_Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? He puts and rejects the same objection as before. (Chap. iii. ver. 7.) And having set forth in the last chapter the grace and advantage by Christ's coming, he now exhorts them to avoid sinning, and live in the grace of God. (Witham)_... [ Continue Reading ]
_Dead to sin, &c. We are then dead to sin when we neither live in sin by serving it, nor sin lives in us by reigning; in this case, how can we still live in it by yielding to its desires? St. Augustine (chap. vi. de spiritu et litera) thus explains the passage: when grace has caused us to die to sin... [ Continue Reading ]
We...are baptized in his death. Greek, unto his death. The apostle here alludes to the manner of administering the sacrament of baptism, which was then done by immersion or by plunging the person baptized under the water, in which he finds a resemblance of Christ's death and burial under ground, and... [ Continue Reading ]
_He that is dead is justified from sin. [1] Some translate, is freed from sin: this is true; but perhaps it is better to retain the word justified, which is observed to be a law-word used in courts of justice, where to be justified is to be acquitted, so that a man cannot be questioned again on that... [ Continue Reading ]
_For in that he died to sin. But the sense must be for sins, or to destroy other men's sins, he himself being incapable of sinning. (Witham)_... [ Continue Reading ]
_Let not sin, therefore, reign, &c. He compares sin and justice to two kings, or generals, under one of which every man fights in this world. Sin is the tyrant, under which fight the wicked, and make their minds and their members the instruments, or arms of iniquity to sin, when they follow and yiel... [ Continue Reading ]
_You are not under the law of Moses, as some of you were before: but now you are all under grace, or the law of grace, where you may find pardon for your sins. But take care not to abuse this grace of pardon offered you, nor multiply your sins, and defer your conversion, as some may do, by presuming... [ Continue Reading ]
_Thanks be to God, &c. He thanks God, not because they had been in sin, but because after having been so long under the slavery of sin, they had now been converted from their heart, and with their whole strength gave themselves to that form of doctrine to which they had been conducted by the gospel.... [ Continue Reading ]
_ I speak a human thing, [2] or I am proposing to you what is according to human strength and ability assisted by the grace of God, with a due regard to the weakness and infirmity of your flesh. The sense, according to St. John Chrysostom is this, that the apostle having told them they must be dead... [ Continue Reading ]
_You were free from justice; that is, says St. John Chrysostom, you lived as no ways subject to justice, nor obedient to the law and precepts of God: an unhappy freedom, a miserable liberty, worse than the greatest slavery, the end of which is death, eternal death: of which sins with great reason yo... [ Continue Reading ]
_For the wages, which the tyrant sin gives to his soldiers and slaves, is eternal death; but the wages, the pay, the reward, which God gives to those that fight under him, is everlasting life; which, though a reward of our past labours, as it is often called in the Scriptures, is still a grace, [3]... [ Continue Reading ]