irit, the Spirit does take control and set us
free from the power of sin that dwells in us and brings our whole lives
into conformity to the will of God. _It is the privilege of the child of
God in the power of the Holy Spirit to have victory over sin every day and
every hour and every moment._

There are many professed Christians to-day living in the experience that
Paul described in Rom. vii. 9-24. Each day is a day of defeat and if at
the close of the day, they review their lives they must cry, "Oh, wretched
man that I am, who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?" There
are some who even go so far as to reason that this is the normal Christian
life, but Paul tells us distinctly that this was "when the commandment
came" (v. 9), not when the Spirit came; that it is the experience under
law and not in the Spirit. The pronoun "I" occurs twenty-seven times in
these fifteen verses and the Holy Spirit is not found once, whereas in the
eighth chapter of Romans the pronoun "I" is found only twice in the whole
chapter and the Holy Spirit appears constantly. Again Paul tells us in the
fourteenth verse that this was his experience as "carnal, sold under sin."
Certainly, that does not describe the normal Christian experience. On the
other hand in Rom. viii. 9 we are told how not to be in the flesh but in
the Spirit. In the eighth chapter of Romans we have a picture of the true
Christian life, the life that is possible to each one of us and that God
expects from each one of us. Here we have a life where not merely the
commandment comes but the Spirit comes, and works obedience to the
commandment and brings us complete victory over the law of sin and death.
Here we have life, not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, where we not only
see the beauty of the law (Rom. vii. 22) but where the Spirit imparts
power to keep it (Rom. viii. 4). We still have the flesh but we are not in
the flesh and we do not live after the flesh. We "through the Spirit do
mortify the deeds of the body" (v. 13). The desires of the body are still
there, desires which if made the rule of our life, would lead us into sin,
but we day by day by the power of the Spirit do put to death the deeds to
which the desires of the body would lead us. We walk by the Spirit and
therefore do not fulfill the lusts of the flesh (Gal. v. 16, R. V.). We
have crucified the flesh with the passions and lusts thereof (Gal. v. 24,
R. V.). It would be _going too far to say we had