Chapter 4: The Soul's True Affinity.
Chapter 4: The Soul's True Affinity.
ROMANS vii: 1-6.
BENEATH THE STRONG rugged thought which runs through chapters vi. and vii. of the Epistle to the Romans, we do not always detect the tender little allegory which connects the two. It is perhaps more than an allegory, for earthly relationships are probably patterns of things in the heavens, and there are correspondences linking the inward with the outward, the unseen and eternal with the temporal and seen. When we are a wakened from the lethargy and death of sin to seek after and realize the Divine ideal which calls to us, we are first attracted towards God's holy law. If only we may enter into alliance with it, we suppose that we shall easily attain whatsoever things are true, pure, lovely, and of good report. We are strongly drawn to it. As it looks out on us from the ten words of Sinai, speaks to us in the voice of conscience, or is reflected from the pages of a Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus, we are fascinated by its beauty. It is as when the traveller for the first time sees the touch of dawn on a line of snow-clad Alps struck out sharp against the deep azure of heaven.
The law is holy, just and good. We delight in it after the inward man. Our judgment approves it, our reason vindicates it, our conscience bears witness to it, our sense of the fitness of things acknowledges its claims.
We are able to love it with all our mind, if not with all our heart. And it seems to us that by constant companionship we shall necessarily become transformed into its sublime and heavenly likeness. The soul deems that it has found its true affinity. There is the dawn of a new joy, the flush of a new hope.
But this experience is destined to be short-lived. There is a fundamental incongruity in the alliance. It is not that the law is deficient in any of those qualities, with which the soul's thought had invested it, but that there is an everlasting incompatibility between its holiness and the manifold weakness and sinfulness of the flesh. The law is spiritual, but we are carnal; the law is perfect, we are sold under sin; the law is heavenly, we are of earth, earthly. And thus the soul becomes aware of its awful mistake, cries out in the bitterness of its anguish, and sighs for deliverance and relief. The dye of its sinfulness seems even deeper and darker, because it works death by that which is good. The deceitfulness of the flesh appears more inveterate, because it takes occasion by the commandment to work all manner of concupiscence. And yet it seems as though nothing can happen to free the soul from its union with the law it has espoused.
At this point, when the blackness of despair has settled down on the hopes and anticipations which the soul had so fondly cherished, it awakes to discover new and unrealized depths of meaning in the Cross. It sees its sinful flesh nailed there in effigy and likeness. It realizes that we who believe have become dead to the law by the body of Christ. It understands, that as death intervenes between husband and wife, dissolving their union by removing one into another sphere so that each is free of the other, similarly the death of Christ, in which we were identified, has placed the law and ourselves in different spheres, the law being left in the earth sphere, whilst we have risen into the heavenly and eternal one, and thus we are freed from the law, "having died to that wherein we were held, that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. "
It is a blessed thing when we apprehend this side of our Saviour's death. It is for sin certainly; but it is also unto sin. We become dead to the law by the body of Christ. It is the release of death: and the soul, with thankful gladness, knows that the bonds by which it was bound to a relationship it could not sustain is forever at an end. The law is not dead, or abrogated, or abolished, but its hold on the soul, as a means of justification and sanctification, is for ever at an end. There can therefore be no charge of disloyalty or unfaithfulness, even though it be married to another.
Then in this new glad life, on Easter soil, as a child of the Resurrection, and admitted into the realm of the Infinite and Eternal, the soul comes on its true affinity, in which it can meet with neither disappointment nor dissatisfaction. It encounters the risen Christ, in whom it recognizes Him that died in weakness on the Cross, but now lives for ever in power and glory, and all its nature leaps towards Him as its true Spouse and Home. All that attracted it before in the law is in Him. Was it holy, just and good? So is He! Did it elicit a response from judgment, conscience, and sense of fitness? So does He! But He has qualities the law never possessed. He can forgive. He has grace to help in time of need. He makes no appeal for the obedience of the self-life, but promotes the obedience which He demands. He lifts us into a new sphere, secures death to self and sin, and indwells by the power of the Holy Ghost.
None can impute to Him any connivance with our imperfections, frailties, and sins. They cost Him agony, blood, tears, death. There is on His part no weak yielding of the lofty ideal which seems to mock us, as we lie paralyzed at its base. The standard of Christ, which is that of Love, is more searching and comprehensive than that of Law. The spirit asks for more than the letter. But His love begets in us the love that possesses and energizes the soul; His death involves death to sinful passions, and to the law as a means of righteousness; His Spirit frees us from the power of the self-life, and fashions us by imperceptible but certain stages into the likeness of His glory.
The Old Version says we are married to another; the Revised Version renders it joined to another; the original says simply should be for another. What sublimity lurks in this simplicity! In life and death, by day and night, in the busy haunts of toil, and in its repose, to be always and only for that other, that glorious Man, in whom truth and mercy have met, righteousness and peace have kissed. All difficulties resolve themselves when brought to this touchstone. The eye is single, and the whole body is full of light. All sin becomes personal disloyalty and infidelity to the gentlest and truest of Friends. All life is animated by the purpose of an absorbing love, that yearns for nothing so much as to set forth the praises of Him who fills the entire horizon of the soul. Thus we bring forth fruit unto God.
The Apostle uses a very strong word to describe the service which love promotes. He says that we serve in newness of the spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter (vii: 6). It is the service of the slave. There is no slavery so absolute as that of love. To promote the well-being of the loved one is the one aim and purpose of existence. The fetters never hurt wrist or ankle, because there is no disposition to be rebellious or turn a way back. Love prompts the heart to move in perfect accord with the demands that the strictest law might formulate. But be'fore law calls, love answers, and every need is anticipated before it has time to assert itself. The strings of daisies which are threaded by a child's fingers on the spring-lawns will compel its mother, with an immediateness and imperativeness which iron and steel could not secure.
It is thus that the Divine law is not annulled, but established through the work of Christ. Not only does He magnify it and make it honorable by His own obedience unto death, but He secures its supremacy in the hearts of those who are joined to Him by faith, and receive of His Spirit. What the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, is done through the Son Himself. The righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
But we must be very careful not to take advantage of God's free grace. The greater our privileges, the deeper our responsibility. To whom much is given, of such will more be required. Love is very exacting in its claims, quick in its instincts, awful in its jealousy. Let us avoid giving needless pain to our faithful Lover, Christ.