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The negative side of this consequence is exhibited in Romans 6, 7 : The dying with Christ to sin and to the entire old form of life.
The positive side is exhibited in Romans 8 : The new life in Christ.
I. The first division is again divided into four parts.
A. As Christians have fundamentally (objectively by the death of Christ himself, and subjectively through the faith sealed by baptism) died with Christ to sin in order to walk in newness of life, so should they act as those who are dead to sin. For their new life is an organic connection with Christ, an organic development; yet it is not a life subject to fatalistic natural necessity, but, in conformity with fellowship with Christ, it is a life in true freedom, as life after Adam has been one in false freedom, or the seeming freedom of hard service. It is a religiously or ethically organic relation; Rom_6:1-11.
B. Because believers are dead to sin, they are free from its dominion. They should therefore take knowledge of the fact that they are delivered, and keep themselves from the bondage of sin; and in the power of their freedom, they should yield themselves under grace to be the servants of righteousness; Rom_6:12-23.
C. But their being dead to sin means also that they, as those who passed into newness of life, have received in themselves the new principle of life, which is righteousness, or the inward substance of the law. Therefore, by Christ, they are dead to the law in the narrower sense, in which they lived in matrimonial alliance. They should serve, not in outward ordinances, but inward principle—from the force of grace, the impulse of the heart; Rom_7:1-6.
D. But if to be dead to sin means also to be dead to the law, as well as the reverse, there follows nothing therefrom contrary to the holiness of the law. The law, rather, was designed, by its constant operation in awakening and increasing the conflict with sin, to effect the transition from the state of sin to the state of grace; Rom_7:7-25.
II. The second or positive part is thus prepared. The condition of believers is free from all condemnation, because, in harmony with its character, it is a life in the Spirit of Christ. But it is a life in the Spirit which is prepared by the Spirit through the glorification of the body and the whole nature; for the Spirit, as the Spirit of adoption, is the first security for it, and the believer is certain of it before-hand in blessed hope; chap. 8.
A. This life in the Spirit now demands, first of all, the laying off, in the conduct of the Christian, of all carnal lusts, which must, however, be distinguished from a positively ascetic mortification of the body; Rom_8:1-10.
B. As the Spirit of God testifies to adoption, so does it, as the Spirit of the risen Christ, secure the inheritance—that is, the renewal of the body, and the glorification of life; v Rom_8:11-17. The certainty of this blessed hope is established: a. On the development of life in this world, Rom_8:18-30; b. On the future or heavenly administration of the love of God and the grace of Christ, which make all the forces that apparently conflict with salvation even serviceable to its realization; Rom_8:31-39.
Meyer’s inscription over chaps. 6–8 is: “Ethical Effects of the äß÷áéïóýíç èåïῦ . Chap. 6; 7 shows that the äéê ., far from giving aid to immorality, is the first to exclude it, and to promote, restore, and vitalize virtue; and chap. 8 exhibits the blessed condition of those who, being justified, are morally free.” Tholuck: “It has been shown down to this point how much the Christian has received by that äéê . ðéóô .; Rom_1:17. It is the mention of the fulness of grace called forth by the power of sin, that now leads the Apostle to exhibit the moral consequences of this communication of grace, which in turn leads him further (chap. 7). to the statement of the insufficiency of the legal economy; and in antithesis thereto (chap. 8), to the moral effects of the economy of grace and its saving issue; so that the Apostle, after amplifying and enriching the explanations between Rom_1:18 and chap. 5, returns to the same point with which chap. 5 concluded.” The Apostle does, indeed, return to the same point with which, not the whole of chap. 5 concluded, but with which Rom_5:11. concluded, but in a sense altogether different, inasmuch as from Rom_5:12 on, the Apostle brings out, not merely the actual antagonism of sin and grace in humanity, as before, but the principial antagonism of the two principles in its ethical and organic aspect.