The Apostle points to a triple condemnation.
'In the likeness of sinful flesh,' Jesus condemns sin by His own
perfect life. That phrase, 'the likeness of the flesh of sin,'
implies the real humanity of Jesus, and His perfect sinlessness; and
suggests the first way in which He condemns sin in the flesh. In His
life He repeats the law in a higher fashion. What the one spoke in
words the other realised in 'loveliness of perfect deeds'; and all men
own that example is the mightiest preacher of righteousness, and
that active goodness draws to itself reverence and sways men to
imitate. But that life lived in human nature gives a new hope of the
possibilities of that nature even in us. The dream of perfect beauty
'in the flesh' has been realised. What the Man Christ Jesus was, He
was that we may become. In the very flesh in which the tyrant rules,
Jesus shows the possibility and the loveliness of a holy life.
But this, much as it is, is not all. There is another way in which
Christ condemns sin in the flesh, and that is by His perfect
sacrifice. To this also Paul points in the phrase, 'the flesh of
sin.' The example of which we have been speaking is much, but it is
weak for the very same reason for which law is weak--that it operates
only through our nature as it is; and that is not enough. Sin's hold
on man is twofold--one that it has perverted his relation to God, and
another that it has corrupted his nature. Hence there is in him
a sense of separation from God and a sense of guilt. Both of these not
only lead to misery, but positively tend to strengthen the dominion
of sin. The leader of the mutineers keeps them true to him by
reminding them that the mutiny laws decree death without mercy. Guilt
felt may drive to desperation and hopeless continuance in wrong. The
cry, 'I am so bad that it is useless to try to be better,' is often
heard. Guilt stifled leads to hardening of heart, and sometimes to
desire and riot. Guilt slurred over by some easy process of
absolution may lead to further sin. Similarly separation from God is
the root of all evil, and thoughts of Him as hard and an enemy,
always lead to sin. So if the power of sin in the past must be
cancelled, the sense of guilt must be removed, and the wall of
partition between man and God thrown down. What can law answer to
such a demand? It is silent; it can only say, 'What is written is
written.' It has no word to speak that promises 'the blotting out of
the handwriting that is against us'; and through its silence one can
hear the mocking laugh of the tyrant that keeps his castle.
But Christ has come 'for sin'; that is to say His Incarnation and
Death had relation to, and had it for their object to remove, human
sin. He comes to blot out the evil, to bring God's pardon. The
recognition of His sacrifice supplies the adequate motive to copy His
example, and they who see in His death God's sacrifice for man's sin,
cannot but yield themselves to Him, and find in obedience a delight.
Love kindled at His love makes likeness and transmutes the outward
law into an inward 'spirit of life in Christ Jesus.'
Still another way by which God 'condemns sin in the flesh' is pointed
to by the remaining phrase of our text, 'sending His own Son.' In the
beginning of this epistle Jesus is spoken of as 'being declared to be
the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness'; and
we must connect that saying with our text, and so think of Christ's
bestowal of His perfect gift to humanity of the Spirit which
sanctifies as being part of His condemnation of sin in the flesh.
Into the very region where the tyrant rules, the Son of God
communicates a new nature which constitutes a real new power. The
Spirit operates on all our faculties, and redeems them from the
bondage of corruption. All the springs in the land are poisoned; but
a new one, limpid and pure, is opened. By the entrance of the Spirit
of holiness into a human spirit, the usurper is driven from the
central fortress: and though he may linger in the outworks and keep
up a guerilla warfare, that is all that he can do. We never truly
apprehend Christ's gift to man until we recognise that He not merely
'died for our sins,' but lives to impart the principle of holiness in
the gift of His Spirit. The dominion of that imparted Spirit is
gradual and progressive. The Canaanite may still be in the land, but
a growing power, working in and through us, is warring against all in
us that still owns allegiance to that alien power, and there can be
no end to the victorious struggle until the whole body, soul, and
spirit, be wholly under the influence of the Spirit that dwelleth in
us, and nothing shall hurt or destroy in what shall then be all God's
holy mountain.
Such is, in the most general terms, the statement of what Christ does
'for us'; and the question comes to be the all-important one for
each, Do I let Him do it for me? Remember the alternative. There must
either be condemnation for us, or for the sin that dwelleth in us.
There is no condemnation for them who are in Christ Jesus, because
there is condemnation for the sin that dwells in them. It must he
slain, or it will slay us. It must be cast out, or it will cast us
out from God. It must be separated from us, or it will separate us
from Him. We need not be condemned, but if it be not condemned, then
we shall be.