Q.-Would you kindly explain through the Bible Treasury the meaning of
“Who shall declare his generation” (Isa. 8)?
“Who shall deliver me out of this body of death” (Rom. 7:24)?
“So then I myself with the mind serve God’s law” (Rom. 7:25).
“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2).
“All them also that love his appearing” (2 Tim. 4:8). Do not all Christians love His appearing?
R. M.
A. (1) Isa. 53:8. Differing interpretations of this clause are by no means wanting. But if the words preceding indicate the wicked travesty of our Lord’s trial before the Roman governor” his judgment was taken away” —so it would appear that the prophet, under the sense of the nation’s overwhelming wickedness in compassing the rejection and death of Jehovah’s Righteous Servant, is led to cry out, “Who shall declare” such a generation as could be so guilty— “for he was cut off out of the land of the living”! (2, 3 and 4). Rom. 7:24, 25; 8:2. The converted or renewed soul—not yet brought into the Christian state of liberty and peace, but nevertheless truly born of God, as were also the Old Testament saints—has a new and holy nature not previously possessed (i.e. when unconverted), and delights in the law of God, yet finding itself powerless for good, because of indwelling sin (ver. 20). To will is present, but to work out the good is not. The body being thus under the power of, and enslaved by this fatal “law of sin and death,” is here called “this body of death,” dead because of sin. Hence the cry, when the soul’s powerlessness is felt and acknowledged, for a deliverer—found in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Looking to self for power has ceased; another is the Object before the soul, and so deliverance is found, and strength. “So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God,” whereas before, as sold under sin, it was no longer “I” but “sin” that dwelleth in me!