The life and work of St. Paul

4s90 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL.
demned to death 1 the victorious power of sin in the flesh, and so enabled us, by a
spiritual life, to meet the otherwise impossible requirements of the Law. Our life
is no longer under the dominion of the flesh, which obeys the law of sin, but of the
spirit 2 The death of Christ has, so to speak, shifted the centre of gravity of our
will. If Christ be in us, the body indeed is still liable to death because of sin, but
the spirit our own spiritual life (he does not say merely ' contains the elements of
life,' but in his forcible manner) is life, because of the righteousness implanted by
the sanctifying Spirit of God. If that Spirit which raised Jesus from the dead dwell
in us, He who raised Christ from the dead will also quicken us to full life, partially
but progressively here, but triumphantly and finally beyond the 8
grave. And even
here, in a measure, we attain to the "life of the spirit." Never, indeed, can we
fulfil the whole Law iii. (Gal. but for the ; 10^ quantitative is substituted a qualitative
fulfilment, and the " totality of the disposition contains in itself the totality
of the Law." In that stage life becomes life indeed. The "law of the spirit" is
the " law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus."
This, then, shows us the true law, and the final issue of our lives. If we are led
by the Spirit of God we are the sons of God, and the spirit of fear becomes the spirit
of sonship, and the cry of slavery the cry of confident appeal to a Father in heaven.
Thus we become joint-heirs with Christ ; and, therefore, to share His glory we must
share His sufferings. The full glory of that sonship is to be ours beyond the grave,
and in comparison with it the sufferings of this life are nothing. The life of all
creation is now in anguish, in bondage, in corruption, yearning for a freedom which
shall be revealed when we too have entered on the full glory of our inheritance as
the children of God. We, though we have the first-fruits of the spirit, share in the
groaning misery of nature, as it too shares in inarticulate sympathy with our
impatient aspirations. We live, we are saved BY HOPE, and the very idea of
Hope is the antithesis of 4
present realisation.
Hope is not possession, is not reality ; it can but imply future fruition it ; is Faith
in Christ directed to the future. But we have something more and better than
Hope. We have the help in weakness, the intercession even in prayer that can find
no utterance, of the Holy Spirit Himself. We know, too, that all things work
together for good to all them that love God and are called according to His purpose.
He ends the Divine work that He begins. Election predestination to conformity
and brotherhood with Christ vocation justification these four steps all follow,
all must inevitably follow each other, and must end in glorification. So certain is
this glorification, this entrance into the final fulness of sonship and salvation, that
St. Paul with one of those splendid flashes of rhetoric which, like all true rhetoric,
come directly from the intensities of emotion, and have nothing to do with the technicalities
of art speaks of it in the same past tense which he has employed for every
other stage in the process. Those whom He foreknew,* predestined, called, justified
them He also glorified.*
" What shall we then say to these things ?" What, but that magnificent burst
Itepl e.jj.apTu!t. Ps. zl. 7 ! wept a/xaprt'ar OVK flTTjcrar (Heb, X. 5). JJ6V. iv. 25 : a)rb TOU aifuxrof
TOV TTJS a^apria?.
1
Ko.-reiipi.vtv, "condemned to execution" (Matt, xxvii. 13).
2 Ver. 6. On the ^po^/ao. T^S o-apxbs, see Art. ix. Philo also dwells strongly on the
impotence of man apart from Divine grace (Legg. Alleg. i. 48, 55, 101).
3 vii. 13 Vlii. 11. The change from TOV eyeipaz/ros 'I^o-ow to 6 vipa rbv Xpiarbf is
remarkable. " Appellatio Jesu spectat ad ipsum, Christi refertur ad nos" (Bengel,viii. 11)
partly resumes the subject of v. 11 after the separate points handled in v. 12 21 ;
vi. 123 ; vii. 16, 725.
4
viii. 1825.
5 There are four explanations of " foreknew," aud each is claimed alike by Calviniats
and Arminians ! (Tholuck.) But, " in the interpretation of Scripture, if we would feel
as St. Paul felt, or think as he thought, we must go back to that age in which the water
of life was still a running stream."
viii. 2630,