deeper interest amongst truly Christian people than the latter part of
the seventh of Romans. It is so closely connected with the practical
experience of Christian life, and at the same time it is so much opposed
to the beautiful theories of some Christian people, that it has always
excited an earnest spirit of inquiry, and engaged the deepest interests
of the students of Scripture. I propose to make it the subject of our
study this morning: to endeavour to find out what the Scripture really
teaches. And in the outset of our study I should wish to give one
caution, which I believe to be of the utmost importance for us all: viz.,
we must not bring the sacred Scriptures to the test of our theories, but
must be prepared, if need be, to give up those theories to the authority
of Scripture. If we want to live in God’s truth, we must be subject to
God’s Word, and must be content to receive what He teaches as He teaches
it. In other words, we must not twist Scripture so as to make it fit our
own opinions, but must receive it as from God, and make all our opinions
bend before its high authority.
With this caution before us, there are three subjects to be considered.
First, of whom is the Apostle speaking: of himself, or some other man?
Secondly, of what period in his Christian life is he speaking: does he
refer to the past or to the present? And thirdly, what does the passage
teach respecting his spiritual condition at the time he wrote the words?
And now, may God the Holy Ghost, who inspired the Word, lead us all
reverently to study, and rightly to understand, His teaching!
I. To whom does it refer? I feel persuaded that we shall all admit
that, if any person were to read the chapter without having some previous
opinion to support, he would believe that the Apostle was speaking of
himself. The word ‘I’ occurs no less than twenty-eight times in the
passage. Such expressions as ‘I do,’ ‘I consent,’ ‘I allow,’ ‘I
delight,’ are found continually; and certainly the natural conclusion
would be that when he said, ‘I,’ he meant himself. I know that it is
sometimes said that he personated some other person; a legalist, or one
in a lower Christian life. But there is not the least evidence of any
such personation in the passage, and he says not one word to lead us to
suppose that such was his intention. In iii. 5, he does thus personate
an objector; and says, ‘But if our unrighteousness commend,’ &c. But
then he distinctly states that he is doing so in the words, ‘I speak as a
man.’ But there is nothing of the kind here. There is a plain, simple
statement in his own name; passing from the ‘I,’ which pervades the
chapter, to ‘I, myself,’ in the last verse; and I am utterly at a loss to
understand on what principle these plain words, ‘I myself,’ can be
supposed to express the personation of some other man.
II. In answer then to our first question, I am brought to the conclusion
that when he spoke of ‘I myself,’ he meant himself, and not another: and
we may pass to our second question. To what period of his spiritual
history did he refer: did he speak of the past, or of the present? Was
he describing some period of past anxiety out of which he had been
delivered, so as to enter on the joys of the eighth chapter? Or was he
speaking of his state of mind at the very time, that he was writing the
eighth chapter, and declaring, ‘Ye have not received the spirit of
bondage again to fear; but ye have received the spirit of adoption,
whereby we cry, Abba, Father?’ In answer to this I have not the smallest
hesitation in saying that, according to every principle of sound
exposition, the seventh chapter refers to exactly the same period as the
eighth; that it is a description of his own experience at the time he
wrote the words; and that we should have just as much authority for
saying that the eighth chapter referred only to the future, as that the
seventh referred only to the past. For this I give three reasons:—
(1.) If we wish to understand the Word of God we must receive plain
words as we find them in sacred Scripture. We have no right to assume
that the present tense stands for the past; that ‘I am,’ means ‘I was;’
that ‘I do,’ means ‘I used to do;’ that ‘I hate,’ means ‘I used to hate;’
and ‘I delight,’ means ‘I used to delight.’ If we once begin thus to
handle Scripture there is an end to exposition; and if people who thus
twist Scripture would be consistent, they ought to go on, and say that
the beginning of this verse, ‘I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord,’
means, ‘I used to thank Him, but I do not now.’
(2.) Again, the transition from the past to the present is clearly
marked in the passage. In the parenthesis which extends from the seventh
verse to the end of the chapter, we find the three tenses,—past, present,
and future. From verse seven to verse thirteen it is all in the past,
and is a description of a certain portion of his past life. ‘I was
alive;’ ‘the commandment came;’ ‘sin revived;’ ‘I died;’ ‘I found it to
be unto death;’ and ‘sin deceived me, and by it slew me.’ It is a
description of the great work of God in breaking down his pharisaism, and
bringing him to Christ. I believe it all took place during those solemn
three days at Damascus. But from the fourteenth verse to the end, all is
changed, and the present tense is employed. ‘I am;’ ‘I do;’ ‘I allow;’
‘I delight;’ ‘I hate;’ ‘I thank God;’ ‘I serve.’ The only exception is
in the twenty-fourth verse, where we find the future: ‘who shall deliver
me from the body of this death?’ This distinction of the tenses is alone
enough to prove the point, for it would be just as reasonable to maintain
that the past means the present, as that the present means the past.
(3.) Once more. The noble thanksgiving of verse twenty-five is supposed
to be the point of transition from the sadness of the seventh chapter to
the joys of the eighth; the conclusion of his conflict in the discovery
of the Lord Jesus. There can be no doubt that this passage does describe
the act of faith rejoicing in the Divine Deliverer. It describes the
believer grasping the victory, and rising through grace above the
conflict within his soul. We quite admit it, and fully accept that
explanation of the words. But now, here is the remarkable point: this
account of a struggle within the soul is found—where? Not only before
the thanksgiving of victory, but also after it; proving thereby that it
is deeply felt, even by those who can give thanks for an overcoming
Saviour. And more than that. People draw a distinction between what
they call the unhappy seventh and the happy eighth; but this verse comes
between the thanksgiving of the seventh chapter and the assurance of no
condemnation in the eighth. It follows the thanksgiving, and leads on
immediately to the grand, and most blessed declaration, with which the
eighth chapter opens: ‘There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them
which are in Christ Jesus.’
On the whole, therefore, I conclude that the Apostle was speaking of
himself, and not of another: and that he spoke of himself at the very
time that he was assured of no condemnation in the present, and no
separation for all eternity: of a perfect safety in his union with the
Lord Jesus Christ. We may pass then to our last subject.
III. What does the passage teach us respecting the experience of the
Apostle at the time when he wrote the Epistle? Perhaps I ought to limit
the question by rather saying, What was his experience with reference to
the law? For the whole object of the passage is to bring out the
holiness of the law, and to prove from his own case that the ‘commandment
was holy, and just, and good.’
(1.) The first thing that is conspicuously clear is that he had
discovered its true character. When he was a legalist he had no idea of
its exalted standard; but, when God called him, his eyes were opened to
behold its perfection. It is a curious fact that those who hope to save
themselves by their doings are almost certain to entertain but low and
limited notions of the law: they think of it as some low standard within
their own reach; so they are always endeavouring to fulfil it, and though
always failing, are never really troubled at their failure; but, when God
opens their heart, they discover its exalted holiness, and find
themselves to be nothing better than dead men before it. This is just
what had happened to St. Paul. He lived in early life as an earnest,
religious, and well-conducted young man, and he was satisfied with
himself. ‘Touching the righteousness which is in the law,’ as he says
himself (Phil. iii. 6), he was ‘blameless.’ He went through all the
Jewish worship as correctly as possible, and omitted nothing: but he knew
nothing of the claims of the law on his whole heart and all his powers;
he simply regarded it as a collection of rules,—and he thought he did
well. So he says, in verse nine, ‘I was alive without the law once.’
His ignorance of the law made him think himself alive; but God had after
a time opened his eyes, and he discovered its exalted holiness. He saw
it expounded in the teaching of our Lord, and exhibited in His life; he
found it was nothing less than the perfect will of a perfect God; and all
his own poor, feeble, miserable doings shrank away as dead things before
the holiness of God; and thus he adds, ‘The commandment came, and I
died.’
Now this change had taken place when he wrote the Epistle, so that the
law was no longer to him a mere skeleton of form, but had appeared before
him as the great expression of the mind of God. And now how did he
regard it? This leads to a second point.
(2.) He approved it, and delighted in it. He approved it, for he said,
‘I consent unto the law, that it is good.’ Nor did he regard it as a
yoke of bondage about his soul. It was not a rigid code by which he was
forced against his will. How any person can suppose that this passage is
the language of an unregenerate, or unconverted man, I cannot imagine.
Did you ever know an unconverted man to delight in the perfect holiness
of God? Such holiness condemns, restrains, and frightens him. But St.
Paul said, ‘I delight in the law of God after the inner man.’ The fact
was he had experienced the great promise of the New Covenant: ‘I will put
my law in their inward parts, and write it on their hearts.’ God, the
Holy Ghost, had written the law on his heart, and now he loved it. To
please God was his greatest joy, and to do His will was the chief desire
of his soul. He could say, as David did, ‘Oh, how I love Thy love: it is
my meditation all the day!’ He was not content with the measure of his
own consciousness, or the standard of his fellow-men, or a vain idea of
doing his best, or doing no harm to any one. He did not split hairs
about the distinction between being blameless and being faultless. He
had seen the Lord in His beauty, and adored Him in His holiness, so now
it was the whole mind and will of God that filled his soul, and the great
desire of his heart was expressed in such words as those of the Psalmist,
‘Teach me to do Thy will; for Thou art my God: Thy Spirit is good; lead
me into the land of uprightness.’ And does not this teach us a lesson of
inexpressible importance respecting ourselves? In Christ Jesus we are
not driven by a slave master, and compelled by the lash into obedience.
We ‘love the law,’ because we ‘love the Lord.’ We find His will, and His
word, to be dearer unto us than thousands of gold and silver; and we
experience the blessedness described by our blessed Saviour when He said,
‘Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for
they shall be filled.’
(3.) But all this while he was painfully conscious that he was
infinitely below its standard. The very fact of hungering and thirsting
after righteousness implies in itself that your hunger is not yet
supplied: so in this passage St. Paul teaches us that he was still very
far from what he most earnestly desired to be. He felt what I may term
the bitter provocation of shortcoming: ‘The good that I would I do not,
but the evil that I would not that I do.’ There was the unceasing
consciousness of falling utterly short of the high standard set before
him in the law. He does not say this to justify sin, for he tells us how
he hated it; but he teaches us, as plainly as words can teach anything,
that at the very time when God had by His great grace so changed his
heart that he had discovered the law and was delighting in it, there was
still in him what the ninth Article describes, when it says, ‘The
infection of nature doth remain yet in them that are regenerate.’ The
old, fallen, sinful human nature was not extinct in him, and this ruin of
his fallen nature was acting as a clog and drawback on his holy longings
after the perfect holiness of God. Thus in his one self there was a
contest between grace and nature, between the new man and the old. Of
the one he says, ‘I delight in the law of God after the inward man;’ and
of the other, ‘I know that in me (_i.e._, in my flesh) dwelleth no good
thing.’ By the power of the Holy Ghost he could say, ‘To will is present
with me;’ but through the power of the old nature he was obliged to add,
‘How to perform that which is good I find not.’ It was this bitter pain
of thus failing to reach the standard of his heart’s desire, that drew
from him the cry, ‘Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from
the body of this death?’ Some people think that such language could not
have come from an enlightened believer, led by the Spirit, and walking in
the sunlight of the eighth chapter. They seem to forget the twenty-third
verse of that very chapter, in which he says, ‘Ourselves also, which have
the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves,
waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.’ (viii.
23.) For my own part, I believe it was the leading of the Spirit that
called it forth, inasmuch as that leading led him to aim at the true
standard of the holiness of God. I agree with the wise commentary of old
Scott:—
‘This energetic language, which many imagine to describe an unestablished
believer’s experience, or even that of an unconverted person, seems to
have resulted from the extraordinary degree of St. Paul’s sanctification,
and the depth of his self-abasement, and hatred of sin; and the reason of
our not readily understanding him seems to be that we are so far beneath
him in holiness, humility, acquaintance with the spirituality of God’s
law, and the evil of our own hearts, and in our degree of abhorrence of
moral evil.’
I have not then the smallest hesitation in taking the passage as I find
it, and regarding it as descriptive of the Apostle’s own sense of
shortcoming before the standard of the law, at the very time of his most
peaceful, Christian experience. I wish I had time to follow out the
subject, and show how in the midst of his conflict a hallowed peace was
flowing into his soul: but that I must leave to another day. But you
must not wait till next Sunday, seeking peace, and finding none; you must
remember at once that, though you fail, the Lord Jesus Christ never does.
You must remember at once that it is with especial reference to this very
struggle that we are taught that ‘the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son,
cleanseth us from all sin.’ You must remember at once that in the midst
of all your difficulties you have a living Advocate at the right hand of
God; and therefore at once, with God’s holiness as your standard, God’s
atonement as your righteousness, and God’s Spirit as your guide,
notwithstanding all shortcomings, you may say as St. Paul did in the
midst of his struggle, ‘I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.’
GRACE.
‘I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I
myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.’—ROM.
vii. 25.
‘There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Jesus
Christ, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.’—ROM.
viii. 1.
I HOPE that your study of this passage during the week has confirmed the
conclusions at which we arrived last Sunday,—that St. Paul was speaking
of himself, not of another; and that he was describing his experience at
the very time he wrote the Epistle. I trust also you have seen from his
words that the Lord had opened his eyes to discover the holiness of the
law, and changed his heart, so that with his whole soul he loved it. I
hope also that it has been clear to you that this exclamation, ‘Oh,
wretched man that I am!’ was the expression of his profound humiliation,
under the painful sense of his own shortcoming when measured by the high
standard of the holiness of God.
Now, I believe that if, instead of adopting some artificial standard of
our own, we aim at the perfection of God’s holiness, as taught in the
Word of God and exhibited in the life of the Son of God, we are sure thus
painfully to feel the contrast between what we are and what we ought to
be. Of course if we measure ourselves by ourselves we may be easily
satisfied; but then we know we are not wise, and our satisfaction may be
nothing more than delusion. But if we bring ourselves to the test of
perfect, spotless, eternal holiness, and honestly look into the workings
of our own fallen heart, I cannot imagine why we should shrink from such
words as those in our confession, ‘We have left undone those things which
we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not
to have done.’
Are we to understand then that there is nothing but conflict and
disappointment before the Christian man, and that the only effect of the
opening of the heart by the Holy Ghost, is to lead us to discover, and
feel the pain of, sin? If so, I could almost say, ‘Let the eye remain
closed,’ for I verily believe there is no state of mind so painful as
when there is the sight of sin without the sight of Christ Jesus. When
you know neither sin nor a Saviour, you can be content in the world; when
you know sin alone without a Saviour, you have all the anxiety of
religion without the joy: but it is when you know both, that you may be
sorrowful yet always rejoicing; deeply conscious of your own defects, and
yet resting peacefully in the right hand of the blessed Lord who has
redeemed you by His blood.
This morning, therefore, if God permit, we will endeavour to study what
it is in the Saviour that can give us a peaceful, thankful joy, at the
very time that we feel most profoundly humbled before the holiness of
God. I have not nearly time to discuss the whole subject as I should
like to do, and, therefore, must confine your attention to these two
verses; standing as they do in immediate connexion with the description
of the struggle, they will supply us with exactly the information we
require, and teach us how in the midst of the sharpest conflict with sin
the believer may enjoy the most perfect peace in Christ Jesus.
There appear to be three lessons plainly taught us.
I. We have the triumphant hope of final victory. Along with the deepest
sense of unsatisfied longings after holiness there is the peaceful spirit
of thanksgiving in the assurance of a coming triumph. The passage does
not refer to a deliverance that had already taken place, but to one still
future; and the thanksgiving was not for any thing past, but for a great
work still remaining to be accomplished. So the deliverance from the
text is not a deliverance from the curse, for that had taken place
already; nor a deliverance from the sentence of the law, for from that
the Apostle was already free; but a deliverance from the power of
indwelling sin, which kept him back from the holiness at which he aimed.
He said, therefore, ‘Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’
He had found by experience that he could not deliver himself; but in the
midst of his own failure he could look up to the great Deliverer, and
with profound thanksgiving bless God for the undoubting assurance that in
God’s own time he would be completely transformed into the very likeness
of his Lord. His language is explained by his own words, in Phil. iii.
20, 21: ‘From whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ;
who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His
glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able to subdue all
things to Himself.’ ‘The body of this death,’ in the text, is the same
as the ‘vile body,’ or ‘body of humiliation,’ in the Philippians; and the
deliverance of the text is the transformation of that body into the
likeness of the Lord Christ Jesus, at the appearing of our Blessed
Saviour. This is exactly the same as what the Apostle John expected when
he said (1 John, iii. 2), ‘Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it
doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall
appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.’ So that,
on the whole, we are taught that the time is most undoubtedly coming when
those who are thirsting after the holiness of God will be perfectly
satisfied; when the vile body shall be changed; and when not a spot, or
blemish, will remain in any one of the saints of God.
Ye then who are humbled and cast down because of your infinite
shortcomings, ye must not be disheartened, but must trust your Saviour.
He came to save His people from their sins, and in His own time He will
do it. If you be in Him, He has already set you free from the curse; He
has already given you the earnest desire to do His will; He has already
so far secured the victory that, ‘Sin shall not have the dominion over
you.’ And the time is soon coming when He will Himself appear in His
glory, and then all conflicts will be over, and you will be like Him, for
you shall see Him as He is. Like St. Paul, therefore, you may begin at
once to give Him thanks. You remember the case of Jehoshaphat, and how
he put the singers in front of his little army, to praise God for the
promised victory, even when the enemy stood there in the fulness of his
strength. So you too may rise at once in the spirit of thanksgiving: for
in Christ Jesus your victory is far more certain than that of
Jehoshaphat. You may press on, therefore, with the utmost vigour, with a
victory full in view; and, though as yet you fall infinitely short of His
most perfect character, you need not wait till you have overcome your
difficulties, but may even now say, as St. Paul did, ‘I thank God through
Jesus Christ our Lord.’