le ingratitude for the unfathomable grace and
salvation received, to be unwilling to do good. For we ought in fact
to be impelled by this very grace to do, with all diligence and to
the utmost of our knowledge and ability, everything that is good and
well-pleasing to God, to the praise and glory of his name.

3. Of this Paul reminds and admonishes us here, in plain and simple
but earnest and important words, in which he points out to us how
much we owe to God for that which we have received from him, and what
injury we shall suffer if we do not value it as we should, and act
accordingly. He says:

"We are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh."

4. Because we have been redeemed from the condemnation we deserved by
our sins, and now have eternal life through the Spirit of Christ
dwelling in us (he speaks of this in the preceding verses), therefore
we are debtors to live after the Spirit and obey God. This Paul
declares also in the text for last Sunday: "Now being made free from
sin and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto
sanctification." Rom 6, 22. Therefore, he says, ye are debtors; your
new calling, station, and nature require of you that, since ye have
become Christians and have the Holy Spirit, ye should live as the
Holy Spirit directs and teaches. It is not left to your own caprice
to do or to leave undone. If ye desire to glory in the possession of
grace and the Holy Spirit, ye must confess yourselves debtors to
live, not after the flesh, the only desire of which is to continue in
sin, but after the Spirit; the Spirit shows you that, having been
baptized and redeemed from sin, ye must turn from sin to the new life
of righteousness and not from that new life to sin.

"For if ye live after the flesh, ye must die."

5. Here judgment is plainly and tersely pronounced on the pretensions
of those foolish people who seek to make the freedom of grace a
pretext for giving license to the flesh. The apostle speaks these
words that he may deter them from presumption, lest in place of the
life and grace in which they pride themselves, they bring upon
themselves again eternal wrath and death. It would be utterly
inconsistent in you who are now saved and freed from eternal death to
desire henceforth to live after the flesh. For if ye do that, ye need
not imagine that ye shall retain eternal life; ye will be subject to
death and condemned to hell. For ye know that it was solely because
of your sins t