Paul The Apostle Takes Up The Theme

Background: The Pauline Epistles.

Immediate Basis: Rom. 5:19-6:11; Phil. 3:1-15.

Among the apostolic group, the outstanding exponent of the teaching of full salvation was Paul, the converted Pharisee. He, above all others, could present the case for an inward religion and the length to which saving grace could go in its application to personal experience of God's great remedy for sin.

The details of his background were by no means accidental.

All that a formal religion had to offer he had explored to the full. If we were seeking a living embodiment of the Pharisee as Jesus described him in the parable of Luke 18: 9-14, there could be no more perfect example than Saul of Tarsus.

"After the most straitest sect of our religion," said he, "I lived a Pharisee" (Acts 26: 5).

Neither was his conversion a chance incident.

"He is a chosen vessel unto me," said the Lord, when sending Ananias to greet him (Acts 9: 15).

"The God of our fathers hath chosen thee. . . . for thou shalt be his witness," was his testimony concerning the word of the risen Lord to him on the Damascus road (Acts 22: 14, 15).

Paul was not one of the original apostolic group. He referred to himself as "one born out of due time" (I Cor. 15:8).

Yet he became the recipient of a special revelation which molded his entire career. "But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ." (See Gal. 1: 11-24.)

The result of all this was that, while one with the rest of the apostles in the general truth which they declared, he became distinctly individualistic in his emphasis. His theology was deeper and his phraseology distinctive.

Among his outstanding emphases are two thoughts which we shall consider today: First, the fact of sin and God's provision for it; and, further, the perfect life and the God-given power to live it.

Here again we pick up the thought of our previous studies.

I. Concerning the Nature of Sin -- And God's Provision for It

In order to grasp the significance of the remedy as taught by the apostle, it is essential to understand something of the Pauline conception of sin itself. Our conception as to the nature of a disease will, of necessity, govern our appreciation of the remedy offered for it. One person may be inconvenienced by a cold and another may be dying of cancer. When a remedy is offered to each, one may be inclined to argue, but the other will make a desperate grab.

To Paul, sin was no mere inconvenience. It was a tragic death grip, not only upon the race in general, but also upon the entire man. Paul never minimized the fact of sin. He treated it as the vile thing it was, polluting the entire man and meriting the wrath of a holy God.

"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men" (Rom. 1: 18).

A. Consider, first, Sin's Reality, as it is here set forth.

1. It is seen as a universal plague, affecting every man.

By many, such a statement may be considered to be hackneyed and trite; but there never was a day when there was greater need that the truth which it contains should be clearly emphasized.

The first three chapters of the Roman epistle, with the multiplied references throughout the other Pauline writings, are emphatic here.

In these chapters, the key phrase is found in the three words, all under sin (3:9).

The Gentile world, in all its darkness and corruption, is reviewed -- and pronounced guilty before God.

The Jew, knowing the law, is considered -- and pronounced guilty before God.

Paul leaves no room for doubt as to humanity's standing with regard to sin.

2. It is also seen as an inward pollution affecting every part of every man.

To Paul, sin was not merely an act; it was a nature. while in the early chapters of the Roman epistle he exposes sin in the world as rebellion against God, in the chapters which follow (6-8) he shows sin to be a nature within the child of God, and that in such a manner that, were it not for our familiarity with the letter of it, it would cause us to reel with shock.

Paul's portraiture of indwelling sin is seen in his epistles as sevenfold:

a. It is a dominating tyrant, as a study of Romans, chapter six, will show. Note that word sin in the singular number, occurring at least seventeen times.

b. It is a hereditary evil, as a familiar expression will indicate.

Turn to three passages, Rom. 6: 6; Eph. 4: 22; Col. 3: 9, and note the words, "our old man" and "the old man."

Here, evidently, is an intruder into our nature. It is declared to be old, and there is reason for it. It dates a long way back, being a racial contamination beginning with the fall and consequently passed on as a corrupted birth strain to all who follow.

c. It is a unitary evil; for, while its expressions are many, the root cause is one.

Hence it is called "the body of sin" (Rom. 6:6) and, in the Colossian epistle, "the body of the sins of the flesh" (Col. 2: 11).

That word body is not to be understood as indicating the human body of flesh and blood, but the principle of sin in its totality. It is an inner unit from which all the consequent manifestations come.

d. It is a body of death (Rom. 7:24).

That expression 'the body of this death" is thought to be a vivid reference to that old Roman form of capital punishment where the condemned person was chained to a corpse, a body of death, and compelled to drag it along with him until he too died by reason of the stench. This sin principle, says the apostle, is like that.

e. It is a downward drag, called by the apostle "the law of sin and death" (8: 2).

f. It is an inward enmity, here called "the carnal mind," which "is enmity against God" (8: 7). It is a propensity, a principle, a disposition, sometimes expressing itself in vulgarity, coarseness, and vileness, and sometimes in earthliness and weakness; but, whether coarse or cultured, contrary to the mind of the Spirit.

g. It is a corruption of the moral nature, called by the apostle "the flesh" (Rom. 8: 8; Gal. 5: 16-21).

Concerning the meaning of this word there has been much controversy. Bible dictionaries and lexicons give at least six different meanings, but most of them seem to be agreed on the following: "The seat and vehicle of sin"; "Applied to the carnal nature."

Many wordy battles have been fought around this term which Paul so frequently uses. This, however, is a study which the student must take up for himself.

To the child of God who is spiritually enlightened, sin in the nature is seen to be both dangerous and deadly -- a foe with which only God himself can deal.

B. Consider, further, Sin's Remedy, as it is here set forth.

In looking for the remedy we must retrace the chapters which we have already covered, for there the disease and the remedy are closely associated, being found side by side.

The key phrase for the remedy is found in chapter three, verse twenty-four: "The redemption that is in Christ Jesus." Within those seven words lie all the processes of saving grace which take a sin-burdened soul all the way from guilt to glory.

1. For the sinner, there is grace which justifies freely.

"Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (3: 24).

That act of justification is not to be understood as the dropping of the charges against the sinner, nor as a minimizing of the charge against him. It is, rather, a frank facing of that charge with an undeniable provision; not as an act of pity at the expense of justice, but as an act of mercy on the ground of an indisputable provision.

"Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus" (3:24-26).

2. For the justified soul, there is provision to sanctify wholly (chapters 5-8).

The fifth chapter closes with the thought that "where sin abounded, grace did much more abound" (5:20).

The sixth chapter opens with the warning, however, that this abounding grace is not intended to cover our sinning, but to cure it. The redeemed soul is seen as enjoying a faith union with the risen Christ in His Calvary death and resurrection. This carries with it a personal knowledge of the fact that "our old man is [was, A.S.V.] crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin" (6:6).

Here is a provision which presents a possibility. "..... was .... that .... might be ...." Here, too, is a possibility which invites a participation.

This sin-destroying work is the gateway into a holy life which Moses, Jesus, Peter, and now Paul insist on and call the life that is perfect.

II. Concerning the Perfect Life -- And the God-given Power to Live It

The believer's death to sin, as Paul sees it, is by no means an end in itself.

Like physical death, it is succeeded by an experience of resurrection, leading into the reality of a life beyond. "That like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (6:4).

What Moses demanded, our Lord himself interpreted, and Peter endorsed is now seen by Paul to be the normal experience of the soul having claimed a personal identification with the crucified and risen Lord. Taking up the same expression which both Moses and Jesus had used, Paul did not hesitate to use the word perfect.

One outstanding feature of Paul's teaching was his carefulness to distinguish between the perfection to be expected in this world and the perfection to be enjoyed in the world to come.

Take for example the distinction he makes in his epistle to the Philippians. "If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. [Lit., the resurrection out from among the dead.] Not as though I had already attained [i.e., the resurrection out from among the dead], either [in this resurrection sense] were already perfect; but I follow after. .. . Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded.. . ." (Phil. 3:11, 12, 15).

Here, obviously, the apostle sees two perfections, one which the believing soul may possess, and the other toward which it must progress. It is evident that in his thinking the perfect life is regarded as the norm where grace is allowed to do its work.

"We speak wisdom," he declared to the Corinthians, "among them that are perfect" (I Cor. 2: 6).

Again he writes in a further letter: "And this also we wish, even your perfection . . . . Finally, brethren, farewell. Be perfect" (II Cor. 13:9, 11).

And to the Colossians he wrote: "That we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus" (Col. 1:28).

There is, then, according to Moses, our Lord Jesus, and the apostolic writers, an experience of present perfection. It is less than the experience possessed by the glorified, more than that possessed by the justified, and governed by the degree of maturity which each soul has attained.

In it no two persons, both evangelically perfect, may measure themselves by each other; and certainly none may measure others by themselves.

This experience is neither mystical nor fanciful, but practical, present, and real.

As in the ordinary things of life, so in things spiritual. Whatever accomplishes that for which it was designed is, in its own place and degree, perfect. It may be a watch, a clock, a fountain pen, a baby's feeding bottle, a scale, or a railroad train. None of these would be pronounced imperfect because it did not do the work of some other instrument. Perfection lies in the accomplishment of that for which the thing has been made. What is man's chief end? asks the Westminster Catechism. The answer given is: Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.

Do you want to see this life worked out in its concrete form? The thirteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians is the answer.