d infirmities and moreover are
subject to much affliction and adversity; and where consequently they
are extremely sensible of death and terror when they would experience
joy and life. In this verse Paul comforts them, showing them where to
seek and surely apprehend their life.

27. Be of good cheer, he would say, for ye are dead to the worldly
life. This life ye must renounce, but in so doing ye make a precious
exchange. Dying unto the world is a blessed experience, for which ye
will obtain a life far more glorious. Ye are now, through Christ's
death, redeemed from sin and from death eternal and are made
imperishable. Upon you is conferred everlasting glory. But this risen
life ye cannot yet perceive in yourselves; ye have it in Christ,
through faith.

Christ is spoken of as "our life." Though the life is still unrevealed
to you, it is certain, insured to you beyond the power of any to
deprive you of it. By faith in Christ's life, then, are ye to be
preserved and to obtain victory over the terrors and torments of sin,
death and the devil, until that life shall be revealed in you and made
manifest to men.

In Christ ye surely possess eternal life. Nothing is lacking to a
perfect realization except that the veil whereby it is hidden so long
as we are in mortal flesh and blood, is yet to be removed. Then will
eternal life be revealed. Then all worldly, terrestrial things, all
sin and death, will be abolished. In every Christian shall be manifest
only glory. Christians, then, believing in Christ, and knowing him
risen, should comfort themselves with the expectation of living with
him in eternal glory; the inevitable condition is that they have
first, in the world, died with him.

28. Paul does not forget to recognize the earthly environment of
Christians and saints, for he says: "Put to death therefore your
members which are upon the earth." Though acknowledging Christians
dead with Christ unto worldly things and possessing life in Christ, he
yet tells them to mortify their members on earth, and enumerates the
sins of fornication, covetousness, etc.

This is truly a strange idea, that it should be necessary for men who
have died and risen with Christ and hence have been made really holy,
to mortify worldly inclinations in their bodily members. The apostle
refers to this subject in Romans 7: 5, 8, 23, and elsewhere,
frequently explaining how, in the saints, there continue to remain
various lusts of original sin, whic