The Day of Atonement

The Day of Atonement

(No. 3400)

A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, APRIL 2, 1914.

DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING MAY 9,
1869.

"And this shall be an everlasting statute unto you, to make an
atonement for the children of Israel, for all their sins, once a year."
Leviticus 16:34.

WE have taken these words for our text. The whole Chapter, however,
will have our attention.

I must be allowed to say at this time, though I seldom say anything in
the way of an apology, that this is not the place, nor would time serve
us to go into a full exposition of the very wonderful teaching of this
Chapter. If we may ever set any portion of Scripture before another,
this is one of the most precious Chapters in the whole compass of
Revelation and, in some respects, the most remarkable of all. It is so
full of wonderfully deep teaching that, instead of a sermon, it might
require a volume! And then, perhaps, we would scarcely have done more
than skimmed the surface. And there are difficulties, I may also add,
connected with the interpretation–very great difficulties–which have
puzzled the most learned of the Reformed and of the Puritan divines. I
do not at all attempt to solve those difficulties, nor profess that all
I say might be able to support and carry out. I desire to give, instead
of any attempt at criticism or deep explanation, a simple exposition of
this Chapter, bringing out of it, I hope, some Truths of God which, if
they do not belong to the Chapter, are, nevertheless, exceedingly
precious ones and will, I hope, be useful to us all.

In a remarkable way God dealt with Israel in the wilderness. There were
special tokens of His peculiar Presence, as in the cloudy and fiery
pillars which were the emblems of His Presence, and in the bright light
called the Shekinah, which shone between the wings of the cherubim
which overshadowed the Ark. But God cannot dwell where there is sin. He
is a holy Being. "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts," is the song
which continually rises into His ears. In order, then, that He might
dwell in the midst of Israel without compromising His Character, He was
pleased to appoint one day in the year which was called "the Day of
Atonement," which should be considered to purify the camp and make it
fit to be the dwelling place of Jehovah.

Now, God has promised that He will dwell among men, and He does dwell
among His own people at this very time. He dwells with them in a
remarkable way. "The Lord is my portion," says my soul. God is the
heritage, the Friend, the Companion of all His people, but because of
their sin He cannot dwell with these believing men unless an Atonement
is made. The annual atonement among the Jews was the picture of the
great Atonement–but the real Atonement, the effectual Expiation which,
not once a year, but once and for all, the Lord Jesus Christ has
offered–now renders it possible for God to walk with men and dwell
among them!

In the ceremony of the atonement, in the Chapter before us, there are
four things that struck me. The first is– I. THE WAY IN WHICH THAT
REMARKABLE CEREMONY SET FORTH THE SACRIFICE MADE TO GOD'S HONOR.

My Brothers and Sisters, the offense of man against God was, so to
speak, a stain upon God's honor. Man set himself up in rebellion
against the Most High! He stood out, therefore, against Divine
Sovereignty! He impugned the Divine Love. His offense blasphemed the
Divine Wisdom. Every human sin is an attack upon the whole Character
and life of God–and sin, itself, is a dishonor done to the glorious
attributes of Jehovah. Before God can be reconciled to man and deal
with Him at all, except by way of retribution, there must be something
done to restore the Divine Honor. Now, we have it declared in this
Revelation which comes to us from Heaven, that Christ has fully
restored the Divine Glory and that since He suffered on the tree, the
Just for the unjust, God can be gracious without a violation of His
Justice and Hecan dwell with us–with us poor fallen creatures–without
the marring of the luster of any single one of His attributes! The
model man has honored God more fully than sinful man ever dishonored
Him! And if God was angry with the race for our sins, He is now towards
the race full of tenderness and pity because of the transcendent
goodness of the new Head of the race, Christ Jesus our Lord, who has
magnified God's Law and made it honorable!

Now, this is the Truth of God that was taught in the first part of the
ceremony on the Day of Atonement. It was taught thus. Two goats were
brought to the door of the Tabernacle. Lots were cast and the first
goat was selected to teach this lesson. The goat was brought by the
people. It was their common property. It would not have sufficed–it
would not have been of any use at all if it had not been so. Read the
Chapter and you will see. Learn from this that the compensation to
God's honor for man's sin must come from men. I t was a man in the
Garden who dared to rebel–it must be a man, another man, who shall
honor God's Law so as to set the race in a fresh relationship towards
God.

The goat is given by all Israel–the Atonement to God's honor must come
out of our race, and hence it is that our Lord is the son of Mary, bone
of our bone, flesh of our flesh–qualified, being a Man, to perform the
obedience required of man and to right, as a Man for men, the wrongs
which man had done to God. Note that first.

The goat which was brought was given up to the appointed priest. God
will have everything done according to order. The sacrifice must not be
left to the whims and fancies of men. So the man who shall offer up the
sacrifice to the Divine Honor must be appointed of God, as Aaron was.
And so our Lord Jesus Christ was God's chosen One, appointed by God to
stand in the gap, and for us to vindicate the Divine Glory which we had
tarnished by our iniquities.

This goat, being thus offered, must be presented to God, but there must
be something with it Sweet perfume must be cast upon the live coals and
the sweet smell must go up before the Mercy Seat. So before God can
ever be satisfied for the wrong done to Him by the Fall and by our
common sin, there must be an offering of sweet merits unto Him which,
let me say, Jesus Christ has most abundantly offered. He took His hands
full of the, most blessed compound of all the graces and all the
virtues beaten small, for there was an exact obedience to every jot and
tittle of the Divine Law. Christ's obedience was perfect in its kind in
the most minute respects–and this merit has been brought before our
God, who is a consuming fire, and burns up every evil work. And as He
lays hold upon this work of Christ, He makes a sweet smell of it–which
is poured out throughout Heaven and earth–"the savor of a sweet odor"
in the nostrils of the Most High

Do not let me cover up, however, what I mean, under the cloak of
allegory. I mean this–that if God is to accept our race of men and all
that we have done against Him and still deal with us on the footing of
mercy–somebody must be found who can be so obedient, so delighting in
God's will, that there shall be a sweet offering made, as morally and
spiritually acceptable to God's Spirit as sweet perfume is to the
nostril of man. And that has been done. When they talk in Heaven of
man's sin–if they ever there speak of it and wonder how God can bear
with man, some bright seraph speaks of man's perfect obedience, even
unto death, and they say to one another, "What man, what man is this?"
and they clap their hands with joy as they say, It's He that sat at the
right hand of the Father, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Son of
David."

One man threw down the race, but another Man has lifted us up! One man
brought ruin by the Fall–another Man restored it and made the race
acceptable to God. If man dishonored God, yet man has more honored Him
than he dishonored Him, now that Christ has become the great
representative Man!

All the glory of Redemption is greater than ever there could have been
of dishonor to God by sin! I believe that God is more honored by the
world having sinned, and having been restored by Christ, than He could
have been if there had never been sin upon this planet and if a
perfectly sinless race had tenanted its bounds!

After this burning of perfume, the goat must die. Nothing could permit
the Justice of God to look upon man at all until there had been
something more than merit. There must be a penalty. "Die he, or Justice
must." Man must die, or God's Justice must die. There must be
blood–life poured out for sin. Now, when that goat was put to death
and the blood flowed forth into the golden bowl, then, Brothers and
Sisters, you saw before your eyes of faith, Jesus Christ put to death
upon Calvary. He who needed not to have died, the Perfect One,
voluntarily offered Himself up as the Victim to Justice, suffering in
His own Person, so as to compensate the Justice of God. Do not imagine
that Christ died to placate Divine Vengeance–not at all–but that it
is sternly necessary if God is to govern this universe at all, that sin
must be punished. The very pillars and the foundations of moral
government would, not to say, be shaken, but actually be tornup if sin
should be permitted to go unpunished! Now, to vindicate the Justice of
God, the sword is drawn and who suffers?

Not the human race. Behold, myriads of the race go streaming up to
everlasting felicity. Who suffers, then? Why, a Man so marvelously
perfect, and withal, so majestically glorious, that His sufferings are
a recompense to God for all that sin had done–and so made an effectual
Atonement for all the transgressions that had dishonored God! You will
observe that I am speaking in very popular, comprehensive and general
terms–and designedly so because I believe I am speaking the Infallible
Truth of the mind of God! So far as God is concerned, the Atonement
that Christ made was universal in its worth and efficacy!

So far as the vindication of the Justice of God and all His other
attributes are to be considered, that vindication was absolutely
complete. And whether one man had been saved, or 50 men saved, or all
saved, or none saved, it would have made no difference. The work was
done! God's honor was clear! God's attributes were glorified–and this
was perfectly done by the putting away of Christ.

Once more. The blood was sprinkled on the Mercy Seat seven times. That
was typical of Christ, who goes up into Heaven in His own proper Person
and there displays before God, the holy angels and elect spirits, the
tokens of His passion, the ensign of His suffering, taking the blood up
to God that henceforth when the Eternal Mind thinks of sin and the
dishonor done to God by sin, it might think of the sufferings of the
blessed Man, Christ Jesus, and see how all dishonor is forever put
away! You know, when you are reading Scripture, dear Friends, you find
a great many passages which speak about Christ's dying for all men, and
about God's having reconciled the world unto Himself. And I know you
are apt to say to me, "You teach us Particular Redemption–that Christ
only died as a Substitute for some men." That I always say, and stand
to–and believe to be a Biblical Doctrine! But do I, therefore, clip
away other texts? No, not in any degree! I believe them as they stand.
I count it treason to try and clip a text, or to make it say the
contrary of what it does say! So far as God's honor was concerned, the
death of Christ for men so obliterated human sin as such that God
could, without dishonor to Himself, deal with mankind. Hence it is that
the wicked live! Hence it is that they enjoy innumerable mercies! Hence
it is that there is a good, strong, substantial ground for offering the
Gospel to every man–and a righteous reason for commanding every man to
believe in Jesus Christ that he may be saved!

This was the first teaching of the Day of Atonement and every Jew, when
he saw, ought to have understood the presentation of that blood within
the veil, that now God no longer looked on the race as being a race
that He must curse and must destroy, but looked upon it with mercy and
was prepared to treat it on the footing of tenderness. And that now
there was a Gospel presented to the sons of men. Oh, I do so love this
thought, that my sin, which did dishonor to God, which did as much as
say that He was not a good God, that it was better for me to hate Him
than to love Him, better for me to be His enemy than to be His friend,
made out as though His Commandments were grievous and that it gave me
pleasure to break them–all the mischief towards God that my sin could
ever do is all put away by the holy life and the blessed death of
Christ Jesus my Lord–and put away forever, forever, forever–so that
God can now deal with me on the terms of Divine Grace!

But my time flies and, therefore, I come to the next point–

II. SIN IS NOW UTTERLY DRIVEN AWAY.

There was another goat–and this goat was to live and not to die–which
set forth quite another Truth of God. I do not think the common
explanation of this is at all correct. And all the expositors I have
met with are clear that it is not correct. Some have said that the
scapegoat typifies our Lord Jesus bearing our sins away in His
Resurrection and ascending into Heaven. The incongruity of the metaphor
has always struck me, but there are reasons in the Hebrew text which
prevent our believing that thatcould have been the meaning of it. The
living goat was taken by a fit man right away into the wilderness and
there it was left. What became of it afterwards, we do not know.
Painters have depicted it as expiring in the midst of desolation, in
the agonies of famine–a mere fancy picture! The scapegoat did not,
very probably, die sooner than any other goat–and it is not at all
necessary that it should. We never need enlarge a topic beyond what
Scripture says. Indeed, there is often as much teaching in a type's
stopping short as there is in its going on!

These two goats had each its name. One was said to be for Jehovah–that
represents Christ, I say, as making recompense to God's honor! The
other is said to be for Azazel, which, if I understand it at all,
means, "for evil." What? Then was that other goat offered to the Devil?
By no means! He is not evil, but one of the ministering spirits in the
service of evil. Evil made Satan what he is. He is its slave, its chief
plotter and schemer, but still not evil, itself! Did you ever
notice–you must have noticed–that the wrong of evil, the sinfulness
of sin, even if it were forgiven, works nothing but evil, so that if
God were to forgive us all, but leave the evil in us, we should be in
Hell for all that because evil of itself holds Hell and works towards
its being realized by us. Evil is, in itself, essentially misery–it
has only to work itself out and it will be so.

Now, how am I to get rid of this sin that is in me as to the evil
consequences inherent in the evil? Suppose God to be perfectly
reconciled to me so far, yet still there is an evil that mischief
brings upon me in itself, apart from God–and how do I get rid of that?
Why, through the scapegoat! The sin of the people was, first of all,
transferred to this scapegoat–all confessed and all laid on the
scapegoat. Then, by Divine appointment, the scapegoat, being chosen by
lot and the lot being guided by God, it was accepted as being the
substitute for the people. The scapegoat was then taken away. And what
was done with it? Why, nothing was done with it but this–it was
relinquished–it was given up! Now, can I get out what I mean? I am
very much afraid I cannot. Our Lord Jesus Christ took upon Himself the
sin of His people. And He was given up to evil, that is to say, to all
the power that evil could put out against Him–first in the wilderness,
tempted from all quarters, tempted by the temptations of Satan. And
then in the Garden, tempted in such a way as you and I never were–the
powers of evil let loose upon Him as they never were upon us! Did He
not say, "This is your hour, and the power of darkness"? And so
dreadful was the assault of evil upon Him, the devil going forth as the
type and incarnation of evil, that He sweat, as it were, great drops of
blood falling to the ground! And while especially on the tree, where
the conflict reached its climax, was He given up.

That cry, "My God! My God! Why have You forsaken Me?" is like the cry
of the goat when it is given up, quite given up, and led away. Evil was
permitted to work out in Him all its own dread hatefulness and havoc,
to which it must bring our spirits, unless God interposes to stop evil
from making the soul become unutterably wretched, even unto death.

I do not know how to get out the thought which seems to be in my soul,
but I do rejoice to think that all the evil I have ever done shall not
go on to plague and vex me because it has vexed and plagued Him. That
all the essential misery that lies in my past sin–which must, even if
God forgave it, still come back to sting and torment me throughout all
my existence–was so laid on Him and so spent all its force and venom
on Him who was given up to it, that it will never touch me again!

You know, Brothers and Sisters, there was no other man who could have
borne all that power of evil but our Lord. And it all fell on Him and
yet it never stained His matchless purity and perfection of Character.
The misery of it came to Him, but the guilt of it could never defile
Him! The misery of sin spent itself on the lonely One who was given up
to its awful force, but it could do no more. The type says nothing
about the scapegoat, whether it died or not, and Christ did not die
because of the misery of His spirit–He died for quite another reason
and in another sense–laying down His life for His people!

There is something, I think, interesting in this if we can carry it
out, but there is this to be said–by that scapegoat being thus given
up, the sin of the congregation was taken away–all taken away and all
gone. And so, through Jesus Christ having borne our sicknesses and
carried our sorrows, the whole force and power of evil to do damning
mischief against a saint has been taken away forever from everyone of
us who have laid our hands, by faith, upon His dear and blessed head.
It is gone! The sin is gone, gone into the wilderness, where it shall
never be found against us any more forever.

I must hasten on, however, for time flies. There was yet a third part
of this expiation. Did you notice it? It is a grand thing when we can
see God's honor clear. It is a grand thing, next, when we can see
ourselves clear as to the effects of evil by Christ's taking evil quite
away. The third grand thing is to see– III. SIN, ITSELF, MADE THE
SUBJECT OF CONTEMPT.

God cannot dwell with us if sin is petted and loved. Sin must be
detested and loathed. Now, read on in the Chapter and you will find
that the bullock and the goat which were there, and whose blood was
taken into the Holy Place, were afterwards burned outside the camp–see
the 27th verse. They were burned, and burned with ignominy, burned
outside the camp in the common sewer, the kennel of the camp–and
burned, too, under circumstances that imply disgust. "They shall burn
in the fire, their skins and their flesh, and their dung"–put in
purposely to show what a contempt was to be put upon the beasts that
had been, for a while, made to take and to typify sin!

That burning outside the camp looked to a stranger like the burning of
a heap of rubbish. There was a foul smell of the burning flesh and
refuse. Persons, as they passed turned their heads away to avoid the
terrible odor. They would say, "What is all this?" "Why, this was a
sin-offering, and when the blood, which God accepted, had gone, this
was what was left–the filth of sin–and the people were just being
taught how they should hate, loathe and destroy it! Every man that
touched it washed himself! And no man could touch any of these things
that day without bathing again and again, the thing was so detestable!

Now, in the Person of our blessed Lord, sin is made most detestable.
Did you ever really hate sin until you learned to love Christ? I will
ask you when do you hate sin the most? Why, when you love Christ the
most! I believe you shall always find that in proportion as you
understand and see the work of Christ, you will see in that work, as in
a glass, that Christ has made sin to be the most loathsome and
disgusting thing that was ever heard of, for what do the angels
say–"Man sinned, did he? Oh, foolish man, to sin against his God and
his Maker!" "Ah," says one of the angels, "but he did worse than
that–he sinned against the God that loved him so, that He would sooner
let His Only-Begotten Son die than poor man should perish!" "Oh," they
say, "what a shameful thing to sin against so dear and kind a God!" If
God were a tyrant, it might not seem atrocious to rebel against Him.
But when He becomes so dear and tender a Father as to give His
Only-Begotten Son–away with you, Sin! Talk of the Devil! He is not
black compared with you, O Sin–you are the Devil's tempter, the
Devil's ruin! You make him black. It is sin, sin that is so foul a
thing that I can liken it unto nothing! There is nothing on earth,
there is nothing anywhere in Hell that can be likened unto it! Sin is
made to appear exceedingly sinful and loathsome to the uttermost degree
through the Expiatory Sacrifice of Jesus Christ!

Now, these are three grand things for God to have done in this
world–after man sinned to have made His name as glorious as ever.
After man's sin, to have set pardoned man straight, as straight as ever
from his sin. And after that, to have made sin which came with the
apple in its hand and which comes every day, now, with painted face,
and with the cup in its hand, filled to the brim with sweet wine, seem
hateful and to be really so! Oh, it is a grand work, that which Christ
has done! Blessed be His name!

Now, the last point–and I shall need your earnest consideration for a
minute or two–is this. I must call your attention to–

IV. THE BEHAVIOR OF THE PEOPLE DURING THE WHOLE OF THAT DAY in which
this wonderful panorama was made to pass before them.

During that day they were to afflict their souls. Do you want to have
your sin forgiven? Put away your jollity and your mirth. A repenting
sinner had need to be a mourner and, Brothers and Sisters, when sin is
put away, how the forgiven sinner afflicts his soul! He is happy! He
was never more happy! Never so happy, but how grieved he is to think he
ever sinned!–

"My sins, my sins my Savior! How sad on You they fall! Seen through
Your gentle patience, I tenfold feel them all. I know they are
forgiven, But still their pain to me, Is all the grief and anguish,
They laid, my Lord, on Thee. My sins, my sins, my Savior! Their guilt
Inever knew, Till, with You, in the desert, I near Your passion drew.
Till with You, in the Garden, I heard Your pleading prayer, And saw the
bloody sweat drops, That told Your sorrow there." Oh, there is never,
never such affliction of soul for sin as when you see the great
Atonement! Let me invite you to hate sin, tonight, you pardoned ones.
Take care to do it. And you unpardoned ones, rend your hearts, but not
your garments!

And turn unto God with afflicted spirits and say, "Lord, through the
precious Atonement of which I have heard so much tonight, blot out my
sins!"

The next thing concerning the people that day was that they were to do
no servile work on that day. There was to be no hewing of wood, no
drawing of water–nothing was to be done throughout all the camp by way
of labor. So, when a soul comes to the Atonement of Christ, it has done
with all its works of righteousness and all its deeds of human merit!
You can never have the Atonement of Christ while you are working out
your own works and trying to be saved by them. And the Believer that
has once come to take Christ to be his Savior will never try to get any
merits of his own. Oh, he has thrown away forever the fooleries of
self-righteousness! He sees the absurdity of hoping that foul, black
hands can ever present a fair, white sacrifice to God. He takes his
lord and he has done with his own doings!

Once more–it was to be to the people a Sabbath unto the Lord. That day
was not the seventh day of the week, but still it was to be a kind of
Sabbath. And what a glorious Sabbath the Atonement always makes! Why, I
feel a Sabbath, tonight, apart from the Sabbath Day. I have a Sabbath
in my soul, to think that the sin of man has not, after all, done
lasting damage to the Throne of God. I feel so happy to think, next,
that there is a special sacrifice made for the elect, by the
scapegoat's having taken away their sin, so that the evil of their sin
will never come on them. I feel so thankful, tonight, to think that God
has made sin to appear to be exceedingly sinful. These three grand
things ring a peal of bells in my soul, for now I feel content–for God
is satisfied to come to God–and I can see why He should let me come to
Him.

I can understand now how it is that He should let a fallen creature
hold converse with His thrice holy Self after His great work is done!
And it is better for me, and better for you, that we should come to God
by so good and reasonable, and proper, and glorious a way–rather than
that we should have been permitted, had it been possible, to come by
any breach of the Law, or by any setting aside of the Divine Command.

I do not think I would have been happy had it been possible for me to
go to Heaven, and God's honor had thereby been sullied, for God's honor
is the very happiness of a reconciled creature! And if that had
suffered any loss through me, I would have been miserable. But it shall
suffer no loss or stain! Christ has completely undone the mischief of
the Fall! Glory be to His blessed name for this!

And now, Beloved in the Lord, I wish that I could speak in the name of
you all and accept the Man, Christ Jesus, tonight, as our
representative. Remember, though He has done this much for us all, that
God can dwell with us, yet He has not taken the sin of us all upon
Himself, but only of so many as stand and confess their sin and trust
it with Him. Come, will you do it? Poor Sinner, will you do it for the
first time tonight? Backslider, will you do it again? You Believers
that have lost some of your evidences, will you do it anew tonight? Oh,
I wish I could now say these words and you could all say, "Amen," from
your hearts–

"My faith does lay her hand On that dear head of Thine, While, like a
penitent I stand, And here confess my sin."

Well, if you won't have Christ for your Savior, I will have Him for
mine! And there are thousands of you here who will say, "Yes, and He
shall be mine, too!" The longer I live, the more I love to rest upon
Him. I did try to rest somewhere else, once, but the dream is over and
now the more I think of my Lord, the more firm I feel the conviction
that He is a rock that will bear the weight of my salvation! The more I
think of what that glorious Man, that blessed Son of God, who is as
much God as He is Man, has done for me, the more do I feel that if I
had fifty thousand times the sin I have, I would rest on Him! And if I
were as wicked as all men put together, I would rest on Him, still,
believing that no amount of sin could outweigh His merit and that no
extent of iniquity could ever surpass the infinite bounds of His
eternal Grace. He is able to save to the uttermost them that come to
God by Him! Come to God by Him, poor Sinner, and may God the Holy
Spirit lead you, and He shall have the glory! Amen, and Amen.

EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: ROMANS 6:1-19.

Paul finishes the last Chapter by saying, "That as sin has reigned unto
death, even so might Grace reign through righteousness unto eternal
life by Jesus Christ our Lord." "What shall we say, then?" What
inference shall we draw from the superabounding of Grace over sin?

Verse 1. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that Grace
may abound?'"Shall we continue in sin, that Grace may abound?" That
were a very horrible inference! It is one great instance of the
shocking depravity of man that the inference has sometimes been drawn!
I hope not often, for surely Satan, himself, might scarcely draw an
inference of licentiousness from love. Still, some have drawn it.

2. God forbid! How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer
therein?Now he goes on by an argument to prove that those in whom the
Grace of God has worked the wondrous change cannot possibly choose sin,
nor live in it.

3. Knowyou not that so many of us as were baptizedinto Jesus Christ
were baptized into His death?That is the very hinge of our religion!
His death, not into His example, merely, nor primarily into His life,
but, "into His death." In this we have believed–we are linked with a
dying Savior and our baptism sets this forth. We "were baptized into
His death."

4. Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death: that like as
Christ was raised up from the dead by the Glory of the Father, even so
we also should walk in the newness of life. The operations, therefore,
of the Spirit of God forbid that a saved man should live in sin. He is
dead. He is raised into newness of life. At the very entrance into the
Church, in the very act of Baptism, he declares that he cannot live as
he once did, for he is dead! He declares that he must live after
another fashion, for has he not been raised again in the type and
raised again in very deed from the dead?

5. 6. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His
death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection. Knowing
this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin
might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. A death
has taken place in us and though there are relics of corruption still
alive, yet they are crucified–they will have to die, they must
die–they are nailed fast to the Cross to die in union with the death
of Christ!

7. For he that is dead is freed from sin. The man is dead. The law
cannot ask more of a criminal than to yield his life. If, therefore, he
should live again after death, he would not be one who could suffer for
his past offenses. They were committed in another life and, "he that is
dead is freed from sin."

8, 9. Now if we are dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also
live with Him. Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dies no
more; death has no more dominion over Him. Or death will have dominion
over Him no more– He will never come a second time under death, and
neither shall His people. "For in that He died, He died unto sin once."
There was an end of it in the sense of once and for all–no second
death for Christ.

10-12. For in that He died, He died unto sin once: but in that He lives
unto God. Likewise reckon you also yourselves to be dead, indeed, unto
sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin,
therefore, reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in the
lusts thereof'Perhaps there were some who would say that in their
spirits, truth and righteousness were supreme, but that in their bodies
sin had the mastery. Yes, but that will not do. There must be left no
lurking piece for sin within the complete system of our manhood–it
must be hunted out and hunted down thoroughly–out of the body as well
as out of the mind!

13. Neither yield you your members as instrument of unrighteousness
unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from
the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God We
do not, I think, make enough of the passive part of our religion. We
are often for doing and quite right, too, and the more active we can be
the better! Still, before the doing there must come a yielding because
we remember who it is that works in us, "both to will and to do of His
own good pleasure," and our activities, after all are not so much our
own as we deem, if they are right. They are the activities of the
Divine Life within us–of the Spirit of God, Himself, working in us to
the Glory of the Father! One great point, therefore, is to yield
ourselves up–our members to be weapons in God's hands for the fighting
of the spiritual war.

14. For sin shall not have domination over you: for you are not under
the Law, but under Grace. The reigning, ruling principle, now, is not,
"You must, you shall," for reward or under fear of punishment! But God
has loved you and now you love Him in return and what you do springs
from no mercenary or self-serving motive! You are not under Law, but
under Grace. Yet in another sense you never were so much under Law as
you are now, for Grace puts about you a blessedly sweet, delightful Law
which has power over us as the word of command never had. "I will write
My Law intheir hearts, in their inward parts will I write them." Yes,
that is the glory of the new life, the delight of him who has passed
from death unto life!

15. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the Law, but under
Grace? Oh, this old question keeps coming up! Somebody wants to sin.
Well, if he wants to sin, why does he not leave this business alone and
go and sin? What has he to do with these theological questions at all?
But still, he wants, if he can, to make a coverlet for his wickedness!
He wants to enjoy the sweets of the child of God and yet live like an
enemy of God–and so he pops in his head over and over again–"May we
not sin because of this, or that?" To which the Apostle answers again,
"God forbid!" Oh, may God always forbid it to you and to me! May the
question never be tolerated among us!

15, 16. God forbid! Know you not that to whom you yield yourselves
servants to obey, his servants you are to whom you obey; whether of sin
unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?If you are doing the
deeds of sin, you are the servants of sin and only as you are doing the
will of God can you claim to be the servant of God! "Hereby we know
that we know Him, if we keep His commandments." That becomes the index
of our condition. The man, then, that lives in sin and loves it, need
not talk about the Grace of God–he is a stranger to it, for the mark
of those that come under Grace is this–that they serve God and no
longer serve sin!

17, 18. But God be thanked, thatyou were the servants ofsin, butyou
have obeyed from the heart that form ofDoc-trine which was delivered
you. Being then made free from sin, you became the servants of
righteousness. "Bondservants," you have got in our new translation, for
so it was, and the Apostle seems to excuse himself for using such a
word by saying–

19. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your
flesh: for as you have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and
to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to
righteousness unto holi-ness.As you submitted yourselves to sin most
cheerfully and voluntarily, and yet were slaves under it, so now come
and be slaves under Christ with most blessed cheerfulness and delight!
Endeavor to lose your very wills in His will, for no man's slavery is
so complete as his who even yields his will. Now, yield everything to
Christ! You shall never be so free as when you do that–never so
blessedly delivered from all bondage as when you absolutely and
completely yield yourselves up to the power and supremacy of your Lord!