I. The death to sin must be a death to its service as well as to its penalty, if the soul has come under that wretched bondage. There is hardly anything more emphatically and clearly laid down throughout St. Paul's epistles than this of the new life which is expected of Christian men, nor any doctrine with which the saintly life is more closely connected and on which it is as it were based, than the death and burial and resurrection of our Saviour Christ. And we must not put it away from us. Better a thousand times to be truthful witnesses and to abhor ourselves. Better a thousand times to hate the memory of that formal service which rests its confidence in continual acts of repentance for continual acts of wilful sin. The life of sin the Apostle supposes dead.
II. How marvellously persistent is the Apostle, is the Holy Spirit, in finding a plain living duty in the sublimest doctrines of religion; in drawing a precept which shall supply occupation for the whole human life, and exercise every faculty of the human heart, from events the most mysterious and Divine.
III. We must be ashamed when we examine ourselves to see how miserably short we fall of the Divine standard and requirements. Let us review our miserably imperfect practice, and seek to begin a higher, a purer, a better life.
J. W. Burgon, Ninety-one Short Sermons,No. 41.
References: Romans 6:9-11. E. H. Gifford, The Glory of God in Man,p. 1.Romans 6:10; Romans 6:11. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. vii., p. 20; Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times,"vol. vii., p. 111.Romans 6:11. H. J. Wilmot Buxton, The Life of Duty,vol. ii., p. 53; Homilist,new series, vol. iii., p. 314; W. Cunningham, Sermons,p. 251; G. Bainton, Christian World Pulpit,vol. x., p. 169; C. G. Finney, Gospel Themes,p. 380; Bishop Temple, Rugby Sermons,1st series, p. 306.