Romans 7:9

Romans 7:9

The Place of the Law in the Salvation of Sinners.

We have here:

I. A life which a man enjoys in and of himself before he knows God. "I was alive without the law once." This is the natural state of the fallen. It is here called life, and elsewhere it is called death. The wide diversity of the names employed to designate the same thing need not cause surprise. The one term expresses the true state of the man, and the other term expresses the man's own view of his state. In God's sight it is death; in his own imagination it is life.

II. The Exodus from that Egypt; the escape from that false life by a dying. "The commandment came, sin revived, and I died." (1) "The commandment came." It is no longer an imitation law, modelled on the measure of his own attainments, which might be pressed upon his conscience, and yet not extinguish his self-righteous life. It is the unchanging will of the unchanging God the word which liveth and abideth for ever. It is a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces. (2) "Sin revived" at the entrance of this visitant. The commandment coming in did not cause, but only detected, sin. It was by the light of the commandment, when it came, that he discovered the sin which had all along been living and reigning in his heart and life. (3) "I died." The life in which he had hitherto trusted was extinguished then. Chased by the strange usurper from every part of its long-cherished home, the life flickers over it a moment, like the flame of an expiring lamp, and then darts away into the unseen.

III. He lives in another life. No interval of time separated the two. The death that led from one life was the birth of another. It is one act. The dying is the living. The exodus from this life is the entrance into that. He does not remain one moment dead. The instant after his death, you hear him exclaiming, "I died." His own voice declaring how and when he died is the surest evidence that he lives. "Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." "Our life is hid with Christ in God."

W. Arnot, Roots and Fruits,p. 69.

References: Romans 7:9. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 299. Romans 7:9. H. W. Beecher, Ibid.,vol. iii., p. 179.