e three _central_.' Nothing can be more truly essential to Pauline
theology than the terms, calling, justification, atonement; but the two
last of them at least do not belong to the central region of religion,
but have to do with the removal of preliminary obstacles to our
entrance upon it.

[16] The apparent exception is John x. 18; but even there the word
rendered 'take' would perhaps be better rendered 'receive.' Christ had
the right to lay down His own life and the right to receive it again
from the Father. So Hort, _First Ep. of Peter_, pp. 34, 84.

[17] Luke xvi. 9.

[18] 1 Cor. ix. 27.

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DIVISION III. Sec. 4. CHAPTER VI. 15-23.

_The perfect freedom is God's service._

The reiterated mention of the deliverance of the Christian from the
yoke of the law--'Ye are not under law, but under grace'--brings up the
excuse for licentious living in a new form:--'This very abolition of
the strict power of the law in favour of a system of which the ruling
principle is God's goodness, at least makes one willing to contemplate
any particular act of sin[1], with a good hope of escaping punishment.'
St. Paul meets the suggestion with a 'God forbid,' and then gives a
deep reason for repudiating it, a reason however which is but a version
of our Lord's saying, 'Every one that committeth sin is the slave of
sin[2].' Every man is always acting under obedience. What he {227}
does in a particular case represents an act of obedience to some
master; that is to say, a taking service with him. Moreover it appears
on reflection that it must be with one of two masters and cannot be
with both, for 'no man can serve two masters.' It is either with sin,
whose service ends in spiritual as well as physical death, or with Him
to whom obedience is properly due, whose service ends in righteousness.
What gives St. Paul reason for thankfulness in thinking of the
conversion of the Christians at Rome, is not that those who became
Christians became thereby exempt from obedience, but that they changed
their allegiance from sin to Christ. At their conversion they gladly
submitted to a pattern or standard of teaching--the teaching of
Christ--to which they were handed over for the fashioning of their
lives--that is to say, they were made free from sin only to become
slaves to righteousness. He uses the word slavery because so long as
their weak flesh shrinks from divine obedience, they must recognize
that the life which is rea