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(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.)

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KJV: What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?

WEB: What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?