The characteristic words of St. Paul's gospel—grace, forgiveness, mercy, liberty, justification by faith not by works—may naturally, when taken by themselves and isolated from their context, lead to a false thought of God as morally 'easy going,' and to a corrupt laxity of conduct. Such a result has shown itself within the area of modern history in the antinomianism of some Protestant bodies. But long before the Reformation St. Paul's words were 'wrested by the ignorant and unstedfast to their own destruction[[1]].' It was probably a misunderstanding of St. Paul's doctrine of justification by faith which called forth the protest of St. James' epistle. And indeed the traces of this tendency to pervert the gospel are apparent enough in St. Paul's own epistles. Divine grace, it was even argued, can better show its largeness if we afford it an opportunity by the abundance of our sin. 'Let us continue in sin that grace may abound.' To this monstrous suggestion St. Paul replies, in his epistle to the Romans[[2]], that it rests on a complete misconception. Christian faith is an introduction into Christ. Believing we are baptized into Him. This means that we are to live as He lived towards the world of sin and towards God. It means that we surrender ourselves in a spirit of glad obedience to be moulded after His pattern. If our believing does not lead to this new living, beyond all question it is a spurious thing, and none of the Christian privileges attach to it. With a similar purpose St. Paul writes here to the Asiatics—newly-made Christians, who lived in the midst of an appallingly corrupt society, and whose inherited traditions of conduct were altogether lacking in self-restraint—to warn them against possible abuses of their Christian privileges and Christian liberty.
To be a Christian is to be committed to a new life different utterly from the old life.
What was the old life? In writing to the Romans St. Paul describes the life of the contemporary heathen world as having its origin in a refusal of the will to acknowledge God. 'They glorified Him not as God.' 'They refused to have God in their knowledge.' Hence a darkening of the understanding. 'They became vain in their reasonings; their senseless hearts were darkened; professing themselves to be wise they became fools.' This explains the origin and possibility of so foolish a worship as that of men and beasts. Further, with the obscuring of the intelligence there was a perversion and emancipation of the passions, resulting in all forms of lawlessness and unnatural vice. A similar description of the 'old life' St. Paul gives here. The root of evil here also appears to be in the 'heart' (or will)—'the hardening of the heart'; hence arises 'vanity of the mind,' an aimlessness or loss of all true and fixed point of view, a 'darkening of the understanding,' an inherent 'ignorance'; and accompanying this loss of real intelligence has been a loss of what is the true goal of human life, fellowship in 'the life of God.' Instead of that a life of uncleanness has prevailed, made into a regular business[[3]], and pursued with 'greediness,' i.e. an entire disregard for others' rights—such a life as is only possible where all true human feeling and good taste has been quenched. Men have become 'past feeling.'
As regards the relation of this black picture to the actual facts, enough has perhaps been said above. At least St. Paul's picture is given as a direct challenge to the experience of those to whom he writes; and it is not blacker, at any rate, than the picture given by a philosophic contemporary at Ephesus, who calls himself Heracleitus. And on the black background of this 'former manner of life,' this 'old man' or old manhood—a life ruled by lusts which are not only morally evil but deceive and mock those who yield to them, leading, in fact, to nothing but corruption and death, a 'waxing corrupt after the lusts of deceit'—St. Paul sketches in the new life in Christ. To become a believer is to submit one's intelligence to learn a new lesson, to study Christ; it is to yield one's self to a 'form of teaching[[4]]' in order to have one's life refashioned in marked contrast to old and abandoned ways of life; it is to imbibe a new principle in the heart of one's rational being, 'to be renewed in the spirit of one's mind'; it is to put on deliberately, as a man puts on clothing, a new manhood, Christ's manhood, which is 'according to God[[5]],' that is, is based on His own life, and is His 'new creation' in righteousness and holiness. And this righteousness and holiness can never deceive us by false promises, because they are rooted in 'truth' or reality.
This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk, in the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart; who being past feeling gave themselves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But ye did not so learn Christ; if so be that ye heard him, and were taught in him, even as truth is in Jesus: that ye put away, as concerning your former manner of life, the old man, which waxeth corrupt after the lusts of deceit; and that ye be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, which after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.
There is one phrase in this passage which may need some further comment—'The life of God.' Into God's own eternal life, as He lives it in Himself, we are given but glimpses. But God is also living in the world as its inherent life, and each form of creation participates in its measure, even if unconsciously, in the life of God. Consciously and intelligently man was intended to participate in it, but he 'alienated' himself from it by sin; and, while he was physically sustained in life by God, morally and mentally he was an exile. But Christ embodies the divine life anew in human form, and by His Spirit imparts it as a new life to men. Once more in Christ men live both 'in God' and 'according to God.'
This thought of our relation to the life of God is, in part, expressed in the Latin original of the Collect for the ninth Sunday after Trinity, in which we pray 'that we who cannot exist without Thee, may be enabled to live according to Thee.'
[[1]] 2 Pet. iii. 16.
[[2]] Rom. vi. 1 ff.
[[3]] 'To work all uncleanness.' Marg. 'to make a trade of.'