02.A12. Light Breaking In

CHAPTER XII.

LIGHT BREAKING IN. IN the moral and spiritual state above indicated, I entered, about the eighth year of my Christian life, upon my studies as a student in theology at Andover, Massachusetts. Our Biblical Professor was the celebrated Biblical scholar, Rev. Moses Stuart. In the progress of our Biblical studies, we came at length to Romans 7:1-25. Our learned Professor, to the surprise of not a few of his pupils, laid out all his learning and talents in rendering it demonstrably evident that the specific object of the apostle in Romans 7:1-25 is to elucidate a legal in distinction from a proper Christian experience. The express object of the entire epistle, as he showed us, is to elucidate and verify the doctrine of salvation in its entireness, salvation by faith, as opposed to the Jewish error of salvation by deeds of law and patriarchal descent. In Romans 1:1-32, Romans 2:1-29, Romans 3:1-31, Romans 4:1-25, Romans 5:1-21, the Christian doctrine of justification by faith is most fully stated, elucidated, and verified, in opposition to the Jewish error of justification by deeds of law. In the next three chapters, a precisely similar course of demonstrative reasoning is pursued relatively to the fundamental doctrine of sanctification by faith, as opposed to the Jewish error upon the same subject. In the portion of Romans 7:1-25 devoted to the subject, the apostle details, in fact and form, his own abortive legal experience as a Jew, and in the eighth chapter details, in contrast with his former legal self and life, his Christian experience as a believer in Jesus. The contrast is most instructive and impressive. In the former state he was always under condemnation, bringing forth fruits unto death; in the latter, he was free from all condemnation, because he was justified freely by divine grace, and "dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." In the former state, in every purpose of obedience, and in every conflict with his evil propensities, "the law in his members," he suffered a sad and inglorious defeat, and was a stranger to victory in all its forms; in the latter state, in every condition of existence, and in every conflict with the powers of sin, he was "more than a conqueror through Him that hath loved us." In the former state, he found "a law that, when he would do good, evil was present with him;" in the latter, "the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus made him free from the law of sin and death." In the former state, "he was carnal, sold under sin;" in the latter, he was the Lord’s freeman, "delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God." To explain the experience detailed in Romans 7:1-25 as Christian experience, is to annihilate, as our Professor showed us, all distinction between sanctification by faith and "by deeds of law," between the experience of the Jew and that of the Christian, and to affirm faith in Christ to be just as inoperative in the matter of sanctification as is the law. The views which our Professor presented, accord, as he rendered undeniably evident, with those received by the entire primitive Church directly from the apostle himself, and with the expositions of a vast majority of the most distinguished commentators of all ages. We were finally shown, by numerous quotations from heathen authors, that the experience portrayed in this seventh chapter is identical with that of men living in sin, as portrayed by such writers, and that their language, in most important respects, perfectly corresponds with his upon the same subject. All our ideas of the Christian life, as we were shown, are marred when we identify the legal experience described in Romans 7:1-25 with the Christian experience described in the next chapter, and in other parts of the Bible. The argument of our Professor was most manifestly unanswerable, and with the conviction induced, rays of light began to pierce "the horror of great darkness" in which my mind was involved. The supposed revealed necessity, that the believer shall remain "carnal, sold under sin," and carry about with him in his "captivity under the law of sin" and death "the body of this death," was taken away, and I was set free to inquire, and soon began most eagerly to inquire, in other portions of the Word of God "for the things which are freely given us of God." The manner in which these inquiries were pursued, together with the results, will be disclosed hereafter.