Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law." This simple condition of salvation is the only one which can be adapted to our need. Sinners as we are, our condition is hopeless unless redemption be offered to us as a free gift. _This redemption is secured to all who believe by God's unalterable purpose and promise._ It is not vitally affected by recurring doubts and fears, nor even by our often insufficient struggles against sin (viii. 28-39). _The result is inconceivably glorious_; freedom from condemnation, adoption into God's family, joy, peace, full favour with God here, and heaven with its perfect glory, consummated in the resurrection, hereafter. Now, it is at the close of all this that the apostle's "therefore" comes; and these are the facts and principles which give to it its point and force. It links all the disclosures of Divine love with the obligations of redeemed souls. Since God has done so much as this for you, what then? By the remembrance of the sin which left you without hope; by the greatness of the love of God who, to save you, gave His well-beloved Son to an atoning death on your behalf; by the greatness of the love of Christ who, to save you, consecrated Himself to this perfect sacrifice; by His birth and death, by His cross and passion, by His resurrection and ascension; by the freeness and the simplicity of the condition on which Christ's salvation becomes yours; by your present peace; by your hope which blooms with immortality and with eternal life; by _these_, _the mercies of God_, I beseech you, yield yourselves to God. That surrender must be the first, the natural, the inevitable result of any vivid and practical realisation of the Divine goodness. "Yield your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God." The Apostle Paul was pre-eminently the teacher of what are called the doctrines of grace. In the system of Divine truth which he gives us, he leaves no room for the indulgence on man's part of the least sentiment of pride. The gospel, in his view, is the Divine expedient for what must otherwise have been a desperate and hopeless case; an expedient, therefore, which--since, from first to last, it is the expression of God's free and sovereign love--cannot allow of any self-glorying to man as unregenerate, or of any self-satisfaction to man as Christian. Hence the uniformity and consistency of his teaching with respect to "works." In the believer and the unbeliever alike, these "works," judged by "the law"--the standard of moral perfection--are all defective, and therefore unavailing. The same truth applies to them all at every stage of the Christian's progress towards heaven. In no sense does salvation come by "works," "lest any man should boast."