He means, in the next place, that whilst there is no life without righteousness, there is no righteousness without God’s gift.  You cannot break away from the dominion of Sin, and, as it were, establish yourselves in a little fortress of your own, repelling her assaults by any power of yours.  Dear brethren, we cannot undo the past; we cannot strip off the poisoned garment that clings to our limbs; we can mend ourselves in many respects, but we cannot of our own volition and motion clothe ourselves with that righteousness of which the wearers shall be worthy to ’pass through the gate into the city.’  There is no righteousness without God’s gift.

And the other subsidiary clause completes the thought:  ’through Christ.’  In Him is all the grace, the manifest love, of God gathered together.  It is not diffused as the nebulous light in some chaotic incipient system, but it is gathered into a sun that is set in the centre, in order that it may pour down warmth and life upon its circling planets.  The grace of God is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  In Him is life eternal; therefore, if we desire to possess it we must possess Him.  In Him is righteousness; therefore, if we desire our own foulness to be changed into the holiness which shall see God, we must go to Jesus Christ.  Grace reigns in life, but it is life through righteousness, which is through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So, then, brother, my message and my petition to each of you are—­knit yourself to Him by faith in Him.  Then He who is ’full of grace and truth’ will come to you; and, coming, will bring in His hands righteousness and life eternal.  If only we rest ourselves on Him, and keep ourselves close in touch with Him; then we shall be delivered from the tyranny of the darkness, and translated into the Kingdom of the Son of His love.

‘THE FORM OF TEACHING’

   ’...  Ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine
   which was delivered you.’—­ROMANS vi. 17.

There is room for difference of opinion as to what Paul precisely means by ‘form’ here.  The word so rendered appears in English as type, and has a similar variety of meaning.  It signifies originally a mark made by pressure or impact; and then, by natural transitions, a mould, or more generally a pattern or example, and then the copy of such an example or pattern, or the cast from such a mould.  It has also the other meaning which its English equivalent has taken on very extensively of late years, such as, for instance, you find in expressions like ‘An English type of face,’ meaning thereby the general outline which preserves the distinguishing characteristics of a thing.  Now we may choose between these two meanings in our text.  If the Apostle means type in the latter sense of the word, then the rendering ‘form’ is adequate, and he is thinking of the Christian teaching which had been given to the Roman Christians as possessing certain well-defined characteristics which distinguished it from other kinds of teaching—­such, for instance, as Jewish or heathen.