Bible Commentaries

No Compromise

Romans 6:2

I. What did the Apostle mean by the Words—Dead unto Sin?—(1) He meant death of the Judicial Penalty of Sin—beyond the power of sin to inflict its penalty upon us. The judicial idea runs through the whole Epistle. A criminal who has served his term of imprisonment for an offence against the law, at the expiration of his sentence is dead to that particular crime. The penalty will not be exacted of him twice over. Even so the Christian, who implicitly accepts Christ's finished work for him upon the cross, becomes dead to the penalty of all his past transgression. (2) Death to the Appeals of Sin—unresponsive to its temptations. How still, how unmoved the dead are! Fill the dead hand of the miser with gold, and his fingers do not clutch it. Even so it is with the believer in Christ (3) Complete and final severance from the practice and love of sin. Death is a state from which there is no return. Even so in Christ Jesus the Christian is to regard himself as finally and irrevocably separated from the life of sin.

II. Alive unto God.—Then there is a positive side to Christian life. That is a truth which needs insistence in these weak and effeminate times. It was said of Mark Pattison that "he spent all his life in the tents of compromise". What a wretched life to live! Why should we try to get to heaven by what Dr. Robertson Nicoll finely called "spiritual blondinism," when there is the highway of the Lord always open to us on which the ransomed of the Lord journey with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads? Turn to the Apostle's words. What did he mean by them? (1) Obedience. The will has been yielded up to Christ in an intelligent, deliberate, and final act of surrender. (2) Fellowship. How sweet and refreshing is the communion of saints1Fellowship with God! What bliss it affords! (3) And, finally, as the result of daily responsive obedience to God and unbroken communion with God, the believer at last attains likeness to God. I cannot linger to name all the features of the Divine character which are reproduced in the Christian. Let me emphasise one only: "God is love". To be alive unto God, therefore, is to live the life of pure, self-sacrificing love.

—J. Tolefrae Parr, The White Life, p133.

References.—VI:3.—F. St. John Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p122. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lv. p168. Bishop Westcott, Village Sermons, p271. Expositor (6th Series), vol. v. p48; ibid. vol. vi. p252. VI:3 , 4.—J. M. Witherow, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvi. p131. C. Parsons Reichel, Sermons, p95. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii. No1627. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ix. p275. VI:3-5.—J. N. Bennie, The Eternal Life, p102. VI:3- 6.—Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p28. VI:4.—C. F. Aked, Baptist Times, vol. liv. p415. J. Keble, Village Sermons on the Baptismal Service, p246. B. J. Snell, Sermons on Immortality, p56. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxvii. No2197. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iv. p12. VI:4-6.—Expositor (4th Series), vol. x. p114. VI:5.—F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. ii. p213. Expositor (6th Series), vol. xii. p257. VI:6.—W. J. Knox-Little, Christian World Pulpit, vol. li. p228. H. C. Lees, The Record, vol. xxvii. p769. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xv. No882. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p265. VI:7.—Ibid. (4th Series), vol. viii. p468. VI:8-11.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix. No503.

The Model of Our New Life

Romans 6:4

Easter Day is like the wedding-day of an intimate friend: our impulse as Christians is to forget ourselves, and to think only of the great Object of our sympathies. On Good Friday we were full of ourselves—full of our sins, of our sorrows, of our resolutions. If we entered into the spirit of that day at all, we spread them out, as well as we could, before the dying eyes of the Redeemer of the world; we asked Him, of His boundless pity, to pardon and to bless us. To-day is His day, as it seems, not ours. It is His day of triumph; His day of Romans 6:9

I. "Christ was raised from the dead." Then He was among them. It is a medicine good for all diseases. It is the light which turns what would otherwise be darkness and sorrow into brightness and joy. Do any men think that their sins cannot be forgiven? that they pass the mercies even of God? that the promises of the Holy Ghost were not meant for them? Christ was dead. Can anything be impossible after that? Can there be any sin that such a death will not wash away.

II. "Dieth no more." All this was done once, that it might be done for ever. And as with Him so with us. "It is appointed unto men once to die." He will have us to do that which He did—but not more. It is a very bitter cup, but then we can only swallow it once. These bodies of ours will be so put together at the last day that they cannot come to pieces any more. We shall be like our Lord in that also. We, being raised from the dead, shall never die again.

III. Here, we are all in the dominion of death. But if God gives us grace to enter into His kingdom, then we shall be like unto our Lord, that Romans 6:2

Am I wrong in saying that he who has mastered the meaning of those two prepositions now truly rendered—"into the Name," "in Christ"—has found the central truth of Christianity? Certainly I would gladly have given the ten years of my life spent on the Revision to bring only these two phrases of the New Testament to the heart of Englishmen.

—Westcott.

References.—VI:11.—H. C. Lees, The Record, vol. xxvii. p769. W. J. E. Bennett, Sermons at the London Mission, 1869 , p21. W. H. Evans, Sermons for the Seasons, p97. C. D. Bell, The Saintly Calling, p41. Expositor (5th Series), vol. v. p142. VI:11 , 12.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. li. No2933. VI:12 , 13.—H. Howard, The Raiment of the Soul, p19. VI:12-14.—Expositor (5th Series), vol. ix. p346.

Alive From the Dead (An Easter Sermon)

Romans 6:13

"Alive from the dead." These words have the true Easter ring. The background of Easter is required to make clear their meaning. Good Friday lies behind us. Good Friday must always be sad, for the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is not only the revelation of the love of God; it is also the abiding monument of the shame of our race—its revolt against goodness, its betrayal of the best, its refusal of ordinary justice, its fickleness and cowardice, its love of self, and its enmity against God. No man who looks at the cross and seriously reflects what it means can fail to be bowed down with shame and penitence. We cannot separate ourselves from that fearful act The best men have said ever since, "My sins helped to nail Him there". We have wished that all our past, the good and bad of it alike, should simply go down into the grave with Christ, that the full force of our baptism should be realised and our old Romans 6:16

In our text we are taught to look to the general tendency of life for the test of character and condition. If we have yielded ourselves, in resolve and in Romans 6:16-18

There is but one passion which cannot go astray, cannot be too great—the passion for righteousness embodied in Jesus. Philosophy and love are here the same thing. No vague ideals are these, dressed up in fine words, drawing on tomorrow because they have had no yesterday, but ascertained and ascertainable experience. Life is an art too complex for any rule but one, and that is the Imitation of Christ.

—Dr. William Barry, in The Two Standards.

Romans 6:18

Your liberty will be sacred, so long as it shall be governed by and evolved beneath an idea of Duty.

—Mazzini.

References.—VI:18.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv. No1482. VI:19.—Basil Wilberforce, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi. p149. VI:21.—G. W. Brameld, Practical Sermons, p373. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p36. VI:21-23.—Ibid. pp205 , 207 , 211.

Romans 6:22

"By holiness," says Mr. John Morley, "do we not mean something different from virtue? It is not the same as duty; still less is it the same as a religious belief. It is a name for an inner grace of nature, an instinct of the soul, by which, though knowing of earthly appetites and worldly passions, the spirit, purifying itself of these, and independent of reason, argument, and the struggles of the will, dwells in patient and confident communion with the seen and the unseen Good."

References.—VI:22.—F. Ballard, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. p113. VI:22 , 23.—Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p203.

Wages Or Gift?

Romans 6:23

I. What is the "eternal life" which is here spoken of? It is endless life, undoubtedly, but it is more than that When we read (as in the Authorised Version), "The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord," we recognise, as Bishop Westcott says, "A general description of the work of Christ, of what He has wrought for us, standing apart from us". But what Paul really wrote was, "Eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord," that is to say (to quote Westcott again), "Life is not an endowment apart from Christ, it is Himself, and enjoyed in Him". Now we see that the adjective "eternal" is not quantitative only but qualitative also; it indicates not endlessness simply, but a certain kind of life, the best and highest kind, life in Christ, the very life of God Himself. But if this be Romans 6:23

"For the present, however, consider Longchamp; now when Lent is ending, and the glory of Paris and France has gone forth as in annual wont. Not to assist at Tenebris masses, but to sun itself and show itself, and salute the Young Spring. Manifold, bright-tinted, glittering with gold; all through the Bois du Boulogne, in long-drawn, variegated rows;—like long-drawn living flower-borders, tulips, dahlias, lilies of the valley; all in their moving flower-pots (of new-gilt carriages); pleasure of the eye and the pride of life. So rolls and dances the Procession: steady, of firm assurance, as if it rolled on adamant and the foundations of the world; not on mere heraldic parchment—under which smoulders a lake of fire. Dance on, ye foolish ones; ye sought not wisdom, neither have ye found it. Ye and your fathers have sown the wind, ye shall reap the whirlwind. Was it not, from of old, written: The wages of sin is death?

—Carlyle's French Revolution, Book II. vi.

Compare the description of the second last of Hogarth's series of pictures, in Mariage à la Mode, given by Dr. Brown in Horœ Subsecivœ ("Notes on Art"—Distraining for Rent).

That is the worst of the wages of sin. Sinners cannot pay them all—however willing, however passionately desirous even they may be to do so. Those wages are always paid in part, of necessity must be, by the innocent in place of the guilty.

—Lucas Malet.

References.—VI:23.—Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p182. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. ii. p223. E. J. Boyce, Parochial Sermons, p228. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii. No1868. Bishop Westcott, Village Sermons, p250. C. Ensor Walters, The Deserted Christ, p61.