_That He might present us to God._ This is all said to teach the peculiar end of Christ's sufferings; namely, that He died,--not for His own sake,--but that He might present us to God. How is that consistent: has He not offered up Himself? Answer: It is true that He has offered up Himself upon the Cross for us all who believe on Him, but at the same time He offers up us with Himself, since all they who believe on Him must suffer also with Him, and be put to death after the flesh as He was. Yet God has taught us, that they are alive in the spirit and yet dead in the flesh, as He afterwards says. But are we a sacrifice with Him? Then, as He dies, so we are to die according to the flesh; as He lives spiritually, so do we also live in the spirit. _Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the spirit._ The word _flesh_ is common in Scripture, as is also the word spirit, and the Apostles usually present the two in contrast. The sense is this: that Christ, through His sufferings, is taken out of this life that consists in flesh and blood, as a man on earth who lives by flesh and blood,--walks and stands, eats, drinks, sleeps, wakes, sees, hears, grasps, and feels,--and, in brief, whatever the body does while it is sensible; to all this Christ has died. This is what St. Paul calls a natural body,--that is, the animal life. _In the flesh_, not _after_ the flesh,--that is, in the natural functions which the body exercises, to such life is He dead: so that this life has now ceased with Him, and He is now removed to another life and quickened after the spirit, passed into a spiritual and supernatural life, that comprises in itself the whole life that Christ now has in soul and body. So that he has no more a fleshy body, but a spiritual body. Thus shall it be with us at the last day, when spiritual life shall succeed to flesh and blood; for my body and yours will live without food and drink,--will not procreate, nor digest, nor grow wanton, and the like, but we shall inwardly live after the spirit,--and the body shall be purified even as the sun, and yet far brighter, while there probably will be no natural flesh and blood, no natural or corporeal labor.