hard saying; for in itself that very Law has been recently vindicated as holy, and just, and good, and spiritual. And only a few lines above in the Epistle we have heard of a "law of sin" which is "served by the flesh." And we should unhesitatingly explain this "law" to be identical with that _but for the next verse here_, a still nearer context, in which "the law" is unmistakably the divine moral Code, considered however as _impotent_. Must not this and that be the same? And to call that sacred Code "_the Law of sin and of death_" is not to say that it is sinful and deathful. It need only mean, and we think it does mean, that it is sin's occasion, and death's warrant, by the unrelieved collision of its holiness with fallen man's will. It must command; he, being what he is, must rebel. He rebels; it must condemn. Then comes his Lord to die for him, and to rise again; and the Spirit comes, to unite him to his Lord. And now, from the Law as provoking the helpless, guilty will, and as claiming the sinner's penal death--behold the man is "_freed_." [Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =For=--(the process is now explained at large) =the impossible of the Law=--what it could not do, for this was not its function, even to enable us sinners to keep its precept from the soul--=God, when He sent His own Son in likeness of flesh of sin,= Incarnate, in our identical nature, under all those conditions of earthly life which for us are sin's vehicles and occasions, =and as Sin-Offering,[123]= expiatory and reconciling, =sentenced sin in the flesh;= not pardoned it, observe, but sentenced it. He ordered it to execution; He killed its claim and its power for all who are in Christ. And this, "_in the flesh_," making man's earthly conditions the scene of sin's defeat, for our everlasting encouragement in our "life in the flesh." And what was the aim and issue? [Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =That the righteous demand (δικαίωμα) of the Law might be fulfilled in us, us who walk not flesh-wise, but Spirit-wise;= that we, accepted in Christ, and using the Spirit's power in the daily "walk" of circumstance and experience, might be liberated from the life of self-will, and meet the will of God with simplicity and joy.