You observe that the Apostle, as is his wont--I was going to
say--gets himself entangled in a couple of almost parenthetical or,
at all events, subsidiary sentences. I suppose when he began to write
he meant to say, simply, 'as Sin hath reigned unto death, so Grace
might reign unto life.' But notice that he inserts two
qualifications: 'through righteousness,' 'through Jesus Christ our
Lord.' What does he mean by these?
He means this, first, that even that great love of God, coming
throbbing straight from His heart, cannot give eternal life as a mere
matter of arbitrary will. God can make His sun to shine and His rain
to fall, 'on the unthankful and on the evil,' and if God could, God
would give eternal life to everybody, bad and good; but He cannot.
There must be righteousness if there is to be life. Just as sin's
fruit is death, the fruit of righteousness is life.
He means, in the next place, that whilst there is no life without
righteousness, there is no righteousness without God's gift. You
cannot break away from the dominion of Sin, and, as it were,
establish yourselves in a little fortress of your own, repelling her
assaults by any power of yours. Dear brethren, we cannot undo the
past; we cannot strip off the poisoned garment that clings to our
limbs; we can mend ourselves in many respects, but we cannot of our
own volition and motion clothe ourselves with that righteousness of
which the wearers shall be worthy to 'pass through the gate into the
city.' There is no righteousness without God's gift.
And the other subsidiary clause completes the thought: 'through
Christ.' In Him is all the grace, the manifest love, of God gathered
together. It is not diffused as the nebulous light in some chaotic
incipient system, but it is gathered into a sun that is set in the
centre, in order that it may pour down warmth and life upon its
circling planets. The grace of God is in Christ Jesus our Lord. In
Him is life eternal; therefore, if we desire to possess it we must
possess Him. In Him is righteousness; therefore, if we desire our own
foulness to be changed into the holiness which shall see God, we must
go to Jesus Christ. Grace reigns in life, but it is life through
righteousness, which is through Jesus Christ our Lord.
So, then, brother, my message and my petition to each of you
are--knit yourself to Him by faith in Him. Then He who is 'full of
grace and truth' will come to you; and, coming, will bring in His
hands righteousness and life eternal. If only we rest ourselves on
Him, and keep ourselves close in touch with Him; then we shall be
delivered from the tyranny of the darkness, and translated into the
Kingdom of the Son of His love.
'THE FORM OF TEACHING'
'... Ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine
which was delivered you.'--ROMANS vi. 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.