, we are hypocrites or self-deceivers.
And, on the other hand, do not let us forget that religion is the soul of which morality is the body, and that it is impossible in the nature of things that you shall ever get a true, lofty, moral life which is not based upon religion. I do not say that men cannot be sure of the outlines of their duty without Christianity, though I am free to confess that I think it is a very maimed and shabby version of human duty, which is supplied, minus the special revelation of that duty which Christianity makes; but my point is, that the knowledge will not work without the Gospel.
The Christian type of character is a distinct and manifestly separate thing from the pagan heroism or from the virtues and the righteousnesses of other systems. Just as the musician’s ear can tell, by half a dozen bars, whether that strain was Beethoven’s, or Handel’s, or Mendelssohn’s, just as the trained eye can see Raffaelle’s magic in every touch of his pencil, so Christ, the Teacher, has a style; and all the scholars of His school carry with them a certain mark which tells where they got their education and who is their Master, if they are scholars indeed. And that leads me to the last word.
III. This mould demands obedience.
By the very necessity of things it is so. If the ‘teaching’ was but a teaching of abstract truths it would be enough to assent to them. I believe that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, and I have done my duty by that proposition when I have said ‘Yes! it is so.’ But the ‘teaching’ which Jesus Christ gives and is, needs a good deal more than that. By the very nature of the teaching, assent drags after it submission. You can please yourself whether you let Jesus Christ into your minds or not, but if you do let Him in, He will be Master. There is no such thing as taking Him in and not obeying.
And so the requirement of the Gospel which we call faith has in it quite as much of the element of obedience as of the element of trust. And the presence of that element is just what makes the difference between a sham and a real faith. ‘Faith which has not works is dead, being alone.’ A faith which is all trust and no obedience is neither trust nor obedience.
And that is why so many of us do not care to yield ourselves to the faith that is in Jesus Christ. If it simply came to us and said, ‘If you will trust Me you will get pardon,’ I fancy there would be a good many more of us honest Christians than are so. But Christ comes and says, ‘Trust Me, follow Me, and take Me for your Master; and be like Me,’ and one’s will kicks, and one’s passions recoil, and a thousand of the devil’s servants within us prick their ears up and stiffen their backs in remonstrance and opposition. ‘Submit’ is Christ’s first word; submit by faith, submit in love.
That heart obedience, which is the requirement of Christianity, means freedom. The Apostle draws a wonderful contrast in the context between the slavery to lust and sin, and the freedom which comes from obedience to God and to righteousness. Obey the Truth, and the Truth, in your obeying, shall make you free, for freedom is the willing submission to the limitations which are best. ‘I will walk at liberty for I keep Thy precepts.’ Take Christ for your Master, and, being His servants, you are your own masters, and the world’s to boot. For ‘all things are yours if ye are Christ’s.’ Refuse to bow your necks to that yoke which is easy, and to take upon your shoulders that burden which is light, and you do not buy liberty, though you buy licentiousness, for you become the slaves and downtrodden vassals of the world and the flesh and the devil, and while you promise yourselves liberty, you become the bondsmen of corruption. Oh! then, let us obey from the heart that mould of teaching to which we are delivered, and so obeying, we shall be free indeed.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv3–23 Are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized…
Are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv3, 6, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23 so many
so many
all we who were baptized.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv3, 12, 15, 19 The power of Baptism:
The power of Baptism:
v. 3. Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death?
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v. 4. Therefore we are buried with Him by Baptism into death, that, like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
v. 5. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection;
v. 6. knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.
v. 7. for he that is dead is freed from sin.
v. 8. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,
v. 9. knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him.
v. 10. For in that He died He died unto sin once; but in that he liveth He liveth unto God.
v. 11. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
The fact that Christians are delivered from the power and bondage of sin is brought out by Paul by a reference to Baptism and its power. Or do you not know, are you ignorant of the fact? If his readers should doubt that justification has caused them to die to sin, they should remember what they knew with regard to their Baptism, whose meaning had been explained to them. As many of us as are baptized into Christ Jesus are baptized into His death. The Christians are not merely baptized with reference to Christ, to be united to Him in His death and to be partakers of its benefits, but, as the papyri have shown, any one baptized into the name of a person of the Godhead thereby became the property of the divine person indicated. Christ’s salvation is our salvation, because we were baptized into His death. By taking our sins upon Him and paying the full price for them by His suffering and death, Christ has delivered us not only from the guilt and punishment, but also from the power of sin. And since we have become Christ’s own by Baptism and have been baptized into His death, we are delivered from the power of death; its authority and sovereignty over us is at an end.
Since this is the nature of our union with Christ, given and sealed to us in Baptism, it follows that we are buried with Christ through Baptism into death, Col 2:12, in order that, just as Christ was raised up from the dead through the glory of the Father, so also we should walk in newness of life. In Baptism the believer dies with Christ. in a spiritual sense. He passes through a death, dies unto sin, is really, totally, dead unto sin. But this dying and being buried with Christ had the purpose, and that was the intention of God, that, in accordance with the resurrection of Christ, we also should walk in newness of life. Christ left the weakness of humiliation of His body and sin which He bore on His body in the grave. And He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, by a manifestation especially of His omnipotence, and entered into a new, spiritual life. And to this life of Christ the new life of the Christians, the life after Baptism, corresponds. It is a new life, and in this new life we are supposed to walk, to have our conversation, to show it in all the acts of our daily life. The salvation of which we become partakers in Baptism works sanctification in us. The idea of purity is always associated with that of newness in Scriptures, and so we say with Luther that the consequence of our Baptism must be that we live before God in righteousness and purity forever.
Just how this new life has been wrought in us is explained in the nest sentence.
v. 5. For if we are grown together with the likeness of His death, we shall also be with that of His resurrection. We have grown together, we have entered into the most intimate union with the death of Christ by virtue of our dying typically in Baptism. Our dying to sin and Christ’s death are thus similar, and the apostle can speak of a likeness, of a picture, which is the death of Christ. Now: if united with Christ in death, we shall certainly be united with Him in life. The one thing having happened, the other is sure to follow. In the case of Christ, His death and resurrection were intimately connected. He, therefore, that has part in His death also has part in His resurrection and is bound to show the new spiritual life with which he has been endowed, which he has received in Baptism. All this can be asserted, knowing, as we do, that our old man is crucified with Christ, in order that the body of sin may be put away entirely, may lose all influence, power, and dominion, to the end that we no longer serve sin. Christians should at all times know and remember that their old man, their corrupt, sinful condition and state, their natural depravity, is crucified with Christ in Baptism, since in Baptism they have become partakers of the death of Jesus on the cross and of its fruit. As a result, the body of sin, the sinful body: that body which sin has used as its instrument: is now put out of commission as such, can no longer serve in that capacity, and therefore we no longer serve sin. That is God’s object and intention, that we henceforth no more, as before, serve sin; this our Baptism has worked, effected, in us. Because the old Adam, in Baptism, has been killed with all his evil lusts and no longer controls the organism of the body as his instrument, therefore we no longer need, we no longer shall, serve sin. For, as Paul declares in the next sentence, in the form of a general axiom, he that is dead is free from sin, is absolved, acquitted from sin, is pronounced just and free from sin in every respect: from its dominion as well as its curse, with the emphasis upon the deliverance from its jurisdiction. Since our old man was crucified with Christ, the axiom finds its application in such a way that sin has now lost power and dominion over us, and that we are no longer obliged to serve and obey sin. That is the wonderful blessing and benefit of Baptism.
But the apostle draws a further conclusion from the fact of our participating in the death of Christ: If we have died with Christ, if we are dead with Christ, we believe, we are confident of the fact, we trust, that we shall also live with Him. We have not merely been delivered from evil of every kind by becoming partakers of His death, but we have also received positive benefits. And this is further explained: Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, will die no more; death no longer rules over Him. Since Christ was raised from the dead, the dominion of death is at an end in His case. When Jesus died on the cross, He Fielded up His spirit, He laid down His life. But in His resurrection He reassumed His life and showed that death was not His lord and master. He has entered upon the full and unhampered enjoyment of the life of which He is the Lord. For: what He died He died unto sin once and for always; but what He lives He lives to God. Jesus had been in relation to sin, He had taken sin upon Himself, and what He did as our Substitute He performed for the purpose of expiating sin, the crowning work of His life in this respect being His death, by which sin was removed, forever put away, so far as Christ is concerned. Therefore for US also, by virtue of our Baptism into the death of Christ, sin is removed, it has lost its dominion and power. What Christ now lives He lives unto God: His heavenly Father. He has entered into the state of His glorification, at the right hand of His heavenly Father. And therefore we also, according to the admonition of the apostle, consider, reckon ourselves as being dead to sin, but living unto God in Christ Jesus. In the same manner as Christ, though not in the same degree: me Christians, by virtue of our Baptism, are dead unto sin and live unto God, because the new life of God is planted into our hearts in Baptism. We live unto God according to the internal man, according to the regenerated mind and heart. And this is possible for us because we live in the communion with Christ and our life is hidden with Christ in God.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 17, 19, 22 We were buried, then, with him through baptism into…
We were buried, then, with him through baptism into death
Here Paul speaks of a believer's baptism in water as if it were a death and burial. AT: "When someone baptized us, it is just like that person buried us with Christ in the tomb" (See: Metaphor)
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just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so also we might walk in newness of life
To raise from the dead is an idiom for causing a person to live again. This compares a believer's new spiritual life to Jesus coming back to life physically. The believer's new spiritual life enables that person to obey God. You can translate this in an active form. AT: "just as the Father brought Jesus back to life after he died, we might have new spiritual life and obey God" (See: Simile and Active or Passive and Idiom)
from the dead
From among all those who have died. This expression describes all dead people together in the underworld. To be raised from among them speaks of becoming alive again.
become united with him in the likeness of his death ... be united with his resurrection
Paul compares our union with Christ to death. Those who are joined with Christ in death will share in his resurrection. You can translate this in an active form. AT: "died with him ... come back to life with him" (See: Metaphor and Active or Passive)
translationWords
bury
baptize
Christ
raise
glory
God the Father
walk
life
resurrection
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21 6:3 Baptism is the rite of initiation into the…
6:3 Baptism is the rite of initiation into the Christian faith (see Acts 2:38, 41). It sometimes symbolizes the entire conversion experience, so Paul refers to baptism as the means through which believers are joined to Christ in his death and resurrection (see also Rom 6:4). However, baptism has no value apart from faith.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.