Thus he comes back, through the imagery of wedlock, to that other parable of slavery which has become so precious to his heart. "_So that we do bondservice_," "_so that we live a slave-life_"; ὤστε δουλεύειν ἡμᾶς. It is as if he must break in on the heavenly Marriage itself with that brand and bond, not to disturb the joy of the Bridegroom and the Bride, but to clasp to the Bride's heart the vital fact that she is not her own; that fact so blissful, but so powerful also and so practical that it is _worth anything_ to bring it home. It is to be no dragging and dishonouring bondage, in which the poor toiler looks wistfully out for the sinking sun and the extended shadows. It is to be "_not in the Letter's oldness_"; no longer on the old principle of the dread and unrelieved "_Thou shalt_," cut with a pen of legal iron upon the stones of Sinai; bearing no provision of enabling power, but all possible provision of doom for the disloyal. It is to be "_in the Spirit's newness_"; on the new, wonderful principle, new in its full manifestation and application in Christ, of the Holy Ghost's empowering presence.[107] In that light and strength the new relations are discovered, accepted, and fulfilled. Joined by the Spirit to the Lord Christ, so as to have full benefit of His justifying merit; filled by the Spirit with the Lord Christ, so as to derive freely and always the blessed virtues of His life; the willing bondservant finds in his absolute obligations an inward liberty ever "_new_," fresh as the dawn, pregnant as the spring. And the worshipping Bride finds in the holy call to "keep her only unto HIM" who has died for her life, nothing but a perpetual surprise of love and gladness, "new every morning," as the Spirit shews her the heart and the riches of her Lord. Thus closes, in effect, the Apostle's reasoned exposition of the self-surrender of the justified. Happy the man who can respond to it all with the _Amen_ of a life which, reposing on the Righteousness of God, answers ever to His Will with the loyal gladness found in "the newness of the Spirit." It is "perfect freedom" to understand, in experience, the bondage and the bridal of the saints. [94] It will be observed that we place _the paragraph_ after ver. 13, not, as many editions of the Epistle do, after ver. 14. It seems to us clear that ver. 14 has a closer connexion with the following than with the previous context. It looks back, not precisely to ver. 13, but to the general recent argument, that it may then look definitely forward, over new ground. [95] Ὑπὸ νόμον, ὑπὸ χάριν: the accusative case gives the preposition properly the meaning of _motion underwards_. But this must not be pressed too far. [96] p. 157.