Romans 1:1I. The fact that a man like Paul, brought up as he was with such a brain and such a heart, turned the wrong way at first, should be capable of burning with such enthusiasm for a man of whose history he knew very little that was real or true until he saw Him in heavenly glory, that after that he should live to be the rejoicing slave of Jesus Christ,— is it a wonder that such a fact should weigh with me ten times more than the denial of the highest intellect of this world who gives me, by the very terms that he uses, the conviction that he knows nothing about what I believe? He talks as if he did, but he knows nothing about it. St. Paul knew the Lord Christ; and therefore, heart and soul, mind, body, and brain, he belonged to Jesus Christ, even as His born slave. II. Let us try to understand what is meant by a slavery which is a liberty. There is no liberty but in doing right. There is no freedom but in living out of the deeps of our nature— not out of the surface. We are the born slaves of Christ. But then, He is liberty Himself, and all His desire is that we should be such noble, true, right creatures that we never can possibly do or think a thing that shall bind even a thread round our spirits and make us feel as if we were tied anywhere. He wants us to be free— not as the winds, not to be free as the man who owns no law, but to be free by being law, by being right, by being truth. St. Paul spent his whole life, all his thoughts, all his energies, simply to obey his Lord and Master, and so he was the one free man— not the only free man: there were some more amongst the apostles; and by his preaching here and there, there started up free men, or, at least, men who were beginning to grow free by beginning to be the slaves of Christ. G. Macdonald, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvi., p. 108. References: Romans 1:1.— G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 254; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. i., p. 75; H. E. Lewis, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxi., p. 220. Romans 1:1-4.— A. M. Fairbairn, The City of God, p. 215. Romans 1:1-7.—Ibid., pp. 41-9; Expositor, 1st series, vol. ix., p. 105; vol. xi., pp. 309, 458; Homilist, 3rd series, vol. vi., p. 108; J. Vaughan, Sermons, 6th series, p. 37; W. B. Pope, Sermons, p. 175; W. J. Knox-Little, The Mystery of the Passion, p. 123. Romans 1:2.— Fletcher, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 1. Romans 1:2-5.—Preacher's Monthly, vol. ii., p. 253. Romans 1:3, Romans 1:4.—Expositor, 1st series, vol. x., p. 149. Romans 1:7I. There is a saintship which lies in the eternal appointment of God, which is the root and beginning of all. There is a saintship in the having been deliberately and designedly set apart by others as a holy vessel, which is independent of your own will. There is a saintship in your own voluntary surrender of yourself at different times to God, which is the responsible saintship. There is a saintship in the secret leadings and mouldings and teachings of the Holy Spirit, which is real and actual saintship. There is a saintship which lies in a holy, self-denying life, the copy of Jesus, which is apparent and active saintship. And there is a saintship in perfection being still beyond you, not reached nor yet conceived— that satisfying likeness in which one day you shall awake, capable of God's presence, your whole body, soul, and spirit concentrated to one object, in one harmonious serving, and that is the saintship of hope, the design of your redemption, the end of your creation. II. There are many to whom it is a very small attraction to be what is commonly meant by a "religious person,"— a name which often conveys, if not narrowness and severity, yet certainly something very moderate and almost quite negative. Do not be a "religious person"; be a saint, be an eminent servant of God; determine that you will be a great Christian. The higher the mark, the easier it is to some minds to reach it; and the reason why some simply do nothing is because they have not yet conceived great things. Do not be content with commonplaces; do not be like Christians about you. Throw your ambition into a channel worthy of the capabilities of which you are conscious. Leave beaten tracks and conventional standards, and the trite, ordinary ways of so-called Christians: be a saint. J. Vaughan, Sermons, vol. xx., p. 17. References: Romans 1:7.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix., p. 210; Ibid., Morning by Morning, p. 187. Romans 1:8-15.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. i., p. 91. Romans 1:11, Romans 1:12.— J. S. Pearsall, Christian World Pulpit, vol. v., p. 184; vol. vi., p. 198. Romans 1:14I. The principle underlying these words is that personal possession of any peculiar privilege is of the nature of a trust, and involves the obligation that the privilege shall be used by the individual, not for his own pleasure or profit merely, but for the welfare of those who are not similarly blessed. What I have that another has not is to be used by me, not for my own aggrandisement, but for the good of that other as well as for my own. The greatness of exceptional endowment, of whatever sort it may be, carries with it an obligation to similar greatness of service. The highest of all, by virtue of his very elevation, is to be the servant of all. The power of the strong is— shall I say?— divinely mortgaged in the interests of the weak; the sufferer whom I have the means of relieving has a God-given claim upon me for that relief; and the ignorant, whom I am able to instruct, is by God entitled to that instruction at my hands. He who has is in debt to him who has not. This is clearly the true interpretation of such a parable as that of the good Samaritan, and indeed it is the true and proper outcome of the gospel itself. II. And this principle, thus introduced by the gospel, furnishes that which is needed to meet the perils of our modern civilisation. The tendency of the times is to increase the separation between different classes in the community. The gospel, far from blotting out all distinctions in society, as the Communist would do, makes the very privileges which mark the distinction between a higher class and a lower the basis of obligation, so that the one is the debtor of the other, and the obligation increases with the increase of the privilege. In this regard it is a solemn thing to be the possessor of a special blessing; for, while it is a boon, it always brings a responsibility, and makes its receiver a debtor to others who are less fortunate than himself. That is the Christian principle; and when men generally accept and act upon it the millennium shall have begun. W. M. Taylor, Contrary Winds, p. 186. This text raises a question on each of three points, which in mercantile phraseology would be designated the Business, the Debt, and the Composition. I. The business: the nature, sphere, and extent of the trade in which Paul's talents were laid out and his capital invested. Paul was a diligent and energetic man. Had he been a merchant, the keenest art in all the exchange could not have overreached him. He embarked all in one business, and then pushed it to the uttermost. He did not neglect the necessary and lawful affairs of this life, but his treasure was in heaven and his heart followed it. II. The debt: how, with whom, and to what extent he had become involved. He was diligent in his business, and yet was not able to pay his way. Paul owed all that he possessed and himself besides to Christ His Redeemer. But he could not directly pay any part of his debt: a man's goodness cannot reach to God. The Lord to whom he owes all has transferred his claim to the poor, and Paul is bound to honour it. Paul cannot reach the treasury of heaven to pay his instalments there; Paul's great Creditor, therefore, makes the debt payable on earth; offices are open everywhere to receive it. Wherever there is a creature of the same flesh and blood with ourselves in want, spiritual or temporal, or both combined, there a legal claim is presented to the disciples of Christ; and if they repudiate, they dishonour their Lord. III. The composition: in what manner and to what extent the insolvent proposed to pay. Let it be carefully observed here at the outset that the most devoted life of a saved man is not offered as an adequate return to the Saviour. As well might he purchase his pardon at first from the Judge as repay the Redeemer for it afterwards. He pays, not in the spirit of bondage, but in the spirit of grateful love; not that he looks to a time when the debt will be paid off, but that he delights in the act of paying it. Having announced his principle, the Apostle plunged at once into its practical details—Romans 1:15, "So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also." W. Arnot, Roots and Fruits, p. 370. The Adaptation of the Gospel to Civilised and Uncivilised Races.. Grant that the Christian revelation is true, and you cannot well oppose its diffusion; acknowledge that there is one God, and that He is revealed to mankind in Jesus Christ, and you cannot allege that it is unnecessary or unwise to make Him known throughout the world. And it will be found that this gospel can take hold of men of all grades of civilisation, from the very lowest to the very highest, because it meets the moral nature and wants of all men, speaks to the conscience and tells how men are lost and how they may be saved. I. On that conviction acted that illustrious missionary who, though born a Hebrew of the Hebrews and educated in all the pride and prejudice of a Pharisee, once he had perceived the knowledge of Christ and caught the spirit of His world-endearing love, threw himself with an ardour at once generous and sagacious into the ministry of reconciliation, and made his appeal without respect of persons or races, to the Jew and the Greek, to the barbarian, to the Scythian, to the bond and to the free. Is not this for our admonition today? Ought not the Church of God to turn the same countenance of goodwill upon all nations and on all classes in a nation without respect to persons? II. Perhaps the Church at home has become a little sickly through over-much self-consciousness, and is like one who grows weak and somewhat peevish by living, so to speak, too much indoors. Let the Church, as represented by her vigorous sons and loving daughters, go forth into the open air on the great areas of the world, and a new glow of health will come upon her cheek and a new pulse of strength into all her veins, and she will have a sweeter temper and a clearer voice and a firmer grasp than ever. In the wisdom of God the thoughts and ways of men are slowly but surely being shaped to glorious ends. Presentiment of better things on earth sweeps in with every force that stirs our souls. At such times surely the Church of God should arise and put on strength! D. Fraser, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvii., p. 305. References: Romans 1:14.—Homilist, 3rd series, vol. vii., p. 280; W. P. Lockhart, Ibid., vol. xxx., p. 214; Preacher's Monthly, vol. x., p. 11; R. W. Church, Human Life, p. 193; C. S. Robinson, Sermons on Neglected Texts, p. 80. Romans 1:14, Romans 1:15.— C. Symes, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvii., p. 363; J. Culross, Ibid., vol. xxix., p. 289. Romans 1:14-16.—Ibid., p. 395; J. Edmunds, Sermons in a Village Church, p. 247; H. W. Beecher, Forty-eight Sermons, vol. i., p. 181. Romans 1:15.— J. Irons, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. vii., p. 217. Romans 1:15, Romans 1:16.— J. W. Burn, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxviii., p. 195; H. P. Hughes, Ibid., vol. xxxii., p. 273. Romans 1:16I. St. Paul rests the glory and the power of the gospel on its influence on every one who believeth: that is, on its persuasion of and acceptance by the heart and mind of each individual man. You see what great results such an admission brings in its train. At once the individual responsibility of man assumes a sacred and inviolable character. If it be so, all attempts to coerce and subjugate men's consciences in the matter of religious belief are not only as we know futile and vain, but are sins against that liberty of reception of His gospel which God has made our common inheritance. The acceptance of the gospel, and of all that belongs to the gospel, must be free and unforced, the resignation of the heart, with its desires and affections, to God. II. Let us remember that not St. Paul only, nor every Christian minister only, but every Christian man and woman among us, is set for the declaration and promulgation of the gospel. Some are called upon to preach its truths; all to proclaim their power by the example of a holy life. The gospel of Christ is still the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. This is the reason why we are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: not ashamed, though the track of the Church has been marked out not with peace but with the sword; not ashamed, though two-thirds of this fair world still lie in outer darkness; because we find that in the midst of all this the gospel has not lost one atom of its life-giving power, that wherever a soul lays hold on the Redeemer by faith, whether in the corrupt Church of Rome, or in the Reformed Church of England, or in any of the endless varieties of religious opinion and communion, or apart from all visible companies of Christians, there enters a new life unto God, a change into the Lord's image, a glorious progress in holiness here, tending to perfection hereafter. H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. ii., p. 176. Note:— I. Some grounds for sympathising with the Apostle's statement. (1) We are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, because it vindicates the abandonment of our crucified Lord by God. The death of Jesus is seen to be at once a sublime satisfaction and an illustrious vindication of the justice of God. (2) We are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, because it reveals the love of God. (3) We are not ashamed of the doctrines of the gospel, for they vindicate the justice and they glorify the love of God. We are not ashamed of them, because they bear the stamp and have the ring of heavenly wisdom. II. Experience has vindicated the Apostle's reason. "It is the power of God unto salvation." The testimony of individuals in this matter is endorsed and sustained by the general testimony of history. W. J. Woods, Christian World Pulpit, vol. x., p. 211. Romans 1:16I. In Paul's day the world was grown very weary of words which had in them no power at all, or, if power, at least not power to save. Weary of words which promised life, but had no power to give it; brain-spun speculations about God and man which made nothing clear, which had no influence whatever over the bad passions of the individual, which brought no hope to the poor or the slave; in these Greek theories there was no gospel of power unto salvation. Weary too of words which had behind them the terrific and sometimes brutal strength of Roman legions, but used it not to elevate subject races, but only to bind the yoke firmer on the degenerate peoples. II. In the midst of all this St. Paul carried what he knew to be a Divine message of help— God's own miraculous word, charged with a loftier wisdom than that of Greece, backed by a mightier authority than that of Rome, and instinct with spiritual life and everlasting salvation for men of every land. It was the revelation of God's righteousness in His Son, and of God's life by His Spirit. III. The power which resides in a word, or which operates through a word, requires one, and no more than one, condition for its operation— it must be believed. Faith is no exceptional demand on the gospel's part. It is the condition of all power which comes by word, whether it be a word that teaches or a word that commands. Salvation must come by faith, because faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. It is therefore to him only who believes its message, but to every one who does believe it, that the gospel proves to be God's power unto salvation. Faith on the part of the hearer is that which must liberate the Divine might, which resides in the word ready to operate. Before you call the gospel weak, ask how you have received it. The faith which has to be exercised about any word varies with the nature of the word. This word from God is spiritual, and it asks not an intellectual but a spiritual faith, a moral submission, a religious surrender of the whole being to the influence of the truth told and the authority of the Person speaking. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation— only you must do it the justice to believe it. J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 1. The Power of God in the Gospel. I. The first element of the power of the gospel which we meet with in the most complete treatise which inspired men have delivered to us on the subject is the gospel doctrine of sin. The sense of sin is among the most real and deep of human experiences. Men were groaning in spirit over the question, when the gospel offered its solution and cast a flood of light upon the nature and the genesis of sin. The Bible declares what man's heart has ever felt to be a truth, that sin is the independent self-originated act of the free will of the creature in opposition to the known mind and will of God. It declares also what man feels in his heart to be true, and has struggled in vain to realise, that sin does not fully belong to man, though it is in him and is his own work. Through the gospel sin was felt and known in its dread reality as it had never been known before; but men learned, too, that it was as essentially weaker than righteousness, as flesh is weaker than spirit, as Satan is weaker than Christ. They learnt that it might be conquered, that it ought to be conquered, and they believed that it would be conquered. II. The second element of the power of the gospel lies in the atonement offered for the sins of the world, which it proclaims. Man seeks to know God as He is; and man only rests and hopes when he sees that not a promise only, but the nature, the name of God is on his side. The name of God was manifest in Christ and wrought redemption. All the attributes of the Divine character are here seen in their essence— the radiant colours blended in one white beam of love. And this is the glory of the gospel, this is the power of that salvation which is by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. III. The third element of the power of the gospel is the doctrine of the incarnation. The world whose air the incarnate God had breathed, whose paths He had trodden, whose load He had borne, whose form He had put on and carried up with Him visibly to celestial zones, could not be a dying world, could not be a devil's world; it must live to be a Divine world and a kingdom of heaven. IV. The gospel was a power unto salvation, because it opened heaven to man's spirit, and brought down the power of the world to come to govern his will and purify his heart. J. Baldwin Brown, The Divine Life in Man, p. 92. References: Romans 1:16.—Sermons for Boys and Girls, p. 86; Homilist, new series, vol. i., p. 529; Church of England Pulpit, vol. xviii., p. 61; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iii., p. 159; T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. ii., p. 54; H. P. Liddon, Church of England Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 297; S. W. Winter, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 200; T. Gasquoine, Ibid., vol. iv., p. 364; H. W. Beecher, Ibid., vol. viii., p. 267; W. Woods, Ibid., vol. i., p. 211; R. W. Dale, Ibid., vol. xxix., p. 305; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. i., p. 96; H. P. Liddon, University Sermons, 2nd series, p. 242; J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 10th series, p. 272; Bishop Simpson, Sermons, p. 97; Saturday Evening, pp. 22-43. Romans 1:16-17 Consider:— I. The condition to which man has reduced himself by transgression, which makes "the power of God unto salvation" the pressing and constant need of his soul. Power is of God, because power is life, and life is of God. If power be gone, God only can renew it. Man is manifestly godlike in the serene composure of his being; he knows the struggles to live up to it, yet falls back into the gloom of the nether abyss. It is a sight of unspeakable piteousness. It would be an agony to angels, it would be an agony to Christ if His mighty arm were not nigh with salvation. II. What evidence upon this point the pagan systems supply. I believe that, regarded in their very highest aspect— that is, in the light of their aspirings and strivings— they are solemn witnesses to this want of spiritual power, by their very efforts to supply it, and to generate that force which can come forth from God alone. It is very easy to use the word idol as a word of scorn; but it is not so easy to define clearly what it means, and to explain the place which it occupies in history. The world's idolatries are the nurses of the most grinding tyranny and the most disgusting sensuality. This is their universal character; to this they inevitably incline. But if any man supposes that idolatries were invented for the express purpose of promoting sensuality and tyranny, by giving them a heavenly sanction, he places himself at a point of view from which it is simply impossible that he can understand humanity and the gospel. The Gentile idolatries were the power of man, striving at first in the true direction, though in sinful, guilty ignorance of the true God, who is "not far from any one of us," but mastered to the end, like all that is born of the will of the flesh, by corrupting elements, and made thereby ministers of widespread desolations and death. The pagan was suffered to feel after God, because God was preparing to reveal Himself. The world was suffered to grope in its darkness, for already the gates of the East were opening, and the flush of the rising daystar began to glow over the world. J. Baldwin Brown, The Divine Life in Man, p. 70. The Essential Nature of Salvation. I. There is no safety but in soundness, and wherever there is soundness there must be ultimate safety. These two principles are comprehended in the original sense of the words, both in Greek and Latin, which are rendered by the one word salvation. But I believe that in the view of sound philosophy, as well as in etymology, the meaning of health-wholeness is the fundamental one, and that we shall get into much mischief, in spiritual things at any rate, if we look at the matter in any other way. He who would save man must heal him: in other words, he must re-quicken that vital power which man lost at the Fall, the re-quickening of which will be regeneration and salvation. II. Salvation is a deliverance— an escape from death and hell. Salvation is the possession of a complete and imperishable bliss. But there is that in it which underlies both these conditions, and through which alone they can be completely realised; and that is the gradual unfolding of the Divine life in the soul— the recovery by the soul of that vital force which in its rudiment man lost in Eden, and which in its maturity man regains in Christ. "The just shall live by faith." That is the basis on which the doctrinal structure rests. Life was lost in the Fall. Life is recovered in Christ; to live in Christ is to be saved. To know Him, to be capable of knowing His mind, and sympathising with His heart, and delighting in His work throughout eternity, is to be blessed in all the boundless blessedness of heaven. But everything depends on our regarding faith, not as a dead condition which any other term might as well supply, but as a vital act; just as vital a relation to the spiritual being as the appropriation and assimilation of the bread which perishes is to the life of the body in this present world. We live by the bread which perishes, as to the body; we live by Christ, the bread of life, as to the spirit. The sense of the body is the organ by which the outward bread is appropriated for its sustenance; faith is the corresponding organ by which, in the inner man, Christ is received with the nourishment of the soul. J. Baldwin Brown, The Divine Life in Man, p. 122. References: Romans 1:16, Romans 1:17.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. i., p. 161; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiii., p. 364. Romans 1:17 (R.V.) I. The most characteristic and weighty expression in this verse is of course God's righteousness, the revelation of which makes the gospel to be a saving power. The Pauline use of the word righteousness is this: righteousness is the condition of any man's being justified, vindicated in law or acquitted of blame by his righteous Judge. And the characteristic of the gospel— its joy and glory— lies here, that it has revealed how that condition of our justification has been reached. By its disclosure of that for the trustful acceptance of mankind, it becomes a message with power unto salvation. II. We are now in a position to see in what sense this righteousness revealed in the gospel is God's. It is God's in its inception; for He it was who in the beginning, when we were yet sinners, sent forth His Son. It is God's in its achievement; for He it was— the Son of the Father— who, in the fulness of time, made many righteous by His own obedience. It is God's in its revelation; for He it was— the Holy Spirit— who comforts us by His teaching, who first through the apostles of our Lord discovered it to all nations for the obedience of faith. III. God's righteousness of, or out of, faith. The relation of God's righteousness is thus expressed by its very name, on both sides— toward God and toward man. As respects God, it is His, in a sense, opposed to its being mine; His as its Author, Originator, meritorious Achiever, and proper Proprietor. The simple personal possessive marks His relation to it; it is God's. But as respects my relation to it— it comes to me, stands me in stead, is reckoned to me for my acquittal "by faith," in consequence of my believing and trusting in Him. Just because this righteousness is another's, it can only be made available for me by my relying upon that other and accepting it as a gratuitous present from His kindness. Because it is God's, it comes to me out of faith; and it is out of faith, that it may be by grace. J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 13. References: Romans 1:17.— G. Ireland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 222; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 567; G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, p. 83. Romans 1:18.—Homilist, vol. vi., p. 157; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xii., p. 381; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 561. Romans 1:18-21.— Bennett, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 325. Romans 1:18-32 The Natural History of Paganism. I. St. Paul's first proposition is, that from the first the heathen knew enough of God from His works to render them without excuse for not worshipping Him. II. Secondly, the Apostle declares that the heathen have culpably repressed and hindered from its just influence the truth which they did know respecting God. He traces polytheistic and idolatrous worship to its root. (1) Its first origin he finds in a refusal to walk honestly by such light as nature afforded. For this primary step in the very old and very fatal path of religious declension men could excuse themselves under no plea of ignorance. (2) The next step followed surely. That truth about God's real nature and properties, which men would not strive fairly to express in their worship, became obscured. Vanity and errors entered into human reasonings on religion. "Men became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened." (3) The third step downward was practical folly in religion. Nature worship involved symbol worship. Symbol worship rapidly degenerated into sheer idol worship. III. It is in this deplorable and criminal perversion of the truth, this religious apostasy, that Paul finds a key to the personal and social vices of heathendom. When the human heart shut out the self-manifestation of the true God, refused to know Him, and worshipped base creatures in His room, it cut itself off by its own act from the source of moral light and moral strength. A bad and false religion must breed a bad and false character. It ought never to be forgotten that heathenism is not simply a misfortune in the world for which the bulk of men are to be pitied but not blamed. It is a crime— a huge, next to world-wide, age-long crime, with its roots in a deep hatred of God, and bearing a prolific crop of utterly inexcusable and hideous vices. To prove this is the end for which the passage is introduced by St. Paul. J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 25. References: Romans 1:19.—Church of England Pulpit, vol. xix., p. 303; G. Dawson, Sermons on Disputed Points, p. 49; F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiii., p. 289. Romans 1:20.— G. Salmon, Non-Miraculous Christianity, pp. 74, 94; R. S. Candlish, The Fatherhood of God, p. 1. Romans 1:20, Romans 1:21.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxx., No. 1763. Romans 1:21.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. i., p. 20; H. W. Beecher, Catholic Sermons, vol. ii., p. 97. Romans 1:21-25.—Ibid., vol. i., p. 297. Romans 1:25 Nature Worship. Consider whether our religion or our irreligion is so free from the idolatrous element as we generally suppose, and if not what are the appearances which bear the most resemblance to the false religion of the ancient world. I. Though the impious among ourselves no longer pray to stocks and stones, or beasts and birds, or moon and stars, there is still a strong taint of idolatry perceptible in our religion, science, literature, business— nay, our very language. Yes, I say our language. Can it be reverence, religious awe, that prompts the suppression of what would seem the most indispensable of all words— the incommunicable name of God? This explanation is precluded by the levity with which men often make that venerable name the theme of ribald jests and the burden of blasphemous imprecation. No, the name seems to be shunned because it means too much, suggests too much, concedes too much. II. Not only is the grand and simple name of God exchanged for a descriptive title, such as Supreme Being, or an abstract term, the Deity, but still more readily and frequently is God supplanted by a goddess, and her name is Nature. This form of idolatry has all the aid that Art can render to Nature. The idolater of Nature cannot but be an idolater of Art, and here the coincidence with heathenism is not one of principle only, but of outward form. The high art of the ancients was a part of their religion. It was not an idle tickling of the sense or fancy. In the perfection of their imitation and the beauty of their original creations they did honour to the god of their idolatry, not indirectly, as the author of their skill, but most directly, as its only object. As long as man retains the sensibilities which God has given him and yet remains unwilling to retain God in his thoughts, the voice of Nature will be louder than the voice of God. If God is not in the fire or the wind or the earthquake, these will nevertheless sweep the multitude before them, and the still small voice of revelation will be heard only by a chosen few. When certain causes now at work have had their full effect, the worshipper of God will again be like Elijah on Mount Carmel, while the vast mixed multitude are worshippers of Nature. J. A. Alexander, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, p. 61. References: Romans 1:26-29.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. ii., p. 34. Romans 1:28.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. ix., p. 346. Romans 1:32.—Expositor, 1st series, vol. ix., p. 213. 1—Ibid., vol. iii., p. 1. Romans 2:1.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. i., p. 491. Romans 2:2-4.—Ibid., vol. iii., p. 67. Romans 2:4I. The Jews thought that St. Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, was tempting them to despise the privileges of their birth and election. He retorts the charge. He asks the Jew how he could dare to despise the riches which God had bestowed upon him. What were those riches? The Law and the Covenant were the pledges and witnesses of their wealth; they could be converted into wealth, but they were not the thing itself. They spoke of a living God near to the Israelite; of a God of goodness, forbearance, longsuffering. These names were given to him in every page of the Divine oracles; the names were illustrated by a series of facts. To boast of the Law and the Covenant and the Scriptures, as if they were not revelations of Him, was to deny and despise them. To accept them as revelations of Him, and not to believe that He was good and longsuffering and forbearing, was to deny and despise both them and Him. To admit that He was good and forbearing and longsuffering at all, and not to believe that He was so at every moment, to themselves and to all men, was to play with words, to despise their sense, their power, their blessing. II. It is even so with each one of us. Our New Testament, our Baptism, our Communion, testify of a God good and forbearing and longsuffering. Now, if this goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering belong to the very name and character of Him in whom we are living and moving and having our being, they constitute a wealth upon which we may always draw. The more we call them to mind, the more we believe in them, the more truly and actively they become ours. We may become moulded into their likeness, we may show them forth. This is that kingly inheritance which the Scriptures and the Sacraments make known to us. If we enter into the meaning of the festival of Epiphany, we shall believe that Christ's glory may be manifested in the greatest weakness, because it is the glory of goodness, of forbearance, of longsuffering. We shall ask that that glory may humble us and lead us day by day to repentance. We shall be sure that there will be at last a full revelation of those riches which eye hath not seen nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, but which God hath prepared for them that love Him. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. iii., p. 97. References: Romans 2:4.— J. Foster, Lectures, p. 351; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxix., No. 1714. Romans 2:4, Romans 2:5.— H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxix., p. 187. Romans 2:4-6.—Homilist, vol. v., p. 423; new series, vol. iii., p. 522; W. H. Brown, Clergyman's Magazine, vol. vii., p. 149. Romans 2:5.— G. Calthrop, Words Spoken to My Friends, p. 269; W. Dorling, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vii., p. 200. Romans 2:7. Homilist, 3rd series, vol. iii., p. 327; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iv., p. 39. Romans 2:8.—Ibid., p. 247. Romans 2:9-11.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iii., p. 18; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 373. Romans 2:11.— H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 3152. Romans 2:12.—Preacher's Monthly, vol. ii., p. 98. Romans 2:12-16I. What does the Apostle mean when he says that certain persons shall perish without law? Is he aggravating their condemnation, and telling us that they shall have judgment without mercy, be dealt with as lawless outcasts for whom no law was ever intended and whose case no law could ever reach? It would seem as if some persons have thought so, but there could not be a greater mistake. What the Apostle means is, as they have not had the written law to live by, so shall it not appear against them in judgment. They shall be dealt with so that no man may accuse the justice of the Judge. They will not be dealt with according to the rigor of a law which they never knew, and therefore never could obey. There was a code of law under which they lived, written not on tables of stone like the covenant of old, but on the "fleshy tables of the heart"— the code of conscience and of reason; and by this law they will be judged, if they have not acted up to the light which they possessed. II. There is a great day of retribution appointed. It must be, it cannot but be an awful thing to have sinned against the God whom our Scriptures have revealed to us. Jesus Christ will be our Judge. He who was tempted— He who in all things was made like unto His brethren— the man Christ Jesus, will judge His fellow-man. Then we may draw near with full assurance of faith, trusting to the merits of our Saviour, the mercy of our Judge. "Not simply," writes one of our greatest divines, "because He is a man therefore shall He judge; for then by the same reason every man could judge and none consequently, because no man will be judged if every man were only to judge; but because of the Three Persons which are God, He only is also the Son of man, and therefore, for His affinity with their nature, for His sense of their infirmities, for His appearance to their eyes, most fit to represent the greatest mildness and sweetness of equity in the severity of that just and all-embracing judgment." Let us see, then, that while life remains to us, we repose our confidence wholly on the death of Christ. Bishop Atley, Penny Pulpit, No. 334, new series. References: Romans 2:12-25.—Homilist, vol. vii., p. 424. Romans 2:13.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. i., p. 71. Romans 2:13, Romans 2:14.— A. Jessopp, Norwich School Sermons, p. 21. Romans 2:13-15.— H. W. Beecher, Sermons, 4th series, p. 394. Romans 2:14I. The great teachers who have seen in the natural man nothing but an enemy of God and an alien from Him have gathered the material of their systems from the pages of the New Testament. But the larger or wider view of the affinity between the human and the Divine natures, which is more in harmony with the instincts of our own hearts and with the later growths of time, may appeal with at least as much confidence to the same authority. There are indisputable truths underlying the doctrine of human corruption and depravity. But, on the other side, there is truth no less certain, which keeps growing in importance with the growth of human knowledge and aspiration. Our text shows that St. Paul did not overlook the evidences of a relationship between the human will and the Divine Will, as in his address at Athens, where he could not but have been moved by the associations of the spot in which so many seekers after truth had laboured. He recognises that God is not far from any one of us, that in Him we all live and move and have our being. Christian life, moreover, reaches its highest expression in consciousness of the relationship between the human spirit and the Divine. The law of Christ is the law of liberty; human nature enjoys true freedom in the ordered and regulated harmony of duty and affection, of reason and will. The soul may be so crippled as only to feel the wretchedness of perceiving the good which it cannot realise for itself, but the love of Christ restores it and brings it back to its true self. Corruption and sin obscure but do not destroy the higher affinities. The attraction of Christ's example— the power of His life and death— put an end to its estrangement. It ceases to be an alien from God, and stands again in the relation of a son. II. We must surrender ourselves to God if we would have Him reveal Himself to us. The more that we submit ourselves in this spirit to the teaching of human life and of the human soul, the less shall we confine our sense of mystery and awe to the future and the unseen— the more profoundly shall we feel that in walking on this firm earth we are treading on holy ground, and that the glory which fills the heavens shines also in the light of common day. The silent influence of this conviction has been felt by all schools of religious thought; each of them practically acknowledges that human nature, rightly interrogated, is the best interpreter of the revelation of God. Human nature reverently studied and rightly understood is the bridge that spans the interval between God and the world. In studying this we are studying the facts that are nearest to us. Here is something definite and tangible, something about which patient truth-lovers may at length agree. Those who fall back on the witness of human nature and look at religion in its human aspect are obeying the irresistible tendency of our own modern habits of thought; but they do not, therefore, surrender the truth or reality of revelation. They are only doing what others have done, who at first have feared entirely to lose sight of old familiar facts if they quitted the point of view which is being abandoned by the age in which they live, but have found that when they have shifted with the times they see the same truth, under a different aspect indeed, but no less clear than before. W. W. Jackson, Oxford and Cambridge Journal, April 27th, 1882. References: Romans 2:14.— H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvii., p. 178; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 68. Romans 2:14, Romans 2:15.— R. W. Dale, The Evangelical Record, p. 41. Romans 2:15.— J. B. Lightfoot, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxii., p. 102; Homiletic Magazine, vol. ix., p. 94; Archbishop Magee, Sermons at St. Saviour's, Bath, p. 147; F. W. Farrar, The Silence and Voices of God, p. 27. Romans 2:16 The Secrets of the Soul. I. We live in a strange secrecy, even hidden from our most loving and intimate friends. If any one of us were asked to relate his own life, he might relate two lives which would seem all but independent of each other. He might tell when he was born, where he had lived, where he had passed year after year, what persons he had lived with, what he had done by way of study or amusement, what had happened to him that was remarkable, what events had made a great difference in his life. Or, again, he might tell quite a different story. He might tell to what thoughts his mind naturally turned in the moment of leisure, what unfinished pictures were, as it were, hung up all round the chamber of his soul. He might tell of deeds done in darkness, which though actual deeds and not mere thoughts, yet are part of this secret inner life by virtue of their absolute concealment. How different these two lives would be 1 II. The secret will not be kept longer than enough to serve its purpose. And woe betide the soul that uses it ill. This sacred veil cast by the Creator in front of a man's holy of holies can be used; nay, we must confess it, such is our fallen state, that it is used to hide evil of every kind. It is the special characteristic of Christians that they are not of the night nor of darkness. It is with the unfruitful works of darkness that we are to have no fellowship. Let us then determine to force all our faults outwards. At whatever cost let us keep sacred to God that inner shrine which He has thus hidden with a secrecy of His own making. If we can be fair anywhere, let it be in that which God has reserved for Himself and where Christ is willing to dwell. Bishop Temple, Rugby Sermons, 1st series, p. 266. References: Romans 2:16.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi., No. 1849; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iii., p. 18; J. B. Heard, Christian World Pulpit, vol. viii., p. 225. Romans 2:17.— Spurgeon, 1st series, vol. ix., p. 214. Romans 2:28, Romans 2:29.—Homilist, 3rd series, vol. i., p. 41; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. i., p. 81. Romans 2:29.— J. Edmunds, Sixty Sermons, p. 41. Romans 2:12(with Romans 5:20-21) The Doctrine of Sin. In these passages we have stated or implied St. Paul's doctrine concerning sin. I. Sin is boldly represented to have issued from the action of God, to have come to pass in some sense through Him; He and His operation are assumed to have been in some sense answerable for it. Speaking of Jews and Gentiles as comprehending between them the entire human world, St. Paul says, "God hath concluded them all in disobedience," or, literally, has shut them all up together into disobedience, the image underlying the word being the collection and enclosure of a multitude in one spot to which they have been driven or conducted. Thus, the idea of the writer would not be, by any means, that God had pronounced them all guilty of disobedience, or proved and convicted them of disobedience; such may be his thought elsewhere, but here his thought is evidently that God had somehow involved them in disobedience, had somehow occasioned their subjection to it. II. How can the Pauline view of sin be justified? This ugly and miserable thing— how can it be shown and seen, as occurring under the plan, as accompanying and inevitably bound up with the process of the work of God? Sin comes originally from the Divine awakening in man of that spiritual germ, that moral element in which he surmounts and transcends the animal, from the Divine superinducing upon his first lower nature of a second higher nature; and it is a temporary accompaniment of the conflict between these two, an incident in the course of progress towards a proper and happy adjustment of the relations between them. The end of the Lord is a glorious humanity, emerging at length from the confusion and travail, and the history of the ages is the history of the war between that flesh and spirit, that old and new man which He has conjoined in us for the accomplishment of His grand end. He means to have mercy on all, or He would not, could not, have sown in us what has led to the concluding of all in sin. S. A. Tipple, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxi., p. 104. Romans 2 The Practical Outcome of Judaism. I. The first thing on which St. Paul lays anxious stress in this passage is this: The judgment of God according to men's works is just, inevitable, and impartial. It is a judgment according to works which the Jew ought, on theory, to challenge. For he seeks to be saved by a "law"— that is, by a thing to be done. If he is to be justified at all, it must be through the coincidence of his life with that rule of living which God gave to his nation and on which he plumes himself. Every one knows, even without any special help from revelation, that the judgment of God against the evil-doer is according to truth; and His judgment is inescapable and universal. II. So far St. Paul has merely been laying down an abstract theory of the Divine impartiality in retribution. He has not yet spoken of the Hebrew law. He does not at first name Jew or Gentile. He addresses his antagonist simply as a man who presumes to judge others for sins of which he himself is no less guilty. At this point, however, he begins to regard his reader as a Jew, separated from the unclean and ignorant heathen by his privileged standing under the Mosaic law; only, instead of recognising the difference which this creates as telling in the Jew's favour, he unexpectedly turns it against him. It gives him nothing but a fatal pre-eminence in guilt and judgment. It is a miserable delusion to fancy that the privilege of hearing God tell us our duty lifts us above responsibility in doing it, or sets us beyond the reach of judgment for not doing it. Nay, it only confers on us, if we sin, a shameful pre-eminence in sinfulness, and when we are judged a fatal priority of condemnation. III. All through the present discussion St. Paul has taken it for granted that the essence of criminality lies in unfaithfulness to known duty. On the same principle he now turns that very knowledge of the law on which his Jewish countrymen relied into a weapon against them: "Wherein thou judgest another thou condemnest thyself." J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 38. Reference: 2—Expositor, 1st series, vol. iii., p. 151. Romans 3:1-2 Preciousness of the Bible. I. Think of the wonderful providence which has watched over the Bible from the beginning. There is no miracle comparable to that which has preserved to us the Scriptures amid all the convulsions of society, after so many centuries of persecution, neglect, superstition, and ignorance— that we should still possess the writings of Moses in their freshness, what a miracle of providence is that! II. The Old Testament presupposes the New. Neither would be intelligible without the other. And both alike have the same mysterious texture— call it typical, mystical, spiritual, or what you will— whereby the common events of men's lives and the ordinary course of human history are found to be expressive of heavenly truths— to be instinct with divinest teaching woven into the very midst of the sacred narrative; from the Alpha to the Omega of it are found the mysteries of redemption, the secret purposes and practices of God. And why is all this but because God Himself is in it, because His Spirit hath inspired it in every part? The Scripture is the very shrine of the Eternal— the Holy of Holies, in which the Shekinah of Glory dwelleth, and where God's voice is heard speaking to man. It is called the Word of God, less because it is His utterance than because it is Divine as well as human— shares the nature of Him whose name in heaven is even now the Word of God. And need I dwell on the grand mystery of all, the awful circumstance that the gospel not only discourses to us of the Eternal Son come in the flesh, but actually exhibits Him to us? In what relation, then, to the ancient oracles of God is our Saviour Christ found to stand as the constant witness to their infallible truth, their paramount value, their Divine origin? They are for ever on His lips. What wonder if, in reply to the question as to what was the Jews' advantage, the Apostle answered, "Much every way," chiefly because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. J. W. Burgon, Ninety-one Short Sermons, No. 3. References: Romans 3:1, Romans 3:2.— G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 203; R. W. Church, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxviii., p. 113; Preacher's Monthly, vol. x., p. 193. Romans 3:4.— H. W. Beecher, Sermons, 3rd series, p. 168. Romans 3:6.— B. Jowett, Church Sermons, vol. ii., p. 273; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 312. Romans 3:9.—Preacher's Monthly, vol. ii., p. 93. Romans 3:9-20 Every Mouth Stopped. I. Perhaps some readers are aware of a feeling of disappointment at reaching this result. Not that they doubt the native depravity of mankind, or the certainty that all men, left to themselves, will go very far astray from righteousness. But it may be said, ail men were not left to themselves. God interposed with a holy and awful law. He took one race under His own moral education. He taught them carefully the way of duty, and did what was possible to fence them in it and cut off all temptation to wander out of it. Surely the average moral standard was greatly raised within that sheltered Hebrew commonwealth, and many individual Hebrews succeeded in leading very virtuous and devout lives "in all the ordinances of the law blameless"! Does it not sound hard to say that not one of them was good enough to justify his life in the sight of God? Is this not like confessing that the whole Mosaic system of religious training and moral legislation was a failure. II. To put us in a right attitude for judging of this whole matter, it is of the first consequence to see what the purpose of God was in giving His law at all. You cannot judge whether the Mosaic law was a failure or not until you know what it was intended to accomplish. Now, the express teaching of St. Paul is that God did not expect the Jews to attain such a righteousness as would justify them at the last by their own attempts to keep the Mosaic law. A law is not intended to give life: it is only intended to regulate life. The law was not meant to lead to righteousness, because it could not give spiritual life. The law was meant to fill a far humbler office: it brought us a better knowledge of our sin. Each addition to revealed law widens men's knowledge of what is sinful, and pushes forward the frontier of the forbidden a little nearer to that ideal line which God's own nature prescribes: "Through the law cometh the knowledge of sin." J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 66. Reference: Romans 3:10.— J. H. Thom, Laws of Life, p. 1. Romans 3:20I. That wrath of God against sin, to which conscience testifies, is itself merely His love, the opposition of His love to that which exalts itself against it. The fire of His love lights and cheers and warms all that abides in His love; but is a consuming fire against all that is out of and contrary to His love. And he who knows not God's wrath against sin knows not God's love. He who regards not Christ as the Judge and Avenger does not thoroughly know Him as the Saviour. Man will never be won back to God— rather, man will never be brought up to that highest perfection in which even his fall is an element, without a revelation from God which is not liable, as conscience is, to be corrupted by our tendency to sin. And how shall such a revelation be given— such an incorruptible revelation? We must have it, or we drop lower and lower into perdition the longer the world lasts. God made to man what has scoffingly been called a "book-revelation," a written record of His will and His acts which might not drift away with the vain imaginations and insecure traditions of men, but might remain, guarded by His providence, through the ages of the world. By the commandments and the other moral parts of the law a fixed and unalterable testimony was borne against sin. II. But whereunto served this law? It could give us no strength, could implant no new principle in our nature, could effect for us no reconciliation with God. The more definite and precise the law was the more effective would it be for this one end, and this only— to multiply transgressions; that by it might be brought out into light the utter incapacity of man to please God or to rescue himself from the awful consequences of sin. The sense of sin is the first step towards recovery. Sad as it is, low as it sometimes sinks a man in loss of hope, it is the first probing of the wound by the Great Physician of the soul. "When the Spirit is come," says our Lord, "He shall convict the world of sin." H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. iv., p. 84. References: Romans 3:21.—Preacher's Monthly, vol. ii., p. 253. Romans 3:21-24.— W. M. Metcalfe, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 321. Romans 3:21-26 Paul's Evangel. The history of God's relations with human sin breaks into two— before Christ, and after Christ. The death of Christ, which marks the point of division, is at the same time the key to explain both. I. Antecedently to the death of Christ the sins of men were passed over in the forbearance of God. By offering His Son for the expiation of sin, God has cut off from men the temptation to misconstrue His earlier toleration of sins, His forbearance to punish them, or His willingness to forgive them. Then, in the antecedent ages, He did pretermit sin in His forbearance; but it was only because He had purposed in His heart one day to offer for it a satisfaction such as this. II. The same public satisfaction for sin, made by God in the face of the world, which is adequate to explain His former indulgence to past sin, is adequate to justify Him in forgiving sin now. (1) The propitiation instituted by God in His Son's sacrificial death having been made amply adequate to vindicate Divine justice, without any further exaction of penalty from sinners, Christ's death becomes our redemption. (2) Let God justify whom He will on the ground of this redemption by the expiating blood of His Son, such a justifying of the guilty must be entirely a gratuitous act on His part, undeserved, unbought by themselves, a boon of pure and sovereign grace. (3) A way of being justified which is entirely gratuitous, hanging not on man's desert but on God's grace, must be impartial and catholic. It is offered on such easy terms, because on no harder terms could helpless and condemned men receive it. Only it lies in the very nature of the case that whosoever refuses to repose his hope of acceptance with God upon the revealed basis of Christ's atonement, shuts himself out and never can be justified at all, since even God Himself knows or can compass no other method for acquitting a guilty man. J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 77. References: Romans 3:21-26.— E. H. Gifford, The Glory of God in Man, p. 30; Homiletic Magazine, vol. vii., p. 15. Romans 3:22 Paul here, in his grand way, triumphs and rises above all these small differences between man and man, more pure or less pure, Jew or Gentile, wise or foolish, and avers that in regard of the deepest and most important things "there is no difference." And so his gospel is a gospel for the world, because it deals with all men on the same level. I. There is no difference between men in the fact of sin. The gospel does not assert that there is no difference in the degrees of sin. At the same time, do not let us forget that if you take the two extremes, and suppose it possible that there is a best man in all the world and a worst man in all the world, the difference between these two is not perhaps so great as at first sight it looks. For we have to remember that motives make actions, and that you cannot judge of these by considering those, that "as a man thinketh in his heart," and not as a man does with his hands, so is he. "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." II. There is no difference in the fact of God's love to us. God does not love men because of what they are, therefore He does not cease to love them because of what they are. His love to the sons of men is not drawn out by their goodness, their morality, their obedience; but it wells up from the depths of His own heart. A man can as soon pass out of the atmosphere in which he breathes as he can pass out of the love of God. "there is no difference" in the fact that all men, unthankful and evil as they are, are grasped and held in the love of God. III. There is no difference in the purpose and power of Christ's Cross for us all. "He died for all." The area over which the purpose and power of Christ's death extends is precisely conterminous with the area over which the power of sin extends. The power of Christ's sacrifice makes possible the forgiveness of all the sins of all the world, past, present, and to come. The worth of that sacrifice, which was made by the willing surrender of the Incarnate Son of God to the death of the Cross, is sufficient for the ransom price for all the sins of all men. IV. There is no difference in the way which we must take for salvation. The only thing that unites men to Jesus Christ is faith. You must trust Him, you must trust the power of His sacrifice, you must trust the might of His living love. Let there be no difference in our faith, or there will be a difference, deep as the difference between them that believe and them that believe not, which will darken and widen into the difference between them that are saved and them that perish. A. Maclaren, Christian Commonwealth, May 21st, 1885. References: Romans 3:22.— E. H. Gifford, The Glory of God, p. 1; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 373. Romans 3:22-26.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iii., p. 83. Romans 3:23.—Preacher's Monthly, vol. ii., p. 98; J. Natt, Posthumous Sermons, p. 63; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 23; Church of England Pulpit, vol. xvii., p. 229; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iv., p. 84; Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 184; vol. xxxi., p. 147. Romans 3:23.— J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 9th series, p. 160. Romans 3:24.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iii., No. 126. Romans 3:24, Romans 3:25.—Ibid., vol. vii., No. 373. Romans 3:24-28.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iii., p. 282. Romans 3:26.—Ibid., vol. i., p. 165; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v., No. 255; Ibid., Morning by Morning, p. 269. Romans 3:27.—Ibid., Sermons, vol. viii., No. 429. Romans 3:28I. What was the point which lay at the root of St. Paul's whole argument? It was this: whether obedience to the ordinances of the Jewish law could be deemed necessary to salvation, whether it should be required of Gentile converts, whether there were anything in it which was to be held in conjunction with faith in Christ, or whether it were all done away by Christ, and declared by His Cross and Passion to be incapable of making a sinner righteous before God. This question has now for us faded in the dimness of distance; rejoicing as we do in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, we can perhaps hardly understand that such a question should be argued, much less that it should form the grand point of discussion in any age of the Church. Yet so it was in apostolic times. A very little consideration shows us why it was so, and why it was necessary for the due establishment of the Church that the question should be set at rest at once and for ever. To do this was one of the great tasks entrusted to St. Paul; himself a Jew, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, as touching the law a Pharisee, he nevertheless, by the inspiration of God's Holy Spirit, saw with a keenness of view, which seems to have been vouchsafed to no other apostle, the error and danger of allowing any word of the law, be it what it might, to be regarded as in any way co-operating with the Lord Jesus Christ for the justification of man. It is in connection with such a view of the subject that St. Paul uses the words of the text. II. Doubtless we must all strive with our hearts and souls to keep God's law; but the real question is, in what light we are to regard all works of righteousness, all obedience to God's law, all efforts to do good, all submission of our will to His, with reference to the pardon of our sins and our entrance into eternal life? And the answer is, that we do wrong if we allow ourselves to consider for a moment how much obedience, how much doing of good, how complete an abnegation of self, will entitle us to God's favour. No amount will do this. It is only when a man realises his position as redeemed freely by the blood of Jesus Christ, as adopted into God's family for no merit of his own, that he can serve God with perfect freedom, and consider all that he can do as nothing in comparison with what has been done by God's grace for him, and return love for love, and cry out in the spirit of adoption, "Abba, Father." Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons, 5th series, p. 320. References: Romans 3:28.— G. Salmon, Sermons in Trinity College, Dublin, pp. 206, 224; S. Leathes, Preacher's Lantern, vol. iv., p. 415; S. Martin, Sermons, p. 57. Romans 3:31; Romans 4 A Crucial Case. I. It was by his faith Abraham was justified, not by his works of obedience. Paul's proof of this is very simple. He finds a remarkable proof-text ready to his hand in Genesis 15:16. On God's side there was simply a word announcing the promises of His grace; on the man's side simply a devout and childlike reliance upon that word. God asked no more; and the man had no more to give. His mere trust in God the Promiser was held to be adequate as a ground for that sinful man's acceptance into favour, friendship, and league with the eternal Jehovah. II. Abraham was justified by his faith, not as a circumcised man, but as an uncircumcised. It lies in the very idea of acceptance through faith, that wherever faith is present there God will accept the sinner apart from every other circumstance, such as nationality, or an external rite, or Church privilege, or the like. If faith saves a man, then faith must save every man who has it. Abraham was a justified man as soon as he was a believer, not as soon as he was circumcised. And the design of such an arrangement was to make him the true type and spiritual progenitor of all believers. The only people whom his experience fails to embrace are those Jews who are circumcised but not believing, who trust in their lineage and in their covenant badge and their keeping of the law, expecting to be saved for their meritorious observance of prescribed rules, but who in the free and gracious promises of Abraham's God put no trust at all. III. It turns out now that, instead of St. Paul being an apostate or disloyal Jew for admitting believing Gentiles to an equal place in the favour of Israel's God, it is his self-righteous countryman, who monopolises Divine grace, and will have no Gentile to be saved unless he has first become a circumcised observer of Moses' law, that is really false to the original idea of the Abrahamic covenant. All who have faith, whatever their race, are blessed with faithful Abraham; and he, says Paul, writing to a Gentile Church, is the father of us all. J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 99. References: Romans 3:31.— Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 25. 3—Expositor, 1st series, vol. iii., p. 215. Romans 4:1-9.—Preacher's Monthly, vol. ii., p. 249. Romans 4:3.— J. G. Rogers, Christian World Pulpit, vol. v., p. 121. Romans 4:6-9.—Preacher's Monthly, vol. ii., p. 248. Romans 4:7.—Ibid., p. 248. Romans 4:9.—Ibid., p. 258. Romans 4:9-11.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. vi., p. 10. Romans 4:11 The Call of Abraham. Mark some characteristics of the faith of Abraham. I. It is the faith not which conceives great things and works for them, but which places itself as an instrument in God's hands and lets Him work through it. It is the faith of martyrs, of men who have not seen that they were doing anything heroic, anything that would change the course of history, only that they were doing their duty, doing it as they could not choose but do. The greatest movers of mankind have felt and delighted to feel that they were being used; that they spoke and acted because they must; that they were working out another's purpose— a purpose larger than their own. II. It was the faith which was specially suited to him who was to be the father of the chosen people— the father in a yet larger sense of all that believe. It was the faith which could wait through long generations, clinging still to the promise, though so dimly understood, of great blessing for the race, and through it for mankind, content in the meantime to suffer if it must be, to wander in the wilderness, to be as a little flock among wolves, to be trampled down, carried into captivity, the faith growing ever brighter in times of darkest calamity, and more assured, more spiritual. It was the faith which could receive God's gradual revelation of Himself and of His purposes; the open ear which in each age would meet God's voice as Samuel met it— "Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth"; for ever learning, seeing one interpretation after another of ancient prophecies fail and pass away, yet waiting, listening, receiving, till the full satisfaction came, till the consolation of Israel dawned on it. Remember that the call of Abraham was the beginning of true religion in the world— of religion with a hope, a progress. Every new book of the Bible marks an onward movement. III. This faith of Abraham— the faith which acts upon a trusted voice, which does not need to see its way even with the eye of imagination, which takes God at His word and waits His time— is the faith which is not beyond our imitation, and which, if we will, may be the hope and stay of our own lives. E. C. Wickham, Wellington College Sermons, p. 15. References: Romans 4:13.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iv., p. 84. Romans 4:16.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiii., No. 1347; Homilist, new series, vol. iii., p. 177; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. ix., p. 338. Romans 4:17.— Fraser, Ibid., vol. vii., p. 105. Romans 4:18, Romans 4:19.—Expositor, 1st series, vol. ix., pp. 215, 392. Romans 4:19-21.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii., No. 733. Romans 4:19-22.— W. Hubbard, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 26. Romans 4:20.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiii., No. 1367; Ibid., Morning by Morning, p. 79; R. S. Candlish, Sermons, p. 105. Romans 4:20-21 Religious faith Rational. To hear some men speak (I mean men who scoff at religion), it might be thought we never acted on faith and trust except in religious matters, whereas we are acting on trust every hour of our lives. When faith is said to be a religious principle it is the things believed, not the act of believing them, which is peculiar to religion. I. It is obvious that we trust to our memory. We do not now witness what we saw yesterday, yet we have no doubt it took place in the way we remember. Again, when we use reasoning, and are convinced of anything by reasoning, what is it but that we trust the general soundness of our reasoning powers? And observe that we continually trust our memories and our reasoning powers in this way, though they often deceive us. This is worth observing, because it is sometimes said that we cannot be certain that our faith in religion is not a mistake. In all practical matters we are obliged to dwell upon not what may be possibly, but what is likely to be. When we come to examine the subject, it will be found that, strictly speaking, we know little more than that we exist, and that there is an unseen power whom we are bound to obey. Beyond this we must trust; and first our senses, memory, and reasoning powers; then other authorities; so that, in fact, almost all we do every day of our lives is on trust, i.e., faith.II. It is easy to show that, even considering faith in the sense of reliance on the words of another, it is no irrational or strange principle of conduct in the concerns of this life. For when we consider the subject attentively, how few things there are which we can ascertain for ourselves by our own senses and reason! After all, what do we know without trusting others? The world could not go on without trust. Distrust, want of faith, breaks the very bonds of human society. Now then, shall we account it only rational for a man, when he is ignorant, to believe his fellow-man, nay, to yield to another's judgment as better than his own, and yet think it against reason when one, like Abraham, gives ear to the word of God, and sets the promise of God above his own short-sighted expectation? If we but obey God strictly, in time faith will become like sight: we shall have no more difficulty in finding what will please God than in moving our limbs, or in understanding the conversation of our familiar friends. This is the blessedness of confirmed obedience. J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. i., p. 190. References: Romans 4:21.— Silver, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 397. Romans 4:22.— J. Irons, Ibid., vol. xi., p. 161. Romans 4:23-25.— W. Hubbard, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 42. Romans 4:25 Christ Risen our Justification. I. These two gifts of our Lord, Atonement and Justification, are laid down by St. Paul distinctly as the fruits of His death and His resurrection. "Who was delivered for our offences," to atone for them; "was raised again for our justification," to justify us. What Christ purchased for us by His death He giveth us through His life. It is our living Lord who imparts to us the fruits of His own death. He hath the keys of death and hell by virtue of His life from death. As truly, then, as the death of Christ was the true remission of our sins, though not yet imparted to us, so truly was His resurrection our true justification, imparting to us the efficacy of His death and justifying us, or making us righteous in the sight of God. II. The joy and gift of our Easter festival is our risen Lord Himself. To the Church it is yearly true, "The Lord hath risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon." Before, all was laid up for us, but we had it not. By the resurrection is the gift of the Spirit and engrafting into Him; by it is forgiveness of sin, and removal of punishment, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, and adoption as sons and brotherhood with Christ, yea, oneness with Him, and eternal inheritance, because all these are in Him, and by it we become partakers of Him and of all which is His. Yea, this is the bliss of our festivals, that they not only shadow out a likeness and conformity between the Head and the members, our Redeemer and us on whom His name is called, but there is through the power of His Cross and resurrection a real inworked conformity, a substance and reality. "Whatever," says St. Augustine, "was wrought in the Cross of Christ, in His burial, in His resurrection on the third day, in His ascension into heaven and sitting down at the right hand of the Father, was so wrought, that by these actions, not words only, of mystical meaning, should be figured out the Christian life enacted here below. We have been made partakers of His precious death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, for where He is, there are we, in pledge and earnest, if we be His; thence He looks down upon us, fixing our failing eyes to look up to Him; thence, by the secret sympathy between the Head and the members, He draws us upward with longing to be like Him: the firstfruits of our spirit are already there; and He is with us, raising what yet lingereth here; we are with Him there, since, if we be His, we are in Him; He is with us here, for by His Spirit He dwelleth in us, if we love Him." E. B. Pusey, Sermons, vol. i., p. 214. Romans 4:25 These words are the answer to the question which would naturally arise from the perusal of the history of the death and passion of Jesus Christ. "He was delivered on account of our offences." Men's sins were the cause of the sufferings and death of the sinless Son of God. I. We read the history of those awful hours during which was transacted the mighty work of a world's redemption, and we are moved with indignation against the various actors in the melancholy scene. But, after all, and without at all extenuating their guilt, these were not the real crucifiers of the Lord of life, or, if they were, it was but as instruments, free indeed, and therefore responsible instruments, but only instruments by whom a death was inflicted, whose cause lay far deeper than their malice or their fears. Without this course the rage of His enemies would have been impotent against the Son of God. For each one of us, for our own individual sins, that sacrifice was offered on the cross. Our waywardness, our rebellion, our acts of injustice, or dishonesty, our false, profane, angry, and slanderous words, these were the crucifiers of the Son of God. II. If our sins were the cause of Christ's suffering, the emotions which should be awakened in our breast should surely be: (1) A fear of sin. With the awful and mysterious declaration of the text before our eyes, what possible hope of escape can we have if we continue in sin? (2) Another habitual feeling which the great truth of the text should leave in our hearts is a hatred for sin. Many reasons have we, indeed, to hate sin, for it is the degradation of our race, the cause of all our sufferings, and the peril of our everlasting future; and the more we are taught by God's Spirit to see the beauty of holiness, and to love the just and the pure and the true, the more we shall hate sin for its own sake, its moral deformity, and its enmity to God and to good. (3) But while fear and hatred of sin should accompany a belief in the atonement, the truth should be embraced by a trusting and cheerful faith. The mysterious greatness of the sacrifice offered when Christ suffered magnifies the Divine justice and the guilt of sin. It also demonstrates the infinitude of God's mercy. (4) The atonement thus embraced by faith should be the root and spring of a loving obedience. The highest conceivable instance of God's love, it should enkindle in our hearts the love of God. Bishop Jackson, Penny Pulpit, No. 354. I. How was it possible to make men feel that they are something quite different from brute beasts, that they were not animals, clever and more cunning than all other animals, that might is not right, self-control not a folly? Or how is it possible to prove that man is not a mere perishing animal that dies, and then there is an end of him? The world of Greece and Rome had come to the blank conclusion that there was no hope, no life worth living. There are plenty of people living now who have inherited instincts from centuries of Christian forefathers, and who are still influenced by Christian customs and traditions, and thus go on as they have been used to do, but who live in blank hopelessness as to the future. How shall it be possible to prove to them now that in every soul of man is the imperishableness of the Divine? Philosophy cannot do it— it is simply silent. Science cannot do it— it is outside her province. Read the philosophies of the would-be philosophers, and you will despair, as centuries ago men despaired. They do not touch the greater hope. And so there sets in the struggle of the day between all the now long-inherited Christian instincts of the race, all the unsuppressed divinely given instincts of the man, against the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil. II. In this struggle we need a reinforcement of power. It is to be found in the truths of which Good Friday and Easter are the witnesses. Christ died that there might be no part of our experience peculiar to ourselves, that He might show that He was very man. He rose to show that death was not the end of all things; and He went into heaven that He might show by His visible rising what will in some form happen also to us. And all for this reason, and to teach us for ever that the interval is bridged over completely from man to God. This vast interval He traversed twice: He came down from God to man, He went up from man to God. He was Himself and is Himself, God and man. The chain is complete from heaven to earth. Since Christ came man knows that he is not a mere animal— he is by his affinities Divine. He walks the earth a new creature. See, says the history of Jesus Christ, the chain is already complete that connects man with God. If the chain reaches down till its lower end is lost in molecular forces, it reaches up till its upper end is lost in the glory of the throne of God, and in the Divine person of Jesus Christ, who has shown us the perfection of God. J. M. Wilson, Sermons in Clifton College Chapel, p. 155. References: Romans 4:25.—Clergyman's Magazine, new series, vol. ii., p. 213; Bishop Moorhouse, Church of England Pulpit, vol. i., p. 108. Romans 5:1I. We read in the New Testament, and especially in the writings of St. Paul, a good deal of the doctrine of justification by faith. Now, is there any distinction between this doctrine of justification, between this blessing of justification, and the blessing of pardon? Is pardon synonymous with justification? I take it that, while justification always involves pardon, and while in the case of an individual sinner it is never separated from pardon, and the pardoned man is always justified, and the justified man is always pardoned,— while in the processes of God's grace to an individual soul, these are never found apart, yet theologically they are to be carefully distinguished. The type and symbol of a justified man is not Joshua simply washed, but Joshua clothed, and clothed in such garments, so fair in holiness, so perfect in their beauty, that we may put into his mouth the song in which the Church, under God's mercy, breaks out into the jubilant language of thanksgiving and praise, "I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall be joyful in my God, for He hath clothed me with garments of salvation." II. "Peace with God." It is undeniable that there is such a thing as peace which does not arise from faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. There is: (1) The peace of ignorance. There are men who know nothing of the law of God; they know nothing of the nature of God; they have never been roused to spiritual anxiety or to spiritual inquiry. Their hopes are of the vaguest and dreamiest kind; or they are simply those hopes of which we hear much in the present day, resting upon the great mercy of God, as if somehow or other we are all to get back to God at last— whether we die in Christ or not. (2) And then there is the peace of the Pharisee. He lives and dies in the buckram of his self-righteousness. He thanks God that he is not as other men are. He is going to heaven perfectly satisfied with himself, or perhaps, just trusting a little to Christ to make up the balance which he may think is against him. Therefore we should ask, not only, "Have you peace?" but "Upon what is that peace resting?" J. C. Miller, Penny Pulpit, No. 717, new series. I. The common meaning which is put upon the word justified may not be all that St. Paul intended by it, nor all that we need to see in it. But it must have a great worth. God accounts me righteous, He justifies me, He does not account me that which in my proper legitimate state, as united to Christ, I am not; He treats me as that which, in this my proper and reasonable state, I am. The justified man is not only one who is acquitted, not only one who is set down as righteous, but one who, in the strictest sense, has become, or has been made, righteous. II. And thus we are able to feel the force of the next words, "Being justified by faith." God is the Justifier, He who accounts man righteous and makes him righteous, and man is justified or made righteous by faith. He believes the witness which God has given of Himself in His Son, and therefore he has faith in God, faith in what He has done, faith in what He is. He is righteous only by this faith, for only by it does he claim any relation to Him who is righteous, only by it can he ascend out of his own nature. Having faith in God, he becomes a true man; otherwise he possesses only the torments of a man with the instincts and pleasures of an animal. III. Being justified by faith, we have peace. Peace must come by rising into life. To suppose that this peace is something won by a certain momentary act of belief, and thenceforth guaranteed to the believer as his treasure and property, is to subvert the whole doctrine. IV. The great question which every man asks is, How can I be at peace with God? The answer St. Paul makes is, "God has made peace with thee, through Jesus Christ." In Him He has manifested to thee what He is; in Him He sees thee. Thou mayest see God in Him; thou mayest rise thyself to be a new creature in Him. For thou art not what thou supposest thyself to be— a separate atom in the universe, a creature who has no relation to any other. Thou hast wonderful affinities with all these beings about thee; and when thou art driven by thy wretchedness and despair of thyself to trust in Him who has taken thy nature upon Him, thou wilt find out that secret as well as the secret of thy own emancipation. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. ii., p. 1. References: Romans 5:1.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix., No. 510; vol. xxv., No. 1456; Expositor, 1st series, vol. ix., p. 215; Church of England Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 83; Ibid., vol. xiii., p. 123; E. Johnson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 234; Preacher's Monthly, vol. ii., p. 235; Homiletic Quarterly., vol. iii., p. 376; W. Hay Aitken, Around the Cross, p. 65; Archbishop Magee, Sermons at Bath, pp. 63, 88. Romans 5:1-2 The State of Grace. There are some who seem only to fear or to have very little joy in religion. These are in a more hopeful state than those who only joy and do not fear at all; yet they are not altogether in a right state. Let us consider how the persons in question come to have this defective kind of religion. I. In the first place, of course, we must take into account bodily disorder, which is not unfrequently the cause of this perplexity of mind. Many persons have an anxious self-tormenting disposition, or depression of spirits, or deadness of the affections, in consequence of continued or peculiar ill-health; and though it is their study, as it is their duty, to strive against this evil as much as they can, yet it often may be impossible to be rid of it. Of course in such cases we can impute no fault to them. They must be patient under their fears, and try and serve God more strictly. II. But again, the uncomfortable state of mind I have described sometimes, it is to be feared, arises, I will not say from wilful sin, but from some natural deficiency which might be corrected, but is not. The sins I speak of arise partly through frailty, partly through want of love; and they seem just to have this effect of dimming or quenching our peace and joy. The absence of a vigilant walk, of exact conscientiousness in all things, of an earnest and vigorous warfare against our spiritual enemies, in a word, of strictness, this is what obscures our peace and joy. III. This fearful anxious state of mind arises very commonly from not having a lively sense of our present privileges. There are persons highly respectable indeed and serious, but whose religion is of a dry and cold character, with little heart or insight into the next world. They are most excellent men in their line, but they do not walk in a lofty path. There is nothing unearthly about them; they cannot be said to be worldly; yet they do not walk by things unseen, they do not discern and contemplate the next world. They are not on the alert to detect, patient in watching, keen-sighted in tracing the movements of God's secret providence. They do not feel they are in an immense unbounded system, with a height above and a depth beneath. Such men are used to explain away such passages as the text. Their joy does not rise higher than what they call a rational faith and hope, a satisfaction in religion, a cheerfulness, a well-ordered mind, and the like— all very good words, if properly used, but shallow to express the fulness of the gospel privileges. IV. What is it, then, that these little ones of Christ lack who, without wilful sin, past or present, on their consciences, are in gloom and sorrow? What but the great and high doctrines connected with the Church? Fall down in astonishment at the glories which are around thee and in thee, poured to and fro in such a wonderful way that thou art, as it were, dissolved into the kingdom of God, as though thou hadst nought to do but to contemplate and feed on that great vision. In spite of all recollections of the past or fear for the future, we have a present source of rejoicing. Whatever comes, weal or woe, however stands our account as yet in the books against the Last Day, this we have and this we may glory in— the present power and grace of God in us and over us, and the means thereby given us of victory in the end. J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. iv., p. 138. Reference: Romans 5:1, Romans 5:2.—Homilist, new series, vol. iv., p. 413. Romans 5:1-11 Immediate Results of Justification. To be acquitted of guilt through the death of Jesus is the most elementary blessing which the gospel brings to our condemned race, shut up in its prison-house of wrath. But it cannot come alone. It opens a door of hope through which each reconciled sinner may look forward unto a new world of lovely blessings following in its train. Hope is the keyword of this section, therefore— exultant hope of future glory; and the three ideas which successively emerge in its very rich and vivid sentences are these: (1) Our hope reposes on this new relation, established between us and God, that we are at peace with Him. (2) Our hope is not impaired but confirmed by our present tribulation. (3) Our hope is warranted by the proof which we already possess of the love of God for us. I. There is room now in men's hearts for the hope that God will bless them with that glory which is His own blessedness, since now they are at peace with Him (vers. 1, 2). Enemies of God could never expect to behold His glory, or be satisfied with His likeness. His friends may. Standing thus near, within sight of that Eye that kindles with a Divine delight over His banished brought back; standing thus near, introduced by the Hand that was pierced, and accepted in the Beloved who was slain, what is there for a justified believer to fear? What is there not for him to hope? II. It is far off, that glory of God which we hope for; at least, it is still in the future. The present is for all of us a life of trouble. Our mean, grieved, dying days, do they not flout and mock at such splendid expectations? Quite the contrary. In the long run life's trouble is found rather to confirm our hope. The Christian who perseveres under trouble is an approved or accredited believer. Is it not clear that, when the tested Christian finds his faith has proved itself genuine, his hope will wax so much the more confident? III. The triumphant hope of a justified believer in what God is yet to do for him finds a still more sure and inexpugnable foundation of fact in what God has already done to prove the greatness of His love. J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 113. References: Romans 5:1-12.—Expository Sermons on the New Testament, p. 178. Romans 5:5.— G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 97; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv., No. 829; vol. xxxii., No. 1904; T. T. Carter, Sermons, p. 309; E. H. Gifford, The Glory of God in Man, p. 90. Romans 5:6.—Preacher's Monthly, vol. vi., p. 1. Romans 5:6-8.— H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 424; W. Hubbard, Ibid., vol. vii., p. 339; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii., No. 446; vol. xx., No. 1184; vol. xx., No. 1191; vol. xxiii., No. 1345. Romans 5:6-10.— H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ix., p. 340; Preacher's Monthly, vol. iv., p. 16; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 265. Romans 5:7-8 God's Love Magnified in Christ's Death. I. In considering how God appointed our Lord and Saviour to suffering and death as the most perfect proof of obedience, it seems necessary to begin by removing a difficulty which will certainly occur to every one: that is, that the death of the Saviour seems by no means so obvious an evidence of the love of God, His and our heavenly Father, as of the Saviour's own love to His brethren; and that it is only, as it were, on the ground of His love to us that we have any right to see in His death the love of God towards us. And yet the case stands as I have stated it. It is indeed difficult to separate things which are in the very closest connection; and who could wish to make a division between the Saviour's love to us and His obedience to His and our heavenly Father? And yet the two are so related that His love to us is shown most directly in His life and His obedience to His Father in His sufferings and death. God shows forth His love to us in this; says Paul, that according to His command and will Christ died for us while we were yet sinners; not for the sake of the righteous, not for a good man nor for a circle of friends, but for the whole world of sinners. And so we cannot doubt that this was the most perfect act of obedience, and that God called Christ to it for our sakes; for it was necessary that He should endure this death, not for His own sake nor with any other good object but that of effecting the salvation of sinners. II. This brings us to consider, in the second place, what was meant to be accomplished, and therefore was accomplished— for when we speak of a Divine purpose we cannot separate design from fulfilment— by this death of the Saviour, that we may see how it was the full glorification of the Divine love. The greatest love is that which effects the most good to the person who is the object of it. We should try in vain to give another definition of it. Now, the Apostle says, "As by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of the One the many are made righteous." This then is what was to result from the Saviour's obedience unto death on the cross. He needed to die for us, Paul says, when we were yet sinners. We become righteous, only it is not because and so far as we have set Him before our eyes as an ideal, for thus we shall never reach it, but really because and in so far as we have received Him into our hearts as the fountain of life. We become righteous if we no longer live in the flesh, but Christ the Son of God lives in us— if we are fully identified with that common life of which He is the centre. For then each of us can say of himself, "Who is there that can condemn?" It is Christ that justifies. We are in Him, He is in us, inseparably united with those who believe on the Son of God; in this fellowship with Him we are truly righteous. But if we come back to ourselves and consider our individual life just in itself, then we are glad to forget what is behind and to reach forth towards that which is before. Then we know well that we must ever anew take refuge in Him, ever be looking to Him and to His obedience on the cross, ever be filled with the power of His life and His presence, and thus we shall attain to that growth in righteousness and holiness and wisdom, in which truly consists our redemption through Him, through His life and His love, His obedience and His death. F. Schleiermacher, Selected Sermons, p. 372. References: Romans 5:7, Romans 5:8.— E. D. Solomon, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xv., p. 280; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 7. Romans 5:8 What Proves God's Love? I. It is a strange thing that the love of God needs to be either proved or pressed upon men. (1) There never was, there is not, any religion untouched by Christianity that has any firm grip of the truth "God is love." (2) Even among ourselves and other people that have drunk in some form of Christianity with their mother's milk, it is the hardest possible thing even for men who do accept that gospel in their hearts to keep themselves up to the level of that great truth. II. Notice the one fact which performs the double office of demonstrating and commending to us the love of God: "In that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Christ's death is a death, not for an age, but for all time; not for this, that, or the other man, not for a section of the race, but for the whole of us, in all generations. The power of that death, as the sweep of that love, extends over all humanity, and holds forth benefits to every man of woman born. III. Look at the force of this proof. Has it ever struck you that the words of the text, upon every hypothesis but one, are a most singular paradox? "God commendeth His own love to us, in that Christ died for us." Is that not strange? What is the connection between God's love and Christ's death? Is it not obvious that we must conceive the relation between God and Christ to be singularly close in order that Christ's death should prove God's love? The man who said that God's love was proved by Christ's propitiatory death believed that the heart of Christ was the revelation of the heart of God, and that what Christ did God did in His well-beloved Son. IV. Consider what is thus proved and pressed upon us by the Cross. (1) The Cross of Jesus Christ speaks to the world of a love which is not drawn forth by any merit or goodness in us. (2) The Cross of Christ preaches to us a love that has no cause, motive, reason, or origin, except Himself. (3) The Cross preaches to us a love which shrinks from no sacrifice. (4) The Cross proves to us and presses upon us a love which wants nothing but our love, which hungers for the return of our love and our thankfulness. A. Maclaren, Christian Commonwealth, June 4th, 1885. Suffering Love. I. This verse is a direct assertion of the deity of Jesus Christ. For it does not mean, "The Father commends His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us," but that "Christ commends His love to us, in that while we were yet sinners, He died for us." It is plain that He who loves is He who dies— otherwise there is no argument at all, if one loves and another dies. II. When it was God's will to present to our world a perfect view of His adorable Being He embodied it into flesh. He made it palpable to man's understanding. He made it speak by tears and smiles and humility and sympathy and anguish; and then He hung it upon a cross, and that image of God's love He called Christ. All that is truth in this world is a copy of the highest, and the greatest original of all love was suffering love, and therefore none can be a picture of love except it bear something of sadness. III. The language of the Apostle at once conducts us to one leading trait in the love which characterised the sufferings of Jesus Christ— for it was not reflecting love, but originating love. It went forth to sinners. We must take care that we understand the full force of the expression. The love that is in the life and death of Jesus is the seed of every spark of love that is worthy the name of love upon the whole earth. IV. One marvel of the love of Christ is its simple endurance of things conspiring to disturb it. He passed through every diversity of irritating circumstance, and yet there is not a moment in which we can discover a want of affection. He pursues His path of high love without one single deviation. V. We cannot admire too much the beautiful proportion of the love of Christ— blending the general interest with particular tenderness. He grasped the universal kingdom of God. Nevertheless, His heart was so disengaged for any one that wanted it, that He loved and bled as if for that one. He has a look for Peter in the hall. He has an eye for Mary upon the cross. He could descend at once from the grand rangings of His comprehensive work to the minutest incident and the smallest work that comes nearest Him. He recollects the cock must crow twice. He has compassion upon the poor servant's wounded ear. He studies the comfort of His mother's future home. These are beautiful traits in the face of love; and is it not just such love that we want? J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 2nd series, p. 107. God's Inexhaustible Love. I. We often forget that God is our Father when sorrow overwhelms us. We forget it still more when all is prosperous and happy. Nay, it would be truer to say that in sorrow we are not tempted to forget this truth, but to deny it; in happiness we are tempted to forget it. There is indeed such a thing as an innocent forgetting. Just as a child may forget the presence of a loved earthly father because that father is so completely a part of the happiness which is shed around, so, too, the Christian may go on his way rejoicing in what God has bestowed— health and strength and happy thoughts and enjoyments suited to youth— and certainly will not be blamed for letting his thoughts be full of the innocent pleasures that his Father gives. But this forgetfulness of God, which may be innocent in the beginning, is liable to slip into a coldness of love simply by its own continuance. II. We are tempted to forget, or to disbelieve, or even to deny that God is our Father when we have done wrong. And, indeed, there is a kind of truth in what we feel; for we rightly feel that our wrong-doing has taken us away from Him. We feel cast off; out of His sight; we feel as if it were useless now to try to hold a place in His love, that place which our misdeed has forfeited; too often we add sin to sin in a kind of recklessness, because it seems not worth while to battle for a completely lost cause. But this is a temptation of our weak nature, and not the direction of conscience nor the teaching of the Bible. If we feel cold in heart, let us turn to Him for warmth; if we feel doubtful, let us beg Him to increase our faith; if we have done very wickedly, let us be all the more sorrowful and all the more earnest in our endeavours to cast out the evil spirit. But let us never forget that He is our Father, and that without our prayer, out of the depths of His love, He sent His Son to bring us back to His Home, to Himself. Bishop Temple, Rugby Sermons, p. 326. References: Romans 5:8.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ii., No. 104; vol. xxiii., No. 1345; T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iv., p. 182; C. G. Finney, Gospel Themes, p. 307; J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 2nd series, p. 107; J. Edmunds, Sermons in a Village Church, p. 96. Romans 5:10.—Homilist, new series, vol. iii., p. 422; J. Vaughan, Sermons, 9th series, p. 181. Romans 5:12 Perhaps there is no more awful thought than this, that sin is all around us and within us, and we know not what it is. We are beset by it on every side: it hangs over us, hovers about us, casts itself across our path, hides itself where our next footstep is to fall, searches us through and through, listens at our heart, floats through all our thoughts, draws our will under its sway and ourselves under its dominion, and we do not know what it is. I. The entering in of sin proves the presence of an evil being. We talk of powers and qualities and principles and oppositions and the like; but we are only putting words for realities. They do not exist apart from being create or uncreate; they are the attributes and energies of living spirits. Sin entered in through and by the evil one— that is, the devil. II. Another truth to be learned is this, that by the entering in of sin a change passed upon the world itself. I am not now speaking of physical evil, such as dissolution and death and the wasting away of God's works, but only of moral evil. A change passed upon the condition of man. His will revolted and transferred its loyalty from God to the evil one. Thenceforward man was the representative of the alien and antagonist power which had broken the unity of God's kingdom; and his will was bent in a direct opposition to the will of God. Such, then, is sin. III. This awful principle of sin has been ever multiplying itself from the beginning of the world. It so clave to the life of man that, as living souls were multiplied, sin in them was multiplied also. As sin has multiplied in its extent, so it would seem also to have become more intense in its character. The mystery of original sin is begun over and over again with each successive generation. Men grow up to a certain height of the moral stature, and are cut down and laid in the earth; their children rise up more or less to the same standard, within certain limits which are the conditions of our being and our probation. But it is no less true that there is a growth and accumulation of evil which in the life of the world is analogous to the deterioration of character in the individual man. The full unfolding of sin has ever been at the close of the dispensations of God; it has been at its worst when He was nighest. It shall at last stand forth in the earth, at the full stature of its hate and daring against heaven, and by the coming of the Son of man in glory shall be cast out for ever. H. E. Manning, Sermons, vol. i., p. 1. I. Note first how naturally and reasonably faith may link the mysterious record of the Fall with the plain facts of our present state. There is a clear and familiar analogy between the childhood of each one of us and the childhood of the race. It is from others that we learn the story of our earliest days; we trust others for all knowledge of the time of our birth and the first shelter of our life; others tell us to whom we owed the care and love in which self-knowledge woke; we must ask others how our place and lot were first marked out for us among our fellow-men. It is faith in others, the evidence of things not seen, which links our present and our past, which gives us the bare outline of our infancy, and shows us our own life continuous beyond the bounds of memory. Now, is it not exactly thus with the childhood of mankind? Natural reason tells us as little of the childhood of humanity as memory can tell us of our own. All the wondrous vision of man's infancy God offers to our faith. He bids us trust Him here. The facts of life force our thoughts to the recognition of the Fall, just as the attractions and repulsions of the heavenly bodies guide the astronomer to believe in the existence of an undiscovered star. "All hangs on that imperceptible point." And so, I believe, it has come to pass that the doctrine of the Fall, and of a flaw and fault inherent in our manhood, has been at once the most scornfully rejected and the most generally acknowledged truth in all the Christian faith. II. Over against the great fact of the sin of the world there stands the great fact of the sinlessness of Christ. We realise the full import of one side of the contrast only as we enter into the reality of the other. Only in the light of His holiness can we see how far the world has fallen away from God; only as we represent to ourselves the range and subtlety and cruelty of sin can we recognise the arresting and controlling miracle of His perfect holiness. And as we realise what He, All-perfect and All-love, vouchsafed to bear for us within the misery of our loveless life, it will lead us to kneel with a new glow of gratitude and adoration at His feet, to cry with a new longing that we may never fall away from Him, fall back under the darkness of sin. "O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. For Thou only art Holy, Thou only art the Lord; Thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the glory of God the Father." F. Paget, Cambridge Review, March 3rd, 1886. References: Romans 6:12.— C. Kingsley, National Sermons, p. 228; C. J. Vaughan, Lessons of the Cross and Passion, p. 214; Homilist, 3rd series, vol. vii., p. 149; W. Cunningham, Sermons, p. 72; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iv., p. 157. Romans 5:15.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii., No. 1591; E. de Pressensé, The Mystery of Suffering, p. 1; E. Bersier, Preacher's Lantern, vol. i., pp. 13, 94, 160. Romans 5:17-21 The Chapter of the Five Kings. Where do we find these five kings? There is King Sin, for Sin reigned. There is King Death, for I read "Death reigned." There is King Grace, for Grace reigned. There is King Jesus, for we reign by One, Jesus Christ; and then, as a consequence, you have kingly saints, for "they which receive abundance of grace shall reign." I. King Sin. His laws are the lusts of man's own heart. One of the saddest things about him is that we can say all his subjects are voluntarily so. They are willingly captives. He does not hold them with a grip against their wish. His reign is a cruel one, for he reigns "unto death." II. King Death. Death reigns by sin. Satan reigns by both. It is a triple empire. They stand or fall together. Who can compete with Death? He can say what no monarch on earth can utter. I have never suffered a defeat. I have entered into the lists with the wisest and the strongest and have overcome them. The wealthy have not been able to bribe me, and the longest life has had to succumb at last. III. King Grace— King Jesus. By His teaching and by His life, by His death and by His resurrection, Jesus opposed Sin. IV. Kingly saints. How little the world understands the Church! The world cannot see our royal robes, for they are made of such peculiar texture that you must have a sanctified eye to behold them. The world cannot see the crown that is on every believer's brow. Only the saint can perceive it on the brow of his brother. In a little while King Jesus shall come again, and then shall be caught up to Him all His saints, and the text shall be literally and perfectly fulfilled, and we shall reign with Him. There are thrones waiting for the redeemed. There are unfading crowns awaiting the Divine bestowal. "They shall reign by One, Jesus Christ." A. G. Brown, Penny Pulpit, No. 1108, new series. References: Romans 5:18.— W. J. Woods, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xviii., p. 198; Homilist, new series, vol. iii., p. 90. Romans 5:19.— E. Cooper, Practical Sermons, vol. iii., p. 144. Romans 5:20.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. i., No. 37; Homilist, new series, vol. ii., p. 260; vol. iii., p. 90; Preacher's Monthly, vol. vii., p. 373. Romans 5:20-21 Abounding Sin; Over-abounding Grace. I. Grace. Here are the two antagonists— grace and sin. Both would be kings; one only has the power to reign. Grace is not just synonymous with love, though love is at the heart of it. It is love in a certain relation— the love of a Redeemer working to its ends. It represents the whole sum of the forces and influences by which the love that would redeem aims at the accomplishment of its hope. Ye know the grace of the Lord Jesus, but the measure of it One only knows. That grace is the conqueror of sin. That triumphs where law fails. II. The relation between grace and sin. (1) Sin is the condition of its manifestation. No sin, no grace, and none of that special glory which grace alone can win— the glory of the redemption of the world. God suffers sin to be born because He knows that grace can conquer it, strip its spoils, and reign in triumph over worlds which His victory has glorified eternally. (2) There is a glory which no feat of omnipotence even can create, which grace, by the conquest of sin, can win and wear through eternity. No sin, no grace, and in the highest sense no glory. III. The relation between grace and righteousness. Grace must reign through righteousness, if it reign at all. (1) None but a righteous soul can be a blessed soul. (2) The righteousness which is by grace has a glory and blessedness which is all its own. IV. The complete and final end of God "unto eternal life." Death is simply isolation. Life is the opposite of isolation. It is the faculty of communion with all things— receiving their tributes, and repaying them with fruits. The work of grace is as the "baptism of a new life for man. The eye kindles again when it feels the inspiration, the blood glows, the limbs and organs of the spirit brace themselves to new vigour and swiftness, while a solemn joy fills the heart which is unspeakable and full of glory. J. Baldwin Brown, The Divine Mysteries, p. 81. References: Romans 5:20, Romans 5:21.— S. A. Tipple, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxi., p. 104. Romans 5:21.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vi., No. 330; Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 56; C. J. Vaughan, Lessons of the Cross and Passion, p. 201. Romans 6:1, Romans 6:2.— F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xii., p. 385. Romans 6:1-5 Free Grace and Sin. In this passage, under cover of a reply to a plausible objection to the doctrine of justification, we really enter upon the discussion of the bearing of gospel faith on moral character. I. To the objection, the plausible but hateful objection, "What then? Are we to persist in our sin just in order that (as you say) the grace of God may abound in its forgiveness?" St. Paul's reply is a very blunt and staggering one. It amounts to this: such an abuse of free grace is in the nature of things impossible. It is practically unthinkable and out of the question. "For," says he, "persons who like us died to sin— how shall we any longer live in it?" Christians, then, are people who in the mere fact of becoming Christians died to sin; severed their old connection with it, that is, or passed through an experience which put a virtual end to their sinful life. This is what faith in Christ has done for everybody who has ever really believed in Him. After an experience like that it is, by the laws of human nature, impossible— if it were possible, it would be morally shameful— for the man any longer to live wilfully in his old sins. II. One thing is sufficiently manifest. Christian faith is very far from a superficial or inoperative or merely intellectual act, such as a man can do without his moral character being affected by it. It is very much the opposite of that. It is connected with the deep roots of our moral and religious nature. It launches us on a totally fresh stream of vital influences. It is like a death and a birth in one; like a burial and a resurrection. Those who have been baptized into Christ and say they trust in His death as the ground of their peace with God are bound to satisfy themselves that their faith is of a sort to kill sin. J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 143. References: Romans 6:2.— J. Natt, Posthumous Sermons, p. 90. Romans 6:2-8.—Preacher's Monthly, vol. ii., p. 253. Romans 6:3.—Homilist, 3rd series, vol. ii., p. 55. Romans 6:3, Romans 6:4.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii., No. 1627; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. i., p. 15. Romans 6:3-5.—Preacher's Monthly, vol. ii., p. 247. Romans 6:3-8.— Bishop Westcott, The Historic Faith, p. 129. Romans 6:4 Easter Even. I. We know what an impression is made by the sight of a dead body, especially if it is that of one who has been near and dear to us. And every one who has felt this lesson has been for a time, for the moment it may be, or hour, or day, if not longer, a different man. The world has lost its power either to distress or please him, and appears in its true colours; and he sees what sin is before God. Yes; the one great truth of all truths is to know what sin is before God. Now this is the wisdom of the grave, yet of itself it is but a cold and lifeless wisdom; but combined with the death and burial of Christ, and the contemplation of it, this wisdom is quickened by love: love is able to overcome the power of death, not by avoiding it, but by wrestling with it. II. There was an old heathen philosophy that taught deadness to the world: the thorough laying aside it required of all human feeling and passions; but what it inculcated partook of that awful and dead calm which nature itself derives from the grave of man; it had nothing of that peace which the Christian learns by the tomb of Christ, wherein there is release from sin by dying with His death, and in those fruits of righteousness wherein God still works, while He gives rest. Thus Christ, being dead, yet speaketh, while by His Spirit He quickeneth our mortal bodies. The world invites us to live to it; philosophy bids us to be dead to the world; but Christianity adds, in order that we may live to God, we are not only to be dead with Christ, but to learn of Him and live with Him, if we would find His rest for the soul. III. Though the Christian be dead to the world, and so really unharmed by it, yet the world will not be dead towards him. Though unwilling, it bears testimony; and from a kind of uneasiness and fear which lies deep within it is urged to deeds of ill-will and enmity, and this is a trial to the love and faith of good but over-conscious disciples, because it seems to dishonour their Lord. But our blessed Saviour seems from the sepulchre to say: "Stand still, and see the salvation of God." Isaac Williams, The Epistles and Gospels, vol. i., p. 386. Romans 6:4 There are three characteristics of the risen life of our Lord which especially challenge attention. I. Of these the first is its reality. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was a real resurrection of a dead body. Men have thought to effect a compromise between their own unbelief or half belief and the language of the apostles, by saying that Christ rose in the hearts of His disciples— that their idea of the spirit and character and work of their Master was too bright, too glorious a thing to be buried in His grave, and that when the first agony of grief was passed the Crucified One presented Himself again vividly to their loving imaginations in even more than His ancient beauty. But, supposing a process of imagination such as this to have taken place in the case of one or two or three minds, is it reasonable to suppose that it can have taken place simultaneously in a great many minds? The nearer men came to the risen Jesus the more satisfied they were that He had risen indeed. The first lesson which the risen Christ teaches the Christian is reality, genuineness. II. A second characteristic of Christ's risen life— it lasts. Jesus did not rise that, like Lazarus, He might die again. So, too, should it be with the Christian. His, too, should be a resurrection once for all. III. A last note of Christ's risen life. Much of it, most of it, was hidden from the eyes of men. They saw quite enough to be satisfied of its reality, but of the eleven recorded appearances five took place on a single day, and there is, accordingly, no record of any appearance on thirty-three days out of the forty which preceded the Ascension. And who can fail to see here a lesson and a law for the true Christian life? Of every such life much, and the most important side, must be hidden from the eyes of men. Alas for those who know so little of the true source of our moral force as to see in secret communion with God only the indulgence of unpractical sentiment, as to fail to connect these precious hours of silence with the beauty and strength of many of the noblest and most productive lives that have been seen in Christendom. H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit, No. 429. Romans 6:4I. The death and burial of our Lord were but the fulfilment of His purpose when He took our flesh in the womb of the Virgin. He was in that grave before He appeared in the world. He appeared in this world that He might descend into the grave again. Every hour that He dwelt here He was giving up His body and soul, confessing that there was no life of their own in them. The glory of the Father had gone with Him through every hour of His earthly pilgrimage, raising up His body and soul, and enabling them to fulfil the work which had been given Him to do. The glory of the Father went with Him into the grave, and it brought Him back in that human soul and body, unhurt by death, unweakened by His conflict with the powers of darkness, to show forth the might of His heavenly life and to be the means through which it should be bestowed upon those for whom He died. II. Christ's baptism was a burial: it was giving up His soul and body to death and the grave; it was "declaring life is not in them, but in Thee." Our baptism is a burial; it is a giving up of our body and soul, and declaring life is not in them, but in Him. As Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we have His glory with us to raise us from our grave, to enable us to think what of ourselves we cannot think, to do what of ourselves we cannot do. This life is given to us. It is not dependent upon the weakness of our bodies or of our souls. It is assured to us by a promise which cannot be broken. It is stored up for us in One who cannot die. F. D. Maurice, Christmas Day and Other Sermons, p. 236. Romans 6:4 Consider the New Life of the Believer. I. First, in this present life, our souls begin to be drawn up to ascending desires— to nearer communion, to loftier enjoyments, to a more heavenly-mindedness. Afterwards at the resurrection, by the same process, our bodies will be raised up. When He appears in the heavens, by a necessary, irresistible, attractive force, our bodies will be raised from the grave, and we shall be "for ever with the Lord." So that the Divine life in a man's soul does not take place till there is first a death and a burial and a resurrection within him; and all that is the result of a certain union with the Lord Jesus Christ; so that Christ's death and Christ's burial and Christ's resurrection are, to that man, not only facts done for him, but things done in him, and things actually taking place at this moment, real, felt, producing direct visible results. And when we trace the secret inworkings, in a Christian's soul, of such strange, unprecedented things as these, surely to such deep and wondrous mysteries we can only justly apply the Apostle's words, and say, "It is newness of life." II. But as the formation of it is new, so it is in its own constitution. God's way of making a new thing is not man's way. God uses up the old materials, but by His using and moulding them makes them new. What is the new element thrown in to make a new man? Love— simply love. The man receives what he feels to be an inestimable gift, and his heart goes forth after the Giver— that Giver who bought that gift for him by the purchase of His own blood. III. Once more, the Christian life is new by reason of that ceaseless variety and never-ending progression, that constant newness which it has in it. He who has set himself to be a Christian has to do with the infinities of God. He has a field in which he can expatiate for ever, and yet never retreat one pace. He is always enlarging his sphere, and with augmented capabilities taking in extended services; he experiences the charm of a sanctified novelty; and every hour he finds a literalness in the expression in this world, as he will find it for ever and ever, "newness of life." J. Vaughan, Sermons, 1865, No. 491. Romans 6:4 Freshness of Being. In everything which is really of God there is a singular freshness; it is always like that tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; there is a continual novelty. And yet some people speak of the sameness of a religious life! I. What is newness? It is not the creation of new matter. Creations in that sense are things of the far past. It is better than creation. The old goes to make the new. The old passions, the old bias, the old elements of the natural man, go to make the strength, the elevation, of the new creation,— the same, yet not the same. Take an instance. Self is the ruling principle of every man whom the grace of God has not changed. Self is his god. Now, how is it in the Christian? He has union with Christ; therefore in him self and Christ are one. By a blessed reaction his God is now himself— his new self, his real self; his life is the life of God in his soul; his happiness is God's glory; therefore still he studies self, but self is Christ. II. Let us trace where the newness lies. First, there is set in the believer a new motive, a new spring welling up. "I am forgiven— God loves me. How shall I repay Him?" A new current flows in the man's life-blood, he feels the springs of his immortality, he carries in him his own eternity. And he goes forth, that man, into the old world; its scenes are just the same, but a new sunshine lies upon everything— it is the medium of his new-born peace, it is a smile of God. Christ reveals Himself to him with ever-increasing clearness. And all the while he carries a happy conviction that it is inexhaustible, that his progress is to be perpetuated for ever and ever; and by faith he shall be learning more, feeling more, enjoying more, doing more, glorifying more— that for ever and ever he shall walk in newness of life. J. Vaughan, Sermons, 2nd series, p. 141. References: Romans 6:4.— E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation, vol. ii., p. 253; Preacher's Monthly, vol. ix., p. 1; Sermons on the Catechism, p. 219; J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 7th series, p. 9; H. P. Liddon, Easter Sermons, vol. ii., p. 19. Romans 6:4-8 Christ's Resurrection an Image of our New Life. Our new life is like that of our risen Saviour— I. In the manner of His resurrection. In order to appear to His disciples in that glorified form, which already bore in it the indications of the eternal and immortal glory, it was necessary that the Saviour should pass through the pains of death. It was not an easy transformation; it was necessary for Him, though not to see corruption, yet to have the shadow of death pass over Him; and friends and enemies vied with each other in trying to retain Him in the power of the grave: the friends rolling a stone before it, to keep the beloved corpse in safety, the enemies setting a watch lest it should be taken away. But when the hour came which the Father had reserved in His own power, the angel of the Lord appeared and rolled away the stone from the tomb and the watch fled, and at the summons of omnipotence life came back to the dead form. Thus we know what is the new life that is to be like the resurrection life of the Lord. A previous life must die; the Apostle calls it the body of sin, the law of sin in our members, and this needs no lengthened discussion. We all know and feel that this life, which Scripture calls a being dead in sins, pleasant and splendid as may be the form it often assumes, is yet nothing but what the mortal body of the Saviour also was, an expression and evidence of the power of death, because even the fairest and strongest presentation of this kind lacks the element of being imperishable. Thus with the mortal body of the Saviour, and thus also with the natural life of man, which is as yet not a life from God. II. And, secondly, this new life resembles its type and ideal, the resurrection life of Christ, not only in being risen from death, but also in its whole nature, way, and manner. (1) In this respect, that although a new life, it is nevertheless the life of the same man, and in the closest connection with his former life. (2) And as the Saviour was the same person in the days of His resurrection, so His life was also again of course a vigorous and active life; indeed we might almost say it bore the traces of humanity, without which it could be no image of our new life, even in this, that it gradually grew stronger and acquired new powers. (3) But along with all this activity and strength, the life of the risen Saviour was yet, in another sense, a secluded and hidden life. And so it is with the new life in which we walk, even if it is as it ought to be strong and vigorous, and ever at work for the kingdom of God; yet it is at the same time an unknown and hidden life, unrecognised by and hidden from the world, whose eyes are holden. III. We cannot feel all these comforting and glorious things in which our new life resembles the resurrection life of our Lord, without being at the same time, on another side, moved to sorrow by this resemblance. For if we put together all that the evangelists and the apostles of the Lord have preserved for us about His resurrection life, we still cannot out of it all form an entirely consecutive history. Not that in Himself there was anything of a broken or uncertain life, but as to our view of it it is and cannot but be so. Well, and is it not, to our sorrow, the same with the new life that is like Christ's resurrection life? We are by no means conscious of this new life as an entirely continuous state; on the contrary, each of us loses sight of it only too often, not only among friends, among disturbances and cares, but amidst the commendable occupations of this world. Therefore we must go back to Him who is the only fountain of this spiritual life and find it in Him. F. Schleiermacher, Selected Sermons, p. 266. Romans 6:5-6 Assimilation through Faith. I. Among the elements of human character we have really no deeper or more powerful agent for working a great change than faith, if we understand it fairly. The word covers the most entire devotion of heart and will which a man can repose in any person whom he justly regards as wiser, nobler, stronger, and more trustworthy than himself. It means, if you will, what among men is called hero-worship; and there is no force known to the student of human nature or of history which has proved itself capable of altering the lives of men so profoundly as this. It combines the strongest motives and the most sustaining elements in character, such as confidence, loyalty, affection, reverence, authority, and moral attractiveness. Take a single element, not at all the noblest, in this complex relationship which we term "faith." Take the mere persuasion of one man that another is able and willing to aid him in his enterprises. What is there such a dependant will not do at the instance of his patron? What change will he not make in his plans rather than forfeit substantial assistance from that quarter on which all his hopes are built? This is faith of a sort, surely, which works powerfully. Add to such a selfish expectation of help the far deeper bond of personal reverence or of proud, admiring love. The Christian owes to Jesus obedience for the service He has rendered, and for the right He possesses to command. Does it seem any longer a thing futile or unreasonable to say, that through such faith as that a man may come to grow together into one with the Divine object of his devotion, until the man's life is penetrated with Christ's Spirit and conformed in everything to His matchless likeness? II. Such a change as this, being not a change merely in a man's conduct, or in the mode in which his character manifests itself, but one deep enough to reverse the springs of character and form anew the spiritual attachments of the person himself, is reasonably enough ascribed to a special Divine agency. Such faith and such attachment come of the operation of God. When the old man dies and a new man lives in a human being there is an evident re-birth; and for that we must postulate an immediate operation of the Divine Giver of Life. J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 155. References: Romans 6:5, Romans 6:6.—Homilist, vol. vi., p. 124. Romans 6:5-7.—Ibid., new series, vol. iv. p. 208. Romans 6:6.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xv., No. 882; Ibid., Evening by Evening, p. 151. Romans 6:7I. "For he that hath died," as it should be rendered, "is justified from sin." The moment the Spirit of God works within the human soul a conviction of sin, there springs up an intense longing to obtain rest. With a burning desire no language can portray, far less exaggerate, the soul cries out for peace. Conviction of sin burns within the breast like live coals. There is no peace, no happiness, no comfort in this life to the convinced sinner. He must have peace, or he feels that reason itself can hardly bear the dire strain. Only an intelligent view of how God saves a sinner can ever give a man a truly solid peace. Where many err, and therefore do not enter into real solid peace, is that they do not know the difference between forgiveness and justification. And yet there is a very great difference between the two. If the punishment due from the law to any sin be endured, the offender that moment becomes as if he had never committed the sin. As Paul says, "He that is dead"— that is, he that has had the penalty for sin and endured it— "i justified from sin." Every one who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ has the benefit of His death, and therefore it is just as if he had received his punishment. God cannot wink at sin. He never did and never will. But though He cannot excuse one sin, He can justly forgive a million. II. The death of Christ settles the whole account. He has paid the last penny— cleared the score right off— and there is nothing left for you or me to pay. We can say of Christ, He is our Resurrection and our Life; in Him we died, and in His resurrection we rose again and rose to an immortal life, for we shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck us out of His hand. A. G. Brown, Penny Pulpit, No. 1053. Reference: Romans 6:7.— J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 7th series, p. 303. Romans 6:7-10 Christ's Death to Sin. When we ask what is meant by affirming of Christ, "The death that He died, He died unto sin," two questions emerge. (1) What connection had Jesus with sin before His death? (2) How came His dying to sever that connection? I. As to the former. The connection of the Lord Jesus with sin so long as He lived an earthly life was the most complete which it is possible for a sinless person to have. Who will venture to say that St. Paul's terrible phrase "made a curse" is too strong to express the hold which sin's penalty laid upon our victim, or that the whole of our Lord's stainless humanity was not wrapt around and penetrated through and through by the tremendous retributive force of sin? Connection with sin! He was all sin's own; its prey, surrendered for some Divine necessity to the devourer; the choicest portion ever seized upon to be borne down to the keeping of sin's child, death, within sin's home, the grave. II. The whole of this connection with sin is said to have terminated at death. It has not been so with any other man. Other men spend their earthly existence under the same penal conditions as I have described in His case; but what room have we to suppose that the act of dying has proved to be in any other case the end of sin, unless it were through their connection with Him? The death of Jesus closed His connection with sin, for the simple reason that in His case alone that connection had been outward, not inward; a guiltless submission to sin's penalty, not a guilty surrender to sin's power. From first to last the sin which is in our race remained to Him a foreign foe, that could gain no entrance into the citadel of His will to corrupt or master His spiritual nature; and the connection which He sustained with it was merely that of a sufferer who owes a death to justice for imputed sins of other men. Once that death was paid, and all the suffering endured which filled up the cup put into His hand to be drunk, His connection with imputed sin was of necessity dissolved. "The death which He died was a death unto sin— once for all." J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 164. Romans 6:8I. As a tree cannot live and grow, cannot bear flowers and fruit, and expand itself towards heaven, unless it be first rooted and buried in the ground, so neither can the love of God in the soul, unless that which is earthly be dead and buried with Christ in His death. It is therefore at baptism that this love is by the Holy Spirit planted within us; it is then that we are buried with Christ, in order that we may live with Him that life which is in God, in holy affections now and in fulness of joy hereafter. Such, therefore, is the subject of the Epistle for today (Sixth Sunday after Trinity). The Christian dwells in continual contemplation on the Cross and death of Christ; it is there his heart and affections are fixed; it is there he finds a remedy against sin and strength against temptation. And as we naturally become like that which we contemplate, it is to him an inexpressible satisfaction to reflect that by his very baptism and new birth he is himself there, dead with Christ and buried, in order that he might find in Him a better life; that the very strength and life of his baptism consists in his being thus made conformable to Christ's death. "Out of the strong comes forth sweetness," out of death life; and to resign earthly hopes, pleasures, and advantages does require that the heart hath found something better, the treasure of new affections which it values more. II. Dead we are with Christ by baptism, by His power and grace, and dead we must also be in the habits of our new life, in order that such Divine life may be continued in Him; and all this from the most intimate reference to Him. The frequent mention of Christ in the inculcating of Christian precept and doctrine implies in our lives also, and in the fulfilling of all Christian precept and doctrine, the frequent recurrence to Him as that source of life. Love is ever thinking of the object beloved; delights in acting with a view to it; to be likened to it; to cling to it; to become more and more one with it. But this love, as being contrary to our corrupted nature, must be forcibly sustained by doing violence to ourselves, and by all outward means; by frequent communion with Him in prayer and meditation, by giving of alms and active charities, and more especially by a frequent participation of His body and blood. J. Williams, The Epistles and Gospels, vol. ii., p. 82. Love of Religion— a New Nature. I. To be dead with Christ is to hate and turn from sin, and to live with Him is to have our hearts and minds turned towards God and heaven. To be dead to sin is to feel a disgust at it. We know what is meant by disgust. Take, for instance, the case of a sick man, when food of a certain kind is presented to him, and there is no doubt what is meant by disgust. On the other hand, consider how pleasant a meal is to the hungry, or some enlivening odour to the faint; how refreshing the air is to the languid, or the brook to the weary and thirsty; and you will understand the sort of feeling which is implied in being alive with Christ, alive to religion, alive to the thought of heaven. Our animal powers cannot exist in all atmospheres; certain airs are poisonous, others life-giving. So is it with spirits and souls: an unrenewed spirit could not live in heaven, he would die; an angel could not live in hell. To be dead to sin is to be so minded that the atmosphere of sin oppresses, distresses, and stifles us,— that it is painful and unnatural for us to remain in it. To be alive with Christ is to be so minded that the atmosphere of heaven refreshes, enlivens, stimulates, invigorates us. To be alive is not merely to bear the thought of religion, to assent to the truth of religion, to wish to be religious, but to be drawn towards it, to love it, to delight in it, to obey it. Now, I suppose most persons called Christians do not go further than this— to wish to be religious, and to think it right to be religious, and to feel a respect for religious men; they do not get so far as to have any sort of love for religion. II. A holy man is by nature subject to sin equally with others; but he is holy because he subdues, tramples on, chains up, imprisons, puts out of the way this law of sin, and is ruled by religious and spiritual motives. Even those who in the end turn out to be saints and attain to life eternal, yet are not born saints, but have, with God's regenerating and renewing grace, to make themselves saints. It is nothing but the Cross of Christ without us and within us, which changes any one of us from being (as I may say) a devil, into an angel. Even to the end the holiest men have remains and stains of sin which they would fain get rid of if they could, and which keep this life from being to them, in all God's grace, a heaven upon earth. No, the Christian life is but a shadow of heaven. Its festal and holy days are but shadows of eternity. But hereafter it will be otherwise. In heaven sin will be utterly destroyed in every elect soul. We shall have no earthly wishes, no tendencies to disobedience or irreligion, no love of the world or the flesh, to draw us off from supreme devotion to God. We shall have our Saviour's holiness fulfilled in us, and be able to love God without drawback or infirmity. J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. vii., p. 179. Reference: Romans 6:8.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iv., p. 87. Romans 6:8-11I. The basis of the Apostle's sentiment here is the death of Christ. The death of Christ is the fact. Christ died for our sins. Calvary, its associations, its wonderful mystery and blessedness, were present to the Apostle's mind; and, however progressive spiritually his view might be, he never lost sight of what took place in Jerusalem— never lost sight of the Lord in His crucifixion and resurrection. In Christ's death he might be said to die to sin as well as for it, for he had done with sin. II. In the second place, with this basis of history, we find that there is also a basis of prophecy,— it is implied here, at least respecting Christ and His people. Paul saw a grand future for Christ and the Church. "Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him." In the eighth chapter of this Epistle we have the outburst of the music, but in the sixth chapter we have the undertone in the same strain; for he says, "If we be dead in Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him," and the eighth chapter is but the expansion and development of that sublime idea. There is therefore a basis of prophecy as well as of history. III. Note the use which the Apostle makes of the past and the future in reference to his spiritual life. He fixes upon the historical fact that Christ died, and died for our sins, and he will not let that for an instant go. But he spiritualises it, and shows its relation to his daily experience. He teaches that between us and Christ there comes an identification and sympathy, through which we feel like Him, and act like Him, and become one with Him, imitating His example, and becoming conformed to His image and His type of life, from a moral power which flows from His death into our life. There is a dying unto sin in the case of all true believers, through their union by faith with Christ, who died so many years ago. So, too, St. Paul makes the resurrection of Christ a moral power in us, so that we rise from the death of sin to the life of righteousness. J. Stoughton, Penny Pulpit, No. 637, new series. References: Romans 6:8-11.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix., No. 503; G. Calthrop, Words Spoken to My Friends, p. 120; Preacher's Monthly, vol. iv., p. 83. Romans 6:9 Christ Risen, Dieth no More. I. The resurrection brings joy to the human soul because it asserts that which is by no means written legibly for all men on the face of nature and of life— the truth that the spiritual is higher than the material; the truth that, in this universe, spirit counts for something more than matter. There are, no doubt, abstract arguments which might go to show that this is the case; but the resurrection is a palpable fact which means this, if it means anything at all,— that the ordinary laws of animal existence are visibly, upon sufficient occasion, set aside in obedience to a higher spiritual force. It was, we all of us know, no natural force, like that of growth, which raised Jesus Christ our Lord from His grave. "Christ being raised from the dead." The resurrection is not merely an article of the Creed; it is a fact in the history of mankind. That our Lord Jesus Christ was "begotten of the Father before all worlds" is also an article of the Christian faith; but then it has nothing to do with human history, and so it cannot be shown to have taken place, like any event, say, in the life of Julius Cæsar, by the reported testimony of eye-witnesses. It belongs to another sphere. It is believed simply on account of the proved trustworthiness of Him who has taught us this truth on His own authority about His eternal person. But that Christ rose from the dead is a fact which depends on the same sort of testimony as any event in the life of Cæsar, with this difference, that no one ever thought it worth his while, so far as I know, to risk his life in order to maintain that Cæsar defeated Vercingetorix or Pompey. The resurrection of Christ breaks the iron wall of uniformity which goes so far to shut out God. It tells us that matter is not the governing principle of the universe. It assures us that matter is controlled by mind, that there is a Being, that there is a will, to which matter can offer no effective resistance, that He is not bound by the laws of the universe, that He in fact controls them. II. Christ's risen life is to us a fact of undying significance. The resurrection was not an isolated miracle, done and then over, leaving things much as they had been before. The risen Christ is not, like Lazarus, marked off from every other man as one who had visited the realms of death, but knowing that he must ere many years pass be a tenant of the grave. "Christ, being risen from the dead, dieth no more." His risen body is made up of flesh, bone, and all things pertaining to the perfection of man's nature; but then it has superadded qualities. It is so spiritual that it can pass through closed doors without collision or disturbance. It is beyond the reach of those causes which, slowly or swiftly, bring down our bodies to the dust. Throned in the heavens, now, as during the forty days on earth, it is endowed with the beauty, with the glory, of an eternal youth. Being raised from the dead, it dies no more. The perpetuity of the life of the risen Jesus is the guarantee of the perpetuity of His Church. Alone, among all forms of society which bind men together, the Church of Christ is insured against complete dissolution. When our Lord was born the civilised world was almost entirely comprised within the Roman empire, a vast social power which may well have appeared, as it did appear to the men of that age, destined to last for ever. Since then the Roman empire has as completely disappeared from the earth as if it had never been. And other kingdoms and dynasties have risen up and have in turn gone their way. Nor is there any warrant or probability that any one of the states or forms of civil government which exist at the present time will always last. And there are men who tell us that the kingdom of Christ is or will be no exception to the rule— that it too has seen its best days and is passing. We Christians know that they are wrong, that whatever else may happen one thing is impossible— the complete effacement of the Church of Jesus Christ. And what is our reason for this confidence? It is because we know that Christ's Church, although having likeness to other societies of men in her outward form and mien, is unlike them inwardly and really. She strikes her roots far and deep into the invisible; she draws strength from sources which cannot be tested by our political or social experience. Like her Master, she has meat to eat that men know not of. "God is in the midst of her, and therefore shall she not be removed; God shall help her, and that right early." III. Christ, risen from death, dying no more, is the model of our new life in grace. I do not mean that absolute sinlessness is attainable by any Christian here. But at least faithfulness in our intentions, avoidance of known sources of danger, escape from presumptuous sins, innocence, as the Psalmist puts it, of the great offence— these things are possible, and indeed are necessary. Those lives which are made up of alternating recovery and relapse— recovery, perhaps, during Lent, followed by relapse after Easter, and even lives lived, as it were, with one foot in the grave, without anything like a strong vitality, with their feeble prayers, with their half-indulged inclinations, with their weaknesses which may be physical, but which a really regenerate will should at once away with— men risen from the dead, yet without any seeming promise of endurance in life— what would St. Paul say to these? "Christ," he would say, "being risen from the dead, dieth no more." Just as He left His tomb once for all, so should the soul, once risen, be dead indeed unto sin. There must be no hovering about the sepulchre, no treasuring the grave-clothes, no secret hankering after the scent and atmosphere of the guilty past. Cling to the risen Saviour. Cling to Him by entreaties which twine themselves round His sacred person. Cling to Him by sacraments, the revealed points of contact with His strengthening manhood. Cling to Him by obedience and by works of mercy, through which, He tells us Himself, we abide in His love. And then, not in your own strength but in His, "likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." H. P. Liddon, Easter Sermons, vol. i., p. 208. Reference: Romans 6:9.— C. W. Furse, Sermons at Richmond, p. 42. Romans 6:9-11I. The death to sin must be a death to its service as well as to its penalty, if the soul has come under that wretched bondage. There is hardly anything more emphatically and clearly laid down throughout St. Paul's epistles than this of the new life which is expected of Christian men, nor any doctrine with which the saintly life is more closely connected and on which it is as it were based, than the death and burial and resurrection of our Saviour Christ. And we must not put it away from us. Better a thousand times to be truthful witnesses and to abhor ourselves. Better a thousand times to hate the memory of that formal service which rests its confidence in continual acts of repentance for continual acts of wilful sin. The life of sin the Apostle supposes dead.II. How marvellously persistent is the Apostle, is the Holy Spirit, in finding a plain living duty in the sublimest doctrines of religion; in drawing a precept which shall supply occupation for the whole human life, and exercise every faculty of the human heart, from events the most mysterious and Divine. III. We must be ashamed when we examine ourselves to see how miserably short we fall of the Divine standard and requirements. Let us review our miserably imperfect practice, and seek to begin a higher, a purer, a better life. J. W. Burgon, Ninety-one Short Sermons, No. 41. References: Romans 6:9-11.— E. H. Gifford, The Glory of God in Man, p. 1. Romans 6:10, Romans 6:11.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. vii., p. 20; Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. vii., p. 111. Romans 6:11.— H. J. Wilmot Buxton, The Life of Duty, vol. ii., p. 53; Homilist, new series, vol. iii., p. 314; W. Cunningham, Sermons, p. 251; G. Bainton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. x., p. 169; C. G. Finney, Gospel Themes, p. 380; Bishop Temple, Rugby Sermons, 1st series, p. 306. Romans 6:11-14 On Realising the Ideal. I. What is the theory of the Christian's condition? As just explained by the Apostle, it is this: The Christian is a man who, like his Master, is already dead to all sin and alive only towards God. He has ceased, in other words, to have anything further to do with sin. With God he has everything further to do. This has resulted, as a matter of course, from the close union, or, as it were, incorporation, which his faith has effected betwixt him and Jesus Christ. In theory, the believer has just as little to do with sin as Jesus has in heaven; which lets us see a little how St. Paul can elsewhere employ such amazing language about mortal man as this— "Risen with Christ," "Sitting with Christ in heaven," their life hid with Him in God. Such is Christian life in its conception. Such it must aim at becoming in fact. II. It is obviously with a practical design that the writer bids the Christian cherish such a conception of his proper character. All life strives to fulfil itself. It makes for that which it was made to be. In the moral training of character, there is no better way of attaining an ideal than to be persuaded that it is the true ideal for us. Put the matter in this form: You are a man supposed to be in idea dead to all sin. Yet in a given instance an evil desire has mastered you. Is there not betwixt these two facts an incongruity, not simply painful, but intolerable? They cannot possibly hang together. A contradiction in fact between your theoretical position and your actual conduct is not a state of matters in which you can rest. Either your ideal must be abandoned, or an effort must be made to shape your behaviour in compliance with it. But your ideal is what you dare not abandon, for that would be to abandon Christ. The conclusion becomes irresistible: let not this wrong desire lord it any longer in this fashion over you— a man dead to all sin. Let the believer then think what he is, that he may become what he ought to be. Broken off from sin, let there be no feeble or furtive concession to it at any point. Live solely for the work of God. Let us spend ourselves wholly in His pure and beneficent service. J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 172. Romans 6:12 The Dual Life of Man. I. There are in every one of us opposing elements, there live within us an Adam and a Christ; the angel has us by the hand or the serpent by the heart. Plato describes human nature as consisting of a threefold being bound into one, a many-headed monster, a lion, and a man. The monster represents all the lowest and the basest and most animal impulses of our nature; the lion represents the passionate irascible side of our nature, in itself noble, but liable to be dangerously uncontrolled; the man represents the reason and the conscience, the ruling power within us. Plato says we can never attain the true nature of our being except when the man and the lion are at one, the man having supreme power, and both together holding the monster of the baser passions under absolute control. II. Three warnings arise out of this subject. (1) We are accountable to God for ourselves— for our whole selves. We cannot disintegrate our individuality, we cannot claim to be good while yet we habitually do evil, we cannot be in a state of sin and yet claim to be in a state of grace. Yet this is the self-deception into which men constantly fall. When they go out, like Judas, to sell their Lord, it is not in the daytime; it is in the night of their own self-deception. We have all need of the daily prayer, "God harden me against myself." (2) We cannot be too careful what we make ourselves. Even the feelings which might be honourable and harmless may be betrayed by excess or by neglect. Our passions are like the waves of the sea, and without the aid of Him who made the human breast we cannot say to its tide, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther." (3) As we feel our evil passions and their mastery over us, so by the grace of God can we get rid of our worse selves altogether. It is not possible by our own unaided strength, but Christ died that it might be more than possible to all that trust in Him. They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts; they are renewed in the image of God. In them the old self is conquered indeed, the body of sin is destroyed, so that they are no longer the slaves of sin; they walk in newness of life. F. W. Farrar, Family Churchman, March 31st, 1886. References: Romans 6:13.—Good Words, vol. iii., pp. 762, 763; R. Tuck, Christian World Pulpit, vol. v., p. 251. Romans 6:14.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xv., No. 901; vol. xxiv., No. 1410; T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. i., p. 103. Romans 6:14, Romans 6:15.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxix., No. 1735. Romans 6:15-23 Bondmen of Righteousness. I. St. Paul's manner of thinking is frequently hard to follow. One peculiarity which contributes to make it a difficult exercise to track his reasoning is this: on the threshold of a fresh train of ideas, when the subject which fills his mind has been no more than started, it is not uncommon to find him suddenly break off in order to interject some side thought which has just occurred to him. Of this habit we have an instance before us. The objection springs up suddenly. If a Christian is no longer under the law of Moses, but under the free, that is, the unmerited, favour of God as the source of His salvation, is not this a distinct licence to him to sin? To that recurring difficulty there never has been, nor ever can be, any valid reply save one: this, namely, that the very change which is involved in a man's becoming a believer in God's free grace through Christ renders his continuance in sin a practical impossibility. Christians were slaves to sin once, no doubt; but conversion has broken that service in order that they should enter another. They are now "servants unto righteousness." II. The expression "enslaved to righteousness" is indeed an unusually strong one, even for St. Paul; so strong that he deems it well to apologise for it (ver. 19). For while the practice of sin is really a moral slavery, as our Lord Himself taught, seeing that it involves the subjugation of what is noblest in a man beneath some base or petty desire of which in his heart he feels ashamed, there is no true bondage in obeying God. On the contrary, the law of righteousness is the law of man's original, proper nature,— his native law, so to speak. To follow it is to act freely. Accordingly, when the Apostle spoke about being a slave of righteousness, he employed language which he felt to be harsh, because, in any strict sense of it, both inaccurate and unworthy. Nevertheless, St. Paul endeavours to say what he means in more precise and less metaphorical language. What it amounts to is this. That as a man previous to his conversion to Christ yielded up his faculties to execute lawless desires, and thus did the work of lawlessness as a slave serves his master, so, after conversion has put an end to that, he must, in a similar way, give himself up to perform the lawful or righteous will of God. J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 182. References: Romans 6:15-23.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv., No. 1482; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. i., p. 18; H. J. Wilmot Buxton, The Life of Duty, vol. ii., p. 61; Homilist, new series, vol. iv., p. 653; Church of England Pulpit, vol. xxi., p. 125; R. Molyneux, Ibid., vol. v., p. 189. Romans 6:16-19.— E. de Pressensé, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 93. Romans 6:17.— Bishop Westcott, The Historic Faith, p. 17. Romans 6:18 The Strictness of the Law of Christ. I. Religion is a necessary service; of course it is a privilege too, but it becomes more and more of a privilege the more we exercise ourselves in it. The perfect Christian state is that in which our duty and our pleasure are the same, when what is right and true is natural to us, and in which God's service is perfect freedom. And this is the state towards which all true Christians are tending: it is the state in which the angels stand; entire subjection to God in thought and deed is their happiness; an utter and absolute captivity of their will to His will is their fulness of joy and everlasting life. But it is not so with the best of us, except in part. We have a work, a conflict all through life. II. I may seem to have been saying what every one will at once confess. And yet, after all, nothing perhaps is so rare among those who profess to be Christians, as an assent in practice to the doctrine that they are under a law: nothing so rare as strict obedience, unreserved submission to God's will, uniform conscientiousness in doing their duty. Most Christians will allow in general terms that they are under a law, but then they admit it with a reserve; they claim for themselves some dispensing power in their observance of the law. Whether men view the law of conscience as high or low, as broad or narrow, few indeed there are who make it a rule to themselves. III. Let us not deceive ourselves: what God demands of us is to fulfil His law, or at least to aim at fulfilling it; to be content with nothing short of perfect obedience,— to attempt everything,— to avail ourselves of the aids given us, and throw ourselves, not first but afterwards, on God's aid for our shortcomings. We Christians are indeed under the law as other men, but it is the new law, the law of the Spirit of Christ. We are under grace. That law which to nature is a grievous bondage, is to those who live under the power of God's presence, what it was meant to be, a rejoicing. Let us go to Him for grace. Let us seek His face. "They that wait upon the Lord," says the Prophet, "shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. iv., p. 1. References: Romans 6:18.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv., No. 1482. Romans 6:19.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. i., p. 18. Romans 6:20.— H. J. Wilmot Buxton, The Life of Duty, vol. ii., p. 61. Romans 6:21.— Prothero, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxix., p. 161. Romans 6:22.—Homilist, new series, vol. iv., p. 653; 3rd series, vol. iv., p. 39; Preacher's Monthly, vol. vi., p. 21; Church of England Pulpit, vol. xxi., p. 125; R. Molyneux, Ibid., vol. v., p. 189. Romans 6:23 The Choice of Life. I. St. Paul is setting before us in a figure the choice of two lives— the life of a Christian, life in Christ, and the life of one who is not a Christian, who has not the Christian's aim nor the Christian's hope. He is setting this before us in a figure; and it is, on the whole, the figure which is so familiar to us in our own baptismal service and catechism. Both, he tells us, involve service. In some of the expressions he is thinking of the service of a servant, in others (as in this word wages—ὀψώνια the soldier's allowance) of military service. We can choose our master, our leader; but serve some one, do some one's work, fight in some one's cause, we must. We may serve God or we may serve sin. He has been striving in the last verses to bring out the contrasts of the two services. They differ in their objects, their aim, their methods, their issue. The text is the last word in the comparison. It contrasts their rewards. But in doing so St. Paul breaks away, as it were, from the similitude; says, as he so often does, "Remember that it is a figure, not the whole truth; no figure can comprehend that." Life is a service; all fight in some ranks. The figure holds in many points, but not in all, not absolutely in one particular point. Service supposes wages, some return for the service, earned and to be paid. And the service of sin has its wages, something that answers to that figure in at least one regard. They are wages earned, the pay of a soldier's toilsome and dangerous service,— though they are not the wages looked for, nor such as make up the campaign. "The wages of sin, the hard-earned wages, is death." It would have followed, it might seem, to say, "The wages, the earned reward, of righteousness is life"; but St. Paul does not say so. There the figure fails. The true soldier and servant of goodness and God knows only too well that he earns no reward; the enemy whom he is to fight is not without him only, but within, in his own half-traitorous heart. No; it is not the wages of goodness, but "the gift of God" given to the unworthy through Jesus Christ our Lord. II. The wages of sin is death. That will be the end of living for pleasure, living for self, living only for this world. The end of living for pleasure is death. You must sacrifice to it things infinitely more precious, and then the pleasures die. They last but a moment; and presently the faculty of pleasure dies. At first we fail to see that this is happening, because there is a change and succession of pleasures. Life has some small variety of pleasures, and they are so disposed that to our inexperienced eye they look endless; but we soon exhaust them. They become but repetitions, and then they cease to please. And so is all self-seeking. We cannot live for self without starving the more generous instincts and forfeiting the higher blessings of life. And self cannot satisfy. All purely selfish success turns to vanity and vexation of spirit. And this world itself passes. The things that are seen are temporal. "The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord"— life ever deepening, widening; self-conquest, freedom, the conscience growing more sensitive and more completely mistress of the life, all instincts and perceptions of moral beauty growing keener, all lofty and generous emotions strengthening the sense of God's nearness, the trust in His goodness, the sympathy with His purposes, for ever increasing, brightening to the perfect day. E. C. Wickham, Wellington College Sermons, p. 125. References: Romans 6:23.— E. Cooper, Practical Sermons, vol. i., p. 15; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi., No. 1459; C. G. Finney, Sermons on Gospel Themes, p. 37; J. Vaughan, Sermons, 6th series, p. 29; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi., No. 1868; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 186; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iv., p. 84; Ibid., vol. vii., p. 22; Church of England Pulpit, vol. v., p. 125; J. Burbidge, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 33; J. Vaughan, Sermons, 6th series, p. 29; C. G. Finney, Gospel Themes, p. 37. Romans 6:23.— E. Cooper, Practical Sermons, vol. i., p. 15. Romans 7:1-6"Law versus Grace.". Note:— I. St. Paul's maxim that it is death which puts an end to all obligation created by statute law. Expositors have often remarked how fond this apostle was of legal phraseology, and especially of illustrations borrowed from jurisprudence. His whole doctrine of justification, as we have it in the earlier portion of this Epistle, is in fact cast in a forensic mould. The verses immediately preceding this chapter describe conversion in language borrowed from an ancient legal process for the manumission of slaves. In harmony with the same obvious tendency of his mind, St. Paul is here borrowing a legal maxim to set forth the necessity for our Lord's judicial death; and citing an instance of it from the marriage law of the Hebrews. The maxim is this: nothing save death can ordinarily cancel the binding obligation of civil law over its subjects; but death always does so. What we are clearly meant to gather from this legal illustration is that the decease of Jesus as the legal representative of His people was necessary, in order to dissolve the claims over them of the Divine law. II. St. Paul contends that it is indispensable that men should be loosed from the legal obligation, if ever they were to attain to real holiness. The lex scripta of Mosaism failed because it was only a lex scripta. It stood over against the fallen nature of man as the bare utterance of a stronger will, an imperative as cold and rigid as the stone it was graved upon, with nothing about it to quicken inward affection or move the deep springs of spiritual good in the human heart. In the gospel a new Word steps into the vacant seat of moral control, and begins to exert his quickening influence upon the moral life. That other is Christ Himself, risen from the dead and reigning in virtue of the grace He brings. If I am so joined to Him as to be delivered from the law through His death, then I must be so joined to Him as to be animated by His life. In the room of the dead letter of Moses' decalogue, prescribing duty to a dead soul, Christ breathes into the man a living spirit. The love for what pleases God proves itself the parent of a troop of happy impulses and pure affections and glad obediences to all the holy and perfect will of our Father in heaven. J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 191. Reference: Romans 7:1.—Preacher's Monthly, vol. ii., p. 248. Romans 7:4I. "Ye are dead." This spiritual death must surely be in some profound sense— so often and so earnestly is the phrase reiterated— the mystical image of that death from which it derives its name. Whither does death conduct us? "Today shalt thou be with Me in paradise," said the Lord of Life to the dying penitent. He Himself "preached to spirits in confinement," preserved in the secret citadel of God; a world where, as He declared, all live unto Him, and whose happier region perhaps is typified by the bosom of Abraham, which the Jews employed to express it and which our Lord has consecrated by His adoption. The triumphant fulness of heavenly glory seems to demand the body no less than the spirit; and may we not fairly deem, with many of our safest and holiest divines, that there is beyond this scene, in some lone region of the illimitable universe, a home for the spirit, embodied, or clad it may be, with some fine and invisible materialism, where in the calm expectation of consummate bliss it learns the art of higher happiness, and trains its faculties for coming glory. And as in all our physical changes spiritual changes more essential seem pictured, I cannot but think that as our death represents the spiritual death that opens the Christian's course, so this intervening state of holy anticipation seems eminently to represent the peculiar blessedness that follows death to sin and to the law. II. Departed saints are dead to the world, dead to its sins, dead to its avenging law. It cannot cast its shadow across the grave, and it cannot prolong one pang of bitterness, one touch of temptation. Its waves are broken beneath the walls of that sheltered paradise. These are the franchised of Christ and of death; dust has returned to dust that the spirit might return unto God; they have died into His eternal life. This is the story of the dying saint; such dying saints must you be even now, if you would live even now with Jesus. W. Archer Butler, Sermons, 2nd series, p. 116. References: Romans 7:4.—Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 56. Romans 7:5-25.—Homilist, new series, vol. i., p. 109. Romans 7:6.— H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 11; Ibid., Sermons, 10th series, p. 217. Romans 7:6, Romans 7:25.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix., p. 216. Romans 7:7I. These are searching words, and direct our thoughts to the hidden light in pursuance of the design of explaining and enforcing the plan of man's justification in the gospel through the merits of Jesus Christ by faith. The Apostle shows that all men, Jew and Gentile alike, are sinners, deserving of death; that the law could not justify because all had disobeyed the law; and by baptism into Christ's death the Christian had died, as it were, to the law, and is no more bound to the law of the covenant than a woman after her husband's death is by the vows of her first marriage. Having thus been obliged to speak disparagingly of the law as a covenant in comparison with the gospel, the Apostle hastens to prevent an inference derogatory to the law itself, and consequently to the character of Him who gave it. The law has laid down a broad clear rule of right, and by taking away every plea of ignorance, and placing the weight of God's authority in the scale, it has, as it were, opened our eyes, and shown us that we are sinners. II. Consider the sin of unlawful desires. The product of our corrupt nature may spring up spontaneously from the original soil, an evidence always of original sin, the parent of actual sin. The world is full of occasions which call them forth; the devil suggests, and the heart too readily answers to the call. They are the first steps towards the acts of sin and the actual violation of the letter of God's law, and when they in reality take place, the struggle issues, either in resisting the temptation by Divine grace and overcoming it, or a sin which results from yielding and defeat. The desire of sin, when indulged in, is as sinful as the act itself. The sinfulness of unlawful desires impresses upon us all the necessity of self-examination and watchfulness and prayer. Such desires are the natural offspring of our own evil heart, we are liable to their intrusion at all times and in all places. We should accustom ourselves to examine our desires, our thoughts, wishes, and external temptations, and judge them, not as carrying no guilt because not proceeding to the outward deed, but as mental acts, having their own moral character, and, as such, condemned or acquitted by the spiritual law of God. The weapons of this warfare of ours must not be carnal, but from God, and mighty to the pulling down of strongholds, if we would cast down the imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against God. Bishop Temple, Oxford and Cambridge Journal, March 11th, 1880. References: Romans 7:7.— Bishop Temple, Clergyman's Magazine, vol. ix., p. 145; Ibid., Church of England Pulpit, vol. ix., p. 145. Romans 7:7-13A Chapter in Saul's Early Life. I. St. Paul repels with energy the idea that there can be anything essentially bad, unholy, or immoral about the blessed law of God itself. On the contrary, but for that law he could never have reached any real knowledge of sin. Only by the law's clear discovery of moral good does it bring home to us the conviction of sin's sinfulness. During childhood, and sometimes well on into early youth, we do not realise God's law. A moment arrives when the law of God comes home to the conscience with new power. In the case of young Saul, it was especially the tenth commandment which came home. It became plain to him that God forbids not merely doing wrong, but wishing wrong. He saw that to be good, therefore, one has to watch the earliest budding of a bad wish within the heart— nay, that if the bad wish bud there at all, the law is already, and in that fact, broken. Ah! the happy dream life was ended then. Here was the death of all his peace and gladness. "Sin revived," says he, with a terse pathos, "sin awoke unto life, and I died." II. The law had failed, then, shall we say? Instead of quenching sin in Saul's soul it had inflamed it. It had produced self-condemnation, inward strife, despair, and death. Was the law to blame for that? No, it was the very perfection and glory of the Decalogue that it contained that tenth and most spiritual precept. It was just its exceeding broadness and nobleness which made it impossible for unregenerate Saul to keep it. It was no fault of the law that it wrought in Saul lust and death; but it was the fault of what Saul had now learned to know as sin. Not sins, but sin: not sinfulness even as a simple quality of the sinner, but sin as a force, a dread and mighty factor in the human soul, which lies deep, deeper than desire, and proves itself strong, stronger than the better will that strives against it. In His mercy God meant men to learn this bitter, humbling, but most salutary lesson, that the natural heart is at enmity against God, since it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 201. Romans 7:9 The Place of the Law in the Salvation of Sinners. We have here:— I. A life which a man enjoys in and of himself before he knows God. "I was alive without the law once." This is the natural state of the fallen. It is here called life, and elsewhere it is called death. The wide diversity of the names employed to designate the same thing need not cause surprise. The one term expresses the true state of the man, and the other term expresses the man's own view of his state. In God's sight it is death; in his own imagination it is life. II. The Exodus from that Egypt; the escape from that false life by a dying. "The commandment came, sin revived, and I died." (1) "The commandment came." It is no longer an imitation law, modelled on the measure of his own attainments, which might be pressed upon his conscience, and yet not extinguish his self-righteous life. It is the unchanging will of the unchanging God— the word which liveth and abideth for ever. It is a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces. (2) "Sin revived" at the entrance of this visitant. The commandment coming in did not cause, but only detected, sin. It was by the light of the commandment, when it came, that he discovered the sin which had all along been living and reigning in his heart and life. (3) "I died." The life in which he had hitherto trusted was extinguished then. Chased by the strange usurper from every part of its long-cherished home, the life flickers over it a moment, like the flame of an expiring lamp, and then darts away into the unseen. III. He lives in another life. No interval of time separated the two. The death that led from one life was the birth of another. It is one act. The dying is the living. The exodus from this life is the entrance into that. He does not remain one moment dead. The instant after his death, you hear him exclaiming, "I died." His own voice declaring how and when he died is the surest evidence that he lives. "Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." "Our life is hid with Christ in God." W. Arnot, Roots and Fruits, p. 69. References: Romans 7:9.— H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ix., p. 299. Romans 7:9-25.— H. W. Beecher, Ibid., vol. iii., p. 179. Romans 7:11I. The sentiment of law, nowadays, is killing the living consciousness in man; it was so, it has been so, in all ages; man is not only in danger from the great majesties of nature, he is in danger not less from himself and from his own works. In many directions they are assuming proportions not less than terrible to him. He may say with the Apostle, "The law slew me." What, then, did the word law mean to St. Paul? What did he find in it? The whole Epistle to the Romans is an exhibition of the reconciliation made by God, of man with His law. It is to us a cold, hard word; but it represents that which is highest in God— order, holiness, rectitude. The moderns think they have advanced far, when they discover that the universe moves upon the wheels of law. Paul plainly enough declares that, and he further opens his epistle declaring that man alone breaks through the barriers of law. This is the subject of the first chapter. Immoral is unlawful. II. I conceive, then, that so long as we limit the Pauline conception of the word law to the legalism of Judaism, we do injustice, not only to the argument of the Apostle, but still more injustice to the scope and intention of the Christian system. When I hear Paul speak of the law of God, I understand by it God's expressed will. But then we know that will is the expression of God's character. God is a sovereign, but He has a law in His own being, beyond and beneath which He cannot go. He can do nothing unholy. He can do nothing wrong, nothing beneath the character of God. III. The law of consciousness is used by the Apostle, when he rises from the review of the symmetry of things to the conditions of character by which God has made Himself known to us. But the birth of consciousness in the soul is the awakening of conscience; and while consciousness broods over matter, as a master over a slave, conscience, a still more inexorable master, broods over the consciousness. Law is still a terror, that which is fixed; the rigid hard law of things is still a sentence and a doom. But the law becomes our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. He is a new force in the soul. Terrified by what is fixed and arbitrary in law, I wanted to find the security of the law of permanence transcended by the law of change, and I find it here. I discover how "the law and the Spirit of life sets free from the law of sin," that is conscience, "and of death," that is nature. E. Paxton Hood, Dark Sayings on a Harp, p. 173. References: Romans 7:11.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xviii., No. 1045; C. J. Vaughan, Lessons of the Cross and Passion, p. 241. Romans 7:12 It is plain that the revelation of the law is made to assist us in copying the pattern which is there set before us. Consider the defect of character which is the natural consequence of not being fully impressed with each one of these three characteristics of God's government and His creation. I. A man may be deficient in a sense of the holiness of the law. Of course he who does not feel the holiness of the law will not fully feel its goodness, still less its justice. The defect of such a man's character is a tendency to be earthly. To have his hopes, his aims, his labours, bounded by this present life; to lose all hold of the heavenly, unearthly side of religion; to be much more moral than devotional; to cut out all his duties by an earthly pattern. This defect of character admits of many degrees. But it is plain that such a man is not fashioned on the highest type. His service may be genuine as far as it goes; but it is imperfect, not only as all human service is imperfect in the execution, but imperfect in the very conception and idea. II. Again, a man may not have a strong sense of the goodness of God's law. Such a man, of course, has but a poor and narrow idea of holiness. But still he may have much more sense of that than of God's goodness. He shuts himself out from much that is tender, much that touches the heart, much that softens and blesses, because he will not open his senses to receive the gifts of his Maker. III. Lastly, a man may be wanting in a sense of the justice of God's government. And perhaps for us imperfect creatures this is the most dangerous deficiency of all. Such a one generally shows his want by a weak desire to bury the past. He has no sense of a sin once done being a substantive thing tied inevitably to substantive consequences. And for this very reason he cannot feel any need for a Redeemer or a redemption. And so he never comes with a full acknowledgment of his guilt to the foot of the Cross, resigning soul and body to Him who alone can cleanse. Bishop Temple, Rugby Sermons, p. 111. Romans 7:13I. What is sin? Rebellion— the resistance of a human mind against the sovereignty of its Creator. It little matters, in comparison, what may be the act by which a rebel shows that he is a rebel; the fact is the important thing— that he is in a state of rebellion. Man measures sin by the degree of the injury which a sin inflicts on society, or upon the man who does it. God measures sin by the degree of the rebellion which He sees in that sin against Himself. What we call the sin is in His sight only the index of the sinfulness which lies deep down in the heart. II. No sin is single, no sin is solitary, there are no islands in sin. The principle of obedience is a single thing; the man that has broken one law has violated the principle of obedience, and therefore he is as much a breaker of the law as if he had broken a thousand things. Again, all God's law is one law. It resolves itself into one— Thou shalt love the Lord thy God. He that hath done one sin did not love God; therefore by his want of love he has brought himself guilty to the count of all the law— for the law is love. III. Every sin which a man does, lies in a series— in which that one sin is a link, and none can calculate what will be the chain of repetitions and the chain of consequences, which shall stretch on and on from sin to sin, from person to person, from circle to circle, from age to age— beyond time into eternity. The sins that we do very soon pass out of our memory, in the crowd of new and pressing engagements and thoughts which come around us; we perhaps very little realise now the sins which once pressed very heavily and were very vivid to our consciences. But with God's view each one sin is as green and fresh as at the moment when it was done. Let us try then to look on sin as God looks on it, and we shall better appreciate the infinite grace of Him who was made sin for us. J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 2nd series, p. 319. References: Romans 7:13.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix., No. 1095; Ibid., Morning by Morning, p. 71; Preacher's Monthly, vol. iii., P. 103. Romans 7:14-25 Dualism in the Life. I. This is the earliest place in this Epistle where the two terms "flesh and spirit" occur in clear contrast, with the peculiar ethical sense conferred upon them by one another. In the next chapter we find them in constant use, as the key words of his argument. The point of St. Paul here is that the law of God partakes of His own nature. It, too, is spiritual. It reflects the Divine character, for it expresses the Divine will, and therefore between it and the nature of man, as man now is, there holds precisely the same incompatibility which our Lord affirmed between what is born of the flesh and what is born of the spirit. In this sad closing picture of his own experience, even after his mind had become reconciled to the law, St. Paul has made himself a mirror in which men of earnest holiness and habits of self-scrutiny have in every age seen themselves reflected. Such an internal dualism— such a strife of opposites— such a comparative impotency to realise the good they propose, are standing characteristics of saintliness, if we may judge saints by their most secret confessions and self-examinations. II. St. Paul speaks of the law in his members as waging such successful war, that it even carried him off at times into captivity, like a prisoner of war. For the sinful principle which has its seat in an inborn disposition makes sudden sallies when a soul is off its guard, then leaps on with some gust of passion, and before it can gather itself up to resist it is swept forward by the unexpected pressure and is lost. So anger overtakes some, so lust others. Let us entreat God for a watchful temper. In Christ Jesus is a spirit of life. What the law never could do, because it was weak through the flesh, God has done in Christ. The Spirit whom we have received in Christ is the true answer to every "Who shall deliver?" Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 211. References: Romans 7:18.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iv., p. 84; W. Ground, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiii., p. 316; H. W. Beecher, Sermons, 5th series, p. 115. Romans 7:19.— H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xviii., p. 364. Romans 7:20 What are the lessons of life which we have to deduce from the doctrine of original sin? I. First, of course, there is that dependence on God's help, which we can never too often repeat to our hearts as our only stay. We have to learn not merely as an abstract truth but as a living fact, as a principle which will check and control, and yet uphold our hearts throughout the day, that we are in God's hands and not our own. We are not the real combatants in the great battle; rather our souls are the battle-field, and Christ and sin fight there for supremacy, and we can but surrender ourselves to one of the two. We are weak and helpless, except in as much as God may help us. If we would ask what are the tokens of our having learnt the lesson, the answer is, that besides the quiet trust in God, the chief token of our having learnt to lean on God, and not on ourselves, is the avoidance of all unnecessary temptation. II. As on the one hand we learn our absolute dependence on God, so do we learn and get comfort in our Christian warfare. We learn that there is a sense in which we can, like the Apostle, disclaim our own faults and say as he did, "It is not I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me." In so far as we do not consent to our own faults, in so far they are not our own; in so far as we yield to them, they are ours. And God who is greater than our hearts, and knoweth all things, can see when we have honestly striven, and assuredly will not deny His help in such a struggle. III. We must not be disappointed, or cast down, or disheartened, because we find our self-improvement very much slower than we expect or like. The evil to be cured is past human remedy. God will cure it if we wish. But He will cure it in His own way, and at His own time. We must be content to fight the battle in His name and strength, and leave the issue in His hands. Bishop Temple, Rugby Sermons, p. 122. References: Romans 7:21.—Preacher's Monthly, vol. ii., p. 262. Romans 7:21-25.— A. D. Davidson, Lectures and Sermons, p. 458. Romans 7:22-23 Victory amid Strife. I. There are, says an ancient father, four states of man. In the first, man struggles not, but is subdued; in the second, he struggles and is still subdued; in the third, he struggles and subdues; in the fourth, he has to struggle no more. The first state of heavy sluggish acquiescence in sin is man's condition when not under the law of God. The second, of a fruitless, ineffectual struggle, is his state under the law, but not with the fulness of Divine grace. The third, wherein he is in the main victorious, is under the full grace of the gospel. The fourth, of tranquil freedom from all struggle, is in the blessed and everlasting peace. Three of these states there are now. However any be under the power of grace, they, while in the flesh, must have conflict still. It would not be a state of trial without conflict. And this conflict is within, as well as without. This very condition of our being must be good for us, since God, after He has redeemed, regenerated, renewed us, has given us of His Spirit, and made us members of His Son, united us to Christ, and made us temples of the Holy Ghost, but still leaves more or less responsibility in those whom He willed to sit on His right hand and on His left in His kingdom. II. This conflict is continual. It spreads through the whole life and through every part in man. Man is besieged on all sides. No power, no faculty, no sense, is free from this warfare. Every sense is tempted or tempts to sin; the law of sin is found, although by God's grace it reigns not, in all our members. But though the whole man is besieged thus within and without, his inward self, his life, his soul, where God dwells, whereby he is united to God, is hemmed in, but not overcome, unless his will consents. "Sin lieth at the door." The will holds the door closed; the will alone opens the door. If thou open not the door thyself, sin cannot enter in. Resist the very first motions. It is then that thou art most in thy own power. Be not weary of resisting, although the temptation come again and again. Each such resistance is an act of obedience to God; each, done by His grace, draws down more of His grace to thee; in each His good pleasure will the more rest upon thee; by each thou wilt become more a vessel of His grace and love, more fitted and enlarged for His everlasting love. E. B. Pusey, Sermons, vol. ii., p. 327. References: Romans 7:22, Romans 7:23.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xviii., No. 1062; A. P. Peabody, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxii., p. 397. Romans 7:22-25I. When a man begins to hunger and thirst after righteousness, and, discontented with himself, attempts to improve himself, he soon begins to find a painful truth in many a word of the Bible to which he gave little heed, as long as he was contented with himself and with doing just what pleased him, right or wrong. He soon finds out the meaning and the truth of that terrible struggle between the good in him and the evil in him, of which St. Paul speaks so bitterly in the text. How, when he tries to do good, evil is present with him. How he delights in the law of God with his inward mind, and yet finds another law in his body warring against the law of God, and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin. How he is crippled by old habits, weakened by cowardice, by laziness, by vanity, by general inability of will, till he is ready— disgusted at himself and his own weakness— to cry, "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" II. Let him but utter that cry honestly; let him once find out that he wants something outside himself to help him, to deliver him, to strengthen him, to stir up his weak will, to give him grace and power to do what he knows instead of merely admiring it and leaving it undone; let a man only find out that; let him see that he needs a helper, a deliverer, a strengthener, in one word a Saviour, and he will find one. Like St. Paul, after crying "O wretched man that I am!" he will be able to answer himself, "I thank God— God will deliver me, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Christ will stir up this weak will of mine, Christ will give me strength and power, faithfully to fulfil all my good desires, because He Himself has put them into my heart— not to mock me, not to disappoint me, not to make me wretched with the sight of noble graces and virtues to which I cannot attain, but to fulfil His work in me." C. Kingsley, All Saints' Day, p. 41. References: Romans 7:22-25.—Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. iii., p. 34. Romans 7:23.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv., No. 1459. Romans 7:24.—Good Words, vol. iii., p. 445; T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iii., p. 37; C. J. Vaughan, Lessons of the Cross and Passion, p. 227. Romans 7:24-25I. The consciousness of sin is so far a universal fact of human nature, that if any one of us is without it, it is because of some disease and defect in his own mind. The conviction of sin may be stifled, nay, it is stifled every day, and yet it is universal as light is universal, although some may shut their eyes close and admit none of it; so is the consciousness of sin universal, although many believe that they have got rid of it altogether. For this very absence of conviction only proves the incompleteness of their nature. They deceive themselves, and the truth is not in them. They are sleeping steeped in cold mists and poisonous dews, but they know not the poison because they are asleep. Yet fire burns and poison destroys not the less, when the senses that are sentinels against them desert their posts. Every man whose nature is complete and awake and active knows that there is such a thing as sin and that he is a partaker in it. II. In what does the consciousness of sin consist? It is the consciousness of division and strife within a man. His mind is not at peace with itself. In our pride we revolt against God, and all our inner thoughts start into rebellion against us. Today, with its high hopes and promises, passes censure on tomorrow with its foolish outbreaks and lame performances. If we could add a little weight to our will, or abate but a little from the force of our temptations!— but as it is, the secret record of our lives would be a register of unfulfilled intentions. III. Such a condition must be one of misery, out of which it is natural to try to escape, either by the door of deliverance opened to us by Christ in His gospel, or through the gates of death and hell. And all these belong not to the nature of sin itself, but only to our consciousness of it. Let us remember that the Physician is close at hand, who will pour balm into our wounds, who will create a new heart and a new spirit within us. Archbishop Thomson, Lincoln's Inn Sermons, p. 188. References: Romans 7:24, Romans 7:25.— Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v., No. 235; T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. v., p. 313; J. Wells, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. xv., p. 5; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 347; Ibid., vol. xiv., p. 356; Preacher's Monthly, vol. ii., p. 96. Romans 7:25.—Good Words, vol. iii., p. 447. Romans 8:1.— G. Moberly, Parochial Sermons, p. 157; Three Hundred Outlines on the New Testament, p. 128; Preacher's Monthly, vol. i., p. 420; vol. ii., p. 258; vol. vii., p. 113; Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 44. Romans 8:1-4.— D. Bagot, Church of England Pulpit, vol. xiii., p. 125. Romans 8:1-11 In the verses before us three points are touched on regarding the gospel as God's power to sanctify. These are: (1) The preliminary work which had to be done by the coming of Christ, or the basis laid in the life and death of our Lord with a view to our being sanctified. Next, (2) wherein sanctification really consists; it is the substitution of God's Spirit as a source of moral influence in lieu of the congenital tendency or drift towards sin of our own nature. And (3) how this working of the Divine Spirit in a believer must issue in his complete revivification, or the victory of life over death both in soul and body. In other words, we have here the origin, the process, and the issue of a believer's sanctification in Christ. J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 225. References: Romans 8:1-17.—Homilist, vol. i., p. 81. Romans 8:2.— H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xviii., p. 362; Homilist, 3rd series, vol. iv., p. 47. Romans 8:3.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. i., p. 18; S. A. Tipple, Sunday Mornings at Norwood, p. 22. Romans 8:3, Romans 8:4.—Homilist, vol. vii., p. 124; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 266. Romans 8:5.— W. Gladden, Ibid., vol. xxv., p. 280. Romans 8:5, Romans 8:6.— G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 187; M. Rainsford, No Condemnation—No Separation, p. 28. Romans 8:5-8.— H. D. Rawnsley, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxii., p. 100. Romans 8:5-11.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 306. Romans 8:6.—Homilist, new series, vol. ii., p. 315; T. M. Herbert, Sketches of Sermons, p. 191. Romans 8:6-8.— H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvi., p. 148. Romans 8:7.—Homilist, new series, vol. ii., p. 90. Romans 8:7, Romans 8:8.— H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. x., p. 172; E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation, vol. ii., p. 362. Romans 8:8 Man's Inability to Please God. I. How comes it to pass that man in his natural state cannot please God? We reply that the very fact of our being creatures of God, as we undoubtedly are, places us under an irreversible obligation to consecrate our every power and talent to God, whether or not He may have issued any direct law to which He demanded obedience. Ours is not a case in which there could be debate as to the authority of the lawgiver, neither is it one in which submission may be refused without actual hostility. But who can think it a disputable point, whether a man whilst in the flesh, whilst in his natural state before conversion, submits himself to God's law? Who can be so ignorant of his own native tendencies as not to know that they impel him directly to what the law forbids and away from what the law requires? II. An unconverted man may endeavour to conform himself to the precepts of his Maker, but there is something so distinct and contrary between that which is to obey and that which is to be obeyed, that the attempt will only issue in fresh proof of the alleged impossibility. It is not a slight change which passes over men when they are converted. Before conversion they are at enmity with God, in a state which makes the pleasing of God impossible, and it is come to pass, as the result of conversion, that they have a mind which is love toward God and which finds its great delight in keeping His commandments; and therefore we may well say that the change is not slight, not such as could take place without being felt or observed. If any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature. We are born heirs of wrath, and we must undergo a great internal radical change before we can become heirs of glory. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2225. References: Romans 8:8.— M. Rainsford, No Condemnation—No Separation, p. 38. Romans 8:9.—Homilist, new series, vol. ii., p. 348; D. Ewing, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 299; Preacher's Monthly, vol. iii., p. 281; vol. v., p. 274. Romans 8:9-11.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 471. Romans 8:10.— T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. v., p. 131; J. Jackson, Church Sermons, vol. i., p. 185; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 31. Romans 8:11 The Beginning of the Redemption of the Body Here. I. The first point which it is needful to consider is the actual degeneracy of the body of man through his yielding it to the uses of sin. What might have been the condition of man's physical frame had Adam remained in a state of purity we have no means of knowing. The human body under its present conditions of sleep, nourishment, and reproduction is manifestly but the temporary tent and workshop of the soul. The shadow which fell on the soul of Adam fell through his senses over all the world. There was a manifest degeneracy of the bodily life; and that was equivalent to the degeneracy of the world, and of all things with which he had to do. II. Consider next the office of Christianity with regard to the human body, the beginning of the work of its redemption in this present world. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus is set forth as the type and the pledge of the present quickening of the body of the believer. I say, a present quickening: it is not a future resurrection only, though that is plainly involved, but it is a present quickening of the body which is dead by sin to be alive by the Spirit unto God. Because of the Spirit and the life He brings, "He that raised up Christ from the dead, shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit which dwelleth in you." Let us trace the outline of the process. (1) The gospel establishes the true and sovereign principle of rule over the bodily passions and powers. (2) The indwelling Spirit gives new possession of the body and its powers. (3) The indwelling Spirit alone explains the organisation of man's body, and justifies its erectness. (4) The gospel completes its ministry by assuring to the body a share in the life and development of eternity. We are called here to reverence the body, and to work at its redemption, because this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and because this body shall stand crowned and robed in splendour before the eternal throne. J. Baldwin Brown, The Divine Life in Man, p. 214. References: Romans 8:11.— G. Calthrop, Pulpit Recollections, p. 147; M. Rainsford, No Condemnation—No Separation, p. 56. Romans 8:12.— Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 35. Romans 8:12-14.—Ibid., p. 64; G. Moberly, Parochial Sermons, p. 201. Romans 8:12-16 St. Paul is telling us here that there are two masters, either of whom we may serve, but one or other of whom we must serve. Christ is one, sin is the other. Christ is the Lord of our spirits. If we claim Him for our Lord and serve Him, then we must live as if we were spiritual beings, trusting, hoping, loving, holding our bodies in subjection; if we serve sin, then the body becomes the master, and the spirit dies; we eat and drink and sleep; faith, hope, and love perish. "But," says St. Paul, "it need not be so with any of us. Christ, the Lord of our spirits, saw that the spirits of men were dead within them, that they were living as mere fleshly creatures, and He came down and lived on this earth and died on it, that He might deliver these spirits out of death, and bind them to Him." I. You see, St. Paul declares that there is a spirit in every one of you. Every poor savage on the earth, who has never heard of a soul or of Christ, has strange thoughts within him; he cannot tell whence they have come or whither they are going. These thoughts that stir within us, these feelings and cravings and wants, which all the things that we see and hear do not satisfy, these are worth all the world to us if only we know to whom to carry them. II. He, into whose name we are baptized, of whose death we are made partakers, He who died that our sin might die, who rose that our spirits might rise and live, He is still with us, the Lord of our spirits, still unchanged and unchangeable. Believing in Him, claiming that right in Him which He gave us in baptism, and which He has never withdrawn from us since claiming our union with Him who has died unto sin once, but who now dieth no more, for death hath no more dominion over Him, our spirits may shake themselves free from this oppressor who is holding them down. With our spirits we can trust in Him, with our spirits we can hope in Him, with our spirits we can rise up with Him, and ascend with Him, and reign with Him. And then if they have tasted this liberty, they would wish to enjoy it continually, and that they may do so they will desire to mortify the deeds of that body which has kept them from enjoying it and would keep them from enjoying it still. They will desire to give up their spirits, to be ruled by His spirit, to be filled by Him with all holy desires and good thoughts, and prompted to all just works. F. D. Maurice, Christmas Day and Other Sermons, p. 50. Romans 8:12-17 From Present Life to Future Glory. I. The leading of the Holy Spirit is no leading at all unless it be efficacious. If we are led by the Spirit, that means that to some extent we are day by day amending our ways, exerting ourselves successfully to do right, and making substantial progress in virtue. II. Wherever you find submission to Divine guidance, you have evidence of a Divine truth. We have no other mark of that sacred and lofty relationship, the noblest belonging to our nature, save character. III. If on solid grounds a believer has made sure Paul's second arch in this brief bridge which spiritual logic builds from earth to heaven, then he is prepared to go on to the third and last, "If sons, then heirs." J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 237. References: Romans 8:13.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. i., p. 20. Romans 8:13-21.—Ibid., vol. iv., p. 225. Romans 8:14.— G. E. L. Cotton, Sermons and Addresses in Marlborough College, p. 48; W. Hubbard, Christian World Pulpit, vol. x., p. 65; Preacher's Monthly, vol. vii., p. 113; M. Rainsford, No Condemnation, p. 71; S. Greg, A Layman's Legacy, p. 123. Romans 8:14, Romans 8:15.— H. W. Beecher, Sermons, 1870, p. 280. Romans 8:15 The Thought of God the Stay of the Soul. I. The thought of God is the happiness of man; for though there is much besides to serve as subject of knowledge, or motive for action, or means of excitement, yet the affections require a something more vast and more enduring than anything created. He alone is sufficient for the heart who made it. We do not give our hearts to things irrational, because these have no permanence in them. We do not place our affections in sun, moon, and stars, or this rich and fair earth, because all things material come to nought and vanish like day and night. Man too, though he has an intelligence within him, yet in his best estate he is altogether vanity. If our happiness consists in our affections being employed and recompensed, "man that is born of a woman" cannot be our happiness, for how can he stay another who continueth not in one stay himself? II. But there is another reason why God alone is the happiness of our souls; the contemplation of Him, and nothing but it, is able fully to open and relieve the mind, to unlock, occupy, and fix our affections. Created things cannot open us, or elicit the ten thousand mental senses which belong to us and through which we really live. None but the presence of our Maker can enter us, for to none besides can the heart in all its thoughts and feelings be unlocked and subjected. It is the feeling of simple and absolute confidence and communion which soothes and satisfies those to whom it is vouchsafed. III. This sense of God's presence is the ground of the peace of a good conscience, and of the peace of repentance also. True repentance cannot be without the thought of God; it has the thought of God, for it seeks Him; and it seeks Him, because it is quickened with love, and even sorrow must have a sweetness if love be in it. J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. v., p. 313. I. Adoption is that act whereby we are received into the family of God. We are none of us in God's family by nature. It is not a matter, properly speaking, of birth; but we are brought into it from without; literally we are adopted. Christ is the one Son of God. Into the Son God elects and engrafts members. He elects them everywhere, and He engrafts them just as He pleases; but they are all chosen from without and brought in. As soon as the union takes places between a soul and Christ God sees that soul in the relationship in which He sees Christ. He gives it a partnership in the same privileges— He treats it as if it were His own child— He gives it a place and name better than of sons and daughters. In fact, He has adopted it. II. But this adoption, if it stood alone, would be no blessing. We cannot sufficiently admire the wisdom of the provision, and thank God for the manifestation of His grace, that wherever He gives adoption He follows it by the "Spirit of Adoption." The Spirit seals the union by making the affinity between the Creator and the creature close, happy, and eternal. The Spirit of Adoption cries "Father." A child does not ask a father as a stranger asks him. He does not want wages for his work, but he receives rewards. He does not want them; he works for another motive, and yet he does not know that he has another motive, for he never stops even to ask what his motive is. That "Spirit" has a present possession in the whole universe. All creation is his Father's house, and he can say, "Everything in it— everything that is great and everything that is little, everything that is happy and everything that is unhappy, every cloud and every sun-ray— all is Mine, even to death itself. J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 4th series, p. 130. References: Romans 8:15.— C. Kingsley, National Sermons, p. 216; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 276; D. Moore, Penny Pulpit, No. 3217; M. Rainsford, No Condemnation, p. 80. Romans 8:16 The Evidence of Christian Sonship. I. The evidence of sonship— its nature. In illustrating this there are two points to be considered— the ground on which that evidence is founded; the manner in which it rises in the soul. In inquiring into the first of these let us carefully mark two things in Paul's words: (1) He draws a distinction between God's Spirit and our spirit: it is not our spiritual life that bears this testimony, it is the Spirit of God bearing witness to the soul; and (2) he implies by the whole contents of the chapter that the evidence is not fitful, but continued and progressive. Consider the manner in which the evidence of sonship rises in the soul. Paul speaks of the action of God's Spirit in three of its aspects, in each and all of which we see the way in which this evidence enters the soul. (1) Deliverance from the carnal. Freedom from this is the first sign of sonship. Here then is the witness when the old affections are being uprooted— a deep desire created after personal purity— when the chains of sin are snapped. (2) The spirit of prayer. Sometimes the Christian prayer transcends all words. The heart's wounded affections, blighted hopes, unexpressed longings— all burn in one deep, impassioned cry: this spirit of prayer possessing you is a sign of adoption. (3) The spirit of aspiration. This is a sign of sonship— life's imperfectness the ground of hope. II. The necessity for this witness. Take Paul's words, and we shall find he brings out three great results of the witness of the Holy Ghost which show three reasons why every man should possess it. (1) We need it to enable us to enter into perfect communion with God; (2) we need it in order to realise our spiritual inheritance; (3) in order to comprehend the glory of suffering. III. Its attainment. In order to acquire this witness, carry into action every spiritual power you possess— translate every emotion into life. Remember you have to work together with God. Take care that you grieve not the Holy Spirit. Feel that every point gained in spiritual life is a point to be maintained. Take care that when you are brought nearer to God by suffering, you do not allow yourself to fall back; if you do, the light of the Spirit will fade. "If then ye live in the Spirit, walk in the Spirit." E. L. Hull, Sermons, 1st series, p. 294. The Witness of the Spirit. I. Our cry "Father" is the witness that we are sons. Mark the terms of the passage: "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit." It is not so much a revelation made to my spirit, considered as the recipient of the testimony, as a revelation made in or with my spirit considered as co-operating in the testimony. The substance of the Spirit's evidence is the direct conviction based on the revelation of God's infinite love and fatherhood in Christ the Son, that God is my Father, from which direct conviction I come to the conclusion, the inference, the second thought, "Then I may trust that I am His son." The Spirit's testimony has for form my own conviction, and for substance my humble cry, "Oh thou my Father in Heaven." II. That cry is not simply ours, but it is the voice of God's Spirit. Our own convictions are ours because they are God's. Our own souls possess these emotions of love and tender desire going out to God— our own spirits possess them, but our own spirits do not originate them. They are ours by property; they are His by source. Every Christian may be sure of this, that, howsoever feeble may be the thought and conviction in his heart of God's Fatherhood, he did not work it, he received it only, cherished it, thought of it, watched over it, was careful not to quench it; but in origin it was God's, and it is now and ever the voice of the Divine Spirit in the child's heart. III. This Divine witness in our spirits is subject to ordinary influences which affect our spirits. The Divine Spirit, when it enters into the narrow room of the human spirit, condescends to submit itself, not wholly, but to such an extent as practically for our present purpose is wholly, to submit itself to the ordinary laws and conditions and contingencies which befall and regulate our own human nature. Do not think that the witness cannot be genuine because it is changeful. Watch it and guard it lest it change. Live in the contemplation of the Person and the fact that calls it forth, that it may not. To have the heart filled with the light of Christ's love to us is the only way to have the whole being full of light. A. Maclaren, Sermons in Manchester, 1st series, p. 54. References: Romans 8:16.— G. Huntingdon, Sermons for Holy Seasons, p. 211; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. vii., p. 23; J. Brierley, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxix., p. 181; Preacher's Monthly, vol. v., p. 278; vol. viii., p. 91; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 133; J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 10th series, p. 142; D. Moore, Penny Pulpit, Nos. 3184, 3187. Romans 8:17I. First, the text tells us, No inheritance without sonship. In general terms, spiritual blessings can only be given to those who are in a certain spiritual condition. Always and necessarily the capacity or organ of reception precedes and determines the bestowment of blessings. The light falls everywhere, but only the eye drinks it in. There is no inheritance of heaven without sonship; because all the blessings of that future life are of a spiritual character. II. No sonship without a spiritual birth. The Apostle John in that most wonderful preface to his Gospel, where all deepest truths concerning the eternal Being in Himself and in the solemn march of His progressive revelations to the world are set forth in language simple like the words of a child, inexhaustible like the voice of a god, draws a broad distinction between the relation to the manifestations of God, which every human soul by virtue of his humanity sustains, and that which some, by virtue of their faith, enter into. Every man is lighted by the true Light because he is a man. They who believe in His name receive from Him the prerogative to become the sons of God. Those who become sons are not co-extensive with those who are lighted by the Light, but consist of so many of that greater number as receive Him, and that such become sons by a Divine act, the communication of a spiritual life, whereby we are born of God. III. No spiritual birth without Christ. Christ comes to make you and me live again as we never lived before; live possessors of God's love; live tenanted and ruled by a Divine Spirit; live with affections in our hearts which we never could kindle there; live with purposes in our souls which we never could put there. There is but one Being that can make a change in our position in regard to God, and there is but one Being that can make the change by which man shall become a new creature. IV. No Christ without faith. Unless we are wedded to Jesus Christ by the simple act of trust in His mercy and His power, Christ is nothing to us. Christ is everything to him that trusts Him. Christ is nothing but a judge and a condemnation to him that trusts Him not. A. Maclaren, Sermons in Manchester, 1st series, p. 68. Romans 8:17I. Sonship with Christ necessarily involves suffering with Him. This is not merely a text for people that are in affliction, but for all of us. It does not merely contain a law for a certain part of life, but it contains a law for the whole of life. It is the inward strife and conflict in getting rid of evil, which the Apostle designates here with the name of suffering with Christ, that we may be also glorified together. On this high level and not on the lower one of the consideration that Christ will help us to bear outward infirmities and afflictions, do we find the true meaning of all that Scripture teaching that says indeed, "Yes, our sufferings are His," but lays the foundation of it in this, "His sufferings are ours." II. This community of suffering is a necessary preparation for the community of glory. God puts us to the school of sorrow, under that stern tutor and governor here, and gives us the opportunity of suffering with Christ, that by the daily crucifixion of our own nature, by the lessons and blessings of outward calamities and changes, there may grow up in us a still nobler and purer and perfecter Divine life; and that we may so be made capable— more capable, and capable of more— of that inheritance for which the only necessary thing is the death of Christ, and the only fitness is faith in His name. III. That inheritance is the necessary result of the suffering that has gone before. The suffering results from our union with Christ. That union must needs culminate in glory. The inheritance is sure because Christ possesses it now. Trials have no meaning unless they are means to an end. The end is the inheritance; and sorrows here, as well as the Spirit's work here, are the earnest of the inheritance. The measure of the distance from the farthest point of our darkest earthly sorrow to the throne may help us to the measure of the closeness of the bright, perfect, perpetual glory above, when we are on the throne; for if so be that we are sons, we must suffer with Him; if so be that we suffer, we must be glorified together. A. Maclaren, Sermons in Manchester, 1st series, p. 82. References: Romans 8:17.—Homilist, 3rd series, vol. iv., p. 48; M. Rainsford, No Condemnation, pp. 95, 103; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 135. Romans 8:18.— H. Wace, Church of England Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 49; Fletcher, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 221. Romans 8:18-21.— H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 27. Romans 8:18-22 The Groans of Creation. I. In trying to understand the several voices which make up this chorus of expectation, we must commence with the dumb companion of our hope, the physical creation. II. Deep in the constitution of our present earth, and continuous along its whole past history, I think we may trace the subjection of all its animated beings to a law of vanity. We are in a world which has not yet attained, neither is already perfect, but which yearns and labours in the hope to produce what shall be better than itself. III. Christ has been delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the Son of God. In His deliverance is contained a pledge of that for which nature groaning waits. The original conditions under which our world was placed and has been kept so long become intelligible when we see that the world, like man, is a redeemed world, on its way to share in the splendid destiny to which Christ conducts redeemed humanity. J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 246. References: Romans 8:18-23.—Homilist, new series, vol. iv., p. 154. Romans 8:18-27.—Preacher's Monthly, vol. iv., p. 395. Romans 8:19, Romans 8:20.— W. C. E. Newbolt, Counsels of Faith and Practice, p. 134. Romans 8:19-21 The Freedom of the Regenerate Will. The plain meaning of this text is, that the whole world, conscious of its disinheritance, is crying aloud for the Spirit of adoption, which is even now about to be shed abroad. The nations are teeming with gifts of secret grace which shall be gathered and compacted, by the power of a new birth, into the mystical body of Christ; they are waiting and breaking forth in impatient desire for the message of life which the Father gave to His Son, and His Son has given unto us, that out of that dark waste shall spring up sons and saints of God. "He will destroy the face of the covering and the vail that is spread over all nations," and the powers of the regeneration and of the resurrection shall work throughout mankind, casting forth the first and the second death and healing the wounds of all creatures. The great gift of the gospel in our regeneration is spiritual liberty, that is, the true freedom of the will. I. Consider how deep a degradation sin is— above all, in the regenerate. The hatefulness of sin is hardly more appalling than its shame. There is no slavery so great as that of a will which has broken the yoke of Christ, and become, by its own free choice, the servant of its own sinful inclinations; for the will itself is in bondage to its own lusts. Sometimes they appear under forms that the world admires, and become, every one, masters to whom we abandon the glorious liberty of the children of God. There is something very melancholy in the abject and eager servility with which men obey their hard commands; sacrificing health, peace, freshness of heart, conscience, the light of God's presence, the very soul of their spiritual life. They enter again insensibly into the bondage of corruption, and groan under the burden which weighs on them more heavily day by day. II. We may learn, next, how great is the misery of an inconsistent life. It forfeits the true grace of Christian obedience. To be religious from mere sense of necessity, that is, against our will, is a contradiction and a yoke. It is much to be feared that many whose lives are pure, who appear devout in all the outward usages of the Church, serve God with a heart that has no pleasure in obedience. Their free will is given to another, and it is but a constrained homage they render to Christ. The glorious liberty of the children of God turns to a forced, necessary observance of commandments. They are under a law, and have retrograded in the scale of spiritual perfection; from sons, they have turned back again to be servants; and their whole temper of heart towards God is infected by a consciousness of indevotion and of a lingering, undutiful will. It is because we do not realise the blessedness and the power of a free will; because we will not do God's will as sons, out of a loving and glad obedience, therefore we cannot stand against the world. It takes us captive and puts out our eyes, and sets us blinded to the mill to labour in darkness, in an involuntary and shameful servitude. H. G. Manning, Sermons, vol. iii., p. 114. References: Romans 8:19-22.— H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxviii., p. 186; J. Owen, Ibid., vol. xxix., p. 376. Romans 8:19-23I. The groaning creation. We are surrounded by the evidences of a conflicting existence, a state of being— not all evil, certainly; certainly not all of God. All things about us show the wrestlings of two orders of things— two orders of spirits, who find on our earth their battle-ground and arena of conflict. "The whole creation groaneth." Time is the great school of suffering, and life is the great teacher. My text points me to a suffering world, but this is God's pathway to restitution. Christianity associates Divine ends and aims with suffering and my text points to them. II. The earnest expectation. All the agitations of the world are the earnest of its need of rest. All things are in their prison or their grave, and beauty blooms only as the plant of a southern clime might bloom in Iceland. And what foundation has the groaning world for its expectant waiting for a time of restitution? The foundation is in the fact that the ransom has been paid and peace has been proclaimed to a revolted universe. We have heard in the groans of creation the tones of wailing over the fall of man, and in this restitution there is a threefold blessing: (1) There is reconciliation; (2) by that reconciliation Scripture assures us that the salvation of all mankind is made possible and the salvation of an immense multitude is certain; (3) this reconciliation was effected by one Mediator, and by one only, even our Redeemer Jesus Christ. III. To that hour of restitution all things are pointing. What is our Lord doing now in His high and holy place? He is expecting till His enemies become His footstool; looking out, looking forward. There is no ignorance implied in this, but a pausing until the fulness of the time shall come. No, from His intercessory throne, while He takes an interest in His friends, He is expecting. The turpitude and the crime of His enemies will only be His threshold to more illustrious and exalted power. He beholds all the hosts of evil tramping on their mad and foredoomed way. He is expecting till— they become His footstool. E. Paxton Hood, Sermons, p. 249. References: Romans 8:19-23.— M. Rainsford, No Condemnation, p. 171. Romans 8:19-25.— E. Johnson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xii., p. 177. Romans 8:20.— C. J. Vaughan, Words of Hope, p. 221; Homilist, new series, vol. ii., p. 350. Romans 8:20-22.— H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiii., p. 122. Romans 8:21.—Homilist, vol. vii., p. 123; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. vi., p. 345; Parker, City Temple, vol. i., p. 62; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 334. Romans 8:22-23 Groans of Unrenewed and Renewed Nature. I. All things bear about them strange tokens of good and evil. Each pictures to us some part of the glory of their Maker, each of our vanity. They minister to us, only by their corruption; they live, only to die. Seeds grow not, but by perishing; when grown they are our food through their destruction. Flowers turn not to fruit but by the fading of their glory. All seems to toil, all changes, all decays, all, in one weary and restless round, seem to say, "We abide not for ever, here is not thy rest." The creature, then, is subject to vanity, through outward decay; itself perishable, and serving to perishable ends. II. But more! It was all formed "very good" to its Maker's praise; and now, through which hath He not been dishonoured? If beautiful, man loves and admires it without or more than God, or worships it instead of Him. If any bring outward evil, man on occasion of it murmurs against its Maker. All around us and in us bears sad tokens of the Fall. As then to us death is to be the gate of immortality and glory, so in some way to them. Whence Holy Scripture says elsewhere, "The earth shall wax old like a garment"; and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner. As then we, so many as are in Christ, perish not utterly, but put off only corruption, to be, by a new and immortal birth, clothed with incorruption, so also they. III. The taste of heavenly things kindles but the more burning thirst to have them. How is it that we have so few of these heavenly longings? In two ways is the longing for God attained, and neither will avail without the other. First, unlearn the love of self and of the world and of its distractions; secondly, contemplate God, His lovingkindness and His promised rewards. Dedicate, morning by morning, the actions of the day to God; live in His presence, do things or leave them undone, not simply because it is right or kind, much less according to mere natural temper, but to God. If we make God our end, He who gave us the grace thus to seek Him will give us His love; He will increase our longing desire for Him; and whom in all we seek, whom in all we would please, whom in all we would love, Him shall we find, Him possess, here in grace and veiled, hereafter in glory. E. B. Pusey, Sermons, vol. ii., p. 304. References: Romans 8:22, Romans 8:23.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. ii., p. 193; T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. i., p. 94; W. J. Keay, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 340; A. C. Tait, Church Sermons, vol. i., p. 305. Romans 8:23 The Aspirations of a Christian Soul. Consider:— I. The nature of Christian aspirations. There are two points to be illustrated here. (1) The fact that the firstfruits of the Spirit are groaning for our full adoption. The Spirit reveals to us our adoption (a) by revealing the love of God, (b) by the gift of spiritual power, (c) by the gift of Divine peace. (2) The groaning reaches to a prayer for the redemption of the body. The power of the body to perpetuate the influences of past sin renders it an awful hindrance to the man who feels the firstfruits of the Spirit of God. And thus it is that we who have the firstfruits of the Spirit must incessantly cry for the redemption of the body from its weakness and pain and evil, because we know that until then we can never reach the heavenly love and power and blessedness which belong to us as sons of God. II. Their prophetic hopes. I say "prophetic" advisedly; for in the term "firstfruits" Paul has distinctly implied that these aspirations are not mere dreams, but real prophecies— not fanciful expectations, but actual foreshadowings of the beauty and blessedness that shall be when God makes perfect the redeemed. (1) We hope for the redeemed body; for as we said just now, the body is the grand hindrance to the aspirations of the soul. And now mark the prophetic cries which lie hid in that hope. Because it is a firstfruit of the Spirit, it foretells that every bodily power shall come forth, not crushed, but made stronger and brighter from the touch of death. (2) We hope for the redeemed world. Paul in the context has dared to affirm that the pain and death of the creature form one loud prophetic wail for the redemption of the earth. Take then your hopes, and believe that in their highest intensity they are literally prophetic of the age when the new Jerusalem shall come down from God like a bride adorned for her husband. III. Their present lessons. (1) We need them all. The very loftiest of these aspirations are absolutely needful to guard us against the very lowest and meanest of the temptations of the everyday world. (2) We must live them all. If we simply treasure them in the soul as beautiful feelings, and do not strive to carry their influence into life, they will fade; for every aspiration which has not practical power is absolutely injurious to a man's spirit, and destined to wither into an idle sentiment. E. L. Hull, Sermons, 1st series, p. 234. References: Romans 8:23.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. x., p. 92; J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 6th series, p. 253; Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, pp. 176, 231, 341. Romans 8:23-27 Waiting in Hope. I. The unintelligent creatures wait, but not in hope. They travail as in pain with the burden of a future birth, of which they themselves are ignorant. We know what we wait for. The sons of God possess already an earnest of their coming inheritance. II. Sober this hope of Christian men in the final regeneration of all things may always be; confident it should be, for it is built on Divine facts. But how seldom can it reach a buoyant or cheerful tone! But the Christian, oppressed with the world's load, is not alone at his solitary prayers. A mystic comrade is near, who tempers the natural cry of one in pain into dutiful and gracious submission, and above another Paraclete or Intercessor, who likewise, touched with the feeling of our infirmity, makes prayer for us in His own name on high. J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 256. Romans 8:24 Eternal Life. I. "We are saved by hope," says St. Paul: "but hope that is seen is not hope." This is the great contrast which runs through the New Testament. Indeed, scientific proof is just what, in the very nature of the case, religion does not admit of. What we mean by scientific proof is the verification, by event or experiment, of some calculation or reasoning or interpretation of facts, which has pointed to some particular conclusion, but not as yet actually reached it. Before this verification there is a direction in which things plainly go, a disposition of facts one way, but there is only probability; after, and by this verificacation, there is certainty. To have scientific proof of a future state is to have found out by having died and actually passed into that state and found yourself in it, that the reasoning on which you had previously in life expected and looked forward to that state was correct reasoning, and that you had made a true prophecy. But this proof, in the nature of the case, we cannot have now. II. There is one great distinction between the current probabilities of life and the expectation of a future state. The probabilities of life pass in rapid succession into their state of either verification or falsification; they do not, for the most part, keep us long waiting: when it is evening, we say it will be fair weather, for the sky is red; and in the morning we say it will be foul weather, for the sky is red and lowering; the morning soon fulfils or refutes the presage of the evening, and the evening soon refutes or fulfils the prognostic of the morning. It is the same with respect to the transactions of life. But the great prophecy of reason has not yet received its verification. A future life is not proved by experiment. Generation after generation have gone to their graves, looking for the morning of the resurrection; the travellers have all gone with their faces set eastward, and their eyes turned to that eternal shore upon which the voyage of life will land them. But from that shore there is no return; none come back to tell us the result of the journey; there is no report, no communication made from the world they have arrived at. No voice reaches us from all the myriads of the dead to announce that the expectation is fulfilled, and that experiment has ratified the argument for immortality. III. It is forgotten, in the charge of self-interestedness against the motive of a human life, that this motive is not only a desire for our happiness, but a desire, at the same time, for our own higher goodness. The two wishes are essentially bound up together in the doctrine of a future state, as not only a continuation of existence, not only an improvement in the circumstances of existence, but as an ascent of existence. In the Christian doctrine of a future state we have this remarkable conjunction, that the real belief in the doctrine goes together with, and is fastened to, the moral sublimity of the state. In the pagan doctrine both of these were absent; the life itself was poor, shadowy, and sepulchral on the one hand, and the belief in it was feeble and volatile on the other. In the Christian doctrine both are present together, the glorious nature of life itself and the reality of the belief in it. Besides, the desire for immortality is not a lonely one; no human being ever desired a future life for himself alone; he wants it for all for whom he entertains an affection here; all the good whom he has known, or whom he has only heard of. Christianity knows nothing of a hope of immortality for the individual alone, but only of a glorious hope for the individual in the Body in the eternal society of the Church triumphant. J. B. Mozley, University Sermons, p. 46. References: Romans 8:24.— H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 115; Ibid., vol. iv., p. 121; Ibid., vol. xi., p. 193; Ibid., vol. xii., p. 301; Preacher's Monthly, vol. ii., p. 93; A. Murray, The Fruits of the Spirit, p. 323; G. Litting, Thirty Children's Sermons, p. 213; E. Bickersteth, Church Sermons, vol. ii., p. 129; M. Rainsford, No Condemnation, p. 135. Romans 8:26 The Spirit the Help to Prayer. The highest gift of God is that which is for all alike. We need the Spirit for all the works we have to do. We can speak no true, honest, sound word unless we ask Him to teach us what we shall say and how we shall say it. I. What are we to do when we feel as if we could not pray? as if that were the greatest difficulty of all? It is the Spirit who helps us, not only to think and to do, but also to pray— who draws out our desires towards God, who speaks more for us and in us than we know. It is very wonderful, but yet it must be so. We could not pray if God Himself were not stirring up prayer in us. It is not we who first seek for fellowship with Him; He seeks to have fellowship with us. The children begin to ask for their Father because the Father has been first seeking His children. II. Is it not a blessed thought that the Spirit is uttering His groans for the deliverance of this world of ours from all its sin and slavery and wretchedness? Should we not rejoice that God knows what is the mind of the Spirit, for it is His own mind? Should we not trust, with all our hearts, that His will should at last be done on earth even as it is in heaven? And do not think that those who have prayed that prayer here on earth pray it less fervently when they leave the earth. Then their tongues are loosed; then they can pray for us and all their friends fighting here below, as God's Spirit would have them pray; then they begin to know that no prayer or groan that has been uttered in the lowliest chamber or in the darkest dungeon shall be in vain. God's Spirit inspired these prayers and groans, and His new heaven and new earth will be the answer to them. F. D. Maurice, Sermons in Country Churches, p. 80. References: Romans 8:26.—Homilist, vol. vi., p. 410; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iii., p. 12; W. Harris, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 320; J. Silcox, Ibid., vol. xxxii., p. 104; H. W. Beecher, Sermons, 9th series, p. 296; D. Moore, Penny Pulpit, No. 3149; M. Rainsford, No Condemnation, p. 122; F. Paget, Anglican Pulpit of Today, p. 447; T. Birkett Dover, A Lent Manual, p. 27; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 217. Romans 8:26-27 The Intercession of the Spirit. I. We have here the reality of prayer confirmed. Paul was a man of truth and soberness, free from superstition and fanatical weakness. He knew of what he was speaking, and he was sure that the Romans would know it too. It was for no inner circle of enthusiasts he was writing here, but for all that were in Rome, called to be saints. The Church in the metropolis, the busy, active society of Rome, is bidden. Mark the care God takes to help the infirmities and educate the spirit of His children. Those prayers of yours, He is saying, are oftentimes the truest and devoutest in which you can say nothing. Feeling and desire— in these, as well as in thought and purpose, God can recognise the spirit of the worshipper. II. The Divine origin of these unutterable longings is here confirmed. Consider the solemn blessedness of these words: "The Spirit helpeth our infirmities." In the solemn hour of prayer, on which our life and activity so much depends; when, as we ask we receive, and if we ask not we receive not; in the solemn hour of prayer, that leaves us refreshed and strengthened, or wearied and yet more perplexed; in the solemn hour of prayer, when we are desiring from God what shall be the bane or blessing of many days, we cannot dispense with the Spirit's intercession. III. God fully understands the meaning of these longings that are not fully understood by the subject of them. In the unutterable cry for God, He reads a desire for communion with Him fuller than has yet been satisfied. In the struggle of the soul that knows not "what to pray for as we ought," in the shaking sobs of him who is torn by distracting feelings between personal wishes and the feeling that there may be something higher and nobler far than these, He recognises the spirit striving to conquer the weakness of the flesh, the passion for submission, however hard it may be. to submit. A. Mackennal, Christ's Healing Touch, p. 203. I. What is prayer? (1) Look upon it as grounded upon the office and work of our adorable Saviour. It is not merely feeling, earnestness, fluency of utterance, confession of sin and want. It is the eye fixed upon the blood and the High Priest. We come boldly to the throne of grace, because we have a great High Priest before the mercy seat. (2) But there is another view of prayer, connected with the work of the Spirit. The quickening power of this Divine agent brings life into the soul and life into our prayer. It is not the exercise of any particular grace, but the combined energy of all. Confidence is linked with humility, contrition, love; all the meek and lowly fruits, so adorning, so necessary to the completeness of Christian consistency, find their place here when the heart is poured out before the mercy seat. And yet what a mass of infirmities! Look at— I.. The matter of our prayers. We know not what to pray for. Left to ourselves we are as likely to be ruined by our prayers as the ungodly by the neglect of prayer. Yet we are not left here in despondency. We are led to mark— I.I. Our assistance in prayer. Great as our infirmities are, our assistance is fully equal to meet them. We have not only an Almighty Surety, but an Almighty Supporter. The blessed Spirit of God condescends to our need, and brings abundant supply, apart from all other sources of encouragement. (1) He excites in us intense desires, groanings unuttered and unutterable— perhaps too big for utterance— desire venting itself in sighs. Nothing but experience can explain this exercise. It is the warmth, life, and vigour of prayer. It is the breathing of Divine supplication, as if the Spirit of God was joining His own soul with ours. (2) Again we observe this Divine help in moulding these unutterable desires in subjection to the will of God. Never are we likely to receive a blessing unless we are willing to go without it. IV. The acceptance of prayer. Often we do not thoroughly know it. But not a breath is lost before God. When the fire seems to go out, have we never found the living spark underneath the heap of embers? And so does the great Searcher see under this mass the spark of His own kindling— the mind of His own Spirit. So does He spell out the ill-printed letters, the disordered and confused matter, and brings them out to be the desires framed by His own Spirit making intercession— moulding them to His own will. C. Bridges, Family Treasury, Dec, 1861. Romans 8:26-27 The word "likewise" with which my text begins institutes a comparison between what is set forth in the text and what had been said before. To grasp this comparison fully we must go back to the eighteenth verse. The Apostle there sets out with a declaration, the peculiar wording of which is meant to show that he is speaking, not with the exaggeration of eloquent appeal or excited feeling, but with the sobriety of simple and deliberate calculation. "For I reckon that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us hereafter." Yet few men have had richer experience of the sufferings of the present life than Paul. The thought to which the word "likewise" in my text goes back is this. Creation, so far as we are concerned with it, sympathises with us, but its sympathy is unavailing; it cannot aid us: on the contrary, the aid is to come from us to it; it looks to our deliverance as the beginning of its own. We want, therefore, something else. We want a sympathy not merely of weak creature fellow-feeling, but of powerful creative aid, and this sympathy my text sets forth. "Likewise," in like manner, but with far different result, "the Spirit also" not merely sympathises with us, but "helpeth our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." The effectual, omnipresent sympathy of the third Person in the ever-blessed Trinity is the wondrous fact which these words disclose. I. This is, perhaps, one of the deepest, as it is surely one of the most comforting passages in Holy Writ. It takes us at once into those dark mysteries of self-consciousness, hidden from all others, half hidden even from ourselves, clear to none but our Creator, which go down to the foundations of our being, nay, to the very depths of the Being and operation of God Himself. For we can, indeed, easily conceive the impossibility of clearly knowing at every instant what we ought to pray for other than in the most general terms. We can also, and still more easily, conceive the impossibility of knowing how to pray as we ought; we all experience it. The wandering of the mind, the listlessness, the absolute blank of thought and feeling which sometimes seems to engulf it when we kneel down to pray; the mere unconnected rhapsodical ejaculations in which the most fervent prayer, like the celebrated ecstasy of Pascal, so often loses itself. All these are so many instances of the not knowing how to pray. The mind sinks in the attempt to rise to God. And so, too, with our ignorance of what we ought to ask. Prayer is the desire of man laid before his Maker. But what shall we desire? Knowledge of His truth in this world, in the world to come life everlasting, seem pretty nearly to exhaust all we are sure we ought to ask. Yet, were our prayers always limited to these two simple but sublime petitions, should we not feel as though much was omitted? True, we can have no knowledge of God's truth unless we have the will to do it: a pure heart is therefore implicitly involved in this petition: and a pure heart, again, involves a right conscience in all the affairs of life; but these things, however sweeping, are things we have or seek to have in common; they are general, not individual needs. Each of us has his own station, his own position, his own character and constitution, mental and bodily; each one of us has, more or less, abused that position, that character, that constitution; each, therefore, has his own burden, known, beyond himself, to God alone. All these differences demand different treatment in each individual case; each has, in consequence, his own individual difficulties. The effort of prayer must be made much in the dark. We know not what to pray for any more than we know how. And here comes in the full comfort of my text. For, strange and paradoxical as it may sound, it is here that the Divine and human seem to touch; on this borderland of ignorance and powerlessness they meet. For though the Spirit Himself helpeth our infirmities by interceding for us when we know neither what to ask nor how, it is only by groans or sighs inarticulate and unutterable, beyond all language to express, beyond all thought distinctly to conceive. II. Many, perhaps I ought to say most, Christians do not really believe the presence of the Holy Spirit in themselves, because of the imperfections of which they are conscious. They cannot take to themselves the things of God in all their fulness because they intimate things so far transcending their own condition and feeling, that they think it impossible they should really apply to them in their literal sense. The comfort which this deep and wondrous passage is meant to give resides not merely in the statement that the Spirit does actually help our infirmities by pleading for us, but in the assurance that the imperfection of our present state and progress, of our religious experience, in a word, need be no bar to our thankfully believing that we, too, have the Spirit, since the Spirit dwelling in each shares, so to speak, our imperfection; limits Himself by the capacities of each, accommodates Himself to the character of each. Let us not deny the Christ that liveth in us, because that life is hid even from ourselves with Christ in God. Let us not ignore the Spirit that dwelleth in us, because we do not as yet see all things conquered by Him, all our thoughts pervaded by Him; remember that if there is but one good aspiration, one wish to do and be that which is right and pleasing to God; one upward look, one sign of the heart and mind to that infinite and eternal Good which alone can satisfy, we have evidence of the Divine existing in us, since it is of His alone that we can give unto Him; since without His Spirit we could neither desire nor conceive beyond the circle of those earthly things within which our earthly life is banned and confined. Solemnise, then, and purify, as well as cheer, your hearts and minds with these thoughts. It would seem that in all God's universe there is no being, after God, so august as man, because no other being's nature did God take in the person of His Son, in no other being does God vouchsafe to dwell by His Spirit. Lift up your hearts, then, to that state, that place, that presence which alone are adequate to the wants and desires we feel within us; and as you lift them up to the Eternal and to that heaven of heavens which yet cannot contain Him, take courage, and learn endurance from the thought that the Spirit Himself helpeth our infirmities, ever making intercession for us out of the depths of His own being with sighs and plaints that cannot indeed be uttered, and must for ever remain unknown to us, but which are perfectly understood by Him to whom they ascend, because it is according to His own will that the Spirit thus maketh intercession for all who are dedicated unto Him. C. P. Reichel, Oxford and Cambridge Journal, p. 883. The Intercession of the Spirit in Prayer. I. The necessity for a Divine inspirer of prayer. (1) To ask rightly we must realise the solemnity of asking. We utter our little thought to the Everlasting thought— our poor cry to the Sustainer of the worlds. To feel this is profoundly difficult. We are such slaves to the visible and the apparent. But when touched by the Divine Spirit, we rouse all the powers of our being to realise the Divine presence as an overwhelming reality— not a cold faith in the mere existence of the Deity, but the conviction that He is the sublime reality before which all visible things are shadows— that He is a presence nearer to us than friend or brother— a presence in actual contact with our spirits. (2) To ask rightly we must ask with persevering earnestness. We ought always to pray and not to faint. Do we verily believe God will hear us, and do we pray as though He were hearing? When we possess the abiding spirit of prayer, when the whole aspect of the spirit's life is seeking, then will our direct petitions have a power that amid all hindrances shall persevere. II. The manner of the Spirit's inspiration. (1) The awakening of inexpressible emotion "with groanings that cannot be uttered." All deep emotions are too large for language— they outsoar the narrow range of human speech. (2) The certainty of Divine response. We dare not ask absolutely for any particular blessing, but the Spirit inspires the cry "Thy will be done," and the right blessings are given. God alters not His order, and because He alters it not we win blessings by spiritual prayer which would not have been bestowed without it. E. L. Hull, Sermons, 3rd series, p. 1. References: Romans 8:26, Romans 8:27.— M. Rainsford, No Condemnation, p. 197. Romans 8:27.— H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxx., p. 145. Romans 8:28I. St. Paul believes that there is a purpose, an end, towards which events are tending. It looks at first sight like a faith rather than the conclusion of an argument. Reason alone, it has been said, might arrive at an opposite conclusion. How can we see a providential guidance, a Divine plan of any kind, in the bloody game which chiefly makes up history? How can we trace it in the conduct of generations, of races, who successively appear upon the surface of this planet to make trials one after another of the same crude experiments, as if the past had furnished no experience with which to guide them? It is true enough that the purpose of God in human history is traversed— that it is obscured— by causes to which the apostles of human despair may point very effectively; and yet here, as ever, we Christians dare to say that we walk by faith where sight fails us, as elsewhere, and we see enough to resist so depressing a conclusion as that before us— to know that the course of events is not thus fatal, thus desperate. "All things work together for good." II. By "good" the Apostle does not mean material, visible prosperity. Success in life is not linked to the love of God even in the majority of cases. The good of which the Apostle is speaking is real, absolute, eternal good. It is the good of the soul rather than of the body. It is the good of the eternal world rather than of the present world. It may be that a man's circumstances have no very marked character one way or another. It may be that they are a tissue of crushing misfortunes. It may be that they are a succession of conspicuous successes. The love of God is the magician which extracts the ore alike from each, and which makes each and all promote man's final, man's absolute good. No life whatever is made up of such commonplaces that each cannot be made, by this love, to sparkle with the very highest moral interest. No misfortunes are so great that they cannot be built into the very steps of the staircase by which souls mount up to heaven. H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit, No. 647. How are we to regard this certitude of the Apostle? Must we not look upon it as a rational conviction, strengthened and confirmed by an experience ample, varied, and wonderful; established by a faith in the Christian verities, and made immovable by the spiritual visions of a heart disciplined by trial and purified by affliction? And this is a certitude open to us all, if we seek it; for though it may seem impossible to our reason, it is easy of attainment to the obedience of faith, and yet faith is not blind. Let us contemplate the source of its light, that our reason be not confounded at the confidence of our heart. I. All things are at work and subject to constant change. The fact is obvious. Ceaseless change conditions everything on earth. And what an air of sadness this self-evident fact gives to our life! As years wear on confidence becomes broken, expectation lessens, hope declines, a trust in creatures is found to be vain, a feeling of insecurity steals over us, which denies us peace, and so fills the mind with fear of foreboded evil, that even in laughter the heart is sad. II. All things work together. The addition of this one word alters everything. It introduces design where there appeared to be no aim, order where all seemed chaos, and a matured plan where there seemed no purpose; so that now "nothing walks with aimless feet." Everything has its appointed way, occupies a given place, and exercises a prepared and regulated influence. The Divine purpose embraces all. They are but spheres and co-operative agencies carrying out the one purpose which runs through all ages. "Of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things," "Who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will." III. But to what purpose, to what end do all things work together? Our text answers, "All things work together for good." This is no mere conjecture, nor simply the assertion of an inspired apostle, but a necessary deduction from the fact we have been considering. If all things work together, then good must be the result. For evil has no power of co-operation. Evil elements cannot be combined, they are antagonistic to each other. The way of goodness carries its security, for the attainment of its end, in its own moral power. The purpose of goodness cannot fail of accomplishment, for the true nature of everything is in accordance with the will, the way, and the work of God. But evil is vanity, and the way of evil a vain show, and the end less than nothing, and vanity. IV. But if all things work together for good, then also for the best. Divine goodness has but one end for the same creature, and that is the best possible. His mind can only purpose the best in relation to the creature concerned. And to reach this end He has but one way, and that is the best. Science knows that there is but one way of doing anything truly, just as there is but one straight line between two points. How impossible, then, that the only wise God should have for His children any end or any way to that end but the best! V. But for whom will this co-operation of all things work out its highest good? "For those that love God." The highest good can only be received by rightly directed affections. Only love can take up the issue of this universal co-operation, which is working out what the eternal love has purposed. W. Pulsford, Trinity Church Sermons, p. 93. I. "All things." We may say literally and without exception all things; for there is a sense in which a human being is related to everything. He is related supremely to God, and by that relation he touches the whole universe. There is a strain of truth as well as a lofty tone of poetry in that old war hymn which makes the stars in their courses fight against Sisera. All things, high and low, fight for or against a man continually. But probably the "all things" here meant are those things which more nearly and constantly affect men. There are things which gather round each person; things which are distributed over the field of his life; things which touch him so immediately, that they give him daily help or daily hindrance as the case may be. II. "All things work together." That explains, in a considerable measure, the great changes that take place, and the great progress that is sometimes made very quickly. Things work together. A man is over-matched sometimes by the weight and pressure of the things he has to do, when a new circumstance occurs, a new thing is born, and as it were instantly yokes itself into harness with the rest, and the object is attained. All things work together, not in an aimless and capricious manner, for this end and that, now in one way and now in another, as though a stream should one day flow seawards and the next back towards its fountain among the hills, but in one volume, along one channel, in one direction, towards one end. Everything is held as in one despotic bond, and gathered up and hurried along the one inevitable channel. III. The greatest question in life to a man is this, "Of what character is the supreme influence of all the things which work together in my life? I am being educated— in what nurture? I am being moved forward to something— what is that something? I am growing— in whose image, and towards the measure of what stature?" The true test is this, "Is there love to God?" It is not, "Am I strong enough to vanquish or successfully resist the forces of life?" because no man is nor ever will be. To say nothing of the buffetings that must come and the changes to which the most obstinate must yield, there is to each at last, and to one as much as to another, the grand defeat— every man, soon or late, is laid on the bed of death, is buried in the grave. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/sermonbible/ Romans 9:3-4 Christian Patriotism. I. It is a noble paradox. The sacrifice which is offered is impossible. There is something of sadness in the passion which suggests it. Great as is the offering, how could it possibly save a nation which trampled under foot a sacrifice far greater? It cost more to redeem souls; that more had been paid in vain: how should the less now suffice? St. Paul speaks as a man speaks— the language of feeling, not of logic. Only let us recognise that it is his genuine feeling that he speaks. It is not a mere figure consciously used and to be explained away before we can get at his meaning. He would give anything to save his brethren— life and everything in life and beyond life that is dearest and best to him. II. The words are a Christian reading of that virtue of which ancient life and the Old Testament are so full— of the love of country, of patriotism. We feel that Paul at least is seeing all the facts of life. He is looking full in the face the realities of the spiritual world; yet this has not extinguished in him the yearning, the pride, the patriotic fervour of his race; it has only given it a deeper, more personal, more practical meaning. There is the tie of common blood; there is the pride of historic name; there is the fond memory of all that the race has been— its responsibilities, its glories, the marks of God's favour to it, the thought of its yet unfulfilled promise; there is all that we feel with respect to our own native country. III. Two things, let us note, Christianity does for patriotism. (1) It gives the sentiment a truer basis in reason. (2) It teaches us how much deeper and wider a thing is the welfare of the community than men have dreamed before. Politics cannot be separated from morals. The law of God, the law of justice, mercy, unselfishness, rules the actions of a nation as well as every member of it. E. C. Wickham, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxi., p. 409. References: Romans 9:3-5.— E. M. Goulburn, Occasional Sermons, p. 207. Romans 9:5.—Homilist, vol. v., p. 270. Romans 9:11-13.— S. A. Tipple, Sunday Mornings at Norwood, p. 90. Romans 9:13, Romans 9:14.— J. Vaughan, Sermons, 12th series, p. 69. Romans 9:15.— Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 332. Romans 9:16.—Homilist, new series, vol. i., p. 627. Romans 9:17, Romans 9:18.—Ibid., vol. ii., p. 322. Romans 9:21.—Church of England Pulpit, vol. xxi., p. 61. Romans 9:21-23—Homilist, vol. ii., p. 23. Romans 9:30, Romans 9:31.— J. Salmon, The Anglican Pulpit of Today, p. 295. Romans 10:1.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. ii., p. 80; vol. v., p. 285. Romans 10:1-11.—Homilist, 3rd series, vol. iv., p. 61. Romans 10:2.— J. Foster, Lectures, 1st series, p. 271. Romans 10:3 Prevalent Errors on Justification Considered. Note:— I. The notion that the spirit may receive an honourable discharge at the great day on the ground of obedience to the law. It is an opinion which exists, indeed, in floating, formless hopes, rather than in the shape of clear and lighted thought; yet it is sufficiently defined and powerful to sway the existence of vast multitudes. "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." No law can acquit a man who is convicted of its violation; if we should receive acquittal, it must be on another principle. II. A more prevalent theory is that which supposes that sorrow for the past and amendment for the future will be accepted as the ground of justification. But the law "requireth that which is past." The law would still say, "Pay me that thou owest." We should still be in hopeless debt. For this additional reason amendment would not justify. There could be no justification, filling the soul with soft and sure delight after the tears of sorrow and the struggles for amendment, like the clear shining after rain. III. Another prevalent opinion is, that justification is wrought by Christ, along with certain co-operative actions of the creature. What is the truth? The oracles of God declare the truth as to the provision that is made for our justification. We are assured that the sinner is justified by Jesus Christ alone. We must "submit" to the righteousness of God." We must submit to enter an ark which we could not build, which we may not navigate, but which we must only enter in powerless dependence on unseen love and grace. The work of saving man, like the work of creating man, is Divine throughout. Other religions represent it as man's work towards God; our religion as God's work toward man. C. Stanford, Central Truths, p. 99. References: Romans 10:3.— W. Cunningham, Sermons, p. 213; Homilist, 3rd series, vol. ix., p. 282; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 264. Romans 10:4 The Law of the Spirit. In this text there are three subjects which call for remark: the Law, Righteousness, and Faith. Consider them in succession. I. "The Law." By the Law is meant the eternal unchangeable Law of God, which is the revelation of His will, the standard of perfection, and the mould of fashion to which all creatures must conform, as they would be happy. As Adam, the child of the dust, was also an image of God, so the Jewish Law, though earthly and temporary, had at the same time a Divine character. It was the light of God shining in a gross medium, in order that it might be comprehended; and if it did not teach the chosen people all, it taught them much, and in the only way in which they could be taught it. And hence, in the text, St. Paul, when on the subject of the Jews, speaks of their Law as if it were the eternal Law of God; and so it was, but only as brought down to its hearers, and condescending to their infirmity. II. By "Righteousness" is meant conformity to the law— that one state of soul which is pleasing to God. It is a relative word, having reference to a standard set up, and expressing the fulfilment of its requirements. To be righteous is to act up to the law, whatever the law be, and thereby to be acceptable to Him who gave it. "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness," because He effects the purpose of the law. He brings that about which the law cannot do, because it is weak through the flesh, through our unregenerate, unrenewed, carnal nature. III. But here the question may be asked, How can we be said to fulfil the law and to offer an acceptable sacrifice since we do not obey perfectly? I answer as follows: He can only be justified, certainly, by what is perfect; no work of ours, as far as it is ours, is perfect, and therefore by no work of ours, viewed in its human imperfections, are we justified. But when I speak of our righteousness I speak of the work of the Spirit, and this work, though imperfect considered as ours, is perfect as far as it comes from Him. Our works done in the Spirit of Christ have a justifying principle in them, and that is the presence of the All-Holy Spirit. And this Divine presence in us makes us altogether pleasing to God. But again, there is another reason why, for Christ's sake, we are dealt with as perfectly righteous, though we be not so. God anticipates what will be, and treats believers as that which they are labouring to become. Faith is the element of all perfection; he who begins with faith will end in unspotted and entire holiness. J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. v., p. 143. References: Romans 10:4.— A. D. Davidson, Lectures and Sermons, p. 229. Romans 10:6, Romans 10:7.—Homilist, vol. iv., p. 421. Romans 10:6-10.— W. Hay Aitken, Sermons, 2nd series, p. 199. Romans 10:6-8.—Homilist, 3rd series, vol. ii., p. 47. Romans 10:6-9.— W. Anderson, Discourses, p. 180. Romans 10:8 Spiritual Exhaustion. These words were spoken to men who were speculating on mysterious subjects, and they touch, of course with necessary change, one of the troubles of this time. For many of us are wearying ourselves with endless speculation on the loftier subjects of thought in religion. It is not wrong— nay, it is right, for such is our nature, to speculate on these high matters; but if we do nothing else, then we injure our religious life, and lose the use of lofty speculation. Pride or despair follows, but chiefly exhaustion of the spiritual faculty, and oftentimes its death. I. How can we retain the pursuit of high mysteries and truth and not lose ourselves in them, or be cast away in their despair? Whether in life with nature or in spiritual life, exhaustion and its results follow on a straining of our powers. We are ravished at first by the grandeur and the solemn beauty of the mighty questions of religion, and we neglect the wayside beauty of the Christian life. But after a few years at most the mystic glory dies away. These things are too much for us. We are bewildered by the multitude of questions which one after another, like a thousand paths from one centre, open out from each of the great problems. Who can count the dust of thoughts which fly around the question of immortality? II. We should turn, when exhaustion threatens to tire and then to kill the spiritual faculty, to the simple Christian charities and tenderness of daily self-sacrifice, to the unassuming sanctities of those common duties which Christ urged us to do because God Himself did them and loved to do them. In making our home happy by filling it with the spirit of gentle love— in musing on the life of our children, and seeing God in it— in watching for and rejoicing in the heavenly touches of Divine things, which meet us in the common converse of life— in the quiet answer, the genial smile, the patience, zeal, industry, cheerfulness, truthfulness, courtesy, and purity which God asks of us as we pass on our hourly way— in doing and watching and loving these things, we shall not be wearied. They make no violent strain on the imagination or the intellect or the spirit. They do not ask us whether we believe this or that doctrine, or involve us in the storm of life's problems. They are not impossible or inaccessible to any one. Their world lies all around us— in the ordinary relations of man to man, of man to animals, of man to nature, and a mighty God is in them that grows not old. They only need an attentive heart to find them out and a loving heart to do them, and they will give you rest. They will put you in possession of the promise, "Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest to your souls." III. But we shall lose, we say, in this humbler life, the beauty and sublimity which in pursuing high things we found in youth, and we cannot do without beauty, nor aspire without sublimity. We look for beauty of act and feeling too much in the splendid sacrifices, and victories of more than ordinary life, in the lives of men at whom the world stand to gaze. The stormy life of Elijah, the agonised life of St. Paul, struggling continually with the higher questions of feeling, passed in an Alpine realm of thought. Both have their lofty beauty, but they do not win us to their side, or breathe peace into the heart, as the ineffable beauty of the simple daily love of Christ. As we understand Christ better, we see that His quietude was grander than the passionate struggle of the others, that His still obedience places Him in union with the sublimity of God, that His simplicity is the result of infinite wisdom at home and conversant with the deep roots of things. Lowland life, but always on its horizon infinite Paradise. S. A. Brooke, The Spirit of the Christian Life, p. 177. Romans 10:8-9I. Confession with the mouth. Confession does not stop, though it begins, with the confession of sin, of the greatness of its guilt, and the justice of its punishment; it rapidly advances to the confession announced in our text; the confession of sin being not only involved in the confession of Christ, but issuing in that confession in the largest and least qualified sense. He who feels that sin is destroying him is in the exact position to take home the truth that Christ died to deliver him. Where there is genuine confession of sin there will equally be genuine confession of all that is vital in the system of Christianity. Why then should not the being saved follow, as it is made to follow in our text, on confessing with the mouth the Lord Jesus? II. Faith in the heart is that which will produce confession with the mouth. It is very easy, but very unfair, to speak of faith as a mere act of the mind, which naturally follows where there is a sufficiency of evidence, over which, therefore, a man has little or no control, and which, in consequence, ought not to be made the test or criterion of moral qualities. We pronounce this unfair, because it does not take into account the influence which the affections exert over the understanding, in consequence of which a man will readily believe some things and obstinately disbelieve others, though there be no difference in the amount of furnished testimony. It should be remembered that where the things to be believed are things which a man would naturally and strongly wish to disbelieve, there is great probability that the heart will operate injuriously on the head; and if notwithstanding the assent be given, and the unwelcome facts be admitted, we have much reason to suppose that there has been a struggle in the breast, a contest between the power of truth and the power of the inclination, which makes the case widely different from the mere yielding on sufficient evidence which is all, we are told, that can be predicated of faith. Belief with the head might leave the life what it was, but belief with the heart must be a belief unto righteousness, a belief which will be evidenced by the whole tenor of the life. Faith cannot be a barren or uninfluential principle. The doctrines of Scripture are such as, if acknowledged, are of the strongest possible interest to man, so that we must be justified in concluding, as we would of any matter of common life, that all real faith must be wanting where there is manifest disregard of all which faith would enjoin. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2167. Romans 10:9 Belief in the Resurrection of Christ. I. That which serves for the condemnation of the unbeliever, setting at nought all his wisdom, works in every way for the good of the faithful, and so is it with that marvellous fulfilment— the Resurrection. It was such as quite surpassed all the thoughts even of good men. So that when our Lord so often spoke to the apostles of His sufferings and resurrection, it is said they "understood it not." Now, if that were the case then, so will it always be in the fulfilment of those things of which Scripture speaks; the great mysteries of Godhead, the wonders of redemption, things which lie before us, and are around us, and beyond us in Christ's spiritual kingdom; such as no senses are cognisant of, no thought of man hath conceived. II. We have no faculties to comprehend the resurrection; our knowledge is made up of images of varied death; death is stamped on every thought we can entertain; we must then believe what we can in no way understand. Nay, we shall understand it by believing better than by any wisdom we know of. Our life here must be that of daily dying according to this law, until the Spirit shall bid us rest from our labours. O Blessed Saviour, Thou art always in the midst of us, Thy words always are of peace, Thy presence always is of peace, "It is I, be not afraid"; but we are troubled about many things, we cannot raise our hearts to take hold of Thee, to apprehend the substance and reality of God— man with us. "Why art thou so vexed, O my soul? and why art thou so disquieted within me? O put thy trust in God, for I will yet thank Him who is the help of my countenance and my God." Isaac Williams, The Epistles and Gospels, vol. i., p. 420. This is a short chain to reach from earth to heaven— from hell to glory. And God meant it to be easy, and it is easy, but its ease is its difficulty. I. "If thou shalt believe." It is of immense importance that we understand and realise the fact that all real faith lies in the heart. It does not dwell in the understanding; it does not lie in the province of the intellect; it is not the result of reasoning; no education will give it: it is in the affections. Faith is the belief of the heart. But why does God say, "Believe in thine heart that God raised Him from the dead"? (1) The resurrection is the seal of all. By raising Him from the dead, the Father showed that He accepted the ransom Christ had paid, therefore all the rest is contained in this, God raised Him from the dead. (2) That resurrection of Christ is our resurrection. We rise in Him, now, with a newness of life; presently, to a life in glory. II. "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus." What is the confession of the mouth? It may be that general acknowledgment of Christ, and the great doctrines of the Christian religion, which ought to characterise and pervade our common intercourse and our daily conversation. To talk of Christ requires an effort and offends people. And why it offends them, it is very difficult to see, but it does. We all know it and feel it, and yet it is a very solemn thought that Christ spoke these words— "By your words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned." (2) But there is another sense in which the words may be taken. There can be no doubt that from the first, all Christians were required to make, at some time, a public declaration of their faith. This confession, which was once, and is still, properly a part of adult baptism, now belongs to confirmation. Till he is confirmed a person has never made a public confession of Christ and of the Christian religion before God and the world. Then he does it. This places confirmation in its true light, and shows its great and paramount importance. J. Vaughan, Sermons, vol. xx., p. 13. References: Romans 10:9.—Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. ix., p. 131. Romans 10:9, Romans 10:10.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. ix., p. 273. Romans 10:10.—Ibid., vol. iii., p. 282; W. C. E. Newbolt, Counsels of Faith and Practice, p. 64; W. Page Roberts, Liberalism in Religion, p. 75; A. Murray, The Fruits of the Spirit, p. 419; Bishop Westcott, The Historic Faith, p. 185. Romans 10:12I. This declaration, at the time when it was first uttered, was probably equally astonishing to the Jew and the Greek: for the Jew, with his long-descended traditions, his sense of privilege of the most exalted kind, his habit of regarding the nations of the earth as in some degree unclean by the side of the people of the circumcision, to be told that within the pale of the Church he must doff his privilege and take rank according to his spiritual growth in Christ and not according to the purity of his blood; for the Greek, with his eager inquiring intellect, his keen sense of beauty, his frank enjoyment of full sensuous life, to be told that within the Church he was no better than one of the strange race— the Chinese of the Roman world— whom he knew vaguely as believing in wonders and worshipping abstractions, avoiding the hospitable board and the festive gatherings in which he himself so much delighted— this was no doubt a hard saying, such as a true Greek would scarcely hear with patience. And hence it is, probably, that in its early day Christianity made more progress in mixed populations, like those of Antioch and Ephesus and Corinth, where the Jew was somewhat less a Jew, and the Greek somewhat less a Greek, than among the pure Jews of Jerusalem, or the pure Greeks of Athens. II. But, however startling it might be, there it was, one of the root principles of the Christian Church. No doubt national or ethnic peculiarities have had a very large influence in determining mankind to receive the easy yoke of Christ, and in modifying the Christianity of various tongues and peoples; but once within the Church, a man is a man; the body, soul, and spirit of a man are the qualifications for entering the Church of Christ, not the blood of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or pure descent from the shadowy glories of Theseus or Herodes. III. The Christian Church of the first ages was emphatically a great brotherhood. Perhaps at the time when St. Paul argued for the admission of Jew and Greek into the same community many of his countrymen imagined that he was introducing a long war of sects into that society where all should be peace and love. Yet the war between Christian Jew and Christian Greek was soon past, and out of this fermenting mass sprang the Catholic Church as we see it at the end of the third century. May we not hope that the time will come when the old traditions of the English Church, freshened and vivified by new influences, under the guidance of the One Spirit, may rise to higher wisdom and new life, and win more perfectly the love of a larger fraternity? S. Cheetham, Sermon preached on St. Andrew's Day, 1871. References: Romans 10:12, Romans 10:13.—Homilist, new series, vol. ii., p. 463. Romans 10:13, Romans 10:14.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. v., p. 32. Romans 10:14 The opponents of "faith by hearing" are accustomed to speak highly of the general sources of enlightenment— the prospect of creation without us and the light of conscience within. I. As regards the former— its universality and perpetuity, as a disclosure of deity to mankind, are utterly contrasted with the Christian system. If God were to interfere at all, they maintain, it would be by some universal agency, simple, general, and obvious, as the laws of His visible creation. They smile at the notion of God's greatest exhibition of His will to man being acted upon the reduced theatre of a petty province and made dependent on the chances of human testimony. But what if we retort that those very laws of nature "on a great scale" have caused God to be forgotten? It is the permanence and uniformity of natural laws of creation that have beguiled men into speculative and still more into practical atheism; it is the very perfection of the laws which has hidden the legislator. Men ever cling to the nearest object: in the law they lose the lawgiver; or, what is more irrational, make a lawgiver of the law and deify the world. II. The law of conscience. The gospel system overpasses every rival remedy, because it brings the affections to reinforce the conscience. Is this to debase the dignity of virtue? It is, as truly as when the virtuous father teaches his wayward child to love virtues by winning him to love his teacher. Is this to debase the majesty of the law— to unveil the adorable benevolence of Him who is its living impersonation? Is it a weakness to keep the law through love of Him who gave the law? Proud and cruel mockery, which freezes to despair, on pretence of hardening to fortitude, which forbids the sick to be healed on any terms but those which the healthy alone could use, and rejects a remedy because it is remedial, which would delude us to starve in the midst of bounty, because forsooth it is unmanly to be dependent on food— to perish of hunger rather than condescend to eat the Bread of Heaven! W. Archer Butler, Sermons, 1st series, p. 343. Romans 10:14-15 Modern Missions. It is an integral point of the Christian gospel that it recognises the unity of mankind, abolishes old walls of division, and aims at establishing on earth a universal spiritual brotherhood. Consider how thoroughly in harmony it is with this gospel of human brotherhood that to every man is given the privilege of calling every other man home to God. Christ, in re-establishing unity among mankind, has done more than make man his brother's keeper; He has made man his brother's reconciler. Far from monopolising to Himself this supreme function, He has, as far as could be, associated every one of us with Himself in the highest and most sacred office of brotherhood. The missionary is a genuine apostle of equality and fraternity, true mediator between ancient foes, and herald of peace on earth; walking in the footsteps of that Divine Brother who, as the head of every man, "hath reconciled us to God in one body by His Cross, having slain the enmity thereby." II. Again, it is another design of Christianity to reproduce in human bosoms the Divinest features of the Divine image. It aims at realising a practical community of feeling, interest, and effort betwixt God and man. Till His disciples get to be inoculated with the saving interest they are but half His, but half in sympathy with Him. If we are not only to have life— a niggard share of it— but to have life abundantly, then we must have love enough to propagate life; must be, not a cistern, but a well springing up and running over to the life of God. III. Is it not the most startling and characteristic thing about our holy faith that it blends together in mysterious co-operation supernatural with natural forces? The Church has her part to play no doubt, and it cannot be dispensed with; but she does not play the part in her own strength alone. All through history the Spirit of God is at work rousing and directing effort, inspiring and rewarding sacrifice. There is therefore no room for any unworthy alarm, lest God's high designs for mankind should in the end be frustrated through man's neglect. When Christ hinged the world's conversion on the co-operation of His people, He called to His side a fellow-worker who was no stranger, but the very mystical body of which He Himself is the head and the heart. J. Oswald Dykes, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxx., p. 216. References: Romans 10:14, Romans 10:15.—Homilist, 3rd series, vol. vi., p. 50. Romans 10:15.— J. Baines, Sermons, p. 86. Romans 10:20.— C. S. Robinson, Sermons on Neglected Texts, p. 120. Romans 10:21 The appeal which Jesus Christ makes, with His hands stretched out upon the cross, to the hearts of Christians is twofold. 1. It is an appeal on behalf of God's standard of holiness, and against the laxity and sin of man. And He makes this appeal by the force of His own example. There are two ways of teaching duty— by word of mouth or precept, and by personal conduct or example. The first is necessary; it is indispensable. The second is more effective than the first. Teaching by precept is the method common to the saints and to the philosophers. Teaching by example is the high prerogative of the saints. Teaching by precept begins with the understanding; it may or may not reach the heart. Teaching by example begins with the heart. The understanding can hardly fail to learn its lesson at a glance. Now, our Lord Jesus Christ uses both methods. Between the Sermon on the Mount and the last discourse in the supper room, He was continually teaching by word of mouth, sometimes single souls, sometimes His disciples, sometimes the Jews, now those who listened, and again those who refused to listen. But side by side with the method of precept, He employed the method of example. All through His life He reinforced His precepts by the eloquence of His conduct; but He gathered up all these lessons, or the most difficult of them, into one supreme appeal to the dormant moral sense in man when He raised Himself upon the cross and stretched out His hands to die. II. Jesus Christ with His hands stretched out upon the cross makes an appeal to our sense of what He has done for us. Why is He there? Not for any demerit of His own; not only or chiefly to teach us virtue. He is there because otherwise we are lost; because we must be reconciled to God by the death of His Son. He is there because He has first taken our nature— made Himself our representative, and then, in this capacity, in bearing the penalty which, in virtue of those moral laws whereby the universe is governed, is due to our sins. When He suffers, we too suffer by implication. When He dies, we too share His death. His appeal is the appeal of love, of love the most tender, the most practical, the most disinterested. There are two lessons, in conclusion, which we may endeavour to make our own. (1) One is particular. Jesus Christ stretching out His hands on the cross is a model for all Christians who are in any position of authority, not only for monarchs or statesmen or great officers, but for that large number of us who, in various ways, have others dependent on us, under our government and influence. The model for Christians, parents, masters, employers, governors, is rather Christ upon His cross in anxious pain, stretching out the arms of entreaty and compassion, than Christ upon His throne finally dispensing the awards of judgment. (2) The other lesson is general. The longest day has its evening, and after the evening comes the darkness of the night. As the soul passes the gate of eternity, the pierced hands of Christ, which during the long day of life have been outstretched upon the cross, seem to the soul's eye to detach themselves and to fold together for judgment. H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit, new series, No. 868. References: Romans 11:5.—Homilist, vol. v., p. 197; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. v., p. 270. Romans 11:7.— Philpot, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. v., p. 49; Durrant, Ibid., vol. ii., p. 301. Romans 11:15.— Bishop Temple, Contemporary Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 129. Romans 11:17-21.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. v., p. 272. Romans 11:20.—Church of England Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 72; J. Vaughan, Sermons, 13th series, p. 53. Romans 11:22.— J. H. Thom, Laws of Life, p. 64; E. M. Goulburn, Occasional Sermons, p. 160; J. Wells, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. v., p. 377; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 402. Romans 11:25.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iv., p. 86. Romans 11:26.— Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 21. Romans 11:32.—Homilist, vol. vi., p. 196; Plain Sermons, vol. vii., p. 15; J. Pulsford, Our Deathless Hope, p. 202. Romans 11:33.— G. Huntingdon, Sermons for Holy Seasons, 2nd series, p. 253. Romans 11:36 God's Creative and Providential Government. I. All things are of God. All the good is of God by authorship, all the evil is of God by permission. In the great things of redemption all things are emphatically of God. For there is no spiritual life in the soul of a fallen man. If it ever lives it is through the vivifying energy of God's Holy Spirit. He excites the prayer and the desire to pray; He gives the ability to pray; His mercies yearned over us; so that He sent His well-beloved Son to die for transgressors. And His justice accepted a vicarious offering, and His faithfulness is pledged to cast out none who come unto Him through Christ. II. All things are through God. We consider the first fact as referring to creation; the second merely to the providence of God. Elevated as God is above all that is human, why should we imagine that the scale on which we estimate proportions is that on which He estimates them, so that what we count great or small is similarly accounted by God? We believe of God's providence that it extends itself into every household, throws itself round every individual, takes part in every business, and is concerned with every sorrow and accessory to every joy. All things are through God as well as of God. III. All things are to God— they conduce in one way or another to God's glory. Though to our dim reason many things seem rather from God, yet the day of judgment will discover that tribute is rendered faithfully and the very uttermost farthing is exacted, as well from sin which has scorned, as from guilt which has sought forgiveness through, the Redeemer's blood H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1914. References: Romans 11:36— G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 37; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 322. Romans 12:1I. We have in the text a very remarkable way of putting what I may call the sum of Christian service. The main leading idea is the gathering together of all Christian duty into the one mighty word— sacrifice. Sacrifice, to begin with, means giving up everything to God. And how do I give up to God? When in heart and will and thought I am conscious of His presence, and do all the actions of the inner man in dependence on, and in obedience to, Him. That is the true sacrifice when I think as in His sight, and will and love and act as in obedience to Him. To consecrate oneself is the way to secure a higher and nobler life than ever before. If you want to go all to rack and ruin, live according to your own fancy and taste. If you want to be strong, and grow stronger and more and more blessed, put the brake on, and keep a tight hand upon yourself, and offer your whole being upon His altar. II. We have here likewise the great motive of Christian service: "I beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of God." In the Apostle's mind this is no vague expression for the whole of the diffused blessings with which God floods the world, but he means thereby the definite specific thing, the great scheme of mercy, set forth in the previous chapters, that is to say, His great work in saving the world through Jesus Christ. That is "the mercies" with which he makes his appeal. The diffused and wide-shining mercies, which stream from the Father's heart, are all, as it were, focussed as through a burning-glass into one strong beam, which can kindle the greenest wood and melt the thick-ribbed ice. Only on the footing of that sacrifice can we offer ours. He has offered the one sacrifice, of which His death is the essential part, in order that we may offer the sacrifice of which our life is the essential part. III. Note the gentle enforcement of this great motive for Christian service: "I beseech you." Law commands, the gospel entreats. Paul's beseeching is only a less tender echo of the Master's entreaty. A. Maclaren, A Year's Ministry, 1st series, p. 315. The Self-sacrifice. Consider:— I. The nature of the claim which is here made upon us. (1) Let us avail ourselves of the light which is shed on the nature of sacrifice by the term which is here employed. "A living sacrifice." The Apostle was addressing those to whom both the need and the thing were perfectly familiar. Sacrifice stands out with great prominence among the forms of the Jewish dispensation; and among all peoples the thing is to be met with, though the conception of its nature and relation, both to man and to God, would vary according to the moral education and condition of each particular race. But it is to be questioned whether the idea could be fully comprehended until He, in whom was life, had, through the Eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God, and laid on His disciples the obligation to yield themselves a living sacrifice to God. The true sacrifice must be a living one. (2) The presenting ourselves a living sacrifice is the first act of a true man's life. Carry on the association sacrifice with life rather than with death, and it will help you with the second principle. Our highest and holiest relations begin when we make the sacrifice of the whole heart of selfishness to God. (3) This presenting ourselves a living sacrifice is the ground of all true rendering of duty to the Church, the family, and the whole world of man. II. Consider the ground of this claim of God; and I note: (1) The Christian sacrifice is a living sacrifice because God urges His claims, not on the ground of His right only, but of His love. The Father loves us with a love which even our sin and apostasy could not weaken. He loves us with a love which could grapple with and conquer death. (2) God has not left, He will not leave, His work for us. He sent His Son into the battle; He became perfect as the Captain of our salvation by suffering. The Father hath sent, sendeth still, the Spirit to carry on the work, and present it to Him complete in the day of the Lord Jesus. The striving and pleading of His. Spirit still is the measure of His interest and hope. He is ready to animate us to achieve the sacrifice which His love constrains us to attempt; ready with all a Father's tender sympathy to share our burdens, to feel our pangs, to prop our weakness, to kindle our courage, to stir and plume our hope. J. Baldwin Brown, The Divine Life in Man, p. 139. Sacrifice. What are the characteristics of the sacrifice which God's wonderful mercies have made binding upon us all? I. First, the Apostle tells us it is to be a living sacrifice, and this is the great distinguishing mark of that personal offering required of us. Sacrifice of old was wont to imply the death of the thing or creature offered. Christian sacrifice is that of the life, and Christ has come to enable us to make that sacrifice a worthier one by giving us fuller and more abundant life to offer, by quickening and transforming all our capacities and fitting them for greater things. There have been those who have thought to offer to God a dead sacrifice, the sacrifice of a mechanical obedience, the sacrifice of stereotyped habits; and such sacrifice is not out of date. Others, again, have thought to offer a dead sacrifice in the shape of a hard, self-contained religion— a religion without warmth of sympathy or expansive power— the exclusive luxury of its possessor; all such sacrifices have but a name to live, and He who asks for nothing less than our very selves cannot away with them. II. Secondly, the sacrifice demanded is a holy sacrifice. What awe surrounds that word, and how far away from ourselves and this miserable, selfish, sinful world that word always seems to carry us! We know what it means; we know that it implies separation; the drawing off from whatever is low and sordid and soiling, the solemn setting apart of whatever it qualifies for the express service of a pure and perfectly holy God. III. And, lastly, this is a reasonable service which is demanded of us, or, as the words might be rendered, a ritual of thought and mind as distinguished from the outward and material ritual which has passed away. It is an intelligent offering that we are called upon to make, one that is both prompted and presented by the reason of the understanding, one in which the mind goes along with the heart. This is the glory of Christianity, that it addresses itself to man's highest power, that it enlists his intellect as well as his affections, that it finds scope for his divinest endowment, and gives heavenward direction to all that is in him. R. Duckworth, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 33. References: Romans 12:1.— R. W. Church, Human Life and its Conditions, p. 31; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. vi., p. 13; E. Garbett, The Soul's Life, p. 313; W. C. E. Newbolt, Counsels of Faith and Practice, p. 125; H. A. M. Butler, Church of England Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 228; H. G. Hirch, Ibid., vol. ix., p. 40. Romans 12:1, Romans 12:2.—Homilist, vol. v., p. 126. Romans 12:1-3.—Church of England Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 32. Romans 12:2 Conformity and Transformation. I. There are two terms in the original language for the expression the world. One of them regards the things that now are in reference to time, the other in reference to space. The one means the things that are seen, this material world, with all its enjoyments and gratifications, its riches, pleasures, and honours; the other means the time or age to which these things belong, and by which they are limited and circumscribed; the period, longer or shorter— we know not its duration, but God knoweth— previous to what we are taught to designate as the end of all things, that consummation of the old, that introduction of the new, which shall be the concomitant of the second Advent of Jesus Christ, the consequence of that second and greater Epiphany for which the Church on earth and in heaven is ever waiting and watching. II. In the passage before us, the term rendered world means properly the period or age that now is. Therefore "Be not conformed to this world" becomes equivalent to "Be not conformed to time, but rather to eternity." Wear not the fashion of persons who belong to time and have nothing to do with eternity. Let not the garb of your souls, let not the habit of your lives, be that which befits persons whose home, whose dwelling-place, whose all, is in the passing unreal scene, which we call human life, and who have no part nor lot in the permanent and unchanging realities of the new heaven and new earth, which shall come into view with the return of Christ and the resurrection of the just. Wear not the garb of time, but invest yourselves already with the fashion of eternity. III. No one can be conformed to, can fashion himself according to, that which he knows not. We are conformed to this world, not because it satisfies us, not because it makes us happy; not because we find rest or peace in living by its rules and principles, but because it is the only world we know, the only world, let me say, in which we know any one. The way to escape from our worldliness is not so much to struggle with it hand to hand, but to supersede it, as it were, by the entrance into us of a new affection; by giving our hearts to another, even to Him who has already entered for us within the veil, and who now and ever liveth to be our Intercessor and our life. C. J. Vaughan, Epiphany, Lent, and Easter, p. 1. Romans 12:2 The Christian Life a Transfiguration. Notice:— I. Where Paul begins— with an inward renewal, "the renewing of your mind." He goes deep down, because he had learned in his Master's school who said, "Make the tree good, and the fruit good." This new creation of the inner man is only possible as the result of the communication of a life from without. That communicated life from without is the life of Jesus Christ Himself put into your heart, on condition of your simply opening the door of your heart by faith, and saying to Him, "Come in, Thou blessed of the Lord." And He comes in, bearing in His hands this gift most chiefly, the gift of a germ of life which will mould and shape our mind after His own blessed pattern. II. The transfigured life which follows upon that inward renewal. What about the Christianity that does not show itself in conduct and character? What about men that look exactly as if they were not Christians? What about the inward life that never comes up to the surface? A certain kind of seaweeds that lie at the bottom of the sea, when their flowering time comes, elongate their stalks, and reach the light and float upon the top, and then, when they have flowered and fruited, they sink again into the depths. Our Christian life should come up to the surface and open out its flowers there, and show to the heavens and to all eyes that look. Does your Christianity do that? It is no use talking about the inward change unless there is the outward transfiguration. Ask yourselves the question whether that is visible or not in your lives. III. Consider the ultimate consequence which the Apostle regards as certain, from this central inward change, viz., the unlikeness to the world around. "Be not conformed to this world." The more we get like Jesus Christ, the more certainly we get unlike the world. For the two theories of life are clean contrary— the one is all limited by this "bank and shoal of time," the other stretches out through the transient to lay hold on the Infinite and Eternal. The one is all for self, the other is all for God, with His will for law and His love for motive. The two theories are contrary to one another, so that likeness with and adherence to the one must needs be dead in the teeth of the other. A. Maclaren, A Year's Ministry, 2nd series, p. 17. I. St. Paul had been dwelling at great length, in this Epistle to the Romans, on the unsearchable riches and goodness of God, in grafting the Gentiles into the stock of Israel, whereby they were become partakers of all the promises made to the Jews of old; which he sums up by this appeal: "I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." II. "Be not conformed to this world," be not like the age around you, and in which you live, the fashion of which perisheth and passeth away; but be ye transformed, let a continual change be taking place in you, by the renewing of your mind, by a new heart, new dispositions, and new way, such as is consistent with the new man, and the new birth in Christ, being made conformable to the Holy Child in obedience, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. "That ye may prove" the word, means to ascertain by putting it to the proof; by obedience men come to know what is pleasing to God, as our Lord says, "If ye do the will, ye shall know of the doctrine." Thus, by the renewal of your minds, ye shall learn that which is good, well pleasing to God, and perfect. The old sacrifices were not so, being but the shadows of good things to come; but the body is of Christ, He is the only good, the one well-pleasing and perfect sacrifice, and such are they who by faith shall be found in Him, perfect even as He is perfect, inasmuch as their old man being buried and dead, they are only known of God as having their life in Christ. III. Thus in Christ must all Christian teaching begin and end. He is Himself the true Passover, and the Lamb that is offered; in Him alone is all reasonable service and filial obedience. He is the New Man to whom we are to be transformed day by day by the renewing of our mind. It is as parts of His body, as limbs and members of Him, that we are to learn humility and love to one another; it is in Him we are to be about our Father's business and in His house. He is Himself that little child to whose pattern we are to humble ourselves. I. Williams, The Epistles and Gospels, vol. i., p. 119. I. When first we meet with such expressions as these, "conformed to the world," "transformed by the renewing of our mind," we may suppose that St. Paul is speaking of a state of mind which is suitable to us as inhabitants of this present earth, and of some other state which may prepare us for what is to come after death. But this is a very imperfect and slovenly method of explaining his language. The man who is in conformity with the world is not the man who understands the world best, not the man who admires the beauty of it most, not the man even who can adapt himself best to all its various circumstances and conditions. He is too much a slave of the things he sees to reflect upon them or look into the meaning of them; too much devoted to all outward shows and enjoyments to have an apprehension of their secret loveliness and harmony. The word "conformed" is used very strictly; it implies that he takes his form from the things about him, that they are the mould into which his mind is cast. Now, this St. Paul will not for an instant admit to be the form which any man is created to bear. II. Deliverance from conformity to the world is the transformation which is spoken of in the next clause of the verse. The process of this transformation St. Paul describes as the renewing of the mind. Such a phrase at once suggests the change which takes place when the foliage of spring covers the bare boughs of winter. It is not strictly a recovery of that which had been lost. The substance is not altered, but it is quickened. The alteration is the most wonderful that can be conceived of, but it all passes within. It is not sudden, but gradual. The power once given works secretly, probably amidst many obstructions from sharp winds and keen frosts. Still, that beginning contains in it the sure prophecy of final accomplishment. The man will be renewed according to the image of his Creator and Father, because the Spirit of his Creator and Father is working in him. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. ii., p. 123. References: Romans 12:2.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. i., p. 28; Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 290. Romans 12:2-18.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iv., p. 84. Romans 12:3 Self-Appreciation. I. Every man's view of himself is meant to be a correct deliberate thing, according to the facts of the case— neither degrading himself too low, nor vaunting himself too high, but thinking of himself as he really is and as God has been pleased to make him. II. To guide us in such investigations the Apostle gives one single rule— "to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith." It is a remarkable expression of his. It is not saying, Judge of yourselves according to the knowledge, or the peace, or the good works, or the attainments, or the powers you have made. But "the measure of faith." Does he say this because everything that is good in a man's heart is faith? Or is it that every other good thing being proportioned to the faith we have, the measure of the faith is indeed the measure of everything that a man has, or that a man can attain, and so becomes the measure of the man, i.e., is the man? Whichever it be, see the important part which faith acts in all our relations. We are really before God what our faith makes us. Realise the love of God to you, and by that realisation you have it. J. Vaughan, Sermons, 1865, p. 9. References: Romans 12:4, Romans 12:5.—Homilist, 3rd series, vol. ii., p. 170. Romans 12:5.— A. Barry, Cheltenham College Sermons, p. 13; Church of England Pulpit, vol. xviii., p. 265; S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, p. 283. Romans 12:6.— W. C. E. Newbolt, Counsels of Faith and Practice, p. 255; E. M. Goulburn, Thoughts on Personal Religion, p. 304. Romans 12:10.— E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation, p. 232; H. J. Wilmot Buxton, Sunday Sermonettes for a Year, p. 170; Saturday Evening, p. 215. Romans 12:11 The Results of Slothfulness. I. We frequently meet people who, on extraordinary occasions, or stimulated by some special inspiration, will exert much diligence and take great pains to produce something excellent and commendable, but who at all other times are slatternly and indolent, caring nothing, so long as a duty be performed, how slovenly may be the performance. It is against such a temper as this that our text directs its emphasis. You are not to be slothful in business— in any business whatever. Let us prevail upon men to be industrious, and we shall have called out the powers and formed the habits which religion most tasks in its commencement and demands in its progress. The industrious man, no matter what lawful objects have occupied his industry, is comparatively the most likely man to receive the gospel, and certainly the fittest, when it has once been received, for its peculiar and ever-pressing requirements. Every man takes a step towards piety who escapes from a habit of sloth. II. God may be served through the various occupations of life, as well as through the more special institutions of religion. It needs only that a man go to his daily toil in simple obedience to the will of his Maker, and he is as piously employed, aye, and is doing as much towards securing for himself the higher recompenses of eternity, as when he spends an hour in prayer or joins himself gladly to the Sabbath-day gathering. The businesses of life are as so many Divine institutions, and if prosecuted in a spirit of submission to God and with an eye to His glory, they are the businesses of eternity, through which the soul grows in grace, and lasting glory is secured. If men are but fervent in spirit, if, that is, they always carry with them a religious tone and temper, then they are serving the Lord, through their being not slothful in business. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1793. Romans 12:12 In the widest sense the injunction of the text lays upon us these things: (1) The habitual maintenance of a prayerful spirit; (2) the duty of embracing opportunities for prayer; (3) the duty of improving the occasions of prayer; (4) watchfulness as a part of constancy in prayer. J. M. Jarvis, Christian World Pulpit, vol. x., p. 250. References: Romans 12:11, Romans 12:12.— E. Garbett, Experiences of the Inner Life, p. 244. Romans 12:12.— H. Alford, Plain Village Sermons, p. 1; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. viii., p. 18; W. Hay Aitken, Mission Sermons, vol. ii., p. 97; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 227. Romans 12:15I. Christians do not enough bear in mind the duty of cheerfulness. An open and lively countenance, a free and joyous manner of address, are considered rather as happy accidents, than as results which every Christian ought to aim at as part of his spiritual life. It is astonishing, if you look through the New Testament Scriptures, how many passages you will find recommending this suavity and urbanity of manner, as a grace to be sought for and to be attained by believers in Christ. The temptation of all seriously thinking men is to slide into shadow and put on gloom. To rejoice with the rejoicing requires some of that healthy and manly vigour of character which can afford to despise the taunts of men, and go its own way in the light of God; some of that hearty and thorough Christianity which does not live by its newspaper, but by its Bible and its conscience. When shall the world find among us a joy better than its own, and say to us, "Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is among you"? II. But now let us pass to the other side of our duty of sympathy— to weep with those that weep. The words here bear no mere formal meaning. They imply that entire oneness, which not a transient fit of compassion, not a tear starting at passing or hearing of a scene of misery, will satisfy; but which requires a man really to enter into and give himself to the companionship and tending of sorrow; in other words, to show active sympathy with the suffering, and endeavour to share and diminish their troubles. Nothing can be conceived more opposed to the natural selfishness of man, nothing less in accordance with the common maxims and practice of the world. It is by no means an easy thing effectually to weep with them that weep. Yet it is the duty of us all as Christians, and one the exercise of which is of very blessed use to us. And therefore we are not to turn our faces away from sorrow, not to avoid it as if it were something detrimental to us; but to feel it an obligation laid on us by Him whom we follow, a portion of our aiming at His holy example, a chosen bond of union with Him in one Spirit, to weep with them that weep. H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. vii., p. 85. Rejoicing and Weeping with Men. I. Our first remark on this twofold duty is that it is one which requires constant watchfulness and activity. The joys and sorrows of men around us are so constant and varied, so multitudinous and changeful, that if we are to keep up a sympathy with them we must be always wakeful. And what can be better fitted to waken men up than the joys and sorrows of their fellow-men? One of the chief elements in working out your own salvation is to forget yourself and enter into the joys and sorrows of others. II. The text presents a task that seems to some impossible to carry out by one and the same person, at least in the same period. The mistake here lies in the idea that to sympathise with the sorrowful one must himself be of a sorrowful mood, and that to be in sympathy with the joyous one must himself at the time be joyous. It is not sadness that is sympathetic, but love, benevolence. And love will take to itself the grief of the sufferer, though itself it is full of joy. It is the sympathy of a joyous, radiant spirit that helps the sorrowful, provided only it is able to enter into true accord with the sorrow. You have seen a bright day of sunshine hiding its brilliancy now and again behind clouds, and even chequering its course with rain. It is such days that have rainbow. It is not the clouds that are the main thing, but the sun shining through the clouds. Sunshine is the grand requisite for meeting either the happy or the sorrowful. III. The earnest endeavour to perform this twofold duty will be found an effective quickener of life and a key to all the secrets of religion. One who is intent on doing both of these will find the need for much earnest prayer. Many a cry will spring from the depths of his heart as he finds himself hard and envious and selfish. And the broken heart will find that the true way to grow sympathetic is thinking much of Christ, looking to Christ, and drawing hope and confidence from Him, drawing courage and love from Him. J. Leckie, Sermons at Ibrox, p. 109. Reference: Romans 12:15.— H. J. Wilmot Buxton, Sunday Sermonettes for a Year, p. 167. Romans 12:15-16 Sympathy and Condescension. I. The first part of the text is a call to sympathy. But notice what St. Paul meant by sympathy, how he describes it. (1) It is an old remark that it is more difficult to rejoice with them that rejoice than to weep with them that weep. Let us endeavour, in little matters, within our own doors first of all to be glad when another is glad, to feel another's as our joy, to be not willing only but thankful that another should have, even though that other's gain may be outwardly our own loss. (2) "Weep with them that weep." The first requisite of all human consolation is sympathy, fellow-feeling, the appreciation of the calamity whatever it be, in its breadth and in its depth. Of all the designations which a human being under Christ's teaching can acquire, none is so valuable, in the estimate of a truly Christian ambition, as this, A son of consolation.II. "Condescend to those things which are lowly." Is it not just the neglect of this rule which makes the chief evil of what is called society? It is a constant pursuit of high things; a struggle to rise one step higher, and then one yet higher, on the ladder of ambition, whatever its particular ambition be; it may be of rank, it may be of fame, it may be of fashion, it may be of excitement generally; most often it is, in some shape or other, the ambition of distinction; but whatever the particular aim, it is briefly to be described as a minding of high things, and the proper remedy for it is that here described by St. Paul, Condescend to things that are lowly. There is a narrowing effect as well as a widening in the pursuit even of Divine knowledge, if that knowledge be chiefly intellectual. How many a man has ended his course a doubter or a disbeliever, mainly, we may well believe, for this reason, that he never forced himself to condescend to the humble, never discovered that the true way to knowledge is through love! If he had learned to condescend to things lowly, he would have entered at length, with a true insight, into the things which transcend knowledge. C. J. Vaughan, Epiphany, Lent, and Easter, p. 21. Romans 12:16-17 Our Duty to Equals. I. While the compassionate view of man, as compared with the ordinary view of him in his health and strength as a flourishing member of this world, is characterised by a beauty of its own, it has at the same time the defect of being a protected state of mind, a state in which the mind is for the moment relieved of all its tendencies to irritation and to asperity, and thrown into a perfect quiet by an external event which does everything for it without an effort of its own. The condescending life is sheltered from trials which very sharply beset the field of equals. The poor and dependent, the mourner, the despondent, the cast down— these exercise our active benevolence, but do not they unconsciously flatter us while they appeal to it? In the life of equals a man enters upon a vast field of relations in which his humility and his generosity pass through an ordeal of special and peculiar severity— severity far greater than that which attaches to any trial of them in the relationship to inferiors, for the simple reason that a man is in competition with his equals, and he is not in competition with his inferiors. To a superficial person it might appear that the great act of humility was condescension, and that therefore the condescending life was necessarily a more humble one than the life with equals. But this is not the true view of the case. The hardest trial of humility must be not towards a person to whom you are superior and who acknowledges that superiority, but towards a person with whom you are on equal footing of competition. II. It is thus that a life of ordinary and common probation, which is what a man generally leads when he lives with his equals, is found, when examined, to contain a powerful supply of the most finished and subtle weapons of discipline. The trials of the sphere of equals touch the tenderest parts and apply the most refined tests; they find a man out the most thoroughly. It is common life that has the keenest and subtlest instruments at command. The ordeal of the sphere of equals is amply represented in the New Testament. If by the constitution of our nature compassion has a particular gratification attending upon it, that gratification attended upon it in our Lord's case. His life among equals, proclaiming His cause against adversaries, invincible defiance, inflexible will— that was His hard work: it was by the struggle with equals that the battle of eternal truth was fought, and by this He fulfilled the great trial of a human life. First in the succour of man, first in the war with man, first in both hemispheres of action, the Firstborn of Creation lives in the gospel, a marvellous whole, to inspire morality with a new spirit, to soften man's heart, to consecrate his wealth. The light of ages gathers round Him. He is the centre of the past, the pledge of a future: the great character marches through time to collect souls about it, to found new empires for the truth, and to convert the whole earth to the knowledge of the Lord. J. B. Mozley, University Sermons, p. 183. Reference: Romans 12:17.—Church of England Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 47. Romans 12:21 Retaliation. I. We must read this verse first in direct contrast with the prohibition, "Be not overcome of evil." The immediate subject of both is that of injuries and their treatment. As to be overcome of evil is to let evil master us, so that it shall subdue and lead captive, instead of merely oppressing and overwhelming us; so to overcome that evil with good is to bring into conflict with injury, not anger, not sullenness, not revenge, but the very opposites and contraries of all these— patience, and meekness, and forbearance, and charity— and this so earnestly, so skilfully, so persistently, that they shall vanquish the evil, shall make it ashamed of itself, and repentant and reconciled, insomuch that the saying shall be verified, Whatsoever doth make manifest is light. Darkness shone upon is darkness no more; evil kindled by a coal from the altar becomes the good which it sought to overbear. II. Evil, St. Paul says, is never vanquished by evil. Satan casts not out Satan, nor does the wrath of man ever work out God's righteousness. Evil must be conquered by good. View the saying in two aspects. (1) In reference to truth and error. Not in a spirit of strife and debate, not in a spirit of disdain or defiance, not in a spirit of superiority or self-confidence— in none of these tones ought any earnest believer to address himself to the separatist from his faith. That were indeed to assail evil with evil. There is one way and but one to the mind of the unbeliever, and that way is through the heart. Not by negatives, but by positives; not by meeting this evil in hand-to-hand warfare, but by bringing into the field a wholly new and unexpected ally, by appealing to his sense of want, and then by showing how Christ has in Him the very food and remedy and rest wanted. It is thus, if at all, that the unbelief will find itself believing. (2) Sin and holiness. No might is really equal to the might of evil save the one mightier than the mightiest, which is the love of Christ constraining. Bring this good into the war with thine evil, and thou shalt overcome yet. C. J. Vaughan, Sundays in the Temple, p. 212. I. The most important and deepest part of the truths that are wrapped up in this great maxim of St. Paul is that the very genius of Christianity itself is a positive, not a negative. It is a life, not a code; a spirit, not a set of rules; a new impulse, not a mass of prohibitions. It is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. It is, above all, the spirit of life and of freedom, not of death and bondage. Now religion very often presents itself to the young in a very opposite light. Its commands appear to be exclusively "Thou shalt not." And this aspect of Christianity is of course a necessary one; but it is very far from complete. It is preparatory; it is the law, not the gospel; it is the schoolmaster that brings men to Christ, not Christ Himself. "I am come," says Jesus Christ, "that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." It was not to destroy and stunt and cripple energies, not to discourage action, not to repeat the old commands, Touch not, taste not, handle not, but to inspire new energy and new life, to give a new direction to the burning desire for action that flames in young souls; in a word, to give life. Fill your soul with new life, give it vent in action, and thou shalt not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. It is not only by avoiding sin, it is by actively doing what is good, that we make progress in holiness. Sin is not fought, it is expelled. II. Surely there is a lesson here for all who have eyes to see Who are they who are ever ready with unhelpful grumbling, with pessimism and self-righteousness? Is it not those who have as yet no notion of the positive method of the Christian life, who have no other idea of dealing with the ever-existing evil of the world, except to proclaim that it is the duty of some one else to repress it, and to hug themselves in blind Pharisaism? How far this is from the spirit of Christ! His was the spirit of inspiration to positive action. His life was not one of self-denial so much as of activity; not of repression, but of expression. It was not His sinlessness, it was His holiness that was the example to the world; and holiness is not merely absence of sin, but the presence of an abounding, overflowing goodness; and here lies its power and its contagiousness. J. M. Wilson, Sermons in Clifton College Chapel, p. 311. Sometimes it has been said that Christianity is deficient in what are called the masculine virtues. The world would give it credit for meekness, for gentleness, for purity; but the world finds fault with it because it lacks that energetic force which is seen in a strong antagonism and in a power of combat with the difficulties of life. They are inclined to say, "Such courage is of a passive order. You can suffer, but you cannot contend." Our answer would be that in this twelfth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans you have a catalogue of Christian virtues, and amongst them is given one virtue which, I imagine, does not find a place even in the catalogue of the virtues of the world. It is the virtue of hatred. We are to abhor what is evil. Christianity will link her lot with goodness, and as in happy wedlock she will live in her sweet home where goodness dwells; but when she goes forth to the world she can put on the armour of entire abhorrence and determined antagonism; she can abhor that which is evil, or, precisely because she loves the Lord, she has learned to hate evil. And hence it follows that the spirit of undying antagonism to evil is indeed a Christian spirit, and is surely one of the masculine order. I. The consent of all our experience may lead us to believe that we can overcome evil with good. Are you trying to overcome your children's faults in the spirit of fault-finding? You know it is not the way to success. The spirit of approbation, the spirit of appreciation, the spirit of imitation— these are the secrets of power. The spirit of Christianity carries us to things that are noble. It raises us to the stature of the fulness of Christ: that is to say, we shall be able to give expression to our nature, and that expression will reflect the image of God. To deal with it otherwise is simply suicidal; it is looking at the work and the energies of God's creation as though it were less than He meant it to be. II. It is irrational to suppose that we can overcome evil in any other way. The laws that govern the world are the laws of righteousness— the laws of good; and you and I, if we believe in them, must believe that it is never worth while to do evil that good may come; it is never worth while to sacrifice a great moral principle, even to achieve a great good. Bishop Boyd Carpenter, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xx., p. 17. I. Evil in its root is simply unregulated desire. Desire is that quality in us men which corresponds to gravitation in the physical bodies, which, while all is well with us, keeps us moving around our true centre, the Being of beings— God. Sin is the free concentration of desire upon some other centre than God— that is, upon some created being; and just as if, in the heavenly spheres, a planet could get detached from its true orbit, from loyal revolutions round its proper sun, and could thus come within the range of other and counteracting attractions, the effect would be vast and irretrievable disaster, so is it in the moral world. Sin is this disorder in the governing desires of the soul, followed by a corresponding disorder in its outward action; and in this disordered desire there lies something beyond, namely, a contradiction of the moral nature or essence of the one necessary being of God. Moral truth is in its principles as distinct from their application, just as eternal and just as necessary as mathematical truth. It is like mathematical truth, eternal, and therefore it is a law of the life of the one eternal Being Himself, since, otherwise, it would be a co-eternal principle independent of Him. And sin is thus the contradiction of God arising from disorder in those governing desires of the soul which were intended by Him to keep us men in our true relationship and dependence upon Him. II. "Be not overcome of evil." It is not then a resistless invader, it is not invincible; for it is not the work of an eternal being or principle. Strong as it is, it is strictly a product of created wills. As Christians, we know evil to be both hateful, and not invincible. It is our duty to abhor it; yet it is also our duty, and within our power, to overcome it. Simple decision, perfectly courteous but unswervingly determined will, will carry the day. Evil may talk loudly, it may bluster; but at heart it is always a coward, and it skulks away at the show of a strong resistance. It may be hard work at first; but in the end purity and straightforwardness and charity and reverence will win the battle; opposition will die gradually away into silence, silence into respect, respect into sympathy, and even into imitation. "Thou art of more honour and might than the hills of the robbers." H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit, No. 504. References: Romans 12:21.—Homilist, 3rd series, vol. viii., p. 161; H. P. Liddon, Christmastide Sermons, p. 397; Contemporary Pulpit, vol. v., p. 50. Romans 13:1 The Principles and Method of Christian Civilisation. I. It may not be certain that this Epistle was written at one of the worst moments of Roman tyranny. It may possibly belong to that short interval of promise which preceded the full outburst of Nero's natural atrocity. But the character which the empire had assumed must have been perfectly well known to St. Paul. It could have been no surprise to him that within a few years the Christians whom he was addressing should be called to expiate the emperor's own crime by frightful tortures, or that he himself should be one of the victims. He wrote to prepare them for such events. And yet he says, "Let every soul be subject to the higher powers, for they are ordained of God." II. We lose, it seems to me, much of the Apostle's meaning, and pervert it to a purpose the most opposite to that which he contemplated, while, at the same time, we weaken the obligation which is laid upon us, if we do not perceive that these words contain the most strong and effectual protest ever made against the tyranny which they command Christian men patiently to endure. The very reason upon which St. Paul rests his exhortation to the Roman Christians is the reason which proves all such oppression as the Roman emperors were guilty of to be a false and hateful thing, a contradiction so gross and monstrous, that it can last only for a short time. "There is no power but of God." If the powers that be are ordained of men, they may be used according to the pleasure of men. It is merely a conflict between this form of self-will and that; between a despotism that exists and a despotism that is struggling to exist. If the powers that be are ordained of God, they must be designed to accomplish the good pleasure of God, all self-will must be at strife with a perfect will which is working continually for good. All efforts at absolute dominion must be a daring outrage upon Him who alone is absolute, and such struggles and such outrages, though they may be permitted a while for the fuller manifestation of that purpose which shall be accomplished in spite of them, have a lying root, and must at last come to nought. F. D. Maurice, Christmas Day and Other Sermons, p. 393. I. This text is a good illustration of the manner in which Christian doctrine is ever made by the apostles the ground of Christian duty. They do not often teach us new duties— in fact, there are very few duties in any part of the New Testament which were not either recognised in the Old, or else perceived to be duties by the light which is naturally in the human mind; but the great feature of the New Testament teaching is this, that all duties whatever are put upon a higher ground than they occupied before. What Christ has done for us is made the measure of what we should do and the argument why we should do it; and Christians are regarded not so much in the character of men who know more than their fellows, as in the character of men who feel themselves bound by the mercies of God and the love of Christ to offer themselves up a living sacrifice. II. Note two or three reasons why we might have expected that the teaching of Christ's disciples would not omit to lay stress upon the duty of honouring and submitting to the Queen. (1) In the first place, the general spirit of gentleness and longsuffering which belonged to all the teaching of Christ would suggest that quiet submission to authority was the right course for Christians. (2) Again, it is not to be forgotten that Christ Himself was declared to be a King, and that all Christians become by their profession subjects of this new kingdom. And in this kingdom submission was to be unlimited and obedience complete; the very lesson which all Christians had to learn was that they were bound to give themselves up with all their power and all their might to be a living sacrifice to Him who redeemed them, and to do His will with all their soul and strength. Hence, to a Christian the name of King was sanctified by its having been assumed by Christ, and the relation of people to king was hallowed. (3) Once more, the example of our Lord Jesus Christ in the days of His flesh would have a great effect in enforcing such duties as those which the text contains. He who would not allow Himself to be made the means of insurrection when the people would take Him by force and make Him a King, and who paid the tribute to avoid giving offence, and who permitted Himself to be given up to the rulers and to be tried and condemned, would certainly have given His sanction to the doctrine of the text. Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons, vol. iv., p. 227. References: Romans 13:1.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. viii., p. 88; C. Kingsley, National Sermons, p. 32. Romans 13:1-7.—Homilist, new series, vol. i., p. 141. Romans 13:4I. In the chapter from which my text is taken St. Paul speaks of civil rulers as ministers of God. He does not limit or soften his language to suit the circumstances of his own time. Nero's will might be devilish; every power which he wielded was Divine. He had been appointed to rule the world which he tormented by Him who loved the world. He was the steward of His treasures even by, if he spent them in making those miserable whom they were intended to bless. II. But St. Paul says further— "He is a minister of God to thee." A strange assertion. The emperor's existence was a testimony to the poor Christian that he belonged to the great Roman world, that he was concerned, whether he was citizen or slave, in its welfare and its misery. That was a great step in his education, in his moral and spiritual education. III. "He is a minister of God to thee for good." St. Paul writes this to men who might, in a short time, be lighting the city as torches to cover the guilt of him who set it on fire. Well! and was he not a minister of God to them for good if he was the instrument of inflicting that torture? The Apostle could venture the daring sentiment. He knew that by some means God would prove it to be true, for that generation and for all generations. And it will be known, some day, to how many men governments the most hypocritical and accursed have been ministers of good, by leading them from trifling to earnestness, by changing them from reckless plotters into self-denying patriots, by turning their atheism or devil-worship into a grounded faith in the God of truth. As Paul believed Jesus Christ to be the Son of God and the King of men, he could not help believing that all human society was organised according to the law which He expressed in words, which He embodied in His incarnation and death— "The chief of all is the servant of all." He could not doubt that every Christian ought to maintain the truth which Nero set at naught, and that if he did, it would prove itself in his case— Nero would be a minister of God for good to him. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. iv., p. 81. Reference: Romans 13:4, Romans 13:5.— W. F. Fremantle, Church of England Pulpit, vol. i., p. 91. Romans 13:7 The Doctrine of Obedience. Note:— I. As suggested by the passage generally, the breadth and largeness of the gospel precepts. The broad principle is stated: obedience to lawful power. The application of it is left to reason, to conscience, to the inward guidance of the Holy Spirit. II. The wholesomeness of the gospel teaching. There is nothing morbid in the Bible. Every one of Christ's precepts, this one most of all, tends to make earth a scene of order and tranquillity in the very same degree in which it teaches men to regard earth as a small and insignificant portion of the whole of their space and the whole of their time. III. Notice a few practical suggestions upon the principle here laid down. (1) Among these I must place foremost the charge to carry it out consistently in all departments of life. (2) If it is the duty of one to obey reverently, it must be the duty of another to rule well. Whatever be our position, however humble it may be in some aspects, yet so far as it is one of authority, if it be but over a few servants, each one of us is, in the sense here designed, "a minister of God," an "officer of God." (3) We must act upon the charge before us in small details. Such as (a) cheerfulness in bearing the burdens imposed on us for the state-service; (b) respectful language at all times about those in authority. (4) Once more, we are bound at all times to cherish, and from time to time more earnestly to express, a spirit of thankfulness to God Himself for His gift to us of government. (5) We should take a more lively interest than is, I fear, common amongst us, in those parts of our public worship which have a direct reference to the persons of our rulers and to the deliberations of our legislature. C. J. Vaughan, Epiphany, Lent, and Easter, p. 39. Romans 13:10I. The law being an expression of the mind and will of God, we have only to study the character of God more closely to interpret more correctly the spirit and intention of the law. The character of God is known to us by His works, His providences, His revelations of Himself by prophets and saints, to whom He has made Himself known. Now, the confluence of all these streams of knowledge, derived from what He has said and done, issues in the revelation of a God of love. To begin with, the act of creation is a work of Almighty love. So it has been said with reason that if a man should realise his existence as a creature, he would be urged by his own consciousness to live a perfect life of love. But to come nearer than creation, to come to our personal contact with God, what is it that we find? The life we now enjoy rises in an ascending scale from peace and friendship and fellowship in work with God, to hope and promises beyond, from a seedtime of manifold experiences here to a harvest of immortality hereafter. II. Consider some of the features of love. (1) In its aspect towards God, love has this note of encouragement, namely, that every movement of your love towards Him, though it be shortlived, intermittent and frail under temptation, is yet a witness to a certain congeniality and conformity of your nature to the nature of God. (2) Again, love is a motive which leads to imitation; you desire to grow like the one you love. (3) It is love that gives unity of design to the whole mechanism of the Catholic Church— its creeds, its sacraments, its ritual, its seasons, its festivals, its fasts, its penitences, and its joys. Just as the master-mind and the genius of one architect give order and harmony to the almost infinite details and creations of a Gothic church, so does love give system and symphony to the infinite varieties of the Christian life. C. W. Furse, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 129. Reference: Romans 13:10.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. i., p. 28. Romans 13:11 The Sleep of the Church. There are many thoughts crowded together here, but each is necessary to the other. They will not bear to be separated, but we must disentangle them by considering how each of them bears on our own life and practice. I. It is clear that the sleep or torpor which the Apostle speaks of is not one into which Jews or heathens had fallen. He was not writing to them. He was writing to a society of men confessing the faith of Jesus Christ, declaring Him to be the Image of God and the head of men. How could the Apostle think that such a society should fall into sleep? Because he knew what the temptation to it was in himself. He knew that he, who had been called by Christ Himself, who had had visions and revelations, who had been in the third heaven, might sink into indifference and listlessness. II. A society is sleeping a death-sleep when its love becomes stagnant, when it is not a vigorous operative power. Now, St. Paul knew that no circumstances imparted this love to him; that if he depended on circumstances it perished. From personal experience he could testify that love to man might be as much killed by frosts as by suns; that if it is not kindled from within, everything from without may be fatal to it. III. And how does he ward off the danger from himself? What contrivance does he use to wake them out of their slumbers? He reminded them that this indifference, lovelessness, this contention, self-seeking, was the accursed state out of which Christ came to redeem them. It was this hell into which He found His creatures sinking. It was to rescue them from this hell that He took flesh and dwelt among them and died on the cross and rose again and ascended on high. They had received the first pledges of this Redemption, of this Salvation. They had been enabled to feel and suffer for others, to desire their good, to love them as themselves. It was but a beginning; the glimpse of a Paradise; a first taste of the Tree of Life. They had a natural gravitation to self-indulgence, a preference for self-will, a desire for self-glory. These tendencies were always threatening to become supreme. Therefore St. Paul bids them think of the salvation which Christ had promised as something yet to come, as a blessing yet to be attained. This salvation from all which clogged their progress and hindered them from seeing things as they were— this salvation from lies, from hatred, from indifference— was all contained in the promise that He in whom is light and no darkness at all should be fully manifested. Every day and every hour was hastening on this manifestation, and therefore this salvation. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. v., p. 15. Romans 13:11 Self-denial the Test of Religious Earnestness. I. By "sleep" in this passage St. Paul means a state of insensibility to things as they really are in God's sight. When we are asleep we are absent from this world's action as if we were no longer concerned in it. It goes on without us, and if our rest be broken and we have some slight notion of people and occurrences about us, if we hear a voice or a sentence and see a face, yet we are unable to catch these external objects justly and truly; we make them part of our dreams, and pervert them till they have scarcely a resemblance to what they really are: and such is the state of men as regards religious truth. Many live altogether as though the day shone not on them, but the shadows still endured; and far the greater part of them are but very faintly sensible of the great truths preached around them. They see and hear as people in a dream; they mix up the Holy Word of God with their own idle imaginings; if startled for a moment, still they soon relapse into slumber; they refuse to be awakened, and think their happiness consists in continuing as they are. II. If a person asks how he is to know whether he is dreaming on in the world's slumber, or is really awake and alive unto God, let him first fix his mind upon some one or other of his besetting infirmities. Many men have more than one, all of us have some one or other, and in resisting and overcoming such self-denial has its first employment. Be not content with a warmth of faith carrying you over many obstacles even in your obedience, forcing you past the fear of men and the usages of society and the persuasions of interest; exult not in your experience of God's past mercies, and your assurance of what He has already done for your soul, if you are conscious you have neglected the one thing needful,— daily self-denial. J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. i., p. 57. I. The text tells us what we are. St. Paul is addressing Christians, yet even they are asleep. Sleep is a torpor of the powers. The more complete the suspension of the energies, whether of brain or muscle or limb, the deeper, the sounder, the more thorough is the sleep. If the Christian man is spoken of as sleeping, it must be with reference to the inactivity, to the torpor, of his characteristic activities. St. Paul does not say that we sleepers may not be dreamers, may not be imaginers, may not be somnambulists. This would be just his idea of the Christian sleeper. The children of light, living like children of the world,— what are we, while this is true of us, but sleeping men, haunted by phantoms, disquieted by night's illusions, and traversing (candle in hand) the chambers and halls and gardens of earth, with eyes closed and sealed to the light of an immortal day? II. To awake out of sleep— what is it? There are acts of the soul as well as of the life. There are critical moments and there are decisive actions in the history of man's spirit. St. Paul knew this— knew it in himself. A moment changed him from an enemy to a friend. He never looked back. It has been thus in ten thousand lives. St. Paul seems to recommend this kind of transaction— a transaction between a man and his soul, between a man and his life— in the short sharp watchword of the text. III. The text adds a motive. "It is high time to awake." The nearness of the Advent is the motive for the awaking. It is a gratuitous supposition that St. Paul positively expected the Advent within the lifetime of the then living. St. Paul knew who had said, "Of that day and that hour knoweth no man," and yet had coupled with it the warning, "Therefore, be ye always ready." Each generation— the first not least— each successively until the latest— should live in the expectation, gilding the darkness of death by the brightness of the coming. Happy they to whom it can be said, Christians, awake, for your salvation draweth nigh. This is the motive of the text. C. J. Vaughan, Sundays in the Temple, p. 1. References: Romans 13:11.— E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation, p. 373; H. J. Wilmot Buxton, Sunday Sermonettes for a Year, p. 1; R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons, 1st series, p. 1; Homilist, 3rd series, vol. iv., p. 286; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. vii., p. 282; G. E. L. Cotton, Sermons and Addresses in Marlborough College, p. 481; H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2893. Romans 13:11, Romans 13:12.— G. Moberly, Parochial Sermons, p. 1; Homilist, new series, vol. ii., p. 456. Romans 13:12 Inducements to Holiness. I. The argument which is drawn from the greater nearness of death (for this is evidently the argument here employed) is not of the same urgency when applied to the believer as to the unbeliever. If I ply the unbeliever with the fact that he is approaching nearer and nearer destruction, I just tell him that he has less time in which to escape and therefore less likelihood of obtaining deliverance. He must do it before daybreak, and the night is far spent. But when I turn with a like argument to the believer, and bid him cast off the works of darkness because the day is at hand, there is by no means the same appearance of force in the motive. "Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed"; and if a man be secure of salvation, so that his attainment of it does not depend on his striving for the rest of his life, to tell him that the end is at hand does not look like plying him with a proof of the necessity of exertion. But it is no Scriptural, and therefore no legitimate, feeling of security which can engender or excuse sluggishness. The only Scriptural certainty that a man will be saved is the certainty that he will struggle. Struggling is incipient salvation. Christ died to save us from our sins, and therefore the more striving there is against sin the more proportion is there of salvation. The Christian's life is emphatically a life of labour. Ought not then this well-ascertained principle— the principle that the consciousness of the greater nearness of the end of a task generates fresh strength for the working it out— ought not this thoroughly to convince us that to remind a man of there being less time for toil should urge him to toil with more energy? II. And if this suffice not to explain why the day being at hand should animate the Christian to the casting off of the works of darkness, we have two other reasons to advance— reasons why the consciousness of having less time to live should urge a man who feels sure of salvation to strive to be increasingly earnest in all Christian duties. The first reason is, because there is less time in which to strive for a high place in the kingdom of God; the second, because there is less time in which to glorify the Creator and Redeemer. Let these reasons be well considered and pondered, and they will, we think, show that there is full motive to "the casting off the works of darkness and putting on the armour of light" in the announced fact that the "night is far spent, the day is at hand." H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2286. Romans 13:12 The Day of the Lord. It is more than eighteen hundred years since the Apostle uttered this exulting cry. We cannot repeat it today when once more we come to our Advent time without some sense of hopelessness. For what has come of it? we ask; is the night gone, is the day at hand? Century after century, with the indestructible aspiration of the heart, has this note of joy been taken up. and the aspiration has been disappointed and the joy unreached. The drama of mankind has been charged with so much action, apparently wasted, and so much suffering, apparently squandered, on the ground of this incessant hope, and yet the great end seems no nearer. On and on, stumbling in the night with bleeding feet and wearied brain, the great world has struggled forward, hoping for the dawn. "There is no radiance," it mutters, "on the mountains yet. I hope for ever, that is my doom; but the night is deep, and the day delays. Would God I could see the morning glow!" I. St. Paul was wrong when he expected the final close in his own time; but he was right in this— that a new day was near at hand. We are wrong when we think we are near to the last great hour of time; but we are right when our heart tells us that God is coming to bring light to our own souls, to awaken our nation out of wrong into right, to set on foot new thoughts which will renew the life of mankind, for that is His continuous and Divine work. The reason, then, denies the nearness of the time when God will close this era of the world, and denies it on account of the slowness of God's work. In reality God's work is never slow or fast; it always marches at a constant pace; but to our sixty or seventy years it seems of an infinite tardiness. We live and grasp our results so hurriedly, and we have so short a time in which to work, that we naturally find ourselves becoming impatient with God. To work quickly seems to us to work well. But we forget how, even in our little life, we lose the perfection of results by too great rapidity. We seclude no hours of wise quiet, and our thought is not matured. God never makes these mistakes, the mistakes of haste. He never forgets to let a man, a nation, the whole of mankind rest at times, that they may each assimilate the results of an era of activity. II. But though that great day is far away, the heart asserts, and truly, that when there is deepest night over nations and the world and men, a day of the Lord is at hand; that a dawn is coming— not the last day, not the final dawn, but the uprising of Christ in light, deliverance, knowledge, and love. The belief is born not only out of our natural hatred of evil and suffering and the desire to be freed, but out of actual experience. Again and again have these days of the Lord come, has the night vanished and the sunlight burst on the world, not only in religion, but in the regeneration of societies, in the revolutions of nations, in the rush of great and creative thoughts over the whole of the civilised world. Men sunk in misery, ignorance, and oppression cried to the watchers, and the prophets answered, "The night is far spent," we see the coming day. And never has their answer been left unfulfilled. S. A. Brooke, The Spirit of the Christian Life, p. 262. References: Romans 13:12.— H. J. Wilmot Buxton, The Life of Duty, vol. i., p. 1; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. v., p. 271; A. Jessopp, Norwich School Sermons, p. 219. Romans 13:12-14.— E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation, vol. ii., p. 1. Romans 13:14.—Homilist, 3rd series, vol. vii., p. 96; Archbishop Maclagan, Church of England Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 273; F. W. Farrar, Contemporary Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 286; H. Bushnell, Christ and His Salvation, p. 371. Romans 13:14.— J. B. Mozley, University Sermons, p. 46. Romans 14:5 Scruples. I. We are all liable at various times to be troubled with perplexities about our duty, not because we find it hard or unpleasant, but because we cannot clearly see our way, and this perplexity sometimes amounts to something like darkness, and causes much fear. It is sometimes a doubt about the past, whether we have done right, and sometimes about the present, whether we are in the right way, and sometimes about the future, what we are henceforward to do. Such scruples and perplexities are sent or are permitted to come, it matters not which, by God; and it is intended that with these, as with all other opportunities that come in our way, we should fulfil some end which God would have fulfilled, and their purpose is too plain to be mistaken for a moment. II. Scruples or difficulties which come in the way of duty are of the wrong kind; they are perversions of conscience, and they require a satisfaction which we have no right to ask. Very often they ask to have settled by reason what really is a matter of feeling. Very often they ask to be blessed with feelings which God chooses to give or withhold at His own pleasure, and which we cannot demand at our pleasure. The time is spent in lamenting past sins which ought to be spent in attending to present duties; the heart is given up to fears which ought to be given up to God; weak regret takes the place of vigorous resolution; longings for a sense of God's presence, or for a sense of our own love, fill up our souls when we ought to be proving our love by the proof which He has named, that is, keeping His commandments. All such scruples and such inward difficulties are not healthy, and to indulge them is not right. III. We should consider whether these inward questionings elevate the general tone of our minds, not merely for the discharge of immediate duties, but for the formation of higher and nobler purposes in life. Unless this be the case, these self-questionings are simply of no use whatever. There were no men in the whole of the world's history who devoted themselves more entirely to questions of this sort than the Jewish Pharisees. And it ended in their case with the grossest and worst hypocrisy. Something of the same sort is very possible still. And the only way to avoid it is always to press the gaze of our consciences towards God and God's will rather than towards ourselves. Bishop Temple, Rugby Sermons p. 101 Liberty is one of the ideas on which the progress of mankind depends. It is now said that liberty is not only an indefinite term, but that it is nothing more than a negation. We are told, in order to prove its indefiniteness, that it has meant different things to different people and at different times, and that, if you ask a number of persons, they will give different explanations of it according to their prejudices or desires. And that is true enough. But all the same, it does not prove that the idea is indefinite in itself. It is the characteristic of any large idea to take different forms at different times: in fact, it must do so— it is the characteristic of an idea to grow as mankind advances, and its form is therefore sure to change. Outwardly, it must always be in a condition of weaving and unweaving, of ebb and flow, of birth and death. But if people took the trouble, they could at any time arrive at its root and express that in a definite statement. That is the work of the student. I. The idea of liberty on the side of religion is founded on the fact that God has made each one of us a distinct person; that we each possess, and are bound to act up to, an individuality. I have an intellect, heart, character, and life of my own, modified by circumstances and by the influences of others, but my own; and I have a body of thought as the result of this, which I have a more absolute right to than I have to my property, and which I am bound to express by a stronger duty than that which binds me to my property. Why is that? From the religious point of view I answer, Because it is God who has made you an individual. It is He Himself who, in you, has made you a representative of a distinct phase of His being, a doer of a distinct part of His work. If anything is remarkable in Christianity, it is the way in which it gave an impulse to individual thought and to the freedom of self-development. II. But this development is impossible if thought and its expression are restrained. For a father to do that for his child is bad enough— for a state or a church to do it for a large number of their subjects is worse still; and whenever this liberty is repressed by force of arms, those who do it are fighting against God. And men have always felt this and every struggle for liberty of thought becomes a religious one, and ought to be considered as such. We hold then, (1) that God practically says to man, "Fight out every question; I give you absolute freedom of thought on them, and I wish you to use it." On the whole, and often by reason of the very elements which seem to oppose it, there has been in this world a fierce freedom of discussion and thought, and it has had its source in God. (2) We hold, secondly, since God guides the world, that, however fierce the battle, and however confusing the chaos of opinions, the best and noblest thing will in the end prevail, and its idea in its right and perfect form stand clear at last and be recognised by all. And when all the ideas which are necessary for man to believe and act on have gone through this long series of experiments, and are known and loved by all, then will the race be perfect. III. Now, these things, being believed, are a ground of the idea of liberty I have put forward. We ought to fall in with the method of God's education of the race, and the way to do it is for the state in public life, and for ourselves in social and private life, to give perfect liberty of thought and its expression on all possible subjects. "But if we allow absolute freedom of thought and expression we do not produce any clear ideas on any subject, only a chaos of opinions— as, for example, on the subject of Liberty." That is only too likely to be your view, if you do not believe in a God who is educating the race. And you are driven back, having no faith or hope, on the plan of authority; but the true lover of liberty, who believes in God as a Divine and guiding Spirit in men, has not only hope, but certainty that a solution will be found. He knows that the best and highest view of the idea will in the end prevail, and that the more liberty of discussion he gives, even of evil and dangerous opinions, the sooner will the solution be arrived at. S. A. Brooke, The Fight of Faith, p. 99. Liberty at Home. I. If is the habit of some parents, not only to check, but even to forbid the expression of opinion on the part of their sons and daughters long after they have reached an age when they ought to be able and to be encouraged to think for themselves. As long as their opinions are the mere echoes of those that rule the household nothing is said, but the moment they differ from them restriction comes in. Such a household lives under a paternal despotism, a government which may have some good results as long as the children are quite young, but the results of which are evil in a home when the age of childhood is passed as they are evil in a state when the age of barbarism has been gone through. For if this kind of despotism succeeds, either through love or through violence, and you have imposed your opinions and your character on your children, what have you done? You have crushed that which was individual in them, their own views. They are not themselves; they have never known what they are, and of course they have no original power and can make no progress. Their life is dull, their thoughts conventional, and they become in after life only one addition the more to the rolled pebbles on the beach of society. And if English parents were all to follow the same plan, or if English children did not continually break through this plan, our society would soon sink into the prolonged infancy of a society like that of China, and all the progress of the nation and of the race of man, so far as England sets it forward, be stopped. That would be the result of complete success, and it is just the same in states as it is in families. II. Having freedom, your children will not abuse it, for they will not only love you, which counts for nothing in these matters, but have real friendship for you, which does; and it will be a friendship which will— since you have accustomed them to weigh evidence— frankly give its full weight to your longer experience. Then, too, they will never be exposed to those violent religious shocks which come on young men and young women who have been hidden away from the difficulties of the day, and who are often utterly overwhelmed when they come out into the world. A boy so trained is not likely to have all his religion knocked on the head, like many weak persons at their first entrance into controversy. Nor is he much horrified with himself if he does doubt or get in some religious darkness, for he has been taught by his father that God is educating him, and that in the end he must see truth. He does not then give up the battle, for his whole training makes him love God too well for that; but he is not in a great hurry, nor is he ever in despair. He watches and waits when he cannot see his way; he is ready to move forward when he does; he has a great faith to support him that he is God's for ever, and that God will make the best opinion prevalent both for him and the world. And through all, his "parents"— who have always reverenced his soul, always given his questioning intelligence and soul freedom of expression, always looked forward to, and when it came accepted, even with joy, the time when he would emancipate himself from the narrower interests and say, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?"— remain his friends, trusted, believed in, communicated with. He owes to them the greatest gift one man can owe to another, independence of mind, and at the root of life a noble, religious faith— faith that God has chosen him to be a living individual person, and that He will make him perfect in the end. S. A. Brooke, The Fight of Faith, p. 118. References: Romans 14:5.— T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. v., p. 23. Romans 14:5, Romans 14:6.— F. W. Robertson, Sermons, 2nd series, p. 160. Romans 14:7I. Look at the text as it is interpreted for us by the section of the Epistle to the Romans in which it is found. That section is devoted to an elucidation of the principles by which the early Christians were to be guided as to their observance or non-observance of particular festival days and as to their abstinence or non-abstinence from certain kinds of meats and drinks. "None of us," says the Apostle, "liveth to himself." However it may be with others, none of us Christians liveth unto himself. Each of us has accepted Christ as his Redeemer and Lord, and is seeking in all things to serve Him, so if one eateth, he eateth unto the Lord, and if another eateth not, he eateth not unto the Lord. Because we are seeking to live to Christ, there is, in reference to all matters indifferent, perfect liberty to the individual conscience, and no one has a right to judge or set at nought another for doing that of which he is fully persuaded in his own mind, and which he is seeking to do as unto the Lord. Not our own pleasure, but rather the glory of Christ and the edification and peace and progress of the brotherhood, is to be made the rule of our lives. II. Consider the text as an inevitable condition of human existence. No man's life terminates on himself alone, but each of us exerts an influence through his character and conduct upon all with whom he comes in contact. Make haste, then, and see whether the effect of your life on others is good or evil; and if evil, seek for goodness and renewal at the hand of Christ. III. Read the text as it expresses the deliberate purpose of every genuine Christian. The true believer forswears self. From the moment of his conversion his whole being runs Christward. The volume of the river may be small at first, but, small as it is, its direction is decided, and it gathers magnitude as it flows, for it drains the valley of his life. He keeps himself for Christ, because he owes everything to Christ. W. M. Taylor, Contrary Winds, p. 341. References: Romans 14:7, Romans 14:8.— R. S. Candlish, Sermons, p. 250; J. H. Thom, Laws of Life, vol. ii., p. 331; S. Martin, Comfort in Trouble, p. 190; D. Moore, Penny Pulpit, No. 3057. Romans 14:7-9I. First among the causes of the gospel's triumph, if it be not rather the sole cause, is that the belief in the crucifixion and resurrection was not a bare profession, but a real inward life. That some new principle was really working in and fashioning the minds of believers is always assumed by the apostles, and not in the way of a heated enthusiasm, in which the mind projects the colours of its tainted eyesight upon the facts it sees, but as calmly as we could speak of the transactions of the parliament, the law-court, or the exchange. Young lads and tender women, common workmen and slaves, showed that a new spring moved all their actions; and those who came in contact with them, if they had in their hearts any germ of good at all, must have felt the influence of this moral supremacy. And can we find any other solution of this change than the simplest of all, that Christ was keeping His promise of being ever with His disciples? It was God who wrought in them; it was the promised Spirit of God that guided them; it was the Lord of the dead and living who was sitting at the right hand of God and helping and communing with those whom the Father had given Him. II. Supposing the Divine agency to be admitted, then it follows that our Lord's nature is Divine. God cannot have been working for so many centuries in the Church causing men to bring forth fruits of righteousness in order to confirm in the earth an idolatrous delusion. Had the Church of Christ been perpetuating that worst of errors, taking the glory of God and transferring it to another, long since would the fountains of grace have been dried up from it, and the spiritual rains of heaven would have refused to refresh it until its idolatry was purged away. But we may bow the knee in His name, we may look up to Him on His Divine throne, we may say with Thomas, "My Lord and my God," because the steady fulfilment of His promises and the streams and blessing ever derived from Him by His Church assure us that His account of His Divine relation to the Father is the very truth. Archbishop Thomson, Lincoln's Inn Sermons, p. 109. Reference: Romans 14:7-9.— J. Duncan, The Pulpit and Communion Table, p. 249. Romans 14:8I. What is meant by this strange word "unto"? We live "unto the Lord." It seems to impart at once into the phrase an air of unfamiliarity if not of actual unreality. I will try and explain this. The right and full understanding of it indeed would make any one a master of St. Paul's philosophy, but some understanding of it we all may win. II. We have very close relations with each other. No one saw more clearly than St. Paul that religion was bound to take these relations into account, to illuminate and sanctify them. Christ's religion is above all others the religion of humanity. But St. Paul knew very well that the religion which is based only on men's relations to one another would be a very imperfect one; for there is a third element in religion which must never be absent, and that is God. By the word unto, live unto the Lord, St. Paul embodies the relation between these three great elements. Live, he says, and perform all your duties to society and to one another; and the way to do so is to live unto the Lord. You are to live with men, for men, but with your thoughts reaching out unto God. These real personal relations between your individual soul and God are not to be sacrificed to your duties to one another; nay, more, you cannot live as St. Paul bids you live, until you live unto God, with your eyes and thoughts and prayers turned to Him. III. Consider how a real living obedience to the command to live unto the Lord would affect our lives here in our present society. (1) To live means with us all to work. Work in one form or other occupies a large part of our lives. Do you not think it would make a great difference to any man if he felt that all his work was done unto the Lord, not unto men? It would make his work trustworthy; discontent would have no place; consciously superficial work would be impossible, for our work is done for the eye of our Master in heaven. (2) Again, think what dignity it adds to labour. We are working under our Master's eye, and no work that He gives us is petty or uninteresting. (3) An honest endeavour to grasp this conception is the greatest possible help against positive downright sins; it gives calmness, hopefulness, and the courage of a soul at rest. J. M. Wilson, Sermons in Clifton College Chapel, p. 52. I. Note, first, that St. Paul feels and acknowledges the difference that separates the fundamental question of the faith of Christ from those of merely subordinate importance. That Christ, the commissioned Son of God, and Himself God manifest in the flesh, is the sole hope of the believer, exclusive of all reference to human merit; that if man will be just before the living God, it is only in and through Christ that he can be accepted as such; that His work is a complete work, to which man can add nothing, but from which man receives everything; that this is the cardinal fact of the religion which God brought from heaven to earth, and that in this, as in a germ, is enfolded the whole glorious story of eternity, St. Paul insists, reiterates, enforces. But in minor differences of view the principle of charity, wrought by the belief of the main and fundamental, is the guiding star. II. The "Lord" here spoken of is at once Christ and God. Unto Him, as Christians, we are called upon to live; He who is the principle of our spiritual life is also made the object of it, as the vapours of the ocean supply the rivers that return unto the ocean itself. Unto Him, as Christians, we are called upon to die; He who died for us is made the object of our death likewise. To live unto God is but to return Him His own right in the human heart, to concentrate on Him those affections which originally were formed for Him alone. What is it but to know that even while this shadowy world encompasses us there is around and above it a scene real, substantial, and eternal— a scene adequate, and at this moment adequate, to answer all the ardent longings of our bereaved souls— a scene in which every holier affection, widowed and blighted here, is to be met and satisfied? To live in this belief, this hope; to read in the death of Christ death itself lost in immortality; to make the God of the New Testament the friend, the companion, the consoler of all earthly sorrow; to feel the brightest colours of ordinary life fade in the glory that shall be revealed,— this is to live the life that heralds the immortality unto God. W. Archer Butler, Sermons, 2nd series, p. 17. The Christian Idea of Life. I. "To the Lord we live; to the Lord we die." That idea of life is founded on the great truth expressed in the previous verse— "For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself." In one aspect that is a universal and inevitable law. We are not separate beings, linked only together by outward ties or for selfish purposes. We are not lonely men floating in the stream of time, just now and again in transient companionship with our fellows. Our life is, and must be, part of a larger life, the life of humanity; for by mysterious chains of influence we are bound to each other and to the world. Now, Paul says that what all other men must do unconsciously the Christian does consciously. Unable to live entirely for himself, he chooses not to live for himself at all. He gives the law its highest meaning in voluntarily dedicating his life and death as one perpetual offering to God, and living thus, he lives most nobly as a blessing to society. II. The motive by which this consecration may be realised. This is given us in the verse which follows our text: "For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that He might be the Lord both of the dead and living." It is from Christ's lordship over life, therefore, that the inspiration springs by which we are enabled to dedicate our whole lives. There are two aspects of this lordship. (1) By the power of His love Christ is Lord over our voluntary life. Among our fellow-men we recognise a kinghood of souls. There are those whom we reverence as spiritual leaders, to whom we yield a loving homage. We rejoice to look up to those greater spirits for guidance and help, and in a sense they reign over us. But far more profoundly is this true with regard to Christ. (2) The second aspect is Christ's lordship over the inevitable events of life. All things are given into His hands. He is King over our whole histories. Our disappointments, failures, sorrows, "death's agonies and fears," are known to and sympathised with by Him. Does not this form a glorious inspiration to surrender? E. L. Hull, Sermons, 2nd series, p. 74. References: Romans 14:8.— Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 162. Romans 14:9.— Parker, Hidden Springs, p. 332; R. S. Candlish, Sermons, p. 266; S. Martin, Comfort in Trouble, p. 204; R. S. Candlish, Sermons, p. 266. Romans 14:10.—Church of England Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 165; Todd, Lectures to Children, p. 62; F. W. Robertson, The Human Race, p. 134; Parker, City Temple, vol. ii., p. 289. Romans 14:11.—Plain Sermons, vol. iv., p. 259. Romans 14:12.— E. Garbett, Experiences of the Inner Life, p. 74; H. P. Liddon, Advent Sermons, vol. i., p. 383; R. W. Church, Church of England Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 365; H. W. Beecher, Sermons, vol. ii., p. 131; Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. viii., p. 245; Outline Sermons to Children, p. 217; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 347. Romans 14:16.— W. Ince, Church of England Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 344. Romans 14:17 In this verse of Scripture joy is not the first but the last of three. Joy is the home in which the pilgrim rests; righteousness and peace are the paths by which he reaches it. I. Righteousness. It is the want of righteousness, or guilt, that disturbs our peace or damps our joy. Here lies the root of the ailment, and here, therefore, must the cure begin. A righteousness suitable to our need must obviously consist of two parts— the evil must be removed and the good imparted. Christ's sacrifice and work correspond to this twofold need of guilty man. His death blots out the guilt, and His life becomes the righteousness of His believing people. Christ personally is everything in the gospel. II. Peace enjoyed flows from righteousness possessed. When I have righteousness then I have peace. The peace of which the text speaks dwells on earth, but it has been produced there by another peace which has its home in heaven. It is when God is at peace with me that I am at peace with God. When His anger is turned away my confidence in Him begins. I need not cherish my dread when He has taken His wrath away. When peace is proclaimed from the judgment-seat to me, peace echoes from my glad heart up to heaven again. III. Joy in the Holy Ghost. Here at last is the thing we have been seeking all our days; it is joy, or happiness. There are two conditions possible to a human soul in this life: the one, to be in sin and at enmity with God; the other, to be righteous in Christ's righteousness, and at peace with God through the blood of the Cross. In respect of the happiness which these two conditions yield, they are related as night and day are related in respect to light. In the region nearest us, and at certain times, they may approach or seem to approach an equality. The night sometimes, through moon and stars and wintry meteors, has a good deal of light in it; and the day sometimes, through rising smoke and hovering clouds, has a good deal of darkness in it. A night of many stars may seem brighter than a day of many clouds; but the night is notwithstanding far different from day. Immortal souls in sin and under wrath may have many bright joys as they traverse this life, but their joys are only sparks on the surface of an eternal night; on the other hand, Christian disciples may have many sorrows, but these are only clouds hovering in the thin atmosphere of earth, hiding heaven from view for the moment, but leaving all the eternity beyond an undimmed, unending light. W. Arnot, Family Treasury, July, 1861. References: Romans 14:17.— Parker, City Temple, 1871, p. 445; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 97. Romans 14:19 (R.V.) I. This was wise counsel, and counsel that we cannot doubt was in accordance with the mind of Christ. But it has not been much heeded in the Church. Of course there have been peaceable and charitable spirits here and there, who have looked with kindliness and respect on those from whom they have differed in opinion or practice, who have even been willing to receive and to honour as brethren all who loved the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, and have been honestly trying to do His work. But the disposition to follow the things that make for strife, and by which one may be set at variance with another, has been, perhaps, more common than the disposition to follow the things which make for peace, and by which we may edify one another. II. Let us endeavour to be both just and generous in all our relations with those who serve the same Master as ourselves, and in all our criticisms and our judgments upon them. I do not mean at all that we should disguise and conceal our convictions on questions of great though not of the greatest importance, because those convictions may not commend themselves to our neighbours. We are not bound to do that. We are not even at liberty to do it. But we may be persuaded, and we may say with all humility that we think we have learned from the Lord Jesus, that certain conceptions of the Church, and of the nature of religion and of duty, which we hold and cling to, are more in harmony with His will than other conceptions which are held and cherished by our neighbours. We may be persuaded of this, and yet abstain from everything that can engender strifes, keeping ever, strong as our convictions may be, and clear and uncompromising though we may be in the avowal of them, "the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." That is to be our aim. In view of the controversies of our time it is incumbent on us to take heed to ourselves, lest in defending what we think to be truth we break the peace and sin against the law of charity, which is the supreme law of the kingdom of God. H. Arnold Thomas, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxx., p. 379. References: Romans 14:19.— J. Irons, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 341. Romans 14:20.—Saturday Evening, p. 28. Romans 14:22.— G. E. L. Cotton, Sermons and Addresses in Marlborough College, p. 386. Romans 15:1.— H. W. Beecher, Sermons, 1st series, p. 113. Romans 15:1-3 Against Self-pleasing. I. We ought not to please ourselves. "We": who are the we? Christians, but not that alone. Among Christians, the strong. "We that are strong." The strength here indicated is not the general strength of the Christian character, although that in a measure is implied, but strength in the one respect of a broad intelligent faith as to the lawfulness of all kinds of food, and as to the complete abrogation of the Mosaic law. It is very noticeable that the Apostle has no corresponding exhortation to the weak. I suppose he foresaw that very few would be willing to accept the terms as descriptive of themselves and their state— that for one who would go and stand under the inscription "the weak" there would be ten ready to stand under the name and inscription of "the strong." As to self-pleasing, it is never good in any case whatever. (1) It is of the essence of sin. (2) It always tends to meanness of character. (3) It tends to corruption, just as the stagnant water becomes unfit for use. (4) It always inflicts injury and misery on others. (5) It is enormously difficult to the self that is always seeking to be pleased, so difficult, in fact, as to be ultimately quite impossible of realisation. II. If not ourselves, then whom?" Let every one of us please his neighbour." But here comes a difficulty, and yet no great difficulty when we look at it more fully. It is this. If the neighbour is to be pleased by me, why should not the neighbour please me in return? If there is to be an obligation at all, it must surely be mutual. Here is the safeguard in the passage itself. "I am to please my neighbour for his good to edification." The one of these words explains the other. "Good to edification" means good in the spiritual sense, religious good; the building up of the character in spiritual life. That is to be the end and aim of any compliance with his wishes that may be made. We are both to borrow, each from each, and then act for the best. If the spirit be good, there will be but little of practical difficulty in settling the limits of concession— in each pleasing his neighbour for his good to edification. III. To help us to do this we ought to consider much and deeply the example of Christ. When He was here He never spared Himself. He never chose the easier way, never waited for the weather, never postponed the doing of a duty. Here is an example, high and glorious, and yet near, and human, and touching. And we are to do as He did, and be as He was. Even Christ pleased not Himself. A. Raleigh, The Little Sanctuary, p. 176. References: Romans 15:2.— S. A. Tipple, Sunday Mornings at Upper Norwood, p. 250; H. W. Beecher, Forty-eight Sermons, vol. i., p. 22; G. Litting, Thirty Children's Sermons, p. 1; J. Vaughan, Children's Sermons, 6th series, p. 39. Romans 15:2-3 Christ not Pleasing Himself— Christian and Social Tolerance. I. Note, first, the rule of forbearance as laid down by the Apostle. We have to learn that, within the limits of what is not positively wrong, every one has the right to be himself, to develop his own nature in his own way, and that he cannot be forced into the mould of another without losing his capacity of highest enjoyment, and his power and greatest usefulness to his fellow-men. Our duty under God is to be true to our own nature, but to grant this privilege also to every other, and where we seek to influence them to do it in accordance with the laws of their nature. The question may arise here again, Is there no limit to our self-surrender? and it is pointed out. We are to please our neighbour "for his good to edification." This is the end, and the end prescribes the limit. Our great object must be not to please our neighbour any more than to please ourselves, but to do him the highest good, and gain an influence that may lead up to truth and duty and God. II. This forbearance is illustrated by Christ's example. To prove the disinterested forbearance of Christ, Paul cites a passage that shows His self-devotion to God. He offered Himself to bear the reproach cast on that great name, and thought nothing of self if the honour of God was maintained. There is a broad principle taught us here also— viz., that right action toward men flows naturally from right feeling toward God. If self-pleasing has been sacrificed on the Divine altar, it has received its death-blow in every other form. He who has truly, deeply, entirely given up his will to God is not the man to force it harshly and capriciously on his fellow-men. This is what the Apostle would have us infer regarding Christ in His human bearings. The forbearance of Christ is illustrated (1) in the variety of character which His earthly life drew around it; (2) He interposed to defend others when they were interfered with. III. Note the advantages that would result from acting on this principle. If we wish those we are influencing to become valuable for anything, it must be by permitting them to be themselves. This is the only way in which we can hope to make our fellow-creatures truly our own. And in pursuing such a course we shall best succeed in elevating and broadening our own nature. John Ker, Sermons, p. 197. Romans 15:4 What is the true purpose of Holy Scripture? Why was it written? St. Paul replies, "Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning." And what kind of learning? we ask. St. Paul answers again, "That we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have, not merely information, but hope." Scripture, then, is a manual of moral or spiritual learning. It is addressed to the heart and to the will, as well as, or rather than, to the intellect. I. We need hope. Hope is the nerve— it is the backbone— of all true life, of all serious efforts to battle with evil, and to live for God. For the majority of men, especially as the years pass, life is made up of the disheartening; the sunshine of the early years has gone. The evening is shrouded already with clouds and disappointment. Failure, sorrow, the sense of a burden of past sin, the presentiment of approaching death— these things weigh down the spirit of multitudes. Something is needed which shall lift men out of this circle of depressing thought— something which shall enlarge our horizon, which shall enable us to find in the future that which the present has ceased to yield. And here the Bible helps us as no other book can. It stands alone as the warrant and the stimulant of hope; it speaks with a Divine authority; it opens out a future which no human authority could attest. There are many human books which do what they can in this direction; but they can only promise something better than what we have at present on this side the grave. The Bible is pre-eminently the book of hope. In it God draws the veil which hangs between man and his awful future, and bids him take heart and arise and live. II. Those who will may find, in Holy Scripture, patience, consolation, hope, not in its literary or historical features, but in the great truths which it reveals about God, about our incarnate Lord, about man— in the great examples it holds forth of patience and of victory, in the great promises it repeats, in the future which it unfolds to the eye of faith, is this treasure to be found. H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit, No. 848. Romans 15:4 Practical Use of the Old Testament. Consider some of the departments of Christian knowledge, for which the study of the Old Testament Scriptures is requisite. I. The history of the chosen people of God is very full of needful instruction for us. The seed of Abraham were selected as the vehicle of God's will, and ultimately of the blessings of redemption to the world. But they were also selected for the great lesson to be read to all ages, that the revelation of a moral law of precepts and ordinances never could save mankind. And this fact is one abundantly commented on in the New Testament. A man is equally incapacitated from reading the Gospels and the Acts to much purpose— from appreciating the relative position of our Lord and the Jews in the one, or the Apostles and the Jews in the other— without being fairly read in the Old Testament. II. Again, one very large and important region of assurance of our faith will be void without a competent knowledge of the prophetical books of the Old Testament. It is only by being familiar with such portions of God's Word that we have any chance of recognising their undoubted fulfilment, when it arrives as a thing announced to us for our instruction and caution. If God has really given these announcements of futurity to His Church, it cannot be for us who are lying in His hands— the creatures of what a day may bring forth— to neglect them or cast them aside. III. As an example of life the ancient Scriptures are exceedingly rich and valuable to the Christian. IV. The direct devotional use of the ancient Scriptures is no mean element in the nurture of the Christian spirit. They are full of the breathings of the souls of holy men of God; full also of the words of life, spoken by Him to the soul. Search the Old Testament Scriptures, for they are they that testify of Christ. To find Him in them is the true and legitimate end of their study. To be able to interpret them as He interpreted them is the best result of all Biblical learning. H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. v., p. 260. The Scriptures Bearing Witness. St. Paul is here speaking of things in the Old Testament respecting Christ. They are there written, he says, that we may dwell and ponder on the same, as seeing how they have been fulfilled in Him; and, so being supported and comforted by them, may have hope. But as the inspired Scriptures are of no avail unless God Himself, who gave them, enlighten us, he takes up the same words of "patience and consolation," and proceeds: "Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according to Christ Jesus: that ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," that God may shed abroad His peace in our hearts, and that His peace may make us at peace with each other; and so, having love to each other, we may render to God acceptable praise and united worship. This, the firstfruits of the Word and of the Spirit, must be by brotherly kindness, uniting Jew and Gentile, bond and free, rich and poor, fragrant as the sacred ointment, and, as the dew from heaven, rich in blessing. "Wherefore receive ye one another," he adds, "as Christ also received us to the glory of God." II. St. Paul then returns to the fulfilment of the Scriptures, showing how the law and the prophets were in Christ altogether accomplished; inasmuch as He fulfilled the righteousness of the law, was the object of its types, the substance of its shadows, and as such the Apostle and High Priest to the Hebrews; and, according to the same Scripture throughout, was to bring the Gentiles to the obedience of faith, that there might be one fold and one Shepherd. The Epistle for the day ends as it begins, with hope as resting on the Scriptures, as strengthened by the fulfilment of them, as imparted by the God of all hope; and this hope is that blessed hope of seeing Christ soon return, and of being accepted by Him. Many and various are the signs of approaching summer, and manifold, in like manner, will be the tokens of Christ's last Advent which the good will notice— will notice with joy and comfort, as a sick man does the coming on of summer. No light hath been as the light of that day will be; no darkness that we know of will be like that which it brings. O day of great reality and truth! all things are shadows and dreams when compared to thee, and the falling of sun, moon, and stars in the great tribulation will be but as a light affliction, which is but for a moment, compared with thee, like clouds that break away when the sun appears! I. Williams, The Epistles and Gospels, vol. i., p. 1. I. There is no book which requires such constant, such daily study, as the Bible. Regard it first merely on what one might call its human side, and quite apart from the fact that it is the wisdom not of man but of God. Scripture is not a hortus siccus, where you can at once find everything you want to find, labelled and ticketed and put away into our drawers; it is a glorious wilderness of sweets, in which under higher guidance you must gradually learn to find your way and discover one by one the beauties it contains, but which is very far from obtruding upon every careless observer. Assume for an instant that Scripture differs in no essential thing from the highest works of human intellect and genius, and then, as other books demand patience and study before they give up their secrets, can it be expected that this book, or rather this multitude of books, should not demand the same? II. But regard the Scripture in its proper dignity with those higher claims which it has upon us as the message of God to sinful man, and then it will be still more manifest that only the constant and diligent student can hope to possess himself of any considerable portion of the treasures which it contains. For what indeed is Scripture? Men uttered it, but men who were moved thereto by the Holy Ghost. It is the wisdom of God. If all Scripture is by inspiration of God, and all Scripture profitable for instruction in righteousness, must not all Scripture, putting aside a very few chapters indeed, be the object of our most diligent search? III. Let us read, (1) looking for Christ— Christ in the Old Testament quite as much as in the New. (2) With personal application, for Scripture is like a good portrait, which wherever we move appears to have eyes on us still. (3) Whatever we learn out of God's Holy Word, let us seek in our lives to fulfil the same and strive to bring both the outward course and inward spirit of our lives into closer and more perfect agreement with what there we search. R. C. Trench, Sermons New and Old, p. 267. References: Romans 15:4.— H. P. Liddon, Advent Sermons, vol. i., p. 248; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 204. Romans 15:4, Romans 15:13 The Twofold Genealogy of Hope. I. We have here the hope that is the child of the night and born in the dark. "Whatsoever things," says the Apostle, "were written aforetime, were written for our learning, that we through patience"— or rather, the brave perseverance— "and consolation"— or rather, perhaps encouragement— "of the Scriptures might have hope." The written word is conceived to be the source of patient endurance which acts as well as suffers. This grace Scripture works in us through the encouragement it ministers in manifold ways, and the result of both is hope. Scripture encourages us, (1) by its records, and (2) by its revelation of principles. Hope is born of sorrow; but darkness gives birth to the light, and every grief blazes up a witness to a future glory. Sorrow has not had its perfect work unless it has led us by the way of courage and perseverance to a stable hope. Hope has not pierced to the rock and builds only on things that can be shaken, unless it rests on sorrows borne by God's help. II. We have also a hope that is born of the day, the child of sunshine and gladness, and that is set before us in the second of the two verses which we are considering. "The God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope." (1) Faith leads to joy and peace. Paul has found, and if we only put it to the proof we shall also find, that the simple exercise of simple faith fills the soul with all joy and peace. (2) The joy and peace which spring from faith in their turn produce the confident anticipation of future and progressive good. Herein lies the distinguishing blessedness of the Christian joy and peace, in that they carry in themselves the pledge of their own eternity. Here, and here only, the mad boast which is doomed to be so miserably falsified when applied to earthly gladness is simple truth. Here "tomorrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant." Such joy has nothing in itself which betokens exhaustion, as all the less pure joys of earth have. It is manifestly not born for death, as are they. It is not fated, like all earthly emotions or passions, to expire in the moment of its completeness, or even by sudden revulsion to be succeeded by its opposite. Its sweetness has no after-pang of bitterness. It is not true of this gladness that "Hereof cometh in the end despondency and madness," but its destiny is to remain as long as the soul in which it unfolds shall exist, and to be full as long as the source from which it flows does not run dry. A. Maclaren, Christian Commonwealth, June 24th, 1886. Reference: Romans 15:13.— G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 240. Romans 15:29 Christian Confidence. Consider the sources of our confidence in our Christian influence. I. There is the constancy of Christ Himself. The constancy of Christ is as much an article of our confidence as His beneficence. His image in the gospel story is that of one without variableness or shadow of turning. When He was on earth, not weariness, nor want, nor scorn, nor cruelty, nor the neglect of His people, nor the imperfections of His disciples, could shake His fidelity, or change the current of His unvarying grace. And now that He has passed away from the gloom and trouble of earth into the serene air of heaven; now that He has laid aside the weakness of humanity, while He retains manhood's tender sympathy and helpful purpose; now that He has established His kingdom in the world and only lives to direct and to advance it; what room is there for fears of His inconstancy to cross and cloud our souls? We have no such fears. We rise into the region of certainty whenever we approach the Saviour. II. Christ is not only the object of Christian trust; He is the spirit of the Christian life. The measure of our Christian confidence determines the measure of our Christian usefulness; spiritual influence is only the outward side of Christian character. The heart prepares its own reception. We take with us the atmosphere in which we mix with others. Nothing can finally withstand the affectionate purpose of benediction, the spirit that, daunted or undaunted, cries still, "I have blessed thee, and thou shalt be blessed." The fact that we have human souls to deal with, each one wrapped in its own experience, often wayward, often perverse, can no more avail than our consciousness of our own imperfection and instability, to suppress the confidence of Christian believers: "I am sure that, when I come unto you, I shall come in the fulness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ." A. Mackennal, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxii., p. 284. References: Romans 15:29.— J. Vaughan, Sermons, 6th series, p. 1; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 1. Romans 15:33.— J. Irons, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 293. Romans 16:7.— E. Garbett, Experiences of the Inner Life, p. 51. Romans 16:10.— G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 426. Romans 16:23.— A. Maclaren, Week-day Evening Addresses, p. 124. Romans 16:27 The Doxologies of Scripture. I. There are two things included in a doxology— the expression of a wish and the performance of a duty. Their essential features are these: (1) They are always and exclusively addressed to God; (2) the mind of the writer fastens specially on some aspect of the Divine character, some attribute or group of attributes, as the foundation of His claim to universal and perpetual praise. II. While the sacred writers no doubt recognised the proofs of Divine wisdom, furnished by the works of nature and the movements of Providence, their minds were habitually fastened on the method of salvation taught in Scripture as the grand and decisive proof by which all others are surpassed and superseded. It was through Christ, not only as the brightness of God's glory and the image of His person, but as a Saviour, a propitiation set forth by God Himself, a means devised and provided by Him for the accomplishment of what appeared impossible; it was through Christ, considered in this light, that the lustre of God's wisdom shone in dazzling brightness upon Paul and John and Peter. The simplest and most obvious explanation of the words "through Christ" is that Christ is the medium through which the Divine glory is and must be glorified. Not only does He share by right of His Divinity in all the Divine honours, not only by His mediation and atoning passion does He furnish the most luminous display of Divine wisdom; but as Head of the Church and as the Father of a spiritual seed, to whom that wisdom is and ever will be an object of adoring admiration; and as their everliving and prevailing Intercessor with the Father, He is the means, the instrument, the channel through which everlasting glory shall be given to the only wise God, who has established a Church, and caused the gospel to be preached for that very purpose, "that now, unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places, might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God; unto Him be glory in the Church by Jesus Christ, through all ages, world without end. Amen." J. A. Alexander, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, p. 133. Reference: 16— G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 213.