elieve that we shall also live with him; knowing that
Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more hath
dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died unto sin once:
but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Even so reckon ye
also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey
the lusts thereof: neither present your members unto sin as instruments
of unrighteousness; but present yourselves unto God, as alive from the
dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. For
sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law, but
under grace.

1. In the analysis of the passage given above, the order of the ideas
has been somewhat altered, and their meaning expanded, with the
intention of rendering the real argument more intelligible; while I
believe that no idea is suggested that is foreign to the original. The
passage, however, is extraordinarily condensed, and is full of some of
the most characteristic of St. Paul's thoughts--amongst them that of
the life in Christ as being a living by dying, or a life out of death.

It is impossible to try to lead a human life under any standard that
can be called moral without knowing that it involves some sort of
'mortification' of selfish and sensual appetites. There {212} is that
in human nature which, as moralists generally must recognize and in
fact have in a measure recognized, must be 'done to death.' It was
this principle that was expressed with such terrible vigour by our Lord
when He bade us pluck out the offending eye and cut off the offending
hand. But the novelty in Christianity was the emphasis which it laid
rather on the living than on the dying; it was its teaching as to the
infusion into human life of a new and positive spiritual force, which
was to overcome evil with good and swallow up death in victory. It was
by their belief in a gift of the Spirit imparted to them, and by their
resulting power to think and act freely according to God, that the
Christians were distinguished from the rest of the world. It is this
upon which their apostolic teachers continually insist. 'I have
written unto you young men, because ye are strong.' 'As many as are
lead by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.' It is only as it
were in the second place that it appears that this living in the new
life will involve dying