2 God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?

Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?"

His answer is energetic.

"God forbid. How shall we that have died to sin (in taking part baptismally in the very death that Christ died) live any longer therein?" "Our old man (our old nature) was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin."

So that there was a dramatic lesson in it.

Every time we look at Christ crucified, we see a reason why we should not be guided by the mere instincts of the body we now possess, for that body was put to death on the cross that we might be told that rational life is not to be found by obeying the impulses that are native to that body.

Those impulses are the law of life in the world, they are not the law of the sons of God. They are not a safe law. Followed by themselves, they lead to every hideousness and ruin. Regulated by law (that is, by God's commands), they are beautiful, as fire is, under control. But the world loves not the law. Naturally, we revolt at it.

"The carnal mind is enmity against God; it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be."

But when the power of the Spirit enters our minds, by the Word of the Spirit understood and believed, the darkness of the carnal mind gives way before the light, and we

"put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him."

The restraints and self-denials and disciplines implied in this process may be irksome to flesh and blood; but there is another side. Even in systems of human wisdom, the value of "training" (whether physical or mental) is recognised; but what training can compare in results to that which hews us into the divine image while yet in the flesh; confers peace in a world of unrest and trouble; gilds the future with the glory of infinite hope; and at last confers the priceless gift of an incorruptible nature in which God will be our open vision and His whole universe our sphere of joyful life for ever?

Seasons 2. 66

3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?

àNow this sacrifice of Jesus becomes sin-destroying in every one who believes the gospel of the kingdom preached in his name; and is sprinkled with his blood in being baptised into him.

All the past sins of such a believer are cancelled, or forgiven; and there is engrafted in him a principle, even the word believed, called "the law of the Spirit of life," which in the remission has "made him free from the law of sin and death;" so that sin no longer reigns in his mortal body that he should obey it in the lusts thereof.

He is "made free from sin" as the sovereign of his mind and actions; and has become the servant of God, whose will it is his study to learn and obey in all things; thus bringing forth fruit unto holiness, the end of which is everlasting life, when he shall be planted in the likeness of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

HERALD OF THE KINGDOM AND AGE TO COME - AUG 1852

àThe sentence to pardon of Iife is through Jesus Christ. In being made a sacrifice for sin by the pouring out of His blood upon the cross, He is set forth as a blood sprinkled mercy seat to all believers of the gospel of the kingdom, who have faith in this remission of sins through the shedding of His blood.

"He was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification" (Rom. 4:25);

that is, for the pardon of those who believe the gospel; as it is written,

"he that believeth the gospel and is baptized shall be saved" (Mark 16:15-16).

Hence, "the obedience of faith" (Rom. 1:5), is made the condition of righteousness; and this obedience implies the existence of a "law of faith," as attested by that of Moses, which is "the law of works" (Rom. 3:27-31).

The law of faith says to him who believes the gospel of the kingdom,

"be renewed, and be ye every one of you baptized by the name of Jesus Christ for remission of sins" (Acts 2:38).

...the act demanded of a renewed sinner by the constitution of righteousness, that he may be inducted into Christ and so "constituted the righteousness of God in Him," is a burial in water into death. The energy of the word of truth is twofold. It makes a man "dead to sin" and "alive to God."

Now, as Christ died to sin once and was buried, so the believer having become dead to sin, must be buried also; for after death burial. The death and burial of the believer is connected with the death and burial of Christ by the individual's faith in the testimony concerning them. Hence, he is said to be "dead with Christ," and to be "buried with Christ;" but, how buried? "By baptism into death," saith the Scripture.

But is this all? By no means; for the object of the burial in water is not to extinguish animal life; but, by preserving it, to afford the believer scope to "walk in newness of life," moral and intellectual. He is, therefore, raised up out of the water. This action is representative of his faith in the resurrection of Jesus; and of his hope, that as he had been planted with Him in the similitude of His death, he shall hereafter be also in the likeness of His resurrection (Rom. 6:3-11), and so enter the kingdom of God.

To such persons the Scripture saith, "ye are all sons of God in Christ Jesus through the faith;" and the ground of this honorable and divine relationship is assigned in these words;

"For as many of you as have been baptised INTO Christ have put on Christ; and if ye be Christ's, then are ye the seed of Abraham, and heirs according to the promise" (Gal. 3:26-29).

They have thus received the spirit of adoption by which they can address God as their Father who is in heaven.

Elpis Israel 1.4.

4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

The uncircumcised and the unclean

As custodians of the holy city, believers have the solemn responsibility of maintaining its standards and laws. Bro. Roberts says on this point:

"If the knowledge of the Truth fail to beget the new man in the heart of the sinner, the baptism following his knowledge is not a birth. It is a mere performance of no benefit to him, but rather to his condemnation…

"It ought, therefore, to be seriously considered by all who contemplate that step, and by all who are called upon to assist them, whether there is EVIDENCE of death to sin before arrangements are made for burial. The burial of a living man is cruelty. It were better for the sinner to leave God's covenant alone than to make a mockery of it."—Further Seasons, pg. 13.

Baptism is not a law, but an action commanded to be submitted to by believers of the gospel of the kingdom, and by none else. It is the act by which the obedience of faith is rendered. Baptism is essential to justification by the law of faith; for without baptism a believer cannot obey the gospel, because the immersion of a true believer is the obedience of the gospel.

Till that action is intelligently submitted to a believer is to that same instant in his sins, or unjustified, which is the same thing. Justification by faith is through the name of Jesus; and immersion into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is the act of union to that name. It is the only formality, rite, or ceremony, by which a believer of the gospel of the kingdom can be married to the name of the Lord Jesus.

If such a believer refuse to be thus united to his name, in so doing he refuses repentance, remission of sins, and eternal life through that name, for these blessings come to the justified by faith only through his name. A believer is no more united to Christ's name without true baptism than a woman is united to the name of a man without the legal marriage ceremony. This simple rite gives her a share in all that pertains to her husband's name, be they riches, or honour, or both; so after a like manner does baptism into the name of the Lord give the true believer all spiritual blessings communicable through his name, and a title to share with him in his glory.

If it be asked, then, "At what instant is a believer of the gospel of the kingdom justified by faith in the kingdom and name?"—the answer is in the words of Peter, "Having purified your souls in the obeying of the truth through the Spirit," which is synonymous with in the being baptised, in the being united to the name, &c. When a believer goes into the water, he becomes passive in the hands of the administrator, who pronounces the formula divinely prescribed, and having ended them, he buries him in the watery grave, from which he raises him to walk in newness of life.

In being buried in the water, his renewedness of heart is granted to him for repentance, and his belief of the promise made to the fathers, and in Jesus as Lord and Christ, is counted to him for righteousness or remission of sins; for he is then introduced into the name of Christ, through which name repentance and remission of sins are conveyed to him. An unimmersed believer is not united to the name; he is therefore not in it, but exterior to it; and can no more have the things contained in the name, than a man can have access to things in a house when he is in the street without its door.

Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come, Oct 1853.

Superfluous re-immersion is a profanation of the Lord's institution for the remission of sins.‭ ‬Nevertheless,‭ ‬it is a sin,‭ ‬that on repentance and repudiation will,‭ ‬doubtless,‭ ‬be forgiven.‭ ‬At all events,‭ ‬the brethren would do wrong to refuse such penitents.

The Christadelphian, Dec 1873

6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.

To be born of earth, flesh, or water, is for the subject to emerge from a previous concealment therein. To be buried or planted is to be put out of sight, or covered up, in whatever medium may be employed; and to wash the body is to bathe it, as is evident from the law, wash and bathe being there interchangeably used.

... they knew nothing of the kingdom of God. How, then, could they have believed the gospel, seeing that the glad tidings are about that kingdom? If the kingdom be not doctrinally in a man's heart, the gospel preached by Christ and his apostles is not there; and this being absent, he is destitute of "the substance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things unseen;" in other words, he is without the faith that is necessary to be possessed for justification in passing through the water "into the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit."

Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come, March 1855

"Sin in the flesh" when personified in Scripture is called "the devil," and it was a part of the mission of Christ to destroy this devil through death, which would have been impossible if sin, as a physical element, had had no existence in him. But having sin in him constitutionally, we can see how he put away sin by a sacrifice of himself.

This diabolos, or devil, being in all the descendants of Adam, is styled "our old man," and "the old man." In mankind generally we see "the old man with his deeds" (Col. 3:9), but in Christ the "old man" existed without his deeds, that is, without evil-doing. In his death the "old man was crucified, that the body of sin might be destroyed"—the enmity in himself was slain and abolished (Eph. 2:6).

There was justice in his death, and justification in his resurrection. In his death there was a declaration of God's righteousness, by showing man's sinfulness even by nature, and in his resurrection an illustration of the fact that God would not suffer an holy one even in sin's flesh to see corruption.

When Christadelphians say that Adam's nature was not changed or altered, they mean to say that it was not changed from immortality to mortality, as some of the "orthodox" teachers suppose, but they do not mean to say that death was inherent in Adam's nature from his creation.

Those who maintain that mortality was a law of his being previous to the transgression, and that as a result of his disobedience he was simply driven from the garden and allowed to die when his nature wore out, cast a reflection on the work of the Deity, by teaching that which worketh death in us was in Adam before he sinned, and that consequently death did not come by sin as stated by Paul in Rom. 5:12, but rather by the law of nature as at first constituted.

It also destroys the force of the Apostle's reasoning in Heb. 2:14, as to why Christ was a partaker of our nature, by nullifying his statement that the power of death lay in the diabolos, or sin in the flesh, unless it is affirmed (which is virtually done by some) that the diabolos existed in Adam before the Fall, but in that case it must have been a "very good" diabolos, and if "very good," we may ask: why destroy it? But as has been shown, there was no diabolos in Adam's flesh previous to the Fall.

The in fixing of the law of sin and death in his members by the sentence, was the introduction of a something that did not previously exist there: and that something having in it the power of death, was transmitted to all born in him, causing death to pass upon all, and the only way of salvation for any of the descendants of Adam who were passing away under this irrevocable law of their nature, was by the destruction of this evil principle in their nature by death, after living a morally perfect, upright and holy life, keeping and honouring all God's commandments, which would entitle all such to a resurrection from the death to which they had been subjected, for the condemnation of sin in the flesh and the destruction of this evil principle in their nature.

But this was a moral impossibility with mankind, because of the depravity of their nature, caused by indwelling sin. None were able to keep the law of God perfectly and sin not, and, consequently, none were able to secure a resurrection. God, who understood this and knew what was in man, saw the weakness of the flesh, and in His infinite love and wisdom developed a plan of redemption by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.

B. J. Dowling

The Christadelphian, Jan 1889

The body is body of sin‭ (‬Rom.‭ vi. ‬6‭)‬.‭

To allow it to rule means death.‭ ‬Where it reigns there are visible:‭ ‬bitterness,‭ ‬lying,‭ ‬pride,‭ ‬vanity,‭ ‬selfishness,‭ ‬anger,‭ ‬lust.‭ ‬The body can be held in subjection but only in one way,‭ ‬viz.,‭ ‬by the sword of the Spirit,‭ ‬which is the Word of God.‭ ‬When heat is brought to bear upon metal,‭ ‬its appearance becomes changed‭; ‬remove the heat,‭ ‬and the metal gradually returns to its normal condition.‭ ‬So it is with the body.‭

Just so long as the influence of the Bible is allowed to operate upon it is it kept under.‭ ‬Remove that influence and the flesh again asserts itself.‭ ‬The flesh is naturally powerful and asserting.‭ ‬God is testing it by means of the flesh.‭ ‬Happy is the man who knows and realises this.‭ ‬He is on his guard God could create impeccable and immortal beings straight away.‭ ‬He does not do so because He requires character‭; ‬and character is developed by contact with evil.

The Christadelphian, Aug 1887

7 For he that is dead is freed from sin.

This does not mean that sin releases all hold upon a man as soon as he passes out of being. Death tightens or consummates sin's grasp. Man, while living, is in a hundred ways the victim of sin, but when death arrives sin's mastery is complete.

To understand Paul we must go backward and forward in his argument. His argument concerns living people (people actually alive though symbolically dead), and is carried on with a risen, immortalised Saviour in view.

The chapter opens with reference to the duty of saints in abstaining from unrighteousness, and proceeds to give the reason why. Baptism, the Apostle explains, is a symbolical dying with Christ, to the end that the baptised ones might, through their union with him, actually attain unto his present unending life.

Hence, whilst awaiting this life, the Apostle argues, the baptised ones should walk in a manner becoming it—"in newness of life."

Christ's death, Paul shows, was a condemnation of sin's nature ("our old man"), and this condemnation was a necessary prelude to a deliverance from it. The sixth chapter is, in brief, a disquisition on the nature which we have, and that to which we hope to attain, and the consistency of our now striving to bring forth moral fruits harmonious with the prospective immortal state.

The seventh verse may be paraphrased thus: He that hath symbolically died hath been symbolically delivered from the consequences of sin. (For another example see Gal. 2:20.) As to whether we are to be actually delivered is conditional upon our now yielding up ourselves to the claims of holiness. The revised version makes the meaning of the chapter more clear..

Bro AT Jannaway

The Christadelphian, Jul 1901

9 Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him.

Thus it is the apostolic definition and declaration that death once had dominion over him. Surely, there is no need for being shocked, when the meaning of the matter is perceived.

On the contrary, the spiritual understanding can see and admire and bow down, and worship through Christ, at the spectacle of God's love advancing without the compromise of God's dignity.

The Blood of Christ - No Need For Being Shocked

THE PARABLE OF THE SIN BEARER

From the time he stepped out of the waters of Jordan to the day of his crucifixion the Son of God must have understood the significance of his baptism, viz.t that only through death could there be deliverance from temptation to sin.

The parallel which the apostle Paul draws between baptism and the death of Jesus justifies

this conclusion. That parallel, given by inspiration from God, shews that Jesus died to sin personally in relation to himself.

Know ye not that so many of us as were baptised into Jesus Christ were baptised into his death ? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death :that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him,

that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin. (Rom, vi. 3-7.)

After transgression Adam was " a body of sin." This " old man " Jesus and his brethren inherit from him. Physically, Jesus was one with his brethren in this respect—an extension of Adam's being—" made of a woman." (Gal. iv. 4.) Therefore the "old man" crucified

with him that the body of sin might be destroyed," is that flesh and blood nature whose impulses led Adam to transgress God's laws, hence Jesus :

Abolished in his flesh the enmity, the law of commandments in ordinances ; for to make in himself of twain one new man, making peace. And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity. (Marg.,in himself)

(Eph. 11. 15-16.)

Thus a dual result was accomplished in His death, viz., deliverance from the power of sin (Heb. 11. 14.) and the abolition of the law. (Gal. in. 13.)

The method adopted by the Father for removing the evil which ensued in consequence of Adam's transgression illustrates His righteousness and unchangeableness. Without abrogating the law of sin and death, the bestowal of the Mosaic law opened the way for the removal of its effects because its precepts brought a curse on Jesus, who fulfilled obedience to its minutest details.

In obedience to that law he freely offered himself as a sacrifice, and thus came under its curse,

" for it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree " (Gal. in. 13).

Since the law cursed a righteous man, its abolition was justifiable. He hath taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross. (Col. 11. 14). Sin being crucified in Jesus,

" Who obeyed the law and made it honourable " ;

God raised him up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it. (Acts 11. 24).

Thus was introduced another law, viz. :

The righteousness of God by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all that believe. (Rom. in. 22).

Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus :

Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance

of God. To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness : that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believe th in Jesus (ibid, verses 24-25).

The Temple of Ezekiel's prophecy 5.6.7.

11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

..the act demanded of a renewed sinner by the constitution of righteousness, that he may be inducted into Christ and so "constituted the righteousness of God in Him," is a burial in water into death. The energy of the word of truth is twofold. It makes a man "dead to sin" and "alive to God." Now, as Christ died to sin once and was buried, so the believer having become dead to sin, must be buried also; for after death burial. The death and burial of the believer is connected with the death and burial of Christ by the individual's faith in the testimony concerning them. Hence, he is said to be "dead with Christ," and to be "buried with Christ;" but, how buried? "By baptism into death," saith the Scripture.

But is this all? By no means; for the object of the burial in water is not to extinguish animal life; but, by preserving it, to afford the believer scope to "walk in newness of life," moral and intellectual. He is, therefore, raised up out of the water. This action is representative of his faith in the resurrection of Jesus; and of his hope, that as he had been planted with Him in the similitude of His death, he shall hereafter be also in the likeness of His resurrection (Rom. 6:3-11), and so enter the kingdom of God. To such persons the Scripture saith, "ye are all sons of God in Christ Jesus through the faith;" and the ground of this honorable and divine relationship is assigned in these words;

"For as many of you as have been baptised INTO Christ have put on Christ; and if ye be Christ's, then are ye the seed of Abraham, and heirs according to the promise" (Gal. 3:26-29). They have thus received the spirit of adoption by which they can address God as their Father who is in heaven.

Elpis Israel 1.4.

19 I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.

Now that word is a very expressive and comprehensive one: holiness is a state of cleanness, and cleanness in its moral relations consists of freedom from all that is constituted morally polluting by the law of God. That is right which God commands—that is wrong which He forbids. That is holy which He calls clean, and that is unholy which He disallows. There is no other rule of righteousness than that.

...God's commandments are unmistakable; they are so very simple that we are liable to forget them, and if we forget them, we cannot be saved. We must keep them in remembrance and act upon them, especially the last. It is the doing of them that is acceptable. It is not sufficient to acknowledge them.

"Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say."

The Christadelphian, June 1872

23 For the wages of sin is death [Not 'everlasting torment']; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Wages are paid only to those who labour:‭ ‬those who in their toil‭ "‬sow to the flesh,‭ " ‬will be paid for the labour they perform‭; ‬and the pay for this kind of labour is‭ "‬corruption,‭" ‬or‭ "‬death unto death‭"—‬death ending in corruption,‭ ‬as the apostle saith,‭ "‬shall of the flesh reap corruption,‭" ‬and of such he says,‭ ‬in another place,‭ "‬whose end is destruction‭;" ‬so that‭ "‬death,‭" "‬corruption,‭" ‬and‭ "‬destruction‭" ‬are‭ "‬the wages of sin,‭" ‬which everyone is fairly entitled to‭ "‬who loves darkness rather than light,‭" ‬and refuses to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ.‭

We need to be delivered from our sins,‭ ‬and from a resurrection unto a second death and corruption,‭ ‬which shall be consummated in a fiery destruction,‭ ‬constituting the destiny of unbelievers,‭ ‬cowards,‭ ‬abominable characters,‭ ‬and whosoever loves and invents a lie.

The Christadelphian, Aug 1870

The Wages of Sin

To summarise the consequences of our first parents' transgression in the garden, they may be defined as follows:—

1.—A knowledge of good and evil.

2.—Shame when naked.

3.—Mental sorrow.

4.—Physical pain and disease.

5.—Great toil through the ground being cursed.

6.—Death.

Revelation and experience both testify that these consequences have descended to their posterity; in a greater or less degree they are inherited by all the children of Adam. Infants are brought into the world amid much physical suffering; they are the subjects of pain and disease from the moment they breathe the air; and ere they have been long in existence they begin to display, by their actions, an innate tendency to evil.

...when at last they are released from their parents' protection, they realise the necessity, unless born in the lap of luxury, of earning their bread by the sweat of their brow. The sorrow which commenced in infancy ceases not as years roll on; it continues in a greater or less degree throughout life, producing the wrinkled brow and furrowed face, which are the sure accompaniments of old age, until at last death supervenes, and there is a return to that dust from which flesh and blood originally came.

The Christadelphian, Mar 1874

It is all an affair of His own grace and wisdom. If He see fit, out of this wreck of a world, to build up a new world out of the old materials, and to use only enough of that material as His purpose requires, on what principle can His act be criticised?

All we can do as reasonable mortals is to stand by and see what He is doing and adjust ourselves to His requirements when we come within the scope of His operations.

The Christadelphian, Dec 1898