And (ver. 12) the practical duty which follows from this is plain. Christians must not acknowledge a tyrant whose strength and power is gone for ever, by letting sin still reign in the lower part of their nature--the body still subject to physical death--and so bring their higher nature into an unnatural subjection to its appetites: they must {210} not leave the limbs of their redeemed selves at the disposal of the dethroned king Sin, to be used as weapons for the warfare of iniquity. No: they must correspond to the privileges of the new life in God into which they have passed, by making an offering of themselves[7] to God, with all the free will which befits those who were dead and are alive again; and an offering also of their limbs, now restored to their own control, as weapons for God's warfare of righteousness. Sin shall no longer be their lord. That despotism belonged to the days when they were under the law. Now it is not the law they are under, but the sovereignty of the divine goodwill. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. We who died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein? Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with the likeness of his death, we shall be also with the likeness of his resurrection; knowing this, that our old man was crucified with _him_, that the body of {211} sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin; for he that hath died is justified from sin. But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him; knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more hath dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died unto sin once: but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey the lusts thereof: neither present your members unto sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law, but under grace. 1. In the analysis of the passage given above, the order of the ideas has been somewhat altered, and their meaning expanded, with the intention of rendering the real argument more intelligible; while I believe that no idea is suggested that is foreign to the original. The passage, however, is extraordinarily condensed, and is full of some of the most characteristic of St. Paul's thoughts--amongst them that of the life in Christ as being a living by dying, or a life out of death.