punishment, though grace
delivers him from the rope and the sword, life is not granted him
that he may continue to steal, to murder; rather he is supposed to
become honest and virtuous. If he does not, the law will again
overtake him and punish him as he deserves. In short, where grace
fulfills the law, no one is for that reason given license to continue
in wrong-doing; on the contrary, he is under increased obligation to
avoid occasions of falling under condemnation of the law.

4. Everyone can readily comprehend this principle in temporal things;
no one is stupid enough to tolerate the idea of grace being granted
to extend opportunity to do wrong. It is only the Gospel doctrine
concerning God's grace and the forgiveness of sin that must suffer
the slanderous misrepresentation that makes it abolish good works or
give occasion for sin. We are told how God, in his unfathomable
grace, has canceled the sentence of eternal death and hell fire
which, according to the Law and divine judgment, we deserved, and has
given us instead the freedom of life eternal; thus our life is purely
of grace. Yet certainly we are not pardoned that we may live as
before when, under condemnation and wrath, we incurred death. Rather,
forgiveness is bestowed that we in appreciation of the sublimity and
sanctity of God's unspeakably great blessing which delivers us from
death unto life, should henceforth take heed that we lose it not;
that we fall not from grace to pass again under judgment and the
sentence of eternal death. We are to conduct ourselves as men made
alive and saved.

5. So Paul says in verse 16, "Know ye not, that to whom ye present
yourselves as servants unto obedience, his servants ye are whom ye
obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?"
Meaning, Since you now have, under grace, obtained forgiveness of sin
and are become righteous, you owe it to God to live in obedience to
his will. Necessarily your life must be obedient to some master.
Either you obey sin, to continue in the service of which brings death
and God's wrath, or you obey God, in grace, unto a new manner of
life. So, then, you are no more to obey sin, having been freed from
its dominion and power. Paul continues the topic in this Sunday's
epistle text, saying:

GOOD AND EVIL "AFTER THE MANNER OF MEN."

"I speak after the manner of men, because of the infirmity of your
flesh: for as ye presented your members as members to uncleanness,"