And if Christ be in you— And if Christ, &c.—with respect to sin,—with respect to righteousness. In these verses the Apostle describes the happy advantages of those who embrace the faith of the Gospel, and live according to it. The phrase δι αμαρτιαν may be properly rendered in respect of, or with reference to sin. This determines what sort of death he is speaking of, namely, a moral death; as if he had said, "The body, or the members thereof, are mortified, as the power of lust is destroyed." Shall quicken your mortal bodies, Romans 8:11 means, "shall raise them to eternal life." The glorified saints are the sons of the resurrection, Luke 20:36 as it introduces them into eternal life. It seems to me clear that this refers to the resurrection of the faithful saints of God at the last day, for these reasons: First, Because the resurrection of Christ is twice mentioned in this verse, as a pledge of their being made to live. Secondly, Because their being made to live is assigned to God as his act, on account of their being faithfully under the government of his Holy Spirit. If the Spirit of God dwell, or govern, in you, God will quicken your mortal bodies, on account, or by the agency, of his Spirit, that dwelleth in you. And therefore, the quickening of our mortal bodies, or making them to live, cannot mean (as Mr. Locke supposes in his long note upon this verse) our being quickened to newness of life, or to a spiritual life of righteousness; which life it pre-supposes, and which the Apostle has spoken of in the foregoing verse. The revival or resurrection of the body is frequently put for our advancement to eternal life. See Doddridge. Mr. Locke would read, Shall quicken even your mortal bodies; and though the foregoing interpretation of this verse is in my judgment the true one, yet it seems but justice to the reader, and to that learned commentator, to subjoin what he has advanced in defence of a different exposition: "To lead us," says he, "into the true sense of this 11th verse, we need only observe, that St. Paul having in the four first Chapter s of this Epistle shewn that neither Jew nor Gentile could be justified by the law; and in the 5th chapter, how sin entered into the world by Adam, and reigned by death, from which it was grace, and not the law, that delivered men; in the 6th chapter he sheweth the convert Gentiles, that though they were not under the law, but under grace, yet they could not be saved, unless they cast off the dominion of sin, and became the devoted servants of righteousness, which was what their very baptism taught and required of them. And in chap. 7: he declares to the Jews the weakness of the law, which they so much stood upon; and shews that the law could not deliver them from the dominion of sin; that deliverance was only by the grace of God, through Jesus Christ: from whence he draws the consequence which begins this 8th chapter, and so goes on with it here in two branches, relating to his discourse in the foregoing chapter, which complete it in this. The one is to shew, that the law of the spirit of life, that is to say, the new covenant in the Gospel, required that those that are in Christ Jesus should live not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. The other is to shew how, and by whom,—since the law was weak, and could not enable those under the law to do it,—they are enabled to keep sin from reigning in their mortal bodies. And here he shews, that Christians are delivered from the dominion of their carnal sinful lusts by the Spirit of God that is given to them, and dwells in them, as a new quickening principle and power, by which they are put into the state of a spiritual life, wherein their members are made capable of being the instruments of righteousness; if they please, as living men alive now to righteousness, so to employ them. If this be not the sense of this chapter to Romans 8:14. I desire to know how αρα ουν, in the first place, comes in, and what coherence there is in what is here said. Besides the connection of this to the former chapter, contained in the illative therefore, the very antithesis of the expressions in one and the other, shews that St. Paul, in writing this very verse, had an eye to the foregoing chapter. There it was sin that dwelleth in me, which was the active and over-ruling principle: here it is the Spirit of God that dwelleth in you, which is the principle of spiritual life. There it was, Who shall deliver me from this body of death? Here it is, God by his Spirit shall quicken your mortal bodies; that is to say, bodies which, as the seat and harbour of sinful lusts that possess them, are indisposed or dead to the actions of a spiritual life, and have a natural tendency to death. In the same sense, and upon the same account, he calls the bodies of the Gentiles their mortal bodies, chap. Romans 6:12 where his subject is, as here, freedom from the reign of sin; upon which account they are there styled, Romans 8:13 alive from the dead. To make it yet clearer that it is deliverance from the reign of sin in our bodies, that St. Paul speaks of here, I desire any one to read what he says, chap. Romans 6:1-14 to the Gentiles on the same subject, and compare it with the thirteen first verses of this chapter; and then tell me, whether they have not a mutual correspondence, and do not give a great light to one another? If this be too much pains, let him at least read the two next verses, and see how they could possibly be, as they are, an inference from this 11th verse, if the quickening of your mortal bodies in it mean any thing, but a quickening to newness of life, or to a spiritual life of righteousness. One thing more the text suggests concerning this matter, and that is, if by quickening your mortal bodies, &c. be meant here, the raising them into life after death, how can this be mentioned as a peculiar favour to those who have the Spirit of God? For God will also raise the bodies of the wicked, and as certainly as those of believers. But that which is promised here is promised to those only who have the Spirit of God: and therefore it must be something peculiarto them, viz. that God shall so enliven their mortal bodies by his Spirit, which is the principle and pledge of immortal life, that they may be able to yield up themselves to God, as those that are alive from the dead, and their members servants to righteousness unto holiness; as he expresses himself, chap. Romans 6:13; Romans 6:19. The full explication of this verse may be seen, Ephesians 1:19 and Romans 2:4-6; Romans 2:10. Compare also Colossians 2:12-13 to the same purpose, and Romans 7:4.
Ζωοποιησει και, shall quicken even your mortal bodies, seems more agreeable to the original, than shall also quicken your mortal bodies."