associated with 'the law'--the law which had awakened it out of its
life of moral apathy by its stern reminders of the will of God. The
law had reminded, instructed, enlightened; but it could not give the
inward power needed to obey its requirements. It served but to bring
to light the tyranny of sin which made man incapable of yielding
obedience to the will of God; it even augmented its power by
stimulating it to opposition. The law therefore belonged purely and
simply to the old condition of moral impotence--the life 'in the flesh'
and not 'in the Spirit.' It fulfilled the {239} only function it could
fulfil in awaking the consciousness of sin. Thus to pass from 'the
life of the flesh' to 'the life in the Spirit' was to pass out of its
dominion. This is the other thought with which St. Paul is occupied in
the passage we are just going to read. This too he expresses with the
help of the figure of death. Human law only regards a living man.
Death acquits him from law by taking him out of the region where it
applies. Therefore, when a man dies with Christ to the 'old man,' he
passes out of the reach of the law which threatened the old man but had
no function beyond that.
Each of these two thoughts is quite distinct and clear; but they are
fused in the present passage. St. Paul begins with the second, to show
that the 'dead' Christian is free from the law (ver. 1; cf. vi. 7).
But marriage law is taken as an example of law, and by this link we
pass from the second thought to the first. But the second thought
requires the man's _self_ to die with Christ to escape from the region
of law. The first thought, on the other hand, requires the 'old man,'
or old mode of life, to die, to leave the man's real self free to be
married to Christ; and this change of subject {240} introduces
confusion into the passage. The attempts to show that there is no
confusion are not successful. In ver. 1 the idea plainly is that the
self dies, as in vi. 7. In ver. 4 the main idea plainly is that the
'old man' is dead, and has left the self free to contract a new
marriage. But the other idea is still sufficiently dominant to cause
St. Paul to say 'ye died to the law,' instead of 'your old man was
crucified.' Morally, of course, the two phrases mean the same thing;
and one who, like St. Paul, is _dictating_ a letter, is specially
liable to verbal confusions even when his thought is clear.
After these explanations the analysis shall be made as brief as
possible. St. Paul, having, in the latter part of the sixth chapter,
shown that the abolition of the power of the law is no excuse for sin,
recurs to and develops the principles which he has now guarded from
abuse, viz. that the power of the law is past for the Christian. He is
writing, he says, to men, whether themselves Jews or not, who
understand what law means, and that its dominion over a man ends with
his death. It has no jurisdiction beyond the grave. He takes the
marriage law ('the law of or {241} 'concerning the husband,' ver. 2) as
an illustration. Without noticing the exceptions in the way of
possibilities of divorce which the Jewish law admitted, he lays it down
generally that 'the law of the husband' binds the wife till death, but
death dissolves its power. When her husband is dead she is
'discharged' and free to be married again. (Here we have passed from
the idea of a man escaping by death out of the dominion of law to that
of his death dissolving the force of law in the interests of another,
viz. his wife.) That is the state of the Christian's real self.
Christ's body, St. Paul says, was nailed to the cross, and you were put
to death there with Him; or rather, your 'old man' was put to death
there, and you were left, like wives discharged from the marriage law
by the intervention of death, free to be united to the risen Christ,
and to see fruits of your new union such as God can approve. There
were fruits from the former union with the 'old man,' in the days when
you were still under the power of the flesh. The body was subject to
feelings and emotions which, under the provocation of the law, became
the instruments of sin; and these all at work in our limbs
(constituting the 'old man,' and having {242} ourselves for the
subject-wife) brought forth the fruits of actions fit only for a
kingdom of death. But now we are discharged from the law, like the
wife whose husband is dead, having died to that in which we were held
captive, and come to life in a new region; so that we can be
slaves--that, as we have seen in the last chapter, we must always be,
so far as yielding a complete obedience is concerned--only no longer
under the old bondage of a written law, but in the new freedom of the
empowering Spirit.
Or are ye ignorant, brethren (for I speak to men that know the law),
how that the law hath dominion over a man for so long time as he
liveth? For the woman that hath a husband is bound by law to the
husband while he liveth; but if the husband die, she is discharged from
the law of the husband. So then if, while the husband liveth, she be
joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if the
husband die, she is free from the law, so that she is no adulteress,
though she be joined to another man. Wherefore, my brethren, ye also
were made dead to the law through the body of Christ; that ye should be
joined to another, _even_ to him who was raised from the dead, that we
might bring forth fruit unto God. For when we were in the flesh, the
sinful passions, which were through the law, wrought in our members to
bring forth fruit unto death. But now we have been discharged from the
law, having died to that wherein we were holden; so that we serve in
newness of the spirit, and not in oldness of the letter.
{243}
1. If we ask ourselves what is practically meant by St. Paul's idea of
the marriage of the redeemed soul to Christ, which supplements his
thought of the whole Church as the bride of Christ[2], the answer seems
to be that it is made up of a moral and a theological factor. The
moral factor is the idea of the devotion of the believer to Christ--'as
a young man marrieth a virgin.' The theological idea is that of the
risen Christ making the soul of the believer fruitful in good works by
infusing into it His own Spirit or life.
2. The conception of the freedom of the redeemed from the moral and
ceremonial law is very easily realized by reference to our ideas of
civic freedom in connexion with the criminal law. The criminal law
exists, and the policemen are among its administrative officers, but
the respectable citizen is free in his relation to the criminal law,
and passes the policeman without any sense of alarm--not because he is
at liberty to break the law, but because he has become accustomed to a
way of living with which the agents of the law are not called upon to
interfere. It is in a sense like this that St. Paul conceives the
Christians to have escaped from the bondage of the Mosaic law.
{244}
3. What is the meaning of the common phrase our 'passions'? It refers
to those feelings which we experience without any action of our will.
It may be a mere neutral sensation of smell. It may be a feeling of
hunger, thirst, desire, anger. These are our 'passions' as opposed to
our actions. These appeal to the will as motives, and it appertains to
the will to determine whether it will yield to them and so translate
passions into voluntary actions. When the will is weak, and passion is
allowed to pass into action uncontrolled, the man becomes the slave of
sin, and his passions, in themselves innocent or only constituting the
material of temptation, become the 'sinful passions' of which St. Paul
speaks in this place.
[1] Matthew Arnold, _St. Paul and Protestantism_, p. 76.
[2] Eph. v. 22.
{245}
DIVISION III. Sec. 6. CHAPTER VII. 7-25.
_The function and failure of the law._
The somewhat confused passage just dealt with, in which several moral
ideas and metaphors are struggling for the mastery, is followed by a
famous passage of luminous power in which St. Paul expounds, with a
profound insight into human nature, the function and failure of law.
The close alliance into which St. Paul constantly puts 'the law' with
the reign of sin, an alliance hardly suggested by any other New
Testament teacher, suggests inevitably the idea that St. Paul, like the
later Gnostics, regarded the law itself as 'sin,' that is, as owing its
origin to the power of evil and working for its ends. Such an idea he
of course repudiates. But all the same it is law, written or
proclaimed, and law only, which both awakens the sense of sin in man
and stimulates sin itself to put {246} forth its power. Let me take
myself, we may imagine St. Paul as saying (for the 'I' of this passage
is very far from being strictly autobiographical), as representing man
in his moral history. I was alive apart from any law once. That is to
say, I lived as suited me best, according to my instincts, asking no
moral questions and troubled by no scruples. And all this time sin,
considered as a moral tyrant, was as if dead. I had no defined moral
ideal and consequently no struggle and no failure. Then comes the law
with its 'Thou shalt not covet' (or do this or that). It imposes
limits in the name of God on my life of instinct. It cries 'Hands
off!' At once I find opposition between me and the law. I do covet
this and that which the law says I must not have. I find myself in the
eye of the moral law a transgressor. And there is something more than
my own lawless desire in opposition to the law. I become conscious of
a great power of sin at work in the world and in me--something greater
than myself, which intervenes in the struggle and reinforces the
opposition to the law. The tyrant Sin rouses himself on the pretext
afforded by the hostile commandment, and exercises his power both by
stimulating my desires, like Eve's (ver. 8), and {247} deceiving my
intelligence, like hers, to believe that good is evil (ver. 11), and so
brings me by means of the commandment into a state of flat disobedience
to the law, which is death. For the law was given for life--'This do,
and thou shalt live'; but there is the necessary converse--'This
transgress, and thou shalt die' (vers. 7-11).
The law then, it is quite plain, is the expression of the will of God.
And the particular commandment is holy and righteous and good. Is the
good then my poison? No. But what has happened is this--the
expression of the good in the law has brought the tyranny of sin out
into the light. It had me in its power before, but I did not know it
and I did not struggle. But as soon as the law aroused in me the
beginning of moral consciousness, sin used the commandment as its knife
to kill me; and so showed its hideous character--which indeed it was
the divine intention to uncloak by means of the law (12-13).
For this it is that we must recognize as the true state of the case.
On the one hand a spiritual law proclaimed over me. On the other hand
a man who in virtue of my fleshly nature have been sold to be a slave
of sin, and who as a slave {248} find myself doing acts by force of
circumstances, the true nature of which I do not understand, and which,
so far from choosing, I hate (vers. 14, 15). For I am not only of this
fleshly nature; I have also a conscience which responds to the claim of
the law and recognizes it as right. But my wish to obey the law is not
strong enough to carry my flesh with it. Thus my actual practice is in
flat contradiction to the ideal of my choice. But henceforth my will
is on the side of the law, and myself is in my will[1]. What runs so
uncontrollably to evil is, it appears, not myself at all, but the alien
tyranny of sin which has taken possession of me and made my flesh its
haunt and instrument--the haunt and instrument of evil only and not of
good. So I can only wish good and practise evil, and become more and
more conscious that I am not my own master. The law of God, accepted
by my will, becomes the law of my mind or inner being; but when I seek
to impose it on my limbs and act accordingly, I find another law--the
law of the tyrant Sin--holding sway in my lower nature; my authority is
defied and {249} I myself am dragged in humiliating captivity to sin in
my lower nature (vers. 16-23). My body has become the death of my
spirit. It is my prison-house. I cry out in my misery for
deliverance. And it is this deliverance which I praise God for having
given me through Jesus Christ our Lord. (By union with Him my higher
self is reinforced, and I can control my lower nature and become my own
master.) But in my isolated, unassisted self, the best that I can get
to is a flat contradiction between the service of the law of God in my
mind and the service of sin in my flesh (vers. 24, 25).
What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Howbeit, I had
not known sin, except through the law: for I had not known coveting,
except the law had said, Thou shall not covet: but sin, finding
occasion, wrought in me through the commandment all manner of coveting:
for apart from the law sin is dead. And I was alive apart from the law
once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died; and the
commandment, which was unto life, this I found _to be_ unto death: for
sin, finding occasion, through the commandment beguiled me, and through
it slew me. So that the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and
righteous, and good. Did then that which is good become death unto me?
God forbid. But sin, that it might be shewn to be sin, by working
death to me through that which is good;--that through the commandment
sin might become exceeding sinful. For we know that the law is
spiritual: but I am carnal, {250} sold under sin. For that which I do
I know not: for not what I would, that do I practise; but what I hate,
that I do. But if what I would not, that I do, I consent unto the law
that it is good. So now it is no more I that do it, but sin which
dwelleth in me. For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth
no good thing: for to will is present with me, but to do that which is
good is not. For the good which I would I do not: but the evil which I
would not, that I practise. But if what I would not, that I do, it is
no more I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in me. I find then the
law[2], that, to me who would do good, evil is present. For I delight
in the law of God after the inward man: but I see a different law in my
members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into
captivity under the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man
that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death? I thank
God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I myself with the mind
serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.
i.
St. Paul, as has been said, is constantly in his epistles of this
period stating briefly or alluding to the failure of 'the law' to
supply man with the moral strength needed to live a good life at peace
with God. Thus: 'The power of sin is the law.' 'As many as are of the
works of the law are under a curse.' 'The letter (the written law)
killeth.' 'Through the law cometh the {251} knowledge of sin.' 'The
law worketh wrath.' 'The law came in beside, that the trespass might
abound[3].' The first of these sayings, occurring as it does
altogether out of apparent connexion with the context, shows us as
clearly as anything could how full of the idea his mind was. But only
here, in this chapter, does he open his heart to us to show us the
experience on which such a strange and original conclusion was based.
We can imagine a youth of intensely susceptible moral and religious
nature like Saul of Tarsus passing out of the home of his boyhood into
the school of Gamaliel in Jerusalem. The one subject of instruction
there was 'the law'--the divine law which was the pride of Israel's
race--in all the grand severity of its moral requirement and in all the
complexity of its ritual regulations. It was the one topic. And all
about him he saw the Pharisees building up the fabric of a meritorious
life before God out of their observances. Now, no doubt the most
easily self-satisfied Pharisees made much of the principle of
compensation--that 'obedience to certain laws' (e.g. the law of the
sabbath or 'the law of fringes') 'was as good as obedience to the {252}
whole[4].' The Pharisee of our Lord's parable who went up to the
temple to pray, satisfied himself because he observed certain practices
beyond the requirements of the law. Our Lord bears witness that the
Scribes and Pharisees paid tithe of mint and anise and
cummin--traditional extensions of the law--and omitted the weightier
matters, judgement, mercy, and faith, yet were righteous in their own
eyes. On the other hand, the maxim of St. James, 'Whosoever shall keep
the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is become guilty of
all,' was a commonplace of the Jewish schools.
There can be no doubt that it must have been the severer teaching that
fastened upon young Saul's mind. He acknowledged himself a 'debtor to
keep the whole law[5].' And in ritual detail, though no doubt the
effort required was immense, he managed to be 'blameless[6].' But in
the weightier and deeper matters it was not so. The moral law,
enforced and commented upon, continually confronting him with its 'Thou
shalt not,' brought to light in him the fact of sin--in desire, we
should gather, rather than in act or word. The law said 'Thou shalt
not covet' (or {253} lust). And Saul said, 'But I do lust after this
and that and the other. My heart and my desires are not in harmony
with the law. Nay, the very fact that the law prohibits it seems to
make my wrong desire stronger.' So the whole Pharisaic idea of a moral
life--the standing over against God and building up a fabric of
merits--seemed to be unsatisfactory. The fabric in his own case was
full of internal rottenness. It would not bear severe examination.
Moreover he could not but observe the lives of those around him who
were so well satisfied with their moral edifices, and he recognized
that their satisfaction was due to nothing but hypocrisy or
shallowness. As he went later to Jewish settlements in various
centres, he saw always the picture of a life fair in its own eyes and
rotten in fact. His general experience of Jewish life is summed up
strongly enough in the second chapter of this epistle. Thus he drew
the conclusion that the law could not be really kept--it was only
possible to keep it by means of evasions and compensations which made
it worse than useless.
Meanwhile there was forming itself in Saul's mind the conviction that
the whole attitude of the Pharisees towards God was false. They lived
as if God had made a contract or covenant with {254} them, and within
the terms of this covenant man could deal with God on an independent
basis. God must keep to His covenant and not augment it or change it.
And on their side the people of God under the covenant had nothing to
do but to keep their part of the bargain and claim their reward with a
conscious and proper pride in the merits of their race and of
themselves. This was exactly the spirit in which they rejected Jesus
as the Christ, as it was also exactly this spirit which He had chosen
for His sternest denunciations. But all this idea of merits, all this
boasting, must have come to seem to Saul's mind monstrously untrue to
the real fundamental relation of man to God. For who maketh thee to
differ? and what hast thou, O Jew, that thou didst not receive? And if
thou didst receive it, why dost thou boast thyself as if thou hadst not
received it? Thus St. Paul's training must not only have made him feel
that he could not satisfy himself in keeping the whole law; but it must
also have convinced him that law itself as a principle, law as
understood and represented among the orthodox Jews, was fundamentally
and permanently incompatible with the real relation of man to God.
There were many elements in the Old Testament, {255} notably in the
Psalms, in which a quite different relation of man to God was
indicated--a relation of meek trust as of a son to a father, and of
penitence and dependence and peace. But in the teaching St. Paul had
received, the law, the legal covenant of man and God, which suggested a
quite different moral attitude, was the essential element; and that, we
must suppose, he felt increasingly sure was a foundation on which he
could not stand.
No doubt these deep questionings about the law, and the growing misery
accompanying them, made him at first all the more zealous for it. No
doubt they explain his fanaticism against the Christians. No doubt his
'kicking against the goad' represents the rebellion of his heart
against anything which seemed to threaten the position of the law of
his fathers, and especially against the utter upheaval of foundations
involved in accepting for Christ Him whom the leaders of his people had
rejected and caused to be crucified. But when he had effected the
great transition, when he had found in Jesus Christ all that satisfied
his deepest instincts about God and his deepest desires for union with
Him, his old experience of the law took shape in a profound theory of
its place in the divine {256} education of the human race. Ultimately
man is meant to be in such close and harmonious relations to the divine
Spirit that he should both know what is right and do it by an inner
light and power. But an outward written law was a necessary prelude to
this; and that in the main because sin--individual sins and the long
tradition of sin--had hardened men's consciences and blinded their
eyes, and the divine law as proclaimed through the conscience had
become in consequence either utterly inadequate or had even been
silenced altogether. A written law therefore, peremptory and explicit,
and announcing its sanction in definite penalties, was needed to teach
men anew what God really required. It was given in such a mode as
threw men on their own independent moral strength, and by that very
fact convinced the best among them of their inward weakness and sin;
while to many more it appeared rather as involving an impossible
effort--as 'a yoke which neither they nor their fathers were able to
bear.' In either case it was their 'tutor to bring them to
Christ'--with His teaching of God, not as a taskmaster, but as a
Father, righteous indeed, but still more loving. And if there were
others again, shallow or worthless men, whom the law simply hardened
{257} in the superficial self-righteousness of mere 'observances,' or
the worst sort of religious hypocrisy, that was only another way of
demonstrating its inadequacy. It left the world to choose between the
Pharisees and Christ as representing real righteousness.