[1] The tense of the verb in 'shall we sin' appears to indicate an act, not a habit of sin. [2] John viii. 34. [3] _Serm._ xxxix. 2. [4] 2 Tim. i. 13. [5] Cf. Luke i. 1-4; 1 Cor. xi. 23; xv. 3, 4. [6] Cf. Rom. vi. 3; Heb. vi. 1-6; 1 Cor. x. 15, 16; xi. 23 ff.; Acts ii. 38. [7] _Didaché_, 8; cf. below, p. 293. [8] Heb. vi. 1, 2; 1 Thess. iv. 1, 2; v. 2. [9] See Hort, _First Ep. of Peter_, p. 18, for the fact that 'a recognized belief or idea [of the threefold Name] seems to be everywhere presupposed.' [10] Cf. above, pp. 31, 32. {236} DIVISION III. § 5. CHAPTER VII. 1-6. _Freedom from the law by union with Christ._ St. Paul is full of two thoughts. The first is that of life out of death, living by dying. He had lived an old life in which 'those multitudinous motions of appetite and self-will which reason and conscience disapproved, reason and conscience could yet not govern, and had to yield to them. This, as we shall see, is what drove Paul almost to despair[1].' He had passed to a new life in which he found in actual, blessed experience that he could do the thing that he would. He could do all things--through Christ that strengthened him. For it was Christ who had been the means of transferring him from the old life to the new, and that by His own way of dying to live. Christ Himself had lived 'by the Spirit' deliberately and always. He {237} had never failed morally to do the thing that He would. But so violent was the antagonism between His life of divine obedience (with the claims that it involved upon other men) and 'the sinful, wilful, weak world around, that the world could not tolerate His presence in it; and it came to this--that He could only live by the Spirit at the cost of dying to the world, i.e. choosing to be put to death sooner than give up obedience to His Father. He chose to die, and thus dying He lived through death in the life of the Spirit, and was raised again from death in body also. Now Christ had brought St. Paul--as He would bring all men--into union with His new life, and by the same method. St. Paul had had to die to the sinful world in order to live to God. But he, being not only a man but a sinner, was obliged not only, like Christ, to die to sin in the world--he had also to die to sin in himself. In other words, he had to 'crucify his flesh with its affections and lusts'--that is, 'his old man' or old way of living. He had, by the help of Christ's Spirit, to assert his inner self or personality against a false self--a false way of life--which had appropriated him and held him captive. Only by being emancipated from the {238} 'old man' could he come to live 'in Christ.' It is this transference from the 'old man,' or old way of life, to the new, by means of a death that St. Paul here describes under the figure of a second marriage. The man's true self was as a wife married to 'the old man.' The old man was nailed to Christ's cross (vi. 6)--that is, the old way of life was