He said that, abiding in Christ Jesus, we walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit. Therefore we are not subject to condemnation, since we do not sin.
Now he goes more deeply within and explains how it happened that we began to walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit, and therefore not to sin.
How did this happen? A new spirit entered and freed me from the law of sin, and so I do not sin. Now the Apostle speaks in the person of a Christian renewed in Christ Jesus.
Earlier he spoke in the person of fallen man. To be subject to the law of sin is the same as to walk according to the flesh and to sin, as is clear from the preceding chapter.
Man came under the yoke of this law through the fall, or apostasy from God. We must recall what resulted from this.
Man is spirit, soul, and body. The spirit is appointed to live in God. The soul is appointed to order earthly life under the guidance of the spirit.
The body is appointed to produce and preserve visible elemental life on earth under the direction of both.
When man tore himself away from God and resolved to arrange his own well-being, he fell into selfhood, whose soul is every form of self-pleasing.
Since his spirit, because of its detached nature, offered no means for this, he turned wholly into the realm of psychical and bodily life. There self-pleasing found ample nourishment, and he became psychical and carnal.
Psychical carnality was already in itself a sin against man's nature. For he ought to live in the spirit, spiritualizing both soul and body. But the misfortune did not stop there.
From selfhood a multitude of passions was born. Together with it they invaded the soul-and-bodily realm. They distorted the natural powers, needs, and functions of soul and body.
Moreover, they introduced much that has no support at all in nature. The psychical carnality of fallen man became passionate.
Thus fallen man is self-centered. Consequently he is self-pleasing, and he feeds his self-pleasing by passionate psychical carnality. In this lies his sweetness, the strongest chain that holds him in these bonds of the fall.
Taken together, all this is the law of sin that is in our members. To free one from this law, these bonds must be destroyed: sweetness, self-pleasing, and selfhood.
How is this possible? There is in us a detached power, the spirit, breathed by God into the face of man. It seeks God and can find rest only by life in God.
In the very act of its creation, or breathing forth, it was placed in communion with God. But fallen man, who tore himself away from God, also tore it away from God.
Its nature, however, remained unchanged. It continually reminded the fallen man, sunk in psychical carnality made passionate, of its own needs and demanded their satisfaction.
Man did not reject these demands. In a calm state he intended to do what is pleasing to the spirit. But when action had to begin, passion rose up from the soul or from the body.
It flattered with sweetness and took possession of man's will. Consequently, in the deed before him the spirit was refused, while passionate psychical carnality was satisfied.
This happened because of the promised sweetness in feeding self-centered self-pleasing. Since this mode of acting occurred in every deed, it is rightly called the law of sinful life.
This law held man in the bonds of the fall. The fallen man himself recognized the heaviness of these bonds and sighed for freedom, but he found no strength in himself to be freed.
Sinful sweetness always enticed him and incited him to sin. The cause of such weakness is that in the fallen man the spirit lost its determining power.
This power passed from it into passionate soul-and-bodiliness. According to his original constitution, man ought to live in the spirit and be determined by it in his activity.
His activity is full, that is, both psychical and bodily. He ought to spiritualize everything in himself by the spirit's power.
But the spirit's power to keep man in this order depended on its living communion with God. When this communion was broken by the fall, the spirit's power also dried up.
It no longer had authority to determine man. The lower parts of nature began to determine him, and these had become passionate. In this lie the bonds of the law of sin.
It is now evident that to be freed from this law, the power of the spirit must be restored and the authority taken from it returned to it.
This is what the divine economy of salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ accomplishes: the spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
It accomplishes this in the following way. The grace of the Holy Spirit descends upon man and, enlivening his spirit, restores it to its natural rights.
From this moment a new life begins in fallen man, or the original life is restored. In this life, the authority determining deeds passes into the hands of the spirit.
It is taken away from passionate soul-and-bodiliness. The life of man receives the character of spiritual life, detached from self-pleasing and pleasure-loving selfhood.
This is the general indication of the change that occurs in a man becoming Christian. The details are as follows.
The elements of the spirit are the fear of God, conscience, and thirst for God, which manifests itself as dissatisfaction with anything created. In the fallen state all these appear, but they are weak and are not heeded.
God's grace, entering within through the preaching of the Gospel, awakens the fear of God. The fear of God enlivens conscience. Both sober and detach the man.
A conviction passes through consciousness and will: everything is vanity, yet because of it you will perish. From this moment begins a living concern for salvation, which is the one thing needful (cf. Lk 10:42).
Work proceeds within, with God's grace assisting and directing. The fear of God threatens judgment. Conscience torments a man for deeds done according to psychical and bodily passion.
The decision comes to change everything according to the direction of the Gospel. The Gospel promises peace with God through the Lord's death on the Cross.
It also promises rest of conscience because of the resolve to live henceforth according to its promptings or according to the commandments.
Conscience has received these commandments as law, or they have renewed the law written in it. The Gospel promises to assist in this by the grace of the Holy Spirit.
This decision changes the whole former life. In place of selfhood it sets self-denial. In place of self-pleasing it sets the pleasing of God.
In place of sweetness it sets readiness for all afflictions, even death, in hope of eternal rest.
When such a decision is formed and strengthened under the action of faith and grace, still acting outwardly and converting, man becomes ready to receive grace inwardly.
He receives it through the divinely instituted Mysteries, according to the order of the stewards of God's house of grace and its treasures.
He receives the Mysteries and is filled with grace. In the first moment of its indwelling, grace allows man to feel the whole sweetness of life according to God.
Before this sweetness all previously experienced delights are nothing. This grace makes man powerful for life according to God.
Restoring his spirit, it leads him into living communion with God. Having entered this communion, he begins to live in God, standing unceasingly before Him within himself by consciousness.
He directs all his activity, in all its smallest manifestations, words, deeds, and thoughts, toward what is pleasing to Him.
He does not merely refuse to heed self-centered and pleasure-loving self-pleasing. He also deliberately takes up arms against it.
He finds satisfaction in acts of self-denial and self-affliction, according to the promptings of grace, which guides and strengthens him.
It is evident that the former law of sin has fallen away from man. A new law of life has entered into action. This is the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
The passions still approach even now. But since they no longer have their former supports within, after selfhood and self-pleasing have been removed, they no longer possess any determining power.
They are driven away by mere contempt and inattention. Sinful sweetness also attempts to entice, as though stealing in secretly.
But it cannot stand even for a moment before the remembrance of that heavenly sweetness which grace lets one feel at the moment of its indwelling within.
Nor can it stand before the thought of the ineffable future rest, or, in case of yielding, of the terrible eternal torments.
We may define the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus thus: a self-denying life by the spirit in God.
It begins to become characteristic in a man who has cleaved to Christ the Lord by faith and has been filled with grace.
It gives authoritative direction to his psychical and bodily activity, turning it all toward the pleasing of God.
It tramples down and despises the former self-centered self-pleasing in passionate soul-and-bodiliness. In this consists freedom from the law of sin.
The Apostle joins freedom from death to freedom from the law of sin. For as in the beginning subjection to the yoke of sin caused death, so now the destruction of the sinful yoke must bring the destruction of death's dominion.
Even after receiving grace, men die. But the meaning of death is no longer the same. It is a passage to blessed immortality, not to unbearable torments.
In those torments there is continual dying without death. The seed of blessed immortality is planted together with the birth of spiritual life by the grace of the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, when mentioning the beginning of this life, the Apostle also mentioned the cutting off of that immortal dying.
All this is produced by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Yet nothing within occurs mechanically.
The Spirit of God transforms our inward order, but not by creative authority and power alone. He follows the conscious and free decisions of man himself and accords with them.
Nevertheless, in all this everything is from the Spirit. For man himself could produce nothing in himself, however much he strained.
All our interpreters understand the Holy Spirit, with His grace that sanctifies us, under the law of the spirit of life.
Theodoret writes: "As the Apostle called sin the law of sin, so he named the Life-giving Spirit the law of the spirit of life. His grace, he says, through faith in Christ, has granted you a twofold freedom."
"For it has not only crushed the dominion of sin, but also ended the tyranny of death."
Chrysostom expounds the force of the present text more fully. He says: "By the name law of the spirit, the Apostle here means the Spirit. For as he called sin the law of sin, so he calls the Spirit the law of the spirit."
"But he also called the Mosaic law spiritual, saying: 'For we know that the law is spiritual.' What then is the difference? It is great and immeasurable."
"That is a spiritual law, but this is the law of the Spirit. How does one differ from the other? In this, that one was given only by the Spirit, while the other abundantly bestowed the Spirit on those who received it."
"Therefore the Apostle also called it the law of life, in distinction from the law of sin, and not from the Mosaic law."
"By the law of sin is meant the law that wars against the law of the mind. This grievous warfare the grace of the Spirit has ended."
"It mortifies sin, makes the struggle easy for us, and first crowns us. Then, under strong protection, it leads us out to the contest."
"In other cases the Apostle passes from the Son to the Spirit, and from the Spirit to the Father and the Son. He attributes everything accomplished for us to the Holy Trinity. So he does here also."
"After the words, 'Who will deliver me from this body of death?' he showed that the Father accomplishes this through the Son. Then again he attributes it to the Holy Spirit together with the Son."
THEOSIS