Alas for the misery of indebtedness, when funds fall short! Whether the unhappy debtor examines his affairs, or guiltily ignores their condition, he is—if his conscience is not dead—a haunted man. But when an honourable indebtedness concurs with ample means, then one of the moral pleasures of life is the punctual scrutiny and discharge. "He hath it by him"; and it is his happiness, as it is assuredly his duty, not to "say to his neighbour, Go and come again, and to-morrow I will give" (Prov. iii. 28).
Christian brother, partaker of Christ, and of the Spirit, we also owe, to Him who owns. But it is an indebtedness of the happy type. Once we owed, and there was worse than nothing in the purse. Now we owe, and we have Christ in us, by the Holy Ghost, wherewithal to pay. The eternal Neighbour comes to us, with no frowning look, and shews us His holy demand; to live to-day a life of truth, of purity, of confession of His Name, of unselfish serviceableness, of glad forgiveness, of unbroken patience, of practical sympathy, of the love which seeks not her own. What shall we say? That it is a beautiful ideal, which we should like to realize, and may yet some day seriously attempt? That it is admirable, but impossible? Nay; "we are debtors." And He who claims has first immeasurably given. We have His Son for our acceptance and our life. His very Spirit is in us. Are not these good resources for a genuine solvency? "Say not, Go and come again; I will pay Thee—to-morrow. Thou hast it by thee!"
Holiness is beauty. But it is first duty, practical and present, in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Ver. 12.
Ver. 13.
So then, brethren, debtors are we—not to the flesh, with a view to living flesh-wise; but to the Spirit—who is now both our law and our power—with a view to living Spirit-wise. For if you are living flesh-wise, you are on the way (μέλλετε) to die. But if by the Spirit you are doing to death[131] the practices, the stratagems, the machinations, of the body, you will live. Ah, the body is still there, and is still a seat and vehicle of temptation. "It is for the Lord, and the Lord is for it" (1 Cor. vi. 13). It is the temple of the Spirit. Our call is (1 Cor. vi. 20) to glorify God in it. But all this, from our point of view, passes from realization into mere theory, wofully gainsaid by experience, when we let our acceptance in Christ, and our possession in Him of the Almighty Spirit, pass out of use into mere phrase. Say what some men will, we are never for an hour here below exempt from elements and conditions of evil residing not merely around us but within us. There is no stage of life when we can dispense with the power of the Holy Ghost as our victory and deliverance from "the machinations of the body." And the body is no separate and as it were minor personality. If the man's body "machinates," it is the man who is the sinner.
But then, thanks be to God, this fact is not the real burthen of the words here. What St Paul has to say is that the man who has the indwelling Spirit has with him, in him, a divine and all-effectual Counter-Agent to the subtlest of his foes. Let him do what we saw him above (vii. 7-25) neglecting to do. Let him with conscious purpose, and firm recollection of his wonderful position and possession (so easily forgotten!), call up the eternal Power which is indeed not himself, though in himself. Let him do this with habitual recollection and simplicity. And he shall be "more than conqueror" where he was so miserably defeated. His path shall be as of one who walks over foes who threatened, but who fell, and who die at his feet. It shall be less a struggle than a march, over a battlefield indeed, yet a field of victory so continuous that it shall be as peace.
"If by the Spirit you are doing them to death." Mark well the words. He says nothing here of things often thought to be of the essence of spiritual remedies; nothing of "will-worship, and humility, and unsparing treatment of the body" (Col. ii. 23); nothing even of fast and prayer. Sacred and precious is self-discipline, the watchful care that act and habit are true to that "temperance" which is a vital ingredient in the Spirit's "fruit" (Gal. v. 22, 23). It is the Lord's own voice (Matt. xxvi. 41) which bids us always "watch and pray"; "praying in the Holy Ghost" (Jude 20). Yes, but these true exercises of the believing soul are after all only as the covering fence around that central secret—our use by faith of the presence and power of "the Holy Ghost given unto us." The Christian who neglects to watch and pray will most surely find that he knows not how to use this his great strength, for he will be losing realization of his oneness with his Lord. But then the man who actually, and in the depth of his being, is "doing to death the practices of the body," is doing so, immediately, not by discipline, nor by direct effort, but by the believing use of "the Spirit." Filled with Him, he treads upon the power of the enemy. And that fulness is according to surrendering faith.
Ver. 14.
Ver. 15.
For as many as are led by God's Spirit, these are God's sons; for you did not receive a spirit of slavery, to take you back again (πάλιν) to fear; no, you received a Spirit of adoption to sonship, in which Spirit, surrendered to His holy power, we cry, with no bated, hesitating breath, "Abba, our (ὁ) Father." His argument runs thus; "If you would live indeed, you must do sin to death by the Spirit. And this means, in another aspect, that you must yield yourselves to be led along by the Spirit, with that leading which is sure to conduct you always away from self and into the will of God. You must welcome the Indweller to have His holy way with your springs of thought and will. So, and only so, will you truly answer the idea, the description, 'sons of God'—that glorious term, never to be satisfied by the relation of mere creaturehood, or by that of merely exterior sanctification, mere membership in a community of men, though it be the Visible Church itself. But if you so meet sin by the Spirit, if you are so led by the Spirit, you do shew yourselves nothing less than God's own sons. He has called you to nothing lower than sonship; to vital connexion with a divine Father's life, and to the eternal embraces of His love. For when He gave and you received the Spirit, the Holy Spirit of promise, who reveals Christ and joins you to Him, what did that Spirit do, in His heavenly operation? Did He lead you back to the old position, in which you shrunk from God, as from a Master who bound you against your will? No, He shewed you that in the Only Son you are nothing less than sons, welcomed into the inmost home of eternal life and love. You found yourselves indescribably near the Father's heart, because accepted, and new-created, in His Own Beloved. And so you learnt the happy, confident call of the child, 'Father, O Father; Our Father, Abba.'"[132]
So it was, and so it is. The living member of Christ is nothing less than the dear child of God. He is other things besides; he is disciple, follower, bondservant. He never ceases to be bondservant, though here he is expressly told that he has received no "spirit of slavery." So far as "slavery" means service forced against the will, he has done with this, in Christ. But so far as it means service rendered by one who is his master's absolute property, he has entered into its depths, for ever. Yet all this is exterior as it were to that inmost fact, that he is—in a sense ultimate, and which alone really fulfils the word—the child, the son, of God. He is dearer than he can know to his Father. He is more welcome than he can ever realize to take his Father at His word, and lean upon His heart, and tell Him all.