Romans 8:10 And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. The work of the Spirit in us does not pour the elixir of immortality into the material frame, however much it may strengthen and prepare the imperishable spirit for its immortal well-being. After Christ hath made a temple of our body, there remaineth a virus in the fabric that sooner or later will work its dissolution. Were the body, by some preternatural operation, to be wholly delivered of its corrupt ingredient, we do not understand why death should interpose between our earthly and heavenly state ever. And accordingly, on nature's dissolution, they who remain alive must, to become incorruptible, at least be changed. And the reason why those in whom Christ dwells have still a death to undergo, is that sin still adheres to them — and the wearing down of the body by disease, and the mouldering of it into dust, and then its re-ascent from the grave — would appear to be the steps of a refining process, whereby the now vile body is changed into a glorious one — the soul's suitable equipment for the delights and the services of eternity. For death, in the case of Christians, cannot surely be because of the judicial sentence on transgression; for those who believe in Christ are delivered from this (ver. 1). It cannot be that by any death of ours we eke out, as it were, the satisfaction which hath been already rendered for sin. A believer's death, then, must be to root out the existence of sin. It is not inflicted upon him as the last discharge of the wrath of God, but is sent as a release from the plague which adheres, it would seem, as long as the body adheres to us. Now this fact that the body is still subjected to death because of sin is the strongest experimental argument for heaven being a place to which sin can find no entry. It is not in the way of penalty that the Christian has to die — for the whole of that penalty has already been sustained. It is not exacted from him as the payment of a debt — for Christ our surety hath paid a full and a satisfying ransom. It is not to help out the justification which is already complete in Him, nor to remove a flaw from that title deed which we have received perfect from His hand. It stands connected, in short, with the sanctification of the believer. The justice of God would have recoiled from the acceptance of a sinner, and so an expiation had to be made; and the holiness of that place where God dwelleth would have recoiled from the approaches of one whose character was still tainted with sin, even though its guilt had been expiated; and so it is, that there must be a sanctification as well as an atonement. For the one, Christ had to suffer and to die; for the other, man has also to die, and so to fill up that Which is behind of the sufferings of Christ. And it is indeed a most emphatic demonstration of heaven's sacredness, that, to protect its courts from violation, not even the most pure and sainted Christian upon earth, can, in his present earthly garb, find admittance therein. (T. Chalmers, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. |
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