3. The next word to explain is grace.—It stands opposed to nature and to law. Whenever nature means the dominion of our lower appetites, then nature stands opposed to grace. Grace stands opposed to law. All that law can do is to manifest sin, just as the dam thrown across the river shows its strength; law can arrest sometimes the commission of sin, but never the inward principle. Therefore, God has provided another remedy, “Sin shall not have dominion over you,” because ye are under grace.
4. Paul states salvation here as a fact.—“By grace ye are saved.” There are two systems. The one begins with nature, the other with grace: the one treats all Christians as if they were the children of the devil, and tells them that they may perhaps become the children of God; the other declares that the incarnation of Christ is a fact, a universal fact, proclaiming that all the world are called to be the children of the Most High. Let us believe in grace instead of beginning with nature.—F. W. Robertson.
Vers. 4–6. The Believer exalted together with Jesus Christ.
I. The believer is assured he is raised up with Christ by the proofs which assure him of the exaltation of Christ.—These proofs, irresistible as they are, do not produce impressions so lively as they ought. 1. From the abuse of a distinction between mathematical evidence and moral evidence. 2. Because the mind is under the influence of a prejudice, unworthy of a real philosopher, that moral evidence changes its nature according to the nature of the things to which it is applied. 3. Because the necessary discrimination has not been employed in the selection of those proofs on which some have pretended to establish it. 4. Because we are too deeply affected by our inability to resolve certain questions which the enemies of religion are accustomed to put on some circumstances relative to that event. 5. Because we suffer ourselves to be intimidated more than we ought by the comparison instituted between them and certain popular rumours which have no better support than the caprice of the persons who propagate them. 6. Because they are not sufficiently known.
II. The means supplied to satisfy the believer that he is fulfilling the conditions under which he may promise himself that he shall become a partaker of Christ’s exaltation.—Though this knowledge be difficult, it is by no means impossible of attainment. He employs two methods principally to arrive at it: 1. He studies his own heart; 2. He shrinks not from the inspection of the eyes of others.
III. The believer is raised up with Christ by the foretastes which he enjoys on earth of his participation in the exaltation of Christ.—This experience is realised by the believer. 1. When shutting the door of his closet and excluding the world from his heart, he is admitted to communion and fellowship with Deity in retirement and silence. 2. When Providence calls him to undergo some severe trial. 3. When he has been enabled to make some noble and generous sacrifice. 4. When celebrating the sacred mysteries of redeeming love. 5. Finally, in the hour of conflict with the king of terrors.—Saurin.
Ver. 5. Justification by Faith.
I. We hold that we are justified by faith, that is, by believing, and that unless we are justified we cannot be saved. Of all men whoever believed this, those who gave us the Church catechism believed it most strongly. Believing really what they taught, they believed that children were justified. For if a child is not justified in being a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven, what is he justified in being? They knew that the children could only keep in this just, right, and proper state by trusting in God and looking up to Him daily in faith and love and obedience.
II. These old reformers were practical men and took the practical way.—They knew the old proverb, “A man need not be a builder to live in a house.” At least they acted on it; and instead of trying to make the children understand what faith was made up of, they tried to make them live in faith itself. Instead of puzzling and fretting the children’s minds with any of the controversies then going on between Papists and Protestants, or afterwards between Calvinists and Arminians, they taught the children simply about God, who He was, and what He had done for them and all mankind, that so they might learn to love Him, look up to Him in faith, and trust utterly to Him, and so remain justified and right, saved and safe for ever. By doing which they showed that they knew more about faith and about God than if they had written books on books of doctrinal arguments.
III. The Church catechism, where it is really and honestly taught, gives the children an honest, frank, sober, English temper of mind which no other training I have seen gives.—I warn you frankly that if you expect to make the average of English children good children on any other ground than the Church catechism takes, you will fail. If it be not enough for your children to know all the articles of the Apostles’ Creed, and on the strength thereof to trust God utterly and so be justified and saved, then they must go elsewhere, for I have nothing more to offer them, and trust in God that I never shall have.—C. Kingsley.