[109] Exod. xx. 17.--Observe here that great fact of Christian doctrine; that desire, bias, gravitation away from God's will, is sin, whether carried into act _or not_. Is not St Paul here recalling some quite special spiritual incident? [110] Ἀφορμὴν λαβοῦσα διὰ τῆς ἐντολῆς. [111] Ἐμοὶ is slightly emphatic; as if to say, "_at least in my case_." [112] For this meaning of θέλειν see the closely parallel passage, the almost sketch or embryo of this paragraph, Gal. v. 17. [113] Read not οὐχ εὑρίσκω, but simply οὔ. [114] Again ποιῶ and πράσσω, as in ver. 16. [115] In itself, the phrase ὁ ἔσω ἄνθρωπος is neutral. By usage it attaches itself to ideas of regeneration. See 2 Cor. iv. 16, Eph. iii. 16. [116] Αἰχμαλωτίζοντα: "Making me prisoner of _war_." Observe the present tense, which indicates not necessarily the full success of the strategy, but its aim. [117] The Greek equally allows the rendering "_out of this body of death_." [118] Read χάρις τῷ Θεῶ. CHAPTER XVII _THE JUSTIFIED: THEIR LIFE BY THE HOLY SPIRIT_ ROMANS viii. 1-11 The sequence of the eighth chapter of the Epistle on the seventh is a study always interesting and fruitful. No one can read the two chapters over without feeling the strong connexion between them, a connexion at once of contrast and of complement. Great indeed is the contrast between the paragraphs vii. 7-25 and the eighth chapter. The stern analysis of the one, unrelieved save by the fragment of thanksgiving at its close, (and even this is followed at once by a re-statement of the mysterious dualism,) is to the revelations and triumphs of the other as an almost starless night, stifling and electric, to the splendour of a midsummer morning with a yet more glorious morrow for its future. And there is complement as well as contrast. The day is related to the night, which has prepared us for it, as hunger prepares for food. Precisely what was absent from the former passage is supplied richly in the latter. There the Name of the Holy Spirit, "the Lord, the Life-Giver," was unheard. Here the fact and power of the Holy Spirit are present everywhere, so present that there is no other portion of the whole Scripture, unless we except the Redeemer's own Paschal Discourse, which presents us with so great a wealth of revelation on this all-precious theme. And here we find the secret that is to "stint the strife" which we have just witnessed, and which in our own souls we know so well. Here is the way "_how_ to walk and to please God" (1 Thess. iv. 1), in our justified life. Here is the way how, not to be as it were the victims of "the body," and the slaves of "the flesh," but to "_do to death the body's practices_" in a continuous exercise of inward power, and to "_walk after the Spirit_." Here is the resource on which we may be for ever joyfully paying "_the debt_" of such a walk; giving our redeeming Lord His due, the value of His purchase, even our willing, loving surrender, in the