m yourselves.' The 'mind of Christ' is given to
us if we will. We can gird it on, and if we do, it will be as an
impenetrable coat-of-mail, which will turn the sharpest arrows and
resist the fiercest sword-cuts.

The last clause of verse 1 is a parenthesis, and, if it is for the
moment omitted, the sentence runs smoothly on, especially if the Revised
Version's reading is adopted. The purpose of arming us with the same
mind is that, whilst we live on earth, we should live according to the
will of God, and should renounce 'the lusts of men,' which are in us as
in all men, and which men who are not clad in the armour which Christ
gives to us yield to.

But what of the parenthetical statement? Clearly, the words which follow
it forbid its being taken to mean that dead men do not sin. Rather the
Apostle's thought seems to be that such suffering in daily life after
Christ's pattern, and by His help, is at once a sign that the sufferer
has shaken off the dominion of sin, and is a means of further
emancipating him from it.

But the two great thoughts in this paragraph are, that the Christian
life is one in which God's will, and not man's desires, is the
regulating force, and that the pattern of that life and the power to
copy the pattern are found in Christ, the sufferer for righteousness'
sake.

II. More specific injunctions, entering into the details of the higher
life, follow, interwoven, as in the preceding verses, with a statement
of the motives which make obedience to them possible to our weakness.
The sins in view are those most closely connected with 'the flesh' in
its literal meaning, amongst which are included 'abominable idolatries,'
because gross acts of sensual immorality were inseparably intertwined
with much of heathen worship. These sins of flesh were especially
rampant among the luxurious Asiatic lands, to which this letter was
addressed, but they flooded the whole Roman empire, as the works of
poets like Martial and of moralists like Epictetus equally show. But New
York or London could match the worst scenes in Rome or Ephesus, and
perhaps would not be far behind the foul animalism of Sodom and
Gomorrah. Lust and drunkenness are eating out the manhood of our race on
both sides of the Atlantic, and, if we have 'the same mind' as the
suffering Christ, we shall put on the armour for war to the knife with
these in society, and for the rigid self-control of our own animal
nature.

Observe the strong motives