THE KING’S BUSINESS
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of God with its commands and prohibi tions; ( 2 ) a law in his members warring against this law of God (and against the law of,his mind that consented to the law of God), This second law read this way: “The good that you would do you cannot do, and the evil you would not do you must continue practicing.” This latter law Paul calls “the law of sin and of death” (ch. 8:2). Paul will soon discover a third law, “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus,” but we must not anticipate that yet. Paul draws the picture of his condition with nothing but the law to save him to a close with the cry, “O wretched man that I am ! Who shall deliver me out of the body of this death ?” And then comes the answer, the glorious answer, "Jesus Christ our Lord.” Here Christ first appears in all the discussion. Then Paul, before passing on to the Spirit of life and victory in Jesus Christ our Lord and in the power of the Holy Spirit ( found in chapter 8 ) recapitulates the contents of the preceding verses regarding one’s self life alone in these words: “So then I myself with the mind serve the law of God: but with the flesh the law of sin.” In chapter 8 that follows the Spirit will make the mind triumphant and the deliv ered man will be no longer “in the flesh,” but in the Spirit (8:5-9). “The body of this death” in verse 24 refers to the phys ical body as the seat and stronghold of moral death (cf. ch. 8:13). Tuesday, July 10 . Rom. 8 : 1 - 4 . We here enter upon one of the most remarkable and most precious chapters in the Bible.' Everything is in contrast with chapter 7 :7-24. There the Holy Spirit never áppears. Here He is everywhere present. There Christ is never seen. Here He is never lost sight of. There all was defeat, here all is victory. There all was gloom, here all is glory. There it was “O wretched man that I am ! Who shall deliver me?” Here it is, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?” The one chapter represents us “under the law” and
carefully notice the way in which Paul maintains at every point the excellence and majesty of God’s law, while at the same time showing its utter impotence to save. All this serves to show in still blacker col ors the exceeding sinfulness of sin.' How utterly bad sin must be since it perverts so good a thing as the law of God to so base a purpose. Sunday, July 8 . Rom, 7 : 14 - 18 . Paul again extols the law. He says it is “spiritual,” but the trouble is with man as he is by nature and as he always is without the working of /the Holy Spirit. The trouble is man himself is “carnal, sold unto sin.” What can a carnal man do with a spiritual law that is outside of him? How utterly Paul was ?old under sin at this time and how utterly we are sold under sin except as the Holy Spirit sets us free, is told in the verses that follow. Paul tells us ^that what he did, he did not even “know.” What he would do he did not practice, but what he hated that he did. We have all been in this same place, and w'ill be there again in a single moment if we walked in our own strength and not in the Holy Spirit. But through all this failure there is a true self that consents to the law “that it is good.” So it is no more we that do the evil that we hate, but sin that dwells within us. We are indeed in a bad position when a thoroughly vile tenant in the house runs the house. The next chapter will tell us of another tenant who is willing to come in and take possession of the house. This glorious tenant is the Holy Ghost, who will come in and turn the vile tenant; sin, out. “In me, that is in my flesh (that is in fne, as I am by nature, or as I am of myself without the Holy Spirit’s glorious indwelling and blessed work) dwelleth no good thing.” Remember it was one of the best men who ever lived who said this, and as it was true of him it is true of us all. Monday, July 9 . Rom. 7 : 19 - 24 . Paul found two laws: (1) the good law
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