《The Biblical Illustrator – Romans (Ch. 6b~8a)》

3. Further, when God draws the real character of a murderer, he draws it thus--“Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made He man.” Now, “the image of God” is innocence, and purity, and love. But sin violates these, and therefore breaks God’s image and is a murderer. But of what sort? The most aggravated possible. For if there had been only one “sin,” that one “sin” would have required the blood of Jesus Christ to wash it out. And if it he thus with all “sin,” how much more must it be with some of you who “crucify the Son of God afresh”?

III. Where will it end? I have said that every sin lies in a series; and none can calculate what will be the chain of consequences, which shall stretch on and on beyond time into eternity. The Bible tells us of an awful state in which a soul may pass into a hopeless and unpardonable condition. First there comes the grieving; then the resisting; then the quenching; then the blaspheming of the Spirit; and so the reprobate state draws on. But it is quite clear that every sin which a man wilfully does is another and another step in advance towards the unpardonable state: and in all sin there is a tendency to run faster, faster, as it makes progress. Indeed, there is not a “sin” which has not death bound up in it. A sin leads to a habit, a habit to a godless state of mind, and the godless state of mind to death. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

A grave charge

Why didn’t Paul say exceeding “black,” or “horrible”? Because there is nothing in the world so bad as sin. For if you call it black there is no moral excellency or deformity in black or white; black is as good as white. If you call sin “deadly,” yet death hath no evil in it compared with sin. For plants to die is not a dreadful thing; is part of the organisation of nature that successive generations of vegetables should spring up, and in due time should form the root soil for other generations to follow. If you want a word you must come home for it. Sin must be named after itself.

I. Sin is in itself “exceeding sinful.”

1. It is rebellion against God. It was God’s right that whatsoever He in wisdom and goodness made should serve His purpose, and give Him glory. The stars do this. The world of matter does this. We, favoured with thought, affection, a high spiritual and immortal existence, were especially bound to be obedient to Him that made us. Ah, it is “exceeding sinful” when the crown rights of Him upon whose will we exist are ignored or contravened!

2. How exceeding sinful is this rebellion against such a God! God is good to the fullest extent of goodness. It were heaven to serve Him. Ah! sin is base indeed, a rebellion against monarch’s gentlest sway, an insurrection against parent’s tenderest right, a revolt against peerless benignity!

3. What an aggravation of the sinfulness of sin is this: that it rebels against laws, every one of which is just! The State of Massachusetts at first passed a resolution that they would be governed by the laws of God until they found time to make better? Will they ever improve upon the model? The law forbids that which is naturally evil, and commends that which is essentially good.

4. Sin is “exceeding sinful,” because it is antagonistic to our own interest, a mutiny against our own welfare. Whenever God forbids a thing we may rest assured it would be dangerous. What He permits or commends will, in the long run, be in the highest degree conducive to our best interests. Yet we spurn these commands like a boy that is refused the edged tool lest he cut himself, and he will cut himself, not believing in his father’s wisdom.

5. Sin is an upsetting of the entire order of the universe. In your family you feel that nothing can go smoothly unless there is a head whose direction shall regulate all the members.

6. If you want proof that sin is exceedingly sinful, see what it has done already in the world. Who withered Eden? Whence come wars and fightings but from your own lusts and from your sins? What is this earth today but a vast cemetery? All its surface bears relics of the human race. Who slew all these? Who indeed but Sin?

II. Some particular sins are exceeding sinful above any ordinary transgression. Of this kind are sins against the gospel. To reject faithful messengers sent from God, loving parents, earnest pastors, diligent teachers; to slight the kind message that they bring and the yearning anxiety that they feel for us. To set at naught the dying Saviour, whose death is the solemn proof of love; to play false towards Him after having made a profession of your attachment to Him; to be numbered with His Church and yet to be in alliance with the world; to sin against light and knowledge; to grieve the Holy Spirit; to go on sinning after you have smarted; to push onward to hell, all this is “exceeding sinful.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Verses 14-25 (Whole passage). The whole falls into three cycles, each closing with a sort of refrain. It is like a dirge; the most sorrowful elegy which ever proceeded from a human heart. The first cycle embraces verses 14-17. The second, which begins and ends almost in the same way as the first, is contained in verses 18-20. The third, which differs from the first two in form, but is identical with them in substance, is contained in verses 21-23, and its conclusion, verses 24, 25, is at the same time that of the whole passage. It has been sought to find a gradation between these three cycles. Lange thinks that the first refers rather to the understanding, the second to the feelings, the third to the conscience. But this distinction is artificial, and useless as well. For the power of the passage lies in its very monotony. The repetition of the same thoughts and expressions is, as it were, the echo of the desperate repetition of the same experiences, in that legal state wherein man can only shake his chains without succeeding in breaking them. Powerless he writhes to and fro in the prison in which sin and the law have confined him, and in the end of the day can only utter that cry of distress whereby, having exhausted his force for the struggle, he appeals, without knowing Him, to the Deliverer. (Prof. Godet.)

Man’s natural incapability of good

I. Whence it arises.

1. The law is spiritual.

2. Human nature is carnal.

II. How it discovers itself.

1. In the contradiction of practice and conviction; this proves that the law is good, but sin works in us (verses 15, 17).

2. In the inefficacy of our resolutions; this shows that sin is more powerful than our good purposes (verses 18-20).

3. In the failure of our good desires; this indicates that our delight in what is good is overpowered by the love of evil.

III. What should be its effect? It should inspire--

1. An earnest aspiration for deliverance.

2. Gratitude for the salvation of the gospel.

3. A firm resolution to embrace it. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

The condition of the awakened sinner

He feels himself--

1. At variance with God’s law (verse 14).

2. At variance with himself (verses 15-17).

3. Utterly helpless (verses 18, 19).

4. The slave of sin (verses 20-23).

5. Miserable and without hope, excepting in Christ (verses 24, 25). (J. Lyth, D. D.)

Legal experience a defeat

The interpretation of this passage has been embarrassed by the unnecessary assumption that it must describe either a regenerate or an unregenerate man. The alternative question as we should state it is, Is this set forth as a distinctively evangelical experience, or as one of a legal type, in whomsoever it may be found? If this is the real point, then both classes of interpreters may be partly right and partly wrong, for the passage may describe the experience which is but too common in Christians, and be purposely set forth as defective in the evangelical element, as abnormal to a proper Christian state, and as exemplifying the operation of law rather than of gospel in the work of sanctification. And this is our idea of it. The arguments on both sides are inconclusive. Those who makes out the case of a converted man point to the use of “I” and “me,” and of the verbs in the present tense, as though Paul told of his present state. They further point to such expressions as to sin as “what I hate” and “the evil which I would not”; also to such language respecting holiness as, “what I would,” “I delight in the law of God, after the inward man,” and “I myself serve the law of God.” But, on the contrary, those who insist on making out an unconverted man, have their equally strong expressions, which seem only appropriate to one yet unregenerate; such as, “I am carnal, sold under sin,” “sin that dwelleth in me,” “how to perform that which is good I find not,” “the law of sin which is in my members,” “oh, wretched man that I am!” etc. Thus they in a measure balance and neutralise each other. But the two classes of expressions taken together show a state of mind which may have much which is truly Christian, while yet the experience as a whole is sorrowfully legal and weak. The gospel offers something more victorious and blissful.

I. The drift and necessities of the apostle’s argument require this view. In order to prove the need of the gospel salvation, and its efficacy, he demonstrates in the early chapters the universality of sin and ruin, and the impossibility of justification by the law. Then he brings forward Christ’s atoning sacrifice, and the offer of a free pardon to the penitent believer, and defends the scheme from the charge of doing away with the need of holiness. And this: occupies him nearly to the middle of this seventh chapter, when there remains the important question, Whether the law, though a failure as to justification, may not suffice as a sanctifying influence? Is Christ as necessary for sanctification as for justification? If that be not discussed, and settled against the law, then Paul’s argument is plainly incomplete: not only so, but if the experience here given be his own at the time, and the normal experience of saints, he seems to concede a failure in the gospel.

II. The passage taken as a wholes apart from single expressions necessitates the same view. After all that can be urged from words and phrases indicative of a regard for holiness and a dislike of sin, the all-significant fact remains, that there is nothing but utter, habitual defeat! Not a note of victory is anywhere heard. The only word of cheer is in a parenthetical clause: “I thank God through Jesus Christ, our Lord”; which he throws in by way of anticipation of the deliverance which he depicts in the next chapter, as the result of another and far higher experience. This unrelieved aspect of defeat shows that Paul writes here of legal failure and not of gospel success.

III. This view is corroborated by the purposely contrasted experience which immediately follows. The eighth chapter tells only of victory. It cannot possibly mean the same generic experience as the preceding one of lamentation and defeat. Both cannot be truly evangelical, though both may be found in converted men. It must be Paul’s intent to call men out of the first into the second, as the genuine gospel state into which he himself had entered. For, mark, he not only uses the same impersonation, but the expressions in the eighth chapter are specifically chosen to represent the contradiction of the state in the seventh chapter. Thus in the seventh: “I am carnal,” and “in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing”; but in the eighth: “Who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit,” and “To be carnally-minded is death, but to be spiritually-minded is life and peace.” In the seventh: “I see another law … bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members”; “who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” but in the eighth: “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” In the seventh: “Oh, wretched man that I am!” but in the eighth: “There is now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.” This contrast of language hardly allows one to think otherwise than that Paul sets forth the legal experience in the seventh chapter, and the evangelical in the eighth.

IV. There is a further corroboration in the more inspiring and hopeful view which it presents of the Christian life. The idea that the highest type of attainment is described in the seventh chapter, is greatly discouraging to the more earnest believers, while it acts as an opiate to the consciences of the worldly-minded. The Church sadly needs lifting, first out of worldliness, and secondly out of legality. Christians must learn that sanctification, as well as justification, is by faith; that spiritual victory is not by natural law, but by grace. (W. W. Patton, D. D.)

For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.--

The spirituality of the Divine law and the sinfulness of man

I. The character of the Divine law. There can be no doubt that the moral law is meant; for the ceremonial could not be denominated spiritual, being composed of external rites, not in themselves holy, although adapted to promote holiness, and especially to typify a holier dispensation. But the moral law is entirely spiritual. It directs to what is essentially right and pure, and requires perfect purity in man. The substance of it is given in Matthew 22:37.

1. The requirements of this law are such as necessarily imply a spiritual obedience. Not only are they the requirements of an infinitely holy Being, who is a Spirit, but the very root and spring of the obedience itself is a spiritual exercise. It is, in its nature, distinguished from all the practices of paganism, from all human enactments, and even from the ritual injunctions of the Mosaic law. There might be a strict and regular obedience to the letter of such laws, without a right state of feeling towards the authority which enjoined them. But to the moral law of God there can be no real obedience except so far as it is the obedience of love. There is no possibility of substituting appearances for realities, profession for action, or actions themselves for affection and principle. The law therefore reaches their most thoughts.

2. The spirituality of the law is also shown by the extensiveness of its demands. It requires obedience to be not only pure in its nature, but perfect in its amount. Love to God must not be contaminated by a single sinful thought. It is a law for the whole heart, and requires all that man possessed when God created him in His own image. It allows of no change--it admits of no deficiency--it makes no allowances--it bends to no circumstances. Nor should it be forgotten that this applies to the duties of the second table, as well as those of the first. As the one requires perfect love to God, producing spotless obedience to Him, so the other requires perfect love to man, producing spotless conduct towards our neighbour. Nor are its demands satisfied by external compliances. The world may be content with politeness, but the law of God enjoins inward righteousness and benevolence, such as is fit to be looked upon by the eye of Omniscience, and worthy to be approved by Him who formed the nature of man to be the image of His own.

II. The impression produced on the mind which hath a right apprehension of the law. “I am carnal, sold under sin.” The word carnal is sometimes used to denote an entire alienation from God. But here, as in some other passages, it is used in reference to the imperfect state of Christians. In comparison with the spirituality of the law, the holiest of men are carnal The apostle felt conscious of his own imperfection, just in proportion as he discerned the holiness of the law. And when lie describes himself as “sold under sin,” it intimates how deep his conviction was. Notwithstanding the freedom which, since his conversion, he had obtained from his former prejudices and sins, he still found some fetters remaining. “He had not yet attained, neither was he already perfect.” On this we remark--

1. That a right knowledge of the law must convince every one of the utter impossibility of obtaining salvation by it. You then perceive how you have failed, and therefore how impossible it is to stand on the ground of self-righteousness. Measured by the standard of right, it is altogether defective and defiled. It is an error to suppose that although the case is bad, yet it may be mended by doing now the best you can. There is little probability of your doing the best you can; but if you did, still the case is not essentially altered. You are still a sinful creature, and therefore the law still condemns you.

2. That the confession of the apostle was made long after his conversion. It is therefore an indication that the holiest of men are not wholly set free from the sin of our nature. Paul, with all his holy attainment and fervent zeal, needed a thorn in the flesh, lest he should be exalted above measure.

3. There should be an earnest desire and aim to obtain greater freedom from carnality and sin. In the twenty-second and following verses Paul did not content himself with making confession; he sought deliverance; he consented to the law that it was good; and such was his delight in it, that he sought conformity to it more and more. Nor can there be any genuine piety towards God where there is not a hatred of sin, and a prevailing concern to be delivered from its influence, as well as its curse.

Conclusion: Infer from this--

1. How needful is it to “Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world.”

2. Learn to value the means of grace, and seek improvement in the use of them.

3. Cherish a spirit of dependence on the Holy Spirit, who rendereth His own means effectual.

4. Maintain a spirit of watchfulness, in order to be steadfast and faithful unto death. (Essex Congregational Remembrancer.)

Believers carnal in comparison with the law which is spiritual

Men are, usually, strangers to themselves; but the law discovers to us our sin and misery. He who knows that the law is spiritual sees himself to be carnal.

I. All true believers are made acquainted with the spirituality of the law. By comparing these words with 1 Corinthians 2:14 we learn that the apostle, being spiritual, was led to see that spirituality in the law of which men are ignorant in their unregenerate state.

1. The law, i.e., the moral law, is spiritual. The apostle had already declared it to be holy, and just, and good; and now he adds, “The law is spiritual.” The general reasons given for this are the law is spiritual, as it proceeds from God, who is a pure Spirit; as it directs men to that worship of God which is spiritual; as it can never be answered by any man who hath not the Spirit; as it is a spiritual guide, not only of our words and actions, but also reaching the inward man; and as it requires that we perform the things which are spiritual in a spiritual manner. All these things may be included; but spiritual is to be understood as set in opposition to carnal. The law requires a righteousness in which there is nothing but what savours of the Spirit. Now if this be a true representation, who would not confess with our apostle, “Lord, I am carnal; when I think of Thy law I am ashamed of myself, and repent in dust and ashes “(Job 15:14-16).

2. All true believers are made acquainted with the spirituality of the law. “We know that the law is spiritual.” This expression well agrees with verse 1. Others, who make their boast of it, and of their conformity to it, know not what they say. They only know it who love it. They can never know it, or love it, unless it be first written in their hearts. And this light bringeth heat with it. The right knowledge of God in the soul begets in it love to Him. A supernatural sanctified knowledge of God is the law of God written in the heart. And this will be attended with obedience; and this obedience, though it be not absolutely perfect as to any one of the commands, yet it will have respect to them all, and from this respect to the law will flow evangelical grief and sorrow whenever we break it or come short of it.

II. The best of saints, comparing their hearts and lives with the spirituality of the law, will find great reason to complain of their remaining carnality. We cannot suppose that the apostle had so much cause to complain as we have; but he might see and feel more than we do, because he was more spiritual. Complaints of the remaining power of sin, so far from being evidences that we are strangers to the grace of Christ, will prove that He hath begun to convince us of sin and to make it hateful to us. Abraham, when viewing the purity of the Divine nature, confesseth himself but dust and ashes, and utterly unworthy to hold converse with God, Jacob confesseth himself not worthy of the least mercy. Job abhors himself, and repents in dust and ashes. Isaiah cries out, “Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.” Conclusion:

1. It is not likely that any who are made acquainted with the spirituality of the law should pretend to sinless perfection.

2. If believers themselves are carnal, then they cannot be justified by their best obedience. (J. Stafford.)

The law, man, and grace

I. The spirituality of the law. In its--

1. Source.

2. Nature.

3. Requirements.

4. Application.

5. Means.

6. Effects.

II. The impotence of human nature.

1. Carnal in its--

2. Sold under sin.

III. The consequent need of saving grace. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

Carnality and slavery

A fundamental lack: pungent convictions of sin. Tendency to apologise for it as a disease, misfortunes heredity, etc. Theo. Parker defines sin “a fall forward.” No sense of its enormity and deformity is to be found. Compare chaps, 1 and 2, in which it is held up before us as monstrous and hideous. Here Paul makes two statements: as to--

I. Carnality. There is in the very nature sin and guilt, like grain in wood, temper in metal. There is a drift, always downward, never upward; a relish for sin; a fatal facility toward transgression. It is this carnal mind that constitutes the essence of enmity to God (chap. 8.). This carnality betrays itself in native and habitual resistance--

1. To law. Even when recognised as holy, just, and good. The very existence of a command incites to rebellion (cf. Romans 7:7)
.

2. To light (cf., John 3:19-20)
. Men are like bugs under a stone: turn up the stone and they run to their holes.

3. To love. Even the tender persuasions of grace are resisted by the sinner.

II. Captivity. “Sold under sin.” There is a voluntary surrender to the power of evil.

1. Dominion of evil thoughts, opening the mind to the entrance of images of lust, and cherishing imaginations and corrupt desires.

2. Sway of vicious habits. Even when the bondage is felt to be heavy the sinner will rivet his own chains (cf. Proverbs 23:35)
.