What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? (Rom. 6:1-2.)
Blessed Augustine comments on this passage:1 "Beginning with this passage, the apostle describes exclusively a man who has been placed under grace, where in his mind he already serves the law of God even though in the flesh he may still serve the law of sin/'
Then he goes on to explain this double servitude under law and sin and says: 'Tor he does not yield to the yearning of sin, however much his desires may still incite and summon him to consent to it, until also the body is revived and 'death is swallowed up in victory1 (I Cor. 15:54). Hence, if we do not yield to perverse lusts, we are in grace and 'sin does not reign in our body' (Rom. 6:12).
But he whom it still holds in its power is still under the law and not under grace, no matter how strongly he may resist sin."
These words make possible a clear understanding of what the apostle says. For all these propositions: (1) to be dead to sin; (2) but to live unto God; (3) to serve the law of God with the mind and the law of sin with the flesh, mean nothing else than this: not to yield to evil desires and to sin, even though sin continues in us.
And this is the same as to say: (4) Sin has no power and does not reign, but (5) righteousness reigns. Hence, he says farther on in ch. 13:14: "Make no provisions for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof/' in other words: the yearnings of sin that are sin itself, namely, original sin and the rest of the paternal inheritance from Adam, continue, but do not obey them. And he says also: "that the body of sin be done away" (Rom. 6:6) which happens when the spirit does not yield but resists.
1 Augustine, Propos. ex ep. ad Rom., 35.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS We are in sin until the end of our lives. As Blessed Augustine puts it:2 "Evil desires will trouble a man, until the body is revived and death is swallowed up in victory." So too, Gal. 5:17: 'Tor the Spirit lusts against the flesh and the flesh against the Spirit, for these are contrary the one to the other; that you do not do the things that you would." And below in ch. 7:19 of this letter:
"The good which I would, I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do," etc. And also, James 4:1: "Whence come wars and whence come fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your pleasures that war in your members?" And I Peter 2:11:
"Abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul."
In this way, then, all apostles and saints confess that sin and concupiscence remain in us until the body is turned to ashes and a new one is raised up that is free from concupiscence and sin, as it says in the last chapter of II Peter (v. 13): "According to his promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwells righteousness," i.e., because sin dwells on this earth. So also the Lord says in Jer. 18:48?., that he will do (with us) as the potter who made of the broken vessel another. For the Lord hates the body of sin and gets ready to remake it into another one; therefore he also commands us to hate and destroy and mortify it and to pray for its end and "the coming of his Kingdom" (Matt. 6:10).
But so to hate the body of sin and so to resist it is not easy but exceedingly hard. This requires as many works of penance as one can possibly do, especially in view of the fact that they are a precaution against ease and idleness.
Know ye not that as many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? (Rom. 6:3.) Blessed Augustine writes in the third chapter of the fourth book On the Trinity:20' "For our double death the Savior expends his single death, and in order to effect a twofold resurrection for us in the sacrament and in his example, he has put before us his one resurrection. He was clothed in mortal flesh and only in it he died and only in it he rose again, and now only in it he joins together with us in something twofold, for in it he became a sacrament for the inner man and an example for the outer man. The following word is spoken with respect to the sacrament for the inner man:
* Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed* (Rom. 6:6). But to the example
2a Augustine, Be trin.j IV, 3. the following word applies: 'Be not afraid of them that kill the body' (Matt. 10:28). To this he most strongly encouraged by this death of his those who belong to him."
That the resurrection of the body of the Lord pertains to the sacrament for the inner man is shown by the word of the apostle in Col. 3:1: "If you were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above." Yet to the example the following word applies: "Not a hair on your head shall perish" (Luke 21:18), and also the fact that he showed his body to the disciples after the resurrection. So then, the apostle speaks in this passage about the death and the resurrection of Christ in so far as they are relevant to the sacrament but not in so far as they relate to the example.
Hence, we must note that there is a double death, namely, the natural or, better, temporal one and the eternal one. Temporal death is the separation of body and soul. But this death is a symbol and a parable; it is, in comparison with eternal death (which is spiritual), like a picture of death painted on a wall.3 This is why the Scripture very frequently calls it sleep, rest, or slumber.
Also eternal death is twofold. One is a very great good. It is the death of sin and the death of death, by which the soul is freed and separated from sin and the body from corruption, and the soul is united by grace and glory with the living God. This is death in the strict and proper sense of the word (for in every other death some mixture of life remains, but not in this one, in which there is nothing but life itself: eternal life). It is only this death that the conditions of death fit absolutely and perfectly; whatever dies in it, and in it alone, vanishes entirely into everlasting nothingness, and nothing ever returns from it (indeed, it inflicts death also upon eternal death). Thus sin dies, and also the sinner when he is justified, for sin does not ever return, as the apostle says here: "Christ dies no more," etc. (Rom. 6:9). This is the principal theme of the Scripture. For God arranged to take away through Christ whatever the devil brought in through Adam. And the devil brought in sin and death. Therefore, God brought about the death of death and the sin of sin, the prison of prison and the captivity of captivity.4 As he says through Hosea: "O death, I will be thy death; O hell, I will be thy bite." (Hos. 13:14.)5 This is
&The reference is probably to the "dance of death," which, at Luther's time, was a frequent subject of the painters.
8 These ideas appear to have been suggested to Luther by the liturgies to the use of which he was accustomed among the Augustinians.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS symbolically represented in the Old Testament by all the wars of the Children of Israel in which they killed the Gentiles.
The other death is eternal and a very great evil. It is the death of the damned. Here it is not sin and the sinner that die, while man is saved, but it is man that dies, while sin lives and remains forever. This is the 'Very evil death of the wicked" (Ps. 34:21).
Now when the apostle speaks of the death of Christ as of a sacrament, he speaks of the second spiritual death, and thus his words can easily be understood.
I said: "the sin of sin." What does this mean? To commit the sin of sin means to act against the law of sin, to transgress the "law of the members" (Rom. 7:23) and to sin against the evil desires of the flesh; this is a very good kind of sin. Just as the defiance of death, and this is what life is, is the death of death, so righteousness is the sin of sin. Hence, the word of the Preacher: "Better is the iniquity of a man than a woman doing a good turn" (Ecclus.
42:14), i.e., it is better that the spirit transgresses the law of the flesh and acts in opposition to the flesh than that the flesh acts in accordance with its law. These are the works of the Lord in which he rejoices and in which he makes us rejoice, as it is written: "Let the Lord rejoice in his works" (Ps. 104:31), and below in ch. 8:3 of the letter before us: "For sin, he condemned sin."
The Spirit uses these negative statements, which are much sweeter than the affirmative ones, in order to express the eternity of the things he speaks of. For "death is killed" means that "death does not come again," and "captivity is held captive" means that "captivity will not return," and this cannot be expressed in affirmative statements. For one can think of a life without eternity. Thus it says also in the same psalm: "Our God is the God of salvation: and of the Lord, of the Lord are the issues of death" (Ps. 68:20) rather than the issues of life. For the entering into life can become, indeed it inevitably becomes, a going out from life, but "the going out from death" means to enter into a life that has no death.
These are the "delights of Christ"6 of which we read in Ps. 16:3:
"To the saints that are in his land, he has made wonderful all my delights." And in Ps. 11:2: "Great are the works of the Lord, sought out according to all his delights."
For we are buried together with him by baptism into death; that as Christ is risen from death by the glory of the Father, so we
«In his lectures on The Psalms, Luther explains these "delights" as the "delights of Christ" ('voluntates Christi"). He writes: "The delights of Christ are the mortification and crucifixion of the flesh and the contempt of all that can be seen, etc." (WA 3, 104, 27 f.).
ROMANS, CHAPTER SIX l 8 l also may walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted to* gether in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.1 (Rom. 6:4-5.)
In a spiritual man, everything must become visible, as far as men and even he himself are concerned, in the same way in which Christ was manifest to the eyes of the Jews after he was dead and buried. For he leads us, and we can only make response to him from beginning to end.
First of all, when he was dead, Christ no longer sensed anything of what was happening outside, even though he was still outside.
So it is also with the spiritual man; though with his senses he may be aware of all things and involved in them, he is totally withdrawn from them in his heart and dead to them. This is what happens when a man thoroughly detests everything that belongs to this life, nay, rather, when feeling distaste for the whole business of this life, he endures it with joy and glories in the fact that he is like a dead corpse and "the offscouring and the filth of this world"
(I Cor. 4:13), as the apostle says.
But we should note that it is not necessary that all be found in this state of perfection as soon as they are baptized into this kind of death. For they are baptized "into death," i.e., toward death; in other words: they have taken only the first steps toward the attainment of this death as their goal. In fact, though they are baptized to eternal life and the Kingdom of God, they do not right away possess its fullness, but they have taken only the first steps toward it—for baptism was ordained that it prepare us for this death and through it give us life—therefore it is necessary that we comply with what has been ordained for us.
There are three kinds of people in this order. First, there are those who are unable to endure the cross and a mortification of the kind we have described, and who are unwilling to die. They belong with the robber who was crucified on the left of Christ, for they blaspheme Christ, certainly in thought, but also by what they do.8 Others do endure the cross but with much feeling of suffering and resistance and groaning, but yet they overcome all this and finally die willingly. They find it hard to be despised and 7 Luther's marginal gloss reads (WA 56, 58, 22): "This goes well together with the word of John 12:24: 'Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and diet it abides alone. . . .' For he says 'likeness' in order that one should not think that he speaks of a physical resurrection and death. In order to indicate the nature of this 'being planted together/ there follows at the same place the word: 'He that hates his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.'"
8 This exposition corresponds to the traditional exegesis. Cf. the Gl. ord. and LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS loathed by all. They belong with the robber at the right of the cross; indeed, Christ continues to carry them with grief and pain in his body. The third group, finally, consists of those who, as I have already said, go to this death with joy. Their prototype is
Christ—Christ who died crying with a loud voice (Mark 15:37) like the bravest hero.9
Knowing this that our old man is crucified with him. (Rom.
Man, as the son of Adam, is "old," not by nature but because of a defect of his nature. For his nature is good, but its defect is evil.
We use the phrase "old man/' not merely with respect to the works of the flesh a man may perform, but chiefly with reference to the fact that he does the right, handles himself wisely, and keeps himself busy in all kinds of spiritual goods, yes, also with reference to the fact that he loves and worships God. It is the "old man" in him that makes him use God in all this so that he can enjoy his gifts. Only grace can correct the perversity of his abusive practice
(which in the Scripture is called curvedness,10 wickedness, and crookedness) and straighten him up. Ecclesiastes 1:15: "The crooked are hard to make straight." This is said not so much because of the stubbornness of crooked people but chiefly because of the defect that is in man by inheritance and because of the poison that is in him from the beginning of his days and infects the depth of his nature, so that, from his selfish disposition, he seeks even in God only himself and his own.11 Psalm 72:14: "He shall redeem their souls from usuries and wickedness." In short, this wickedness is so bottomless that no one can know its depth, and in the Scriptures it is not it as such, but only the love of it, that is confuted by the mercy of God. Psalm 11:5: "He hates the soul of him who loves wickedness."12 And Ps. 32:6: "For this," namely, wickedness,
"let everyone that is godly pray unto thee," namely, because he 9 Lit.: "quos Christus cum valido clamore ut fortissimus Gygas moriens significavit" (Gygas = giant. The giants [Gigantes] were the sons of Terra.
They stormed the heavens but were killed by the lightning of Jupiter.) Ficker (p. 324, n. 32) points out that the Missal of the Augustinian Hermits prescribed for the Ember Days the use (in the secret prayers) of Ps.
19:5: "Exultavit ut gigas ad currendam viam" (He has rejoiced as a giant to run the way").
10 The term "curvedness" (curvitas) is not used in the Vulgate. About its significance, cf. Chapter V, note 10.
11 "Quo etiam in ipso Deo per amorem concupiscentiae querit homo, quae sua sunt."
12 Following Faber, Luther takes the psalm to read, "Qui autem diligit iniquitatem, odit animan eius," instead of suam as the Vulgate has it ("He that loves iniquity hates his own soul"). hates it. All this is symbolized by the curvedness of that certain woman in the Gospel whom Satan held captive for eighteen years, as the Savior said (Luke i3:n).13
That the body of sin may be destroyed to the end that we may serve sin no longer. (Rom. 6:6.) "To destroy" must here be taken spiritually. For if the apostle wanted to speak of corporeal destruction, it would not be necessary for the "old man" in us to be crucified for this. For he will be physically destroyed, whether or not we want it so, also in the case of those in whom the "old man" is not crucified. What is a necessity, therefore, cannot be a commandment or a counsel. It is for this reason, so Blessed Augustine remarks,14 that the apostle,, wanting to explain the nature of this destruction, goes on to say:
"that we should no longer be in bondage to sin." This is an interpretation, says Blessed Augustine, of the sentence: "that the body of sin might be destroyed." To destroy the body of sin means, therefore, to break the desires of the flesh and of our old man by exertions of penitence and the cross, and so to decrease them from day to day and to put them to death. As the apostle says in Col.
3:5: "Put to death therefore your members which are upon the earth." In fact, in this same passage, he describes very clearly both the old and the new man.
It is to this destruction that several headings of the psalms refer:
"That he shall not be destroyed" (Ps. 57:1; Ps. 58:1; Ps. 59:1). In Ps. 60:1, it says: "O God, thou that cast us off and hast destroyed us." And in Jer. 1:10: "to destroy, to break down, and to pluck up."
"The body of sin" must, therefore, not be understood as something mystical as many do15 who imagine "the body of sin" to be the whole heap of our evil works, but it is the very body we carry around with us. It is called "the body of sin" because, in opposition to the spirit, it inclines toward sin. The seed of the devil is in it; hence, the Lord says to the serpent in Gen. 3:15: "I will put enmity between your seed and her seed." The seed of the woman is the word of God in the church,16 because it inclines toward righteousness and the good. The seed of the devil is the very sin,
13 Luke 13:11 ff.: "And behold, a woman that had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years; and she was bowed together, neither could she look upwards at all. And when Jesus saw her, he called her and said to her: 'Woman, thou art loosed from thy infirmity.1 And he laid his hands upon her, and she immediately was made straight, and glorified God."
14 Augustine, Propos. ex ep. ad Rom., 32-34.
15 The GL ord. and Lyra.
*6 The GL ord. interprets "mulier" by "ecclesia"
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS tinder, and concupiscence in the flesh. And this enmity goes on continuously, according to the word of the apostle in Gal. 5:17:
"The flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh."
The flesh has the seed of the devil and seeks to bring forth sin and sinful fruit, but the spirit has the seed of God and seeks to bring forth righteousness and its fruits. And so these two "are contrary the one to the other, that you may not do the things that you would/' (Gal. 5:17.)
For he that is dead is justified from sin. Now, if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dies no more; death has no dominion over him. For what has died to sin, died once; but what lives, lives unto God. So do you also reckon that you are dead to sin but alive unto God in Christ Jesus. (Rom. 6:7-11.)17
17 Here is Luther's gloss on Rom. 6:7-11 (first the interlinear and then the marginal gloss; the reference of the latter is indicated by numbers within parentheses): "For he, who actualizes this 'If we have been planted together,' etc., is dead: by a good spiritual death he is made righteous from his sin, i.e., he is risen in a spiritual resurrection. Now if we be dead by a spiritual death through baptism, in order to end sin with Christ: we believe, because this new life cannot be experienced but must be believed. For no one knows that he lives again or experiences that he is justified, but he believes and hopes that we shall also live in spirit and newness, now and forever, with him. Knowing, i.e., because we know that Christ, after he had died, rising again from the dead, to himself physically and to us sacramentally, dies no more (1): in eternity death shall have no more dominion over him; in other words: therefore it cannot have any dominion over you in spirit. For in that he, Christ, died physically, he died once (2) to sin, i.e., that sin should die, but in that he lives, he lives after the resurrection to God (3; 4) in righteousness and glory. So do you also reckon, i.e., feel, know, that you are dead to sin, I Peter 2:24: 'That we, having died to sins, might live to righteousness/ but alive in a spiritual life to God in Christ
Jesus, by faith in Christ.
"(1) He does not say 'and will live/ but 'and dies no more/ because in the Scriptures negative statements are employed to signify and to emphasize all the more strongly that the eternal is meant. For example, 'That henceforth we should not serve sin "means" we shall be righteous forever/
"(2) Heb. 9:12: 'By his own blood he entered once into the holies, having obtained eternal redemption/ And again (ch. 9:28): 'Christ was offered once to take away the sins of many/
"(3)The Greek text reads (according to Faber): 'For what is dead to sin, has died to it once/ and this is much better. Tor what is alive, lives unto
God.' Quod means 'whatever'; it must be taken as a pronoun and not as a conjunction. The passage speaks of the sacrament of the death of Christ; in other words: just as Christ, who died once, can never die again, so whosoever dies once spiritually to sin, dies never again, but will live in eternity.
"(4) This text shows that the translator has exercised the function not only of a translator but at the same time also that of an expositor. The What he wants to say is that we must suffer this spiritual death only once. For one who dies in this way lives forever. Therefore we do not need to go back to sin in order to die to it once more.
This interpretation opposes the Novatianists;18 the nature of the spiritual life is such that once it has been laid hold of, it is necessarily eternal. For death does not put an end to it as it does to physical life; it is the beginning of eternal life. Hence, the saying of John's:19 "Whosoever believes in me, shall never die/' i.e., as long as he does not willingly turn away from this life in Christ, he cannot die. In time, the spiritual life is gradually so strengthened that a turning away from it will be utterly impossible, for no one endowed with the unshakable strength of the perfection of an eternal will would want to turn away from it.
As the ray of the sun is eternal because the sun is eternal, so the spiritual life is eternal because Christ is eternal. He is our life: through faith he flows into our life by the rays of his grace and remains in us.20 For just as Christ is eternal, so also the grace that flows out from him is eternal by its very nature. And so, when a man sins again, the spiritual life in him does not die, but it is he who turns away from it that dies, while it remains in Christ forever. This is what the apostle means when he says here: "If we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him."
How shall we live with him? "Knowing/* he says, "that Christ, being raised from the dead, dies no more/1 so also "what is dead to sin is dead to it once for all." He has Christ who dies no more, and so he, too, dies no more but lives with Christ forever. For this reason, we are baptized only once, affirming the life of Christ translator cannot commit a greater fault than to transmit to others a meaning which does not lie in the text he has to translate but is his own. We must therefore disagree with Blessed Jerome,* who says in his book about Daniel that he could not translate what he had not first understood. This is nothing else than to want to understand and know everything and, to be sure, in so far as this suits his own modesty, Jerome may have spoken the truth."
* Cf. Jerome, Contra Rufin., II, 32: "I know how difficult it is to understand the prophets, and that no one can have a ready judgment about how they must be translated unless he has first understood what he has read."
This passage (at the end of Jerome's prologue to Isaiah, just preceding the prologue to Daniel) is quoted by Lyra in his comments on Jerome's De
18 Luther may think of Ambrose, De poenitentia (against the Novatianists), !9 Luther thinks of John 6:40: "For this is the will of my Father, that everyone that beholds the Son, and believes in him, should have eternal life," but he actually quotes John 11126.
20 A Roman Catholic sacramental conception!
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS thereby, though we may fall quite often and get up again. For the life of Christ can be recovered again and again, but one can begin it only once, just as a man who has never been rich can only once commence to become rich, although he can again and again lose and recover his wealth.
But what lives, lives unto God. (Rom. 6:10.) Only what lives eternally and spiritually lives unto God, because God is eternal spirit. Only what is spiritual and eternal counts in his presence, but flesh and all that is temporal are nothing before him. Inasmuch as this life is eternal, a man who dies to his sin, needs to die only once, for upon such a death there can follow only a life that is eternal. There is no death in it, for otherwise it would not be eternal. Nor can a man who died once to sin die to it again, for upon this death there followed eternal righteousness which can never again fall into sin. Here we let follow the That the Novatianist heresy interpreted this text wrongly by assuming that it teaches that there is no hope for the lapsed to rise up again, because a man must die to sin once for all. But this
"once for all" does not fix the limit and number of acts of penitence, but it sets off the eternity of grace (and excludes the possibility that there can be another kind of righteousness).21 What is meant here is this: Whoseover has been baptized and done penance has thereby escaped from sin and acquired righteousness so that he does not need ever again to escape from another sin or acquire another righteousness. For this one and only righteousness suffices forever. This cannot at all be the case with any kind of human righteousness, for according to moral philosophy,22 there remain always other virtues to be acquired once a man has acquired one.
However, what is here meant is not that when someone loses the righteousness he has once acquired, he cannot acquire it again.
For Scripture contradicts this error; Prov. 24:16: "A righteous man falls seven times a day and rises up again." And our Lord said to Peter: "I say not unto thee, until seven times, but until seventy times seven" (Matt. 18:22).
Therefore, as I have said, this "once" does not state or rule out the number of alternations in righteousness, but it sets a limit to 21 "Et abnegat^ alietatem iustitiae"
22 Cf. the distinctions between the several virtues (following Aristotle) in the Physics of Trutvetter, II, de habitibus animae; Ockhara, III Sent, q. 12, a.
2H ff.; Gabriel Biel, III Sent., d. 34, q. un.9 a. 1, n. 2 and 3. diversity in righteousness, or, rather, it emphasizes the eternal nature of righteousness: to the effect that it is not inconsistent with its eternal nature that, in this life, one can repeatedly either lose or find it again. Even Blessed Peter sinned after the sending forth of the Holy Spirit by putting on the false show, of which we read in Gal. 2:11 ff.; and this was certainly a mortal sin counteracting the gospel as well as the salvation of the soul, inasmuch as the apostle says there expressly that he did not act in accordance with the truth of the gospel.
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, so as to obey the lusts thereof. Neither present your members as instruments of iniquity unto sin, but present yourselves to God, as those that are alive from the dead and your members as instruments of rightousness unto God. For sin shall have no dominion over you, for you are not under the law, but under grace. (Rom. 6:11-14.)
So then, sin has no dominion over those who are under the law.
This is sufficiently clear in the light of what we have said before in interpreting ch. 3. A man who is without faith in Christ is always in sin, even though he does good works. This is why we must note that the apostle's way of speaking appears to those who do not understand it as extraordinary and strange on account of its pronounced peculiarity. For they think that "to be under the law" means "to have a law according to which one must live." But to the apostle, "to be under the law" means "not to live up to the law," to be a defendant before the law and its debtor and a transgressor, and this because the law rightly accuses and condemns him, while he cannot satisfy it or rise above it. And so, while the law has dominion over man, also sin has dominion over him, holding him captive. Hence, I Cor. 15:56: "The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law," i.e., sin is so powerful and has dominion over us because the law has dominion over us.23
The sequence of thought, then, is this: Sin is the sting or power of death by which death has power and dominion over us, just as it says above in Rom. 5:12: "by sin death," etc. The law, however, is the power or potency of sin through which sin continues and has dominion over us.
From this dominion of law and sin one can be freed only by Christ, as it says in the passage that follows the one just quoted:
"But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord 23 Luther adds here " 'Virtus' hie, i.e., potentia dicitur" {virtus here means power) with reference to the Vulgate version of I Cor. 15:56: "Virtus veri peccati lex" ("The power of sin is the law"). Luther frequently points to this meaning of virtus in his lectures.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS Jesus Christ!" (I Cor. 15:57). And our Lord himself says in John 8:36:24 "If, therefore, the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed/' And in John 16:33: "In the world you have tribulation, but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." And in I John 5:4:25 "This is the victory that has overcome the world, even your faith." "And who is he that overcomes the world but he that believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?" (I John 5:5.)26
And so he says here that we can check the reign of sin because "we are not under the law but under grace." All this means "that the body of sin shall be destroyed" and that righteousness shall be gradually perfected.27
But thanks be to God that you were the servants of sin but have become obedient from the heart to that form of teaching whereunto you have been delivered,28 and being made free from sin, you have become servants of righteousness. (Rom. 6:17-18.)
Though some want to understand this phrase by changing its parts,29 so that it reads: "(You became obedient to that form of teaching) that was delivered to you," I believe that the Spirit speaking through the apostle spoke intentionally in the way of the text. For the wisdom of the flesh is hostile to the word of God, but the word of God is immutable and insuperable. Therefore, the wisdom of the flesh must undergo a change; it must give up its own form and take on the form of the word. This happens when by faith it yields and undoes itself and conforms itself to the word,30 believing that the word is true and it itself untrue. "The Word became flesh" (John 1:14) and "took on the form of a servant" (Phil. 2:7), in order that the flesh should become word and man take on the form of the word; then, in terms of the third chapter of the letter before us, man will become as righteous, truthful, wise, good, meek, chaste as the word itself is whose form he takes on by faith.
24 Luther writes: "in John 6."
2 5 Luther writes: "I John 1."
20 Here he notes: "ch. 4."
2? "Et perficiatur iustitia incepta"
2 8 In the marginal gloss, Luther says (WA 56, 62, 13 ff.): "I.e., from the form of error you are now delivered to the form of the gospel, because 'thy word, O Lord, shall remain forever' [Ps. 119:89]. For it is not the word that changes, but we are changed and yield to it. Isaiah 40:8: 'The grass withers, but the word of our God shall stand forever/ Matthew 5:25: 'Agree with your adversary/ in other words: give up your own likeness and put on the likeness of the word. For 'the Word became flesh' [John 1:14] in order that we should become the word ['ut nos verbum efficiamur']."
29 "Per hipallagen," according to Faber in his Commentary.
3° "Conformitas verbi" Cf. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones in Cantica.
Hence, it is more meaningful to say, "whereunto you were delivered" than "which was delivered to you." For the teaching of the gospel is delivered also to the ungodly, although they do not deliver or conform themselves to it—and they are not delivered to it, because they do not truly and heartily believe it. Almost the same thought is expressed in this word to the Corinthians:31 "Now that you have known (God) or, rather, are known by God"; and in exactly the same way, he could have said here too: which was delivered to you or, rather, "to which you were delivered" as it is characteristic of believers and saints. I refer you to ch. 7, below, in this letter where it is explained how we die to sin and the law rather than let the opposite happen.
For sin shall have no dominion over you. (Rom. 6:14.) We must understand that this refers not only to the sinful desire for temporal goods and prosperity but also to our tendency to run away from temporal evils and adversities. For a man who has Christ through true faith does not desire any worldly goods
(nor life itself), however much they may intrigue him; nor does he fear any evils and even death itself, however much they may frighten him. He stands firm on solid rock; he does not seek an easy life and does not mind getting hard knocks, not that he is not tempted to flee when fear overcomes him, or to yield to sinful desire when it entices him (for he is not insensitive to either lust or fear), but, in the end, he does not surrender, even though it costs him utmost exertion and pain just barely to resist and to come out on top, in accordance with the word of I Peter 4:18:
"The righteous man is scarcely saved." In this trial and struggle, the righteous man always resembles more a loser than a victor, for the Lord lets him be tested and assailed to his utmost limits as gold is tested in a furnace. ("For he is not crowned except he contend lawfully." [II Tim. 2:5].)
(1) He who fears death more than Christ and loves life more than Christ does not yet possess Christ through true faith. For sin has dominion over him, and he is under the law. We must understand this in the fullest sense in terms of his own teaching: John 12:25:
"He that loves his life loses it." And elsewhere: "He that loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me," and "He that does not take his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me"
(Matt. 10:37-38). It is thus not easy to bring sin under control.
Indeed, if God were not in us, "who is faithful and will not suffer 81 Luther thinks of I Cor. 13:12, but actually quotes Gal. 4:9.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS us to be tempted above that we are able" (I Cor. 10:13), we should certainly be drowned. However, he suffers unbelievers to be tempted, so that they fall, nay, rather, they have already fallen and are forever unable to stand, but he is faithful to those who by faith stand and call upon him.
(2) When sin does not succeed in getting dominion over the saints as it assails them, it is forced to serve them. "To them that love God all things work together for good." (Rom. 8:28.) As the apostle says: "But he will make with the temptation also the way of escape that you may endure it." (I Cor. 10:13.) Thus dissipation makes the soul chaster when it attacks it; pride makes it humbler; laziness, livelier; avarice, more generous; anger, more gentle; and gluttony, more abstinent. When the spiritual man gets involved in all this, there arises in him a greater and greater hatred against that which assails him. And thus his trial becomes very useful to him.
So then, sin rules in our mortal body if we yield to it, but it becomes a servant if we resist it, for it thoroughly arouses our hatred of iniquity and our love of righteousness. But in our future immortal body, it will neither have dominion, nor will it rule, nor will it be a servant. Let us recognize, then, how marvelous God's wisdom is! He furthers the good through evil and he perfects righteousness through sin, not only in us, but also in others. In the sins that others commit, he gives us cause to hate the sin against the neighbor and to give it up in order that we may practice love and piety toward him, and in order that, as far as we ourselves are concerned, we may yearn for righteousness and come to loathe unrighteousness—yet only if we call upon him from a pure and sincere faith.
Neither present your members unto sin as instruments of iniquity. (Rom. 6:13.) The translation reads here "iniquity" instead of "unrighteousness more violently because he is in the law than he would if he determined by unbelief, just as, conversely, righteousness is the whole general way of life determined by faith; it is faith together with its works just as unrighteousness is unbelief together with its works, including the good and holy ones.
According to Blessed Augustine in his work On the Spirit and the Letter,*2 "sin" must here be understood, not as the work of sin, but as the law of sin or the law of the members, as concupiscence, "tinder," inclination toward evil, resistance against the 32 Luther thinks perhaps of Augustine, De nupt. et concup., I, 30 and 31. The argument here is directed against Lyra. good. The apostle, therefore, wants to say that the members of the body must not be yielded to "sin," i.e., to concupiscence and the "tinder," so that, by such an obedience to sin, they become weapons of unbelief and so that believers are made into unbelievers, in so far as they do the works of unbelievers according to the desires of sin. But we must obey God, so that "our members may be instruments of righteousness/' i.e., of a life of faith and faithfulness.
I speak a human thing, because of the infirmity of your flesh.
For as you have yielded your members to serve uncleanness and iniquity, unto iniquity; so now yield your members to serve unrighteousness, unto sanctification. For when you were the servants of sin, you were free men to righteousness. What fruit therefore had you then in those things, of which you are now ashamed? For the end of them is death. But now being made free from sin, and become servants of God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end life everlasting. For the wages of sin is death. But the grace of God, life everlasting in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom.
Above he spoke of the thorough mortification of concupiscence in such a way that he would not allow a concession to it even in marriage. But here he relaxes his demand, and he means to say this: If because of the infirmity of the flesh, one must yield at all to lust, this should happen at least apart from dishonor and uncleanness in a marriage that is sanctified by faith, inasmuch as even the heathen, people who are outside the faith, observe such cleanness in accordance with human custom. Thus the idea of this passage is, in brief form, the same that he develops more fully throughout the entire chapter in I Cor., ch. 7. There he says:
"Because of fornication, let each man have his own wife" (v. 2), and, farther on, "that Satan tempt you not because of your incontinency" (v. 5). This is a human injunction, which is much less important than the counsel he offers saying: "Yet I would that all men were even as I myself," but not all are able to do this, therefore he continues: "but each man has his own gift from God, one after this manner, and another after that" (v. 7).
That also here he has been speaking of such a counsel and of the thorough mortification of the flesh he indicates when he says by way of reducing the strictness of the demand a little: "I speak a human thing," in other words: If you cannot be continent, behave at least chastely so that sin does not reign by the pollution and uncleanness of the flesh to the detriment of faith and righteousness and to the increase of unrighteousness.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS To serve uncleanness. (Rom. 6:19.) The apostle now turns around and does not hold to the antithesis, for he says first: (to serve) "uncleanness and unrighteousness unto unrighteousness" and then "to serve righteousness unto sanctification," i.e., cleanness. (Hence, in the Old Testament, it often says "be holy/1 "sanctify yourselves" for "purify yourselves,"
"be clean from carnal pollution/')33 For in his understanding, sanctification and cleanness are the same: they mean the chastity of the body, not any kind of chastity, but that which comes inwardly out of the spirit of faith that sanctifies. There is also a chastity of the heathen, but it is not a holy chastity or sanctification, because their soul is polluted. Hence, he says also here first:
"Serve righteousness'' and then: "unto sanctification/' For the soul must first be made chaste by faith in order that the holy soul then can also make the body clean for the sake of God, for otherwise it would be an empty chastity. In the same way the Lord speaks to the hypocrites: "You hypocrites, cleanse first what is inside, that the outside may become clean also," in other words: If you have become clean inside, the body and everything outside will easily and spontaneously be clean. Consequently, if one serves righteousness, such service carries sanctification with it (Isa. 1125):
"And righteousness shall be the girdle of his waist and faith the girdle of his loins," in other words: He who believes and is righteous in spirit thereby easily overcomes and controls dissipation.
Conversely, one who serves uncleanness, i.e., dissipation and the pollution of the body, will become more and more unrighteous, because sin has taken hold of him and because, having given up his faith, he has become an unbeliever.
33 Cf. Gen. 35:2; Isa. 52:11; Ezek. 36:25; Num. 11:18; Josh. 7:13.