the Red Sea. At the Red Sea, Pharaoh died, his dominion ended, Israel were baptized

into Moses, and were at length free to serve the Lord. He had said: "Let My Son go that

He may serve Me" (Exod. 4: 23). And in this command lies the essential teaching of

Rom. 6: 12-14. Service as bondslaves yields to service as sons, law gives place to grace,

Egypt to the wilderness, and brick-making for idolatrous kings to the building of a

tabernacle for the King of kings.

We are particularly warned against the "mortal body" and its "lusts". The body is

mortal because of sin; we possess such a body because Adam sinned and was expelled

from the garden of Eden. It is the medium of the deceitful and corrupting lusts of the

"old man" (Eph. 4: 22); and when we put on the new man, we walk in love as children

of light.

The apostle, in Rom. 6: 13, speaks of our not yielding our members to sin but to

God; and in Eph. 4: he goes on to speak definitely of the newly-yielded "hand" and

"mouth" (Eph. 4: 28, 29), which, as representing our words and deeds sum up most of

our activities.

John speaks of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. A

corrective to this is to remember that the body is mortal; if we realize this, it will not

minister to any false "pride of life".

Rom. 6: 12 is an outworking of the truth of Rom. 6: 6, where the "old man" is

crucified, so that the body of sin (called "the mortal body" in verse 12) might be rendered

null and void, "that henceforth we should not serve sin". As Gal. 5: 24 says: "They that

are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passion and lusts."

Notice how everything here seems to focus upon service. The walk in "newness of

life" of Rom. 6: 4 is expressed in the service in "newness of spirit" of Rom. 7: 6.

The crucifixion of the old man, and the nullifying of the body of sin, have in view the

canceling of our service to sin (6: 6). The delivered believer is exhorted to yield himself

and his members to God; and his members are called "instruments", shewing that service

is still in view. In the next section, too (6: 15-23), the entire argument revolves around

the thought of "service".

The wonderful freedom and deliverance of the believer is further explained in 6: 14

by showing that he is entirely removed from the dominion of law as well as that of sin,

and is now under grace:--

It should be observed that there is no article before "law". It is not sufficient to be

delivered from a ceremonial law, for the mere abolition of rites and ceremonies could not

exempt from obedience to moral law. We are now found under a new economy, that of

grace. Under the dispensation of grace, however, the moral law will be kept as certainly

as if our salvation depended upon it. The dispensation of grace only sets the law aside as

a means of salvation; when the law enunciates moral truth, this remains as true under