GREENWICH, OCTOBER 29TH, 1896

GREENWICH, OCTOBER 29TH, 1896

I do not think that anyone can read the first three chapters of Romans carefully without seeing that what is prominent is man’s moral state of which his conduct is the evidence. It is a sum up to show the state of the first man before God brings out the second. It is true that Christ was delivered for our offences but our justification is in Him risen, and I take it that it is on this ground that the believer receives the gift of the Holy Spirit. So few seem to me to take into account the fact that not only is man a sinner but that death is on him as regards his state here, and it is on the ground of that judgment having been borne in Christ that man is justified in the eye of God. As Mr. Stoney has put it, the man that was under judgment has gone in judgment and by the faith of His death I come into the light of all that is in Him as risen, peace, reconciliation and eternal life.