On Realising the Ideal.
I. What is the theory of the Christian's condition? As just explained by the Apostle, it is this: The Christian is a man who, like his Master, is already dead to all sin and alive only towards God. He has ceased, in other words, to have anything further to do with sin. With God he has everything further to do. This has resulted, as a matter of course, from the close union, or, as it were, incorporation, which his faith has effected betwixt him and Jesus Christ. In theory, the believer has just as little to do with sin as Jesus has in heaven; which lets us see a little how St. Paul can elsewhere employ such amazing language about mortal man as this "Risen with Christ," "Sitting with Christ in heaven," their life hid with Him in God. Such is Christian life in its conception. Such it must aim at becoming in fact.
II. It is obviously with a practical design that the writer bids the Christian cherish such a conception of his proper character. All life strives to fulfil itself. It makes for that which it was made to be. In the moral training of character, there is no better way of attaining an ideal than to be persuaded that it is the true ideal for us. Put the matter in this form: You are a man supposed to be in idea dead to all sin. Yet in a given instance an evil desire has mastered you. Is there not betwixt these two facts an incongruity, not simply painful, but intolerable? They cannot possibly hang together. A contradiction in fact between your theoretical position and your actual conduct is not a state of matters in which you can rest. Either your ideal must be abandoned, or an effort must be made to shape your behaviour in compliance with it. But your ideal is what you dare not abandon, for that would be to abandon Christ. The conclusion becomes irresistible: let not this wrong desire lord it any longer in this fashion over you a man dead to all sin. Let the believer then think what he is, that he may become what he ought to be. Broken off from sin, let there be no feeble or furtive concession to it at any point. Live solely for the work of God. Let us spend ourselves wholly in His pure and beneficent service.
J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul,p. 172.