Chapter 6
Having seen, therefore, the need to be emotionally moved by the impact of the doctrine of Atonement as God has offered to us in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, we return to give further consideration to this question of the Judaiser: “Does sin give more scope for the exhibition of God’s grace?”
We have three answers to that question.
The first answer lies in the meaning of baptism itself, which is outlined in the first fourteen verses of this chapter.
The second answer is that the believer has changed his master — which we will consider from vs. 15-23 of this chapter.
The third answer will be drawn from the Law of Moses and the lessons that are therein.
V1. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? If grace super abounds above and beyond the power of sin as we have shown in Chapters, does the increase of sin give, therefore, more scope for the exhibition of the grace of God? Those who ask this question, exhibit a failure to understand the very basis upon which grace is bestowed.
V2. By no means is our answer to that question, for the fact is that we are dead to sin. As we have shown before, it is now a question of our identity with Adam or Christ as to whether we live or die. As Christ has died unto sin, which we have taught before, so as our federal head we must be united with him in death.
If we are, therefore, dead to sin in our Lord Jesus Christ, it is obvious that we cannot afford to exhibit sin in our lives merely for the exhibition of God’s grace. We cannot live that way. We are crucified with Christ — we no longer live unto ourselves.
V3. You do not properly understand the meaning of baptism to ask that question. For we are baptised into his death, and what do you understand concerning the death of our Lord Jesus Christ? Not only did he die for us on the tree but his whole life was a living death unto sin, whilst dedicating himself to living unto God. Therefore if we are baptised into his death, we are dead to the sins of this world. We are buried with him by baptism. Burial is a total thing. When a body is put under the ground, it ceases to be — it ceases to breathe, it ceases to exist. That should be our relationship to sin, as we are buried with our Lord Jesus Christ, for he had nothing to do with sin.
V4. But even as Christ was raised up, so will we be raised up. How was he raised? He was raised up by the glory of the Father. “The glory of the Father” is His character, and it was, therefore, the exhibition of Divine Righteousness — the character of God in His life which laid the foundation for the raising to eternal life. Indeed it was the glory of the Father to which He was risen, and therefore in our present state, we should walk in that newness of life. Here we equate our present walk in the newness of life to the resurrected Lord. We should aspire to be like unto Him. We should live our life as if we were in the presence of God — raised in heaven lies in Christ Jesus, seeking those things which are above where Christ sitteth on the right hand of the Father.
V5. Surely it is a question of simple logic—we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, i.e. if we have disappeared, as it were, out of the range and scope of sin, we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection. The new life in Christ will itself teach us by experience that the old man is crucified, because our former way of life has now been replaced by higher ideals. That former way of life we lived according to “the body of sin” which has to be destroyed. In this we fulfil the type in the Law of Moses, where the body of the sin offering was taken and destroyed outside the camp as being of no value in God’s sight.
V6. Once the body of sin is destroyed, then we are free from the slavery of that body. For he that is morally dead to the body of sin is justified from sin. Now a dead man is free from sin’s prompting, and a justified man is free from sin’s effect.
V7-8. Again, I say, it is a question of having faith, and that faith being based upon our knowledge. We have faith that we shall live with Christ because our knowledge tells us that he has been raised from the dead and he will die no more. Again we stress it is a question of knowledge — and that knowledge instilling into us a faith — a faith to believe in God.
V9-10. Jesus dies no more — death has no more dominion over him. It had dominion once, for he came in the flesh in which we now find ourselves. He lived under that dominion. He had in his body the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life — which, if he allowed them, would have enslaved him to sin. But by the power of God, he was raised above those temptations and now, having been freed from that body of sin, sin has no more dominion over him. When he died, he died to declare God’s righteousness in crucifying the body of sin. God only asked him to do that once and for all. Having done this, he could do no more in a life of perfect obedience, he now liveth unto God. He who lives unto God as Jesus does, must also determine to live his life in obedience to the living God who is unrelated to sin.
V11. Consequently, we should use our logic and see ourselves dead unto sin as He was, and alive unto God as He is. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, He who now bears the full title of salvation, as the manifestation in every sense of our God, we should be free from the bondage of sin and death.
V12-13. Do not let, therefore, sin ruin and rule us in this death doomed body. We must not obey sin. Sin is a terrible master. It can give us nothing but misery and depression. Why then should we serve sin? In this warfare in which we are engaged of flesh verses Spirit, I exhort you, not to place your members as part of the military force of sin to be used in its service, but to yield your members as weapons of righteousness unto God as those who are members of the army of the living God. For if you enlist your members in the army of righteousness, then sin will not have the overlord-ship in our lives as it would if we would yield them as instruments of unrighteousness.
V14. Really, we have an advantage in as much that we are not under Law. For if we were under the Law, with its commandments, we would find that those just, holy and good commandments, wonderful in themselves, would by their very commandment against sin, suggest the possibility of sinning. Such is the evil in our nature that it would react badly against that Law, and consequently would be to our disadvantage to be under that system of things.
V15. We are not under the Law, we are under grace. What a remarkable advantage that is, because with grace, there is no defeat. There can be no defeat because grace always allows for a new start, even though a person may fail again and again in the warfare of faith. If we continue in God’s army of righteousness, then the grace of God will always allow us to reform in the battle against King Sin. This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.
And so, you see, it is a question of identity isn’t it. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Of course we will not because we are identified with He who is the manifestation of the righteousness of God.
V16. But now we look at our second answer to that question. We cannot sin that grace may abound because we do not serve sin anymore. We have changed masters. The question may be rephrased: “Well, perhaps we can sin just once. Maybe one single act of sin that the grace of God may be given scope for exhibition?”
Again I answer strongly in the negative. There is no way that we can do this. Use your logic. Is it not true that to whosoever you yield yourselves servants, you are the servant to that one to whom you yield yourself? There are only two alternatives. If you serve sin, you will serve sin to death — for that is the wages that sin pays.
But if by obedience you serve God, then the outcome of that will be the imputation of His righteousness. I have avoided using the exact antithesis to this by saying “obedience unto life”, because I don’t want to give you the false impression that by your own acts of obedience you can earn eternal life.
What I have said is that you can obey God and your obedience of faith will be unto righteousness. If obedience of faith leads to righteousness, it is not the righteousness in question, but the foundation which leads to the imputation of it. Such obedience to righteousness is evidence we are God’s servants and as a result we will be partakers of His grace in being justified from sin.
V17. What is it that impels us to obedience? Is it not what we have explained earlier — the love of God as expressed in His son? Let God be thanked, therefore, that we are His servants because we have not chosen to serve Jim, so much as he inspired us to serve Him. So much has the influence of God been with us that we now find that we can obey God from the heart, yes, out of the heart! Even though we learnt from our Lord that from out of the heart of man proceeds evil thoughts. If we spontaneously obey God out of the heart, it must be that the Truth of God has first entered into those hearts that we might have responded.
That is exactly what has happened. For God has virtually put us in a cast, in a mould of teaching, that we might come out as examples, a pattern of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, himself was, of course, a pattern of the character of God.
God has delivered us into that mould of teaching. He it is who has put us there. He it is who has shaped us and having shaped us in that mould of teaching whereby we are justified, freed from sin. It is the Truth that makes us free! It is the Truth that teaches us that we are not free to please ourselves, but we are free to do as we should. Consequently, we are now the servants to Righteousness.
V19. Now, I do wish to apologise for speaking in these human terms, for using the figure of slavery, which is not very nice, I suppose, but I have been trying to impress upon you the great contrast between serving sin and serving God. We do not want to go on serving sin from impurity and violation of God’s Law through to the deliberate and dirty acts of sin. We desire to be the servants of righteousness — the very opposite — to be justified and purified by a reversed process.
V20. As I have said before that if we become servants to righteousness, then we are made free from the slavery of sin. However, our past experience has taught us that the converse is equally true. That is, when we were servants to sin, we were certainly free from any wonderful influence of Righteousness, were we not? I place this in the converse so as to make the realisation greater. Consider the time when we did walk in the lusts of our flesh, when we were planted in the likeness of sinful flesh. What sort of fruit did we find was produced in our lives — what return did we get? Was it not shame? Was it not these things which caused us to be depressed? Was not shame the first bi-product of sin when Adam and Eve took of the fruit of the garden? The point aimed at by sin, is death. In our unrestrained way of life this is where we are heading.
V21. Look by contrast at what we have now. In our service to Righteousness, as arduous as it may be at times, what is the outcome in our life? Is it not sanctification? Do we not feel clean in God’s sight? Is there not a clarity of conscience and a joyfulness about our life? This is the very opposite to shame.The whole point to which we are aimed at in serving Righteousness is everlasting life. That fruit of course is for all seasons. It is the tree of life finally, whereby we may be sustained in life forever and ever by the fruits of that Righteousness.
V23. Returning again to our figure of serving in an army. The army of sin is paid wages, but the rations of a soldier are small and meagre indeed. If we chose to take our human members and use them as weapons in service to sin, we will be bitterly disappointed in the wages that we are offered.
We finish again with a marvellous contrast, for if we take our members and yield them as weapons in the service of God’s Righteousness, we find that we do not receive wages as such, for we do not earn any. For what man who by his service can put God in his debt! Yet, not having received wages, we shall receive instead a gift — a gift of God. That gift is eternal life, and with that gift there will be eternal satisfaction — no disappointment. The gift of God is only available to those who in the service to Righteousness have been positively identified with Him who is God’s Righteousness, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Chapter 7
Now I wish to press home my argument against this question: “Shall we sin that grace may abound?”
We are not given any license to sin as I have shown before, because we have endeavoured to emphasise our need of identification with he who was dead to sin but alive to righteousness. I wish to further that illustration by a lesson from the Law of Moses — and in particular, the Law as it governed the relationship between husband and wife — a most intimate relationship. The lesson is addressed to those who know that Law because when we look at the Law of Moses as it regulated married life, we can see just how much the husband had dominion over the wife.
V1. First of all let us understand this. The Law had dominion over a man as long as he lived. So intrinsically evil is our nature, that it reacted sinfully against the Holy Law, only seeing in its commandments against sin, the possibility of doing wrong. Hence if we were still under Law, we would be so for the rest of our natural life, and our flesh taking the opportunity of the auto suggestion of good commandments, would leave us under the dominion of sin as long as we lived.
V2. Now let me press that lesson into the context of the intimate relationship between husband and wife as they were married under the Law of Moses. We learn through the Law that the wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. If her husband were to die, that renders that relationship inoperative. She is no longer under obligation to that man. He is now non-existent and she is a free woman and can marry any other man providing she marries in the Truth. However, if she marries another man while her husband is alive, she is nothing more than an adulteress. What I am trying to say is this … that our relationship under the Law of Moses as being bound by it, is like the wife’s relationship to her husband as being bound by him. For you see, under the Law of Moses, marriage is not like it is today.
The Law more stringently bound the wife to her husband in respect to her conscience. We know for example that a woman was really not free to make her vow of dedication to her God, for should such a vow become known to her husband he could cancel any such vow. Not so in Christ. Here we have women of their own free will, and in the exercise of individual conscience, being made one with their husbands in Christ Jesus our Lord. So when we speak about the Law of the husband we are speaking of that Law as it operated under the Law of Moses, where the wife’s subjection was stringent indeed.
V3. Taking that figure a step further, we apply it to ourselves as individuals, as we are at once both husband and wife. As a husband he represents our former way of life, living under Law and the dominion of sin by the suggestion of Law. However, being baptised into the death of Christ, that old man (the husband) has died. With the death of our former way of life, the ‘inner consciousness’, generated within us by the power of God’s truth, is now free to be exercised and to be identified with our Lord Jesus Christ as his bride.
This figure of husband and wife, of the old man of sin and the new way of righteousness and life, which I have been pressing on you, has been worked our first of all in the body of Christ. He died under sin that he might be made alive unto God. If we are identified with him who was raised from the dead, then we must inevitably, by our identification with him, show forth in our lives those characteristics which are of God and from God.
V4-5. Again I would have you hark back to your former way of life — to the days when the passions of your flesh were exercised without restraint. They were energised into action by the very terms of the Law which, though good in itself, became the strength of sin. As a result of that form of existence, if any fruit was brought forth at all, it was brought forth unto death. An anomaly in terms really and certainly a fruitless existence.
But now through our relationship to Christ we have been delivered. The motions of sin have been reduced to inactivity because we are dead to that which held us captive. That which held us captive was the Law. It held down. It was repressive. It was not productive to inspire us to do the things that are right before God. It was given as a disciplinary measure to repress our feelings rather than to cultivate them.
V6. Having been then released from one form of slavery, we should cheerfully volunteer for another form of slavery. Having died under sin, and being now alive unto righteousness, we should act as if we were alive, and serve God with freshness and vigour in the spirit’s teaching as it is set forth in His word. We should not continue in the oldness of academic formalism, in letters without meaning, and without feeling, which could only serve to convince a man that he was a sinner, and not to produce within him that spontaneous reaction of one who knows he is forgiven of God.
Now some may say:
V7-8. “Seeing that we have argued that the purpose of Law was not to give life but convince one of sin, and that in being convinced of sin we became aware of what sin is, are you really saying that the Law in itself is actually sin?”
No. We are not saying that. To the contrary. It is the Law that really taught us what sin is. In teaching us that, it was obviously the opposite of sin, an antagonist to it. How could the Law be sin, if it identified sin for what it was? There are many things which we ourselves were not aware of as being sinful, and would never have known had not the Law said so. For did not the Law say “Thou shalt not lust”?This is the last of the ten commandments, the only one which speaks of those things which are harboured in the inner recesses of our heart, undetermined by man, but clearly defined by Law.
So, far from the Law being sin, it is the very opposite to sin, seeing it brought sin out into the open and revealed it for what it was. Therefore, sin was seen to be the real villain. So bad was sin that it took the opportunity, through the good commandment to work in me, that is me, Paul, all manner of evil thinking. Sin used a good commandment to do that, for you see, when we did not have the Law, then sin was dead because we acted without being conscious of the fact that we were sinning.
V9-11. As a boy I was alive and free of a conscience of sin because I did not understand Law, but as I grew older and I began to understand the commandments of God against sin, I became conscious of sin and developed a guilty conscience. I realised I was not keeping those commandment, and as a result of my guilty conscience I felt condemned to death. As a young Jewish boy I had always thought that the Law which I was learning was ordained to give me eternal life, but as a mature man trying to keep the Law, I found by experience, that all it did was to convince me that by sin I was condemned to death. You see, sin is so evil — it is so deceitful, it caused me to react evilly against a good Law, and by the use of that good Law it killed me! Without the Law sin was dead. Now through the Law I am dead!
V12. Now do not misunderstand me. I want to state categorically that the Law is holy. The commandment is holy. It is just and it is good.
V13. Was it God’s intention then that this very good Law should be the means of death to me? No, this was not God’s intention at all. It is not the Law or God that is the problem. It is sin. Sin that it might really be seen for what it is because it puts me to death by the means of that which is good. So that by the flesh reacting against the commandment as it does, sin is out in the open and exposed as being an exceeding great sinner.
Now we can not only prove this matter of the exceeding sinfulness of sin by referring to the scripture of Truth, but we know it by our own experience. For when we were under the Law of Moses, the power of sin inherent in our body of sin was emphasised by the commandments of the Law. The fact that we are now baptised into the body of Christ does not in any way decrease that awareness but rather intensifies it. The difference is, that in him we have the forgiveness of sins which provides the moral incentive to break its power. My personal experience which I now set before you, I know is the experience of all those who have a spiritual mind, who daily strive with that mind to overcome the promptings of their flesh.
V14. Because the Law proceeded from God, it can be nothing else but spiritual, but I am a carnal, fleshly creature of the dust sold under sin. Sin like a slave owner, possesses our bodies and without the spiritual mind, we give unremitting service to his dictates.
V15. However, we do not do this voluntarily—that is, those of us in Christ Jesus; for we find that our service to sin is arduous and depressing. What I accomplish in life I scarcely understand — it being so far removed from what I resolve to do. The things that my mind desires that I should do, I find are not the habitual practices of my body at all. The specific things that my mind loathes, my body performs with meaningless regularity.
V16. Now if my mind recognises that those specific acts which I perform according to the dictates of my flesh are wrong and if my spiritual mind loathes them, then I have this consolation, that at least I am in agreement, and speak in unity with the Law of God which is spiritual. So I find that whilst my body is carnal, sold under sin, my mind endorses the spirituality of the Law.
V17-18. So what then do we find is the logic of our personal experience. Is it not this: that if we do those things which are wrong, against our better judgement, then it is not really ourselves who are working those matters out in our life — it is the dictates of the flesh which spring up and intrude into our life against our better judgement. Sin is the problem, and sin has taken up residence in my body. It is the diabolos, the false accuser, for it causes me to do those things which my spiritual mind resents, and therefore does not truly represent the real me. I know that in my flesh, that is, my flesh as a natural man, there is nothing good. There is no intrinsic value in flesh whatever. Goodness is only derived from God.
V19. I have a will to do what is right. My spirit is willing, but I find the rule of my life is that whenever I am determined to do the right thing, I am also very conscious of the opposite course of activity, and evil is ever present with me. So great is the desire to do wrong, that I find it impossible to carry out my best intentions because of the weakness of my flesh.
V21-22. Therefore this rule of action predominates throughout the course of our life, that as we endeavour to dedicate ourselves to the will of God, we find ever present with us those evil tendencies which make life ever so much more difficult. Yet it is with great delight that I rejoice in the Law of God and I do this according to my inward man — certainly now with my flesh. With this inward man — if he were not to have any opposition, life could be full and satisfying. But what does sin do? It goes to war against this inward man, and uses my members as its weapons of offensive, warring against the Law of my mind and quite often brings me into captivity—into bondage to that Law of sin, which predominates in my members.
V23. In this unremitting warfare of flesh against spirit there are moments of great depression and pain as the trials of life come upon us, and one realises how futile is the attempt to try and perfectly obey the Law according to one’s own will-power. Rather is it a prayer to God to rescue us from this body doomed to death, and we have great rejoicing and thanksgiving in our hearts to God, because our prayer is answered in Jesus Christ our Lord. He is Yahweh’s salvation, manifested to us, and in whom sin was destroyed by a perfect demonstration of the spirit’s thinking.
V25. So amidst all our depression we can rejoice in the fact that we, ourselves, the real us, delighting in the Law of God, can live our life with a positive view, that one day we shall be freed from this bondage of sin and brought into the great liberty of the children of God.
The Solution