1. The foregoing chapters are a proof and defence of the first fundamental truth of the gospel — that the only way in which we can be pardoned is through our trusting exclusively, not to what we have ourselves done, but to Christ and His atonement. Nay; we have the principle that the more sin has abounded, so much the more superabundant and triumphant is the free favour of God.

2. To many this has always appeared to be very perilous teaching. It seems to offer no security for practical virtue — if, indeed, it does not actually put a premium upon sin. What else is that but to say that we may sin the more in order to make God's forgiving mercy the more illustrious? Of course, if anything approaching to this were a fair deduction from the doctrine of justification, then such a doctrine would be grossly immoral. But the same objection was taken in St. Paul's day against St. Paul's teaching; and he met it by a vigorous repudiation. Indeed his answer to it formed the second main section of his theological system, since in that answer he developed the whole theory of Christian holiness. And the charge of immoral tendency, which glanced harmlessly off St. Paul and the Church of his time, may very well prove equally harmless against the evangelical Churches of modern date. Remember, the free acquittal of a penitent believer is not the end of the gospel, but only the means. Now, if free justification turn out on trial not to save a man from his sin, but to encourage him in it; then it turns out to be a cheat, like all other gospels or recipes for working deliverance which men have ever concocted or experimented with before Christ and after Him! The question, therefore, is a vital one. It just means this: Is the gospel a success or a failure?

3. St. Paul's instant reply is a blunt and staggering one. It amounts to this: such an abuse of free grace is unthinkable and out of the question. Christians are people who, in the mere fact of becoming Christians, passed through an experience which put a virtual end to their sinful life. Such a difficulty is purely intellectual, arising in the minds of men who try to comprehend the gospel from the outside without having first experienced it. But, then, when once this intellectual difficulty has been started by a non-Christian objector, the Christian craves to find an intellectual answer. That my Christian faith is inconsistent with persisting in sin, I feel. How it comes to be thus inconsistent with it, I want also to see.

4. It is under this view that St. Paul proceeds. "Are you ignorant of what every Christian is supposed to know — how as many of us as were baptised into Christ, were baptised into His death?" Well, then, it fellows that "we were buried along with Him by means of that baptism of ours into His death, for the express purpose, not that we should remain dead any more than He did, but that, just as He was raised from the dead, so we also should walk in a new life." In the case of converts in the primitive Church, conversion was always publicly attested, and its inward character symbolised, by the initiatory rite of baptism. For them nothing could seem more natural than to look back upon their baptismal act whenever any question arose as to what their conversion really meant. Its most general meaning was this, that it put baptised believers into the closest possible relationship with Christ, their Second Adam, of whose "body" they were thenceforward to be "members," whose fortunes they were thenceforward to share. But if baptism seal our incorporation into the Representative Man from heaven; who does not know that the special act of Jesus with which of all others we are brought most prominently into participation, is nothing else than His death and burial? That central thing about Christ on which my faith has to fasten itself is His expiatory death upon the Cross for sin. Am I to be justified through Him at all? Then it is "through faith in His blood" (Romans 3:25). Have I, an enemy, been "reconciled to God" by His Son at all? I was reconciled "by the death of His Son" (Romans 5:10). To that death upon the Cross of expiation which was attested by His three days' burial the gospel directs the sinner's eye, and on that builds his trust for pardon and peace with God. And the great rite which certified the world and me that I am Christ's, was before all else a baptism into the death of Him who died for me!

5. All this St. Paul treats as a Christian commonplace. Its bearing on our continuing in sin is obvious. Conversion through faith in Christ's propitiation is seen to be essentially a moral change, a dying to sin. The nerve of the old separate, selfish, sinful life of each man was cut when the man merged himself in his new Representative, and gave up his personal sins to be judged, condemned, and expiated in his Atoner's Cross. Now, how can a man who has gone through an experience like that continue in sin? For him the old bad past is a thing dead and buried. Old things are passed away, everything has become new. Such a man can no more go back to be what he was before, feel as he felt, or act as he used to act, than Jesus Christ could rise out of His grave to be once more the Victim for unexpiated guilt and the Sin bearer for a guilty race.

6. The Christian dies to his old sin that he may begin to live to holiness and God. This is the express design God had when He put our sins to death in His dear Son's Cross. Faith in Christ makes us morally incorporate with Him in spirit, as well as legally embraced under Him as our Representative. Christ is our Head in that He represents us before the law, so that in His death all who are His died to sin. Christ is no less our Head to quicken us as His members, and in His living again we all live anew. The will and the power to walk in new moral life are therefore guaranteed to us by our faith. 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 seriously affected by it. It is connected with the deep roots of our moral and religious nature. It changes the main current of our ethical life. Those who have been baptised 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, and to maintain the life of righteousness.

(J. Oswald Dykes, D. D.)

That the gospel dispensation, instead of relaxing the principles of moral obligation, strengthens and renders the sin committed under its light the most inexcusable, may be illustrated —

I. FROM THE NATURE AND PERFECTIONS OF GOD. He is a being of absolute purity. Being thus perfect in Himself, He must love every resemblance of His own perfection in any of His intelligent creatures; and the more nearly they resemble Him, the more must they be the objects of His favour.

II. FROM THE CHARACTER AND OFFICES OF THE REDEEMER. The Redeemer is the beloved Son of God, one with the Father; and, therefore, the arguments drawn from the perfections of God, to illustrate the purity of the gospel dispensation, are equally conclusive with respect to the Redeemer. In His several offices, no less than in His personal character, Christ invariably promoted the cause of righteousness. For this He sustained the office of a prophet; for this He became our great High Priest, to restore that intercourse which sin had interrupted. For this end, too, He became our King, and gave us a system of laws suited to that state of reconciliation. Now, such being His character, such the offices which He sustained as our Redeemer, and such the end for which He did sustain them, it follows, by necessary consequence, that the dispensation of the gospel, so far from relaxing the obligations of moral duty, tends powerfully to confirm them.

III. FROM THAT PERFECT RULE OF MORAL CONDUCT WHICH THE GOSPEL PRESCRIBES. It is at once the most simple, the most pure and perfect that ever was delivered to the world; as superior to the much-famed systems of philosophers as its Divine author was superior to them. It lays the foundation of moral duty in the heart, the true spring of action; and by one simple principle of which every heart is susceptible, even the principle of love, it provides for the most perfect moral conduct, and for the proper discharge of the duties of life.

IV. FROM A CONSIDERATION OF THE BRIGHT EXAMPLES WHICH ARE SET BEFORE US IN THE GOSPEL.

V. FROM THE POWERFUL AID WHICH THE GOSPEL PROMISES TO ENABLE US TO OBSERVE ITS PRECEPTS AND IMITATE THE BRIGHT EXAMPLES WHICH IT SETS BEFORE US. The gracious Author of this Divine influence is the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God, the third person in the ever blessed Trinity.

VI. FROM THE ULTIMATE END AND DESIGN OF THE WHOLE SCHEME. The great end of the gospel scheme undoubtedly is to bring us to a state of perfect felicity in the glorious kingdom of our God; to the full enjoyment of that immortality which our Saviour hath revealed. With the attainment of this glorious end, holiness, or moral purity, and inseparably connected, both in the nature of things and by the positive laws of God's moral government.

1. In the nature of things, the unholy or immoral must be excluded from heavenly happiness. They are incapable of it. There is no conformity between the dispositions which they have cultivated and the joys of the celestial regions.

2. It is not only in the nature of things, but by the positive law of God's moral government, that the unrighteous are excluded from heaven and happiness.

(G. Goldie.)

1. What shall we say then? Say to what? To the great affirmation that man is justified freely by God's grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Shall it be this: Let us persist in sin that grace may multiply? How sharply Paul turns upon the immoral suggestion! It is a corruption not to be endured.

2. But why did the apostle submit a conclusion like that to his readers? He knew that his doctrine did not contain it, but he knew that a corrupt human heart and a perverted understanding could put it in. That the conclusion, or its equivalent, has been asserted, and that often, where if submitted as a proposition it would be rejected with loathing, it is not without a subtle influence, is matter of observation.

I. THERE ARE THOSE WHO THINK THAT IT IS POSSIBLE TO CONTINUE IN SIN AND BE SAVED.

1. How often one is forced to notice that men may combine a love of evangelical doctrine with love of money and a shrewdness that makes men who are not evangelical shrug their shoulders. We have known men, great wrestlers in prayer, whose lives, and the whisperings of whose doings, have made us ashamed. Moral confusion is at the bottom of these inconsistencies. Our evangelical doctrines are not to blame. The fault and the failure is in those who profess them while only half-perceiving them, and ignore their moral issues.

2. Paul shows us that grace comprises not only a gracious act of pardon done by God in the believer's interest, but also an active principle of sanctification in the believer's soul. The abounding of grace is only manifested in the breaking of sin's power and the destruction of sin's principle. Grace is the enemy of sin, not its covering. He who is saved by grace is not a leper clad in white raiment, but a leper healed. Grace is not beauty thrown over the deformity of some foul sickness; it is health. It is life counter-working death, and no man can continue in sin and yet be saved by grace.

3. But still, Is not grace a gift? Certainly. But God gives life. Yet life is not something external to the creature to whom it is given. It is not like a string of beads round the neck or a ring on the finger. The gift of life to a dead stick after that manner would leave it a dead stick still. Hear a parable. Early one summer morning I came upon an orchard. The trees were beautiful, and fruit was abundant. I wandered on until I came upon a tree having neither bloom nor fruit. I said, "You poor, lost tree, what can you be doing here? I marvel you are not removed." Upon which this tree replied, tartly, "You are in a great mistake. I am neither poor nor lost." "Well," I said, "you have neither leaves nor fruit, and, I should judge, no sap." "What has that to do with it?" it broke out. "You seem not to know that a great saviour of trees has been down here, and I have believed his gospel, and am saved by grace. I have accepted salvation as a free gift, and, though I have neither leaves nor fruit, I am saved all the same." I looked at it with pity and said, "You are a poor deluded tree; you are not saved at all. You are dead and good-for-nothing, despite all your talk about grace and redemption. Life, that is salvation. When I see you laden with fruit, I shall say, 'Ah! that poor tree is saved at last; it has received the gospel and is saved by grace.'" As I turned away, I heard it saying, "You are not sound; you do not understand the gospel." And I thought, so it is, as with trees so with men.

II. ANOTHER FORM OF THIS ANTINOMIANISM OF THE HEART CONNECTS ITSELF IMMEDIATELY WITH THE DEATH OF CHRIST. Men talk and act frequently as if in Christ's shed blood there was a shelter from the consequence of their sins, even though they remain in their sins. They harbour covetousness, envy, hate, and pride; they stain their hands with dishonesty, and then, with their stained hands uplifted in the face of God, aver that they believe in the death of Christ for their sins, and are saved. This is not the gospel Paul preached. He asks, "How shall we who died to sin live any longer therein?" He who has by faith appropriated the expiatory death of Jesus, in and by that act died to sin. In the apostle's day, baptism was the open signification of the death. It was as the burial of one who had died. It would be a new thing to see a dead man going on as if nothing had happened. So the saved man does not persevere in sin; how should he? He has died to it. Sin has no further claim. Who can claim anything of the dead? He is not sinless. Sin, alas! is not dead, but lie is dead to it. He has not got beyond its trouble, but he has got beyond its bondage. Faith in Christ's death as our means of pardon, includes also His life as the principle of our sanctification. As one delightfully said, "The Cross condemns me to be holy."

(W. Hubbard.)

A man's nose is a prominent feature in his face, but it is possible to make it so large that eyes and mouth and everything are thrown into insignificance, and the drawing is a caricature and not a portrait. So certain important doctrines of the gospel can be so proclaimed in excess as to throw the rest of the truth into the shade, and the preaching is no longer the gospel, but a caricature, and a caricature of which some people seem mightily fond.

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

I. THE CONDUCT OF MANY PROFESSED CHRISTIANS INDICATES —

1. That they have some knowledge of grace.

2. That they do not heartily receive it because of sin.

3. That they rather use it as a shelter for sin.

II. SUCH CONDUCT IS ABOMINABLE, because it —

1. Tempts God.

2. Is irrational.

3. Courts certain destruction.

4. Is impossible where grace is really active.

(J. Lyth, D. D.)

A certain member of that parliament wherein a statute for the relief of the poor was passed was an ardent promoter of that Act. He asked his steward when he returned to the country, what the people said of that statute. The steward answered, that he heard a labouring man say, that whereas formerly he worked six days in the week, now he would work but four; which abuse of that good provision so affected the pious statesman that he could not refrain from weeping. Lord, Thou hast made many provisions in Thy Word for my support and comfort, and hast promised in my necessities Thy supply and protection; but let not my presumption of help from Thee cause my neglect of any of those means for my spiritual and temporal preservation which Thou hast enjoined.

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

Abounding sin is the occasion of abounding grace, but abounding grace is for the destruction of abounding sin. It is absurd to suppose that a medicine should aggravate the disease it cures.

I. BELIEVERS ARE DEAD TO SIN.

1. In their condition before God.

2. In their character in consequence of it.

3. Forensically in the eye of the law.

4. Experimentally; in point of fact.

5. In their affection for it.

6. In its power over them. Or, to put it another way, believers have died to sin legally in justification; personally in sanctification; professedly in baptism; and will die completely to it in glorification.

II. THIS IS ACCOMPLISHED —

1. By participation in Christ's death who died for it.

2. By communication of the power of Christ in killing it.

3. By profession made in baptism of renouncing it.Death to sin is the necessary consequence of union with Christ, who delivers from its depraving, condemning, and reigning power.

(T. Robinson.)

An Armenian arguing with a Calvinist remarked, "If I believed your doctrine, and was sure that I was a converted man, I would take my fill of sin." "How much sin," replied the godly Calvinist, "do you think it would take to fill a true Christian to his own satisfaction?" Here he hit the nail on the head. "How can we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?" A truly converted man hates sin with all his heart, and even if he could sin without suffering for it, it would be misery enough to him to sin at all.

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

The Christian's breaking with sin is undoubtedly gradual in its realisation, but absolute and conclusive in its principle. As, in order to break really with an old friend whose evil influence is felt, half measures are insufficient, and the only efficacious means is a frank explanation followed by a complete rupture which remains like a barrier raised beforehand before every new solicitation; so to break with sin there is needed a decisive and radical act, a Divine deed taking possession of the soul and interposing henceforth between the will of the believer and sin (Galatians 6:14). This Divine deed necessarily works through the action of faith in Christ's sacrifice.

(Prof. Godet.)

(text and ver. 11): —

I. THE CONTRASTED LIVES: "Life in sin," and "being alive unto God." The contrast is such that the unspiritual can perceive it, though unable to understand it. The ungodly may say,We neither know nor care whether a man is justified or not, but we do know whether he keeps the law of conscience, whether he acts up to his professed principles, whether he does that which, apart from his profession, we know to be right. But how is it that the world is able to form these judgments? Was the civilised world qualified to do this in the days of Cicero or of Pericles? Was there to be found then, or is there to be found now, where Christianity is not, anything approximating the same jealousy of conscience, etc., which those who now boast that they are men of the world often exhibit? Surely not. If worldly men are competent judges of Christian principle, it is because the atmosphere breathed by true Christians has stimulated its life and awakened its conscience. The world is indebted to the Christianity it is ready to revile for its power to call Christians to its bar. Note:

1. What is meant by living in sin." The term has been almost appropriated to describe certain forms of bold and unblushing transgression of moral law. If a man is a known drunkard, adulterer, or rogue, he is said to "live in sin"; and no one excuses or palliates his conduct. But the corruption of human nature goes down deeper, and the ravages of sin are far more extensive than this. That man is "living in sin" —(1) Who can sin without remorse. If a man sins and his only thought is, "How shall I escape the indignant scorn of the world?" he is taking pleasure in ungodliness, he is only happy in the absence of God.(2) Who does what he knows to be wrong, but palliates it by pleading the force of circumstances, the nature of society, or the custom of the world.(3) Who habitually neglects to do that which God and his conscience have often called upon him to accomplish. "To him who knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin." It is not enough that a man should avoid the practice of evil; he must not be lacking in generosity, good temper, self-restraint, religious emotion, zeal and work for God and man.(4) Who finds pleasure in the commission of sin, hankers after forbidden sweets, and would like to go where he could escape detection. To sum up, "All ungodliness is sin." To be without God, to act irrespectively of His authority, to find pleasure in what is opposed to His will, is to live in sin and bring the consequences of such a life down upon the soul.

2. What is meant by being "alive unto God." By being "alive to" anything is meant a vivid conception of its reality, a joy in its presence, a devotion to its interests. Thus one man is alive to business, another to his reputation, another to truth. One man is alive to beauty in nature or art, he is therefore quick to discern its presence, keen to criticise its counterfeits, filled with joy when surrounded with its exponents. Another man is alive to literature or science, his ear is sensitive to every message from the great world of letters and invention, and the world exists, so far as he is concerned, to sustain and furnish material for his favourite pursuit. One man is alive to the well-being of his own country, and another to the wider interests of man. With the help of these illustrations we may assume that a man is alive unto God —(1) When he fully recognises the signs of the presence of God. Habitual transgression or neglect of the laws of God is incompatible with the condition of a man who sees God everywhere. That man is "alive to God" to whom God is not a theory by which he can conveniently account for the universe, or a name for certain human conceptions of nature and its workings, or an invention of priestcraft to terrify the soul, or a philosophic concept the presence or absence of which has little to do with life or happiness, but the great and only reality, the prime and principal element of all his thoughts. No one fully recognises the presence of God unless he has advanced beyond the teaching of nature, and received from Holy Scripture, from the inward operations of the Spirit in his own heart, more than philosophical speculations can give him. If alive unto God, every revelation of His infinite essence suggests to our quickened spirit the presence of our Father and our Friend.(2) When the sense of the Divine Presence awakens all the energies and engages all the faculties of his nature. If duly conscious of the Divine Presence, we shall render the appropriate homage of our entire being. Then every place is a temple, every act is a sacrifice, every sin the pollution of a sacred place, the defilement of a holy day. It is morally impossible for one who is alive unto God to imagine that he is doing too much to express his sense of reverence, gratitude, or obligation. In one word, self is subdued to Him, and human will is lost in God's.(3) When he finds his highest desires gratified. If we are alive unto God, we shall find that we are following the bent of our true nature. He that drinketh of the water given him by Christ, shall never thirst after those draughts of carnal pleasure to be found in the broken cisterns of human invention, and it shall be in him a well of water springing up to everlasting life.

II. The two lives have been described and contrasted, life in sin and life unto God. IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT TO CONCEIVE OF TWO MODES OF LIFE MORE OBVIOUSLY OPPOSED TO ONE ANOTHER. They cannot coexist in the same spirit.

1. If sin is delighted in, God is dreaded. There is no tendency in human nature by means of which sin can be remedied or undone. The punishment of sin is death, i.e., moral alienation of heart from God, sinful habit and tendency. Consequently every sin carries in itself its own perpetuation and the germ of further transgression.

2. A life unto God supposes a spirit to whom the nearness, the perfections, the work of the Lord are unutterable delights; to whom the whole universe is a transparent medium, through and behind which is seen the face of the Eternal God.

III. HOW SHALL THOSE THAT ARE LIVING IN SIN EVEN LEARN TO BE ALIVE UNTO GOD?

1. The charge had been brought that that gospel looked leniently on sin, and the apostle boldly takes it up, admits its seeming plausibility, anticipates its possible force, and answers it by showing what was involved in that faith which justifies the soul. The life unto God can never supervene in a soul which has been living in sin, "except," says he, "through a death unto sin." Justification implies the removal of its penalty, its non-imputation, the exhaustion of its sting, the annihilation of its wages. Our new and holy life is not the ground of our justification, nor, strictly speaking, the consequence of our pardon and acceptance with God; but it is in one sense the pardon itself, the way in which the Holy Ghost slays that enmity within us which was the great curse of sin. "How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?"

2. As far as his illustration is concerned, the apostle states a truism when he says that one who is dead to sin cannot live any longer therein. A man who is dead to sin may be carried away from his standing ground by some terrible and novel blast of temptation; but it is a contradiction in terms to assert that he can "live in sin."

3. What, then, is meant by "death to sin"?(1) Not a desperate fear of the consequences of sin. This fails to repress gross vice and crime. There are no cowards so great as those who often make violent assault on the life and property of others. They choose darkness that they may avoid detection; they are armed to the tooth when they go against feebleness and womankind. Multitudes tremble at the preaching of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, but sin as if they never trembled. Fear may have kept you back from the commission of sin, and warned you to paths of honour and usefulness, and yet never have slats the desire after what is hateful to God.(2) Not respect to the opinion of the world. The good opinion of our fellow citizens is a powerful motive to virtue; but if it is our only one, there is nothing eternal in our virtue. Then if our circumstances were changed, we should change also. Let us be put back to times when a lower honour prevailed in business or in society, we should be forced back to the undeveloped morality of the past, and "live in" the practice of what we now see to be "sin."(3) Not mere self-respect. There are those who are careless about the world's respect as long as they can secure their own. This reverence for conscience, and independence of the judgment of others, is closely akin to the highest virtue, but yet as an ultimate principle it is not sufficient. The proud independence of mankind may speedily run up into an audacious independence of God. Self-respect may rapidly blossom into self-idolatry.(4) "Death to sin" is not secured by orthodox creed, ceremonial exactness, or even religious zeal. These are all occasionally confounded with it, but they may be all compatible with a "life of sin." Church history is full of proofs that neither articles, nor sacraments, nor profession, nor even great sacrifices for religion, avail to slay the sin of the heart or render the soul alive to God.(5) By this process of exclusion we have brought the meaning of the phrase "death to sin" to a much more limited group of experiences. The apostle identifies it with union to Christ, that which he sometimes calls "faith in His blood," "baptism into Christ," or "living by faith on the Son of God," because "Christ liveth in us." Paul knew he was appealing to a safe and sure tribunal when he went right to the consciousness of his converts. "Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." It is certain that the apostle would not have these Romans reckon thus unless it were true. Observe, it is not merely that they are to reckon that Christ died for their sins, but they are also to reckon that they too are dead unto sin through Jesus Christ.

4. The way, then, in which this change is effected is by union with Christ —(1) In His Passion. "By the Cross the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world"; "I am crucified with Christ"; "If we be dead with Him, we shall also live with Him." We are "buried with Him by baptism into His death." The thought often recurs that our faith in Him nails our own hands to the cursed tree and films our eye on worldly glory. If we have taken up this thought into our entire spiritual nature, that "Christ died for our sins," then we are dead. As we become alive to what the death of Christ really is and means, how it prepares the only way by which a new life could enter our race, and a new spirit be given to transgressors, by which God could justify the ungodly, and still be just; it is not difficult to understand that faith in Christ, that union to Christ, involves dying with Christ to sin. A true and deep faith in Christ, a recognition by mind and heart of His work, is such an intuition of law, such a sense of God, such a revelation of the evil of sin, such a burning of the heart against the world, the flesh, and the devil, that the apostle was justified in saying that Christians might reckon themselves dead unto sin.(2) In His life and resurrection. The new life of the soul is a resurrection life, charged with all the associations and aspirations which would be possessed by one who had passed, through dying, from death to life. The life unto God flows out of the life of God in the soul.

(H. R. Reynolds, D. D.)

The following curious incident once happened to a clergyman. One day, after preaching, a gentleman followed him into the vestry, and, putting a £10 note into his hand, thanked him most energetically for the great comfort he had derived from his sermon. The clergyman was very much surprised at this, but still more so when shortly afterwards the same thing again took place; and he determined to sift the affair to the bottom, and find out who this man was that was so comforted by his discourse. He discovered that he was a person at that very time living in the most abominable wickedness and in the very depths of sin. "Certainly," said he to himself, "there must be something essentially wrong in my preaching when it can afford comfort to such a profligate as this!" He accordingly examined into the matter closely, and he discovered that, whilst he had been preaching Christ's sovereignty, he had quite forgotten his legislative glories. He immediately altered the style of his sermons, and he soon lost his munificent friend. I am told that, by preaching Christ's legislative glory, I also have driven some from my chapel. Pray for me, my brethren, that I may still preach doctrine, and that Longacre may become too hot for error in principle or sin in practice; pray for me that with a giant's arm I may lash both.

(Howels, of Longacre.)

There is no influence more mischievous on the morals of a people than to interpret the atonement in such a way as to make it independent of good works, if to the atonement you give any other than purely legal connection. If it includes state of nature and character in its connections, then must it stand forever associated with human endeavour and conditioned upon it. Else the sacrifice of Jesus becomes a harbour for thieves — a port into which sinners can at any moment steer with all their sins on board, the moment that the winds of conscience begin to blow a little too hard and threaten wreck to their peace. And this is what I call a plain accommodation of sinners, and hence a premium on sin. For sin is sweet to the natural man, sweet to his pride, his cruelty, his senses; and who would not sin and have the sweetness of it, if when he found it troublesome he could, by the saying of a prayer, or the utterance of a charmed word, be in an instant delivered from it forever? And yet I believe that in just this supposition multitudes in Christendom are living. Salvation is something to be visited upon them, independent of their conduct; nay, in spite of their conduct. Jesus is a cabalistic word which, no matter how they live, if they but whisper it with their dying gasp into the ear of death, he is bound to pass them up into heaven and not down into hell, where their deeds would consign them and which their characters fit. They cheat, they lie, they slander, they hate, they persecute, but then is not there mercy for all? Will not faith save a man; and have not they faith? And are they not told that God will do anything in answer to prayer; and did you ever see men pray as fast as these fellows can when they are sick? This is what I call making Christ a harbour for thieves and Christianity a premium on sin. This is what I call the most horrible perversion of the gospel plan of salvation conceivable!

(H. W. Beecher.)

There is nothing so hard to die as sin. An atom may kill a giant, a word may break the peace of a nation, a spark burn up a city; but it requires earnest and protracted struggles to destroy sin in the soul.

(D. Thomas, D. D.)

Paul, RomansRomeAbound, Conclusion, Continue, Extended, Grace, Greater, Increase, Order, Persist, Sin, Sinning1. We may not live in sin;
2. for we are dead unto it;
3. as appears by our baptism.
12. Let not sin reign anymore;
18. because we have yielded ourselves to the service of righteousness;
23. and because death is the wages of sin.

Romans 6:1-2

     1055   God, grace and mercy
     5775   abuse
     6662   freedom, abuse
     8703   antinomianism
     8775   libertinism

Romans 6:1-7

     5110   Paul, teaching of
     6030   sin, avoidance
     6617   atonement, in NT
     6660   freedom, through Christ

Romans 6:1-14

     2421   gospel, historical foundation
     6661   freedom, and law

Romans 6:1-18

     6028   sin, deliverance from

May 6. "Reckon Ye Also Yourselves to be Alive unto God" (Rom. vi. 11).
"Reckon ye also yourselves to be alive unto God" (Rom. vi. 11). Death is but for a moment. Life is forevermore. Live, then, ye children of the resurrection, on His glorious life, more and more abundantly, and the fulness of your life will repel the intrusion of self and sin, and overcome evil with good, and your existence will be, not the dreary repression of your own struggling, but the springing tide of Christ's spontaneous overcoming life. Once in a religious meeting a dear brother gave us a most …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

November 11. "Reckon Yourselves Dead, Indeed" (Rom. vi. 11).
"Reckon yourselves dead, indeed" (Rom. vi. 11). Our life from the dead is to be followed up by the habit and attitude henceforth which is the logical outcome of all this. "Reckon yourselves dead indeed, unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ, and yield yourselves unto God," not to die over again every day, "but, as those who are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God." Further His resurrection life is given to fit us for "the fellowship of …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

February 24. "Sin Shall not have Dominion Over You, for Ye are not under the Law, but under Grace" (Rom. vi. 14).
"Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace" (Rom. vi. 14). The secret of Moses' failures was this: "The law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did." And this was why his life work also came short of full realization. He saw but entered not the Promised Land. The founder of the law had to be its victim, and his life and death might demonstrate the inability of the law to lead any man into the Promised Land. The very fact, that it was …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

August 7. "Knowing this that Our Old Man is Crucified" (Rom. vi. 6).
"Knowing this that our old man is crucified" (Rom. vi. 6). It is purely a matter of faith, and faith and sight always differ, so that to your senses it does not seem to be so, but your faith must still reckon it so. This is a very difficult attitude to hold, and only as we thoroughly believe God can we thus reckon upon His Word and His working, but as we do so, faith will convert it into fact, and it will be even so. These two words, "yield" and "reckon," are passwords into the resurrection life. …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

Sixth Sunday after Trinity Exhortation to Christian Living.
Text: Romans 6, 3-11. 3 Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection; 6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of …
Martin Luther—Epistle Sermons, Vol. III

Seventh Sunday after Trinity Exhortation to Resist Sin.
Text: Romans 6, 19-23. 19 I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye presented your members as servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity, even so now present your members as servants to righteousness unto sanctification. 20 For when ye were servants of sin, ye were free in regard of righteousness. 21 What fruit then had ye at that time in the things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. 22 But now being made free from …
Martin Luther—Epistle Sermons, Vol. III

Address on Easter Eve
"We were buried, therefore, with Him through baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also should walk in newness of life."--ROM. VI. 4. "I delivered unto you, among the first things, that . . . He was buried."--I COR. XV. 3, 4. St. Paul lays extraordinary and, at first sight, inexplicable stress, on the fact of our Lord's Burial. It is certainly strange that, in the second of these two texts, he mentions it as constituting, along with the …
J. H. Beibitz—Gloria Crucis

Twentieth Day. Holiness and Liberty.
Being made free from sin, ye became servants of righteousness: now present your members as servants of righteousness unto sanctification. Now being made free from sin, and become servants unto God, ye have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end eternal life.'--Rom. vi. 18, 19, 22. 'Our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus.'--Gal. ii. 4. 'With freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage.'--Gal. v. 1. There is no possession more …
Andrew Murray—Holy in Christ

Love of Religion, a New Nature.
"If we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him."--Romans vi. 8. 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. Consider how certain scents, which are too …
John Henry Newman—Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII

'The Form of Teaching'
... Ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you.'--ROMANS vi. 17. There is room for difference of opinion as to what Paul precisely means by 'form' here. The word so rendered appears in English as type, and has a similar variety of meaning. It signifies originally a mark made by pressure or impact; and then, by natural transitions, a mould, or more generally a pattern or example, and then the copy of such an example or pattern, or the cast from such a mould. …
Alexander Maclaren—Romans, Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V)

Christ's Resurrection an Image of Our New Life.
(Easter Sunday.) Praise and glory be to God, and peace with all who with joyful hearts greet one another with the cry, The Lord is risen! Amen. TEXT: ROM. vi. 4-8. IT is natural, my friends, that the glorious festival of our Saviour's resurrection should attract the thoughts of believers to a far remote time, and that it should make them rejoice to think of the time when they shall be with Him who, after He had risen from the dead, returned to His and our Father,--a joyful prospect, expressed in …
Friedrich Schleiermacher—Selected Sermons of Schleiermacher

Death to Sin through Christ
"Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord."-Romans 6:11. THE connection of this passage will help us to understand its meaning. Near the close of the previous chapter Paul had said, "The law entered that the offence might abound; but where sin abounded, grace did much more abound, that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness, unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord." He speaks here of …
Charles G. Finney—Sermons on Gospel Themes

Baptism --A Burial
I do not understand Paul to say that if improper persons, such as unbelievers, and hypocrites, and deceivers, are baptized they are baptized into our Lord's death. He says "so many of us," putting himself with the rest of the children of God. He intends such as are entitled to baptism, and come to it with their hearts in a right state. Of them he says, "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?" He does not even intend to say that those who were …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 27: 1881

The Doctrines of Grace do not Lead to Sin
No sooner is this doctrine set forth in a clear light than men begin to cavil at it. It is the target for all carnal logic to shoot at. Unrenewed minds never did like it, and they never will; it is so humbling to human pride, making so light of the nobility of human nature. That men are to be saved by divine charity, that they must as condemned criminals receive pardon by the exercise of the royal prerogative, or else perish in their sins, is a teaching which they cannot endure. God alone is exalted …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 29: 1883

Christ's Resurrection and Our Newness of Life
The idea that the grace of God should lead us to licentiousness is utterly loathsome to every Christian man. We cannot endure it. The notion that the doctrines of grace give license to sin, comes from the devil, and we scout it with a detestation more deep than words can express. "How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?" On our first entrance upon a Christian profession, we are met by the ordinance of baptism, which teaches the necessity of purification. Baptism is, in its very …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 37: 1891

Death and Life in Christ
I. THE FACTS REFERRED TO IN THESE FOUR VERSES CONSTITUE THE GLORIOUS GOSPEL WHICH WE PREACH. 1. The first fact here very clearly indicated is that Jesus died. He who was divine, and therefore immortal, bowed his head to death. He whose human nature was alhed to the omnipotence of his divine nature, was pleased voluntarily to submit himself to the sword of death. He who was pure and perfect, and therefore deserved not death, which is the wages of sin, nevertheless condescended for our sake to yield …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 9: 1863

Alive unto God.
(Sixth Sunday after Trinity.) ROMANS vi. 11. "Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." Every baptised person belongs to God. He is His absolute property, marked with the sign of the great King. As the broad arrow is the mark that certain property belongs to the British Government, so the Cross of Holy Baptism is the sign and pledge that we are God's. Think of that, my brothers, you are not free to choose your own way, your …
H. J. Wilmot-Buxton—The Life of Duty, a Year's Plain Sermons, v. 2

Servants of Sin.
(Seventh Sunday after Trinity.) ROMANS vi. 20. "The servants of sin." There is no existence in the world so sad as that of a slave; and there is no slavery so hard as that of sin, no taskmaster so bitter as the devil. There was a tyrant in the old times who ordered one of his subjects to make an iron chain of a certain length, in a given time. The man brought the work, and the tyrant bade him make it longer still. And he continued to add link to link, till at length the cruel taskmaster ordered …
H. J. Wilmot-Buxton—The Life of Duty, a Year's Plain Sermons, v. 2

The Parable of the Householder. A Sermon, by Bishop Latimer.
MATTHEW XX.--The kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that was an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard. This parable is written by the evangelist Matthew in the twentieth chapter, and is very dark and hard to be understood; yea, there is no harder piece of scripture written by any evangelist. Therefore it may well be called hard meat; not meat for mowers nor ignorant people, who are not exercised in the word of God. And yet there is no other diversity …
John Knox—The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3.

"But if Ye have Bitter Envying and Strife in Your Hearts, Glory Not," &C.
James iii. 14.--"But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not," &c. It is a common evil of those who hear the gospel, that they are not delivered up to the mould and frame of religion that is holden out in it, but rather bring religion into a mould of their own invention. It was the special commendation of the Romans, that they obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine into which they were delivered, (Rom. vi. 17) that they who were once servants, or slaves of sin, had now …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

Schleiermacher -- Christ's Resurrection an Image of Our New Life
Friedrich Ernst Daniel Schleiermacher, German theologian and philosopher, was born at Breslau in 1768. He was brought up in a religious home and in 1787 went to the University of Halle, and in 1789 became a Privat-Docent. In 1794 he was ordained and preached successively at Landsberg and Berlin. The literary and philosophical side of his intellect developed itself in sympathy with the Romanticists, but he never lost his passion for religion, a subject on which he published five discurses in 1799. …
Grenville Kleiser—The world's great sermons, Volume 3

How Christ is to be Made Use Of, in Reference to the Killing and Crucifying of the Old Man.
Having thus shortly pointed out some things in general, serving to the clearing and opening up the way of our use-making of Christ for sanctification, we come now more particularly to the clearing up of this business. In sanctification we must consider, first, The renewing and changing of our nature and frame; and, next, The washing and purging away of our daily contracted spots. The first of these is commonly divided into two parts, viz. 1st, The mortification, killing, and crucifying of the …
John Brown (of Wamphray)—Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life

Evening Prayer for a Family.
O eternal God and most gracious Father, we thine unworthy servants here assembled, do cast down ourselves at the footstool of thy grace, acknowledging that we have inherited our fathers' corruption, and actually in thought, word, and deed, transgressed all thy holy commandments, so that in us naturally there dwelleth nothing that is good; for our hearts are full of secret pride, anger, impatience, dissembling, lying, lust, vanity, profaneness, distrust, too much love of ourselves and the world, too …
Lewis Bayly—The Practice of Piety

Sanctification and Justification.
"Yield your members servants to righteousness unto sanctification." --Rom. vi. 19. Sanctification must remain sanctification. It may not arbitrarily be robbed of its significance, nor be exchanged for something else. It must always signify the making holy of what is unholy or less holy. Care must be taken not to confound sanctification with justification; a common mistake, frequently made by thoughtless Scripture readers. Hence the importance of a thorough understanding of this difference. Being …
Abraham Kuyper—The Work of the Holy Spirit

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