I’d like to share with you this great exposition of Romans 8:2 from G. Campbell Morgan (1863-1945), one of the finest expositors of the last 100 years.
His family experience and the impact of the preaching of D.L. Moody brought him to a ministry of preaching at the age of twelve. He was twice the pastor of Westminster Chapel (1904, 1943). He ministered in England and the United States and is well known for his solid expositional preaching and teaching.
This exposition will be broken down into two parts because of its length. Enjoy the preach of G. Campbell!
Romans 8:2 (NKJV) 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.
The Spirit is described in the New Testament as “the Spirit of Truth,” “the Spirit of Promise,” “the Spirit of Grace,” “the Spirit of Glory.” “The Spirit of Life” is a suggestive and comprehensive phrase, indicating the relation of the Spirit of God to all life. Two words are here placed together, both of which; refer to life. The word “Spirit” suggests life at its very highest. Here, as always, where the reference is to God, the word indicates the originating cause. The word “life” marks rather a manifestation or a form of the essential than the origination and power thereof. This word translated “life” is a very interesting one. The Greek language is richer than ours in this particular, that it has more words than one to describe life. Where we use our word “life”‘ to include many conceptions, there are at least two words in Greek literature; words that we have become familiar with by their adaptation into our language in scientific usage-the words bios and zoe, from which we have derived our words biology and zoology. These two Greek words indicate two thoughts about life, but in Greek classical literature they are other than the thoughts that they indicate in the New Testament. The order of suggestiveness is reversed in the New Testament, and this is an arresting peculiarity which the purely natural-I may almost say the animal-side of life. The other word, bios, had in it something of an ethical value and a spiritual conception. In all Greek literature you find this contrast is maintained.
But when I take up the New Testament, uniformly I find the order is reversed, and when life is referred to by Jesus, by New Testament writers, the higher word in Greek thinking and Greek writing is relegated to lower uses and the lower word is elevated to higher uses.
Such a fact arrests attention, and a man is immediately driven to ask why this peculiar change-not a studied change, not a change of language adopted after some council had met and decided to adopt it. Then we might have questioned it. We are always open to question anything councils do. It was a change that came into the thinking of all Christian men so quietly, and yet so powerfully, that when you gather up the arguments of the Christian writings and put them into one, you find the strange uniformity. Jesus Himself, so far as the records reveal His teaching, adopted this change, and all the writers conformed to it. A new thought of life lies at the back of this change of word, a new conception of life is its originating cause. These New Testament writers saw life as the Greeks saw it, and yet quite differently. They saw the same things, the same men, the same women, the same animals, the same flowers, the same landscapes, the same seas, the same everything; and yet, without collusion, without decision of Pope, or Council, or Presbytery, or even Congregational Union-I suppose that was the only ecclesiastical court in existence then-without any of these things, I find these men made a change in terminology.
I believe the explanation will be found in the fact that the Christian man recognizes the original sanctity and holiness of every form of life. He has discovered that behind the “natural” of theology–even Paul’s theology-is the “natural” of Divine intention, and the “natural” of Divine intention is holy, and is directly due, always and everywhere, in every realm of life, to the activity of the Spirit of God. Without resolution, without decision of Council, the early Christian consciousness made its protest against the idea that life in any form is essentially evil. The early Christian consciousness is perfectly plain in declaring that life has become evil, that man has fallen into willful and rebellious wrong-doing; and it is in this very epistle that you have the mostglaring and terrible revelation in literature of what the heart of man is by the choice of his sin. Thus Christianity, powerfully and pervasively, has taken hold of a word in current Greek literature, which always had upon it the taint of sin, and changed its meaning because Christian thought has been remade by the advent and presence of Jesus Christ.
But now, concerning the conception that this presents to our view as Christians, the relation of the Spirit of God to all life is too often forgotten by Christian people. Let me make this broad and inclusive proposition. All life is due to the direct action of the Spirit of God. The Bible never loses sight of that fact. As we take up this ancient literature of the Hebrew people and study it, we find a recognition of the relation of God and the Spirit of God to all life. That is the meaning of the first chapters in Genesis. “In the beginning God created.” “Darkness was upon the face of the waters,” but “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” The original creation has behind it a spiritual explanation. Travel back as far as you will through æons you cannot measure, and Genesis still sings the anthem of the beginning, “in the beginning God created”; and when there was to be a remaking of a disorganized and chaotic world again “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” If you study this ancient literature you will find perpetually that the Hebrew heard the wheels of God in the thunder of the storm, and saw the flash of His chariot when the lightning illuminated the heavens. He saw at the back of all life the presence of the Spirit of God. The whole truth has been beautifully expressed by one of our more modern writers:
One Spirit-His
Who wore the plaited thorn with bleeding brows-
Rules universal Nature! Not a flower
But shows some touch, in freckle, streak, or stain
Of His unrivalled pencil. He inspires
Their balmy odors, and imparts their hues,
And bathes their eyes with nectar; and includes
In grains as countless as the seaside sands,
The forms with which He sprinkles all the earth.
You say that is poetry? That is scientific fact to the Christian soul, and science is always poetic if you know it. Think of that conception; what is it? That all the fragrance of the flower is the result of the breathing of the Spirit of God, and every touch of delicate beauty upon its petal is the direct, immediate, actual, absolute workmanship of the Spirit.
That outlook is wide, and radiant, and spacious. Let us confine our attention to the thought suggested in this spacious outlook as it affects man. We suffer today from too constant contemplation of man as he is, and a consequent failure to understand man as God intended he should be. We have been gazing so long and so intently at ruin that we have forgotten the fair lines of the Divine ideal and the plan toward which God is moving and working in all such as are submitted to His Spirit.
To be continued: