t a habit of sin.

[2] John viii. 34.

[3] _Serm._ xxxix. 2.

[4] 2 Tim. i. 13.

[5] Cf. Luke i. 1-4; 1 Cor. xi. 23; xv. 3, 4.

[6] Cf. Rom. vi. 3; Heb. vi. 1-6; 1 Cor. x. 15, 16; xi. 23 ff.; Acts
ii. 38.

[7] _Didache_, 8; cf. below, p. 293.

[8] Heb. vi. 1, 2; 1 Thess. iv. 1, 2; v. 2.

[9] See Hort, _First Ep. of Peter_, p. 18, for the fact that 'a
recognized belief or idea [of the threefold Name] seems to be
everywhere presupposed.'

[10] Cf. above, pp. 31, 32.

{236}

DIVISION III. Sec. 5. CHAPTER VII. 1-6.

_Freedom from the law by union with Christ._

St. Paul is full of two thoughts. The first is that of life out of
death, living by dying. He had lived an old life in which 'those
multitudinous motions of appetite and self-will which reason and
conscience disapproved, reason and conscience could yet not govern, and
had to yield to them. This, as we shall see, is what drove Paul almost
to despair[1].' He had passed to a new life in which he found in
actual, blessed experience that he could do the thing that he would.
He could do all things--through Christ that strengthened him. For it
was Christ who had been the means of transferring him from the old life
to the new, and that by His own way of dying to live. Christ Himself
had lived 'by the Spirit' deliberately and always. He {237} had never
failed morally to do the thing that He would. But so violent was the
antagonism between His life of divine obedience (with the claims that
it involved upon other men) and 'the sinful, wilful, weak world around,
that the world could not tolerate His presence in it; and it came to
this--that He could only live by the Spirit at the cost of dying to the
world, i.e. choosing to be put to death sooner than give up obedience
to His Father. He chose to die, and thus dying He lived through death
in the life of the Spirit, and was raised again from death in body
also. Now Christ had brought St. Paul--as He would bring all men--into
union with His new life, and by the same method. St. Paul had had to
die to the sinful world in order to live to God. But he, being not
only a man but a sinner, was obliged not only, like Christ, to die to
sin in the world--he had also to die to sin in himself. In other
words, he had to 'crucify his flesh with its affections and
lusts'--that is, 'his old man' or old way of living. He had, by the
help of Christ's Spirit, to assert his inner self or personality
against a