1. This text, like the preceding one, is an exhortation to Christian
life and works. The language employed, however, is of different
construction. The hateful machinations of the devil, by which he
produces so much disaster in the world, make it necessary to urge
this exhortation in many different forms upon those who have become
Christians. For when God out of grace, without any merit on our part,
bestows upon us the forgiveness of sins which we ourselves are unable
to buy or acquire, the devil instigates men at once to conclude and
exclaim: Oh, in that case we need no longer do good! Whenever,
therefore, the apostle speaks of the doctrine of faith, he is obliged
continually to maintain that grace implies nothing of that kind. For
our sins are not forgiven with the design that we should continue to
commit sin, but that we should cease from it. Otherwise it would more
justly be called, not forgiveness of sin but permission to sin.
2. It is a shameful perversion of the salutary doctrine of the Gospel
and great and damnable ingratitude for the unfathomable grace and
salvation received, to be unwilling to do good. For we ought in fact
to be impelled by this very grace to do, with all diligence and to
the utmost of our knowledge and ability, everything that is good and
well-pleasing to God, to the praise and glory of his name.
3. Of this Paul reminds and admonishes us here, in plain and simple
but earnest and important words, in which he points out to us how
much we owe to God for that which we have received from him, and what
injury we shall suffer if we do not value it as we should, and act
accordingly. He says:
"We are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh."
4. Because we have been redeemed from the condemnation we deserved by
our sins, and now have eternal life through the Spirit of Christ
dwelling in us (he speaks of this in the preceding verses), therefore
we are debtors to live after the Spirit and obey God. This Paul
declares also in the text for last Sunday: "Now being made free from
sin and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto
sanctification." Rom 6, 22. Therefore, he says, ye are debtors; your
new calling, station, and nature require of you that, since ye have
become Christians and have the Holy Spirit, ye should live as the
Holy Spirit directs and teaches. It is not left to your own caprice
to do or to leave undone. If ye desire to glory in the possession of
grace and the Holy Spirit, ye must confess yourselves debtors to
live, not after the flesh, the only desire of which is to continue in
sin, but after the Spirit; the Spirit shows you that, having been
baptized and redeemed from sin, ye must turn from sin to the new life
of righteousness and not from that new life to sin.
"For if ye live after the flesh, ye must die."
5. Here judgment is plainly and tersely pronounced on the pretensions
of those foolish people who seek to make the freedom of grace a
pretext for giving license to the flesh. The apostle speaks these
words that he may deter them from presumption, lest in place of the
life and grace in which they pride themselves, they bring upon
themselves again eternal wrath and death. It would be utterly
inconsistent in you who are now saved and freed from eternal death to
desire henceforth to live after the flesh. For if ye do that, ye need
not imagine that ye shall retain eternal life; ye will be subject to
death and condemned to hell. For ye know that it was solely because
of your sins that ye lay under the wrath of God and had incurred
death, and that it was because ye lived after the flesh that ye
deserved condemnation. Most assuredly Christ has not died for those
who are determined to remain in their sins; he has died that he might
rescue from their sins those who would gladly be released but cannot
liberate themselves.
6. Therefore, let him that is a Christian take care not to be guilty
of such nonsense as to say: I am free from the Law, therefore I may
do as I please. Rather let him say and do the contrary. Let him,
because he is a Christian, fear and shun sin, lest he fall from his
freedom into his former state of bondage to sin under the Law and
God's wrath; or lest the life, begun in God, lapse again into death.
For here stands the express declaration, "If ye live after the flesh,
ye must die;" as if the apostle meant: It will not avail you that ye
have heard the Gospel, that ye boast of Christ, that ye receive the
sacraments, so long as ye do not, through the faith and Holy Spirit
received, subdue your sinful lusts, your ungodliness and impiety,
your avarice, malice, pride, hatred, envy and the like.
7. For the meaning of "living after the flesh" has been repeatedly
stated and is readily understood. It includes not only the gross,
sensual lust of fornication or other uncleanness, but everything man
has inherited by his natural birth; not only the physical body, but
also the soul and all the faculties of our nature, both mental and
corporal--our reason, will and senses--which are by nature without
the Spirit and are not regulated by God's Word. It includes
particularly those things which the reason is not inclined to regard
as sin; for instance, living in unbelief, idolatry, contempt of God's
Word, presumption and dependence on our own wisdom and strength, our
own honor, and the like. Everything of this nature must be shunned by
Christians (who have the Holy Spirit and are hence able to judge what
is carnal) as a fatal poison which produces death and damnation.