PROLOGUE From Jerusalem to Rome is about fifteen hundred miles. I traveled the route directly during my tour in 1895. It is a small matter now, however perilous, prolix and paradoxical in the apostolic age, and attended with such difficulty and danger in the absence of the steam-engine and the mariner’s compass, that even Paul, with his supernatural courage, advised postponement till spring, and after all was caught in a storm, wrecked on the Island of Malta, and detained till spring. The second time I crossed the Atlantic I was in a storm which lasted five days and nights, but our noble steamer with thirtysix boilers shot through the face of the tempest like an arrow. Jesus appeared to Paul twice, (a) on the Damascus road and (b) while praying in the temple ( Acts 22:17), where He gave him his commission to the Gentiles. As Rome was the capital and metropolis of the Gentile world, I trow from the hour of his commission in Jerusalem his heart leaned away toward Rome. Eventually he receives clear light, assuring him that he must go at no distant day.

Hence, when he wrote this letter in Corinth, in the winter of A.D. 58, he enjoyed quite a prescience of his ministry in Rome in the near future. His arrest and imprisonment in Jerusalem took place in June A.D. 58, being soon carried to Caesarea to save his life from the mob, and there detained by the avaricious Felix — in hopes of filthy lucre for his release — two full years, when, pursuant to his appeal to Caesar, Festus, the noble successor of the unworthy Felix, was forced by Roman law to send him to Rome, though utterly failing, even through the judicial help of King Agrippa, to ascertain even the smallest allegation against him criminal in Roman law.

Hence the letter written by Festus to the emperor, corroborated by the testimony of Julius, the Roman centurion, who had him in custody, secured for Paul great leniency and full evangelistic liberty at Rome during the life of Burrus, the commander-in-chief of the praetorian army which guarded the imperial palace, who, receiving the letter of Festus and the report of Julius in reference to the innocence of Paul, permitted him to enjoy perfect liberty to push the gospel work in his hired mission hall, central in the city, two full years, till this noble man — Paul’s only influential friend at the imperial court — passed on to his account with God. His successor, neither knowing nor caring anything about Paul, had him removed to the military barracks, where he wrote the letter to the Philippians, having written the epistles to the Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon during the two years in his hired house. Who founded the Roman church? We are satisfied that no apostle founded it in person. I trow the “strangers from Rome, Jews and proselytes,” on the day of Pentecost, having received the baptism with the holy Ghost and fire, went home and founded their own church. As Pentecost was a purely Jewish assembly (I mean religiously, as all proselytes were Jews in an ecclesiastical sense), of course the original nucleus of the church was about all Jews. We ascertain from Paul’s long catalogue of salutations in the sixteenth chapter that he knew personally quite a host of the members when he wrote this letter at Corinth early in A.D. 58. Rome was the center and metropolis of the known world, as well as the home of the emperor and his five thousand senators, the rulers of the world. Consequently the trend of universal immigration to Rome was great.

Paul arrived in February A.D. 61, the Pentecostal revival being June A.D. 33. Hence during these twenty-eight years a host of Paul’s converts, not only from Asia, hut especially from Europe, had migrated to Rome, not only swelling the membership, but revolutionizing it in the fact of giving a majority to the Gentile element. Hence, when Paul wrote this letter, he had quite a multitude of happy Christian friends and acquaintances at Rome, not only ready to receive with joyful appreciation this wonderful letter, but to greet the apostle with joyous welcome, even walking out to the Appian Forum and Three Taverns (forty miles) to greet and accompany him into the city and introduce him to the brethren.

THIS EPISTLE I may here safely observe that among all the apostolical epistles, Pauline and general, this bears the palm, and even among all the books of the whole Bible, for symmetry, beauty, comprehensibility, unity and variety, this book stands pre-eminent. As Rome was the capital and metropolis of the whole world, it is believed Paul did his best in this noble production, so comprehending and expounding every phase of gospel truth that if all the rest of the Bible were lost, this epistle would furnish all the truth necessary to salvation. Opening with the sin side of the argument, he addresses the first chapter to the heathens, appropriate at this great emporium of paganism. When I was there three years ago I was in the Pantheon, a great temple in which all the gods were worshipped. This was there in Paul’s day. Chapter 2 is addressed to the Jews, who were the popular churchmembers in that day. With verse 18 of the third chapter the sinward argument closes, and the most thorough and elaborate exegesis in the Bible runs from verse 19 of this chapter through the fifth chapter, expository of justification by the free grace of God in Christ, received and appropriated by faith alone. Chapter 6 is a grand and unanswerable exposition of entire sanctification, while Chapter 7 gives Paul’s wonderful Arabian experience of his own glorious sanctification after a three years’ conflict with the man of sin and the law ( Galatians 1), till God revealed His Son in him, having appeared to him on the way to Damascus. Chapter 8 is grand and wonderful on the sanctified experience, also running triumphantly into glorification.

Verse 29 of the eighth chapter opens that climacteric presentation of election and reprobation, running through Chapter 9 Chapter 11 unlocks the mysterious and much controverted problem relative to the ultimate destiny of the Jews, God’s miracle of providence after the expiration of the Gentile times. Chapter 12 is lucidly and gloriously expository of experimental and practical sanctification. Chapter 13 assures us of the Lord’s near coming and the transfiguration of the saints. Chapters 14 and 15 elucidate sundry duties and responsibilities, and the sixteenth is devoted to the salutations of the great crowd of saints who had been saved through his ministry and had migrated to Rome during the twenty eight years since the church was founded by the Pentecostal converts.

CHAPTER - 1. “Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ.” Oiketees means “a hired servant”; doulos , the word here occurring, means “slave,” the signification at once beautiful and profound; a striking allusion to Old Testament slavery, which went out at the Jubilee. However, the law provided for the indefinite detention of such as were not willing to leave their masters, specifying in that case that the proprietor should nail his ear to the door-post, thus signifying that he should never go out of his house, but abide his slave forever. This is a beautiful symbolism. All sinners are Satan’s slaves. All truly sanctified people are God’s slaves. Meanwhile the unsanctified Christians rank as hired servants in the kingdom of God, serving for hire; e .g ., preaching for a salary, et cetera . The sanctified gospel blows the Jubilee trumpet this day in all the world. Responsive to the trumpet call to sanctification, many reject and go back to the carnal freedom of Satan’s kingdom, serving God no longer. Praise the Lord, while they go back by thousands, rejecting holiness and forfeiting justification, yet they do not all go back. The elect few still, as in olden time, say: “Master, I will not leave thee.” “Then come up to the door-post and let me nail your ear, so that you shall abide in my house forever;” i .e ., let me nail old Adam to the cross, and crucify him, thus sanctifying you wholly, so that you shall never go out of my house. How unutterably blessed to be the “Lord’s love slave.” “Perfect submission, all is at rest, I in my Savior am happy and blest Watching and waiting, looking above, Filled with His goodness and lost in His love” “An elect apostle, having been separated unto the gospel of God.” “Called” in the E.V. is the word for “elect.” We are nominated in regeneration, elected in sanctification, and crowned in glorification. Paul was utterly separated from the world for this work, as God’s elect people are this day. 2. “Which He before proclaimed through His holy prophets.” “Gospel” means the good news that God has redeemed the world and salvation is free. This was the burning message of His prophets from the days of Abel. 4. “Defined the Son of God with power from the resurrection of the dead, through the Spirit of holiness.” The resurrection of our Savior by the omnipotent power of the Holy Ghost was the irrefutable confirmation of His Messiahship, the grand leverage of human faith and the prelude of the universal resurrection of the dead. 5. “Through whom we received grace and apostleship, unto the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles, for His name’s sake.” The redemption of Christ is the only procuring cause of salvation, the Holy Ghost the efficient cause, the preaching of the Word the instrumental cause, and faith the conditional cause. 6. “In whom ye are also the elect of Jesus Christ: 7. “Unto all who are in Rome, beloved of God, elect saints: Grace to you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” This is a beautiful, loving and affectionate salutation. 8. “In the first place, I thank God through Jesus Christ concerning you all, because your faith is spoken of in the whole world.” The emperors had built great highways into every country in the known world (as it belonged to them by conquest), so traveling was convenient in all the known earth.

The stranger in every foreign land had nothing to do but find the Roman road and walk in it till he reached the world’s metropolis; as all the roads in England centralize in London. Throughout their universal conquests during seven hundred years, Rome made it a rule to adopt all the religions of the conquered nations, bringing all their gods to Rome, where all were worshipped in the Pantheon, a magnificent circular marble edifice 200 feet in diameter and 200 feet high, still standing and in a perfect state of preservation, now useful for the Holiness people to preach in, as all have a perfect right in that temple to worship any god in all the world, and in any way. Therefore the new religion (Christianity), within the twenty-eight years since Pentecost, had received notoriety throughout the whole world, in the reports carried by the travelers from Rome to the ends of the earth.

Bygone ages have been filled with miracles, not only recorded in the Bible, but great and wonderful unwritten by an inspired pen. In 753 B.C. the jealous king of Alban had Romulus and Remus exposed in the wild woods on the banks of the Tiber. A wolf finding them, instead of devouring them, nursed them with her own milk. Corroboratory of this historic legend, they still keep wolves in the same cave on the spot. I saw them when I was there in 1895. These exposed infants, reared by the wolf, became shepherds on the spot, becoming a rendezvous of the wandering pioneers, and soon swelling into a tribe. By the famous stratagem, well known in history, of securing wives from the Sabines, resulting in the accession of that nation, they proceeded with their conquests over the nations of the earth. So constant was the work of death that the Temple of Janus, whose open doors indicated war, and closed were the signal of peace, never was closed but twice during the 753 years — once during the reign of Numa Pompilius, and again immediately after the first Punic war. At the end of the period it was permanently closed, as the whole world was conquered and peace had come to abide. Then was fulfilled the prophecy, “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from beneath his feet, till Shiloh come.”

When the Romans had conquered all the world, then Augustus Caesar was crowned universal monarch, thus taking the scepter from Judah and all other nations at the very time when Shiloh was born in Bethlehem, thus making the birth of the Savior significantly the herald of “peace on earth and good will to men,” as the Romans had conquered and thus brought universal peace. Do you not see the hand of God in all this? Nothing was so important to the preaching of the gospel in all the earth as a powerful universal empire precisely such as Rome. Do you not see with what rapidity Paul passed from nation to nation, preaching the gospel? This he could not have done if all of these nations had not been under the same government.

What was true of Paul was equally true of all the apostles and their numerous comrades. Paul, being a learned man, wrote up his travels. The original twelve, “unlearned and ignorant men,” with few exceptions, left us no history of their ministry; however, we have a mere epitome in contemporaneous tradition that they all, like Paul, went to the ends of the earth, preaching faithfully till bloody martyrdom set them free to fly away to glory: Paul beheaded and Peter crucified at Rome; Luke hung on an olivetree in Greece; Matthew suffering martyrdom in Ethiopia, Matthias in Abyssinia, Mark in Alexandria; James, the son of Zebedee, beheaded by Herod Antipas; James, the son of Alpheus, precipitated from a pinnacle of the temple; Andrew crucified in Armenia, Philip in Asia Minor; Bartholomew skinned alive by order of the barbarous king in Phrygia; Jude shot full of arrows in Tartary; Thomas interpenetrated with a cruel iron bar, and thus martyred, in India; and John, having been miraculously delivered from the caldron of boiling oil in Rome into which he was cast to make soap of him, was then banished to Patmos, where he saw the apocalyptic visions; finally, at the age of 101 years, was translated to Heaven from Ephesus, Asia Minor. Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and other Christian Fathers, so certify, and I believe. Why have we no record in Scripture? Good reason: John himself was the last writer, surviving all the other apostles thirty years. Hence no one was left to record his translation. John Wesley believed it, and so do I. God, in His wonderful providence, gave the Romans the whole world in one vast consolidated empire, as a grand preparation for the universal propagation of the gospel, which would have been an impossibility without the protection of a universal government. For a similar reason, He gave Alexander the Great all nations A.D. 325, in order to establish the Greek language in all the world as the necessary vehicle which God in His wonderful providence had prepared to transmit the gospel to the world, and retain it in its inspired original to the latest generation. 9. “For God is my witness, whom I serve in my spirit in the gospel of his Son, how I incessantly make mention of you always in my prayers; 10. “Supplicating, if possible indeed at some time I shall be pleased in the will of God to come unto you.” Paul had been preaching twenty eight years when he wrote this letter, all the time desiring and praying that it might be his glorious privilege, in the will of God, to visit the world’s metropolis and there preach the gospel in the capital of all the nations beneath the skies. 11. “For I long to see you, in order that I may impart unto you a certain spiritual gift, that you may be established.” Since the Bible abundantly reveals entire sanctification as the establishing grace, we legitimately conclude that this is an indirect, though exceedingly forcible, allusion to the great second work of grace, so prominent in the Pauline epistles, as well as the whole Bible. Paul made great tours traveling through many different countries, “confirming the saints;” i .e ., getting them sanctified and established in the experience. 12. “But this is the consolation among you through the faith in one another, both of you and me.” While God is the only object of faith, yet in a subjective sense the faith of the saints mutually cooperates, developing reciprocal invigoration, intensification and augmentation. 13. “I do not wish you to be ignorant, brethren, I purposed to come unto you, (but was hindered hitherto,) in order that I may have some fruit among you, as indeed among other Gentiles.” A half-dozen years had elapsed since Paul first planted the gospel in Greece, which was separated from Italy only by a narrow sea, yet it is the Adriatic, in all ages notorious as a storm-center and a tempest breeder. In that age, when the art of navigation was in its infancy, the mariner’s compass and the steam engine not yet dreamed of, the enterprise of crossing that stormy sea from Greece to Italy was no insignificant affair. You must remember that when Paul made this voyage it occupied about five months, and involved an awful shipwreck after a storm of two solid weeks without letting up. We must not forget that our apostle was entirely without financial resources, so essential to this long, perilous and expensive voyage. Hence, in the providence of God appealing to Caesar, he forced his enemies to defray the expenses of this tour, all the way from Jerusalem to Rome. During these twenty eight years his work had resulted in the establishing of hundreds of churches (i .e ., mostly little Holiness bands) throughout Syria, Phrygia, Cappadocia, Galatia, Cilicia, Lydia, Mysia, Macedonia, Achaia and many other countries. Hence God, in His providence, had thus long postponed his cherished enterprise of preaching the gospel in the world’s metropolis. 14. “I am debtor both to Greeks and barbarians, to the wise and the unwise.” The Greeks in every ramification of culture and civilization (i .e ., poetry, oratory, philosophy and the fine arts) had stood at the top of the world the last five hundred years. Meanwhile, through the Alexandrian conquest, she had given to the world the most wonderful language of all ages, in the providence of God the vehicle for the transmission of the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth. Hence the Greeks enjoyed a universally recognized pre-eminence above the nations of the earth, all others, even the Jews, contrastively denominated “barbarians.” Paul was God’s cosmopolitan missionary, like Bishop Taylor at the present day. God help us to feel that we, too, are debtors to all men indiscriminately. 15. “Thus, according to my ability, I am ready to preach the gospel even unto you who are in Rome.” The Spirit of the Lord was then profoundly impressing Paul that his long-anticipated visit to Rome was not only a verity, but soon to be realized. Hence it was only three years from the date of this writing till, to the infinite delight of his heart, he entered the world’s emporium, “in the fullness of the blessing of Christ.”

GOSPEL DEFINED 16. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the dynamite of God unto salvation unto every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” How fortunate we are to have a clear, unequivocal, lexical definition of gospel, than which the inspired vocabulary, except the Divine epithets, has no more important word; since on this a world of theological controversy has accumulated with the roll of ages. Here we have every problem solved and controversy circled in a clear and unequivocal definition furnished by the infallible Author of revealed truth. The Greek word here used by the Holy Ghost to define “gospel” is dunamis , i .e ., dynamite; a word recently introduced into the English vocabulary by the men of science, who discovered the most wonderful and paradoxical of all the mechanical powers in the scientific and artistic world. Ransacking the Anglican vocabulary of 150,000 words, and finding none adequate to reveal their wonderful discovery, they went to the classic Greek and took the very identical word used by the Holy Spirit to define gospel. Hence it is a simple and indisputable fact that gospel is nothing more nor less than “the dynamite of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” People universally stumble over the sheer simplicity of Bible truth; e .g ., wagon-loads of books have been written by learned theologians in an attempt to tell the world what the gospel is. Millions of brains have grown dizzy studying over these controverted exegeses, and wound up utterly puzzled, dumfounded and farther from the truth than when they began. The six thousand sectarian denominations in the world all try to make us believe that the respective creed of each is the Gospel, which is utterly and demonstratively untrue.

They are every one wrong. The Gospel is no creed, confession, theology, dogmatism nor ritualized ecclesiasticism. Neither does it consist in scholastic learning, oratorical power, natural gifts nor theoretical magnetism. It is simply the dynamite of God which reaches the heart through faith alone, as you see this is the only condition specified, and blowing all sin and debris out. When the awful convicting truth of the Sinai Gospel is faithfully preached, revealing hell and damnation for impenitent sinners, and this truth is believed by wicked, hell-ward bound people through their faith in this awful revelation of their damnation and doom, God’s dynamite reaches the deep interior of their depraved hearts, blowing them up into a knock-down conviction, bringing them wallowing and roaring at the mourner’s bench. Then when the Gospel of Calvary is faithfully preached to this heart-broken penitent, and he believes the wonderful truth of the vicarious atonement while contemplating the stupendous magnitude of redeeming love, through his humble faith in the converting truth of God, the dynamite of conversion gives him another wonderful blowing up, lifting him out of Satan’s kingdom, giving him a glorious balloon ride with Jesus, and dropping him down in the kingdom of God’s redeeming grace and regenerating love. Again, when the truth is preached of inbred sin in a subjugated state surviving in the heart of God’s children till all the debris of the fall is expurgated through the cleansing blood applied by the Holy Ghost, then through the medium of simple faith in God’s plain and unmistakable word, another conviction takes hold of him bringing him down low at the feet of Jesus, terribly humiliating him while contemplating the disharmony with the Divine administration and disconformity to the image and likeness of God, he goes mourning night and day. Finally when the wonderful Gospel of entire sanctification through the cleansing blood of Jesus and the consuming fires of the Holy Ghost is faithfully preached to him till his faith apprehends and appropriates the glorious promise of God to sanctify his children by way of consecration and faith; then through the medium of his faith in the sanctifying truth of the infallible God, the dynamite of entire sanctification is transmitted into the deep interior of his fallen nature, when a spark from heaven’s altar, through his humble faith, ignites the blast, blowing inbred sin out by the roots and transporting the man far away out of the old, howling wilderness into the ever green fields of Beulah land where the sun and moon both shine night and day, and no one says, “I am sick.” Now do not forget that this dynamite administered through the faith of the recipient is the only definition of Gospel. Hence you see that the dead churches belting the globe, whether Papal or Protestant, are literally heathenized without a scintillation of actual Gospel. They all have more or less truth, which is a valuable auxiliary in salvation, but utterly inefficient in the absence of the Holy Ghost dynamite. If the truth alone could save, the devil would have been lifted from hell long ago, for I trow he knows more truth than any of us, yet not a scintillation of Heavenly dynamite can ever reach him, because he and all the inmates of hell, demoniacal and human, have passed the borne of probation, the former when they fell from the heavenly state ( Isaiah 14:12 and Jude 7), and the latter when they passed out of time into eternity. An illiterate old Negro, full of the Holy Ghost, has more Gospel in his own soul ready to transmit to others through his great thick dictionary and grammar-butchering lips than a whole car-load of plug-hatted theologians without the dynamite of the Holy Ghost. The reason why the Gospel is butchered and perverted on all sides is, because the people do not use their common sense and utilize the blessed Holy Spirit. God says the way to heaven is so plain that “wayfaring men, though fools, need not err therein” ( Isaiah 35). Oh, how egregiously uninspired men with great heads and human learning have complicated it. All this is a trick of the devil to obscure the way to heaven till he can dump the people by millions into hell. You do not need a college to qualify you to preach the gospel. You have only need to “tarry at Jerusalem till you are endued with dynamite from on high.” Then you will preach the gospel soon enough “with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.” Since Satan has manipulated to sidetrack the churches on the line of human learning (not that we object to per se ), God is stirring all the world with the holiness movement, raising up millions of men and women to preach the genuine old-time Pentecostal Gospel with no human power but the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, ministering the dynamite of conviction, regeneration and sanctification through their humble instrumentality. Reader, will not you be one? 17. “For the righteousness of God is revealed in him from faith unto faith,” i .e ., from the faith of justification unto the faith of sanctification, and downward to glorification, whether through translation, if so fortunate as to be on the earth when the Lord takes up his Bride, or resurrection, bearing us on to an eternal participation of the transfiguration glory. “As has been written: but the just shall live by faith.” This is the battle shout of God’s saints in all ages and dispensations. So long as the lion’s mouth and the burning stake kept Christianity low down at the feet of Jesus, she was more than a match for the world, the flesh and the devil, and so proved the first three centuries. When the Emperor Constantine suddenly promoted the church from bloody martyrdom to the imperial palace, it marks an awful epoch of retrogression in her history, plunging heedlessly into the paganized heresies of debauched Romanism, ere long eclipsing every ray from the glorious Son of Righteousness, burying every grand cardinal truth of God’s precious Word deep in the rubbish of priestcraft and legalistic idolatry. You must not think that God’s true people were not found on the earth in all by-gone ages. They were; but after the Constantian apostasy, outside of the Catholic Church, anathematized by the popes and persecuted unto death; first called Novations, A.D. 251; at a later date Waldensees, Albigenses and still later Moravians, who were instrumental in the conversion and sanctification of John Wesley. God used Martin Luther and his compeers to dig up out of papal rubbish the great cardinal truth of justification by the free grace of God, through Christ, received and appropriated through faith alone independently of popery, prelacy and priestcraft. This glorious truth flashed into his mind while doing penance at Rome under the eye of the pope, while on his bare and bleeding knees, climbing up and down the stone stairway of Pilate, up which Jesus walked when He stood at Pilate’s bar, and which they claim had been transported from Jerusalem to Rome during the Crusades. Meanwhile climbing up and down this stairway a supernatural voice, as he said and always believed, rang out from heaven this familiar Scripture: “The just shall live by faith.” That moment Luther abandoned all of his castigatory penances, left Rome, returned to Germany, and shook the whole world by preaching this great law of God’s kingdom, utterly upsetting all the chicanery of intriguing priests who for centuries had held the world in a dark delusion. Luther spent his life in the establishment of this great fundamental doctrine. John Wesley was converted while listening to the reading of Luther’s preface to Romans, beautifully and triumphantly setting forth this great fundamental Bible doctrine. God used him not to spend his life in the old tracks of Luther, his gospel father, but to move on with his fire-baptized contemporaries in the grand evolution out of legalistic dry-bones, restoring to the world the precious vital truth of entire sanctification by the free grace of God in Christ, received and appropriated by faith alone. It is the glory of the present holiness movement not only appreciatively to walk in the track of our gospel predecessors, but under the leadership of the Holy Ghost, sitting meek and lowly at the feet of Jesus, still deeper to explore the wonders of revealed truth, bringing to the light the beautiful scriptures expository of the Lord’s return to the earth, the glorious millennial theocracy, the final and triumphant restitution under the mediatorial reign; at the same time encouraging woman’s ministry and divine healing, so prominent in the apostolic age.

ATTITUDE OF THE HEATHENS 18. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men holding down the truth in unrighteousness, 19. “Because the knowledge of God is manifest in them: for God revealed it unto them.” The Holy Spirit, the light of nature and human conscience, are universal regardless of age, race or condition, revealing to every human being light and knowledge sufficient to save them, if they would only walk in it. The trouble is these divine lights are obscured by ten thousand devices, for human damnation manipulated by Satan and his myrmidons. 20. “For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being known by the things which are made, both His eternal power and divinity, so that they are left without excuse.” God-head in E.V. is wrong, the Greek being theiotees , which means divinity, instead of theotees , which means God-head; the words being so much alike, transcribers and translators mistook the one for the other. The truth of the matter is, while God is revealed to all the heathens by the light of nature, conscience and the universally present Holy Spirit, it is a matter of fact that the different Persons of the Trinity are not thus revealed. Hence, though the heathens can know God and be saved without the revealed Word, in the absence of the latter, they never would be able to recognize three Persons of the Trinity. You see Paul positively affirms the gracious possibility of universal salvation, otherwise they would not all be left “without excuse.” Hence you see from this positive statement that no one in the judgment day can give an apology for his disqualification to meet the Lord and enter heaven. The untutored savage in his primeval wilds sees God in the clouds and hears him in the winds: “Whose soul proud science never taught to stray, Far as the solar walk, the milky way.” Captain John Smith, a cultured Episcopalian, during his captivity with the Indians, after the old chief had adopted him as his son and successor, was left in charge of him and his old wife and little grandson, while all the balance went off to war. During a terrible wintry storm, when a great sleet everywhere covered the deep snow, the loud roar of whose breaking beneath the feet entirely disqualified him to get in gunshot of the wild animals on which they were all dependent for their daily food, day after day the young Englishman returns at nightfall from a laborious all-day walk over the ice fields, crushing beneath his feet and letting him down into the deep snow, weary and forlorn, faint with hunger and fatigue. Every evening the venerable chief lying flat on his back on his bear-skin, prostrate with rheumatism, delivers his adopted son a profitable exhortation on the patience and humiliation requisite to qualify a soul at life’s end to ascend above the snow clouds, and dwell in the glorified presence of the Great Spirit forever. Finally John concludes that they are all going to starve to death in a pile. Consequently, with much regret in his own heart to leave those people to die alone, he set out apparently as usual on a hunting excursion, but with his mind made up to escape and make his way back to Jamestown. While thus trudging along, seeing a herd of buffaloes at a great distance, taking position in concealment, he prays God to send them within gun-shot, as he had had nothing to eat for a week but some broth made from the bones of a wild-cat, which the vultures had picked, and they had recovered from beneath the snow. Sure enough, his prayer is answered and the herd comes roaring along near by. He fires away and downs a fat heifer. Running, he cuts out some meat and satisfies his awful hunger by eating it blood-raw. Then supplying himself with some of the food to eat on his journey, his heart turns back with incorrigible sympathy for those poor people he had left to die. Consequently, loading himself with the meat, he wends his way back to the wigwam, arriving at nightfall, and saluted by the venerable chief, lying on his back, “O, my son, I knew you would bring it today. Oeneah (the name of his God) told me so.” Smith wanted to hand him some of it raw to eat at once. “O, no, my son, I am not in a hurry.” “Well,” says Smith, “I will broil you some on the coals.” “O, no, I prefer it stewed. While it is cooking I want you to sit down that I may talk to you about the great spirit, Oeneah, who always takes good care of his children.”

Smith felt himself a missionary among them, and had been teaching them the Christian religion the best he could from the Bible. Now he finds, to his surprise, that the old Indian, who had spent his life in savagedom, knew much more about the Lord, and his salvation, than he did. I mention this to demonstrate a case of a heathen who was intelligently saved, walking with God and bearing the fruits of the Spirit. A multitude of Scriptures intelligently corroborates this great truth, that all the people in the world can be saved if they will, having nothing to do but walk in the light which God gives them, as in that case, in the glorious ultimatum, the “blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth them from all sin” ( 1 John 1:7). This is true of all the people in the world, whether heathen, Moslem, Papist or Protestant ( John 1:9 and Titus 2:11). Then why send the heathens the gospel if they can be saved without it? (a) Because God has commanded us to go and preach the gospel to every creature. We must obey or fall under condemnation. (b) Because the more light they have, the greater the probability that they will walk in it and be saved. For the same reason we keep on preaching to people in gospel lands, not because they can not be saved without it, but because they will not. In all cases it is a question of will and probability rather than privilege and possibility. 21. “Therefore knowing God, they did not glorify him as God nor were they thankful, but they became vain in their reasonings, and their foolish heart was darkened.” All the heathens in the world are but the apostasy of the Patriarchical church, having the true light in the days of Noah; the Mohammedans and Jews, the apostasy of the Mosaic church, and the Roman Catholics, the fallen Apostolic church; while the great Protestant denominations are going at racehorse speed the same downward trend into spiritual darkness, formality, hypocrisy, legalism and idolatry. Paul in this verse describes the first stage of apostasy from God, i .e ., landing them in intellectualism; the second stage subsequently described, putting them in idolatry, and the third and last in brutality. The heathens are now in the last stage, i .e ., brutality, and the Romanists in idolatry, and the Protestants in intellectualism, seeking the power of natural talent and education instead of the spiritual dynamite which constitutes the only definition of gospel in the Bible. 22. “Saying that they were wise they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of corruptible man, birds, quadrupeds and creeping things.” The Greeks worshipped gods in human form, and the Egyptians in the form of many animals; the former reached idolatry and the latter brutality. 24. “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto impurity to dishonor their bodies among themselves, 25. “Who changed the truth of God into a lie, worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for evermore. Amen.” Here we see the fatal downward trend of humanity, alienated from God; like a ship loosed from her moorings, adrift on the sea, the sport of the billows and the caprice of the storm, till wounded or wrecked. Hence when people get away from the personal indwelling Holy Spirit, they float on hellwardly whether through churches or outside. Creature worship is idolatry, whether it be a fine house, a pipe-organ, an old creed, water baptism or an elegant, learned preacher. It is creature worship instead of the heart cry after God. 26. “Therefore God gave them up to the lusts of dishonor.”… 27. These two verses describe a horrible state of humanity, cohabitation with animals, and other abominations unmentionable, peculiar to the inhabitants of Sodom and in the hell dens of many other cities in all ages.

When I was in that country I went to the site of Sodom and Gomorra and found it all covered by the Dead Sea. Not only is the sea utterly desolate, no fish competent to live in its poisonous waters, but the surrounding country is all a burning desert waste without a drop of rain, whereas in the days of Abraham and Lot it was “well watered,” God having sent the withering desolation because of their wickedness. As this wicked age fast ripens for destruction, the horrors of Sodom are fast multiplying with the inventions of the age utilized by Satan. I write these pages in New York. A sanctified man, saved out of the horrors of slumdom, tells me that we need not leave the American metropolis to find all the horrors of ancient Sodom. 28. “And so as they did not approve to hold God in perfect knowledge, he gave them up to a reprobate mind to do the things which are abominable.” Here we see how people become reprobated. They first reprobate God and then He reprobates them, as He saves none against their will. So if you want to be elected to glory, heaven and immortality, you go ahead at once and elect God, and be true to God and it will turn out that He has elected you. Here we have a picture, like the brutality in verses 26 and 27, too black for description. 29. “Is filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, vice and covetousness.” Those who go to heaven must have the fullness of grace in entire sanctification, while in a similar manner Satan ripens his people for hell, by filling them with the very diabolical attributes which congenialize them for the society of hell. “Full of envy, murder, deceitfulness, strife, and evil affections.” These black vices are germinally born in humanity by the fall. Afterward they reach maturity by practice, ripening the soul for hell. In this probation all people are fast rushing to dramatically opposite destinies, diverging incessantly either from another; the one class in due time getting full salvation and ripening for heaven, and the other class, full deterioration and maturing for hell. There is no medium; we must all go one way or the other. So you have your choice between full salvation and full damnation. Which will you have? 30. “Secret maligners,” i .e ., eaves-droppers clandestinely stirring up a hell-fire to burn you forever, meanwhile they flatter you with their lips, and claim to be your best friends. “These slanderers.” How frequently does murder follow slander! These remorseless liars, whether clandestinely or openly, set whole communities on the fires of hell, often deluging homes with blood. “Haters of God.” Satan imparts his own nature to the people given up to him. So they actually loathe and despise the God who made them and gives them the air they breathe. “Proud, haughty, arrogant.” These words express different phases of that abominable Satanic delusion that makes the beggar think he is a king, the fool think he is a philosopher, the debauchee think he is a gentleman, and the hypocrite think he is a saint. “Practitioners of evil,” i .e ., they are professional scoundrels, ready to do anything that is bad and nothing that is good. If they pretentiously do good, it is only a cloak for their meanness, that they may unsuspected perpetrate a blacker crime. “Disobedient to parents.” How awfully dissolute the present age on parental discipline: children rushing headlong to hell under the immediate eye of parents who make a profession of Christianity! In many so-called Christian homes, the children are Incorrigible. In Georgia, an oldstyle Methodist forbade his daughters to attend Satan’s dances, their silly, half-hearted mother encouraging them to go and catch beaux so they could marry. One day the father comes into the family room, finding them all busy making lustful ball-dresses, getting ready for Satan’s fandango. They could no longer hide the matter, so they confess outright. He then picks up all of the goods, seventy dollars worth, and laid them into the big, old-style wood fire, and looks at them till they all burn into ashes. Then turning he addresses his wife and daughters: “If there is anything more of this, I will sell out [and he had a princely house] and give all I have to the missionary cause, tramp for my living, and you shall all go to the wash-tub for your bread.” He had an iron will, and they knew he would do it, so he had no more trouble to rule his house. Good Lord, give us more like him! 31. “Incontinent.” This word means reckless in every sense, incorrigible, abandoned, awful in the extreme. “Covenant breakers,” i .e ., recreant to all obligation at home or abroad, all mooring loosed, and utterly unreliable in every respect. “Without natural affections.” The poor heathens in Africa are in this horrific state this day, as all the missionaries can testify. I heard them at Old Orchard Camp-meeting last August testify as eye and ear witnesses to these horrors. E .g ., All of their doctors are diabolical wizards claiming to hold communication with the gods, (and true, with the demons, the gods of the poor heathen). They impute all sickness to witchcraft, and simply practice to find the witch. In that case the nearest relatives must set on them and kill them; otherwise they will be implicated as accomplices and killed.

Bishop Taylor witnessed the awful tragedy of a man killing his own little daughter ten years old because the doctor said she had bewitched her sick mother. The gospel is the only possible remedy for these horrors. “Incapable of mercy.” This indicates an appalling depth of diabolism and cruelty beyond all hope. 32. “Who, knowing the righteousness of God that those who do such things are worthy of death, not only do them but take pleasure in those who do them.” This is the darkest conceivable climax; when people not only commit indiscriminately the most atrocious crimes, but take delight in those who do these things; “birds of a feather flock together.” The very presence of the good is a withering rebuke to the bad. Murderers love the company of murderers. Libertines, debauchers, harlots, thieves, liars, blasphemers, swindlers, and obscene, vile reprobates all love the company of one another. Carnal church people, both clerical and civic, love to lean to their own sect. If you ever expect to get to heaven you would better see that you actually love the society of the most holy people you can find. If this is not so, you are a long way from the pearly gates.

CHAPTER - Whereas, the first chapter is to the heathens or the outsiders, the second chapter is addressed to the lay or popular church members, whom sadly he finds in the same dilemma with the besotted heathens, i .e ., in Satan’s kingdom along with them.

ATTITUDE OF THE CHURCH MEMBERS 1. “Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, every one that judgest; for in whatsoever thou judgest another thou condemneth thyself; for thou that judgest art doing the same things.” How vividly this verse not only describes the formalistic pew, but the iceberg church member of the present day! The popular preacher stands in the pulpit condemning the outsiders, calling them to repent and join the church; while in the same discourse he confesses that he and his people sin every day in thought, word and deed, and denounces the holiness people as heretics for preaching and professing a religion that saves from all sin, actual and original. Do you not see he is the very man in the text who confesses judgment against himself? True religion in Paul’s day was just what it is now, and so is the counterfeit identical with itself in all ages. 2. “For we know that the judgment of God, according to truth, is against those doing such things,” i .e ., all who commit sin are under the same condemnation, whether church members or outsiders. 3. “But O man, that condemneth those doing such things and art doing the same thyself, do you consider this, that you shall escape the condemnation of God?” The answer is an awful negative. The church member by his very attitude condemns the worldlian for sin, at the same time actually making a profession of a sinning religion. The inconsistency literally makes him a laughing-stock for devils, because his very attitude as a sinning Christian puts him under the same condemnation along with the sinful world, and sends him to the same hell. 5. “Pursuant to thy hardness and impenitent heart thou treasurest up to thyself wrath against the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God.” The great Judgment Day will know no difference between the infidel and the sinning church member. They will all be sent down to hell together when they meet the righteous judgment of God, here contrasted with the false, pusillanimous judgments of men in the pulpit and in the pews, “who will give to each one according to his works,” not according to his profession. In that awful day every tub will stand on its own bottom. God receives no man’s face ( Galatians 2:6). No clerical dignities and offices there. The worldly preacher and officer will go down with all worldly people, as you know none but the church will stand, and that means the ecclesia , from ek , “out,” and kaleoo , “call.” Hence none are members of God’s church but those who have responded to the call of the Holy Ghost, come out of the world and separated themselves unto God for time and eternity. 7. “To those who according to patience of good work, seek honor, glory and immortality, eternal life.” This world is probationary. We must decide between the animal and the angel. If we live for the angelic element of our nature, we will go up and live with the angels when we go out of this world. If we live for the animal of our nature, we will go down and live with the demonized animals in the world of woe; we will all reap what we sow. 8. “To those who from self-seeking, and who obey not the truth but obey unrighteousness, there will be indignation and wrath.” These rewards and retributions have nothing whatever to do with church membership or its absence, but simply the character of each individual. You either become like God or Satan in this life. In the final judgment, all who truly and inwardly are like God, will go up and live with Him forever, while those who have lived for the world, Satan will claim as his own, since he is the god of this world ( 2 Corinthians 4:4). 9. “Tribulation and anguish upon every soul, that worketh out the evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek.” Jew here represents the whole world who claim to be godly; the Greek, the non-professors. “Worketh out the evil” has a final signification, i .e ., indicating the ultimate destiny of every soul. As you observe the people within the circle of your acquaintance, you will find the general trend either to the good or the bad developing a finale, one way or the other, before they leave the world. All wind up this life confirmed either in holiness and God or this world and Satan. The church means “the called out of the world,” while sanctification means taking the world out of you and thus perfecting your separation from the world and Satan, who is its god. One way or the other there is in every case a “working out” of the problem for salvation or damnation. 11. “For there is no respect of persons with God.” He only knows character. The fact that you have been a great churchman or an elegant preacher will be neither known nor mentioned in the Judgment Day. Many who have lived and died unknown to the great of church and state will be called to the front, while multitudes who have been very great and honorable, standing at the front, will be relegated to the rear. There is but one question, “Are you like God?” If not, all the good you think you did is sunk in the sloughs of Satan’s kingdom. 12. “For so many as sinned without law, shall also perish without law; while those who sinned under the law, shall be judged by the law.” From this verse we find there will be three distinct varieties of judgment in the great day. The heathens will not be judged by the Bible, but simply by the laws of nature, the light of conscience and the Holy Ghost. The old Jews will be judged by the Old Testament only, while all who have enjoyed the light of Christendom will be judged by the whole Bible. Hence many heathens will be acquitted and saved whose moral lives have not measured up to the stature of many nominal Christians who will go down under condemnation, because the former walked in all the light they had and the latter did not. Hence we see an infinite diversity of judgments in that great and notable day of the Lord. 13. “For not the hearers of the law shall be just with God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.” This does not teach legal justification, but the fact that God’s true people are always obedient. A beautiful emphasis is here laid on doing, confirmatory of the significant fact that obedience to the law of God is the normal fruit of true faith in every case, invariably as the shadow follows the substance. “Make the tree good and the fruit will be good; make the tree evil and the fruit will be evil” (Jesus). 14. “For when the heathens, not having the law, do by nature the things of the law, they not having the law, are a law unto themselves.” This confirms the gracious possibility for the heathens, through the light of nature, conscience and the Holy Spirit, actually to do the things of the divine law and be saved, as doubtless millions have done who are now in heaven.

Gentile in E.V. is the very same word translated heathen. Hence, remember they are synonymous. 14, 15. The Holy Spirit is everywhere substantially revealing the will of God. “He is the true Light, who lighteth every man that cometh into the world” ( John 1:9).

Here is a beautiful allusion to heathen conscience, “their conscience bearing them witness, their thoughts accusing or excusing either with other.” How wonderfully the Holy Spirit, through human conscience in all the earth, is constantly speaking to every immortal soul, saying, “This is right, that is wrong,” et cetera . Where Paul speaks of the seared conscience ( Timothy 4:2) it does not mean the conscience of men, but of devils. That is a reason why the demons can not be saved. When a human soul passes the dead line and is abandoned by the Holy Ghost, having committed the unpardonable sin, so that He ceases to strive, then that soul becomes demonized, the conscience being cauterized. As the Holy Spirit deals with every human spirit, whether heathen or Christian, speaking through His telephone, the conscience, He will witness to the condemnation or acquittal in the Judgment Day. 17. The Jew in Paul’s day stood precisely where all of the fallen churches do to-day. They were God’s normal people till they rejected Christ. So all the churches are right so long as they are true to the Holy Ghost, who is none other than the spiritual Christ on earth ( John 14:16). 18. “Thou knowest us well, and discriminatest the things which differ, making thy boast from the law.” We are in a mixed world; soul-poison on all sides, the spiritually dead feeding on it. Though a dead man has eyes, he sees not; ears, he hears not; a nose, he smells not; a tongue, he tastes not; nerves, he feels not. Satan has his poison greeting us on all sides. If you eat, you die. Spiritual resurrection alone can open eyes, ears, olfactory, gustatory, and sentient organs, while sanctification gives them healthy and efficient activity. 19. “Thou hast confidence that thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of those in darkness, 20. “A teacher of the ignorant, an instructor of the juveniles; having the form of knowledge of the truth in the law.” If you follow through this prolix sentence, including seven verses, you find this boastful character all a delusion and a cheat. As in case of the fallen Jew, it is equally true with the counterfeit Christian of the present day. How grand these achievements if they were only real! Yet where you will find a genuine case, Satan has a score of counterfeits to counteract the heavenly influence, and wrap the blind multitude in a still darker delusion. 21. “Wherefore thou that teachest another, doest thou not teach thyself?” What a vivid picture of the preacher in the pulpit and the member in the pew, like the sign-boards, pointing out a road they never travel! “Thou who preachest not to steal, doest thou steal?” How significant this arraignment of the counterfeit professors. If you ever cheated a man out of a dollar, you stole a dollar. We send to the penitentiary the little rogues who steal a few dollars, while great thieves who have stolen their thousands serve as jurors, plead at the bar, or even encumber the judicial bench. Many serious people believe our public is now ruled by thieves who have stolen princely fortunes and risen to the dignity of mammon kings. “Thou that sayest not to commit adultery, doest thou commit adultery?” Aside from the consideration of the actual sin, in millions of cases secretly committed, when we hear Jesus say, “He that looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery in his heart,” what a multitude are guilty of this dark crime! “Man looks on the outside, but God looketh on the heart.”

Glory to God for sanctification, whose consuming fires alone can exterminate heart adultery! Awful revelations and terrible ordeals await the guilty in the Judgment Day. “Thou that abominatest idolatry, doest thou rob temples?” Rome was full of costly heathen temples, adorned with gold, silver, and precious stones. The Jews were so avaricious, doubtless this accusation is not without foundation, especially if we consider the probability of their defrauding the heathens out of the offerings due their gods. 23. “Who boastest in the law, and through the transgression of the law dishonorest God.” I have that all round me till I turn heart-sick, e .g ., people claiming to be paragon saints, boasting over their legal obedience in outward ordinances and churchisms, loudly condemning others, and at the same time showing by their unspiritual, carnal and frequently even profligate lives, their own utter ignorance of God and His salvation. 24. “For the name of God is blasphemed on account of you among the heathens, as has been written.” The unworthy lives of professors have always been the greatest impediment to religion, not only among the heathens, but in Christian lands. This arises from the fact that carnal people can not see spirituality ( 1 Corinthians 2:14,15). Satan is always showing his counterfeits and passing them for true saints. In Asia and Africa all people dressed in European and American costumes are recognized as Christians; even those who are there to sell whisky, and perpetrate the blackest crimes. The heathens find them worse rascals than themselves and are utterly disgusted with the name “Christian,” regarding it as synonymous with the crimes they see the people whom they call “Christians” commit.

Years ago a Hindu priest that got hold of a New Testament, and was perfectly charmed with the character of Jesus Christ. As he read on he found He had gone away from Mt. Olivet up to heaven. So he concluded that he could never reach Him. Then he fell on the plan of finding some of His disciples, and receiving light and help from them. Upon inquiry, he was introduced to a number of English merchants in Bombay as disciples of Christ. When he found them bigger rascals than the heathens, he turned away with disgust, giving up the Christian altogether and serving the Hindu gods more faithfully than ever. Finally Bishop Taylor arrived there about twenty five years ago; preached four years, and built up the South India Conference. This priest happened to attend his meetings. Among many at the altar, seeking earnestly, he discovered these identical English merchants who had been introduced to him as disciples of Christ, and with whom he had become so disgusted. Then he said to himself, “I will watch and give them another chance; perhaps there was a mistake in the matter some way.”

He saw them weep and mourn and seek long and earnestly at the altar. Then they rose with bright faces, testifying that they had found Jesus Christ and He had saved them. Then he said to himself, “Now I will watch them and give them another chance.” This time he found them all right, exemplifying the same beautiful characters he had read about in the New Testament.

Consequently he sought and found the Lord Jesus Christ, became a witness to His wonderful salvation, turned preacher, and is now standing at the front of Immanuel’s army in India. 25. “For truly circumcision profiteth if you keep the law; but if you are a transgressor of the law your circumcision has become uncircumcision.” We see from this verse the condemnatory verdict of the ordinances when uncorroborated by a true and irreproachable Christian character. In that case they become witnesses against us in the Judgment Day. 26. “Therefore, if the uncircumcision may keep the commandments of the law, will not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision?” “Man looks upon the outside, but God looketh on the heart,” and sees our intrinsical character and estimates us accordingly. He can not be deceived. 27. “Truly that which is uncircumcision by nature, keeping the law, will condemn thee who, through the letter of the circumcision, art a transgressor of the law.” From this clear statement of the Holy Ghost we see how God will put the non-ritualistic holy Quakers on the witness block in the Day of Judgment to testify against the millions who have received the ordinances and lived unworthily. 28. “For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly; neither is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh: 29. “But he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit and not in the letter, whose praise is not of men but of God.” This beautiful and momentous affirmation of the Holy Ghost modernized would read: “He is no Christian who is one outwardly; neither is baptism that which is outward on the flesh: but he is a Christian who is one inwardly, and baptism is that of the heart in the spirit and not in the letter whose praise is not of men but of God.” From these Scriptures we see most unequivocally the pure spirituality of the gracious economy; no mere temporality like water baptism, eucharist or church rites having anything to do with it. When your heart and life are right in the sight of God, you are all right every way without the slightest reference to the external marks of a Christian profession. When I was a boy my father marked his sheep by cutting their ears. Now it is customary simply to mark them with paint. So God marked His sheep during the former dispensation by circumcision, a bloody and painful operation. Nowadays He marks them by the simple rite of water baptism, the recognition perpetuated in the eucharist received ever and anon. Yet this marking never did make a sheep. Neither do the ordinances have anything to do with making Christians, any more than cutting the ears or branding with paint has to do with making sheep. God makes the sheep and the people mark them. So God makes the Christian and the preacher marks him. The sheep unmarked is worth quite as much as after he has received the mark. So is the true Christian in the divine estimation worth as much without the mark as with it. Satan is always putting God’s sheep-mark on his hogs, covering them with sheepskins and passing them for sheep. They are readily detected, because they plunge into the first mud-hole they come to, perfectly delighted to wallow in the mire; whereas a sheep will actually die before it will pollute itself in the mud.

Shall we never wake up to the fond trickery of the devil, fooling the poor, blind, carnal people by the wholesale, bamboozling them with the nonsensical delusion that the Christian religion consists in outward ordinances, external manifestations, shams and hoaxes? These Scriptures clearly reveal not only the utter emptiness of all external forms, ceremonies and professions, uncorroborated by the internal spiritual transformation wrought by the Holy Ghost in the heart; but the awful reality that all of these things will only expedite the condemnation in the Judgment Day and augment the damnation in eternity.

CHAPTER - 1. “Then what is the advantage of the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision?” This question is very pertinently asked in view of the preceding deliverances, confirmatory of the non-essentiality of carnal ordinances, church rites, and visible membership to salvation, which is purely and unequivocally the work of God alone wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit responsive to the free will of every soul who receives Him. 2. “Much every way. For indeed in the first place because the oracles of God were committed unto them.” Of course the visible church in all ages has enjoyed the wonderful blessing of God’s revealed word, which is absolutely inestimable. But we must remember that Christ Himself is the Word ( John 1), whose meaning is revelation, and the incarnation of Christ for the apprehension of material senses is the very summary of all possible revelation of God to man. Yet we must remember that the Holy Ghost, who is identical with the Spirit of Christ and the Father (Ch. 9), is among the heathens in all ages, revealing to them their Savior in the interior conscience of all truly humble appreciative hearts. 3. “For what if some did disbelieve? Whether shall their unbelief make void the faith of God? 4. “For it could not be so; let God be true and every man a liar; as has been written: In order that thou mayest be justified in thy words and shall prevail when thou art judged.” Here the apostle, constantly affirming the gracious possibility of universal salvation, finds the heathens not only alienated from God, first into proud rationalism, secondly into silly idolatry, and finally into revolting brutality; and the Jews, who represent the visible church in all ages, with all their munificent endowments through the wonderful light and blessing of God’s revealed Word, corroborated and symbolized by the ecclesiastical ordinances, rites and ceremonies, nevertheless en masse not only utterly destitute of God’s saving grace in the heart, but actually puffed up with spiritual pride and disgusting vanity, believing themselves to be the elect of God and looking with contempt upon the Gentiles, whereas they themselves are in the deeper and more terrible condemnation, because of grace depreciated and light not only rejected but actually metamorphosed into darkness black as the midnight of perdition. Amid this deplorable wholesale ruin appertaining both to Jews and Gentiles, i .e ., to church members and outsiders, despite the universal redeeming grace of God in Christ, thus populating hell with countless millions, both church members and worldlians, yet the truth, mercy, and grace of God are in no way invalidated by this awful state of things. God is just as true amid a world of liars as if all the people on the earth were true and appreciative of His salvation. In the grand finale, when the universe faces the great white throne, every one will stand for himself and be judged according to his intrinsical spiritual, practical personality. 5. “But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say? whether is God unrighteous administering wrath? I speak after the manner of a man. 6. “It could not be so; then how will God judge the world?” The apostle is answering the allegation of his opponent, who would excuse himself on the hypothesis that his failure has in no way affected the perfect purity and glory of the divine administration, since God, absolutely immutable, verifies and perfects the unimpeachable integrity, honor and majesty of His administration, despite all the irregularities and failures on the part of the world, whether religious or irreligious. 7. “But if the truth of God abounded through my life unto his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?” He here answers the argument of the fatalist: “Since the immutable God is neither changed nor in the least deflected from the perfect integrity of His administration, neither His veracity suffering the slightest impeachment by my perversity and falsehood; as I am utterly incompetent to contravene the divine purpose or tarnish the infallible glory of the Almighty, then why am I condemned as a sinner?” It is the hackneyed pleading of irresponsibility which we daily meet, offered as an apology on the part of the ungodly. 8. “And not, as we are scandalously reported, and as certain ones certify that we say, that we must do evil in order that good may come? Whose condemnation is just.” Among the two hundred millions of martyrs who sealed their faith with their blood in bygone ages, not a single one died in the capacity of a good person in the estimation of their persecutors. On the contrary, they were all slain under criminal charges. Hence this Satanic maxim on the part of our enemies has prevailed in all ages, the present day no exception. God’s people are even now calumniated as disturbers of the churches, and accused of many misdemeanors of which they are not guilty. 9. “Then what is it? Are we better than they? By no means: for we have proven that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin.” Paul uses the pronoun “we,” including himself with the Jews in this contrast with the Gentiles, thus manifesting both the sympathy and humility peculiar to a speaker, who so frequently in his phraseology identifies himself with his hearers. In this verse “Greeks” is synonymous with the whole Gentile or heathen world; while “Jews” is identical with the nominal members of the visible church in all ages. Now, do you see the force of the apostle’s conclusion? It is the simple fact that salvation is a personal and not an ecclesiastical matter so far as churchism or non-churchism is concerned; it has nothing to do with salvation and never did, but simply leaves its votaries all under condemnation, indiscriminately in the hands of the devil, “the god of this world” ( 2 Corinthians 4:4). The several verses following this sweeping classification of both church members and outsiders in the black catalogue of sin, and under the dismal grip of Satan, vividly, lucidly and appallingly portray the horrific state of moral obliquity pertinent to all the people in all ages who have not been rescued from the above classifications by the redeeming grace of God in Christ, regenerating and sanctifying the heart.

An astonishing phenomenon has frequently been noteworthy with reference to these alarming Scriptures, which draw the blackest picture this side the bottomless pit; e .g ., a pastor standing in his pulpit reading them to his congregation as a refutation of the doctrine and experience of entire sanctification and a confirmation to his people of the absolute necessity that they all remain in sin down to life’s end, depending on the grim monster to deliver them from the dark grip of the soul’s destroyer. Such a procedure is simply giving his members a ticket to hell through his church. The Bible is God’s way-bill to heaven. Like all other way-bills, while it points out the right way, that the traveler may walk in it, it equally specifically designates all the wrong ways, that he may avoid them. While the Bible grandly and gloriously points out to the sinner the “highway,” and to the Christian the “holy way,” it most clearly and emphatically points out the devil’s sidetracks which lead down to hell, at the same time warning the traveler to keep out of them. Here we have a most horrific, demonstrative and terrifying presentation of Satan’s way to hell, given as a solemn warning that we may keep out of it. What is to become of the people when their own pastor points out this way and recommends it to them, which is now being done in countless instances in order to refute sanctification and defeat the Holiness Movement? The only hope in all such cases is that God will have mercy and save the people in spite of the preacher and the devil, too. 10. “As has been written, that there is none righteous, no, not one,” i .e ., not a single one of the above classes, i .e ., Jews and Greeks who are all under sin, i .e ., all church members of all ages and nations so far as the efficacy of membership, water baptism, church rites and legal obedience are concerned. Since these things, though all right in their places, never did have any power to justify a soul; therefore they leave all their votaries in their sins both actual and original, on the same plane with the unregenerate heathen. 11. “Neither does any one understand, neither is there any one who seeketh out God,” i .e ., seeketh God till he finds Him. Hence the legitimate conclusion confirmatory of the utter impossibility that any one through water baptism, sacraments, church-rites, legal obedience and ecclesiastical loyalty can possibly ever reach a personal knowledge of God in the salvation of the soul, that being a personal enterprise on the part of the human spirit and the Holy Spirit, utterly independent of clerical, ritualistical or legalistic administrations. 12. “All have gone away from him, they have all together failed; there is no one that doeth good, no, not one.” Man has been a failure in all dispensations. He failed in Eden, winding up with the fall. He failed in antediluvian times, swept away by the great flood. He failed in the patriarchal dispensation, going down into Egyptian slavery. He failed in the Jewish dispensation, culminating in the awful destruction of Jerusalem and the people by the Roman armies. He failed in the dispensation of our Savior’s ministry, winding up with the disgraceful scene of Calvary.

According to the prophecies, the Gentile dispensation, amid whose fugitive retreat we now live, is, like its predecessors, destined to wind up with the horrific tragedies of the great tribulation. Is not that very discouraging? Not to me. Man was never created an independency. Hence when left alone he has always failed, and always will. This is to us a most profitable lesson.

Shall we not heed the warning of our ruined predecessors and all fly to God, who is the only success? Whosoever departs from God plunges into ruin, world without end. 13. “Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips.” This is an awful description of the above who depart from God. This picture is progressive, this verse describing an advanced state of alienation from God. 14. “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.” The darkness continues to intensify as we proceed away from God. 15. “Their feet are swift to shed blood.” Not only is this true of wicked worldly people who are ready to waylay and murder you, but it is equally true of the fallen churches; as we see through ages how eagerly they have rushed forth to shed innocent blood, beginning with our Savior, and continuing through the centuries, deluging the world with martyrs’ blood, and would today if they could. The Inquisition would revive this day if they had the power. 16. “Destruction and misery are in their ways.” Wicked people are total strangers to happiness; though so blinded by the devil, they think they are the best people in the world, as in the case of counterfeit professors. 17. “The way of peace they have not known.” This statement relieves this entire catalogue of the foolish interpretation which unsaved preachers frequently put on it, identifying it with Christianity, but which is true, under their bogus type, you see not really true, as these people “have not known the way of peace.” Hence they have never been Christians. 18. “The fear of God is not before their eyes.” Wickedness, like righteousness, is progressive. Here we reach the climax. They have passed the dead-line and the Spirit of conviction has been grieved away. So they are doomed. Without the fear of God there is no more hope for a sinner than a devil. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” When there is no fear there is no place to begin. The Holy Spirit abides in every land, convicting every soul, till He is grieved away. Conviction fills the soul with fear, yet there is no salvation without love, i .e ., the divine love poured out in the heart by the Holy Ghost (Ch. 5:5) in regeneration. Then love and fear consist till sanctification gives perfect love, which casts out fear ( 1 John 4:18). The unconvicted sinner has neither fear nor love. He is like a demon.

The convicted sinner has fear and no love. The converted man has love, but is not free from fear, while the sanctified has perfect love and no fear. 19. “We know that so many things as the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world become guilty before God.” So long as Adam the First is on hand, you are under the law, because he broke it. The only way for you to be exonerated before the law is to satisfy it, which you can only do by having the man of sin executed. Then the law has no more quarrel with you. Your Christ has paid the penalty and gives you grace to live in harmony with the divine administration, after the penalty has been executed against the sin principle in your heart by exterminating it. We have now traversed the sin-side of the Pauline argument, and with the next verse enter upon the grace-side of this wonderful exposition of the redemptive scheme. You see now why Paul got a thrashing wherever he went. If he had contented himself simply to preach love and mercy, like the modern clergy, he might have saved his body from flagellations and stonings. But that is not the divine order. A man will never take bitter, caustic medicines till he finds that he is sick, and it is medicate or die. Under the delusions of Satan, none think they are sick till it is too late, unless they receive the light of the Holy Ghost in a radical conviction. This comes under the preaching of the Sinai Gospel, which uncaps hell and shakes the people over it. What an awfully unpopular introduction is this, holding all the starchy church people, as well as outsiders, right over an open hell and shaking with a strong arm, warning them that they will drop in with all their water baptism, sacraments, church rites, loyalty, and good works, if they do not come to God individually and cry for mercy till he saves them of His own free grace and power! Let a man come into a popular church and preach to them the utter futility of all their boasted righteousness, and tell them they are all on their way to hell right along with the slummites, and see how quickly they will run him out. We cry aloud to the people, holding up the panacea all in vain, because they do not think they need it. No intelligent physician ever administers medicine till he diagnoses the patient and becomes acquainted with the disease. If the preachers would begin, like Paul, on the sin-side and go down to the bottom, revealing the hidden things of darkness, holding the big church officers and the influential women out over an open hell day after day, they would raise a row just as Paul did. Sanctification thirty years ago made me a red-hot preacher of the Sinai Gospel. I have been pelted with rocks, dirt, eggs, potatoes, apples, run off frequently, hauled away, and threatened with immediate death. Why is it not so now with you? I am no longer physically equal to the evangelistic work. God is now using me as a teacher, helping the saints into better experiences and a more thorough understanding of the precious Word. If I were young again, I certainly, like Paul, would preach the Sinai Gospel more courageously than ever.

Beginning with verse 19, Paul evolves the longest argument in the Bible confirmatory of justification by the free grace of God in Christ, received and appropriated by faith alone without deeds of law. This wonderful and unanswerable argument runs through the remainder of chapter 3 and all of chapters 4 and 5, winding up with that grand a fortiori argument on the “much-mores.” 20. “Therefore by deeds of law shall no flesh be justified in his presence.” In vain have legalists labored to so interpret this plain passage, which occurs so frequently in the Pauline writings, as to make it exclude the New Testament ritual. It is so plain and positive as to be utterly inevasible in the positive exclusion of all deeds of all law. It simply kills the legalistic heresy outright and forever, sweeping from the field the remotest possibility of human works having anything to do with justification. “For through law is the perfect knowledge of sin.” The law is simply the light which reveals sin. The room may be much polluted with dirt, and the inmates think it is clean till the light is brought in, which reveals all of the filth, but has no power to remove it and cleanse the room. This is precisely what the law does. It reveals sin, but has no power to take it away. 21. “But now the righteousness of God is made manifest without law, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.” This righteousness of God is utterly independent of all law, because God Himself is the law-giver. “Law” in this passage is without the article, showing that it excludes all law indiscriminately, while in the statement, “the law and the prophets,” having reference to the Mosaic law, we have the article. What is the righteousness of God? It is the righteousness (or justification, as they are synonymous) of God in Christ, i .e ., the righteousness which Christ procured for us by His vicarious death. Our Savior has a righteousness peculiar to His divinity, and essential to it, which He will never give to another, but retain forever.

He so has a righteousness peculiar to His humanity, and essential to it, which He will retain forever, and never give to another. Yet He has a third righteousness arising from His perfect obedience to the divine law, both keeping it actively and passively paying its penalty for us. This third righteousness, which is neither essential to His God-head nor His manhood, He procured not for Himself, as He did not need it, but for you and me. This righteousness is the only palladium that can possibly fortify us against the terrors of the violated law, and it is God’s glorious and munificent gift in Christ. Since it is a free gift, we do not have to give anything for it. The abandonment of all sin is indispensable to put us in position to receive it by simple faith, i .e ., faith is the hand by which the soul receives it, i .e ., the only spiritual faculty competent to receive it.

Hence, if we do not receive it by faith alone, we will never get it, and hell is our doom. 22. “The righteousness of God through faith of Jesus Christ unto all who believe, for there is no difference.” In justification, we have faith in Christ; in sanctification, we have the faith of Jesus Christ, who never had the faith of pardon, as He never had any sins to be pardoned, but He always had the faith of purity, i .e ., such faith in God as all the angels and redeemed spirits in heaven and earth enjoy, i .e ., identical in quality though not in quantity.

We find here there is actually no difference in all the world, the church member and the heathen standing on the same broad plain of universal condemnation till saved by personal application to Christ. In the preceding exegesis, we see that he is not a Christian who is one outwardly, neither is baptism that which is outward on the flesh; but he is a Christian who is one inwardly, and baptism is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God. Hence you see plainly the utter insignificance of all ceremonial professions without the spiritual experience; while the latter is just as valid in the sight of God without the visible ordinances as with them. The true salvation is a pure spirituality in toto .

Hence there is no difference between the professor and the non-professor, the whole problem being settled on the question of possession. You can profess much and have nothing. You can have an uttermost salvation without the attestations of ecclesiastical ceremonies. Paul utterly and eternally sweeps dead ritualism from the field. 23. “For all sinned and came short of the glory of God.” “All have sinned” (E.V.) is a wrong translation, involving personality and condemning the infants. The Greek is the imperfect tense, only implying that all sinned seminally, which is true. There was but one creation, i .e ., Adam; Eve being no exception, but an evolution from Adam’s rib. Hence when Adam sinned, the race sinned, and all fell together, all being in Adam seminally.

Hence all the infants sinned seminally and received a corrupt nature, though they did not sin personally. Consequently they did not personally fall under condemnation. All infants are born depraved, i .e ., with a sinful nature, though not actual sinners, but Christians by the redemption of Christ. They should be converted before they forfeit infantile justification by actual transgression, and then sanctified before they backslide. “Fall short” is in the present tense, stating a sad, though universally observable fact, resulting from the fall. This “falling short of the glory of God” appertains to all till this mortal shall put on immortality. 24. “Being freely justified by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” If the people could have been saved through legal obedience and good works, the Son of God might have stayed in heaven, enjoying forever the throne of his glory. Counterfeit religion, girdling the globe and deluding the people with the vain hallucination that they can be saved by priestly absolutions, church loyalty and legal obedience, hurls daily into the face of God the most abominable of all insults by actually treating with contempt the dying love and precious blood of His Son. 25. “Whom God set forth a vicarious atonement through faith in his blood.” We can only be saved from hell through the substitutionary death of Christ, who paid our penalty, dying a ransom in our room and stead, thus blockading the mouth of hell with his crucified body in order to keep us out. This is justification, i .e ., negative salvation. It is not only indispensable that we be kept out of hell, but equally pertinent that we be prepared for heaven. While the negative phase of salvation through the vicarious atonement keeps us out of hell, it is equally true that the positive phase of salvation through the precious blood expurging all sin makes us holy and congenializes us to the heavenly state, thus making us forever like the unfallen angels and qualifying us to enjoy the society of angels, archangels and glorified spirits forever. It is bold and comprehensive, involving full salvation, both negative and positive. We have but one human condition specified, and that is that we get it all through faith “in his blood.” Thorough repentance must put the sinner on believing ground, where he can be justified by faith; while complete consecration is indispensable to put the Christian on believing ground where he can be wholly sanctified through faith alone, precisely as he when a sinner received justification through faith alone. Satan’s preachers are always crying out “obedience.” It is a fond trick of the devil to deceive people by good things; e .g ., obedience is good and commendable in its sphere. The truth of the matter is, true faith inspired by the Holy Ghost is always obedient, whether in the justification of a sinner or the sanctification of a Christian. Right here comes in the devil’s tricky delusion in fixing the eye on the obedience instead of on Christ, and thus running the poor devotee into idolatry, which is your inevitable fate if you depend upon anything but Christ to save you. It is only Satan’s counterfeit that does not obey God, the genuine being always gladly obedient to every ramification of the divine administration. “Unto the manifestation of his own righteousness, through the remission of the sins which are passed; 26. “Through the forbearance of God, unto the manifestation of his own righteousness at the present time, that he should be righteous and the one justifying him who is of the faith of Jesus.” What a burning emphasis we have here on the fact that the sinner in justification does not receive his own righteousness, the normal fruit of legal obedience, nor the absolution of an interceding priest, administering church ordinances and ritualistic obligations; but he receives the righteousness of Christ Himself, God’s own righteousness, purchased by the vicarious death of His Son, not at some future period, but now conferred on the humble, believing penitent, the very identical righteousness of Christ Himself, and appropriated through faith without works. 27. “Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what law? of works? No; but through the law of faith. 28. “For we conclude that a man is justified by faith without works of law.” How astonishing that, in the face of so much positive, clear and unequivocal inspired affirmation that justification is by faith alone without any works of any law, after all we see nominal Christianity burdened to death with human legalisms. Poor old Romanism got so heavily loaded centuries ago, that she not only got slowed down into a standstill on the track, but as the way to heaven is up-grade, and the way to hell downgrade, the tremendous gravity of her mammoth institutions reversed her wheels, so for many centuries she has been running perditionward with an appalling velocity. You have but to look around you and see the Protestant churches already burdened into a standstill, and yet competing either with other in the manufacture of ecclesiastical institutions unheard of in the Bible. The gullibility of poor, fallen humanity in religion has been proverbial in all ages, and, oh, how universally manifest at the present day, when, amid the universal fulfillment of the latter day prophecies, this old wicked world is so fast ripening for destruction, everywhere augmented and expected by fallen churchisms, furnishing a thousand substitutes for the precious blood of Jesus and the refining fire of the Holy Ghost. How triumphantly and irrefutably does this verse forever annihilate all the claims of human legalism, uncontrovertedly establishing the great fundamental Bible truth of justification for all men through the free grace of God in Christ, received and appropriated by faith without deeds of law; i .e ., water baptism or anything else on the line of legal obedience. 29. “Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles; yea, indeed of the Gentiles, 30. “Since there is one God who will justify the circumcision and the uncircumcision through faith.” We need not wonder at the amount of apparently substantial repetition in this argument proclaiming God’s great law of pardon to all the world indiscriminately, whether Pagan, Papist, Moslem, Jew, Gentile, or Protestant. It is simply by faith alone, without works wrought by yourself, a preacher, a church member, or anything else. 31. “Then do we make void the law through faith? It could not be so, but we establish the law.” Here Paul answers the silly objections which I have often heard abused by Satan’s preachers; i .e ., that we who preach the utter non-essentiality of all legal obedience in order to justification, are making void the law, i .e ., setting it aside and treating it with contempt. This is simply the bogus pleading of spiritually ignorant people. If we had to be justified by the law we would all be sent to hell, for the simple fact that we are all law-breakers. Hunting in the Bible for justification through legal obedience is like the criminal ransacking the statute book to find his pardon.

It is not there, but on the contrary he finds his condemnation boldly written on every page. Not we, but unfallen beings, such as Adam in Eden and the angels in heaven, can possibly be justified by the law. Transgressors can receive nothing but condign punishment. Well does Paul say that instead of nullifying we establish the law, boldly affirming the impossibility of its nullification under the hypothesis of our justification by faith alone without works, from the simple fact that our faith receives and appropriates Christ, who alone in all this world has kept and verified the law, not only by His active obedience to all of its mandates, but by His passive obedience, satisfying the violated law in the vicarious atonement which He made by His substitutionary death in our room and stead. When you seek justification by works, you are depending on your own obedience, which is “filthy rags in the sight of God” — a miserable and irretrievable breakdown. When we are justified by faith we lay hold of Christ, our glorious substitute, who has perfectly satisfied the law both actively and passively in every respect. Consequently we have victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil, in time and in eternity.

CHAPTER - THE EVOLUTION OF THE REDEMPTIVE SCHEME OUT OF THE ABRAHAMIC COVENANT 1. “Then what we say that Abraham, our father according to the flesh, hath found? 2. “For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath boasting, but not before God.” The covenant which God stipulated with Abraham is identical with the covenant of redemption which he made with His Son in heaven, pursuant to which the mediatorial, involving the redemption of the world, was launched ( Galatians 3:16). This covenant two thousand years subsequently God renewed and confirmed with Abraham, being ultimately verified in the incarnation of Christ and ratified by His atoning blood. It was pertinent that God should elucidate the plan of salvation by the stipulation of the mediatorial covenant with some human being, who should give it notoriety and thus normally receive the paternity of faith on the earth.

This glorious honor, in His wisdom, God conferred on Abraham. The very fact that the Abrahamic is identical with the mediatorial covenant involves the conclusion that human salvation is restricted to that covenant. Hence we see that all the people who seek justification by works are without hope, because out of harmony with Abraham, who was justified by faith alone without works. Hence the utter and hopeless futility of all the legalistic systems, which, like fallen Judaism, have girdled the globe for ages. “For what saith the Scripture? But Abraham believed God and it was imputed unto him for righteousness” ( Genesis 15:6). 4. “But to him that worketh the reward is not reckoned according to grace, but according to indebtedness; 5. “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him who justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” This argument is so plain, clear and explicit that he who runs may read and not be mistaken. Here Paul so utterly annihilates all the dogmas of justification by water baptism, sacraments, legal obedience, church rites, priestcraft, prelacy, popery or ecclesiastical loyalty as to put the gainsayer in the awful attitude of flatly contradicting God Almighty. How strange that people reading these plain and unequivocal statements of the Holy Ghost, by which they are to be judged in the great day, can still swallow down Satan’s lies, proclaimed from fallen pulpits, and go off after legalistic rites, vainly seeking justification where they will never find it. In order to set this matter clear and unequivocal, God actually justified Abraham twenty-four years before he became a member of the visible church, or received circumcision, lest somebody might be stupid enough to identify justification with legal obedience. Now, remember, if you are not identified with the Abrahamic covenant, you have no interest in Christ ( Galatians 3:29). If you are a bona fide member of that covenant you are justified by faith alone, without works, like Abraham, whom God converted through faith alone twentyfour years before he received a solitary church ordinance. If you do not belong to the faithful paternity of Abraham, you have no participation in the Fatherhood of God, but, on the contrary, you are a child of the devil ( John 8:44), with all your boasted church membership and legal obedience. 6. “Therefore indeed David speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom God imputeth righteousness without works [ Psalm 31]: 7. “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered, 8. “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord may not impute sin. 9. “Therefore cometh this blessedness on the circumcision, or indeed upon the uncircumcision? For we say, that faith was imputed unto Abraham for righteousness. 10. “How then was it imputed? to him being in circumcision or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision.” This is a continued evolution of this wonderful and unanswerable Pauline argument, actually the most prolix in all the Bible, confirmatory of justification full and free for all the world by the free grace of God in Christ, received and appropriated by faith alone, without work of law. The very fact that this took place in the case of Abraham twenty four years before the organization of the visible church in his house, teaches us a grand and impressive lesson; i .e ., that God in His infallible administration, by putting twenty-four years between the two transactions, forever annihilates the possibility of their identification by sensible, honest people. What an awful job the devil has on his hands to prove the essentiality of water baptism or any other church ordinance to justification, when Abraham, God’s paragon saint and the representative of every other, was justified by the free grace of God in Christ twenty-four years before he received a church ordinance! I know there is a disposition on the part of many superficial, bogus theologians flippantly to pass over the Abrahamic covenant. This is wholesale murder, because Abraham had no covenant, but was simply the recipient of the renovation of the Messianic covenant by which the world is redeemed.

Hence the Scriptures positively identify the Abrahamic with the Mediatorial covenant. Then, if you are not justified like Abraham, becoming one of his legitimate spiritual posterity, you have no interest in Christ ( Galatians 3:25). Mark this long quotation from the Psalms of David, descriptive of God’s “blessed man,” whose sins are covered, and to whom he does not impute iniquity. If it turns out that you are not that “blessed man,” the devil gets you to an absolute certainty, whether in the pulpit, the pew or the world. Now you see clearly how Paul identifies this “blessed man” with the Abrahamic covenant, because he is justified by faith alone, without works, like father Abraham, who actually got converted twenty-four years before he was baptized. Do not forget the inspired epithet, “blessed,” which God applies to the man who, like Abraham, is justified by faith without legal obedience. “Blessed” literally means “happy.” You take the poor legalists, all round, and you find anything but a happy people. They are blue as indigo. It is a regular long-faced Christianity — Satan’s counterfeit. Take the people who have nothing but Jesus and depend on nothing but God, and you will find “happy” pilgrims every time. That is the reason why Satan’s legalistic church members can not keep away from theaters, dances, card tables, circuses, horse races and saloons. It is because they have no happiness in their religion. Hence they have to go to the devil for joy to keep them from dying of the blues. There is nothing in the Abrahamic covenant but Jesus. Hence the children of father Abraham are a jolly set. 11. “And he received the sign of circumcision, the seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had in uncircumcision, that he should be the father of all those believing through uncircumcision, that righteousness may be imputed to them: 12. “And the father of circumcision not only to them who walk in the tracks of the faith of our father Abraham which he had in uncircumcision.” We see here that the normal attitude of Abraham’s children is in uncircumcision, as he was converted twenty-four years before he entered the visible church. Here we have it revealed that salvation is only for those who walk in the steps of Abraham, i .e ., get justified by faith alone. These belong to class number one, i .e ., the normal children of Abraham. In the second place, provision is made for those who belong to the circumcision, i .e ., the visible church, that they may also come into the covenant by faith and become the children of Abraham if they will walk in the steps of that faith which he had in uncircumcision. Hence we see the preeminence in the covenant is given to those who get converted before they join the church. It is a mistake to receive the unconverted into the visible church, lest they may lean on it and stop short of experimental salvation, and in that case lose their souls. I joined the church before I was converted, God showing me mercy and leading me on into an intelligent experience, though Satan did his utmost to get me to rest in church membership.

MILLENNIUM 13. “For the promise to Abraham and his seed, that he should be the heir of the world, was not through the works, but through the righteousness of faith.” The covenant with Abraham was simply the renovation of the Messianic ( Galatians 3:16), by which Christ purchased this world with His blood. Hence it is here stated that Abraham is to inherit the world. A title made to a man is valid to his children forever. Hence Abraham’s seed, i .e ., Christ, is to inherit the whole earth in the millennium, in due time renovated, and possess it forever. Hence, if you would be a member of the glorified Bridehood and reign with Christ a thousand years ( Revelation 20:4-6), you must be a child of Abraham. Hence it is positively specified that this inheritance is not through the law, i .e ., you do not get it by good works, but through faith. 14. “For if the heirs were from the law, faith is made empty and the promise of none effect.” The great promise which God made to Abraham to redeem the world by the gift of His Son, which was utterly unnecessary if they could be saved by legal obedience. The law was here four thousand years before Christ came; there was plenty of water to baptize people, and every other conceivable facility of legal obedience. Therefore if salvation had been possible through the law, the condescension and death of Christ were unnecessary, null and void. The utter incompetency of fallen humanity to be saved in any other way superinduced the absolute necessity for Christ to come and die, thus redeeming us from sin, death and hell. Hence legalism is so abominable in the sight of God; from the ostensible fact that it treats with contempt the vicarious atonement which cost the life of His Son. 15. “For the law worketh out wrath; for where is no law, there is no transgression.” While the law is perfectly pure and holy, yet it is utterly incapable of love and mercy. All it can do is to condemn the criminal.

Hence the silly nonsense of salvation by obedience, which could only turn over the whole human race to endless punishment. The law is the exponent of the penalty, and must be prefinite to all transgression. 16. “There it is by faith, in order that it may be by grace, that the promise may be sure to all the seed, not only to those who are of the law, but to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.” “Seed” here means all truly elect in Christ, i .e ., all who will be saved by the atonement in all ages. You see that faith and grace are counterparts of the same plan of salvation, i .e ., the antithetical hemispheres of the same glorious globe of human redemption. Hence, like Siamese twins, they must live and die together. Hence you see legalism nullifies the grace of God and slights the whole scheme of redemption. If salvation had been by works, the thief on the cross might have been left out. Millions of people die out of reach of interceding priests and water baptism; yet they are not beyond the reach of God’s redeeming grace. The elect of God are, in all nations and ages, indiscriminately dispersed in all the earth. Grace reaches every one of them utterly independent of human instrumentality. God can use anything or nothing in the salvation of souls. Faith is the human side of the glorious plan, and grace the divine side. The former is coexistent with humanity and the latter with God. Hence the silly pusillanimity of laying a human embargo on the divine prerogative. 17. “As has been written, that I have made thee a father of many nations.” What a wonderful honor is the Abrahamic paternity! Just as God is the spiritual Father of all the saved of all ages and nations, i .e ., all the elect who avail themselves of the redemption in Christ, so God renovated the mediatorial covenant with Abraham, which He made with Christ to redeem the world, before the Fall, thus honoring Abraham as His “friend,” making him the human representative in the covenant of redemption, complimenting him with the fatherhood of the faithful, i .e ., the elect, the saved of all ages and nations. This transaction with Abraham is of infinite value to us all, because in his case we have an illustrative example, setting forth the human side of the gracious economy. What is it? Oh, how plain and simple!

Wayfaring men, though fools, can not err therein.” We are saved by grace through faith alone. What is grace? It is the free gift of God in Christ, saving all who will receive Him. What is faith? It is the hand which you reach out and receive Christ, i .e ., you just take God at His word and believe His wonderful promises. Is this all? Certainly it is all. Abraham is our illustrative example. We are to be saved precisely as he was, otherwise we have no interest in Christ ( Galatians 3:29). How was he justified? “He believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness, i .e ., justification ( Genesis 15:6). This took place twenty-five years before he received circumcision, i .e ., joined the church; but some one might think baptism, sacrament, or church membership had something to do with his salvation. It is true, long after he was saved by grace through faith alone, he became a paragon church member, which was all right in its place, i .e ., the school of Christ, but never did have anything to do with personal salvation, which is the work of God alone, and consequently through faith alone.

Grace being the divine and faith the human, they are counter hemispheres of the same globe of salvation! Hence, grace alone means faith alone. The devil rages over faith alone, because it knocks out the pope and the priest and smashes his arrangements generally, giving God all the glory.

Whenever you poke in water baptism or anything else to help God save a soul, you offer Him a downright insult and plunge into idolatry, because He turns away with disgust and leaves you and the water god to work the matter out. The very insinuation that God needs any help to save a soul is a blasphemous insult to His majesty. “Before God whom he believed, who createth life in the dead and calleth things which are not as though they are.”

When God made the covenant with Abraham, He saw every soul that would ever be saved standing before Him, and conferred on that patriarch the faithful paternity of that mighty host, assuring him, “In thy seed, i .e ., Christ, shall the families of the earth be blessed.” That fulfillment is yet future, reserved for the millennium, when Satan will be cast out and Jesus reign in every home on the face of the whole earth, when Abraham’s family will girdle the globe, verifying God’s promise that he shall inherit the world. What a memorable transaction, when God revealed to Abraham his family enveloping the whole earth and possessing it without a rival! The Jews and Mohammedans, uncompromising rivals either to other, have fought, bled and died to appropriate the blessings of the Abrahamic covenant, which never were restricted to any race or church, but were always universal as the mercies of God covenanted in Christ, reaching every faithful soul in all ages and nations, regardless of creed, race, or color. 18. “Who against hope believed, pursuant to hope that he should be the father of many nations according to that which had been spoken, So shall thy seed be. 19. “And not being weak in faith, he considered not his own body already dead, being a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb: 20. “And he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but was filled up with dynamite through faith, giving glory to God, 21. “Truly being fully assured that God is able to perform that which he has promised.” Of course the whole plan of salvation must be ratified by the incarnation of Christ, and this covenant sealed by His precious blood, without which the scheme of redemption must collapse forever.

Consequently the grand salient fact in the Abrahamic covenant is the Messianic incarnation and the progenitorship of Christ in his family. At this point all natural possibilities take their everlasting flight, permanently superseded by the supernatural, in view of the physical impossibilities of natural posterity, arising from the fact that both Abraham and Sarah had long passed the age of fertility. This fact clearly illustrates the supernaturalism indispensable to all genuine saving faith; as none but the children of Abraham have part in the covenant of redemption. Hence it is only the faith supernaturally inspired by the Holy Ghost that can make you a son of Abraham and an heir of the promised redemption. That is the reason why true faith has always been a scarce article in this wicked world. “Moreover then the Son of man having come, shall he find faith on the earth?” ( Luke 18:8).

The answer is in the negative. The faithful people having been taken up in the rapture, when the Lord comes in His awful pre-millennial judgments on a wicked world and fallen church, He will not find true faith in all the earth.

This is the grand salient point in the plan of salvation, faith being the great fundamental grace underlying the superstructure and appropriating the benefits of the redemptive scheme involved in the Abrahamic covenant. Oh, how Satan counterfeits human faith, eliminating the supernatural and leaving it a loathsome old corpse ( James 2:26). Unless the Holy Ghost inspire in the soul this super natural faith such as Abraham had, you never can be one of his children, a participant of the redemption in Christ ( Galatians 3:29). Without this inspired supernatural faith you will always be “staggering” at the promises of God. Now, remember that, if you would be saved, you must walk in the steps of Abraham (5:12), who not only “staggered not at the promises of God through unbelief, but was filled up with dynamite through faith.” The peculiarity of natural faith, which is Satan’s counterfeit, is its destitution of the dynamite which the Holy Ghost alone can give, constituting the supernatural in justifying and sanctifying faith. Here we read that Abraham not only believed the promises of God which contradicted the laws of nature relative to the incarnation, but being so inundated with the dynamite of supernatural faith, he actually leaped for joy, giving glory to God. Hence, if you would be a son of Abraham, you must have that supernatural faith which so fills you up with spiritual dynamite that you not only triumph over all unbelief, but laugh at impossibilities and give glory to God, counting His promises already done without any visible manifestations of the fact, as Abraham without the shadow of a doubt leaped for joy in anticipation of His Omnipotent Son, the world’s Redeemer, two thousand years before the angels sang their gaudeamus over the manger of Bethlehem. 23. “But it was not written for the sake of him alone that it was imputed unto him, 24. “But truly for the sake of us unto whom he is about to impute it,” i .e ., “to those who believed on him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead.” You see from these Scriptures that we are justified precisely like Father Abraham. Oh, how simple! He just believed God, and it was counted unto him for justification. Here it is positively specified that it was not written for the sake of Him alone, but for us, that we may know how to be saved. People are constantly stumbling over the very simplicity of God’s saving grace. Satan is constantly decoying us away after big things, lest we believe the simple truth of God and be saved. 25. “Who was delivered for our transgressions and arose for our justification.” Christ became our literal, actual, vicarious substitute, taking our place, dying in our room and stead. While He thus paid the penalty and redeemed every son and daughter of Adam’s ruined race, so perfectly and satisfactorily as to preclude all necessity of human condemnation, thus actually blockading hell against the ingress of every soul, and opening the pearly gates, with angelic shouts welcoming every poor victim of sin and sorrow to the fadeless glories of the heavenly hope, yet redemption is one thing and our participation of redeeming grace quite another. The latter we can not only secure through faith in the promises of God, unbelief climaxing an eternal forfeiture. Many have appeared on the earth claiming to be Christ, but they all fail to rise from the dead. The resurrection of Christ is the grand Archimedean lever inspiring universal faith in His Christhood.

CHAPTER - 1. “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” This verse assumes the hortatory form, urging us up, in view of the wonderful simplicity and feasibility of justification by faith, that we all avail ourselves of the glorious privilege to enjoy perfect peace and reconciliation with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. If Abraham and his contemporaries in a moonlight dispensation could have such a victory through anticipatory faith, apprehending the promises and appropriating the vicarious atonement, how infinitely brighter should be the victory of our faith, walking in the cloudless light of the glorious Son of righteousness, who is already risen on the world with healing in His wings, flooding the whole earth with the transcendent effulgence of the historic incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension!

SANCTIFICATION 2. “Through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and let us rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” The pronoun “this” is emphatic in this verse, indicative of progress in the school of faith reaching terra firma , i .e ., establishing grace where we hold our ground, no longer retrogressing nor wavering through unbelief, doubt having been eliminated and faith moving forward with the tread of a giant. Consequently we are again exhorted, not simply as in the preceding verse to have peace with God, but to “rejoice in hope of the glory of God,” as we have now climbed so high up the Delectable Mountains as to enjoy a conspicuous and inspiring view of the Celestial City, if we will look through the telescope of doubtless faith. The hortatory phase of these beautiful climaxes in the three first verses of this chapter does not appear in E.V., which has the indicative mood of these verbs, the original being in the subjunctive. The fact is, Paul is here leading us on and upward, beginning with clear Abrahamic justification by faith alone, and moving on into the richer and more glorious experience of entire sanctification, followed by the climacteric establishing graces of the Holy Spirit. 3. “And not only so, but let us indeed glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation worketh out endurance.” Tribulation is from the Latin tribulum which means the flail with which the farmer in olden time thrashed. Hence the pertinency of this reference to Satan beating us over the head, back, and limbs like the farmer beating out his wheat. We are exhorted to rejoice in all this because God will overrule it to our good, making it an exceedingly valuable means of grace in perfecting our susceptibility of enduring all the hardships, rebuffs, disappointments, troubles and trials which the enemy can bring against us, thus developing a most invaluable qualification for the immeasurable responsibility awaiting us in boundless eternity. 4. “And endurance, approval,” i .e ., this indefatigable endurance of all the abuses and persecutions which Satan can possibly turn on us is the very thing to work out the divine approval of our hardihood, fidelity, loyalty and heroism — a most profitable curriculum in the school of Christ. “And approval hope,” i .e ., this divine approval of our endurance in all the troubles, trials and persecutions amid this vile God-forgetting and Satanridden world, is the great salient confirmation of our heavenly hope, actually working it out and making it a glorious eternal verity. 5. “But hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who has been given unto us.” Here is a beautiful reference to the gift of the Holy Ghost to the disciples on the day of Pentecost, when the Son of God poured Him out on them from heaven, gloriously sanctifying and filling them with the blessed Holy Spirit, inundating them with perfect love casting out all fear and shame. “Shed abroad” in E.V. is wrong, the translators following the Latin, which in this passage has diffusa, whereas it should be effusa . “Shed abroad” is only an incorrect translation of the Greek ekkechutai from ek , “out,” and cheoo , “pour,” simply meaning to pour out; but it is illusory, involving the idea that the love is already in the heart, and is merely diffused abroad, which might consist with philia , human love, which is indigenous in fallen humanity, and utterly graceless, being simply carnal affection peculiar to the unregenerate, not only in this world but, as we see in the case of Dives, in the world to come, who even in the flames of hell loved his brethren so that he wanted to send them a missionary to save their souls. The word here is agape , divine love, which is the nature of God ( 1 John 4), and imparted to us by the Holy Ghost in regeneration, making us “partakers of the divine nature.” The reference in this passage is really to the sanctified experience, because it speaks of the “Holy Ghost having been given unto us,” which is none other than the Pentecostal experience here beautifully described in verses 2-5. 6. “For we being yet without strength, yet in due time Christ died for us: 7. “For scarcely will one die for a righteous man: for in behalf of a good man one even dares to die: 8. “And God commendeth his love toward us because we being yet sinners, Christ died for us.” A good man, in the primary sense, is one who never sinned. Hence in this original sense it applies to Christ only. In case of the rich young man who called Him good master,” and to whom He responded, “Why callest thou me good? for there is none good but one, and that is God,” many persons erroneously think that our Savior refused to be called good, referring to this passage as an argument against the possibility of entire sanctification in this life. They utterly misapprehend the whole matter. Our Savior did not refuse to be called good, but simply turned the young man’s appellation, “calling him good master,” into a confession of His divinity: “You call me good, and such I am. Now as there is none good but God, do you not see that you have recognized my divinity, calling me God?” While in this primary sense no fallen beings are good, yet there is a gracious possibility for us all to be righteous and holy, from the fact that a righteous man is simply a pardoned sinner, and a holy man a purified sinner. The case was an extreme one. If a good man were on the earth, such would be his glory and majesty that some one might die for him, while it is scarcely Probable that any one would die for a righteous man, i .e ., a pardoned sinner; but Jesus even died not only for people utterly destitute of any resources or commendation, but even His enemies. 9. “Then how much more now, being justified in his blood, shall we be saved from wrath through him. 10. “For if we, being enemies, were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, being reconciled, should we be saved by his life. 11. “And not only so, but rejoicing in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have received reconciliation.” Salvation is double. Since Satan captured the whole world in view of adding it to hell, our normal place under the law is condemnation and hell. Christ does a double work.

He negatively saves us from hell by paying our penalty, and thus blockading hell with His crucified body. This is glorious, but not enough.

We also need a positive salvation to prepare us for heaven. Hence, we preach the crucified, i .e ., the dead Christ, to the sinner, his atoning substitute who pays his debt, blockades hell, and keeps him out. Hence, the sinner is justified by the dead Christ, who takes his place under the law. “Then if we are reconciled by his death” — there is justification by the crucified Christ — “how much more shall we be saved by his life?” Here comes in the glorious, positive side of the redemptive scheme, including regeneration and sanctification, the mighty works of the living Christ through the Holy Ghost. The a fortiori argument occurs here (9-21), evolved in a series of climaxes, set forth in the repetitions of the adverb “much more,” contrasting Adam the First with Adam the Second, the former being the ruin and the latter the redemption. 12. “Therefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, so death came upon all men, in that all sinned.” Not “have sinned” as E.V., which would involve personal responsibility, condemning the infants; but “sinned,” the imperfect tense, does not involve personality, but simply implies that all sinned seminally in Adam when he fell, as all were in him, the only one created, including all humanity in all ages. 13, 14. “For until the law, sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed, there being no law; but death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the type of him who is to come.” Here is an allusion to the infants, idiots and heathens who did not sin after the manner of Adam, i .e ., break a known law; yet they all died physically, thus paying the penalty and showing to all the world their guilt in a sense, i .e ., corroborating the above conclusion that all sinned seminally in Adam. How was Adam the type of Christ? Only representatively. Both Adam and Christ represent the entire human race.

This is so fortunate for us. We all failed in Adam; but we all have a second chance in Christ; otherwise we must have gone like the fallen angels ( Jude 6) to abide in adamantine chains and penal fires forever. 15. “Not as the offense so is also the free gift; for if by the offense of one many died, much more the grace of God and the gift in the grace of the one man Jesus Christ abounded unto the many.” We have here the Greek phrase “the many,” in both cases used in a superlative sense. The simple meaning is, all died in Adam and all live in Christ ( 1 Corinthians 15:22), i .e ., all died seminally in Adam and all live personally in Christ. When? “Except every one be born from above (not again) he can not see the kingdom of God” ( John 3:5).

Here we see the absolute necessity of the new life on the part of every human being who shall enter God’s kingdom. “He tasted death for every one” ( Hebrews 2:9), not “every man” as E.V. Christ not only certifies that all infants are in the kingdom, but holds them up as paragon members ( Matthew 18). The prodigal son was born in his Father’s house, i .e ., in the kingdom of God. Hence all are born there, as humanity is uniform.

Then when do we pass out of Adam into Christ? The moment soul and body united constitute personality, i .e ., in the prenatal state, we are “born from above,” before we are born physically. The fall of Adam is seminal and the redemption of Christ personal. Hence all are fallen in Adam and redeemed in Christ. The death penalty of Adam’s transgression is physical, spiritual and eternal. 16. “And not as by the one that sinned is the free gift; for judgment is from one unto condemnation, and the free gift from many transgressions unto justification.” This verse confirms the fact the two Adams in their representative characters are parallel lines, running through time and all eternity. All we lost in Adam we gained in Christ and infinitely more, as Christ is infinitesimally greater than Adam. 17. “For if through the offense of one death reigned through one, how much more shall those receiving abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.” Through Adam the First death swept the world; through Adam the Second we not only have the full restitution, but an infinitely better state than before the Fall. 18. “Then as by the offense of one it was unto all men to condemnation, so indeed by the righteousness of one it was unto all men unto the justification of life.” This is perfectly clear on the universal ruin through Adam in the Fall, and the universal redemption through Christ in the Mediatorial Kingdom, the only trouble arising from the fact that we are all free and liable to sin and fall under condemnation at any time till our probation ends.

The Adamic ruin is seminal; the redemption of Christ, personal. 19. “For as by the offense of one man the many were made sinners, so also by the obedience of one man the many shall be made righteous.” This verse clearly and unmistakably again affirms the parallelism of the two Adams, assuring us that what we lost in the one we gain in the other. 20. “The law came that sin may abound.” The law is perfectly pure and holy and could not have any affinity with sin. Yet when the law is disobeyed it awfully augments the guilt of sin. “But where sin did abound, there did grace much more abound.” Not only does Christ repair all the evil wrought by the Fall, but to those who are true to Him, He makes all things work together for good.” So all of our enemies are transformed into vehicles of blessing. This paragraph is replete with fundamental theology, setting forth the utter and universal ruin of the Fall and the complete, glorious and superabundant restitution of the redemptive scheme. 21. “And as sin reigned unto death, so may grace also reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” In these Scriptures the doctrine of total depravity is established beyond the possibility of cavil. “Total” means entire. Depravity means a state in which we are deprived of something, i .e ., life. Hence total depravity means deprivation of spiritual life. How we have it repeated here that all are dead in Adam, our federal head. When God calls a thing dead, there is no life in it. Hence the whole human race lost spiritual life in the Fall, and are all in Adam totally depraved. It is equally true that we all receive spiritual life in Christ, in both cases normally and independent of our will. As the Pall is universal, the redemption is equally so. Hence the gracious possibility for every soul to be saved in heaven. By the grace of Christ we are born in His kingdom, and only get out by sinning out, as in case of the prodigal son, who might, like his older brother, have stayed in the father’s house.

Doubtless the bitterest anguish of the damned in hell will be the awful reminiscence, “The Son of God redeemed me, and purchased heaven for me. I went to hell like a fool, having no plausible excuse for my damnation!” Meanwhile devils will berate you and say, “If we had been redeemed like you, we would not be here, but shouting with the angels.”

This horrific reminiscence of heaven and eternal glory purchased for them freely by the Son of God and available at their option, but foolishly and brutally rejected and depreciated, will hunt the damned with the black ghosts of inextinguishable memory through the flight of eternal ages. The Pauline climax of this “much-more” argument is simply transcendent. Here we have the two Adams representing the whole human race — the one in sin and death, the Other in life and holiness. Well does he give the infinite pre-eminence to the Latter. Why? The first Adam who brought sin into the world was only a man like myself; the second Adam, who proposes to take it out, is not only a man, but the Omnipotent God. Hence, well does he say, “Where sin did abound, there did grace much more abound.” While sin is great, grace is infinitely greater. What a grand inspiration to every sinner to escape from Adam, who has nothing but sin and ruin, to Christ, who has a superabundance of grace, glory and heaven forever.

CHAPTER - ENTIRE SANCTIFICATION The Pauline argument on justification by the free grace of God in Christ, received and appropriated by faith alone, pursuant to the Messianic covenant, which God renewed with Abraham, honoring him with the paternity of faith, antithetical to the Divine paternity of grace — faith and grace being counterparts of the same glorious plan, representing respectively the human and divine side — is the most elaborate in all the Bible, beginning with verse 19, Chapter 3, and closing with Chapter 5, in that irresistible, sweeping conclusion exultantly triumphing in the transcendent, superabounding grace of Adam the Second, who has swept every conceivable difficulty from the field, defeated sin, death and hell, and thrown wide open the pearly gates and issued His royal amnesty proclamation to the ends of the earth, offering to every fallen son and daughter of Adam’s race grace and glory, world without end, without money and without price. Following this sledge-hammer logic on justification, he now takes hold of the sin-principle, goes down into the subterranean regions of the soul and shows up its utter eradication by the omnipotent grace of Adam the Second. 1. “Then what shall we say? Must we abide in sin in order that grace may abound?” Here Paul takes by the throat this hell-hatched, hackneyed argument of the carnal preachers, i .e ., that God is glorified by inbred sin abiding in us to keep us humble and magnify the grace of God by forgiving us when we are overcome by the tempter and yield and sin. He literally eradicates and annihilates this silly Satanic argument, setting out with a flat denial. 2. “It could not be so.” Not as E.V., “God forbid,” which is a strong imprecation, but as the Greek gives it, a positive and unequivocal denial.

Hence the advocates of this carnal dogma (and their name is legion) are forced into the attitude of flatly contradicting Paul and the Holy Ghost. “How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?” Sin is conquered and bound in regeneration, but killed in sanctification. Hence a truly sanctified man can no more commit sin than a dead man lying in his grave can rise up and throw rocks at the passers by. You must remember the Bible is a common-sense book. While sin is dead in me and I can not commit it, yet it is I can commit sin, and if I do not watch and pray, I will. Why? though sin is dead the devil its author is not dead. Armies of demons throng the air ready every moment to put sin back in the heart after it has been destroyed.

The house can not burn down, because there is no fire in it. Yet it can burn down, because the incendiaries are lurking round seeking an opportunity to burn it. Good Lord, save us from rushing into foolish, irrelevant conclusions! So long as we are in this world we are in the enemy’s land, liable at any moment to be attacked and killed. This world is no “friend to grace to help us on to God.” Yet it is literally and positively true, as here we have it stated, that Adam the Second is more than a match for Adam the First, and ready to slay him in a moment pursuant to your consecration and faith. 3. “Do you not know that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?” While there is a beautiful symbolism in water baptism, typifying the baptism of the Holy Spirit by which sin is exterminated, God forbid that we should run into papistical dogmas of baptismal regeneration by giving a materialistic interpretation to this passage. It does not say “baptized into water,” but “into Jesus Christ.” Hence, the construction of it simply to mean water baptism materializes God and runs into idolatry. This baptism, which is none other than that of the Holy Ghost, actually puts you in Christ, where there is no sin, thus utterly and eternally annihilating sin, as we have indicated by our baptism into His death. Just as Christ died on the cross, so do we die to sin in this baptism, when by the Holy Ghost we are baptized into the death of Christ, when we are as free from sin as the dead body of Jesus was from life while lying in the tomb. 4. “Therefore we have been buried along with him through baptism into death.” We find here that the baptism is the agent who executes the work of the burial into the death, which means the atonement of Christ, which is the receptacle of all sin which escapes damnation; i .e ., every old man of sin must either be buried into the atonement of Christ and be left there forever, or be burned in hell fire world without end. It is astounding that Bible readers identify this baptism with the burial which is positively contradictory of Paul’s plain statement which makes the baptism the undertaker instead of the interment. “In order that, as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so may we also walk in newness of life.” Here we see that the resurrection must be homogeneous to the interment, being performed by the omnipotent power of the Holy Spirit, who raised the body of Christ from the dead. Therefore it follows as a logical sequence that the Holy Ghost Himself is the agent in both operations, i .e ., the internment and the resurrection, thus clearly and demonstratively proving that this is none other than the baptism of the Holy Ghost slaying the man of sin and burying him forever into the death of Christ, the only receptacle of sin as an alternative of hell. When this old body of sin is thus forever removed, eternally buried in the death of Christ, the new man, having been resurrected in regeneration, now utterly disencumbered and free, walks on forever with God in “newness of life.” We must bear in mind that water is not mentioned in this chapter, while all the language is homogeneous with the baptism of the Spirit and out of harmony with a material transaction. If your conscience demands baptism by immersion in water, do not hesitate to satisfy your convictions in the beautiful symbolism of the material ordinance. Yet it is exceedingly pertinent that we do not mar this beautiful, clear and demonstrative statement of the supernatural baptism of the Spirit by confounding it with an outward ceremony. The thing buried in this transaction is not your physical body, which is buried in water and baptized by immersion, and the same identical body immediately raised up by the muscular power of the administrator; but that old body of sin, which is invisible and spiritual, having been crucified by the Holy Ghost in sanctification and now buried into the death, i .e ., the atonement of Christ, and left there forever; because if unfortunately Satan raises him up, “the last state is worse than the first.”

Hence we see the utter heterogeneity of two transactions, the internment involving the old man of sin after he has been crucified by the Holy Ghost, putting him down deep into the death of Christ, the exterminator of all sin, there to abide forever; while the new man, the son of God, created in the heart by the Holy Ghost in regeneration, is raised up to walk in newness of life forever. Hence we see that one thing is buried, so to remain forever. An infinitely different thing is the subject of the resurrection; i .e ., the old man, the son of the devil, is the subject of the interment; and the new man, the son of God, the subject of the resurrection. Hence we see the impertinency in the interpretation of this Scripture as simply applying to water baptism by immersion, in which the same physical body is the subject both of the interment and the resurrection. 5. “For if we have been grown together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection.” “Planted together” in E.V. is wrong (see R.V.), the translators mistaking sumphuoo , grow together,” for sumphuteuoo , “plant together.” Hence the true reading is, “we have been grown together,” a beautiful allusion to frugiculture, in which the graft, having been inserted into the trunk, grows fast, assimilating itself, and the two becoming organically identical. The fruit-grower supplies his nursery with seedlings whose fruit is utterly worthless, symbolizing the people born into this world in a state of total depravity, bearing fruit which is good for nothing. Then he proceeds to cut down these seedlings, at the same time grafting into each trunk the scion which produces the good fruit he proposes to cultivate for the market. This is regeneration, each branch growing fast to the trunk and bearing fruit. If these trees remain in the nursery, they will be stunted and dwarfed for want of room and prove a failure. Therefore they must be transplanted into the orchard, putting each one off alone where it has plenty of room to grow and develop; meanwhile, the strong winds beating against it, no longer protected by its comrades in the nursery, bend it hither and thither, circulating the sap, and keeping it from becoming bark-bound, and at the same time loosening up the roots so they can penetrate deep down into the earth and lap around the great rocks, thus holding it steadfast amid all the storms, the roots penetrating into deeper depths, running far out, and absorbing new fields of fertility, while the branches mount high and spread out, bearing an abundance of delicious fruits, making glad many hearts. This is the sanctified experience contemplated in this beautiful metaphor. 6. “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified, in order that the body of sin may be destroyed, that we may no longer serve sin.” Here we have the golden key which unlocks all the mystery involved in this profoundly interesting, though much controverted, paragraph. Paul is grand in the utilization of illustrative metaphors, using the term “man” in quite a diversity of significations; e .g ., “new man,” indicating the new creation wrought in the heart by the Holy Ghost in regeneration, also synonymous with inner man” ( 2 Corinthians 4:15), and the “hidden man of the heart” ( 1 Peter 3:4), the “outer man,” meaning simply the physical body, and destitute of spiritual signification; while he actually, in a diversity of phraseology, rings changes on the “old man of sin” throughout all of his writings, everywhere thus symbolically alluding to the old Adam, i .e ., the fallen nature, the corrupt tendency transmitted to us and hereditary from the Fall. This “old man” does not mean our personal sins, which are not as old as we are, but original sin, which is as old as Adam’s transgression; and therefore so pertinently denominated the “old man.” You see here that this old man is crucified, i .e ., killed dead. The burial here described is the legitimate counterpart of the crucifixion, consistently carrying out the metaphor pursuant to the legitimate logical sequence that the dead are to be buried. Then, if you want to know what is buried in this transaction, you have only to ascertain what is dead. You see it is that old crucified man, now a loathsome dead corpse, and must be buried out of sight, there to remain forever. There is only one place to bury this body in case that the soul is saved, and that is the death of Christ, the vicarious atonement, the “Fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Immanuel’s veins; And sinners plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains.” In case of the wicked, this old man of sin is buried in hell-fire; while in the experience of the saved he receives interment into the death of Christ, there to abide forever actually exterminated. Is this crucifixion gradual or instantaneous? When the poor victim is nailed to the cross, he gradually suffers and bleeds his life away, finally dying suddenly in a moment. One moment there is life in him, and not yet dead. The next moment life has actually ebbed away, and he is dead as the bones in Ezekiel’s vision. The instantaneity and completeness of the crucifixion is here settled beyond the possibility of cavil, revealed by the Holy Ghost in the aorist tense peculiar to the Greek language alone, and made by the Holy Ghost to reveal His own mighty work. Sanctification throughout the New Testament is constantly revealed by this tense. While a gradual work precedes and another follows sanctification, yet the work itself is instantaneous. While regeneration is birth, sanctification is the death of the old man. Do you not know that death is always sudden? I was well acquainted for forty years with a man who was a hopeless consumptive, been given up by all physicians to die at the beginning of that period. Yet he lived on the forty years, through all the time the same hopeless consumptive, and finally died as suddenly as the tick of the clock. The burial which follows the death, putting away the corpse out of sight permanently to abide in its final resting place (for there is no resurrection in this case, unless you let the devil raise him and ruin everything), indicates the settlement of the sanctified in the permanent and growing experience of holiness. “That the body of sin may be destroyed.” This statement of the Holy Spirit is an additional confirmation of the grand and glorious work of God in sin’s utter extermination. How honest Bible readers can pass superficially over this and still believe in the necessary survival of the old man in the heart till corporeal death, I can not see. I defy the scholarship of the world to formulate a statement more clearly conclusive of extermination than this, which we have from Paul’s infallible pen. The word “destroyed” here is also in the aorist tense, indicating a complete work, and precluding the possibility of survival. Oh, how hard it is to get people to believe the mighty works of God! We so naturally look upon His work from a human standpoint, forgetting that it is as easy for Omnipotence to create a world as to precipitate a snowflake from a passing cloud. How pertinent that we pray, “Lord, increase our faith.” 7. “For the one having died has been made free from sin,” i .e ., the person who has “died to sin,” as above described, i .e ., “had the old man crucified,” and the “body of sin destroyed.” “Has been made free from sin,” fully and literally translated, giving the force of the Greek perfect, would read, “Has been made free from sin, and more so now than ever.”

Whereas the English definition of the perfect tense is an action completed in past time, developing a state continuing down to the present; the Greek has the same definition, but always lays the emphasis on the present, the English putting it on the past, thus giving a wonderful force to the revealed truth on Christian experience; e .g ., Hebrews 10:10, “By whose will we have been sanctified by the offering of the body of Christ once, and have it yet better than ever.” This verse 7 we are now investigating has been appropriated by Universalists to refute the future punishment of the wicked, deducing from it the conclusion that physical death liberates all from sin.

This construction is utterly untrue, since the apostle is not speaking of the physical man at all, but the spiritual, throughout the entire argument. This verse follows the sixth as a legitimate corollary from the death of the old man and the destruction of the body of sin. Of course in that case the person having experienced the actual death of sin has been made free from it. There is a rattlesnake on your premises, much to your annoyance and danger.

That venomous monster is not only killed, but taken away and buried deep in the earth, there to remain forever. Of course you are now free from the presence, alarm, and peril of the monster, and will so remain forever. This monster is inbred sin. Jesus wants to kill him and utterly put him away forever, thus making you free from sin. 8. “But if we died along with Christ, we believe that we shall live along with him, 9. “Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more: death hath no more dominion over him.” We are here portrayed, by the inspired apostle, going with Christ to Calvary and there being nailed to the cross and crucified with Him. None but disciples of Christ go to heaven. If you would be His disciple you must follow Him in the great salient facts of His personal experience. You must follow Him to the manger and be born of the Spirit in utter obscurity and contempt of the world. You must follow Him to the Jordan and receive the Holy Ghost descending on you and filling you. You must follow Him as He climbs Mount Calvary, and there be nailed to the cross, bleed and die as He did. You must also follow Him in His glorious resurrection, transfiguration and triumphant ascension.

After Christ had died He had the perfect and eternal victory over death. All the powers of the Roman Empire could never have killed Him again. Just so this wonderful experience of entire sanctification, crucifying the old man and burying him deep into the atonement, sinking him away into the “sea of forgetfulness,” never to be heard of again, thus “destroying the body of sin,” makes us just as free from sin as Christ was from physical death after He had consummated His work and exhausted all of His resources, so far as He was concerned, becoming powerless as a fleeting shadow. 10. “For in that he died, he died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.” This verse continues to tighten up the preceding argument, confirming more and more the triumphant assurance of the gracious possibility for us to be as free from sin as Christ is from death.

These are paradoxical revelations. Yet we have but to believe and God will see to their verification. 11. “Thus you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.” Hitherto the apostle has been on the divine side presenting the mighty works of God in the destruction of the sin-principle in the human heart. He now turns over to the human side, telling us how to get it. This “reckon” means consider, believe, reason, et cetera . It is a verb in the imperative mood, plural number, and present tense. Good Lord, help us to obey this commandment and “reckon ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin.” See the emphatic adverb “indeed” obliterating every possible doubt.

Now will you do this “reckoning”? Rest assured God will make it good.

When I crossed the Atlantic Ocean the second time, we were confronted by an awful storm five days and nights; no glimpse of sun, moon, nor stars, but mountain billows lashing the clouds and rolling over the ship. We were mid-Ocean, the storm striking us five hundred miles this side Gibraltar and letting up a thousand miles east of New York. Yet our noble ship with her thirty-six boilers shot through the storm like an arrow, landing precisely on time according to the reckoning of those sturdy old German sailors. If human reckoning can be relied on amid ocean storms, certainly we can depend on divine reckoning amid all the storm of probationary life. So you make the reckoning. He who has commanded you to “reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin,” will certainly make the reckoning good by killing sin outright, so dead it will never kick again. Shall I make this reckoning when I know sin is alive in me? Of course, with the painful consciousness that sin is alive in you as big as a rhinoceros, you muster courage to “reckon [it] dead indeed.” You have nothing to do but hold on to the reckoning, shout victory and be true. God, pursuant to your faith, will certainly attend to the death problem. He will kill it. So, to your infinite delight, you will find it is “indeed dead.” 12. “Let not sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey the lusts of the same.” This verse is tersely recapitulatory, dropping, for a moment, back to the unconverted state in which sin reigns in the “mortal body.” In justification sin is conquered and bound preparatory to execution in sanctification (5:6). 13. “Neither permit ye your members arms of unrighteousness unto sin” ; as in that case you will necessarily backslide and go headlong to hell.

Justification is a transition experience, destined either to go on into holiness, consummated by the execution of the “old man,” or by yielding your members as “arms of unrighteousness,” go back into sin and down to hell. “But present yourselves unto God as alive from the dead, and your members as arms of righteousness unto God.” This is an important appeal for entire consecration, which is the human side of sanctification. How pertinent this fervent exhortation after his vivid description of entire sanctification by the crucifixion of the “old man” and the destruction of the “body of sin.” The Jew presented the offering to God by laying it on the altar which sanctified the gift. He had nothing to do with the work of sanctification. That was effected by mere contact with God’s altar. But he must bring the offering and put it on the altar; even so the crucifying of old Adam is not your work, thank God. For you could never do it; but it is the work of Him who hung the heavens upon naught, and flung the stars glittering over the skies; so hurry up and make the consecration. Time is flying and eternity is coming. Consecrate at once and make the reckoning.

Then the louder you shout, the sooner the walls of Jericho will fall. 14. “For sin shall not have dominion over you; because you are not under law, but under grace.” The law has no quarrel with any one but the lawbreaker, i .e ., this old man of sin. Hence, when he is dead, you are as free from the law as if there was no law. When you get rid of everything in your nature that wants to violate the law, you are then just as free from the law as if there were none. In a great city like this (New York), full of policemen, jails, and penitentiaries, I am as free as a bird of paradise. Though I do not know the laws of the city, I have no fear; because I have no longer any disposition to violate any law, human or divine. The four stages, i .e ., sin, law, grace, and glory, appertain to every soul in the transition from earth to heaven. Egypt is sin-vexed, Pharaoh emblematizing the devil! The wilderness is law-land, the law actually thundering forth from Sinai in the wilderness, and given to people who were in covenant relation with God and amenable to His law, yet possessed of inbred sin antagonizing the law, and destined to die verifying the penalty of the violated law. Pursuant to the violated law, old Adam is buried deep in the bottom of the Jordan, and Canaan, grace-land, is entered amid the triumphant shouts which knock down the walls of Jericho. In Egypt we had guilt; in the wilderness, depravity; and in Canaan, infirmity; justification taking us out of bondage, sanctification out of legalism, and finally glorification sweeping away all infirmities and transporting us out of grace into glory. 15. “What then? May we sin because we are not under law, but under grace? It could not be so.” This is one of Satan’s heretical phases of sanctification, persuading people that when they are free from the law, they can violate it with impunity. Ever and anon he catches a lot of fanatics on that hook. Well does Paul settle the question summarily by a positive negation. Such a conclusion is preposterously false, from the simple fact that this glorious freedom actually identifies you with the Lawgiver, making you a subordinate in the divine administration, helping God in the maintenance of law and order throughout the universe. Hence the gross incompatibility of the slightest disharmony with the law on your part. The children of the King are free from the law; yet they are the paragon exemplars of legal obedience, conservatism and loyalty. When your will is lost in God’s will, you enjoy the very freedom of God Himself, who is perfectly free to do everything good and nothing bad. This is the very climax of perfect liberty. 16. “Do you not know that to whom ye present yourselves slaves to obedience, ye are slaves to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?” Man is a dependency by nature, All attempts to assume independence have collapsed and ultimated in ruin; i .e ., the Eden independence winding up in the Fall, the Antediluvian in the Flood, the Patriarchal in Egyptian slavery, the Jewish in destruction by the Roman armies; and in the clear light of prophecy the Gentile destined to go the same way, ending in the great tribulation. Man would have stood under any or all of these dispensations if he had been true to God. Human independence is but another name for Satanic slavery. Entire sanctification makes you God’s slave. This is the identical word applied by the Holy Ghost to God’s apostles and saints throughout the Bible. God’s slavery means perfect liberty. If you were a slave on earth, and your master were perfectly good, infinitely rich, and loved you enough to die for you, in that case you would be free and happy as an angel. 17. “Grace belongeth unto God, because ye have obeyed from the heart that type of teaching unto which ye were committed, 18. “And having been made free from sin, you became slaves unto righteousness.” The stupendous fact of your wonderful deliverance out of Satanic slavery, which means brutality here and damnation hereafter, and have been transformed into the slaves of God, which means the highest freedom in the universe, i .e ., the very delectable and glorious liberty of God himself, is a grand source of thanksgiving to God. Hence the apostle opens this sentence with a shout of triumph, proceeding with a beautiful rehearsal of the glorious transformation, culminating in entire sanctification which really makes you the slave of righteousness, i .e ., perfectly subservient to righteousness, having not the slightest affinity for unrighteousness.

DEPRAVITY SUPERSEDED BY SANCTIFICATION 19. “For I speak after the manner of a man on account of the weakness of your flesh.” While in these bodies, as Wesley well says, “we can only think, speak and act through organs of clay.” Sense and phraseology must be simplified and adapted to the people. For this reason, the Old Testament abounds in symbolism, and the New in parabolic and materialistic imagery and illustration. In heaven Paul hears language incomprehensible on earth, doubtless because of its pure spirituality ( 2 Corinthians 12). “For as ye presented your members slaves unto uncleanness and iniquity pursuant to iniquity.”

This is a vivid description of the wicked living animal lives, afflictive and even suicidal to themselves. God’s order reversed — the angel down in the mud and the hog on top! The brutal “uncleanness” peculiar to the wicked gives them a hell on earth — ten thousand aches, pains and sorrows known only to themselves. Thousands of people annually die in the hospitals of this city (New York) and are buried alone in the Potter’s Field, with no friend on earth to speak a word in the dying ear. Millions of people shorten their lives by brutality and sink into paupers’ graves. The wicked not only sin against themselves and humanity, but sin against God. Hence this double epithet: “uncleanness,” which is sin against themselves; and “iniquity” (Greek, lawlessness, i .e ., transgression of God’s laws), sin against God. Here the Holy Ghost specifies the source of all this, i .e ., eis anomian , “pursuant to iniquity” or “lawlessness.” This word means depravity. In , prefixed to a word, means not . Hence iniquity means the want of equity, i .e ., justice. De, used as a word, has a negative meaning, i .e ., deprivation. Hence you see iniquity and depravity are synonymous. In this verse we have the affirmation that both uncleanness and iniquity proceed from the common source of human depravity. This is the negative side of the argument. Now, in the prosecution of the affirmative, we find a radical tergiversation take place, eliminating depravity and superseding it by holiness to the Lord. “Thus now ye have presented your members slaves unto righteousness pursuant to sanctification.” This part of the verse describes the experience following the wonderful transformation of grace. I find here the very pure Greek construction appertaining to sanctification after the wonderful transition as to depravity in the former state when you were “slaves to uncleanness and iniquity.” Hence it follows as a logical sequence that the deep interior of the heart, where Satan has his throne and the rattlesnakes of inbred sin coil and rattle on all sides, is gloriously expurgated of all evil, Satan ousted, the snakes, reptiles and doleful creatures slain, their blood and bones enriching the soil, now turned over to King Immanuel, who transforms the entire situation into the blooming gardens and beautiful fields of Eden, through which the angels walk, and the songs of the seraphim are wafted on heavenly breezes, and there the Holy Ghost has enthroned Jesus to reign without a rival. The antithesis is profoundly significant, eis anomian and eis hagiasmon : “pursuant to iniquity” in case of the sinner, and “pursuant to sanctification” in case of the righteous. Here is the significant fact: the deep, subterranean region of the fallen spirit, occupied by inbred sin and impregnably fortified by the devil, is radically expurgated of all carnal debris , washed in the blood of the Lamb, and filled with the perfect love of God. Consequently the very temptations which formerly stirred the malevolent affections, i .e ., anger, wrath, malice, envy, jealousy, prejudice, bigotry, egotism, pride, vanity and all of the selfish predilections, now arouse the very opposite, i .e ., love, kindness, pity, sympathy, philanthropy, charity, forgiveness, and an earnest desire to do good for evil. All this follows as a logical sequence from the fact that the old malevolent affections are eradicated and gone, and the benevolent emotions have taken their place. Hence so long as you are truly sanctified, the very incentives which formerly to your sorrow, defeat and disgrace aroused evil, will now only awaken the corresponding good.

This is truly a miracle of grace, paradoxical to aliens, but blessedly real to the truly sanctified. 20. “For when you may be the slaves of sin, you may be free of righteousness.” The sinner has no righteous character whatever. The sanctified have no sinful character. The one the slave of sin, and the other that of holiness, while the justified are somewhat intermediate, though no longer serving sin, but still having it on hand in a subjugated state and serving in the kingdom of God after the similitude of hirelings, liable to go out at any time. 21. “Then what reward had you at any time? in which things you are now ashamed; for the end of those things is death.” Here is an interrogatory allusion to your old life in sin, when Satan paid you in ruined health, dissipated fortune, alienated friends, scandal, bankruptcy and a guilty conscience of which you are ashamed. 22. “But now having been made free from sin and having become slaves unto God, you have your fruit unto sanctification and the end eternal life.” Regeneration is the flower, and sanctification the fruit. While the flower is exceedingly beautiful, and indispensable to the production of the fruit, yet it alone is utterly worthless. Not so with the fruit; you can live on it if you never saw the flower. Hence we see the grand end of the gracious economy is sanctification, which qualifies you for the battlefield and robes you for the mount of victory; regeneration being an indispensable preparatory work, but an utter failure if not followed by sanctification, as the flower is futile if nipped by frost or blighted by death, so that it falls away, producing no fruit. As we see millions of flowers bloom and fade and no fruit appear, so myriads are happily converted, who fall away, never producing the delicious fruit of holiness for the angels and redeemed spirits to enjoy in heaven. 23. “For the wages of sin is death; but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” We see from the preceding that all sinners are Satan’s slaves, who may deluge them with the alluring promises of the good things in this life, at the same time flattering them that they will get saved before they die and reach heaven after enjoying all the pleasures of sin. No man can pay what he does not possess. Satan has nothing but sin, misery, disgrace, death and damnation. Hence he invariably, in the end, pays off his servants with his own currency, giving them disappointment, wretchedness and remorse in this life and a burning hell through all eternity.

God’s people, when saved to the uttermost, are free as angels, enjoying the glorious liberty of God Himself, qualifying them to do everything good and nothing bad. The greatest desire of the immortal soul is eternal life. This we have in our wonderful Savior, without money and without price; while Satan pays off his poor slaves with death, not simply the fleeting, evanescent death of the body, but that of the soul, which never dieth, though dying on through all eternity.

CHAPTER - The first chapter of this wonderful epistle is addressed to the heathens, elucidatory of the gracious possibility of their salvation, if true to the light of nature, conscience and the Holy Ghost, but sadly affirmatory of their fatal apostasy from God, first into rationalism, secondly into idolatry, and finally into the low debaucheries and gross sensualities of literal brutality.

The second chapter is addressed to the Jews, representing the popular churchism of the day, and consequently synonymous with the fallen ecclesiasticisms of the present age, setting forth the deplorable fact that while their attitude is condemnatory of the non-professing world, it is equally conclusive of their own guilt. Hence he finds them confessing judgment against themselves, clearly implicated in the same condemnation along with the heathen. Consequently he recognizes three orders in the final judgment, the heathen being judged by the laws of nature only, the old Jews by the Old Testament, and all Christians by the whole Bible. Hence he culminates in the bold declaration that he is not a Christian who is one outwardly, neither is baptism that which is outward on the flesh; but he is a Christian who is one inwardly, and baptism is that of the heart, in the spirit and not of the letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God; thus beautifully developing the confusion that salvation is purely an individual enterprise, consequently involving none but the inquiring soul and Omnipotent Savior, human ecclesiasticism being utterly irrelevant and nonessential, notwithstanding their value in a didactic sense. Winding up the sin-side of the argument, finding heathens and church members all under condemnation, with the exception of the individual acceptance of saving grace, he now begins the grace side of the argument with verse 19 of Chapter 3, setting forth the great fundamental truth of justification by the free grace of God in Christ, received and appropriated by faith alone; this magnificent elucidation expounded from the Abrahamic covenant, recognizing that patriarch as the representative of the faith paternity on the divine side of the gracious economy; antithetical to the Fatherhood of God in Christ, constituting the divine side of the grace paternity; this argument culminating in Chapter 5, with the beautiful contrast of the two Adams, the First representing humanity and the Second redemption, the latter infinitely superior to the former, as God totally eclipses man, illustrating the transcendent victory of grace over sin. Chapter 6 is entirely devoted to the elucidation of entire sanctification, illustrated in the crucifixion, utter destruction of the body of sin, rendering us actually free from sin, having our “fruit unto sanctification and the end everlasting life.” How natural for the apostle now to corroborate the preceding exegesis with his personal experience of entire sanctification. I am satisfied this seventh chapter is a description of that wonderful Arabian experience, tersely alluded to in Acts 9:22: “Then Paul continued to be more and more filled with dynamite,” and lucidly narrated in Galatians 1:15-19, when Paul certifies that God was pleased to reveal His Son in him; therefore, conferring not with flesh and blood, he went off into Arabia and spent about three years seeking this grand and glorious experience of entire sanctification before he would dare to go up to Jerusalem and compare experiences with the apostles who had received the Pentecostal baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire, and claim a participation in the apostleship of the Lord. How natural it was for him, after his miraculous conversion under the ministry of Ananias in Damascus, to go to preaching with all his might, feeling that the complete work was done and he was ready for the Lord’s war. I have seen the same a thousand times in my ministry; e .g . people rousingly converted, shout uproariously and work heroically a few days, and then get blue as indigo, collapse, give way to a terrible assault of doubts and fears. Of course that was but a conviction for the second work of grace, consequently I called them to the altar again to seek sanctification, on whose reception doubts and fears all fled away and victory came to stay. We have this very phenomenon in Paul’s experience. After preaching a very short, unknown period at Damascus, he is caught in the battle with inbred sin. Thinking, like your humble servant who staid there nineteen years, that he could fight it out on the line of legal obedience and good works, he manfully enters the conflict, leaving the crowded metropolis and going off into the wild, sandy deserts of Arabia, God’s celebrated theological school, where He taught Moses forty years and sanctified him at the burning bush, preparatory for his great and responsible work, and John the Baptist thirty years, filling him with the Holy Ghost and fire, indispensable to the precursorship of Christ. This old solitary desert was celebrated in all ages as God’s prophetical college. Of course such a man as Paul must pass through the curriculum of entire sanctification under the leadership of the Infallible One. The connection does not permit us to identify the statement, “When God was pleased to reveal his Son in me,” with the notable transaction on his way to Damascus, when the Son of God was not “revealed in him” but to him, shining down on him from the bright firmament above. Here we have the grand salient truths constituting the plan of salvation; i .e ., in regeneration the Holy Ghost reveals the glorified Christ to the soul of the sinner. Such is His majesty, beauty and glory that no human spirit can resist the charm. Well did Charles Wesley say: “The worst of sinners would rejoice could they but see thy face.” This is the technical moment when every soul gets converted, i .e ., the very minute when the eye of the human spirit rests on the glorified Savior revealed by the Holy Ghost. Thus we see that Christ was revealed to Paul when he was converted; this Arabian experience in which God revealed His Son in him being an entirely different transaction and constituting his sanctification. The Holy Ghost is sent into this world to reveal and glorify Christ. Therefore when you receive the Holy Ghost in sanctification, He always enthrones Jesus in the heart, revealing Him to your soul sitting on the throne of your spirit, reigning within and without.

While this seventh chapter is the personal experience of Paul and all other sanctified Christians, we do not reach the epoch of his receiving the blessing till verse 25, the preceding chapter constituting his testimony to the battle with inbred sin, so vividly revealed by the law and so hotly and uncompromisingly contested by the stalwart and heroic apostle, till finally reaching utter desperation of his own efforts along the line of legal obedience, giving up in final desperation, he turns the old man of sin over to the Lord Jesus Christ, immediately raising the shout of victory and testifying to the glorious deliverance. While you read this chapter you will understand it better if you keep your eye on Paul down in Arabia, wallowing in the burning sands and fighting inbred sin like a dog in a yellow-jackets’ nest.

MATRIMONIAL ILLUSTRATION OF SANCTIFICATION 1-4. While the Bible contains but one great compound fact, i .e ., sin and its remedy, accommodatory to our feeble and finite senses, while locked up in these houses of clay, it utilizes an infinite diversity of imagery, beautifully and variantly expository of the wonderful redemptive scheme. Since God is the Author of both nature and grace, there is perfect harmony throughout His works in both departments. Consequently the deep and otherwise incomprehensible spiritual truths revealed in the Bible are constantly elucidated with an infinite diversity of imagery, deduced from the most common affairs and events of every-day life. The church of God throughout the Bible is symbolized by a holy woman, and that of Satan, i .e ., the fallen church, by a harlot. In these four verses we have a grand metaphoric truth revealed under the figure of a woman becoming enamored of a most lovable man, and while exceedingly anxious to become his bride, still encumbered with an old husband, for whose death she must patiently wait before the much-desired nuptials can be legally celebrated. This woman is the human soul betrothed to Christ in regeneration, gladly receiving His periodical visits in revival times, bringing her nice presents and talking more and more about the projected wedding, which is only postponed with great reluctance, awaiting the death of the loathsome old, tobacconized, drunken, wife-beating husband, who is none other than Adam the First, here antithesized by the law, and must get out of the way before the long-anticipated matrimonial solemnization with her new lover, Adam the Second, can take place. Meanwhile the courtship is progressing, and it seems the old husband will never die, her delectable lover drops a hint: “If that’s all your trouble, you have nothing to do but turn him over to me, and I will dispatch him in the twinkling of an eye.” At this suggestion, she leaps and shouts uproariously. Behold, the old husband is dead and the long-anticipated wedding celebrated on the spot, involving the double interest of old Adam’s funeral and the festal joys of holy wedlock with her Divine Spouse. 5. “For when we were in carnality, the emotions of sins which were through the law were working in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.” So long as we are unsanctified a thousand carnal incentives antagonistical to the law of God are stirring us up to give way to known and trifling sin, the first overt act, as we have here clearly revealed in the aorist tense, forfeiting our justification and bringing us back into the old condemnation of our former wicked life. 6. “But we have now been made free from the law, being dead in that in which we were held, So that we serve in the newness of the spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.” This verse answers all questions relative to the actual personal profession of entire sanctification on the part of the Apostle Paul and his associated ministry. The very fact that he is free from the law, and, as he says here, that everything in him antagonistical to the law had been slain, amounts to his clear and unequivocal testimony to the crucifixion of the “old man,” which is the very salient fact of entire sanctification. Paul dictated this letter to Tertius in Corinth, A.D. 58, twentyone years after he had been sanctified in Arabia, consequently he was prepared to give, as he does in the verse, a clear and unequivocal testimony to that glorious experience. 7. “Then what shall we say? is the law sin? it could not be so; but I had not known sin except through law; for indeed I had not known lust unless the law said: Thou shalt not covet.” While as he here affirms it is impossible for the law to be sin, because it is the very radiation of the divine purity and glory; yet from the very fact that the law is God’s light, revealing to us sin that we may fly from it, it follows as a legitimate sequence that if we do not walk in the light and avoid sin, but on the contrary yield to temptation and commit sin, our responsibility is infinitely intensified and our criminality correspondingly aggravated; the law, which God in mercy gave to light us to heaven, bearing witness against us, and thus infinitely augmenting our condemnation. 8. “For sin taking occasion through the commandment wrought out in me all antagonism; for without the law sin was dead.” N. B. — Sin so constantly repeated here is in the singular number, meaning the sinprinciple, i .e ., original sin and not actual sin, which is in the plural. Where there is no commandment sin is dead, because it has nothing to antagonize.

PAUL’S INFANTILE REGENERATION. 9. “But I was alive at one time without law.” We are all generated in Adam the First, spiritually dead ( Psalm 9:5; 1 Corinthians 15:22). The moment soul and body united involve personality, we pass normally into the mediatorial kingdom, where Christ gives life to all. Hence, like the Prodigal Son, we are all born in the kingdom of God, and only get out by sinning out. The old theology holding the justification and not the regeneration of infants is untenable, as these two works, though separate and distinct, the former in heaven canceling condemnation, and the latter in the heart vitalizing the spirit; yet they are always synchronal, the one never existing without the other, the former logically preceding, but instantaneously followed by the latter. Justification disqualifies for hell, and regeneration is indispensable to heaven. Hence the hypothesis that our infants are justified and not vitalized is untenable and clearly refuted by this passage; while Paul affirms his own infantile regeneration, which he retained till he reached responsibility and forfeited it by violating known law. Hence this case clearly confirms the regeneration as well as the justification of infants. Therefore, infants are not sinners, but Christians when they are born into the world, and so remain till they commit actual transgression. Is it possible to bring them up without the forfeiture of their infantile justification and regeneration? Certainly; and this is our imperative duty. In that case, would they need conversion? They would, in order to keep them justified and regenerated. If they are born justified and regenerated by the normal work of Christ, in what would their conversion consist? The word does not mean justification and regeneration (though these graces are indispensable in case of actual conversion, being the antithesis of condemnation and spiritual death), but “a turning,” which all infants need, being born depraved, i .e ., with inbred sin in the heart, which so turns them away from God that, if not turned round and introduced to the Savior, will start directly away from Him so soon as they set out in responsible life. Hence, take the infant, turn him round, introduce him to the Savior before he loses infantile justification, and then get him sanctified before he backslides, and you would soon see a giant in the kingdom. “The commandment having come, sin revived, 10. “And I died; and the commandment which was unto life, the same was found to me to be unto death.” When Paul reached responsibility, coming in contact with the law, like the rest of us, he unfortunately antagonized it, thus forfeiting his infantile justification. the law, which, instrumental in the divine administration, and, of course, conducive to life, when disobeyed became the swift vehicle of death. Consequently he died spiritually, the inbred sin, of course, lying dormant, having nothing to do till the time came. Then it revived, beginning an exterminating war against the law, he, taking side with it, died spiritually. 11. “For sin, taking occasion through the commandment, deceived me and through it slew me.” This verse explains itself. The commandment aroused inbred sin, hitherto still and dormant in his heart. If he had not yielded to sin, the law would have been a great blessing to him. But, like the rest of us, he yielded to sin, which consequently slew him outright. 12. “So the law indeed is holy, just and good.” That is certainly true, because the law is the very radiation of the divine purity and glory, yet when antagonized becomes the swift vehicle of condemnation, infinitely augmenting eternal responsibility. 13. “Then was that which is good made death to me? It could not be so; but sin, that it may appear sin, was working out death to me through that which is good, in order that sin may appear exceedingly sinful through the commandment.” Here he describes inbred sin, the soul-poison born in him, interpenetrating his organism with the virus of depravity and spontaneously working out death in him as indicated by the middle voice of the verb, thus exhibiting sin in its real horrific turpitude, malignity and deformity, awfully intensified by the incoming of the law, like a rattlesnake enraged when disturbed in his lair by an effort to kill him. 14. “But we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, having been sold under sin.” The law is the very splendor radiating from the throne of God and revealing sin in its horrific deformity. Hence the law is perfectly pure and holy, and, of course, spiritual, i .e ., consentaneous with the Holy Spirit. We have here carnal “I” and spiritual “I” used contrastively ever and anon. We must not identify them, for the one represents the old and the other the new man, different as sin is from holiness, and Satan from God. “Having been sold under sin,” an allusion to the Fall, when father Adam sold us all out for a mess of apples. The Greek is the perfect tense, as I here translate, involving the whole human race in original sin. 15. “For that which I do I know not; for I do that which I do not wish, but I do that which I hate. 16. “But if I do that which I do not wish, I consent to the law that it is good: now it is no longer I that do this, but sin that dwelleth in me.” You recognize the error in E.V., and see how Paul certifies that he commits neither known nor willing sin. Can you apply this statement to a sinner? I know not. The normal character of a sinner is to commit known and willing sin. You see positively that this is not only a justified man, but he is living in a very high state of justification, which may be said of few, i .e ., that our people in the churches who claim justification could truthfully say that they commit neither known nor willing sin! Let those Christians who apply this chapter to the sinner make the application to themselves, and see whether they are living on a plane superior to Paul at this time in his experience when he certifies twice over that he commits neither known nor willing sin.

This is truly the Bible standard of justification. Paul was a man of gigantic mentality and intense moral and spiritual acumen. Hence he thinks, speaks and acts in the superlative degree. In verse 15 he positively certifies that he commits neither known or willing sin. In verse 17 most unequivocally abnegates all personal identity with the sin-trouble in which he is involved. 17. “It is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.” Enoikousa is from en , “in,” and oikos , “a house.” Hence it means the housed-up sin, i .e ., the old sin born in him, and still to his sorrow living in him, though under his bitter protest. Hence you see the source of all the trouble. Despite his will and intelligence to the contrary, this old enemy still occupies the citadel in the deep interior of his heart, never having been dislodged in his miraculous conversion, though so stunned and paralyzed that Paul thought he was gone, and went to preaching heroically in Damascus. Soon the enemy stirs so discernibly that recognition is inevitable. Paul is too intense and thorough-going to wink at the Stygian monster and enter into a compromise. He calls to witness heaven, earth and hell, that this vexatious problem must reach a final solution. He quits the ministry and goes away to the Arabian desert to settle the matter with God. He is determined to strike bottom rock before he leaves the lonely wilderness. Hence he keeps company with the wild beasts three years, but he settles the matter for time and eternity, coming back to Damascus a cyclone of fire. So he moved a flaming tornado through Asia and Europe till he laid down his head on Nero’s block. Instead of being identified with the sin, he meets the charge with a flat denial: “It is not at all I that do it, but him that dwelleth in me.” Light had shone in, revealing to him that indwelling enemy. He enters the conflict like a hero, and is determined to have it out with him. So he wages a three years’ war with Adam the First, and achieves a complete victory, which lasts him to the end of his life. 18. “I know that in me, that is in my carnality, there is no good thing.” This is the carnal “me,” representing Adam the First, in whom there is no good thing. “Me” is here antithetical to spiritual “I” representing his own personality. “To will is present with me, but to work out that which is beautiful is not present with me.” This is the hackneyed confession of the unsanctified. Justification brings us into the kingdom of peace and sanctification into the kingdom of power. “Beautiful” in this verse (E.V. “good”) means the beauty of holiness, which literally charms all true Christians, who spontaneously leap to the conclusion that they can do it, only to sink broken-hearted in contemplation of constant failure. Every real Christian desires and wills to do his whole duty, yet signally failing for lack of power which sanctification alone can supply. 19. “For the good that I wish, I do not; but the evil that I do not wish, that I do.” That is a strong stating, in harmony with the vigor of Pauline thought and expression. It is explained by what follows. 20. “But if I do that which I do not wish, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.” Unscholarly people reason over this, founding a grave charge against Paul on the identity of “I,” which is utterly untrue, because “I” is not at all identical with itself, as it alternately represents carnality and spirituality, which instead of being identical are unlike as God and Satan, the one being the Son of God, the other that of the devil. Hence such an argument is radically untrue. Here the carnal “I,” representing old Adam, does all the mischief. Verse 20 repeats verse 17, certifying his utter innocence in the matter, and laying all the blame on that indwelling sin represented in verses 18 and 19 by carnal “I.” Hence Paul repeatedly affirms his irresponsibility, laying all the blame on the inbred sin which is causing all the trouble. It is a matter of fact that we are not condemned for the existence of inbred sin in our hearts nor its stirring within us. All this we can not prevent, but we are guilty if we yield to it and commit known and willing sin. This Paul repeatedly abnegates. Again, we become guilty if we do not walk in the light which God gives, and do our best by the grace of God to have this inbred sin destroyed. 21. “Moreover, I find a law, that, to me, wishing to do good, evil is present with me.” This is where the counterfeit professors woefully lie on Paul, making his language an apology for committing sin. They differ from Paul wide as the poles. While they wickedly pervert this Scripture to their own destruction, making it an apology for known and willing sin, Paul positively and repeatedly certifies that he did no such thing, and the only trouble in his case was the inward conflict of an indwelling enemy. His testimony in this verse is that the evil is ever present to menace, tempt and antagonize him in his enterprises to glorify God. While this is true, we must remember his positive abnegation of all yielding to it, and repeated affirmation that this indwelling sin, of its own spontaneity, was really doing all the mischief in the case, while he pleads constantly his own innocency. 22. “For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man.” This inspired affirmation sweeps from the field all who would identify this chapter with a sinner’s experience, from the simple and undeniable fact, patent to all Bible readers, that the sinner has no “inward man,” which is none other than the “new creature” created in the heart by the Holy Ghost in regeneration. A sinner is but an incarnate devil, and utterly destitute of the “new creation’, which the Holy Ghost never imparts till the condemnation is removed by free justification, transplanting him from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God. Hence you see the utter untenability of the dogma which would identify the testimony of this chapter with a sinner. I do not wonder that Clarke, Wesley, and other noble spirits of bygone ages, so construed, because they did not have the corrected Greek, the Sinaitic manuscript, a copy of which I hold in my hand, and which has thrown a flood of light on New Testament exegesis, not having been discovered until A.D. 1859, when Dr. Tischendorf, the great German, after forty years of earnest search in the Bible lands for everything that could throw light on the Holy Scriptures, providentially discovered it in the Convent of St.

Catherine on Mt. Sinai, which had been erected in the second century, and in whose archives God has kept this complete copy of the New Testament from the apostolic age, lying hidden and secure during the long roll of the Dark Ages. While a thousand years of Satan’s midnight passed over the world, during which not one man in a thousand could read or write, while blood and barbarism ran riot in every land, and the vandals especially did their utmost to destroy, not only all the Bibles, but all other books, obliterating the last spark of light and civilization from the earth, God, in great mercy, hid away this copy of the New Testament, and thus preserved it from the errors and interpolations incident to that long period of darkness and ignorance, bringing it to light A.D. 1859, just in time to shine out the morning star and felicitous harbinger of the present Holiness Movement, which is, I know, none other than the John the Baptist preceding the second coming of our glorious King to girdle the globe with His Millennial Theocracy and reign forever. 23. “But I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and striving to bring me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.” The E.V. commits a glaring error in this verse by involving the idea that Paul was actually brought into captivity to the law of sin. This conclusion is utterly alien to the Greek, which conveys no such an idea. On the contrary, it is the perpetual present, revealing simply a constant and indefatigable effort on the part of inbred sin to bring him into captivity. But, thank God, it never succeeded, as his testimony repeatedly assures us. In Colossians 3 he gives us a catalogue of the members of this old man of sin, i .e ., anger, wrath, malice, envy, jealousy, revenge, lust, temper, pride, vanity, etc. It so happened that this chapter suffered especially in the way of corruptions, which you observe in not only this, but in several other passages, thus accounting for the misunderstandings, misinterpretations and strange applications which have been made by a diversity of exegesis.

If the E.V. were correct in this verse, authenticating the conclusion that Paul was ever and anon actually brought into captivity to the law of sin, it would actually require the aorist tense, which does not here occur, but simply the perpetual present, only indicating a continuous effort on the part of the indwelling enemy to bring him into captivity, but fortunately for him never succeeding, as in that case he would have become a backslider. 24. “O wretched man that I am: who shall deliver from this body of death?” Paul was a man of great mind and heart, thinking most profoundly and feeling with an intensity unrealizable by people of ordinary caliber.

With the combined powers of his gigantic intellect, iron will, deep, thrilling, electrifying and intense emotionality, he has fought a terrible battle with this indwelling energy antagonizing the law of God; meanwhile, with Napoleonic energy and Alexandrian perseverance, mustering all his powers of mind, heart and spirit, and focalizing all his gigantic volitional enthusiasm, he has striven with desperation to verify the law of God and do His will on earth as the angels do it in heaven. Along this line failure, defeat, collapse and discomfiture have floored him time and again, despite all his wallowing in Arabian sands and importunately crying to God. Three awful years of terrible conflict with this old man of sin, roaring like a lion, floundering like the leviathan and snapping like a crocodile, having fruitlessly passed away, victory evidently further off than ever. We here have a historic metaphor deduced from the custom on the part of ancient conquerors to inflict on their war captives the horrific retribution of binding them fast to a dead corpse taken from the battlefield, tying back to back and limb to limb. It is said that the inhalation of the poisonous miasma emitted from the putrefying corpse invariably killed the living soldier before he got rid of him, unless fortunate to receive some extraneous aid, bringing him happy deliverance. This fact again sweeps away the hypothesis which would apply this chapter to a sinner, as in that case there could be no living body, as every sinner is simply a spiritual corpse. How vividly, clearly and unmistakably do we here see the “double-minded man” ( James 1:8; 4:8), the corpse representing the old, dead, carnal mind, and the living soldier the mind of Christ, wrought in the heart by the Holy Ghost in regeneration.

Paul himself, with his glorious Damascus experience of conversion, was this living soldier, with the old man of sin tied to him, represented by the loathsome corpse. Every Christian, when converted, sets out to obey the Lord on earth like the angels in heaven, thus keeping the law in the beauty of holiness; but destined to defeat, failure, mortification, despondency, culminating in desperation, like Paul in the verse when he cried out, “O wretched man that I am!” I went on this line precisely nineteen years, fighting down old Adam by the power of the law, only suffering a thousand signal defeats, till in the midst of a glorious revival, in which I was doing all the preaching, thirty years ago, I reached this memorable Pauline culmination, when, crying out, “O wretched man that I am! “I gave up the fruitless war against indwelling sin, turning the battle over to Him who is mighty to save and strong to deliver. Then, glory to God, the victory came! 25. “Thanks be unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Here we have Paul’s testimony to the glorious victory which the Omnipotent Sanctifier gave him in a moment, when, after three years’ battle with indwelling sin, despairing and abandoning his own efforts, he turned the Stygian monster over to the Lord Jesus Christ. Then the uproarious shout of victory came in a moment. The church of the present day, with the exception of a little handful of sanctified people, are in the seventh of Romans, roaming round through the howling wilderness of Arabia, where Israel spent forty years.

Oh, how we need a hundred thousand Joshuas to lead the universal church into the land of corn and wine! How foolish it is for them to take the fog, darkness, storm and conflicts of this chapter, and not the glorious sunburst which crowns it in the twenty-fifth verse, where Paul leaps and shouts uproariously and trudges back to the great Syrian metropolis to tell the good news and preach the gospel of full salvation like a messenger from heaven.

You must remember that while this chapter describes Paul’s battle with indwelling sin while in the justified state, he did not stay in it, but, as you see, he passes out with a shout, leaping triumphantly into the eighth chapter, which opens with a jubilant hallelujah of complete deliverance, roaring a continuous gaudeamus of entire sanctification till it is drowned by the co-mingled hallelujahs of angels and redeemed saints congratulating glorified humanity in the transcendent ultimatum of final and eternal heavenly triumph. “Then, therefore, I myself with the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.” This observation in recapitulatory, giving a general comprehensive nutshell statement of the uniform experience of humanity under the administration of mediatorial grace. “Mind” here means the spiritual impartment, enlightened by the Holy Ghost and conservative of our allegiance to the law of God; while “flesh” is used in its general sense of depravity, whose constant trend is earthward, sinward, and Satanward, conservatively to the “law of sin.” CHAPTER - THE SANCTIFIED EXPERIENCE 1. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.” N. B. — This is all we have in the verse, the other clause appearing in E.V. having been by some transcriber taken up from verse 4 and inserted here without authority. The illative conjunction, “therefore,” connecting this bold affirmation of “no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus,” is a logical deduction from the elaborate discussion of the preceding chapter and the brilliant victory ringing out in the triumphant shout of verse 25. But this is justification? Very well; but is the justification following entire sanctification in contradistinction to the primary justification identical with the remission of actual transgression, which precedes it? We can not be justified in a full and final sense till after complete expurgation from the very sin-principle in entire sanctification. Hence we see that final justification follows sanctification ( 1 Corinthians 6:11). Here the bold affirmation involves the sweeping conclusion that the parties who have been delivered by the Omnipotent Sanctifier in verse 25 are actually exonerated from all the penal consequences of sin resultant from the Fall, both personal and original. 2. “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and death.” One definition of “law” is a rule of action, which is pertinent in this verse, where. the Holy Spirit, the Author of life, has actually given you perfect freedom from all the power and influence of sin and death. 3. “For the impotency of the law, in which it was without strength through the flesh.” This is one of the rare instances in which “flesh” evidently means this mortal body. Wesley says we can only think, speak and act through these “organs of clay,” which have been so dilapidated by the Fall as really to become disqualified to serve in the capacity of efficient media through which the perfect law of God is verified in this world. Adam, before he fell, was competent, through the wisdom and power of the indwelling Spirit, perfectly to keep the divine law. From the ostensible fact that the whole race in the Fall signaly forfeited the power to keep the law, God in his condescending mercy, gave humanity a second probation under the mediatorial reign of the Second Adam. Otherwise we must have gone hopeless forever, like the fallen angels. “God sending his own Son in the likeness of the sin of carnality, and concerning sin, condemned sin in carnality.” The antithesis carries us back to Eden. What was the creature instrumental in the abduction of humanity? “He was the most subtle,” i .e ., the wisest. This would locate him with the bipeds. The argument is altogether against the conclusion that he was a snake. He was a biped, the next link to man, looking more like him than a gorilla, which walks upright, using his hands like a man. So this creature only lacked the immortal human spirit. His very existence added much to the facility of human temptation, as he could speak; otherwise the surprise would have defeated the temptation.

The position of this animal is now vacant in the zoological catalogue, as we see he was taken out of his place by the transformation which followed as a divine retribution. When God called him to account, I know he stood upright like a man till the awful anathema fell, “On thy stomach thou shalt go,” showing that he had not previously moved prostrate in the dust, the implacable odium of the human race. When this anathema fell on him, methinks I see his neck elongated, with horrific projecting jaws, and venomous, forked tongue; his arms, absorbed, disappear; his posterior members consolidated into a great, huge tail. Now falling on the ground, he crawls away, a loathsome, narcotic, hissing serpent, to be hated and slaughtered by the whole human race. Thus, you see, the snake originated out of the transformation resulting from sin. Evil can not emanate from good. Hence God never made a devil, a sinner, nor a snake. The brazen serpent in the wilderness by the divine order resembled the fiery serpents which invaded the camp and slew their multitudes. Why? Because the brazen serpent symbolized Christ, who was to take the form of man in order to save us. John the Baptist and Jesus both called the people a generation of vipers, i .e ., “children of rattlesnakes.” Hence we received the diabolical venom through the serpent, thus imbibing the snake nature and becoming a race of snakes. It takes a rogue to catch a rogue. Consequently the commonwealth never makes much headway against a gang of thieves till some of them turn State’s evidence; then they get them quickly. So our blessed Savior took the form of our “sinful flesh” that He might save us from our sins. As symbolized by the brazen serpent, He became a snake that He might find and save us snakes. The wonderful condescension of redeeming love “Condemned sin in the flesh.” The condemnatory sentence must precede the execution of a criminal. As our Savior has perfectly kept the law for the whole human race, thus condemning the sin in carnality, therefore the gospel sword is sent out into all the world to execute the sentence of guilt against the man of sin in every human heart throughout the whole world. Thus, you see, it is our work to slay the man of sin without mercy. Therefore the true gospel has in all ages met the bitterest opposition, because nothing loves to die. Snakes fight awfully for their lives. Christ turned snake as symbolized in the wilderness, i .e ., He took the form of us snakes, found them all, and passed sentence of death on them. Hence ours is truly a snake-killing business throughout. The two-edged sword of the gospel is sent into the world to cut off every snake head. Snakes are very scary. Hence you must have the perfect love which casts out fear, if you would make headway killing the snakes. Carnal cowards tinker along and let the snakes live. 4. “In order that the righteous judgment of the law may be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.” The righteous judgment of the law is, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die” ( Ezekiel 18:4). Hence the sin-principle in every heart must die. God’s method with sin is extermination. That is always done in “those who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” When your walk is mixed you never get sin destroyed.

It is only those who are solidly out and out for God who get sin exterminated. 5. “For those who are according to the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, and those who are of the Spirit the things of the Spirit.” God is calling all to heaven; and Satan, the “god of this world” ( 2 Corinthians 4:4), is offering us this world as he did Jesus. The body is earthy and destined soon to go back to it. We have our choice to live for this world or heaven. We get just what we live for. If we live for this world, we leave soon, and are liable to at any moment, unprepared for heaven. Hence Satan, whose subjects we are, takes us to hell. The divine order is, first God, then the human spirit, then the mind or soul, and finally the body. Satan reverses the order, putting the body first, then the mind, and the immortal spirit is neglected altogether. In that case you have the world here and hell hereafter.

Man is a three-story building, consisting of body, mind and spirit. The latter. i .e ., the third story, is where our King erects His throne. when we are true, ruling the mind through the spirit, the body through the mind and our life through the body Satan reverses the divine order in the human spirit down in the mud then the mind, and finally the body, i .e . the hog element of our nature, on top. The sins of your body make you hoggish; those of your mind make you worldly; while the sins of your spirit make you devilish. There is a fearful liability that the degradation of your immortal spirit may pass the susceptibility of spiritual influence, in which case Satan succeeds in utterly blowing off the third story of humanity, sealing your doom in hell and diabolizing you forever. These are those who commit the unpardonable sin. 7. “For the mind of the flesh is enmity toward God: for it is not subject to the law of God: for it is not able to be.” The fallen churches in all ages have sought in vain to subdue the carnal mind and subordinate it to the law of God Oh, the efforts everywhere made in popular ecclesiasticisms to wash and dress old Adam so he will do for heaven! It is all a trick of the devil to fool the people and catch them with the lasso of carnal security. God’s method with sin is extermination. We can not evade the issue. Cato, the great Roman statesman and orator, wound up every speech before the Roman senate with the statement “Carthago delenda est ” — Carthage must be destroyed She was the uncompromising rival of Rome. Hence the one or the other must be destroyed. So the carnal mind is the implacable enemy of grace, and must be destroyed or the hope of heaven surrendered forever.

This carnal mind is none other than Satan’s own mind imparted to humanity in the Fall. God is the pure Holy Spirit, and has the sole right to rule men, angels and the universe. The carnal mind subordinates soul, mind, spirit and the entire being to the animal body, in that way alienating you from God, brutalizing and turning you over to the devil. 8. “For those who are in carnality are not able to please God.” The word “flesh” (E.V.) here does not mean the body, but the carnal mind. Enoch pleased God while in the body, and He took him to heaven. The next verse shows that it does not mean the body, but carnality. There is but one way out, and that is to have carnality destroyed, which is the work of entire sanctification. If we do not please God, it is certain we will never get to heaven. If we please Him we must obey Him. He commands us to be holy, and that means to get rid of depravity. For this he has made ample provision. Hence we must obey and be holy, or disobey, remain carnal and displease God, thus backsliding and making our bed in hell. If you walk in all the light He gives you, his blood will cleanse you from all sin. If you do not walk in the light, you will displease Him, and lose your soul in the end.

DIVINE UNITY 9. “You are not in carnality, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. But if any one have not the Spirit of Christ, he is not his.” Here we have a beautiful and lucid affirmation of the divine unity. “Spirit” occurring three times in this verse. First, He is the Holy Spirit, in the second place, the Spirit of the Father; and in the third instance, the Spirit of the Son, and identical throughout, illustrating clearly the identity of the three persons constituting the Godhead, and the identity of the Spirit of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The same is clearly revealed in Acts 5, where Holy Ghost, in verse 3, God, in verse 4, and Spirit of the Lord, i .e ., Christ, in verse 9, are all used synonymously. It is exceedingly pertinent for us to be specific at this point, as some have gotten tangled discriminating between the Spirit of Jesus and the Holy Ghost and the Spirit of God, and gone off into the tri-theistic heresy to their spiritual detriment.

However incomprehensible the Divine Trinity and Unity, yet it is a fact clearly revealed in God’s infallible Word. We are not saved by knowledge, but by faith. Hence we do not have to understand the Scriptures, but “only believe.” When we pass beyond we will learn more in a week than in all our lives ill this world. As we are saved by faith, and “He that believeth not shall be damned,” we would better see that we believe all, remembering that we have only a few days in which to believe, but all eternity in which to learn. While there is but one God, He is revealed to us in three persons, accommodatory to our finite apprehensions of the wonderful redemptive scheme. I am editor in the morning, teacher in the afternoon, and preacher in the evening. Yet I am only one and the same man, known to the world in three personalities. In this notable verse we would discriminate between the statement, “The Spirit of God dwelleth in you,” as the word oikei is from oikos , “a house,” and means to abide in you, like a person living in a house, which is peculiar to the sanctified experience; for during the regenerated life “He is with you” ( John 14:16), in the capacity of an Architect, coming and going, working on the building, but when it is completed in entire sanctification, moving into it to permanently abide; and “If any one have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” which is comprehensive of the regenerated state as well as the sanctified. 10. “But if Christ is in you, the body is indeed dead as to sin, and the spirit life as to righteousness.” This verse is very beautiful and plainly affirmative of the ostensible fact that if whether in the capacity of an Architect in the regenerated life, or enthroned King in the sanctified experience, your body is dead so far as sinful activity is concerned, i .e ., is as free from committing actual sin as the dead man lying in his grave from taking part in the activities of life around him; meanwhile your spirit is responsive to all the activities and enterprises involved in a life devoted to obedience to the divine administration. 11. “But if the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you.” Here we have again the verb oikei, from oikos, a house, signifying that the Holy Ghost, having moved into your heart, is there keeping house.

Since He is the Omnipotent Architect He is always ready to undertake a building job and faithfully stick to the work till the house is completed, after which He moves in permanently to abide. If the house is unfinished, and you meet the conditions, He will abide with you in His Omnipotent executive capacity till He finishes the edifice, i .e ., sanctifies you wholly.

Then He moves in, brightening, beautifying, electrifying and glorifying your heart by His perpetual presence, making your life an unbroken sunshine, and giving you constant victory over every foe, and an incessant heavenly prelibation. “He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead will also create life in your mortal bodies by his Spirit who dwelleth in you.” The glorious ultimatum assured in this inspiring promise is the transfiguration of the body, which may take place either in the translation of the saints when the Lord comes to take up His Bride, or in the resurrection; our glorious Redeemer having provided these two methods, through either of which it is possible to enter the glorified state. While the final and perfect restitution of these bodies will take place in glorification, either by translation or resurrection, yet our blessed Savior, in His condescending mercy, gives us many prelibations of this coming glorification, to comfort, revive and reinvigorate us for the labors of this life. Hence this wonderful promise not only reaches forward to final glorification when this mortal shall put on immortality, but it includes the healing mercy of the Great Physician, administered ever and anon in the recuperation of these feeble, faltering tenements, and the alleviation of our diseases indiscriminately. While you live in a house, there is at least a probability that you will repair the breaches accruing from natural dilapidation or the sudden violence of storms, thus keeping your tenement in comfortable repair. Hence it is at least a tenable conclusion that the Holy Ghost will keep His house, — this body — renovated and repaired while He occupies it. He has long been the blessed Healer of my body, wonderfully keeping in repair this frail tenement. Just as your house reaches a period when it is not worth repairing, and, consequently, you no longer restore the breaches; but in that case you soon evacuate it for a new edifice which you have built; so, when the Holy Ghost ceases to heal my body, I will begin to shout louder than ever, concluding that the house is no longer worth repairing, and will soon be evacuated for the occupancy of the “house not made with hands, but eternal and in the heavens” ( 2 Corinthians 5:1). Hence we see that divine healing normally, in the gracious economy, results from the overflow of the spiritual life, the Holy Ghost inundating my spirit and overflowing my body with His healing power and presence. My testimony to personal divine healing would comprise a volume. For all this I magnify the name of the great and infallible Physician. Yet, if He does not soon compliment me with a translation, this tenement will no longer be worth repairing. Then, with triumphant shouts, I will look out for heaven, which is infinitely better than health. God help us all to so sink away into Thy sweet will that we will shout over healing, but shout still louder when we are not healed, hailing the auspicious omen that heaven is very nigh, which is a million times better than health. 12. “Then, therefore, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh to live after the flesh. 13. “For if you live after the flesh, you are about to die; but if through the Spirit you kill out the habits of the body, you shall live.” This life is an irrepressible conflict between the spirit drawing us upward and the flesh gravitating earthward, sinward and hellward. Our only hope of victory is by the power of the Holy Spirit to literally and actually exterminate all the evil habits of the animal body, becoming pre-eminently and victoriously spiritual in life, conversation, aspiration and anticipation.

ENTIRE SANCTIFICATION PECULIARIZED BY THE DIVINE LEADERSHIP AND ATTESTED BY THE CLEAR WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 14. “For so many as are led by the Spirit of God, the same are the sons of God.” The Holy Spirit leads the human spirit by direct and immediate illumination, revelation and inspiration. He leads our intelligent minds by the Word, which He wonderfully lights up to our lucid apprehension, while He leads our bodies by His gracious Providence. Hence, if true to this divine leadership, we will never go astray. However, it is exceedingly pertinent that we heed this leadership in its triple aspect. If you follow the Spirit alone Without due appreciation of Word and Providence, you open the door for an evil spirit, passing himself for the Holy Ghost, to come in, deceive, side-track and ruin you. If you follow the Word alone without a due appreciation of God’s Spirit and Providence, you will run into dead formality and lose your soul. If you follow Providence alone, regardless of the Word and Spirit, you will apostatize into rationalistic infidelity and make your bed in hell. The true policy is to keep your eye on Jesus, whom no evil spirit can counterfeit, because the devils have no incarnation. Though the innumerable demons which throng the atmosphere can assume the form of an angel of light, thus counterfeiting the Holy Ghost and deceiving millions, yet none of them can counterfeit Jesus, from the fact that they have no incarnation. Therefore we are everywhere commanded to follow Jesus, meanwhile recognizing the Holy Ghost as our infallible Guide, not only personally, but through His Word and Providence. 15. “For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again unto fear, but you received the spirit of sonship, in which we cry out, Father, Father.” The “spirit of bondage” here mentioned does not refer to the unconverted, but the regenerated state, peculiar to the period of spiritual infancy. This passage is corroborated by Galatians 4:1-7 (which you do well to read in this connection), setting forth spiritual servitude and sonship contrastively; the former appertaining to the entire period of spiritual infancy, beginning at birth, i .e ., regeneration, and running up to majority, i .e ., sanctification, where you enter spiritual manhood. Upon examination you readily see that these two periods are but counterparts in the history of the same individual, the servile character predominating during spiritual infancy, while you need “nurses” and “guardians,” and the filial having pre-eminence during your majority, when you are competent to take care of yourself and consequently no longer under the and guardians. A dead man is not subject to law in any sense. Regeneration raises you from the dead and puts you under a legal regime of nurses and guardians in the visible church, till you reach the majority of entire sanctification, old Adam, who is under the law, being crucified, thus gloriously liberating you, so that you are “no longer under the law but under grace” (Chapter 6:14). We must not discriminate too widely between “servant” and “son” in this exegesis, so as to conclude that they are different individuals, for they are not, but one and the same; during the regenerated state, while under the law, which can only be satisfied by the crucifixion of Adam the First, the servile character predominating; while in the sanctified experience the filial relation comes to the front, throwing into eclipse the former period of spiritual infancy amid the cloudless glories of full salvation. Your son is as truly your heir from his infancy as he will ever be, though under the law of domestic government and frequently flogged for misdemeanor till he reaches adult age. Though after this epoch you treat him as a servant no more, but simply as a son, yet he is more obedient and actually serves you better than when, a naughty lad, you found the rod a valuable auxiliary. The old theology is here at random recognizing the dead church members as servants of God, though they had never been born of the Spirit. You see that is untrue, because the servant in this case is your child, who serves you like a slave during minority. Hence you see that all the servants of God are not simply His servants, but His children, denominated “servants” during a spiritual minority, but “sons” after they have reached majority. Hence it is flagrantly murderous to true diction to call these common sinning church members who have been born from above the “servants of God,” even though they be ever so loyal to the church and obedient to the preacher. That is a Romish heresy, now fearfully rapidly creeping into all the Protestant churches. God does not yoke up the devil’s cattle to pull the salvation wagon. He works none but His own oxen. 16. “The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.” I hope you will never apply the neuter pronoun to the Holy Ghost, as it almost amounts to blasphemy to speak of the Author of all life in the use of the neuter pronoun as if He had no life at all. The clear and unequivocal witness of the Spirit here mentioned does not apply to the servile period of spiritual infancy, i .e ., the regenerated state, but to the filial period of sanctification in which the sonship supersedes and predominates over the servitude in which you were born under the law of the domestic government. Do we not receive the witness of the Holy Spirit to our regeneration? Certainly we do. But it is not the clear, constant, abiding and overwhelming witness mentioned here and in Galatians 4:6, shouting incessantly, “Father! Father!” Abba being simply the Hebrew word for father, which is left untranslated in E.V. As Wesley well says, in regeneration we have the witness at times, anon obscured by intervening clouds, and, in time of temptation, frequently entirely absent. Then we sing, — “Oh, drive these dark clouds from my sky, Thy soul-cheering presence restore Or take me to Thee up on high, Where winter and clouds are no more.” While the sanctified soul sings, — “I’ve reached the land of corn and wine, And all its riches freely mine; There shines undimmed one blissful day, For all my night has passed away.” John Bunyan describes the sun and moon both shining night and day in Beulah Land. Inbred sin is a dismal old bog, always generating fogs and clouds; which, though frequently for a time driven away by the sun, ever and anon linger in dismal gloom for days and even weeks together. This filthy old morass is taken out by the roots in entire sanctification, its bed thoroughly drained and transformed into fruitful fields, smiling gardens and blooming landscapes, never again to be enveloped in fogs and storms.

GLORIFICATION 17. “But if children, indeed heirs, truly heirs of God, and fellow heirs of Christ; if we suffer along with him in order that we may also be glorified along with him.” None but disciples go to heaven. The disciple is a follower. Therefore we must follow Christ in all the grand, salient points of His Messiahship. We must follow Him to the manger, and be born in utter obscurity; to the Jordan, and receive the Holy Ghost; through Gethsemane, and die to our own will, sinking eternally into the will of God; to Pilate’s bar, and have the whole world sign our death warrant; and, finally, up rugged Calvary, there, nailed to the cross, our sinful humanity must be crucified, after the similitude of His sinless humanity. These grand, salient, experimental foci include providential intervening periods, replete with worldly contempt, hardships, privation and persecution, which we must gladly endure for Christ’s sake. After all of His suffering, walking out of the tomb, and glorified on Mount Olivet, He ascended up to heaven to reign forever. We have the blessed assurance that if we follow Him in His humiliation, we shall also follow Him in His glorification. This Epistle is transcendently climacteric, devoting Chapter 1 to Chapter 3:18 to the Sinai gospel on conviction; Chapter 3:19 to Chapter 5 to justification; Chapter to sanctification; Chapter 7, the battle with inbred sin, culminating in the entire sanctification of Paul in Arabia (verse 25); Chapter 8:1-16, Paul’s triumphant shout ringing on after he got sanctified (Chapter 7:25). Now the wonderful climax continues, the next pile in the heavenly monument being glorification. The silly idea prevails that sanctification is the end of the new creation. Justification is primary salvation; sanctification, full salvation; and glorification, final salvation. Of this grand and stupendous work the popular pulpit has nothing but the first, thus keeping the people back in rudimentary Christianity, homogeneous with Judaism. This glorification is to reach the body, mind, and spirit, thus qualifying humanity in its triple departments to go up and live with God forever. Many ignorantly oppose sanctification on the ground of its unattainability till death, thus making a fatal mistake, and identifying it with glorification, which must follow sanctification. This is a trick of Satan to keep people from sanctification, which is indispensable to prepare them for glorification. Thus they vainly congratulate themselves that sanctification will come at death without an effort on their part, which is a dangerous delusion, and will turn them over to the devil world without end. It is true that glorification comes in death irrespective of our volition, wrought by the Holy Ghost on the human spirit and mind simultaneously with the evacuation of the body. You have frequently seen an unearthly radiance lingering in the face of the dead in the coffin. This is the splendor of the glorified soul reflected back on the vacated tenement as it retreated away; as the setting sun ever and anon throws back the thousand variegated tints and hues bespangling the firmament far over to the eastern horizon simultaneously with his retreat through the gates of Hesperus. We have a most wonderful Savior. He is going to clear up everything, making a full and final restitution, not only restoring the body to heavenly glory, but even this earth is to be sanctified by fire ( 2 Peter 3:10), made new again and restored to heaven, where it belonged before the devil broke it loose in view of adding it to hell. Thus earth and firmament made new ( Revelation 21), inhabited by glorified saints and angels like all other heavenly worlds, will shine and shout forever. When you die, your soul and mind will be glorified by the Holy Ghost simultaneously with the evacuation of the body, so that you actually go to heaven in the glorified state. All the saints living on the earth when the Lord returns will be glorified, soul and body simultaneously, and caught up to meet the Lord in the air ( 1 Thessalonians 4). God has two methods of glorifying the body, i .e ., translation, for which I, along with the apostles and their contemporaries, am on the daily outlook. The other method is the resurrection. We must all be transfigured into the similitude of our Savior’s glorified body, soul and spirit. This may come any moment by translation.

If our Lord tarrieth till we die, then we will waive the glorious transfigured body until the resurrection, our soul and mind being glorified when we die.

The apostles and saints lived and died looking for the Lord to come and translate them ( 2 Corinthians 5). We are eighteen hundred years nearer His coming than they were. Hence we should certainly be on the constant outlook. The most glorious privilege of the ages is to be living on the earth sanctified and ready for the Lord to come and translate us. In that case we will never see death, and never evacuate the body, but be transfigured and glorified, soul, mind and body simultaneously, when our Lord calls us to fly up and meet Him in the air ( 1 Thessalonians 4:16). Entire sanctification does the only qualification we need. The Holy Ghost will attend to all the balance, miraculously glorifying us, soul, mind and body.

This is the grandest conceivable inspiration to a holy experience and life.

Oh, that the preachers would all hold it up before the people. It would stir heaven, earth and hell. 18. “For I consider that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that is about to be revealed in us.” He means the glorification of soul, mind and body, about which I have written. Such is the grandeur that the sufferings of this life go into eclipse as we contemplate the glory liable to reach us any moment. What a wonderful mitigation of all worldly woes and sorrows! Yet the masses of Christendom are about as destitute of it as the heathens. Oh, how we need armies of heralds to proclaim this inspiring truth! 19. “For the earnest expectation of the creature awaiteth the revelation of the sons of God.” This means our bodies patiently waiting and longing to put off mortality and put on the transfiguration glory. 20. “For the creature was made subject to mortality, not willingly, but through him that subordinated it” Nothing loves to die. Hence the body is unwillingly tied up in mortality. We must bear it patiently for the One who put us here will soon make it all right. 21. “Therefore, indeed, pursuant to hope, the creature itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.” The plain meaning of this verse is that my body is to be gloriously delivered from all the humiliation and suffering of this mortal life, rendered imponderable So it can fly with angelic velocity, transfigured into the unutterable similitude of my Savior’s glorious body. This is the inspiring hope thrilling my poor, mortal body, and rendering it felicitously oblivious to all my toils, cares and disappointments. 22. “For we know that all creation groaneth together and travaileth in pain till now.” This metaphor vividly describes all creation, even the earth itself, as groaning in great anguish and suffering like a woman in the throes of childbirth, till the new creation is born ( Revelation 21), “new firmament and new earth,” thus lucidly portraying the fulfillment of prophecy appertaining to the glorious restitution in Christ, ultimating not only in the glorification of the soul, mind and body after the similitude of Christ, but the glorification of earth and firmament after the fiery sanctification, when Omnipotence will again come in and create it anew, celestializing and adding it back to the heavenly universe, where it belonged in halcyon days of Eden. 23. “And not only so, but we ourselves, having the earnest of the Spirit,” i .e ., the heavenly prelibation we enjoy in the regeneration and sanctification of the Holy Spirit, which is a foretaste of the heavenly felicity which awaits us, “and we ourselves also groan among ourselves, awaiting the sonship,” i .e ., the “redemption of the body.” Even these bodies of ours are to become the sons of God in the coming glorification, where they will be transfigured into the similitude of our Savior’s glorious body, which ascended up from Mt. Olivet. The vivid conception of Paul here portrays the body holding in electrical anticipation its own coming glory and groaning to enter into the heavenly splendors of the transfiguration. 24. “For we are saved by hope.” He here means the salvation of the body from mortality. Hope spies out and appropriates in anticipation. Therefore, while shut up in these tenements of clay, we lay hold of the glorious hope of the transfiguration, thus rising superior to our pains, toils and persecutions, and virtually living in the glorious heavenly future, rather than the suffering and sorrowing present. 25. “For that which is seen is not hope; for that which one sees, why does he also hope for it? But if we hope for that which we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” Glorification is purely a matter of hope, as none can receive it in this life. Hence the fanaticism of those who profess it. We see here it is not a matter of possession, but of hope. Hence, through hope, we enjoy it in anticipation. The hackneyed testimony, “I hope I am a Christian,” is incorrect. Paul here says we do not hope for what we have, but what we have not. If you are a Christian, you have present salvation, attested by the Holy Spirit. The very fact that it is with you a matter of hope is prima facie evidence against you, i .e ., that you do not possess it.

Justification and sanctification are, for this life, and a matter of conscious possession, while glorification is for the future state, and a matter of hope.

This Epistle is beautifully climacteric in the development of the gracious economy; conviction, Chapters 1, 2 and 3; justification, Chapters 4 and 5; sanctification, Chapter 6; experience of justification, Chapter 7; experience of sanctification, Chapter 8:1-16, gloriously attested by the witness of the Spirit; glorification, Chapter 8:17-28, realized at the end of this life and here participated in the prelibations of hope.

WONDERFUL AID OF THE SPIRIT 26. “And thus indeed the Spirit helpeth our weakness.” While in these fallen, dilapidated bodies, which we must occupy during our probation till relieved by glorification, we are so encumbered with infirmities of thought, speech, and action that we would be in a deplorable condition were it not for the timely aid of the Holy Spirit. “We know not what we should pray for, but the Spirit himself maketh intercessions with unutterable groanings. 27. “He who searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession toward God in behalf of the saints.” Here is a most wonderful and infinitely consolatory fact revealed. While the English language contains one hundred and fifty thousand words, the common people only use three or four hundred; great scholars, only seven to ten thousand. Not only are many saints straitened to common words and phases, but with most ample flow of language many of our petitions are too deep for utterance. The most of earthly language is too materialistic and symbolic to express the deep spiritual truths of this wonderful salvation, especially appertaining to glorification, which is super-experimental. When Paul was in heaven ( 2 Corinthians 12) he heard and saw things too glorious and spiritual for mortal utterance. This deficiency of language the Holy Spirit supplies with groanings which can not be uttered. Hence our most important and efficient prayers are given by the Holy Spirit, and are too deep and spiritual to be formulated in words. Elijah prayed with prayer ( James 5:17), not as E.V., “prayed earnestly,” but prayed with the prayer the Holy Ghost gave him. Hence the miraculous effect of his prayers. “He that searcheth the heart,” i .e ., Jesus, who answers our prayers, “knoweth the mind of the Spirit.” Now you see this wonderful problem; the Holy Spirit indicts our prayers, which are often too deep for utterance. But remember He is the Spirit of Jesus (Chapter 8:9 and Acts 5), i .e ., the spiritual Christ on the earth ( Matthew 28:20); while the glorified Jesus is interceding for us at God’s right hand, who actually understands perfectly all the petitions indicted by the Holy Ghost and groaned out by us, and answers faithfully, though too deeply for verbal utterance. Hence the most illiterate can shake heaven, earth and hell by their prayers. I have known people converted and sanctified in our meetings while praying in their native tongue, which was entirely unknown to the congregation. The Holy Spirit is the Author of a truly efficient prayer. He knows all languages, whether in words or groans. Consequently all true hearts under all circumstances can pray right up to God the petition indicted by the Holy Spirit, whether in words or groans, understood by our glorious Intercessor and presented directly to the Father. 28. “But we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, who are the elect according to his purpose.” You see the climax, beginning with conviction, and running through justification, sanctification and glorification, finally culminates in election. This verse literally inundates God’s true people with floods of unutterable consolation, promoting them beyond all disappointment, and literally putting them out of reach of all evil, locating them in cloudless sunshine, even amid a world of storms. The simple solution of the whole matter hinges on the fundamental problem of this divine love, which is the nature of God, the only essential element in the plan of salvation experienced in the blessing of first love in conversion, and made perfect in sanctification, when all the antagonistic, malevolent affections are eliminated away. So long as this divine love is truly dominant in the heart, you are actually under the “shadow of the Almighty,” as safe on. earth as if in heaven, thus truly the “elect of God according to his purpose” that we should be conformed to the image of His Son, which is perfect love. Thus we are actually invulnerable by all the emissaries of Satan in earth and hell, the impregnable presence of God always intervening between us and every peril, making. everything indiscriminately incidental to us a blessing. This grand climactic truth is beautifully elucidated in the case of Balaam, Satan’s wicked, false prophet, whom Balak, the King of Moab, had hired with a princely fortune to come to his aid and curse Israel for him, as he feared to meet them on the battlefield, and believed that Balaam had such power with the gods that the people whom he anathematized were destined to fade from the face of the earth. If ever a man did his best to pronounce woes and curses on a people it was Balaam, when, the royal sacrifices having been sumptuously offered on the altars of Moab to the gods whom he believed to rule the universe, taking position on the pinnacle of Pisgah, and looking down upon the goodly tents of Jacob, spread out over the plains of Moab, standing on tiptoe and invoking the gods of the Orient, he opens his mouth with the avowed determination to pour the most withering and blighting anathemas on Israel. But, behold, blessings instead of curses pour out of his mouth.

Balak rallies again and offers more sacrifices, thinking the matter will yet prove a success. Again Balaam, from the summit of Pisgah, opening wide his mouth, endeavors to curse Israel; but benedictions, richer and grander, only pour forth from his lips. Again they rally, offer sacrifices and try it again, thus repeating their diabolical orgies six times, not a single anathema ever escaping the lips of the prophet, but blessings, more and more copious, incessantly flowing from his eloquent lips. Finally, the royal patience utterly collapsing, the king, giving up in despair, flies into a rage and orders the prophet “be gone” like a dog. But he does not get rid of him so easily. Again he stands upon the summit of Pisgah, overlooking the goodly tents of Jacob, and, opening his mouth, blessings, more copious and eloquent than ever before, flow like rivers from his inspired lips. The spirit of prophecy mightily resting on him, he sweeps down the intervening ages, hails with triumphant gaudeamus the rising star of Bethlehem, and hears the seraphic song heralding upon earth the world’s Redeemer; on through the ages flash the splendors of his prophetic fire, reveling in the glorious millennial theocracy, girdling the world with the triumphs of the Second Advent. What lesson do we learn from this? Why, the clear and ostensible fact that it is utterly impossible for men or devils to inflict spiritual detriment on God’s true people, because he is always present with them, turning every curse into a blessing. Hence it makes no difference whether men bless or blame, God will make it a blessing to you if you truly love Him; hence the lonely pilgrim environed by millions of devils can shout and sing with utter and eternal impunity, there being no power in earth or hell competent to hurt him. You are truly immortal till your work is done. God can bless us through our enemies as well as our friends, Himself being the only source of blessing in all the universe.

ELECTION, PREDESTINATION AND REPROBATION 29. “Because whom he did foreknow, he did also predestine to be conformed to the image of his Son, to be the firstborn among many brethren.” You must remember that the conclusions here involved follow as a logical sequence from the preceding argumentation. What is the meaning of “firstborn” ? It means the first one in the glorification of spirit, mind and body, constituting the trinity of humanity and representing the whole human race in the redemption, in contradistinction to Adam the First, who represented all in the Fall. Our Savior is not only very God, but perfect man, having a human soul, mind and body. Hence in His glorification which characterized His ascension into heaven He represents the perfect and final restitution of humanity. He is the first thus born into glory, not simply numerically, but pre-eminently, Enoch and Elijah having gone on before, confirmatory heralds, thus giving the world these ominous star gleams anticipatory of the glorious rising sun. Hence we see that this glorification of spirit, mind and body is the triumphant ultimatum of the redemptive scheme, thus verifying the original and eternal “purpose” of God to populate heaven with perfected and glorified human beings. 30. “But whom he did predestinate, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” Why does not sanctification appear in this specification of graces? Neither regeneration nor sanctification are mentioned, but only the call of the gospel through the Spirit, followed by justification and glorification. Regeneration is implied in justification, and sanctification in glorification. Again, you must remember that in this chapter, e .g ., verse 1, as well as elsewhere, justification has the broad signification of complete deliverance from all the penal consequences of sin, both actual and original, in which sense it can only follow entire sanctification, expurgatory of inbred sin. You must remember that foreknowledge stands at the head of this entire catalogue, culminating in glorification. Hence we see the impertinency of recognizing here an unconditional election and absolute predestination, from the simple fact that knowledge of character precedes all these appointments. Now, you must remember that all knowledge with God, whether appertaining to the past or the future, is in the present tense.

Omnipotence is certainly absolutely and unconditionally illimitable. Yet you must remember that knowledge does not determine anything, from the simple fact that it is not influence. Therefore we must not identify things which are utterly dissimilar. From the fact that human knowledge is limited and imperfect, it is difficult to illustrate this problem. All of our knowledge of the future does only proximate; e .g ., an old pilot, who knows every track through the Atlantic Ocean and every submarine rock, stands on the wharf of this city (New York); seeing a ship sail, he knows by her bearings that she will be wrecked on those formidable and impassable rocks. Yet his knowledge of the fact does not cause the wreckage. You see your own son daily wallowing in debauchery and sensuality, and know to your sorrow that he is going to the dogs and the devil; yet your knowledge does not expedite him on his hellward-bound career. Hence you see in all this election and predestination there is not the slightest interference with the freedom of the will. Why? These pre-appointments simply follow as a logical sequence from the moral and spiritual character of the parties appointed, God, from the beginning, having a perfect knowledge of those characters. Yet it is a fact of universal recognition that we freely choose good or evil, and in this way determine our own characters. Now, is it possible for human destiny to turn out differently from the prediction? We have clear light on that question in 1 Samuel 23:1-13. During David’s memorable flight from Saul he takes his refuge in Keilah, the men all fawning on him with flattering attestations of conservatism, assuring him that they will be true and stand by him on the battlefield. David, very happily enjoying that gift of the Holy Spirit denominated “discernment of spirits” ( 1 Corinthians 12:10), suspecting their fidelity, goes aside and turns the problem over to God in prayer (v. 11). “Will the men of Keilah deliver me up into his hands? Will Saul come down, as thy servant hath heard? O Lord God of Israel, I beseech thee tell thy servant And the Lord said, He will comedown” (v. 12). “Then said David, Will the men of Keilah deliver me and my men into the hands of Saul? And the Lord said, They will deliver thee up” (v. 13). “Then David and his men, about six hundred, arose and departed out of Keilah, and went whithersoever they could go. And it was told Saul that David was escaped out of Keilah. And he forbear to go forth.” Here we have a positive answer from God to David, “Saul will come down to Keilah and the men of Keilah will deliver thee up.” Now you see that neither of these predicted events transpired, because David immediately rallied his men and fled away from the traitors who were lying to him that they might purchase royal favor with his head, Saul being close on his track, and, hearing that he was gone, did not come to Keilah at all. Hence you see that even these pre-announced events are entirely changed by human action. David understood God’s method with man better than the cavilers of the present day, who apologize for their own obliquity by crying out, “What is to be will be, and I can not change my destiny.” When God told him that Saul would come to Keilah and the inhabitants of the city would betray him into his hands, David well understood that Saul would come and the Keilites would deliver him up if he stayed. Consequently, blowing his war bugle, he immediately rallies his men and skedaddles at double quick. The Bible is a commonsense book, adapted to the common, uneducated people, who are honest enough to receive its plain and candid truth and govern themselves accordingly. 31-34. In these verses Paul powerfully reasons the case, recognizing the fact that Christ redeemed His people by His own blood, and none has a right to gainsay. 33. “Who shall charge anything against the elect of God?” Eklektos , “the elect,” is from ek , “out,” and lego , “to choose.” In regeneration God chooses us out of the world. The word “elect” really conveys the idea of a second choosing, as lego means “to choose,” and ek , “from.” Hence the chosen from the chosen, corroborating the fact that Christ does not select a bride from the devil’s people, which would be true if the election was consummated in regeneration; but He chooses His bride from the people of God, superinducing this second election in entire sanctification, determinative of the bridehood. 35. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or difficulty, or persecution, or famine, or peril, or sword?” The answer is clearly in the negative, as two hundred millions of martyrs singing their death song in the fire have abundantly attested. 36. “As has been written that for thy sake we are killed all the day long, we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.” This is a simple allusion to their daily exposition to martyrdom. “I die daily” ( 1 Corinthians 15:31); simply affirmatory of the constant peril which everywhere confronted them, with the daily liability of sealing their faith with their blood, which Paul actually did at Rome, whither he was writing this letter. 37. “But in all these we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. 38. “I am persuaded that neither death nor life, angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor dynamites, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” All this is beautiful, true and eminently consolatory. Yet it is an undeniable fact that we are perfectly free and can turn away at will. While we may have no disposition to do so, yet we have the power, so long as we are on probation. Fortunately it is power which I feel in my case, and doubtless in many others, will never be exercised; yet it is there.

CHAPTER - This is one of the places where the chapter division is injudiciously made, breaking the subject in two in the middle. 1. “I speak the truth, I lie not, my conscience bearing witness in the Holy Ghost.” Paul had the approval of his conscience while, unconverted, he persecuted the saints. Then his conscience bore him witness, but not in the Holy Ghost. Though the conscience survived the Fall, God’s telephone to speak to the soul, without which man never could be saved, but must go like the fallen angels; yet it is not a safe guide unless regenerated by the Holy Ghost, but is very likely to be usurped by Satan, who is fond of speaking through God’s telephone and thus passing himself for God. For that reason the leading preachers in the Jewish Church murdered Jesus, and have martyred the saints in the fallen churches of all ages. They follow their consciences, which are manipulated by the devil and an unsafe guide. It bears them witness, but not in the Holy Ghost, as they are strangers to Him. 3. “For I could wish that I were a Sin-offering from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kindred according to the flesh.” This verse in E.V. has led to the conclusion that Paul was willing to give up his interest in Christ and lose his soul for the salvation of the Jews. That is altogether a mistake. He simply states that he would gladly suffer martyrdom, as Christ had, in order to save them. “Accursed,” in E.V., is anathema , from ana , “upon,” and titheemi “place.” Hence it originally means “an offering,” and became applied to a sin-offering, in that sense being applied to Christ, who had a perfect right to let him die a martyr to save the Jews, or live to preach the gospel. He here assures us that he would gladly lay down his life for the Jews if Christ should so order. 4-10. He here recapitulates the signal and extraordinary blessings which God conferred on the Jews, and bewails their apostasy, at the same time observing that the true Israel were in harmony with Christ, representing the seed of Abraham.

ELECTION OF THE MESSIANIC PROGENITORSHIP IN CONTRADISTINCTION TO THE ELECTION OF GRACE If you do not recognize and keep before you this distinction, you get much tangled in both Testaments. While the election of grace determinative of heaven or hell is optionary with man, that of the progenitorship was utterly independent of human volition, absolute and unchangeable in this sense.

The Jews were elected and the Gentiles reprobated; Isaac elected and Ishmael reprobated, and Jacob elected and Esau reprobated. 11. “For the children not having yet been born, nor done anything good nor evil, in order that the purposes of God may stand according to election, not of works but of him that calleth.” This was because Jacob was elected to the progenitorship before he was born, and Esau reprobated from the same. Yet the atonement was as free and efficacious for Esau as for Isaac, for the Arabs as the Jews. 12. “It was said to her that the elder shall serve the younger.” While this primarily means the election of Isaac to the progenitorship, and the reprobation of Esau to the same, it has here a potent symbolic meaning which is not to be overlooked, i .e ., that the old Adamic nature in us is to serve the new creature imparted by the Holy Ghost in regeneration. The word “serve” means a slave, involving the perfect submission of the old man. 13. “As has been written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.” This is the language of Malachi 1:2,3, five hundred years after the time of these men. Hence it does not apply to these men personally, but representatively to Israel, a godly people, and the Edomites, very wicked idolators. 14. “Then what shall we say? Is there Unrighteousness with God? It could not be so. 15. “For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I do have mercy, and will compassionate whom I do compassionate” ( Exodus 3:19). This progenitorship was a great and signal mercy, yet it did not exclude the reprobated from grace and glory but does imply from a place in the honored Messianic progenitorship. 16. “Then therefore it is not of him that willeth nor him that runneth, but of God who showeth mercy.” This progenitorship, the greatest blessing this side of heaven, was bestowed on Abraham and his seed by the sovereign discriminating mercy of God. Yet while it was special to Abraham and his seed, instead of excluding all others from the kingdom of grace and glory, it was the provision of God’s redeeming love for the whole human race. 17. “For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, that for this very thing have I raised thee up, that I may show forth my power in thee, in order that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.” At that time Pharaoh was absolute monarch of the only organized government on the globe. He built the pyramids, the world’s greatest wonder to this day; there being no mechanical powers on the earth at the present day competent to erect them.

It has been estimated that it would take twenty thousand men one hundred years to build Cheops. When I climbed to the top and stood on its pinnacle, five hundred and fifty feet above the earth, and looked down the huge mass covering thirteen acres of ground, I no longer doubted the estimate. God did not mock Pharaoh. He sent him His two best preachers, Moses and Aaron, to preach the gospel. to him that he might be saved. Of course the gospel resisted hardened his heart, as in every other case. The same sun that softens the wax, hardens the clay; so the same gospel that saves those who receive it, hardens and augments the damnation of all who reject it. Hence souls lost in Christendom reach a hotter hell than the heathens. If Pharaoh had been converted, he was the very man to glorify God in all the earth, by sending the gospel to the ends of the earth. He had the men and the money, and was competent to preach the gospel and proclaim the true God in all the earth. Pharaoh did like millions of other sinners, rejected the gospel and plunged into ruin for time and eternity, defeating the purposes of God for which He had raised him up, that he might be converted under the preaching of Moses and Aaron and preach the gospel of God’s truth and righteousness to all the earth. 20. “O vain man, who art thou that repliest against God? Whether shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why didst thou make me thus? 21. “Hath not the potter power over the clay, to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?” The removal of the clay from the bank to the pottery is regeneration. The purification of the lay from all trash, pebbles and foreign materials, by desiccation, commination and sifting, is sanctification. The diversified work in the formation of the vessel is character building; while the final ornamentation, putting on the beautiful gloss, is glorification. Timee , “honor,” here means financial remuneration; while “dishonor” means no financial value. Since the potter, like all other mechanics, simply prosecutes his employment for the money that is in it, he invaritably sets out to make an honorable vessel. Why does he fail?

Because, after he has done his best, the clay mars in his hand so that the vessel is spoiled and utterly worthless, consequently he casts it away into the ditch, as it is a well-known fact that these marred vessels can not be worked over. They are actually fit for nothing. If you put them on the turnpike pike, they will dissolve and become mud. Hence the potter always throws them away as utterly worthless. Now let us make the application.

When God sets out to make a man, He invariably proposes to make a good one. Why does He not succeed, since He is Omnipotent? It is not a mere question of power. The human will is involved. If your will falls in line and reciprocates God’s will, He is certain to make you a vessel to honor, just as the potter always does his best to make a good, sound vessel that will be current in the market, but, despite all he can do, the vessel mars in his hands and turns out a failure. Even so, while God is doing His best to make a good man, your will antagonizes His will till the vessel is spoiled. Then He can only leave you for Satan’s heap of rubbish, tumbled down into hell.

If God were to ignore your free will, He would dehumanize you. He does not want a machine. If he did, He would make it. He wants a man. Hence He can not make you good without the co-operation of your will, lest He unman you. While the potter is doing his best to make an honorable vessel, the clay mars in his hands till the vessel is spoiled. Just so, while God has laid heaven, earth and hell under contribution to make a good man of you, this does not settle the question, because your will is free. If you sink away into the will of God, He is certain to make you a vessel unto honor. If you contravene His will, you will become a vessel unto dishonor, fit only for the ditch of damnation. 22. “But if God, wishing to show forth his indignation and make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath which had been perfected for destruction.” “Fitted,” E.V., which I translate “having been made perfect,” is the identical word constantly translated “perfect,” setting forth Christian perfection. Hence it involves the conclusion that there is a perfecting for destruction as well as salvation. No soul goes to heaven till perfected for glory. Even so no one goes to hell till perfected for damnation. The potter never gives up the vessel while there is hope. God is the Omnipotent. Hence He works on every vessel so long as there is hope. When the human will so contravenes the divine will as to disqualify Omnipotent grace to make you a vessel to honor, then you are perfected for destruction. God is Omniscient. He sees you will never let Him save you. Consequently He lets you drop into hell. There is no other place for you. He has made heaven for you, but you will not let Him love you, consequently you are a vessel unto dishonor perfected for damnation, i .e ., ripe for hell. 23. “In order that he may make known the riches of his glory unto the vessels of mercy, which he before prepared unto glory.” “Glory” here means the glorification of spirit, soul and body, which awaits all the saints at the end of this life, spirit and mind being glorified simultaneously with the evacuation of the body, the latter receiving glorification in the resurrection, unless, fortunately, we should be honored with the translation, going up in the rapture “to meet the Lord in the air,” in which case, soul and mind and body will all he glorified at the same time. Hence our entire probationary life here is in the hands of the blessed Potter, who is constantly bringing into availability His Omnipotent grace and merciful Providence to prepare us for glorification in the end, thus perfecting us vessels of honor. 24-26. Here Paul speaks of the fact that these vessels of honor are elected both from Jews and Gentiles indiscriminately. 27. “But Isaiah crieth out in behalf of Israel: If the number of the sons of Israel may be as the sands of the sea, the remnant shall be saved.” N. B. — Amid the wonderful fulfillment of God’s promises through out both Testaments, to gather the Jews from the ends of the earth and restore them, not only to Palestine but to His covenanted mercy and gracious favor, the “remnant” is everywhere recognized and contemplated, and not the teeming multitudes. The divine election, both on the line of grace and progenitorship, is confined to this remnant. So, while we may confidently rely on the fulfillment of God’s promises to His chosen people, we must not forget that the faithful remnant is the recipient throughout. 28. “For perfecting and cutting it short, the Lord will verify his work upon the earth.” When God’s time comes to restore the Jews, I know He will astonish the world by the miracles of His summary prophetical fulfillments. 29. “And as Isaiah before said: Unless the Lord of hosts left unto us a seed, we were as Sodom and we become like unto Gomorra.” Hence you see that the Jews were neither exterminated nor utterly cast away, God’s merciful eye following the faithful remnant in all their peregrinations upon the face of the whole earth, keeping the covenant which He made with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses, and finally gathering them back to the land of their holy patrimony. 30. “Then what shall we say? That the Gentile does not following after righteousness received righteousness, and the righteousness which is from faith,” i .e ., the true and genuine righteousness, which always saves. 31. “But Israel, following the law, did not attain unto the law of righteousness.” The Jews, like the fallen churches of all ages, retrogressed into the legalistic heresies of seeking salvation by good works, thus deluded by the devil, and going headlong into apostasy and damnation, so blind that they actually killed their own Savior. 32. “Wherefore, because they sought it not by faith, but by works.” The true religion in all ages is salvation by the free grace of God in Christ, received and appropriated by faith alone, without works; while false religions in all ages teach salvation by faith and works, the latter always eclipsing the former and running them into idolatry. “They stumbled over the stone of stumbling, 33. “As has been written: Behold I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, and he that believeth on him shall not be ashamed.” Shame is always the progeny of sin. People are ashamed to pray in public and in their own families and invite the erring to the Savior, looking them boldly in the face. What is the solution? Sin is at the bottom. Get rid of sin and your shame is all gone. Here we see that the Jews, having waited four thousand years for their own Christ, stumbled Over Him, plunging into hopeless ruin. Till Christ came the Jews were normally the true people of God. The ministry of Christ, living and dying, proved the fatal epoch in the apostasy of Israel. Before that epoch the Jewish church was adorned with brilliant examples of holiness. Since that day she exhibits not a solitary light, but goes deeper into the darkness of infidelity and atheism as the ages go by. In a similar manner, Romanism stumbled over Christ preached by Luther and his compeers. Before that day Saint Bernard, Abbey de Rance, Thomas a Kempis and many other exemplars of entire sanctification shone brilliantly in their ranks. But, oh, how dark their escutcheon today, unilluminated by a solitary confessor! In a similar manner the Episcopal Church stumbled Over Christ preached by Wesley and his heroic comrades, plunging into darkness and sinking deeper into worldliness. Oh, what a memorable epoch in the history of the Protestant churches the present Holiness movement is marking! We live in an age of thrilling prophetical fulfillments, when “men will not endure sound doctrine.” God has raised up an army of Holiness people, girdling the globe with the evangelism of Christ, the great Protestant churches in all lands stumbling over Him, as revealed by the Holy Ghost in His Omnipotent, sanctifying power.

CHAPTER - CHRIST THE ONLY WAY, AND RECEIVED BY FAITH ALONE 1. “Brethren, truly the desire of my heart and my prayer to God in their behalf is for salvation. 2. “For I testify to them that they have a zeal of God, but not according to perfect knowledge.” The Jews in Paul’s day, like the fallen churches in all ages, had some knowledge of God, but it was not the experimental sort, such as enables us to know Him personally in practical and real salvation. 3. “For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness; but did not submit themselves unto the righteousness of God. 4. “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.” Righteousness arising from legal obedience is nothing but our own counterfeit self-righteousness, which is “filthy rags” in the sight of God. The only hope of humanity is the righteousness of God in Christ, imputed unto the broken-hearted through faith alone, and wrought in the heart by the Holy Ghost in regeneration. We have a most wonderful Savior, very God and perfect man. In His divine capacity He has a righteousness peculiar to His divinity, which He will never impart, but retain forever. In His human capacity He has a righteousness peculiar to His perfect humanity, which He will never impart, but eternally retain. Meanwhile He has a third righteousness arising from His perfect obedience to the divine law, actively in life keeping it and passively in death verifying it. This third righteousness, which is neither essential to His Godhead, nor His manhood, nor His perfect Mediatorial character, lie procured for all His guilty, ruined brethren to relieve them of condemnation and establish them irreproachable before the divine law for time and eternity. Since Christ Himself is the only human being who ever did or ever can keep the law, having become our Substitute in death and our exemplar in life, since faith in its very nature is the only appropriating grace, we must all receive this righteousness by faith alone. Here Paul condemns the Jews for “going about” to establish their own righteousness instead of receiving the righteousness of God in Christ by simple faith. The world is still full of people “going about” to establish their own righteousness. I was on that line nineteen years, intervening between my conversion and sanctification.