It is to be observed that verse 11 carries the subject beyond the reasoning of verse 8, where our living with Christ is shown to be a just and sure consequence for the believer: if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him. It is future. But now we have a weighty, present result founded on what intervenes, especially verse 10. Christ died to sin once and lives to God; and He is the life as well as the resurrection. As thus alive to God, all closed as to sin in His death, we live of His life, and are thus also to reckon ourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God, not here with Him, but through or in virtue of (el') Him. This epistle never, in its doctrinal province, goes so far as union with Him, though it does employ the truth of the body to enforce the right use of spiritual gifts on Christians. In the Epistle to the Ephesians we are shown to be quickened together with Christ and raised up together with Him. Here however we are alive to God in Him.
“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body that ye should obey its lusts.” (Ver. 12.) The truth is then, not that sin is dead, but that we are entitled by Christ's death and resurrection to regard ourselves in the account of faith as dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign. It is personified here as elsewhere sometimes, seeking the upper hand in our mortal body so as to subject us to its lusts. But through Christ it has no claim over us. As He lives to God who died to sin once for all, so also we are to reckon ourselves done with the dominion of sin and not to obey its lusts. As dead to sin we owe it no allegiance whatever.
Nor is this all. The apostle pushes the matter farther. “Neither yield your members instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but yield yourselves to God as alive from out of dead men, and your members instruments of righteousness to God.” (Ver. 13.) The first occurrence of “yield” means in the form of the word, the habit of yielding; the second, by its form, implies the surrender already made. It is not a gradual improvement of the nature or the will as men speak, but the giving up of ourselves in a single and complete act to God as alive from among the dead, and our members as instruments of righteousness to God.
This is the new place of positive blessing given to us, counting ourselves thus by faith. Such is the present practical consequence, as we have seen also what is future for us. “For sin shall not have dominion over you” —not sin as a personified ruler now, but no sin in any shape or measure; “for ye are not under law but under grace.” (Ver. 14.) This closes the foregoing discussion and prepares for a new step taken in the argument following.
What a blessed comfort thus far and how uncompromisingly laid down in the very portion that refutes the flesh's misuse of God's mercy and of the Christian's liberty! “Ye are not under law, but under grace.”
It is painful to see how those who profess to believe the gospel, valuing both Christ and His work, elude the force of His word, and essay to foist on the Christian subjection to law, which the Spirit is here flatly negativing. The law is the strength of sin; for by its restraint and interdict it simply provokes the flesh. It never gives power of holiness any more than life: grace, not law, quickens, saves, and strengthens. If believers could be under law, sin must have dominion over them.
It is in vain to say that the apostle is here treating of our being accounted righteous in Christ. Not so: he is discussing the walk of the Christian in answer to the cavil that grace tends to sanction lax ways. It is a question therefore of a rule of life, of its principle and spring. The objectors then as now had fallen into the error of supposing that the law, though unable to give the remission of sins, is the rule of righteousness for the Christian. Justification from sin, not from sins, is the point in hand, and as the blood of Christ washes away the sins of the believer in the sight of God, so he is cleansed from sin; not simply by Christ's dying for him, but by his dying with Christ. For he that died is justified from sin. The nature is in question, and consequently the walk of the believer; and the remedy here, as everywhere, is in Christ; but it is in death with Him of which baptism is the sign.
Nor can there be a less holy doctrine than the notion so prevalent among the Puritans as well as others still less intelligent and with less godly desire, that the death of Christ has taken away the condemnatory power of the law for faith, but left the Christian under it as a directory of his ways. A law which can no longer condemn departure from itself or those guilty of it is nugatory. It is of the essence of law not only to prescribe duty but to condemn any and every infraction of its requirements. Hence our apostle teaches elsewhere, “as many as are of the works of the law” (i.e., as many people as are on the ground or principle of works of law, not merely as many as have broken the law) “are under the curse.”
It is false doctrine, then, and really Antinomian in its basis, that the law has lost its sting or condemnatory power for those under it. Such is not the boon of redemption. The law is not dead. It retains all its force against the wicked, as the apostle shows. It is not an evil thing but excellent, when used lawfully; but it is unlawfully imposed on the righteous and holy. The Christian, even if he had been a Jew, is not under law, but under grace; and this not by the death of law, which cannot be and ought not to be, but by his own death with Christ. As a dead man can sin no more, so the law does not apply to one viewed as dead. Such is God's way of considering the Christian, not only atoned for but dead with Christ; and faith considers him who possesses it as God does. Thus the law remains inviolable; and the deliverance of the Christian consists not in the weakening or even mitigation of the law, but in the change of place which grace gives. The believer died with Christ, and is thus justified from sin and freed from law. Nebuchadnezzar's furnace did not burn the less, though the three Hebrews were preserved unscathed. The curse fell on Christ crucified; the believer is in Christ risen. “There is therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.”