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‘Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.’
Rom_6:11
But the hope that is held out to Christians does not end with this great doctrine. By faith in the expiatory sacrifice of Jesus Christ, ‘he that believeth in Jesus’ obtains a sentence of justification in virtue of which he stands reconciled to God. But there is something more. Christ died and rose again.
I. He is our living Lord.—The Christian not only partakes in His Death and in His Burial, but also in His Resurrection. He rose with and in Him; he is to live with and in Him. Of this, his baptism is not only the symbol, but the seal and pledge. And to live is not merely to regain peace with God through the forgiveness of sin. It is to seek the light of His holiness, to walk in newness of life, in communion with the Father and the Son through the Spirit. As Godet says: ‘In the cure of the soul, pardon is only the crisis of convalescence; the restoration of health is sanctification.’ This brings us to the thought expanded and enforced in chapters 6–8.
II. The end which God has in view, the Apostle teaches, is the restoration of the sinner to life with Himself. Holiness is true life. Reconciliation is the first step; justification by faith is the means; sanctification is the end. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, however, while it brings freedom from guilt, does not prescribe freedom from moral obligation. On the contrary:
III. It enjoins practical holiness.—The objection, therefore, that Christianity encourages its disciples to ‘continue in sin, that grace may abound,’ is utterly without foundation. So far is this from the truth, that the Apostle exclaimed, with all the strength of asseveration, and we exclaim with him, ‘God forbid!’ The doctrines of Jesus Christ have the very opposite tendency.
Prebendary Eardley-Wilmot.
Illustration‘This is perhaps one of the very strongest statements in all the New Testament. We are to account ourselves dead to sin. And yet all the while we know that we go on sinning. Even the just falleth seven times a day. And St. Paul himself, in this very Epistle, bewails with the most impassioned bitterness the all too undeniable fact that what the Christian would not, that he still continues to do. But for all this here the words stand.’
THE RECKONING
I. The first part of the reckoning relates—
(a) To the greatest evil—‘Sin.’ There was a time when sin was a very little thing, but a paradise has been changed into a pandemonium, and pure beings into corrupt souls. The history of the world is the history of sin.
(b) To separation from this tremendous evil. ‘Dead indeed unto sin.’ A dead man is wholly insensible to the sounds, the tastes, the pleasures, and the avocations of life; and so should be a Christian man to all kinds of sin; they should have no dominion over him.
II. The second part of the reckoning relates—
(a) To the greatest Being—‘God.’ He is absolute love. And herein is His supreme greatness manifested.
(b) To connection with Him. ‘Alive unto God.’ The Apostle does not attempt to explain or prove this. He prefers to assert it independent of all metaphysical principle. But his statement, brief though it is, contains a world of meaning.
Illustration
‘Is it a paradox, or is it said in sober earnest? Is it a contradiction, stating what is not, only with the intention of fixing your minds more strongly on what really is; or is it the statement of a living fact which is to have a place and home in daily life? We know full well it is the latter. It is a paradox no doubt; but the life of faith is full of paradoxes. We may even say that the life of faith upon earth is itself one great paradox. You may say that such a precept as this is in itself a call to the impossible. But is not Christianity itself a call to the impossible?—to the impossible, that is, looked at from the merely human point of view.’
DEATH AND LIFE
I. The Christian’s view.
(a) He deems himself ‘dead unto sin.’ Sin once had mastery over him, but now it has lost its charm, its power, and its dreadful threatening. He is emancipated through a spiritual death.
(b) He reckons himself to be ‘alive to God.’ Formerly his soul was dead unto God; but now the thought of God is congenial, the voice of God is welcome, the will of God is authoritative. This spiritual life unto God involves the glorious resurrection and the life eternal.
II. This view derived from relation to Christ.—What we need for our true well-being is a revelation of God and a victory over sin.
(a) The change is in the likeness of Christ’s death and resurrection. In his crucifixion, our Lord died unto sin; in His resurrection, Jesus rose, and lived unto God. When we affirm that our death unto sin, and our life unto God, are in the likeness of Christ, we mean in fact and not in measure.
(b) The change is by the power of Christ’s death and resurrection. ‘In Christ Jesus’ here means in union with Him.
Illustration
‘Truth, honour, the craving after better things, which even bad men show, are the struggling witnesses to the fact that scarcely any depravity in this life can quite crush out the new life which God of His goodness has put within us. These are the facts. If you have sinned ever so deeply, or ever so long, it cannot alter the fact. It is the Christian’s birthright. Let your sins have been what they may, you may at any time turn round upon the Tempter, and, in the power of God which is yours in Christ, you may defy him to do his worst. Alive towards God. Yes, so we are. Would to God we could believe it.’
ALIVE UNTO GOD
II. We must make it our business so to live in this world as to carry out this idea of deadness to all that is merely of the world and evil.
III. There is a whole world of life on the side next God.—Try this and you will find it true. What does life mean? It means action and energy, and not mere existence. Life means love, and affection, and desire, and intercourse, and active energy on behalf of that for which we live. And the life of the soul is drawn from God and tends to God.
IV. Here we have the grand secret of Christian improvement.—It does not lie so much in merely taking precautions against individual sins—though this, alas! is all too necessary—as in vigorous pressing on in goodness, and in living in perpetual intercourse with God. How do we live in intercourse with God? There are three ways mainly.
(a) There is the closest of all when we come to Him—or rather when He comes to us—in Holy Communion.
(b) There is the next in our stated prayers, whether in His own house or in private.
(c) And then, linked on with these, and carrying their fragrance into our hourly life, there is the perpetual recollection and realising of His Presence.
Illustration
‘When Christ our Lord became man, He was not merely man minus human imperfections, He was more than that. Adam had been that once. So when Christ became man it was not merely a going back to what once had been, but a going forward to something new and better. The second man was the Lord from “heaven.” And this teaches us wherein our renewal must consist. As when Christ became man, the Godhead came into our nature, so when we are baptized into Christ, a new and Divine vitality is set a-going in our personality as well.’