yet he does what the Law requires, and more, because his obedience is not that of "the letter, but the spirit;" as St. Paul says, the Christian is constrained by love to act. And why? Because God has taught him that it is beautiful and right to do so, and because God has made the Love of Christ paramount in his heart to all other love. Let us make therefore, a distinction. When we say that a Christian is free from the Law, we do not mean that he may break it, or not, as he likes. We mean that he is bound to do right by a nobler tie than " 'you must." Consider the Law as expressed in the first, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth commandments, and then examine the relations in which a Christian is placed with regard to these commandments. Hence the Apostle says: "To them that are without law" I became "as without law "—but he explains― "being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ." And again: "Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness." Christian liberty then, is a loving servitude to God. Just as if a slave were made free, and then felt himself bound in gratitude to toil with tenfold vigour for a master whom he loved instead of fearing; or just as the mother is the slave to her sick child, and would do almost impossibilities, not because it is her duty, but because she loves her child;-so the whole moral law is abrogated to us as a Law, because obedience to it is ensured in the spirit. 2. The Law of redeemed Humanity: "Because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead." "All are dead :" that I call the law of redeemed Humanity. Let us explain this expression. It is sometimes interpreted: "If one died for all, then all must have been spiritually dead." But this is not St. Paul's meaning. Those who have intelligently followed his argument thus far, will see at once that it is beside his reasoning. There are two kinds of death -one in sin, before Redemption; the other to sin, which is Redemption. Here it is of the death to sin, and not the death in sin, that St. Paul speaks. This is his argument:-If One died as the representative of all, then in that death all died ; not that they were dead before, but dead then. You will recollect that this is the great thought throughout this Epistle. Every Christian is dead in Christ's death, and risen in Christ's resurrection: "In that He died, He died unto sin once: but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." Again: "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." So here there is exactly the same train of thought: "He died for all, that they which live should not thenceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again." (ver. 15). This is Christ's Redemption: He died to sin for all, as the Representative of all. In his death we all have died. He rose again, and Life is now owed to Him. In Christ alone, then, is the true law of our Humanity intelligible. 3. The new aspect of Humanity in Christ: creature," or creation. "a new Humanity as a whole, and individually, is spiritualized; it is viewed in Christ as a thing dead and alive again-dead to evil, but risen to righteousness. For even such is Christ, the Son of Man (v. 16): "Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more." Even Christ we know now as the Son of God, rather than as the Son of Man. So by us Christ is to be known spiritually, and not with worldly ideas, such as the Apostles had of Him when He lived. He is to be recognized no more as weak, rejected, despised, battling with evil, but as the Conqueror of Evil: for the Resurrection has shown what He was: He was "declared to be the Son of God, with power according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." Remember however, the historical order: Christ was revealed first as Man, then as God; so now, it is best to begin with the simplest aspect of Him. Teach children first the simple beauty of Christ's manhood:-only we must not rest there: Now therefore, it is not Christ who was, but Christ who is ; "it is Christ who died, yea, rather, who is risen again: who also liveth to make intercession for us." It is the same in each individual Christian. A Christian is human nature revolutionized (v. 17). Almost the deepest thing in the Jewish mind was that exclusiveness which made the Jew at last believe that holiness consisted in national separation. In the Jew then, Christianity caused the abjuration of prejudice. The Gentile it freed from atheism and idolatry. In both the Jew and Gentile it changed the life of flesh and self into a spiritual and self-sacrificing existence. My brethren, there must be a crisis in your being. It may be gradual in its progress, like John the Baptist's, or sudden, like St. Paul's; but except it take place, "except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God." IT LECTURE XLV. 2 CORINTHIANS, v. 14, 15. T may be that in reading these verses some of us have understood them in a sense foreign to that of the Apostle. It may have seemed that the argument ran thus :-Because Christ died upon the cross for all, therefore all must have been in a state of spiritual death before; and if we were asked what doctrines are to be elicited from this passage, we should reply, "the doctrine of universal depravity, and the constraining power of the gratitude due to Him who died to redeem us from it." There is however, in the first place, this fatal objection to such an interpretation, that the death here spoken of is used in two diametrically opposite senses. In reference to Christ, death literal; in reference to all, death spiritual. Now, in the thought of St. Paul, the death of Christ was always viewed as liberation from the power of evil: "in that he died, he died unto sin once ;" and again, "he that is dead is freed from sin." The literal death then, in one clause, means freedom from sin; the spiritual death of the next is slavery to it. Wherein then, lies the cogency of the Apostle's reasoning? How does it follow that because Christ died to evil, all before that must have died to God? Of course that doctrine is true in itself, but it is not the doctrine of the text. In the next place, the ambiguity belongs only to the English word-it is impossible to make the mistake in the original: the word which stands for were, is a word which does not imply a continued state, but must imply a single finished act. It cannot by any possibility imply that before the death of Christ men were in a state of death-it can only mean they became dead at the moment when Christ died. If you read it thus, the meaning of the English will emerge-" if one died for all, then all died;" and the Apostle's argument runs thus, that if one acts as the representative of all, then his act is the act of all. If the ambassador of a nation makes reparation in a nation's name, or does homage for a nation, that reparation, or that homage, is the nation's act—if one did it for all, then all did it. So that instead of inferring that because Christ died for all, therefore before that all were dead to God, his natural inference is that, therefore all are now dead to sin. Once more, the conclusion of the Apostle is exactly the reverse of that which this interpretation attributes to him: he does not say that Christ died in order that men might not die, but exactly for this very purpose, that they might; and this death he represents in the next verse by an equivalent expressionthe life of unselfishness: "that they which live might henceforth live not unto themselves." The "dead" of the first verse are "they that live" of the second. The form of thought finds its exact parallel in Romans, vi. 10, II. Two points claim our attention :— I. The vicarious sacrifice of Christ. I. The vicariousness of the sacrifice is implied in the word "for." A vicarious act is an act done for another. When the Pope calls himself the vicar of Christ, he implies that he acts for Christ. The vicar or viceroy of a kingdom is one who acts for the king-a vicar's act therefore is virtually the act of the principal whom he represents: so that if the papal doctrine were true, when the vicar of Christ pardons, Christ has pardoned. When the viceroy of a kingdom has published a proclamation or signed a treaty, the sovereign himself is bound by those acts. |