ly world, where the Lord is, and for
which He is training us; the eternal Country of this eternal City and
Home; +out of which+ (city)[4] +we are actually+ (_kai_) +waiting for,
as our Saviour+, in the full and final sense, the +Lord Jesus Christ,
who will+

Ver. 21. +transfigure+--not annihilate, not cast away as essentially
evil, but wonderfully change in its conditions, and so in its guise, in
its semblance (_schema_)--+the body of our humiliation+, this body, now
inseparably connected with the burthens and abasements of our
mortality, _humbling_ us continually in the course of its necessities,
and of its sufferings, but not therefore, in its essence, other than
God's good handiwork; +to be conformed+, with a resemblance based on an
essential assimilation (_summorphon_, _morphe_), +to the body of His
glory+, as He resumed His blessed Body when He rose, and as He wears it
now upon the Throne, and in it manifests Himself to the happy ones in
their bliss; +according to+, in ways and measures conditioned only by,
+the forth-putting+ (_energeia_) +of His ability actually to subdue to
Himself all things that are+ (_ta panta_).

So the great passage, the pregnant chapter, ends. As it began so it
closes--with Jesus Christ. With Him His servant can never have done;
"Him first, Him midst, Him last, and without end." Jesus Christ is the
present joy, and the everlasting hope. His perfected righteousness is
the believer's actual deep safety and repose. His unsearchable riches
of personal grace and glory are the constant animation and ever-rising
standard of the believer's spiritual progress. He is the eternal
Antidote to our fears, and also to our sins. He is the infinite
Contradiction to the least compromise, under any pretext, with evil;
and He is this, among other ways, by being Himself "that blessed Hope";
"the Lord Jesus Christ, which is our Hope" (1 Tim. i. 1); so that the
prospect of His Return, and of what He will do for us, and for Himself
(_eauto_), when He returns, is to be our mighty motive in the matter of
practical, aye of bodily, cleanness and holiness of life.

The whole passage now before us is strongly characteristic of the New
Testament way of dealing with sin. In the first place, there is no
lack of urgent and explicit warning. The moral and spiritual evil is
labelled unmistakably. It is pointed out as a danger not hypothetical
but actual; not floating in the air, but embodied in lives and
infl