_THE JUSTIFIED: THEIR LIFE BY THE HOLY SPIRIT_
ROMANS viii. 1-11
The sequence of the eighth chapter of the Epistle on the seventh is a
study always interesting and fruitful. No one can read the two
chapters over without feeling the strong connexion between them, a
connexion at once of contrast and of complement. Great indeed is the
contrast between the paragraphs vii. 7-25 and the eighth chapter. The
stern analysis of the one, unrelieved save by the fragment of
thanksgiving at its close, (and even this is followed at once by a
re-statement of the mysterious dualism,) is to the revelations and
triumphs of the other as an almost starless night, stifling and
electric, to the splendour of a midsummer morning with a yet more
glorious morrow for its future. And there is complement as well as
contrast. The day is related to the night, which has prepared us for
it, as hunger prepares for food. Precisely what was absent from the
former passage is supplied richly in the latter. There the Name of the
Holy Spirit, "the Lord, the Life-Giver," was unheard. Here the fact
and power of the Holy Spirit are present everywhere, so present that
there is no other portion of the whole Scripture, unless we except the
Redeemer's own Paschal Discourse, which presents us with so great a
wealth of revelation on this all-precious theme. And here we find the
secret that is to "stint the strife" which we have just witnessed, and
which in our own souls we know so well. Here is the way "_how_ to walk
and to please God" (1 Thess. iv. 1), in our justified life. Here is
the way how, not to be as it were the victims of "the body," and the
slaves of "the flesh," but to "_do to death the body's practices_" in
a continuous exercise of inward power, and to "_walk after the
Spirit_." Here is the resource on which we may be for ever joyfully
paying "_the debt_" of such a walk; giving our redeeming Lord His due,
the value of His purchase, even our willing, loving surrender, in the
all-sufficient strength of "the Holy Ghost given unto us."
Noteworthy indeed is the manner of the introduction of this glorious
truth. It appears not without preparation and intimation; we have
heard already of the Holy Ghost in the Christian's life, v. 5, vii. 6.
The heavenly water has been seen and heard in its flow; as in a
limestone country the traveller may see and hear, through fissures in
the fields, the buried but living floods. But here the truth of the
Spirit, like those floods, finding at last their exit at some rough
cliff's base, pours itself into the light, and animates all the scene.
In such an order and manner of treatment there is a spiritual and also
a practical lesson. We are surely reminded, as to the experiences of
the Christian life, that in a certain sense we possess the Holy Ghost,
yea, in His fulness, from the first hour of our possession of Christ.
We are reminded also that it is at least possible on the other hand
that we may need so to realize and to use our covenant possession,
after sad experiments in other directions, that life shall be
thenceforth a new experience of liberty and holy joy. We are reminded
meanwhile that such a "new departure," when it occurs, is new rather
from our side than from the Lord's. The water was running all the
while below the rocks. Insight and faith, given by His grace, have not
called it from above, but as it were from within, liberating what was
there.
The practical lesson of this is important for the Christian teacher
and pastor. On the one hand, let him make very much in his
instructions, public and private, of the revelation of the Spirit. Let
him leave no room, so far as he can do it, for doubt or oblivion in
his friends' minds about the absolute necessity of the fulness of the
presence and power of the Holy One, if life is to be indeed Christian.
Let him describe as boldly and fully as the Word describes it what
life may be, must be, where that sacred fulness dwells; how assured,
how happy within, how serviceable around, how pure, free, and strong,
how heavenly, how practical, how humble. Let him urge any who have yet
to learn it to learn all this in their own experience, claiming on
their knees the mighty gift of God. On the other hand, let him be
careful not to overdraw his theory, and to prescribe too rigidly the
methods of experience. Not all believers fail in the first hours of
their faith to realize, and to use, the fulness of what the Covenant
gives them. And where that realization comes later than our first
sight of Christ, as with so many of us it does come, not always is the
experience and action the same. To one it is a crisis of memorable
consciousness, a private Pentecost. Another wakes up as from sleep to
find the unsuspected treasure at his hand--hid from him till then by
nothing thicker than shadows. And another is aware that somehow, he
knows not how, he has come to use the Presence and Power as a while
ago he did not; he has passed a frontier--but he knows not when.
In all these cases, meanwhile, the man had, in one great respect,
possessed the great gift all along. In covenant, in Christ, it was
his. As he stepped by penitent faith into the Lord, he trod on ground
which, wonderful to say, was all his own. And beneath it ran, that
moment, the River of the water of life. Only, he had to discover, to
draw, and to apply.
Again, the relation we have just indicated between our possession of
Christ and our possession of the Holy Ghost is a matter of the utmost
moment, spiritual and practical, presented prominently in this
passage. All along, as we read the passage, we find linked
inextricably together the truths of the Spirit and of the Son. "_The
law of the Spirit of life_" is bound up with "_Christ Jesus_." The Son
of God was sent, to take our flesh, to die as our Sin-Offering, that
we might "_walk according to the Spirit_." "_The Spirit of God_" is
"_the Spirit of Christ_." The presence of the Spirit of Christ is such
that, where He dwells, "_Christ is in you_." Here we read at once a
caution, and a truth of the richest positive blessing. We are warned
to remember that there is no _separable_ "Gospel of the Spirit." Not
for a moment are we to advance, as it were, from the Lord Jesus Christ
to a higher or deeper region, ruled by the Holy Ghost. All the
reasons, methods, and issues of the work of the Holy Ghost are
eternally and organically connected with the Son of God. We have Him
at all because Christ died. We have life because He has joined us to
Christ living. Our experimental proof of His fulness is that Christ to
us is all. And we are to be on the guard against any exposition of His
work and glory which shall for one moment leave out those facts. But
not only are we to be on our guard; we are to rejoice in the thought
that the mighty, the endless, work of the Spirit _is_ all done always
upon that sacred Field, Christ Jesus. And every day we are to draw
upon the indwelling Giver of Life to do for us His own, His
characteristic, work; to shew us "our King in His beauty," and to
"fill our springs of thought and will with Him."
To return to the connexion of the two great chapters. We have seen how
close and pregnant it is; the contrast and the complement. But it is
also true, surely, that the eighth chapter is not merely and only the
counterpart to the seventh. Rather the eighth, though the seventh
applies to it a special motive, is also a review of the whole previous
argument of the Epistle, or rather the crown on the whole previous
structure. It begins with a deep re-assertion of our Justification; a
point unnoticed in vii. 7-25. It does this using an inferential
particle, "_therefore_," ἄπα--to which, surely, nothing in the just
preceding verses is related. And then it unfolds not only the present
acceptance and present liberty of the saints, but also their amazing
future of glory, already indicated, especially in ch. v. 2. And its
closing strains are full of the great first wonder, our Acceptance.
"_Them He justified_"; "_It is God that justifieth_." So we forbear to
take ch. viii. as simply the successor and counterpart of ch. vii. It
is this, in some great respects. But it is more; it is the meeting
point of all the great truths of grace which we have studied, their
meeting point in the sea of holiness and glory.[119]
As we approach the first paragraph of the chapter, we ask ourselves
what is its message on the whole, its true _envoi_. It is, our
possession of the Holy Spirit of God, for purposes of holy loyalty and
holy liberty. The foundation of that fact is once more indicated, in
the brief assertion of our full Justification in Christ, and of His
propitiatory Sacrifice (ver. 3). Then from those words, "_in Christ_,"
he opens this ample revelation of our possession, in our union with
Christ, of the Spirit who, having joined us to Him, now liberates us
in Him, not from condemnation only but from sin's dominion. If we are
indeed in Christ, the Spirit is in us, dwelling in us, and we are in
the Spirit. And so, possessed and filled by the blessed Power, we
indeed have power to walk and to obey. Nothing is mechanical,
automatic; we are fully persons still; He who annexes and possesses
our personality does not for a moment violate it. But then, He _does_
possess it; and the Christian, so possessing and so possessed, is not
only bound but enabled, in humble but practical reality, in a liberty
otherwise unknown, to "_fulfil the just demand of the Law_," "_to
please God_," in a life lived not to self but to Him.
Thus, as we shall see in detail as we proceed, the Apostle, while he
still firmly keeps his hand, so to speak, on Justification, is
occupied fully now with its issue, Holiness. And this issue he
explains as not merely a matter of grateful feeling, the outcome of
the loyalty supposed to be natural to the pardoned. He gives it as a
matter of divine power, secured to them under the Covenant of their
acceptance.
Shall we not enter on our expository study full of holy expectation,
and with unspeakable desires awake, to receive all things which in
that Covenant are ours? Shall we not remember, over every sentence,
that in it Christ speaks by Paul, and speaks to us? For us also, as
for our spiritual ancestors, all this is true. It shall be true in us
also, as it was in them.
We shall be humbled as well as gladdened; and thus our gladness will
be sounder. We shall find that whatever be our "_walk according to the
Spirit_," and our veritable dominion over sin, we shall still have
"_the practices of the body_" with which to deal--of the body which
still is "_dead because of sin_," "_mortal_," not yet "_redeemed_." We
shall be practically reminded, even by the most joyous exhortations,
that possession and personal condition are one thing in covenant, and
another in realization; that we must watch, pray, examine self, and
deny it, if we would "be" what we "are." Yet all this is but the
salutary accessory to the blessed main burthen of every line. We are
accepted in the Lord. In the Lord we have the Eternal Spirit for our
inward Possessor. Let us arise, and "walk humbly," but also in
gladness, "with our God."
St Paul speaks again, perhaps after a silence, and Tertius writes down
for the first time the now immortal and beloved words. [Sidenote: Ver. 1.]
=So no adverse sentence is there now,= in view of this great fact of
our redemption, =for those in Christ Jesus.[120]= "_In Christ
Jesus_"--mysterious union, blessed fact, wrought by the Spirit who
linked us sinners to the Lord.[121] [Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =For the law
of the Spirit of the life which is in Christ Jesus[122] freed me,= the
man of the conflict just described, =from the law of sin and of
death.= The "law," the preceptive will, which legislates the covenant
of blessing for all who are in Christ, has set him free. By a strange,
pregnant paradox, so we take it, the Gospel--the message which carries
with it acceptance, and also holiness, by faith--is here called a
"law." For while it is free grace to us it is also immovable ordinance
with God. The amnesty is His edict. It is by heavenly _statute_ that
sinners, believing, possess the Holy Spirit in possessing Christ. And
here, with a sublime abruptness and directness, that great gift of the
Covenant, the Spirit, for which the Covenant gift of Justification was
given, is put forward as the Covenant's characteristic and crown. It
is for the moment as if this were all--that "_in Christ Jesus_" we, I,
are under the _fiat_ which assures to us the fulness of the Spirit.
And this "law," unlike the stern "letter" of Sinai, has actually
"_freed me_." It has endowed me not only with place but with power, in
which to live emancipated from a rival law, the law of sin and of
death. And what is that rival "law"? We dare to say, it is the
preceptive will of Sinai; "Do this, and thou shalt live." This is a
hard saying; for in itself that very Law has been recently vindicated
as holy, and just, and good, and spiritual. And only a few lines above
in the Epistle we have heard of a "law of sin" which is "served by the
flesh." And we should unhesitatingly explain this "law" to be
identical with that _but for the next verse here_, a still nearer
context, in which "the law" is unmistakably the divine moral Code,
considered however as _impotent_. Must not this and that be the same?
And to call that sacred Code "_the Law of sin and of death_" is not to
say that it is sinful and deathful. It need only mean, and we think it
does mean, that it is sin's occasion, and death's warrant, by the
unrelieved collision of its holiness with fallen man's will. It must
command; he, being what he is, must rebel. He rebels; it must condemn.
Then comes his Lord to die for him, and to rise again; and the Spirit
comes, to unite him to his Lord. And now, from the Law as provoking
the helpless, guilty will, and as claiming the sinner's penal
death--behold the man is "_freed_." [Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =For=--(the
process is now explained at large) =the impossible of the Law=--what
it could not do, for this was not its function, even to enable us
sinners to keep its precept from the soul--=God, when He sent His own
Son in likeness of flesh of sin,= Incarnate, in our identical nature,
under all those conditions of earthly life which for us are sin's
vehicles and occasions, =and as Sin-Offering,[123]= expiatory and
reconciling, =sentenced sin in the flesh;= not pardoned it, observe,
but sentenced it. He ordered it to execution; He killed its claim and
its power for all who are in Christ. And this, "_in the flesh_,"
making man's earthly conditions the scene of sin's defeat, for our
everlasting encouragement in our "life in the flesh." And what was the
aim and issue? [Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =That the righteous demand
(δικαίωμα) of the Law might be fulfilled in us, us who walk not
flesh-wise, but Spirit-wise;= that we, accepted in Christ, and using
the Spirit's power in the daily "walk" of circumstance and experience,
might be liberated from the life of self-will, and meet the will of
God with simplicity and joy.
Such, and nothing less or else, was the Law's "_righteous demand_"; an
obedience not only universal but also cordial. For its first
requirement, "Thou shalt have no other God," meant, in the spiritual
heart of it, the dethronement of self from its central place, and the
session there of the Lord. But this could never be while there was a
reckoning still unsettled between the man and God. Friction there must
be while God's Law remained not only violated but unsatisfied,
unatoned.[124] And so it necessarily remained, till the sole adequate
Person, one with God, one with man, stepped into the gap; our Peace,
our Righteousness, and also by the Holy Ghost our Life. At rest
because of His sacrifice, at work by the power of His Spirit, we are
now free to love, and divinely enabled to walk in love. Meanwhile the
dream of an unsinning perfectness, such as could make a meritorious
claim, is not so much negatived as precluded, put far out of the
question. For the central truth of the new position is that THE LORD
has fully dealt, for us, with the Law's claim that man shall _deserve_
acceptance. "Boasting" is inexorably "excluded," to the last, from
this new kind of law-fulfilling life. For the "fulfilment" which means
legal satisfaction is for ever taken out of our hands by Christ, and
only that humble "fulfilment" is ours which means a restful,
unanxious, reverent, unreserved loyalty in practice. To this now our
"_mind_," our cast and gravitation of soul, is brought, in the life of
acceptance, and in the power of the Spirit. [Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =For
they who are flesh-wise,= the unchanged children of the self-life,
=think,= "_mind_," have moral affinity and converse with, =the things
of the flesh; but they who are Spirit-wise, think the things of the
Spirit,= His love, joy, peace, and all that holy "fruit." Their
liberated and Spirit-bearing life now goes that way, in its true bias.
[Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =For the mind,= the moral affinity, =of the
flesh,= of the self-life, =is death;= it involves the ruin of the
soul, in condemnation, and in separation from God; =but the mind of
the Spirit,= the affinity given to the believer by the indwelling Holy
One, =is life and peace;= it implies union with Christ, our life and
our acceptance; it is the state of soul in which He is realized.
[Sidenote: Ver. 7.] =Because=--this absolute antagonism of the two
"_minds_" is such _because_--=the "mind" of the flesh is personal
hostility (ἔχθρα) towards God; for to God's Law it is not subject.
For indeed it cannot be= subject to it; [Sidenote: Ver. 8.]
=those[125] who are in flesh,= surrendered to the life of self as
their law, =cannot please God,[126]= "_cannot meet the wish_"
(ἀρέσαι) of Him whose loving but absolute claim is to be Lord of the
whole man.
"They cannot": it is a moral impossibility. "The Law of God" is, "Thou
shalt love Me with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself"; the
mind of the flesh is, "I will love my self and its will first and
most." Let this be disguised as it may, even from the man himself; it
is always the same thing in its essence. It may mean a defiant choice
of open evil. It may mean a subtle and almost evanescent preference of
literature, or art, or work, or home, to God's will as such. It is in
either case "_the mind of the flesh_," a thing which cannot be refined
and educated into holiness, but must be surrendered at discretion, as
its eternal enemy.
[Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =But you= (there is a glad emphasis on "_you_")
=are not in flesh, but in Spirit,= surrendered to the indwelling
Presence as your law and secret, =on the assumption that= (εἴπερ: he
suggests not weary misgivings but a true examination) =God's Spirit
dwells in you;= has His home in your hearts, humbly welcomed into a
continuous residence. =But if any one has not Christ's Spirit,= (who
is the Spirit as of the Father so of the Son, sent by the Son, to
reveal and to impart Him,) =that man is not His.= He may bear his
Lord's name, he may be externally a Christian, he may enjoy the divine
Sacraments of union; but he has not "the Thing." The Spirit, evidenced
by His holy fruit, is no Indweller there; and the Spirit is our vital
Bond with Christ. [Sidenote: Ver. 10.] =But if Christ is,= thus by the
Spirit, =in you,= dwelling by faith in the hearts which the Spirit has
"strengthened" to receive Christ (Eph. iii. 16, 17)--=true (μὲν),
the body is dead, because of sin,= the primeval sentence still holds
its way _there_; the body is deathful still, it is the body of the
Fall; =but the Spirit[127] is life,= He is in that body, your secret
of power and peace eternal, =because of righteousness,= because of the
merit of your Lord, in which you are accepted, and which has won for
you this wonderful Spirit-life.
Then even for the body there is assured a glorious future, organically
one with this living present. Let us listen as he goes on:
[Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus,= the
slain Man, =from the dead, dwells in you, He who raised from the dead
Christ Jesus,= the Man so revealed and glorified as the Anointed
Saviour, =shall also bring to life your mortal bodies, because of
(διὰ τὸ κτλ[128]) His Spirit, dwelling in you.= That "frail temple,"
once so much defiled, and so defiling, is now precious to the Father
because it is the habitation of the Spirit of His Son. Nor only so;
that same Spirit, who, by uniting us to Christ, made actual our
redemption, shall surely, in ways to us unknown, carry the process to
its glorious crown, and be somehow the Efficient Cause of "the
redemption of our body."
Wonderful is this deep characteristic of the Scripture; its Gospel for
the body. In Christ, the body is seen to be something far different
from the mere clog, or prison, or chrysalis, of the soul. It is its
destined implement, may we not say its mighty wings in prospect, for
the life of glory. As invaded by sin, it must needs pass through
either death or, at the Lord's Return, an equivalent transfiguration.
But as created in God's plan of Human Nature it is for ever congenial
to the soul, nay, it is necessary to the soul's full action. And
whatever be the mysterious mode (it is absolutely hidden from us as
yet) of the event of Resurrection, this we know, if only from this
Oracle, that the glory of the immortal body will have profound
relations with the work of God in the sanctified soul. No mere
material sequences will bring it about. It will be "_because of the
Spirit_"; and "because of the Spirit _dwelling in you_," as your power
for holiness in Christ.[129]
So the Christian reads the account of his present spiritual wealth,
and of his coming completed life, "his perfect consummation and bliss
in the eternal glory." Let him take it home, with most humble but
quite decisive assurance, as he looks again, and believes again, on
his redeeming Lord. For him, in his inexpressible need, God has gone
about to provide "so great salvation." He has accepted his person in
His Son who died for him. He has not only _forgiven him_ through that
great Sacrifice, but in it He has "_condemned_," sentenced to chains
and death, _his sin_, which is now a doomed thing, beneath his feet,
in Christ. And He has given to him, as personal and perpetual
Indweller, to be claimed, hailed, and used by humble faith, His own
Eternal Spirit, the Spirit of His Son, the Blessed One who, dwelling
infinitely in the Head, comes to dwell fully in the members, and make
Head and members wonderfully one. Now then let him give himself up
with joy, thanksgiving, and expectation, to the "_fulfilling of the
righteous demand of God's Law_," "_walking Spirit-wise_," with steps
moving ever away from self and towards the will of God. Let him meet
the world, the devil, and that mysterious "flesh," (all ever in
potential presence,) with no less a Name than that of the Father, and
the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Let him stand up not as a defeated and
disappointed combatant, maimed, half-blinded, half-persuaded to
succumb, but as one who treads upon "all the power of the enemy," in
Christ, by the indwelling Spirit. And let him reverence his mortal
body, even while he "keeps it in subjection," and while he willingly
tires it, or gives it to suffer, for his Lord. For it is the temple of
the Spirit. It is the casket of the hope of glory.
[119] "In this surpassing chapter the several streams of the preceding
arguments meet and flow in one 'river of the water of life, clear as
crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb,' until
it seems to lose itself in the ocean of a blissful eternity."--David
Brown, D.D., "_The Epistle to the Romans_," in "_Handbooks for Bible
Classes_."
[120] There can be no reasonable doubt that the words "_who walk not
after the flesh, but after the Spirit_," should be omitted. They are
probably a _gloss_ from ver. 4; inserted (perhaps first as a
side-note) by scribes who failed to appreciate the profound simplicity
of the Apostle's dictum.
[121] We thus indicate the thought given by the otherwise difficult
"_For_" of ver. 2. That "_for_" cannot mean to imply that there is no
condemnation _because the Spirit has enabled us to be holy_; this
would stultify the whole argument of chapters iii.-v. What, in that
context, it must imply is the complex fact (1) that _we are in
Christ_--where there is no condemnation, and (2) that we are there _by
the Holy Spirit_, who brought us to saving faith. Now we are to learn
(3) what that Spirit has done _also_ for us in giving us union with
Christ.
[122] Τοῦ πνεύματος τῆς ζωῆς ἐν Χπριστῷ Ἰησοῦ. In the Greek of the
N. T. it is possible so to interpret. Classical Greek would require
τῆς ζωῆς τῆς ἐν Χ. Ἰ. The rendering, however, "_the law of the
Spirit of life, in Christ Jesus_," (making the last three words govern
the whole previous thought,) is amply admissible.
[123] Περὶ ἁμαρτίας: the phrase is stamped with a sacrificial
speciality by the Greek of the O. T. See _e.g._ Levit. xvi. 3, 5, 6,
9, 11, 15, 16, 25, 27. And cp. Heb. x. 8.
[124] "The way of him that is laden with guilt is exceeding crooked."
Prov. xxi. 8 R.V.
[125] We do not translate the δὲ. It seems to be best represented in
English by connecting the clause only by position with what goes
before.
[126] The Greek lays a solemn emphasis by position on Θεῷ.
[127] We refer the word πνεῦμα here, as throughout the passage, to
the Holy Ghost. No other interpretation seems either consistent with
the whole context, or adequate to its grandeur.
[128] We read thus, not διὰ τοῦ κτλ ("_by means of, by the agency
of, His Spirit_"). The two readings have each strong support, but we
think the balance of evidence is for the accusative not the genitive.
Happily the exegetical difference is not serious. The accusative gives
indeed a meaning which may well include that given by the genitive,
while it includes other ideas also.
[129] We are aware that ver. 11 has been sometimes interpreted of
present blessings for the body; as if the fulness of the Holy Ghost
was to effect a quasi-glorification of the body's condition now;
exempting it from illness, and at least retarding its decay. But this
seems untenable. If the words point this way at all, ought they not to
mean a literal exemption from death altogether? But this manifestly
was not in the Apostle's mind, if we take his writings as a whole.
That spiritual blessings may, and often do, act wonderfully in the
life of the body, is most true. But that is not the truth of this
verse.