the dispensation of the gospel urges us. T. Adam: "Gratitude runs low in the nature of man; but if there is one spark of it in the heart, the belief of deliverance from death, and eternal life merited for us by the Son of God, will kindle it into a flame." Chalmers: "Let me urge that you proceed on the inseparable alliance, which the gospel has established, between your deliverance from the penalty of sin and your deliverance from its power-that you evidence the interest you have in the first of these privileges, by a life graced and exalted by the second of them." Without holiness no man shall see the Lord.

30. To those, who rely on the righteousness of Christ alone for justification, and heartily forsake their sins and serve God with a willing mind, everlasting life is certain. It is the end to which their present conduct tends; the end God has in view in all his dealings with them; the end they have before their minds in their best frames, v. 22. They are as sure of that as God's word can make such poor doubting souls.

31. All the penal sufferings of the wicked are deserved. They receive only the fruit of their doings. Death is their wages, v. 23. They are earning all the wo that will yet come upon them. The law of retribution returns into their own bosom all their evil deeds. They cannot justly complain of a righteous recompense.

Clarke: "A man The apostle does

32. But heaven is a gift—a free gift, without money and without price. Eternal life is deserved by no mere men. It is wholly free, v. 23. Nor is this a painful but an animating thought to the renewed soul. He is willing that God should have all the glory of salvation. The crown of glory cannot be purchased with such tin and dross as mingle with our best services. may MERIT hell, but he cannot MERIT heaven. not say that the wages of righteousness is eternal life: no, but that this eternal life, even to the righteous, is the gracious GIFT of God; and even this gracious gift comes through Jesus Christ our Lord. He alone has procured it; and it is given to all those who find redemption in his blood. A sinner goes to hell because he deserves it; a righteous man goes to heaven, because Christ has died for him and communicated that grace by which his sin is pardoned, and his soul made holy."

33. What a wonderful person is Jesus Christ our Lord. By him the worlds were made. By him all things consist. All the angels worship him. All the virgins love him. If our sins are washed away, it is by his blood. If we are accepted, it is in the Beloved. If we have sore conflicts here, and yet come off conquerors, it is because his grace is sufficient for us. He is all and in all, the first and the last, the author and the finisher of faith. Who would not

join with Hawker and say? "Through life, in death, and for evermore, be it my joy to acknowledge that there can be no wages mine, but the wages of sin, which is death; and all the Lord bestows, even eternal life, with all its preliminaries, can only be the free, the sovereign, the unmerited gift of GOD through JESUS CHRIST our LORD."

CHAPTER VII.

VERSES 1-6.

BELIEVERS ARE IN NO SENSE UNDER LAW AS A MOTIVE TO HOLINESS. THEY ARE MOVED BY

A MORE EFFECTIVE PRINCIPLE.

1 Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?

2 For the woman which hath a husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.

3 So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress : but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man.

4 Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.

5 For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.

6 But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.

1.

KNOW ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth? Most will agree that the apostle, having answered the objection stated in Rom. 6: 15, and having completed the exhortation fitly growing out of that answer, here resumes the matter announced in Rom. 5: 14: Sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace. He proceeds to show how we are not under law. Many for he read it. So Wiclif, Tyndale, Cranmer, Grotius, Bp. Hall and others. The Doway in the text has it liveth; but in a note admits that we may read, he liveth. The Vulgate does not decide the matter, omitting the pronoun, as does also the Greek. The doctrine is the same which way soever one decides. The death of either party in a marriage contract releases the survivor. And whatever the apostle intends to teach

in v. 1, it is something consistent with this idea, for he expressly introduces it in v. 2. The word rendered man in this verse is the generic word, corresponding to the Latin homo, meaning one of the human family, a man or woman, a human being. It is not the word corresponding to the Latin vir, meaning one of the male sex. Schleusner even thinks that the word here denotes a woman. Wolf and Pool interpret it indifferently of male or female, supposing, as Olshausen and some others do, that the law even in this verse means the law of marriage. Thus the passage would teach that the death of either party releases the other in marriage. Clarke thinks it all the same whether we read he liveth or it liveth. Speaking of these two renderings Chalmers says, "that either supposition, of the law being dead or of the subject being dead, stands linked with very important and unquestionable truth so that by admitting both, you may exhibit this passage as the envelope of two meanings or lessons, both of which are incontrovertibly sound and practically of very great consequence." But it is better to confine the attention to one rather than to both of these conceptions. Each seems to have some claims to consideration. The great objection to reading it liveth is that stated by Wolf"It is very unusual and surely unknown to scripture to say that the law liveth, or the law is dead." The only place cited to prove such language admissible is v. 6 of this section, and there a different reading is accepted by many. The great argument in favor of the sense gathered from the authorized version is that it coincides wel! with Paul's language in v. 4, where he says Christians themselves are dead to the law, not the law dead to them. But what does Paul here mean by the law? Some say he points to the ceremonial law. But why should we thus hold? Men were sanctified while obeying the ceremonial law, and observing (not abusing) its precepts. It was indeed burdensome, and those, who put it in the place of the grace of God, sadly perverted it. But men might be dead to it as a way of salvation, and yet not be in a state of salvation, relying on the moral law to save them. With the necessary qualifications the same things may be said of the Mosaic institute as a whole. But why may we not apply the term to law. generally-to all law as a method of justification or of sanctification? This covers the whole ground, well agrees with what Paul has said elsewhere, and leaves no room for evasion. Some, indeed, think that in this verse the apostle by law means the law of marriage only. But that is not necessary to a right understanding of the verse. The law of marriage is an illustration of the principle here avowed, and a very good one too, brought forward in vs. 2, 3. Some have suggested that this argument is specially

addressed to Jewish converts to Christianity; but all the early Christians were, according to their several grades of intelligence, acquainted with the moral law, even as contained in the decalogue, yes, and even with the general character of the old dispensation, And nothing could hinder even the Gentiles from knowing the general character of the moral law, for it was written on their hearts. And Jew and Gentile are alike wedded to law as a scheme of commending themselves to God and of assimilating their characters to his. Now God's people have no more to do with moral law as a method of salvation, nothing more to do with the covenant of works as a means of pardon, acceptance or sanctification, than a dead man has to do with laws of any kind enacted for the government of the living. One's death releases him from any and every law, by which man ever held him in subjection or had dominion over him. We might thus express the sense: My brethren, whether Jews or Gentiles in origin, I have fully showed you that justification is by no means to be obtained. by any conformity sinful men can acquire to the precepts of law. I have in the last chapter shown that neither can holiness be acquired by a legal spirit, nor by motives drawn from the rigors of law. If you would obtain sanctification, you must seek it by the grace of the gospel. I wish this matter to be understood by you, and well settled in your minds. So I ask your intelligent attention to an illustrated argument on the subject. Will you not admit thus much that one's death releases him from the binding force of any law, under which he may have lived? Will you not concede that neither good nor bad governments have power to pursue a man beyond the grave? Even the prisoner and the slave are free among the dead. Now, my argument is that you are dead to the law; you are dead with Christ, who is the head and surety of the covenant of grace, and so no law, as a means of salvation, can bind you. I have proved that no man can be justified by any law. I am now proving that his heart cannot be purified by any law, as a master or as a means, supplying adequate motives or helps thereto."

2. For the woman which hath a husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. The single word rendered, which hath a husband, is found nowhere else in the New Testament; but we have it in the Septuagint in Num. 5:29. There is no doubt that it is correctly rendered. The law of her husband is the law of marriage which binds her to her husband. He liveth, in this verse corresponds to the same words in v. 1, and shows that the rendering there is probably correct.