And how does the divine reasoning now advance? "From glory to glory"; from acceptance by the Holy One, who is Love, to present and endless preservation in His Beloved One. [Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =Therefore much more, justified now in His blood,= as it were "_in_" its laver of ablution, or again "_within_" its circle of sprinkling as it marks the precincts of our inviolable sanctuary, =we shall be kept safe through Him,= who now lives to administer the blessings of His death, =from the wrath,= the wrath of God, in its present imminence over the head of the unreconciled, and in its final fall "in that day." [Sidenote: Ver. 10.] =For if, being enemies,= with no initial love to Him who is Love, nay, when we were hostile to His claims, and as such subject to the hostility of His Law, =we were reconciled to our (τῷ) God[73] through the death of His Son,= (God coming to judicial peace with us, and we brought to submissive peace with Him,) =much more, being reconciled, we shall be kept safe in His life,= in the life of the Risen One who now lives for us, and in us, and we in Him. [Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =Nor only so, but= we shall be kept =exulting too in our (τοῦ) God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom now we have received[74] this (τὴν) reconciliation.= Here, by anticipation, he indicates already the mighty issues of the act of Justification, in our life of Union with the Lord who died for us, and lived again. In the sixth chapter this will be more fully unfolded; but he cannot altogether reserve it so long. As he has advanced from the law-aspect of our acceptance to its love-aspect, so now with this latter he gives us at once the life-aspect, our vital incorporation with our Redeemer, our part and lot in His resurrection-life. Nowhere in this whole Epistle is that subject expounded so fully as in the later Epistles, Colossians and Ephesians; the Inspirer led His servant all over that region then, in his Roman prison, but not now. But He had brought him into the region from the first, and we see it here present to his thought, though not in the foreground of his discourse. "_Kept safe in His life_"; not "_by_" His life, but "_in_" His life. We are livingly knit to Him the Living One. From one point of view we are accused men, at the bar, wonderfully transformed, by the Judge's provision, into welcomed and honoured friends of the Law and the Lawgiver. From another point of view we are dead men, in the grave, wonderfully vivified, and put into a spiritual connexion with the mighty life of our Lifegiving Redeemer. The aspects are perfectly distinct. They belong to different orders of thought. Yet they are in the closest and most genuine relation. The Justifying Sacrifice procures the possibility of our regeneration into the Life of Christ. Our union by faith with the Lord who died and lives brings us into actual part and lot in His justifying merits. And our part and lot in those merits, our "acceptance in the Beloved," assures us again