[91] Omit αὐτῃ ἐν from the text.
[92] Παριστάνετε: we may perhaps explain this present imperative also to mean "do not go on so doing."
[93] Παραστήσατε: the aorist certainly implies a critical resolve, a decision of surrender.
CHAPTER XV
JUSTIFICATION AND HOLINESS: ILLUSTRATIONS FROM HUMAN LIFE
Romans vi. 14—vii. 6
AT the point we have now reached, the Apostle's thought pauses for a moment, to resume.[94] He has brought us to self-surrender. We have seen the sacred obligations of our divine and wonderful liberty. We have had the miserable question, "Shall we cling to sin?" answered by an explanation of the rightness and the bliss of giving over our accepted persons, in the fullest liberty of will, to God, in Christ. Now he pauses, to illustrate and enforce. And two human relations present themselves for the purpose; the one to shew the absoluteness of the surrender, the other its living results. The first is Slavery, the second is Wedlock.
Ver. 14.
For sin shall not have dominion over you; sin shall not put in its claim upon you, the claim which the Lord has met in your Justification; for you are not brought[95] under law, but under grace. The whole previous argument explains this sentence. He refers to our acceptance. He goes back to the justification of the guilty, "without the deeds of law," by the act of free grace; and briefly restates it thus, that he may take up afresh the position that this glorious liberation means not licence but divine order. Sin shall be no more your tyrant-creditor, holding up the broken law in evidence that it has right to lead you off to a pestilential prison, and to death. Your dying Saviour has met your creditor in full for you, and in Him you have entire discharge in that eternal court where the terrible plea once stood against you. Your dealings as debtors are now not with the enemy who cried for your death, but with the Friend who has bought you out of his power.