Romans 14:7

Rom_14:7-9

For none of us liveth to himself.

None of us liveth unto himself

This is seen in--

I. Success, which can be secured only by co-operation. When one devotes himself to one kind of work and another to another, the results of their labours are brought together to complete a perfect mechanism. Thus by these labour exchanges the experience of all is made to benefit each. One man does not make a whole pin.

II. Curiosity. We are anxious to know about our neighbours. It may be denounced by some as impertinence, but after all God has made us look at others--Look not every man on his own things. God said early, Where is thy brother? And it was a Cain who replied, Am I my brothers keeper? It is true that this curiosity often degenerates into gossip. It is evil when we speak of others only to criticise their garb, etc. It is a higher use of curiosity when we want to know not how a dress fits, but whether these people have on the wedding garment; not whether such an one is of obscure origin, but whether she belongs to the family of God. It is a right curiosity when we inquire about our brethren in foreign lands. The Lord has joined us together by a bond of brotherhood, as the very curiosity we manifest in each other shows.

III. Our love of society. The child wants other children to play with just as soon as it knows anything. The young man or woman goes forth in search of companions. The old man, though becoming deaf, still desires to be told by the voice of affection of what is said. A child plays around while his elders converse about politics, science, or literature, and he seems not to hear. But let one tell of a friend dying, or a battle raging, or a dreadful accident, and the child will at once drop his playthings and cease his sports to listen. Why is this? Because there are common bonds which unite us all, and because we are not made to live to ourselves. Everything that touches one heart awakes an echo in another. There is no punishment more dreadful than solitary confinement. The reason of men so confined sometimes has given way. Human beings, when they could not have men to talk to, have talked to beasts. Baron Trenck, in his solitary dungeon, made a friend of a spider. The greatest of poets made the desolate Lear talk to the clouds and the winds. All these things serve to show that no man liveth to himself.

IV. The disposition to imitate. The girl saw her mother nurse the baby, and must have a doll. The boy saw his father chop the wood, and must have an axe and a saw. This principle is in the very heart of man, for God has put it there.

V. The judgment we form of ourselves and others. When we turn away from a beggar we cannot help feeling that we have done wrong, and we begin to reason so as to relieve our Conscience from a sense of having failed in duty. We came home tired. We were told that a neighbour was ill, without a friend to do anything for him. We hesitated, but went to bed. Next morning we learned that he had died in the night, alone, and without any one to speak to him of a Saviour. Then we reproached ourselves. Why? Was it not right to take rest? Certainly; but God had taught us not to live for ourselves alone, and we condemned ourselves for our selfishness. If we had gone we might have had a pain in the head next day, but the heart would have felt all right. Here was a generous, benevolent man, doing all he could for the welfare of society, and trying to help the poor every way possible. When he died, what a funeral! The secret was that that man did not live for himself. There was another man, just as honourable and moral, but a miser. When he died there were no tears, only a host of relatives fighting over his hoard. We admire heroes, not because they are men of blood, but because they live not for themselves, but for others, for their country. Think of Howard, whose name still lives as a synonym for all that is self-denying and beneficent. So is it with Miss Nightingale, Luther, Calvin, and Wesley. Conclusion: If we should not live for ourselves, for what ought we to live?

1. To live for Christ is the only way to live for humanity. Many have tried to live for their friends and failed. A priest, thinking he was doing the European inhabitants of the Spanish colonies a favour, suggested that the African race could better stand the climate and the work of the tropics. In that way slavery was originated in this part of the world, and what a price it has cost us to free ourselves from the curse!

2. When we live for Christ we take Him as our pattern and live for humanity. Then will we lift up the fallen, cleanse the leper, lead the blind, etc.

3. We have to be introduced to Christ by some one who knows Him. But introduced, we can introduce others. (Bp. Simpson.)

None of us liveth to himself

Each living man bears a relation to his whole race: his having lived will never cease to be felt throughout the universe. We own each other, and God owns us all. A man never stands alone, unrelated to anything, but his closest relation is always to his Creator. A willow tree may stand far from the banks of the stream, and with no apparent support, except from the ground about its trunk; but what are its roots doing? Down burrowing amid the rocks, forcing a way through the earth, seeking for openings, pushing whithersoever is the smell of moist soil, diving to the level of the cool well, and drinking deep of its nourishing waters, shooting out by the brook side many, many rods away, till its banks are fringed like a shawl, seeking everywhere for nutriment, which gives life to the tree above them. This is what the roots are doing; and man is like a tree, only his roots shoot upward as well as downward; his firmest tie is to the heart of God, as his surest and best supply is from thence; but he is also indissolubly connected with all below him and round about him. Who, then, can say, I am mine own; I stand alone, unrelated, unlinked, solitary, uninfluenced and uninfluencing? Such a thing cannot be; and so it is written by the unerring pen of inspiration--None of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. (H. W. Beecher.)

None liveth unto himself

I was not born for myself alone; my country claims a part, my relations claim a part, and my friends claim a part in me. (Plato.)

The duty of not living to ourselves

It is the excellence of our rational nature that by it we are capable of living to some known end, and of governing our lives and conduct by some rule, whereas brute creatures necessarily live and act at random, just as the present appetite influences them. Let us, then, make the most of this our prerogative by proposing to ourselves the noblest end of human life, and engaging in such a course of action as will reflect the greatest honour upon our nature, and be productive of the most lasting happiness.

I. We should, according to this apostolical maxim, by no means confine our regards to ourselves, and have our own pleasure, profit, or advantage in view in everything we undertake; but look out of, and beyond ourselves, and take a generous concern in the happiness of all our brethren of mankind; make their sorrows our sorrows, their joys our joys, and their happiness our pursuit; and it is in this disinterested conduct, and in this only, that we shall find our own true happiness.

1. This disinterested conduct of man is most agreeable to the course of nature without us. The sun, the moon, the planets, and comets, are strictly connected, and combined into one system. Each body, though so exceedingly remote from the rest, is admirably adapted, by its situation, magnitude, and velocity in its orbit, to the state of the whole, in those respects and many others. This connection, probably, also extends to the remotest bodies in the universe, so that it is impossible to say that the withdrawing of any one would not in some respect or other affect all the rest. The clouds and the rain are designed to moisten the earth, and the sun to warm it, and the texture and juices of the earth are formed so as to receive the genial influences of both, in order to ripen and bring to perfection that infinite variety of plants and fruits, the seeds of which are deposited in it. Are not all plants likewise suited to the various kinds of animals which feed upon them? The various kinds of animals are, again, in a thousand ways adapted to, and formed for, the use of one another. That brute animals are excellently adapted to tile use of man, and were, therefore, made to be subservient to the use of man, man will not deny. The strength of some, and the sagacity of others, are as much at our command, and are as effectually employed for our use, as if they belonged to ourselves.

2. The situation of man in this world, or the external circumstances of human nature, oblige us to assert, with Paul, that no man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. Man himself is but a link, though the highest link, of this great chain, all the parts of which are closely connected by the hand of our Divine Author. Nay, the more extensive are our powers, either for action or enjoyment, on that very account, the more multiplied and extensive are our wants; so that, at the same time that they are marks of our superiority to, they are bonds of our connection with, and signs of our dependence upon, the various parts of the world around us, and of our subservience to one another. The rich, if they would receive the greatest advantages from society, must contribute to the happiness of it. If they act upon different maxims, and think to avail themselves of the pleasures of society without promoting the good of it, they will never know the true pleasures of society. And, in the end, they will be found to have enjoyed the least themselves who have least contributed to the enjoyment of others. Thus it appears from a view of the external circumstances of mankind that man was not made to live to himself. The same truth may be inferred--

3. From a nearer inspection of the principles of human nature and the springs of human actions. Whence is that quick sensibility which we are conscious of with respect to both the joys and the sorrows of our fellow-creatures if their happiness or misery were a matter of indifference to us? Can we feel what is sometimes called the contagion of the passions when we find that our minds contract a kind of gloom in the company of the melancholy, and that this melancholy vanishes in company which is innocently cheerful, and question the influence of social connections? Much less can the reality or the power of the social principle be doubted when a fellow-creature in distress calls forth the most exquisite feelings of compassion, attended with instant efforts towards his relief. Doth not the sense of honour in the human breast derive all its force from the influence which social connections have over us? Of what use could it be but to beings formed for society? Lastly, of what doth devotion itself consist but the exercise of the social affections? What are the dispositions of our minds which are called forth into action in private or public prayer, but reverence for true greatness, humility, gratitude, love, and confidence in God, as the greatest and best of beings; qualities of the most admirable use and effect in social life.

II. Having given this general view of the social turn of our whole natures, whereby we are continually led out of ourselves in our pursuit of happiness, I shall now consider farther how all our appetites and passions, which are the springs of all our actions, do, in their own nature, tend to lead us out of ourselves, and how much our happiness depends upon our keeping their proper objects in view, and upon our minds being thereby constantly engaged upon something foreign to themselves, after which I shall show what are the fittest objects thus to engage our attention. Our benevolence, for instance, leads us immediately to relieve and oblige others. Pleasure, indeed, always attends generous actions, but the satisfaction we receive in our minds from having done kind offices to others is far less pure, and less perfectly enjoyed, if at all, when we had any private gratification in view before the action. In like manner, he who courts applause and does worthy actions solely to obtain it, can have no knowledge of the genuine pleasure arising either from the good action itself or the applause that is given to it, because he is sensible in his own mind that if those who praise his conduct were acquainted with the real motive of it they would be so far from admiring that they would despise him for it. It is chiefly an anxious solicitude about ourselves, and the appearance we shall make in the eyes of others, which is the cause of that affectation and constraint in behaviour which is so troublesome to a persons self, and so ridiculous in the eyes of others. This trifling remark, being so frequently verified, may serve to show that these sentiments are by no means merely speculative, but that they enter into the daily scenes of active life. Indeed they are in the highest sense practical, and upon them depend those maxims of conduct which contain the great secret of human happiness, and which are confirmed by every days experience. Why are persons whose situation in life obliges them to constant labour, either of body or mind, generally more happy than those whose circumstances do not lay them under a necessity to labour? Persons thus employed have not much leisure to attend to the idea of self, and that anxiety which always attends the frequent recurring of it, whereas a person who has no object foreign to himself, which necessarily engages his attention, cannot have his faculties fully exerted, and therefore his mind cannot possibly be in that state of vigorous sensation in which happiness consists.

III. We now come to see what considerations drawn from the Holy Scriptures will further confirm and illustrate this maxim of human conduct which was first suggested by them. Nothing is more frequent with the sacred writers than to exhort men to the practice of their duty as the command of God, from a principle of love to God, of love to Christ, and of love to mankind, more especially of our fellow Christians, and from a regard to the interest of our holy religion--motives which do not at all turn the attention of our minds upon themselves. This is not borrowing the aid of self-love to strengthen the principles of benevolence and piety, but it is properly deriving additional strength to these noble dispositions, as it were, from within themselves, independent of foreign considerations. (J. Priestley, L.L.D.)

Related life

I. no man liveth unto himself.

1. We gather about the grave of one who, while he lived, withdrew himself largely from contact with men, and from the activities of his generation; and we say of him, There was a man who lived entirely to himself. No, he did not! That reserve and isolation are as definite a power in the world as the marching of a regiment. When, on the sea, the wind suddenly becomes chill and the fog thickens, and the commander paces the deck with anxious face, you know that you are in the neighbourhood of an iceberg--though the iceberg has cabled you no message. And just so with those moral icebergs. The air grows chillier whenever they approach. The frost of their selfishness nips the kindly buds of other lives and makes them as fruitless as their own.

2. And if this is so, how clearly we see the force of the text when we look at some character of an opposite type! Here is a man with fine sympathies and endowments whose life seems to be engrossed in his business or his studies. What an influence he could wield, we think, if he could set out of that narrow round which holds him to such petty cares! But every one of those cares touches some other life. His partners, clerks, workmen, children, and servants--all these are conscious that something warmer and ampler than the starved currents of their own being has flowed into their lives through him.

3. In a word, all life in man is consistent--the highest form of it with the lowest--the life of the soul with the life of the nerves. There are two sets of nerves, those of motion and those of sensation, running side by side like a railway with a double track. One set of nerves or tracks brings us the incoming trains--the tidings and influences from without; the other set dispatches the influences from within. To have both these sets of nerves constantly doing their duty--to have my eye and ear and the nerves which are connected with them correctly reporting to me the beauty and the melody that are outside, and then to have lips and every organ of expression accurately transmitting to others the thought and purpose that are within--this is life. But suppose that while my nervous system is receiving impressions it has become incapable of expression. It would be paralysis, and paralysis is simply an incipient form of death. Life is virtually impossible without expression, and that expression for ever betrays the man that is behind it. There are many who are trying to live to themselves in the sense that they are trying to keep the quality of their lives a secret. Let me exhort them to desist from such an impossible undertaking. The world will be quick to find out what brings the throb into your pulse and the light into your eye. And therefore your life will be worthier and happier if you frankly recognise that it is the law of your being to betray itself.

II. no man dieth to himself.

1. Does this mean that when a man comes to his death-bed, his end must needs reveal himself, and so strongly influence others? Hardly; for there is a physical terror of death which is the characteristic of certain timid and sensitive natures, and the more devout the character, the keener often is its dismay. And on the other hand, there are persons with such force of will, that the acted career they have been playing all along, they play with equal composure to the very end.

2. The significance of death is to be found in the temper and purpose with which it is contemplated and approached. Do we understand that the process of life is double, and that every step forward is a progress in decay and an experience of death? The worn-out weariness of the octogenarian utters itself, incipiently, in the tired slumber of the child. Man is acting, from the beginning, with a certainty in view. And how is he acting? Knowing that he will die, is he using his life as if it were a vestibule or a terminus? Conscious that a part of himself will drop away into the grave and a part endure beyond it, is he living for what will perish, or rather for what will last? For what is it that happens at death?

(1) We have been too busy to recognise clearly the character and quality of a man who lived, it may be, right alongside of us. But suddenly he falls, and then all the past somehow pieces itself together and becomes an intelligible whole; and behind the mannerisms, or whatever it was that sometimes offended us, we see the shining track of a noble Christian life. And, looking back over such a pathway, we realise how no man dieth to himself; we see how death groups together and garners up the whole drift of the mans career, and we thank God for one more good example.

(2) To such a portraiture there must needs be an opposite. Did you ever think to yourself with a shudder that you were glad some one was dead? Here is a life that; has touched nothing that it has not debased. But the misery of the death of a bad man is that it has so enormous a propagating power. Their burial galvanises into new life all the memories of their dreary past. (Bp. H. C. Potter.)

Living

to self:--The first question which arises as we meet these words is as to their scope and sweep. Must we not begin by putting them under limitations? Is it true? Are there not multitudes of persons who are living to themselves? We ought not to limit any truth until we find it impossible to do otherwise. Truth as it comes from the lips of a man specially endowed to speak it is always likely to be greater than our comprehension of it. First of all, we know, as a matter of fact, that no man is simply an individual. An individual life would have to start as it was said of the life of Melchisedek, without father and without mother. We all of us are related. Whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, the fact remains. We need not concern ourselves, however, about remote ancestries. Those immediately back of us have influenced us more or less. We see family likenesses extending not alone to facial expression, but family likenesses extending to character. If you find a proud and obstinate mother you are pretty sure in a family to find also a proud and obstinate son; if you find a weak and indolent father you will not be surprised if somewhere in the family you find a still weaker and more indolent daughter. Our relationships count for something. They are not mere matters of arrangement; or of convenience. Soul, as well as body, descends. And yet every man has something which individualises him. There is a spark as it were of spiritual life in every one of us, as there is a spark of electricity in every drop of water and in every grain of sand. Electricity in matter seems in a certain way, and remotely, to represent spirituality in mind. Very well, then, take only these two facts--the fact of relationship to others making our life a continuation of their life, and the fact of each of us having a distinct personality--and how mysterious it is! And yet nobody can deny the facts. Now this relation to others from whom we cannot free ourselves shows that the good in us and the evil in us are not entirely our own, and that no man can be judged simply as an individual. It is not our own till we adopt it as our own. Related all round as we are, then, does it not become clearer and clearer that the apostle simply indicates a universal law of life when he says, For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself? It is manifestly impossible that any man should live to himself in unrelated and uninfluential independence of others. Every man is related all round. Is it not clear that no good man lives to himself? The very idea of goodness implies unselfishness, kindness, sympathy. When a man intelligently and voluntarily co-operates with God, lives unto the Lord, as St. Paul phrases it, then we all agree that he is not living to himself. And yet if we look into the matter sufficiently close we shall find that there is a sense in which a man is never so much living to himself or for his own interests as when he is voluntarily living to God. The laws of the universe are such that benevolence ultimately hangs up by the neck the man whose penuriousness has blinded his eyes to the fact that he has been occupying himself all his life, like Haman of old, in gallows-building. For living to himself, mark you, is an impossible task. In some degree or other every man is multiplying himself, his character does not remain at home, but it travels abroad. Is there not great comfort in the fact that no man can be good without doing good? We used to be taught in the days gone by that we must not think of ourselves, but we must be good and unselfish. Did we not feel at the time that there was something impossible and unnatural in that advice? Self is here with us, we cannot rid ourselves of it. The consciousness of self I cannot escape. (Rouen Thomas, D.D.)

None of us liveth to himself

I. Senses in which this is true.

1. That of personal influence over our fellows.

(1) Many a godless man is encouraging himself in the way to perdition by some foolish or sinful word or deed of a professing Christian; and also many in whom all that is good dates from some solemn word said by a believer who never knew what that word was to do. And the humblest exercises this influence just as truly as the mightiest. The little child that died before it ever spoke an articulate sentence may have done more than the wisest and greatest to permanently affect the whole character and life of its parents. There is a sense in which the most selfish man cannot live and die to himself. He will influence by the tone and atmosphere of his life. Every professing Christian is an epistle known and read of all men. By his entire life he is saying, One thing is needful: seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; or else, All these things are very well to talk of, but give me the main chance.

(2) And as we cannot live, neither can we die to ourselves. Our death is the testing-time of all our life, the thing that fixes the character of it all. And what different influences come from different deaths! Think of the hardening effect of a death of which you say, Ah, hes gone; no great loss to anybody but himself; and then think of the effect of a death about which you say, Well, religion must be a real and wonderful thing to have kept a man up in suffering as it did there! And very naturally Balaams wish will follow.

2. That of mutual dependence. The work of many of you is rather for your children than for yourselves: and even the young should know that their parents happiness is dependent on their turning out well. Effects, reaching to millions of people, come of causes in human beings thousands of miles away, and never seen nor known. A fancy, in a savage race, for some article of British manufacture, will increase the comforts of many homes in a great manufacturing town. Or a people arise in war for slavery; and the consequence is felt in trade and religion all over the world. We are gradually finding out that the welfare of one race or nation is the welfare of all. We are learning to cast away the infidel question, Am I my brothers keeper? and are learning instead those wise words of a heathen, I am a human being, and I feel that I have something to do with everything human! which are an echo of St. Pauls. Yes, my friend, there are some who could not do well for a while yet without you. There are those whom almost every human being would miss if he were taken away. Very few lives could be quenched without loss and grief to some one.

II. The sense in which Paul meant it.

1. The text is a step in an argument. Paul has been arguing for toleration, and showing that though men may differ on points short of the great essential doctrines of salvation, they may yet be conscientious and devoted Christians. So we are to recognise as Christians all whom God would recognise. Everything the true Christian does, the apostle says he does as for his God and Saviour. For none of us liveth unto himself, etc. And thus the great truth taught is that the Christian does not live to himself in the sense of thinking mainly of self. His will is subordinated to Gods; his great end is not to get on in life, but rather to glorify God and enjoy Him for ever. Now, in this sense of the phrase, many do live entirely to themselves and not at all to God. There are people who could not seriously say that, from Monday morning to Saturday night, they bestow any real thought on anything beyond the horizon of this world.

2. Here, then, we have a test by which to try the reality of our Christian profession and character. Would it be a safe thing for any one to say to this congregation, We differ one from another in a great many respects; but there is one thing in which we are all agreed, None of us liveth to himself, and none of us will die to himself! We are all living and will die to God. But this great test is one that is thoroughly accepted by people who are not Christians, who hold very cheap the fair words of the man in whom all is tainted with the plague-spot of selfishness. The great secret of usefulness is the ceasing to live to yourself! They glorified God in me, said St. Paul of those who heard of his conversion; and God shall be glorified in each of us, whether in life or in death, if we be truly devoted to Him. (A. K. H. Boyd, D.D.)

Religious selfishness

Do we all live up to the spirit of the text in our--

I. Prayers? The Lord s Prayer is all in the plural number. Our Saviours prayers were and are essentially intercessory. So were Daniels, Pauls, Jeremiahs, Abrahams. In fact, all the great prayers of the Bible are intercessory. But is it not with most of us, my wants, my sorrows, my difficulties, my soul? Is not the thought of others a very small part when you are upon your knees, and thanksgiving for others the smallest of all? May not this be a reason for the very few answers you have had? God turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends. Inscribe it in your oratory as the life of your prayers--None of us liveth to himself.

II. Religious life. The religion of most men consists of little more than going to church, reading religious books, and now and then talking to some religious person. Whereas every Christian is to be a leavening element, placed in this world to germinate and extend truth. Every feeling which God gives a man is the property of the Church and of the world.

III. Conversation. The right rule for this is, that there should be a reciprocity, and that each person should try, according to the character of the persons to whom he is talking, to get good, or to do good, but the tendency is to think far more of the good we may get than of that we may give.

IV. Religious views. Most of us live in a very narrow system of ideas. God forbid that we should be so liberal as to profess to find truth everywhere and leave it nowhere. But so the more essential truths are held, and the Lord Jesus is magnified, we ought not to break up the great continent of truth into so many little islands, on which each puny man takes his stand, and says, This is the Church.

V. Church work. Can it be a right state when, out of such a congregation as this, there is such a little band to be found of those who give themselves to any expressed work of usefulness? How many are living in their little daily circle, attending to their own health, or their own business, or their own souls! But will the kingdom of God ever be spread in this way? (J. Vaughan, M.A.)

Religious selfishness

The Emperor Constantine said to one who was dissatisfied with every church he had attended, Some are so supremely selfish that they would construct a special heaven for themselves and their friends. (S. Milner.)

Selfish and unselfish workers

Of all things beware of that most mortal selfishness, that greedy selfishness, which makes a man unwilling to labour, for fear that somebody else will get the benefit of his labour instead of himself. Remember Him who for ever and for ever labours for something or somebody beside Himself. What can the sparrow give to God? And yet God every morning thinks of the sparrow. What can ten myriad, myriad worms on the earth give back to God? And yet God never forgets the worm. What return can the great tribe of insects make to God for His watchful care? Piping on their tiny instruments they can raise no song of praise worthy of His hearing. All living creatures on the broad universe receive Gods benefaction; and it is His joy to work for their benefit. (H. W. Beecher.)

Self or Christ; which is it

?--

I. The setting aside of self. Not annihilating it, but giving it its proper place. Selfishness is the master-sin, the master-curse of man. The selfish man is not like one looking round on a noble landscape, and forgetting himself in the beauty of the wide expanse, but like one carrying a mirror with him, so that every object is seen in connection with self, and is only admired as it helps to set off self. The apostle reverses all this. From the Christians life, death, and all between, self has been displaced. The first setting aside of self is in the matter of justification before God; for, previously, mans object was to amend, improve, or mortify self, in order that he might recommend himself to God. The Holy Spirit, however, shows that self can contribute nothing towards mans acceptance with God. What is conviction of sin but just the setting aside of self? From that point it proceeds onwards throughout a mans whole life. Others may live and die to themselves, but not we who have been bought with a price. How this--

1. Elevates life! That which degrades life is the introduction of self, but now life is lifted up into its true glory--the position which God originally designed for man.

2. Takes away lifes littlenesses.

3. Establishes and strengthens life.

4. Secures us against all failure and disappointment.

II. The substitute for self.

1. In the matter of our standing before God. As the first thing the Holy Spirit does is to set aside self, in the matter of justification and acceptance, so His next is to present to us the Son of God as the true ground of our acceptance. Having taken Him in the place of self, we find ourselves at once accepted in the Beloved.

2. As the object for whom we live. In Him we find an object worth living for.

(1) What solemnity is thus thrown over life! All its parts and movements are now consecrated to the Lord.

(2) What dignity this imparts, both to life and death!

(3) What importance now attaches to life! All triviality has passed out of it.

(4) What an imperishable character is thus imparted to life! It was self formerly that ruined everything. He is come in, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, and He imparts His immortality to us.

(5) What an incentive to zeal this gives us!

(6) What a reason for consistency and holiness of life! Everything we do tells, not merely upon our comfort, earthly prospects, good name, but upon the glory of Christ.

III. The manner in which this substitution is effected (verse 9). Christs claim over us as Jehovah is eternal, and nothing can be added to it. But His claim over us as the Christ is a superadded claim. This claim He has made good by His death and resurrection. Nor can any one dispute it or present a rival one, for no other has done what He did.

1. The least, then, that we can give Him is our life; the undivided service of our being, in every part.

2. Our death is to be His. In dying He thought on us; so in dying let us think on Him. Our death is to be for His glory.

3. Our eternity is to be His. He ever liveth for us; let us anticipate the ever living for Him. (H. Bonar, D.D.)

The action of presence

1. One of the most remarkable phenomena in chemistry is that which is known as catalysis, or the action of presence--so called because the mere presence of a certain substance among the atoms of another substance produces the most extensive changes upon these atoms; and yet the body thus operating is itself unchanged. Thus, e.g., starch is converted into sugar and gum, at a certain temperature, by the presence of an acid which does not participate in the change. A current of hydrogen gas directed upon a piece of polished platinum will take fire, and yet the platinum will remain completely unaltered. Very many of the most important actions of growth and decay, of life and death throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms, are produced by this catalytic power. We find illustrations also in the attractions of cohesion and gravitation, in the resemblance of many animals to the soil on which they live, or the objects by which they are surrounded, and in the regional resemblance subsisting between all the plants and animals belonging to one continent and its dependencies. Ascending higher, we find the influence of this principle in the characteristic features of mental, moral, and physical likeness which the inhabitants of a particular district acquire; and in the resemblance so often noticed between the countenances of husband and wife who have lived long together.

2. But it is in the social world that we see the most striking examples. Human beings are unceasingly exerting unconscious influence upon one another, and producing results of the most vital and lasting importance. The very presence of some is like sunshine, while the society of others acts like a dark cloud. We feel at once at our ease in the presence of some people, and awkward and reserved in the presence of others. On a large scale we see the effects of the same law in the conventionalities of life, in fashions, in the enthusiasm of a crowd, in the panics of trade, and in moral epidemics.

3. The hem of Christs garment was instinct with healing power; and the very shadow of the apostles shed silent virtue on the sick laid by the wayside. And so in a manner is it with Christians still. But this nameless influence is different in different cases. The natural man often shines through the new man, and produces an alien impression. One is morose and bigoted; his very presence acts like an acid. Another is Pharisaically strict, and makes sad the heart that God has not made sad. A third is morbid, oppressed with little fidgety difficulties and trials. All these Christians are, insensibly to themselves, producing an effect upon others quite contrary to what they wish: they are giving a wrong idea of their religion to the world. On the other hand, there are Christians who produce in others a sense of their close relation to God, and breathe around them an atmosphere as healthy and exhilarating as the air on a mountain-top. They give an adequate representation of what Christianity is and does. Note respecting this spiritual catalysis--

I. Its truthfulness. We say of children that they instinctively know those who love them, and go to such at once; while no kind words or sweet looks will allure them to the side of those who are not lovers of the little ones at heart. What is this but just the impression which a true character is making upon a heart gifted, by virtue of its simplicity, with an insight unknown to the wise and prudent? So also every one has noticed the fondness of animals for certain persons, and their aversion to others. Every Christian is producing two sets of influences. One is the involuntary influence of his real character; the other is the influence of what he says and does for a special purpose. Now these two currents may be opposed to one another. The character may be saying one thing, the lips and conduct another. But in vain does a man profess to be what he is not. The mask worn for a purpose continually slips aside, and reveals the natural face behind. There is a species of animalcule called Rotifera, living in tufts of mosses, which, when placed under the microscope, is found to be transparent as crystal. You see all its internal organs and the processes of life as you see the works of a watch through the glass. We are like this creature. I may not be able to tell why I think a certain person is not a genuine character, but I have an instinctive feeling that he is not what he pretends to be.

II. Its constancy. Not more constantly is the sun shining, or a flower exhaling its fragrance, than the Christian is radiating or exhaling influence from his character upon those around him. What a man voluntarily chooses, says, or does, is only occasional. But what he is--that is necessarily perpetual. I cannot always speak a word for Christ, but I can always live for Him. The voluntary language of what I say or do is spasmodic, and liable to continual interruption; but the language of what I really am is as continuous as my life itself. Just as the leaven, by its mere presence, changes the particles of meal in the midst of which it is hid, so does each human being, by his mere presence, affect for good or evil those with whom he associates.

III. Its responsibility. This we do not always acknowledge. We are responsible, we say, for the influence that we desire to produce upon others; but for the voluntary effect of our life, we think we are no more responsible than we are for the involuntary beating of our hearts. We cannot, however, thus repudiate our responsibility. For what is our character? The sum of our thoughts, feelings, and actions. This character we ourselves have formed, and while we cannot help the silent influence of our character, when formed, we are responsible for the formation of it. Our very accountability to God rests upon our ability to build up a good character; and if we are judged according to the goodness and evil of our character itself, we may certainly be held responsible for the good or evil influence which, unknown to us, it produces upon others. We cannot live in the world and escape this responsibility, because we cannot live in the world and not exert a moral influence upon others. The radiation of heat from one object to another, the equalisation of temperature, is not more certain in the physical world than the distribution of influence in the moral. (H. Macmillan, D.D.)

Influence

I. The power of human influence.

1. Nothing in the universe is self-contained. There is an intimate connection and mutual dependence existing between all things and beings. This is true in--

(1) The angelic world (Heb_1:1-14.).

(2) In the world of nature. Not a single atom of matter, ray of light, etc., stands alone. The fall of a bullet (so says Mr. Grove) changes the dynamical condition of the universe. Bacon affirms that All things that have affinity with the heavens move upon the centre of another which they benefit.

(3) The human world. The interdependence of one another is an absolute fact. Isaac Taylor has well said, On principles even of mathematical calculations each individual of the human family may be demonstrated to hold in his hand the centre lines of an interminable web-work on which are sustained the fortunes of multitudes of his successors.

2. Influence binds us to one another and the world. It is twofold.

(1) Direct and palpable. Such is seen in the active employment of that moral power which we all possess, e.g., in teaching, etc.

(2) Indirect and imperceptible. This is the most constant, uniform, and powerful. We all come beneath this law. Each soul born into this world increases or diminishes the sum total of human happiness or woe. Every deed, word, thought, and emotion must sometimes be known and influential. What an awful solemnity does this give the present life; how closely does it link the future with the present! Yonder is but an outgrowth of this here and now.

II. Human influences should be consecrated to Gods service.

1. God claims this power as peculiarly belonging to Him. His empire is as extensive as space and eternity, He is sovereign Lord over life and death. Either with or against our wills, our influence must minister to His purposes.

2. The Christian who realises the principles of the text consciously and willingly consecrates this power, his life, his death to God. In every state of being we belong to Christ.

3. All claims to service rest either upon--

(1) Ownership.

(2) Authority, or--

(3) Engagement. Upon each and all of these grounds God claims our conscious consecration.

III. The advantages resulting from an unreserved consecration of influence to the Divine service.

1. The end of life in its holiest and highest form is answered. The springs of an action determine its value, selfishness is adverse to usefulness. A disinterested Christian life alleviates much moral and physical misery.

2. Is the fountain of the purest and most permanent happiness.

3. Gilds the close of life with unspeakable light and peace. (J. Foster, B.A.)

Influence, a childs

In a cemetery a little white stone marked the grave of a dear little girl, and on the stone were chiselled these words--A child of whom her playmates said, It was easier to be good when she was with us--one of the most beautiful epitaphs ever heard of.

Influence, a childs

A gentleman was once lecturing in the neighbourhood of London. In the course of his address he said, All have influence. There was a rough man at the other end of the room with a little girl in his arms. Everybody has influence, even that little child, said the lecturer, pointing to her. Thats true, sir. cried the man. Everybody looked round, of course; but the man said no more, and the lecturer proceeded. At the close the man came up to the gentleman and said, I beg your pardon, sir, but I could not help speaking. I was a drunkard; but as I did not like to go to the public-house alone, I used to carry this child. As I came near the public-house one night, hearing a great noise inside, she said, Dont go, father. Hold your tongue, child. Please, father, dont go. Hold your tongue, I say. Presently I felt a big tear on my cheek. I could not go a step farther, sir. I turned round and went home, and have never been in a public-house since--thank God for it. I am now a happy man, sir, and this little girl has done it all; and when you said that even she had influence I could not help saying, Thats true, sir; all have influence. (Freeman.)

Influence, inevitable

That which a man is, that sum total made up of the items of his beliefs, purposes, affections, tastes, and habits, manifested in all he does and does not, is contagious in its tendency, and is ever photographing itself on other spirits. He himself may be as unconscious of this emanation of good or evil from his character, as he is of the contagion of disease from his body, or, if that were equally possible, of the contagion of good health; but the fact, nevertheless, is certain. If the light is in him, it must shine; if darkness reigns, it must shade; if he glows with love, it will radiate its warmth; if he is frozen with selfishness, the cold will chill the atmosphere around him; and if corrupt and vile, he will poison it. Nor is it possible for any one to occupy a neutral or indifferent position. In some form or other he must affect others. Were he to banish himself to a distant island, or even enter the gates of death, he still exercises a positive influence, for he is a loss to his brother--the loss of that most blessed gift of God, even that of a living man to living men, of a being who ought to have loved and to have been beloved. (N. Macleod, D.D.)

Living for others

I live not wholly for myself, said a beautiful flower one fair morning, as it lifted to the sun its crest sparkling with dewdrops. I live not wholly for myself. Mortals come and gaze on me, and breathe my fragrance, and go away better than they came; for I minister to their perceptions of the beautiful. I give to the bee his honey, and to the insect his food; I help to clothe the earth in beauty. I live not wholly for myself, said a wide-spreading tree. I give a happy home to a hundred living beings; I grant support to the living tendrils of the vine; I absorb the noxious vapours in the air; I spread a welcome shadow for man and beast; and I, too, help to make earth beautiful I live not wholly for myself, said a laughing mountain streamlet. I know that my tribute to the ocean is small, but still I am hastening to carry it there. And I try to do all the good I can on my way. The tree and the flower love my banks, for I give them life and nourishment; and even the grass which feels my influence has a greener hue. The minnows find life and happiness in my waters, though I glide onward only a silver thread; and men and animals seek my brink to assuage their thirst, and enjoy the shadow of the trees which I nourish. I live not wholly for myself. I live not wholly for myself, said a bright-hued bird, as he soared upwards into the air. My songs are a blessing to man. I have seen the poor man sad and despondent as he went home from his daily work, for he knew not how to obtain food for his little ones. Then I tuned one of my sweetest lays for his ear, and he looked upward, saying: Behold the fowls of the air; for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet my heavenly Father feedeth them. Am not I better than they? and the look of gloom changed to one of cheerfulness and hope. I live not wholly for myself. I live not wholly for myself, should be the language of every thinking, reflecting mind. It is the language of duty, guiding to the only paths of happiness on earth, and preparing the soul for unalloyed bliss throughout the measureless enduring of eternity. (Great Thoughts.)

Every man has a good or evil influence

The fact that no man can evade the responsibility of living either for good or for evil in this world, is strikingly set forth by Dr. Chalmers in the following weighty paragraph:--Every man is a missionary now and for ever, for good or for evil, whether he intends it or designs it or not. He may be a blot, radiating his dark influence to the very circumference of society; or he may be a blessing, spreading benediction over the length and breadth of the world; but a blank he cannot be. There are no moral blanks; there are no neutral characters. We are either the sower that sows and corrupts, or the light that splendidly illuminates, and the salt that silently operates; but being dead or alive, every man speaks.

The power of influence

Look at those concentric rings growing wider and wider, rolling their fair ripples among the reedy sedge, tipping the overhanging boughs of yonder willow, stirring the nest of the startled water-hen, producing an influence, slight but conscious, to the farthest margin of the lake itself. That idle word--that word of heat or scorn--flung from my lips in casual company. Oh, you say, it produced a momentary impression upon the mind of those who listened to it, and that is all. No; it is not.:Believe me it is not. It deepened that mans disgust at godliness; and it sharpened the edge of that other mans sarcasm; and it shamed that half-convinced one out of his penitent misgivings; and it exerted an influence, slight but determining, upon the destinies of that immortal life. Oh, this is a terrible power that I have--this power of influence. And I cannot get rid of it. It clings to me like the shirt of Nessus upon Hercules. It looks through my eye: it speaks from my lips; it walks abroad with me. I cannot live to myself. I must either be a light to illuminate or a tempest to destroy. (W. M. Punshon.)

Influence, permanent

The pulsations of the atmosphere, once set in motion by the human voice, cease not to exist with the sounds to which they gave rise. Strong and audible as they may be in the immediate neighbourhood of the speaker, and at the immediate moment of utterance, their attenuated force soon becomes inaudible to human ears. The waves of the air thus raised perambulate the earth and oceans surface; and, in less than twenty hours, every atom of its atmosphere takes up the altered movement due to that infinitely small portion of the primitive motion which has been conveyed to it through countless channels, and which must continue to influence its path throughout its future existence. Thus considered, what a strange chaos is this wide atmosphere we breathe! Every atom, impressed with good and with ill, retains at once the motion which sages and philosophers have imparted to it, mixed and combined in ten thousand ways with all that is worthless and base. The air is one vast library, on whose pages are for ever written all that man has ever said, or woman whispered. There, in their mutable but unerring characters, mixed with the earliest as well as with the latest sighs of mortality, stand for ever recorded vows unredeemed, promises unfulfilled, perpetuating in the united movements of each particle the testimony of mans changeful will. (Babbage.)

Influence, perpetuity of

It is a high, solemn, almost awful thought for every individual man, that his earthly influence, which has had a beginning, will never, through all ages, were he the very meanest of us, have an end! What is done is done; has already blended itself with the boundless, everliving, ever-working universe, and will also work there, for good or for evil, openly or secretly, throughout all time.

Influence, personal

The greatest works that have been done have been done by the ones. The hundreds do not often do much, the companies never do: it is the units, just the single individuals, that, after all, are the power and the might. Take any church,--there are multitudes in it; but it is some two or three that do the work. Look on the Reformation!--there might be many reformers, but there was but one Luther: there might be many teachers, but there was but one Calvin. Look ye upon the preachers of the last age, the mighty preachers who stirred up the churches--there were many coadjutors with them; but, after all, it was not Whitefields friends, nor Wesleys friends, but the men themselves, that did it. Individual effort is, after all, the grand thing. A man alone can do more than a man with fifty men at his heels to fetter him. Look back through all history. Who delivered Israel from the Philistines?--it was solitary Samson. Who was it gathered the people together to rout the Midianites?--it was one Gideon, who cried, The sword of the Lord and of Gideon! Who was he that smote the enemy?--it was Shamgar, with his ex-goad; or it was an Ehud, who, with his dagger, put an end to his countrys tyrant. Separate men-Davids with their slings and stones--have done more than armies could accomplish. (C. H. Spurgeon)

Influence, posthumous

Da Vincis famous painting of The Lords Supper, originally adorning the dining.room of a convent, has suffered such destruction from the ravages of time, war, and abuse, that none of its original beauty remains. Yet it has been copied and engraved; and impressions of the great picture have been multiplied through all civilised lands. Behold a parable of posthumous influence.

Influence, small, its value

I have no more influence than a farthing rushlight, said a workman; to whom his friend gave reply, Well, a rushlight does much. It may burn a haystack or a house--nay, it helps me to read Gods Word. Go your way, and let your rushlight so shine before men that they may glorify your Father in heaven.

Influence, unconscious

It is related that when Thorwaldsen returned to his native land with those wonderful marbles which have made his name immortal, chiselled with patient toil and glowing aspiration during his studies in Italy, the servants who opened them scattered upon the ground the straw in which they were packed. The next summer, flowers from the gardens of Rome were blossoming in the streets of Copenhagen from the seeds thus accidentally planted. The genius that wrought grandly in marble had unconsciously planted beauty by the wayside.

Influence, unconscious, its power

Many years ago an intelligent youth was apprenticed in the town of Peele. He had been piously trained by his good parents, but unhappily, having left home, he yielded to temptation, neglected the reading of his Bible, disregarded the Sabbath, and gave up prayer. John was gradually declining from bad to worse, when one night a new apprentice arrived. On being pointed to his little bed, the youth put down his luggage, and then, in a very silent but solemn manner, knelt down to pray. John, who was busily preparing for rest, saw this. He did not raise a laugh, as many youths would have done; conscience troubled him. Gods Holy Spirit strove with him: it was the turning-point in his life. He again began to pray, sought the Saviour, and was enabled at length to rejoice as one of Gods forgiven children. A few years afterwards he began to preach to others. He ultimately devoted himself altogether to the ministry, and became one of the most laborious, successful, and honoured of Gods servants. His writings are to be found in many languages, and in almost every part of the world, and his name will probably be had in grateful remembrance as long as time shall last. A few years ago a funeral--such a funeral as is seldom seen--took place in one of our great manufacturing towns. Clergymen, ministers, civic authorities, merchants, and thousands of men of all classes were paying honour to the departed. Shops were closed, and the whole town seemed wrapt in mourning, as though some great prince had fallen. And who was the departed? None other than John Angell James, of Birmingham, the author of The Anxious Inquirer, once the boy whose turning-point in life was brought about by the unflinching and devout example of his fellow-apprentice.

The object of life

To whom, for whom do we live? This is a question of the utmost importance to everybody, even when we look at it singly; but this importance acquires an awful character when we cast our thoughts forward from this question to the next. To whom, for whom shall we die? And each person will have to make his own answer.

I. Most men live to themselves. Some hunt after riches, others after pleasure, others after ease and comfort, others after power, others after honour and a good name, a few after knowledge; but all for themselves. However the tunes may change, the same keynote runs through them all--self, self, self. Where do we hear of any, labouring for the sake of gaining riches, pleasure, etc., for others? A few, indeed, here and there, are not unwilling to spend the odds and ends of their time for the good of others, who will eat the dinner themselves, and then call in their neighbours to pick up the crumbs under the table. Thus far the natural man may mount. But so long as our natural heart continues unchanged, so long will self be the idol which that heart worships, and the taint of selfishness cleave even to our least blamable actions.

II. How strange that men should live to themselves! For we cannot fail to see that by our very nature we were made, not to live to ourselves, but to each other.

1. We are brought into the world by others. We cannot grow up without others; nor learn to walk, to speak, to do anything without others. All that we learn by reading we learn from others, most of whom have been long lying in their graves. The tea you drink comes from China; the cotton for your clothes from India or America.

2. It is impossible for any person to live wholly for himself; at least unless he shuts himself up in a cell or a wilderness. But this is an act so contrary to our nature, that no one would frame such a design, unless with a purpose of living, not for himself, but for God. In their ordinary condition men have numberless wants, which bind them together, and make them dependent on each other. The help, which, during the period of our entire helplessness, was given through the stirrings of natural affection, we cannot obtain, when we are grown up, except by helping others in turn. The richest man cannot live without the ministries of his poorer brethren: nor can he gain their help, except by making them in some measure sharers in his riches. The reason why, as society advances, men are set apart for different trades, is, because they will help each other far more than each man could ever help himself by following every trade at once.

III. Men should not live to themselves, but to God. The text is more especially meant as a warning against one particular branch of selfishness--self-will. It tells us that we are not to live according to our own will, but according to a higher will than our own.

1. This too is a lesson, which the whole order of our nature and condition in the world and the constitution of society are meant to teach us. It is plainly one of the reasons why we are born so helpless, and continue so long in childhood, in order that we may learn to obey, so that our stubborn will may be mortified and crushed. Again in after life, whatever we do, if we are to do it successfully, we must do patiently, obediently, conforming our will to nature, watching the course of the seasons, and ploughing and sowing accordingly, ministering to nature, to the end that nature may minister to us. Moreover, when men unite into societies, they are constrained to sacrifice, each his own will, to the will of the society, which is set up on high as law, and claims obedience from all.

2. Yet all these forces, mighty as they would seem to be, are totally unable to subdue our self-will. In spite of all the lessons of experience, we cling to the persuasion that happiness consists in having our own way, although no man ever had his own way without falling sooner or later into the bottomless pit.

3. Nor is there any power mighty enough to deliver us from the bonds of selfishness, except the free Spirit of Christ. We must learn to live to God, to do all things for His glory, and with an eye to His will, and we shall then learn to live for others. The Christian must endeavour to fashion himself after the perfect pattern set before him by his Lord. For Jesus lived not to Himself, but to God, not seeking His own happiness, but the happiness of all mankind. This was the very purpose for which He left His throne and died upon the Cross. (Archdeacon Hare.)

The end of life

I. It is Gods design that we should not confine our regards to ourselves, but extend them to our fellow-men. Various considerations may be presented in support of this proposition.

1. The duty relating to man enjoined in the moral law is, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

2. This testimony of Scripture is confirmed by the gregarious tendencies of man. The instinct implanted in our nature by the Author of our being, which leads men to cling together and to form themselves into communities for mutual assistance and protection, affords no small proof of the Creators design that they should be fellow-helpers of each other.

3. Additional confirmation of this truth may be found in our social relations.

(1) Men cannot marry within certain limits of consanguinity without their offspring becoming degenerate. Thus God has placed the ban of His displeasure upon the exclusiveness of caste.

(2) Rich and poor have to combine for the accomplishment of given ends. Without the combination of the ones capital with the others labour, various results now obtained would not be realised. Capital can purchase the raw material; but how, without labour, can it be transported and manufactured? Labour, again, can build the house; but capital is necessary to procure the material and the site.

(3) The division of labour and union of workmen teaches me the same truth. I cannot look on a building or a vessel without being reminded that such works could not have been produced by any number of individuals working in a state of isolation. To how many beside the agriculturist are we indebted for our food! To how many beside the draper for our clothing! It may be said, almost, that every man is indebted to every man, and that every man is to some extent the servant of the humblest man that lives. And it is with nations as with individuals. The superabundant produce of one may, for the profit of both, be exchanged with the manufacture of another, whose produce is insufficient to support its teeming population.

II. It is Gods design that we should not live to ourselves, but for the promotion of His glory.

1. The same law which requires us to love our neighbour as ourselves, also requires us to love God supremely.

2. The nature of man echoes this verdict of inspiration. When I look at heathen nations, I find them everywhere in their own way acknowledging their obligations to a God. There is a law written on every mans heart to the effect that as we are indebted to God for the origin and maintenance of our existence, we owe Him our supreme regard and constant service.

3. Our conviction is strengthened when we survey the external world. (W. Landels.)

Living and dying to the Lord

This is an instance of Pauls way of rising from a particular question to a general principle. A doubtful disputation springs up, on a small and narrow point of casuistry, as to meats or days. Instead of its being discussed by subtle argumentation and a fine balance of small reasons for and against, the case is at once carried into a region of spiritual thought and duty, from whence there may be got both a nearer insight into heaven and a larger oversight of earth.

I. the fact stated.

1. Negatively. There is a sense in which we speak of a man living to himself, when he acts with a selfish eye to his own interests or pleasure. Is this the explanation here? It might be so, were it not for what follows; for no selfish man dies for his own profit. When dying or not dying to ones self is connected with living or not living to ones self, it is plain that states of being, not Seeds or actions, must be intended. There can be no reference to what is matter of voluntary choice, but rather to what is ordered and arranged for us.

(1) And in a sense the text is true of the unregenerate as well as of the regenerate.

(a) I enter the busy hall of commerce or the haunt of gaiety and dissipation, and not one in either place is living really to himself. The life you are living, whether in the pursuit of gold or pleasure, is not indeed to yourselves. You heap up riches, and know not who shall gather them. You live in wantonness, but you live in vain. A man cannot isolate himself in this great and goodly universe of being. He cannot become either a hermit or a god.

(b) And how awfully true is it of the ungodly that none of them dieth unto himself! Did any one of the company of Corah die to himself? Or take those who close a life of vanity with self-righteous decorum or mere slumbering insensibility, does any one of them die to himself for his own benefit, as if his death were for himself alone? How great, ye godless ones, is your madness! If you could live to yourselves, or die to yourselves, then indeed ye might have some apology for trifling as you now do with lifes precious gift and deaths awful doom.

(2) But it is of believers that the apostle speaks. For the believer both life and death are invested with new character and value: and it must be with reference to this character and value that it is here said of him that he does not live or die to himself. Your new life and death, then, believers, are not to yourselves.

(a) As if they belonged to you as being purchased or procured by you.

(b) As if for your own sakes and on your own account merely they were given to you.

(c) As gifts terminating in yourselves, They have respect to something out of and beyond yourselves.

2. Positively.

(1) The life you have got is not only from Him; it is also and emphatically to Him. You are not made spiritually alive merely for your own comfort and peace. It is for Himself that He has redeemed and renewed and quickened you (Eze_36:22; 1Ti_1:16).

(2) And so also as to death. Very different, indeed, is your death from that of unregenerate men. Even they die unto the Lord, who endures with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction. But to you death is no more penal; it has no more sting. It is a falling asleep; a departing to be with Christ. And, with all its blessedness, it is unto the Lord. Your hopeful death, like your holy life, you owe to Him. And your being enabled thus to die is unto Him. He is glorified in your dying.

3. These views may tend to soothe our spirits, in the contemplation of the lives and deaths of Gods people.

(1) They often have a troubled course in life. But the explanation is found in this, that none of them liveth to himself. God has other ends to serve by it besides the believers own peace, or even his salvation.

(2) And to their death may this same consideration reconcile us. These deaths may seem to be, many of them, premature. One consolation we have in the assurance that for themselves to be with Christ is far better; but the text suggests that their death is not for their own sakes merely, but to advance the Lords cause and promote the Lords ends.

II. The inference deduced. Whether we live or die, we are the Lords.

1. All men are the Lords, whether they will or no. It is true of unbelievers that living and dying you are the Lords. He has you in His grasp, and you cannot escape. Ah! were either of these two things otherwise, your case might not be so desperate as it is. If your life and death were unto yourselves; or if you, living and dying, were still your own, you might have some apology for your unconcern, and for living and dying as you please. But do but consider what it is to belong absolutely and helplessly to that very Lord who tells you that, live and die as you may, it is to Him and to His ends. Oh! surely it is hard for you to kick against the pricks! Consider who this Lord is. Is it not He who, at a great price, has purchased this lordship over you, this ownership of you? It is Jesus who died and rose again, to whom the Father has given power over all flesh.

2. But again, I turn to you who believe.

(1) It is your comfort to know that, whether you live or die, you are the Lords; and very specially to know this in connection with the assurance which goes before. What a guarantee, both for the safe preservation and for the right ordering of your life, as a life that you live not unto yourselves, but unto the Lord! And if thus living unto Him, you are so securely His, how, as regards your dying, may you cast all your care upon Him!

(2) The text is applicable for admonition as well as for comfort. It gives the death-blow to all selfishness, both as regards your judgment of others, and as regards your management of yourselves. For the fact that you live and die unto the Lord, makes you the Lords in respect of your obligation, whether you live or die, to feel and own yourselves to be His, and to seek not your own ends, but His. (R. S. Candlish.)

Christian devotedness

I. No man liveth to himself. This is essentially characteristic of the true Christian; for a man who lives to himself, by the sentence of the text, is not a Christian. The Christian--

1. Regards the great end of his being. Human existence must have an object. God acts not in anything without design. What am I? and, Why am I? are questions we ought frequently to ask; and he who acts according to the answer which the Scripture gives, will live not to himself, but to the Lord.

2. Habitually respects the approbation of God.

(1) Through faith in the atoning sacrifice of Christ. For no man can be acceptable to God but through that.

(2) Through the active employment of that moral power which faith in Christ gives to maintain that character, and to do those works which God approves.

3. Feels an interest in the cause of Christ. To live unto ourselves is quite incompatible with this. We must renounce either the one or the other. If any man will be My disciple, let him deny himself.

4. Is concerned for the temporal miseries of his suffering fellow-men. He who lives to the Lord will follow His example in going about doing good. Nor is this work of charity obstructed by the most earnest concern for the salvation of men.

II. No Christian man dieth to himself. This is his reward for not living to himself. God takes his cause into His own hands, and binds up his death with His own plans.

1. It may be in judgment to others. So many prayers are lost to the world; an influence is withdrawn; a light is quenched; one fewer is left to stand between the living and the dead. It may be in judgment to families who have refused admonition, and to unfaithful churches, and to nations. Properly, indeed, do we often pray that God would spare useful lives.

2. It may be hastened in mercy to him. The righteous are often taken away from the evil to come.

3. It is deferred, in many eases, in mercy to others. He is sometimes to endure the evil to come, and his private feelings are to give place to the public good. Thus Jeremiah was doomed to weep over the destruction of his people. St. Paul desired to depart; yet it was needful for him to continue.

4. In all cases God is glorified by his death. Perhaps in extreme suffering we may show a power of patience, a great triumph, an abundant entrance into the kingdom of our Lord. Perhaps our death may be a calm dying into life; a summer wave gently rippling to the shore. It is enough. Let us live to Him, and in our death we shall glorify God.

III. He is therefore the Lords in life and death, to do His will, to be acknowledged, guarded, blessed, and honoured as His. The Christian man is the Lords--

1. In life. Life includes--

(1) Our earthly blessings; and they are given as far as they really tend to our advantage.

(2) Our afflictions; for these we have comfort, support, and a glorious issue.

(3) The period in which we are to be trained up for the maturity of holiness.

2. In death. The Christian man has served in the outer apartments of the house; he is now called into the presence-chamber. (R. Watson.)

The Christians mission

I. The negative presentments of the truth involved.

1. None of us ought to live to himself; for God has an original claim upon the service of every one of us, based upon the right of creation, the mercy of continued being, the mystery of redemption, the derivation from Him of a spiritual nature, gifts, and covenants, and revelations, and hopes of heaven.

2. None of us can do so. We have duties to discharge, which it must be to the injury of others if we neglect; a moral example to hold up, which must influence, either for good or evil, some subordinate mind. A man cannot dwell apart; nor divest himself of the necessity of doing some good or harm every day.

3. Nor is this view to be limited to the present generation. Our good or our evil deeds live after us. No man dieth to himself. We believe in the joyous meetings of the redeemed. To their unutterable sorrow the ungodly shall have meetings likewise, as well with those whom they have tempted, as with those who have tempted them.

II. The affirmative view.

1. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord. This expression--

(1) Implies the possession of a life derived from, centred in, devoted to Christ. A man must live before he acts.

(2) Asserts a great rule of duty. We live unto the Lord when we live for the good of His people, for the honour of His cause, for the extension of His Church, for the glory of His name. And the consciousness that we are so living, and must so live, is one of the first indications of the renewed mind.

2. Whether we die, we die unto the Lord.

Christians can neither live useless lives, nor die useless deaths.

1. God gets to Himself honour from the dying hours of a Christian by the blessing to survivors, often occasioned by the affecting circumstances of his removal. A man may be permitted to win souls to Christ by his death, whom he could never win to seriousness in his life.

2. A good man dies unto the Lord, because his removal may assume the aspect of a witness or a judgment, and so become a vindication to a faithless world of the rectitude of our Makers ways. It is the worlds loss; the loss of so many fervent prayers, so much of beneficent influence, so much of bright example to lure to heaven and lead the way.

3. A Christian dies unto the Lord, because he dies to the glory of the Lord; to the honour of His grace, to the vindication of His faithfulness, to the magnifying of His gospel, to the illustration of His unchanging love, to the swelling of His redeeming triumphs in the life of the world to come. He dies to the Lord who dies in the Lord.

4. Whether, therefore, we live or die, we are the Lords. Such is the apostles conclusion of the whole matter. It tells of--

(1) Our safety in all worldly changes. The Great Ruler of the universe has a property in us, and He will guard and keep His own.

(2) Our original; of our kindred with immortal natures; of our designation to endless life.

(3) Our perseverance in faith and holiness, and of our final triumph over death and the grave. Jesus having loved His own which were in the world, loves them unto the end. (D. Moore, M.A.)

The Divinity of the inner and outer life of the good

The context suggests--

1. That there is a variety of grades in Christian attainments--weak in faith and the strong. The causes of this diversity are difference in mental capacity, methods of education, in the period of adopting Christianity, in the means of improvement and the manner of employing them, etc.

2. That those in the lowest grades of Christian attainment have generally displayed an undue attachment to religious ritualism. Another who is weak, eateth herbs.

3. That the lowest grades, who act in conformity with their sincere conviction, demand the generous respect of all. Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not. Had this always been acted upon the Church would have been spared all acrimonious controversies, schisms, and persecutions.

4. That the grand characteristic common to every grade in Christian attainment is devotedness to the Lord (verse 6). The text is but an amplification of this idea.

I. Christ is the Sovereign of the Christians inner life. We live unto the Lord. Whatever power controls the soul is the true sovereign. The political Caesars are but impotent pretenders compared with this. The supreme love is ever this power. The text suggests in relation to this inner sovereignty of Christ--

1. That it is a principle of rule which stands opposed to all personal aims. None of us liveth unto himself. There is a sense in which no man can live unto himself. Man is a link in the vast chain of being. He cannot move without influencing others. But what the apostle means is, that we Christians live not to self as a supreme end. Whilst it is the glory of mans nature that he cannot live unto himself, it is his shame that he will strive to do so. Is there a crime on the black scroll of human depravity that may not be traced to this source? Now, St. Paul intimates that living unto the Lord is the very opposite of this; it is to live as He lived who pleased not Himself.

2. That it is a principle of rule held supreme amidst all the variations of life. We live. We die. It is not long since we commenced life: not far hence we shall close it. Now, the Christian holds the principle of Divine rule within him supreme amidst all these changes, even in the greatest death itself. Not My will, but Thine, be done. Perhaps these variations are but the types of future changes. Eternity is not a scene of monotony. Death here, to the good man, is but an out-birth to a higher life; and may it not be that holy souls will emerge into higher, and still higher, forms of being for ever? But there will never be a change as to this governing principle of the soul. But why yield up our existence so entirely to the influence of another?

(1) It is the only course congenial with our spiritual being. To live to self is to offer the greatest indignity to that soul whose relations are infinite, and whose sympathies were intended to compass the world. Happiness is defined as loving and being loved. But the selfish man has no generous love within him; and because of this others have no heart to love him. The soul must go out of self, and be filled with God in order to fill self with joy.

(2) It is the only course agreeable to the universal law of right. We are absolutely the Lords. To consecrate our all to Him is therefore our reasonable service.

(3) It is the only course that will ensure the approbation of God. Gods smile is the glory of heaven, and His frown the midnight of hell. Surely, then, to seek His favour is the highest dictate both of wisdom and duty. And those who now, and at the last day, will secure the Well done! are those who are inspired and ruled by the benevolent spirit of Jesus.

II. Christ is the Sovereign of his outerlife (verse 9).

1. Let it not be supposed that He is the Sovereign of both in the same sense.

(1) His sovereignty over the inner life is dependent upon individual choice. For Jesus to force His way to power over the human heart would be to destroy human responsibility. Nothing can rule the soul that it does not love, and there is no power that can force it to love. This inner sovereignty, then, is by the suffrage of mind. We are made willing. But not so with the outer. Christ sits on His throne independent of the volitions of the universe. He must reign; to Him every knee shall bow.

(2) His sovereignty over the inner life is a Christian virtue. To be ruled by the benevolent spirit of Christ has ever been felt and acknowledged praiseworthy. But the sovereignty of Christ over our outward circumstances is not to us a virtue. We had no power in raising Him to the throne, nor does His continuance there depend on us.

(3) His sovereignty over the inner life is limited. In every age the numbers who have spiritually yielded to His sceptre have been few comparatively; but this external government stretches over the race, as it exists here, and in eternity, the dead and the living.

(4) His sovereignty over the inner life is ever a blessing, but over the outer it is frequently a tremendous curse. The man who enjoys His inner reign, exults beneath His outward sceptre. But the man who rebels against Him in his heart, writhes under His external authority. The mighty forces of government, which work in favour of willing subjects, proceed in dread array against Him as a rebel.

2. The basis and extent of Christs outward authority.

(1) It is founded on His death and resurrection. It is here implied that these facts occurred by Christs own personal intention.

(a) For to this end He died. Not because of any law of mortality or violence, but simply because He purposed it (Heb_2:14). Have you anything analogous to this in the history of our world? It may be said that many men have been found willing to die; but their willingness was nothing more, at most, than a desire to die now rather than then. The question never rested with them to decide whether they would die or not. But Christ chose to die, whilst He might have avoided it for ever (Joh_10:17-18). But wherein is the moral propriety of this? To die by self-resolution, what is it but suicide? The reply is this: that Christ was what no man is--the Proprietor of His own existence.

(b) He rose as well as died, by His own personal purpose. It is not said that He was revived, but that He revived. This is wonderful, and there is but one way of explaining it: Jesus was God-man. The man-nature died, and the God-nature revived it. Now, these two facts are the basis of His mediatorial authority. I am He that liveth and was dead, and am alive again, and have the keys of death and hell.

(2) This outward authority extends ever the dead and living.

Conclusion: If Christ is the Lord of the dead and the living, then--

1. There is nothing accidental in human history. He presides over all the acts of our being.

2. The departed are still in existence. Had the apostle believed that all that remained of the dead was the dust that lay in their graves, would he have spoken of Jesus as their Lord?

3. Death is not the introduction to a new kingdom.

4. We may anticipate the day when death shall be swallowed up in victory. (D. Thomas, D.D.)

The Lord of the dead and the living

When our Lord had reached the end of His redeeming work He announced to His Church, All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. This explained the whole mystery of His life on earth, and connected it with His future reign in heaven. The text is an echo of the Saviours final saying.

I. The redeemers dominion over men. This is declared to be the end of His ministry on earth.

1. His death was a means to an end.

(1) This great intention pervades the Scriptures. It was the eternal purpose of the Trinity, the meaning of the first promise, the keynote of psalm and prophecy. When He came it was a King that angels worshipped. His miracles were wrought to illustrate His kingship, and His teaching was based upon it. In the agony of death He spoke in the spirit of a King.

(2) Without His death this dominion could not be reached. He might have come as the Son of God incarnate to assume His rightful sway, but that could only have been in wrath to vindicate His Fathers violated law, and hence would have been the ruin of our race. But the government He came to obtain demanded that man should be redeemed from another power and then brought back to his lost estate of obedience and love.

(a) Sin had dominion over man in virtue of the penalty of violated law. The Redeemer died to atone for sin, to absorb its sentence in Himself, and thus to reign in the bestowment of pardon and peace.

(b) Sin had dominion over man through the law of evil ruling in his nature. By His atoning death the Redeemer obtained for man the Spirit of a new life making him free from the law of sin and death.

2. His resurrection declared that His end was attained, and that His empire was won.

II. The administration of that dominion

1. Its extent. The words Lord of the dead and living.

(1) Place the whole race under Christs feet.

(a) The phrase gives mankind its distinct definition. Elsewhere the Redeemers dominion is the entire creation.

(b) It suggests the whole sad history of our ruin and wretchedness. We are a dying race, from generation to generation succumbing to our mortal enemy. But our Redeemer is ruling over our ruin and translating it into salvation. Our death His government turns to life.

(c) It is not, however, the living and the dead, but the dead and living. The dead must have the pre-eminence, for they are the bulk of our race, sanctified to our thought by their mystery and multitude.

(d) But it is the language of mortals. Christ has no dead subjects. All live to Him, as He told the Sadducees.

(e) It prescribes the limits of the Redeemers lordship which is to last while mankind are made up of dead and living. When death is swallowed up in victory it will cease, and God shall be all in all.

(2) Distribute our Lords dominion over two provinces.

(a) He is the Lord of the world of disembodied spirits. He entered this world and Death yielded Him the keys which had been His from the beginning, but now became His by another right. But here the light fails us, and the evangelical record which follows the Lords passion to His final cry suspends its story till He opens His lips to Mary; and we do well to respect its silence. The same restraint is laid upon us when we speak of the nature of Christs empire here. Concerning one great province, that tenanted by those who died without the gospel, all we can say is that Christ is their Lord. Concerning those who have sinned against all revelation, inward and outward, He is their Lord too, and only their Lord. Over the remaining province, paradise, Christ rules, but there He also is, and all who enter follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.

(b) We must now return to the living. He is their absolute Lord. It is the probation of every man who hears the gospel to accept or reject His sway. Rejection of that sway seals every mans fate; while acceptance is the foundation of personal religion.

2. Its character (verse 7). The Lord to whom we have submitted has become--

(1) The director of our being. We live unto the Lord. His loyal subjects have renounced self, and taken Him to be their supreme Lord (verse 6).

(2) The disposer of our being. We die to the Lord. Death is part of our sum of duty. (W. B. Pope, D.D.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rom 14:7-9. For none of us — True Christians, in the things we do, liveth to himself — Is at his own disposal, doth his own will; and no man dieth to himself — Only for his own advantage, and according to his own pleasure, when he will. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord — Spend our lives in his service, and according to his will; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord — Either by sacrificing our lives to his glory, if he demand it of us; or, if we expire in a natural way, by behaving to the last as those who have his love ruling in our hearts, and his sacred cause still in our eye. Whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s — In consequence of being thus truly devoted to Christ, both in life and death, we have the pleasure of knowing that living or dying we are his servants; yea, and the objects of his favour and care. For to this end — Or purpose; Christ both died — Paying thereby the price of our ransom; and rose — Receiving in consequence thereof his purchase and dominion; and revived — Or liveth, as εζησεν may be rendered, namely, ever liveth, not only to appear in the presence of God as our advocate and intercessor, but that, having subdued our enemies, he might exercise his dominion over us, and be Lord — Of all his redeemed people, both such as are yet alive, and those that are dead. “From this passage, and from Php 2:10, where those under the earth are said to bow the knee to Jesus, it may be inferred, that the souls of men at death neither sleep nor fall into a state of insensibility. For if that were the case, Christ could not, with propriety, be said to rule over them, nor they be said to bow the knee to him.” — Macknight.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Tolerance enjoined in view of the Judgment of God the Lord of both, Rom_14:7-13.

The apostle now impressively dissuades both parties from judging each other by the fact that they were tied to the judgment throne of God. It would be a fearful usurpation of that awful office of the infinite and holy One should brother Christians sit in judgment upon each other.

7. None of us—None of us as men, and especially none of us as Christians.

Liveth to himself—However self-sufficient in our judgments, we are not independent beings. We are fastened by strong ties to the throne of God.

By creation, by redemption, by self-consecration, (see notes on chap. Rom_5:1-2,) we are Christ’s and God’s.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CRITICAL NOTES

Rom_14:7.—We are not to follow our own pleasure, nor obey our own inclinations. In life and death we, Christians, are the Lord’s.

Rom_14:8.—Christians are Christ’s property, and they must live, not to themselves, but to one another.

Rom_14:9.—Christ having died and risen again to make believers His property, will He not take care of His own?

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Rom_14:7-9

Life and death harmonised.—In the opinion of most life and death are antagonistic. Death is the privation of life. The one is a something to be desired and cherished, while the other is to be dreaded and shunned. Life is the sphere of activities, while death is regarded as their cessation. We mourn when the good workman dies, as if work for him were over. But St. Paul teaches a larger view. Life and death are raised to one great level; they are spheres for a noble ministry. Both life and death are for the Lord, and it is in that light that we get to understand the greater importance of life and the sweet significance of death.

I. Christ by His life and death lifts death out of its darkness and gives a new meaning to life.—What a meaningless, monotonous round are the life days which are lived by the majority! Their souls are moved by no great purposes; their spirits are not touched by ennobling motives. To such life is hardly worth living. Christ gives to life a new meaning, a fresh force and vigour. Christ died and rose again that He might make life noble. Christ is the light of life, illuminating with glory, lifting out of its dulness, and showing the pathway to true greatness. Death is the shadow feared by man; its very approach casts darkness over the frame. Death loses much of its darkness and its terror when we view it in the light of Christ’s claim. Death introduces to new and wider spheres. Death and life belong unto Him who by death conquered death.

II. Christ by His death and risen life made both spheres His own.—He made this earthly life His own by entering into all its trials, joys, and perplexities. He made the risen life His own by rising from the tomb. Life belonged unto Christ before His incarnation. Shall we be wrong in asserting that life in fuller measure belonged unto Christ after His resurrection? The keys of all life were delivered into His hands. In Him was a largeness of life not embraced in the prophetic vision. Death in all its solemn mystery belongs unto Him who has the keys of Hades and of death. Christ is sovereign over life and over death. If life and death belong unto Christ and the Christian be joined to Christ, then the Christian’s life and the Christian’s death belong unto the Lord. Life with all its possibilities, death with all its mysteries, are the Lord’s. Let us so act as to show that whether living or dying we are the Lord’s.

III. Christ by His death and life leads His people out of death into life.—This is specially true of the period which we call conversion. The believer is at this crisis led out of the death of sin, ignorance, and guilt into the life of holiness, knowledge, forgiveness, and the peace of God which passeth understanding. But here we contemplate a still higher leading—a leading which is progressive and continuous. Christ leads His people out of the death of selfishness into the life of love. Selfishness makes self the centre of life, the object and aim of existence; love makes Christ the centre of life, the alpha and omega of existence and of that which we regard as non-existence. But there is not such a thing as non-existence in the estimation of a Christ-loving nature. Life and death are crowned and glorified by love. And Christ will lead His people through death to the life of perfect love and of undying service.

Learn:

1. The dignity of the Christian life. It may be passed in lowly spheres as earth spirits estimate, but it acquires dignity as it is a Christ-owned life. Ownership imparts dignity. Royalty seems to overshadow with its greatness all its surroundings. The royalty of heaven’s eternal King imparts dignity to the life of him who moves as in the loving taskmaster’s sight.

2. The sublimity of the Christian service. It is one of love. It is one for life and for death. It is one in an ever-widening sphere. Self-service is contracting; love-service is expanding. The Christian lives for God, for Christ, for the promotion of all good and true ends.

3. The interminable nature of the Christian’s view. Death does not bound his prophetic vision. The narrow tomb does not form a barrier to his wide-looking soul. He sees the unseen. Death opens up a larger life and shows divine service. Whether living or dying he is the Lord’s.

Rom_14:7. Loving self-abnegation.—These words would come with a startling sound to the ears of the world to which St. Paul wrote. There might be a time when none were for a party and all for the state; but the time had passed, if it evertruly existed, and the decline of the nation had begun, and national decline is marked by the increase of selfishness. But the words may come to us likewise with startling emphasis. This is a so-called Christian country. Our Christian preachers and teachers are multitudinous. Christianity has had a fairly long reign and a fairly successful course in our island; and yet have we reached the ideal set forth in the words, “None of us liveth to himself”? As we look at society in some of its aspects and in certain of our moods, the words sound to us like an ironical utterance. “None of us liveth to himself.” Is not the modern doctrine, “Every man for himself”? Is it not the ripe conclusion of our modern evolutionary philosophy that the weakest must go to the wall? The man with a weak will, without push and tact, without iron nerves, must be crushed, and is often crushed, by his stronger fellow. Alas that we will not look facts in the face! We are closed up in selfishness, we pamper our selfish fancies, we foster our selfish likings and prejudices, and we are very much shocked if any plain preacher tells us that we are selfish. We require still to be told that the true theory of life is that we must not live to ourselves, but unto Christ, to His Church, and for the good of humanity.

I. In the world self strives for prominence.—This statement requires no proof; it is almost axiomatic and self-evident. The poet sings, “Love rules the camp, the court, the grove.” If the poet mean self-love, he is not far from the truth. But Jove in the higher and diviner sense does not rule. Do the strikes of the present day speak of loving forbearance between men and masters? What does the interest of capital mean but the interest of self? What do the claim and rights of labour mean but the claim and rights of self? What do the ten thousand wrongs, anomalies, oppressions, and in too many cases cruelties of our social system declare? They proclaim that self is striving for the prominence. This strife is everywhere,—in the remote hamlet and on the crowded exchange flags; in some of our syndicates, in our cotton corners, in our many fraudulent bubble schemes, and in our lying advertisements. Ah, self! thou unholy and rapacious monster: thou dost obtrude thy ungainly form in all departments of life; thou hast been known to wear the guise of philanthropy, to assume the garb of sanctity; thou hast not scrupled to profane the priest’s sacred vestments and to sully a bishop’s lawn!

II. This self-strife leads to individual dissatisfaction and to social undoing.—This is evident to every casual observer of society. Where self is thought about more than society and the general welfare, there is sure to be social undoing. Revolutions may have been necessary, and may have done good; but some revolutions have been influenced by a selfish spirit and have been fraught with evil. All revolutions promoted by selfishness are injurious, and can only become beneficial as the great Worker educes good out of evil. Certainly most harmful to the individual is the effort to make self prominent and supreme. The more we give to self, the more it craves; the more it gets, the more it wants. Its riches may increase, but they tend only to greater poverty. The most discontented of mortals have been those who have had ample means for the pampering of self.

III. Self-hood, however, is subjected.—So that it becomes true in a wider sense than we sometimes think that none of us liveth to himself. In will and purpose we live to ourselves, but in tendency and effect we live for others. The idler and the pleasure-seeker may find themselves conquered in the conflict. If they do nothing better, they serve as warnings and beacon lights to the sensible. They live to themselves, but their wasted lives tell us to shun the shifting sands of folly in which they were engulfed. It is plain that the worker cannot altogether live to himself. According to the political economists he is a productive labourer, and thus while increasing his own wealth he increa the wealth of the nation. Society cannot allow us to live for ourselves; for ourselves are firmly bound to and with other selves. The nation is made up of individual selves, as a building is erected by means of separate stones. As stone is bound by and to its fellow-stone, so my self is bound by and to the other self. The not-self is essential to the welfare of the self; the not-self and the self are bound together and have interests in common.

I. In the Church there is loving self-abnegation.—The objector says that he cannot see it. We go into the Church, and find that modern Christians are essentially selfish. Of course we cannot see it; for it is not to be seen, and a man does not see that which he does not want to see, and which is outside his range of things. He does not see that self-will is dethroned and bowing in loving submission to the divine will. In the Christian self-hood rises against the Christlike spirit. Self-hood rises, but it falls conquered by the Christian manhood. The general aim, purpose, and desire of the Christian is upward to Christ. The Christlike soul dethrones selfishness and exalts the Prince of life. Christ and not self is the centre of the Christian nature. He loves himself, but he loves himself in and for Christ, the beloved of all true men. A mere observer cannot see that which is going on in the nature of another, The conquest over self is gained in secret; the battle is bloodless and without noise. Christ-love conquers self-love; but we cannot see Christ-love riding in any triumphal car or wielding any sceptre of authority. The Christian does not live to himself. There is in him a motive power which the world does not see. And this inward life works outwardly in many beneficial ways. He must be blind indeed who does not see that many Christians have shown that they live to and for Christ, and thus in the highest sense live to and for the good of their kind. Christianity has been the most beneficial agency which has found a home and a sphere in this planet.

II. The Christian finds in self-abnegation the widest contentment.—When self is allowed to gain the upper hand, then there is the reign of misrule, then there is dissatisfaction. But when the life stream flows with Christ treading the waters every storm is hushed, and the course of the waters produces sweetest music. Contentment in the soul is the effect of the Christ presence and supremacy.

III. The Christian in loving consecration obtains truest riches.—Not that which is of any account at the bankers; but shall we still esteem soul wealth as of no avail? Self works for riches, but is crushed by the weight. If he would confess it, the man is oft richer in poverty than in wealth. Love works for Christ and obtains soul wealth—riches here and riches hereafter.

IV. The Christian in loving consecration secures extensive productiveness.—Life is regarded by many as the only sphere for production. Wo believe in annihilation to a much larger extent than may be supposed. However, there is no annihilation. We live when we are dead. Tombs have a voice. “The memory of the just is blessed.” We die to the Lord, and He is the good husbandman who will not allow the dying grain to be wasted. Over the graves of His beloved He makes the golden harvest to wave. Let us seek to show that we live unto the Lord. If we have the inward life of consecration, the blessed fruits will appear. The light of love within will shine on the world’s dark pathway. Let us be comforted in seeming life failure that we live unto the Lord, for He can turn the seeming failure into success. Let us not fear death, for in the dark valley we are Christ’s. He will guide safely through to the tearless, deathless land of infinite love and blessedness.

Rom_14:7-8. Living and dying unto the Lord.—Let us investigate the principle here laid down: that both the life of the Christian and the death of the Christian have a special place and use in the divine purposes; that there is something which every man is sent into this world for, and which it were to contravene the ends of his creation if he were to leave unfulfilled.

I. Let us consider first the negative statement of the apostle in relation to this great principle.—“None of us liveth to himself.” None of us. Who are the “us” here spoken of? Manifestly they are the true Christians, as opposed to men of the world; those who place themselves at the disposal of Christ, as opposed to those who care only to live to their own selfish ends; in a word, those who have made a voluntary choice of the divine service and are urged onward in the path of godliness by the power of a new affection and a new hope. The text, however, may be taken in the largest sense, as the expression of a general fact in the divine government, and plainly implying that, living as we do under an economy of mutually dependent ministries—man linked with man, and class bound up with class—not only none of us ought to live to himself, but none of us can five to himself if we would. I say none of us ought to live to himself; for it is clear that God has an original and antecedent claim upon the service of every one of us—upon our time, upon our substance, upon our talents, upon our affection. We are His by every consideration which could be binding on an intelligent spirit—by the right of creation, by the mercy of continued being, by the mystery of redemption, by the derivation from Him of a spiritual nature, by gifts and covenants and revelations and hopes of heaven. “What have we that we have not received?” And what have we received which in strict justice might not have been withheld? Surely we must all feel that “every good gift is from above,”—our table, if it be spread; our cup, if it be full; the medicine, if it heal our sickness; the voice of joy and health, if it be heard in our dwellings; the sweet sense of security, if there be none to make us afraid. All secondary agencies—chance, skill, judgment, friends, influence—are but the servants of the great Benefactor bringing our blessings to us. They are the bearers of the cup, not the fillers of the cup. The Lord stands by the well, giving to every man as it pleaseth Him. Hast thou riches? “The Lord thy God, it is He that giveth thee power to get wealth.” Hast thou understanding and gifts? It is the Lord that “maketh thee to differ from another,” and endued thee with “a wise, understanding heart.” Reputation and credit had not been thine if the Lord had not “hidden thee from the scourge of tongues”; and if the tranquillities of domestic life are thine, “He maketh peace in thy borders, strengthening the bars of thy gates, and blessing thy children within thee.” What, then, follows from this but that we live to Him who gives us all the means to live; that we lay upon the altar of our obedience a living and loving sacrifice—our heart’s cheerfulest, our mind’s noblest, our soul’s best?

II. But there is an affirmative view of our principle to be taken.—Besides saying our life cannot be inoperative, cannot be resultless, cannot be barren both of good and evil, the text specifies a positive designation of this life to a place among great agencies, intimates that out of it God would get honours to Himself, and so teaches us that there is no man so useless and helpless in the world as not to be able to do some good if he would. “For whether we live, we live unto the Lord.” This expression may be taken first as implying the possession of a principle of internal and spiritual religion—a life derived from Christ, centred in Christ, devoted to Christ. A man must live before he acts—must be in a state of reconciliation to God before he devotes himself to His service. Religion is a choice—the choice of Christ as a Saviour, of God as a portion, of the ways of wisdom as the ways of pleasantness, of the hope of heaven as our exceeding great reward. All this supposes activity, energy, devotedness—body, soul, and spirit consecrated and given up to God; and nothing dead about us but the love of the world and self and sin. “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” But, again, there is in this part of the text the assertion of a great rule of duty—a declaration that our life is to be consecrated to the great ends of moral usefulness. We “live unto the Lord” when we live for the good of His people, for the honour of His cause, for the extension of His Church, for the glory of His name. And the consciousness that we are so living, and must so live, is one of the first indications of a renewed mind.

III. But to this declaration the text adds another, that “when he dies, he dies unto the Lord.”—He who does not live to himself shall not die to himself. Christians can neither live useless lives nor die useless deaths. God has a purpose in both and a property in both; “so that, whether they live or die, they are the Lord’s.”—D. Moore.

Rom_14:7-8. Christian devotedness.—This sentiment is strikingly characteristic of Christianity, and marks it with features so noble and benevolent that, whilst it is a key to its design, it offers one of the greatest motives by which its discipline and influence are recommended.

I. No man liveth to himself.—This is not only characteristic of the true Christian, but is essentially so; for a man who liveth to himself, by the sentence of the text, is not a Christian. It indicates:

1. That the Christian regards the great end of his being. Human existence must have an object. God acts not in anything without design. Nature is full of this. Every star, animal, plant, has some object. That this atom of the rock is in this place rather than that is determined by some purpose. Is man, then, exempt from this law? There is an end of life, a purpose of creation and preservation, and of the still more wondrous dispensation of redemption. It becomes us to inquire what that end is, and steadily to pursue it.

2. No Christian man liveth to himself: this indicates the respect which he habitually has to the approbation of God. Here, again, appears the distinction between the Christian and the man who lives to himself. The man who lives to himself cultivates that principle and this passion, does this and avoids the other; but the motive is not God, but his own self. The Christian sets God at his right hand, seeks His approbation, and to Him his heart is always open.

3. No Christian liveth to himself: this indicates the interest he feels in the cause of Christ. To live unto the Lord by living for His cause and to live for ourselves is impossible. The extension of the work of Christ in every age goes upon the same principle. The principle of selfishness and that of usefulness are distinct and contrary. The principle of one is contraction; of the other, expansion.

4. No Christian liveth to himself: this indicates a benevolent concern to alleviate the temporal miseries of his suffering fellow-men. Spiritual charities are the most important, but they are not our duties exclusively. He who lives to the Lord will have His example in view; and in that he is seen going about doing good.

II. No Christian man dieth to himself; he dieth to the Lord.—As a reward for not living to himself, he is not suffered to die unto himself.

1. It may be in judgment to others. It may be in judgment to families who have refused admonition and to unfaithful Churches when a Barnabas or an Apollos or a Boanerges is called away.

2. It may be hastened in mercy to him. Good men are often removed to heaven before scenes of wretchedness and misery are presented.

3. It is prolonged in mercy to others. He is not always taken away from the evil to come. He is sometimes to endure it, and private feelings give way to public good. (Jeremiah and St. Paul.)

4. No Christian man dieth to himself, for his death is that by which Christ may be glorified. Let us not be extreme in our anxieties about death, let us be anxious to glorify God in our death, and He will take care of all the rest.

III. The man who lives and dies, not to himself, but to the Lord, is the Lord’s in life and death.—To be bound to Him, but to yield ourselves to His service and glory. The Christian is the Lord’s in life. Life includes our earthly blessings; life includes our afflictions; life is the period in which we are trained for the maturity of holiness. And the Christian is the Lord’s in death. The body is laid down in hope; the grave has been sanctified by the body of Christ, and the key is in His hands.

1. It is founded on justice. To live to ourselves is unjust. Our obligations to God are absolute.

2. It is founded on benevolence. God might have rendered men much less dependent on others than they are.

3. This is a principle founded on the ministerial character. A minister living to himself is the most pitiable object on which the eye can fall. To him was committed the cause of Christ, and he has been indifferent to the general movement, if his department has been enough to grind him his daily bread.

4. Let us see the great end of life. It is to live to please God; to live as Christ lived on earth—soberly, righteously, godly, benevolently. As Christians we employ talents which will be rewarded in another state. We thus prepare for death; and in that awful moment what a heaven it will be to know that, we die to Him, and that, “whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s”!—R. Watson.

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Rom_14:7-9

Is the Lord our Lord?—Is the Lord of dead and living in any real sense our Lord? Has He that conquered the grave conquered the worldly part in me? Are covetousness, ambition, impurity, indolence, thoroughly put down? Questions such as these are painful to propose, and hard to answer. If we are immersed wholly in the present world, the fashion of which passeth away, if Christ be dead in vain so far as we are concerned, the thoughts that belong to this day may help to awaken us. The mountain on the horizon seems small and dim, but towards it we are travelling, and it grows daily bigger: it is the mountain of heaven that we must scale, and there is a dark and silent valley, invisible at present, through which we must pass before we reach it. Compare the great realities that we have been looking at to-day with the all-engrossing business that draws our attention off them. The subtlest tongue will be silent before long; the most eager strife will cease; the wisest decision will be quoted no longer at most than the kind of right it relates to shall subsist. But we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; and at that bar the issue that is decided is for eternity. May He that judges us plead our cause also! And because we shall have acknowledged from our hearts that He is the Lord of the dead and the living, may He wash out our sins with His blood, and say, “Thou hast been faithful unto death; I will give thee a crown of life”!—Archbishop Thomson.

The Redeemer’s dominion.—The Redeemer’s dominion over men is forcibly declared to have been the end of His ministry on earth. The apostle’s words are very express and emphatic. “To this end that” signifies, in language as strong as could be used to note design, that the purpose of the Passion was the attainment of universal dominion over the human race in time and in eternity. To this end, and no other; for this purpose, and nothing short of it; with this design, embracing and consummating all other designs. But we must view it under two aspects: it was a purpose aimed at before the death; in the Resurrection it was a purpose reached. He died that He might have the dominion; He lived that He might exercise. Now, of this mighty realm of the risen Christ, the dead constitute the vast majority. “What, in comparison of the uncounted hosts, numbered only by the infinite Mind, are the few hundreds of millions that any moment are called the living? It is in the realm of the shades that we contemplate our great family in its vastest dimensions, as it has from the first generation been gaining on the numbers of the living and swelling onwards to the stupendous whole bound up in the federal headship of the first and second Adam.” Now, in all this vast domain, there is but one rightful Lord of the conscience; there may be other lords with dominion, and they may be many, but in the realm of conscience there is only one Lord, and He is the risen Saviour!—Pope and Saurin.

Christ our Master.—As he always exists, as a Christian, in and by his Master, so he always exists for his Master. He has, in the reality of the matter, no dissociated and independent interest. Not only in preaching and teaching, and bearing articulate witness to Jesus Christ, does he, if his life is true to its ideal and its secret, “live not unto himself”; not with aims which terminate for one moment in his own credit, for example, or his own comfort. Equally in the engagements of domestic life, of business life, of public affairs; equally (to look towards the humbler walks of duty) in the day’s work of the Christian servant or peasant or artisan; “whether he lives, he lives unto the Master, or whether he dies, he dies unto the Master”; whether he wakes or sleeps, whether he toils or rests, whether it be the term or the vacation of life, “whether he eats or drinks, or whatsoever he does,” he is the Master’s property for the Master’s use.

“Teach me, my God and King,

In all things Thee to see;

And what I do in anything

To do it as to Thee.

“A servant with this clause

Makes drudgery divine;

Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws

Makes that and th’ action fine.”

Moule.

A threefold cord binds to Christ.—Christ’s death, Christ’s resurrection, and Christ’s intercession—a threefold cord, which cannot be broken—bind you indissolubly in the “bundle of life” with Him. I may be faint and weary, but my God cannot. I may fluctuate and alter as to my frames and feelings, but, my Redeemer is unchangeably the same. I should utterly fail and come to nothing if left to myself; but I cannot be left to myself, for the Spirit of truth has said, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” He will renew my strength by enduing me with His own power. He is wise to foresee and provide for all my dangers. He is rich to relieve and succour me in all my wants. He is faithful to perfect and perform all His promises. He is blessed and immortal to enrich my poor desponding soul with blessedness and immortality. Oh, what a great and glorious Saviour for such a mean and worthless sinner! Oh, what a bountiful and indulgent Friend for such a base and insignificant rebel! What, what am I, when I compare myself, and all I am myself, with what I can conceive of my God, and of what He hath kindly promised to me? What a mystery I am to myself and to men! A denizen of earth to become a star of heaven! A corruptible sinner made an incorruptible saint! A rebel made a child! an outlaw an heir! A deserver of hell made an inheritor of heaven! A stronghold of the devil changed into a temple of the living God! An enemy and a beggar exalted to a throne, united in friendship with Jehovah, made one with Christ, a possessor of His Spirit, and a sharer of all this honour, happiness, and glory for evermore! Oh! what manner, what matter of love is this? Lord, take my heart, my soul, my all. I can render Thee no more; I could render Thee no less. It is indeed a poor return. My body and my soul are but as “two mites”; end yet—glory to Thy great name!—Thou who didst esteem those of the poor widow wilt not despise these of mine. Lord, they are Thine own, and I can only give Thee what is Thine. I melt with gratitude; and even this gratitude is Thy gift. Oh, take it, and accept both it and me in Thyself, who art all my salvation and all my desire, for ever and for ever.—Ambrose Serle.

Christ and the Christian.—Have I overdrawn the claims of Jesus Christ upon the Christian? I cannot present them in all the amplitude and depth, and at the same time the minuteness and precision, with which you will find them set forth in the New Testament as a whole. There Christ is indeed all things in all His followers. There the Christian is a being whose true reason and true life is altogether and always in Jesus Christ. He is slave, and his Redeemer is absolute owner. He is branch, and his Redeemer is root. He is limb, and his Redeemer is head. He is vessel, and the great Master of the house is always to have full and free use of Him for any purposes of His own. He has no rights and can set up no claims as against his Lord: “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?”—H. C. G. Moule.

Surrender to Christ.—To surrender at discretion to Jesus Christ, who is not a code but a master, is so far forth to put your being into right relations with itself through right relations with Him. It is to gravitate at last upon your centre, and to be in gear. It is to be possessed, spiritually possessed; but by whom? By the Lord of archetypal order; by the Prince of peace; by the Prince of life; by Him in whom, according to one profound scripture, all this complex universe itself “consists,” is held together, holds together. The more of His presence and dominion, the less of fret and friction. The less resistance to Him, the more genuine and glad and fruitful action—as it were a sphere-music of the moving microcosmos of the soul.—H. C. G. Moule.

Christ’s threefold right.—Now, if we examine, we shall find that Christ has every kind of claim and right to us. He has a right derived from His creative power. If “all things were made by Him,” He made us, and not we ourselves. In consequence of this He has a propriety in us, not only such as no man can have in a fellow-creature, but such as even no father has in his own children. They are his in a subordinate and limited degree; but we are the Lord’s absolutely and entirely. Suppose we were to return to Him all that we received from Him, what would be left as our own? He has a right derived from His providential care. He has not only given us life and favour, but His visitation hath preserved our spirits. Whose are we but His in whom we live, move, and have our being? How mean to enjoy the light of His sun, to breathe His air, to eat constantly at His table, to be clothed from His wardrobe, and not own and acknowledge our obligations to Him! He has a right derived from His redeeming mercy. We are not our own, but bought with a price, and He paid it. To feel the force of this claim it will be necessary for us to weigh three things:

1. The mighty evils from which He has delivered us: sin, the power of darkness, the present evil world, death, and the wrath to come.

2. The state to which He has advanced us. Even the beginnings of it here, its earnests and foretastes, are indescribable and inconceivable; even now the joy is unspeakable and full of glory, and the peace passeth all understanding.

3. The way in which He has thus ransomed us. All comes free to us; but what did it cost Him? Owing to our slight views of the evil of sin and the holiness of God, we are too little struck with the greatness of redemption and the difficulties attending it. It was easy to destroy man; but to restore him, in a way that should magnify the law which had been broken, and display God as the just as well as the justifier, was a work to which the Lord Jesus only was adequate; and what does it require even of Him? Not a mere volition, not a mere exertion, as when He delivered the Jews from Egypt, and spake the world into being. He must assume flesh and blood. He dwelt among us. For thirty-three years He was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” Let us go over His history; let us survey His sufferings; let us meditate on His agony in the garden, His shame on the cross, His abasement in the lowest parts of the earth; and all this for enemies, and all not only without our desert, but without our desire—till we feel we are drawn and bound with the cords of a man and the bands of love—a love that passeth knowledge. Hence He has a right, derived, not only from what He has done, but from what we have done—a right derived from our dedication. If Christians, we have ratified His claims, and have actually surrendered ourselves to Him, renouncing every other owner, and saying, Lord, I am Thine; save me. Other lords beside Thee have had dominion over me; but henceforth by Thee only will I make mention of Thy name. And having opened your mouth unto the Lord, you cannot go back.—W. Jay.

Christian citizenship.—It is scarcely surprising that men sometimes charge Christianity with having enfeebled the civic virtues. Patriotism, they tell us, and public spirit, burned with a deeper, steadier glow in ancient Athens or Rome than in any modern city. And yet there is something of paradox in the thought that such a result can be spoken of as following upon the teaching of Jesus; for the spirit of His teaching is, as some of our modern writers would phrase it, essentially altruistic: it is inherently and fundamentally social; its starting-point is self-abandonment, its root principles are love and sacrifice, and its natural fruits in every Christian character should have been social enthusiasm. While the apparatus of social life was still pagan, the Christian was of course bound to think of himself as a member of a separate community; but the thought of citizenship or membership of a community was none the less his guiding and inspiring thought, as it should be ours, if our life is to be worthy of the privileges we inherit and the hope that is set before us in Christ Jesus. In this matter, as in all else that concerns our social and religious life, we derive useful and clear guidance from the language and the spirit of St. Paul. See how his mind was filled with thoughts of citizenship. To the Philippians he writes, “Do your duty worthily as citizens of the gospel kingdom.” The Ephesians are addressed by him as “fellow-citizens with the saints.” In describing his own life the thought is still the same. “In all good conscience,” he says, “I have lived as a good citizen unto God.” Everywhere, in fact, his language implies this fundamental thought, as the inspiring purpose of his life, that no man liveth to himself, but that we are members one of another, because we are Christ’s and our life is hid with Christ in God. And if we turn from his language to the plan and conduct of his life, we see in him the very type and pattern of a true Christian patriot, working at his trade, self-supporting, independent, not forgetting his position or his rights as a Roman citizen, devoted to his own people with a devotion surpassing the power of words to express, and yet never engrossed with any earthly occupation or by any earthly ambition, and absolutely free from that enervating spirit of self-indulgence which makes such havoc of all higher purposes in the life of men. It is good for us thus to think of him for a moment apart from his great name as an inspired apostle, for thus we may hope to catch the infection of his keen and fervid interest in all the relations of our common life, and to be ourselves uplifted as we see how he uplifts and purifies all he touches with the fire of his spiritual earnestness. See how he takes these phrases about citizenship, shaming by his use of them those who care nothing for the thing itself—how he takes them up and enlists them in the service of the new kingdom; thus consecrating, so to speak, and transfiguring the citizen spirit. As we linger over all this—Paul, the Roman citizen—Paul, the Jewish patriot—Paul, the apostle of a new citizenship in the New Jerusalem, where there is neither bond nor free, neither Jew nor Gentile, no national antipathies, no class antagonisms, no party bitterness, no mean and petty rivalries, where all are brethren in Christ, and called to mutual service—the question must come up in our thoughts, What do we make of our citizenship? We live in crowded communities. What is our life in regard to this citizen spirit? Is the spirit strong in us? or is it weak? Does it inspire and direct our life? and is it of the Pauline type? Does it save us from the canker of pride and prejudice, and the spirit of isolation? Does it destroy the root of selfishness in us? and does it make us revolt from all forms of self-indulgence, sensuality, animalism? Or does it somehow leave these things to grow in all their strength in our community, and to propagate themselves after their kind, as if it were no concern of ours? If so, it has to be confessed that the Holy Spirit has not yet enfranchised us, and our citizenship is not such as becometh the gospel of Christ.—J. Percival.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 14

Rom_14:7. Erasmus and Bilney.—Thousands of men are influenced by persons whom they never saw. The Reformation began at Cambridge University very early in the sixteenth century by Bilney, a solitary student, reading a Greek Testament with Latin translations and notes which Erasmus had published. Bilney had never seen Erasmus, but the quiet work of Erasmus was the means of bringing Bilney to the knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus. Bilney, again, influenced Latimer, who was one of the fathers of the English Reformation, and who suffered martyrdom for the truth. Thus the Reformation in England may be largely traced to the quiet work of Erasmus as he sat at his desk, and used his vast learning and intellect to make the word of God more familiar to the people of his time. Buchanan and Judson.—A young American student more than seventy years ago happened to read a printed sermon which had fallen into his hands. The sermon was entitled “The Star in the East,” by Dr. Claudius Buchanan, and described the progress of the gospel in India and the evidence there afforded of the divine power. That sermon, by a man whom he had never seen, fell into the young student’s soul like a spark into tinder, and in six months Adoniram Judson resolved to become a missionary to the heathen. That little printed sermon, preached in England perhaps with no apparent fruit, became through God’s blessing the beginning of the great work of American foreign missions. You may not be an Erasmus or a Claudius Buchanan; but God may have as great a work for you to do as He had for them. What an influence for good Christian parents may exercise upon their children with far-reaching results to the world! The faithful Sabbath-school teacher may leaven with gospel truth young minds that may yet control the destinies of a nation. Young women, by the power of their own Christian character, may change for the better the muddy current of many a godless life. The great matter is for every one of us to live near to God, to cultivate a Christ-like character, and then our life is sure to be a blessing. You must walk with God if you would have weight with men. Personal holiness is the key to personal influence for good.—C. H. J., in “Pulpit Commentary.”

Rom_14:8. Death in the Lord is sweet.—Balaam exclaimed, “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.” Life in the Lord is the bright way to death in the Lord, and death in the Lord is the pleasant cypress avenue to eternal glory.

“So live that, when thy summons comes to join

The innumerable caravan that moves

To that mysterious realm where each shall take

His character in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not like the quarry slave at night,

Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch

About him and lies down to pleasant dreams.”

Bryant.

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

14:7 As the Lord’s servants (14:4), Christians are to look to God for guidance and seek to honor him in all things (14:8). Because we are ultimately accountable to him, our desire should always be to please him, not to live for ourselves.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Rom 14:7. Ἡμῶν, of us) believers; for all others live and die to themselves.—ἑαυτῷ, to himself) Wellerus says: No man ought to live to himself, neither formally [formaliter], so that, as one at his own disposal, he should regulate his life according to his own desires; nor materially [materialiter], because, satisfied with himself, he may wish to give way to self-indulgence; nor [finaliter] with this end in view, that he may make the scope of his life the enjoyment of pleasures.—ζῇ, ἀποθνήσκει, lives, dies) the art of dying is the same as that of living.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rom_14:7-9. Proof for the threefold κυρίῳ, Rom_14:6, and that generally from the whole subjective direction of the life of Christians towards Christ. Paul does not mean the objective dependence on Christ (Rückert, Reiche, Ernesti, Urspr. d. Sünde, II. p. 19), because it would not prove what was said in Rom_14:6, but would only establish the obligation thereto.

ἑαυτῷ ξῇ] so that he believes that his life belongs to himself, that he lives for his own interest and aims. 2Co_5:15. Comp. the passages in Wetstein and Fritzsche. The dative is thus to be taken in the ethically telic sense, and so, too, in ἑαυτῷ ἀποθνήσκει; for also the dying of the Christianin so ideal a manner is Paul conscious of the moral power and consecration of fellowship of life with Christis a moral act (Bengel: eadem ars moriendi, quae vivendi) in the relation of belonging to Christ, in which the Christian at death feels and knows that he has stood with his life, and is now also to stand in his dying. Such is the conscious ἐν κυρίῳ ἀποθνήσκειν, Rev_14:13. Comp. Php_1:20; Rom_8:38.

Rom_14:8 contains the positive counterpart, proving the negative contents of Rom_14:7, and is likewise to be understood as a subjective relation.

On τὲ γὰρ … τέ, for as well … as also, see Hartung, Partikell. I. pp. 88, 115; Baeumlein, Part. p. 219.

τοῦ κυρίου ἐσμεν] the Lords property are we. This now derives the sum of the entire specifically Christian consciousness from its previously adduced factors.

In the threefold emphatic τῷ κυρίῳ (τοῦ κυρίου) observe the divina Christi majestas et potestas (Bengel), to which the Christian knows himself to be completely surrendered.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rom 14:7 f. οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἡμῶν ἑαυτῷ ζῇ κ . τ . λ . The truth which has been affirmed in regard to the Christian’s use of food, and observance or non-observance of days, is here based on a larger truth of which it is a part. His whole life belongs not to himself, but to his Lord. “No one of us liveth to himself,” does not mean, “every man’s conduct affects others for better or worse, whether he will or not”; it means, “no Christian is his own end in life; what is always present to his mind, as the rule of his conduct, is the will and the interest of his Lord”. The same holds of his dying. He does not choose either the time or the mode of it, like a Roman Stoic, to please himself. He dies when the Lord will, as the Lord will, and even by his death glorifies God. In Rom 14:14 ff. Paul comes to speak of the influence of conduct upon others; but here there is no such thing in view; the prominence given to τῷ κυρίῳ ( τοῦ κυρίου ) three times in Rom 14:8 shows that the one truth present to his mind is the all-determining significance, for Christian conduct, of the relation to Christ. This (ideally) determines everything, alike in life and death; and all that is determined by it is right.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rom_14:7

For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself; ἑαυτῷ, in dependence on himself. This verse is an amplification and confirmation of the preceding. The principle on which both the classes of persons just referred to acted, is a true Christian principle. No Christian considers himself as his own master, or at liberty to regulate his conduct according to his own will, or for his own ends; he is the servant of Christ, and therefore endeavors to live according to his will and for his glory. They, therefore, who act on this principle, are to be regarded and treated as true Christians, although they may differ as to what the will of God, in particular cases, requires. No man dieth to himself, i.e. death as well as life must be left in the hands of God, to be directed by his will and for his glory. The sentiment is, We are entirely his, having no authority over our life or death.

Charles Hodge — Commentary on Romans (1835), First Corinthians (1857), and Ephesians (1856) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Hath respect to himself only, which the Hebrews utter after this sort, Doeth well to his own soul.

We must not stick, saith he, in the meat itself, but in the use of the meat, so that he is justly to be reprehended that liveth so, that he casteth not his eyes upon God. For both our life and our death is dedicated to him, and for this cause Christ hath properly died, and not simply, that we might eat this meat or that.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

For none of us--Christians

liveth to himself--(See Co2 5:14-15), to dispose of himself or shape his conduct after his own ideas and inclinations.

and no man--"and none" of us Christians "dieth to himself."

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 7. None of us liveth to himself] The Greek writers use the phrase, εαυτω ζην, to signify acting according to one's own judgment, following one's own opinion. Christians must act in all things according to the mind and will of God, and not follow their own wills. The apostle seems to intimate that in all the above cases each must endeavour to please God, for he is accountable to him alone for his conduct in these indifferent things. God is our master, we must live to him, as we live under his notice and by his bounty; and when we cease to live among men, we are still in his hand. Therefore, what we do, or what we leave undone, should be in reference to that eternity which is ever at hand.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

7. For no one of us, etc. He now confirms the former verse by an argument derived from the whole to a part, — that it is no matter of wonder that particular acts of our life should be referred to the Lord’s will, since life itself ought to be wholly spent to his glory; for then only is the life of a Christian rightly formed, when it has for its object the will of God. But if thou oughtest to refer whatever thou doest to his good pleasure, it is then an act of impiety to undertake anything whatever, which thou thinkest will displease him; nay, which thou art not persuaded will please him.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(7) Dieth to himself.—Even in the act of death the Christian is conscious of his relation to Christ; he dies “in the Lord” (Rev_14:13).

(7-9) The larger principle holds good, and therefore much more the smaller. It is not only his food that the Christian consecrates to God (or rather, immediately, to Christ, and through Christ to God), but his whole life, to its very last moments.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

7. For none of us] Us the justified, the “sons of God.”—Here (and in Rom_14:8-9,) St Paul states the great principle on which the practice in question is, or should be, based. He takes it for granted that each Christian owns, and acts upon, a sense of the Lordship of Christ, because that Lordship is a Divine fact.

liveth to himself] See last note on Rom_14:4. Here, as in 1 Corinthians 4, the argument passes from the Christian’s independence of man’s judgment to his deep dependence on the Lord’s. To “live to himself” is here, manifestly, not so much to live a “selfish” life as to live a life in which the mere dictates of conscience and will are the supreme rule, irrespective of Christ. Q. d., “none of us believers can make anything lower than Christ and His will the rule of life. Opinions, convictions, conscience itself, must be brought for light and correction to Him; for we are His.”

Strictly speaking, this is a digression, as the main purport of the passage is to insist on the lawful freedom of believers with regard to one another.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For none of us liveth to himself,.... That is, none of us believers; others may, but these do not, at least they ought not, nor do they when under the influence of the grace of God: they do not live, neither to righteous, nor to sinful self; they do not live upon their duties and services; nor do they ascribe their life, righteousness, and salvation to them; nor do they live to their own lusts, or make provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof, and much less to the lusts and wills of others:

and no man dieth to himself; every man dies, and must, or undergo a change equivalent to death; believers die as well as others, not eternally, or the second death, but corporeally, or a temporal death, but not to themselves; as they do not seek their own will and pleasure, and profit in life, so neither in death; they do not die to their own advantage only; death is gain unto them, it frees thema from all their sorrows, toil, and labours, and introduces them into the presence of Christ, and the enjoyment of everlasting happiness; but this is not all their death issues in, but also in the glory of Christ: moreover, no man has the power over life or death; as his life is not from himself, he has no power to lengthen or shorten it, nor to hinder or hasten death; this belongs to another Lord and master, whom life and death are both to subserve. This is an illustration of the above reason, by which the apostle confirms his advice.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

7 For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.

Ver. 7. For none of us liveth to himself] St Paul stood, as it were, on tiptoes, αποκαραδοκια, Php 1:20, to see which way he might best glorify God, by life or by death.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For none of us ... - Whether by nature Jews or Gentiles. In the great principles of religion we are now united. Where there was evidence of a sincere desire to do the will of God there should be charitable feeling, through there was difference of opinion and judgment in many smaller matters. The meaning of the expression is, that no Christian lives to gratify his own inclinations or appetites. He makes it his great aim to do the will of God; to subordinate all his desires to his Law and gospel; and though, therefore, one should eat flesh, and should feel at liberty to devote to common employments time that another deemed sacred, yet it should not be uncharitably set down as a desire to indulge his sensual appetites, or to become rich. Another motive “may be” supposed, and where there is not positive “proof” to the contrary, “should be” supposed; see the beautiful illustration of this in 1Co 13:4-8. To live “to ourselves” is to make it the great object to become rich or honored, or to indulge in the ease, comfort, and pleasures of life. These are the aim of all people but Christians; and in nothing else do Christians more differ from the world than in this; see 1Pe 4:1-2; 2Co 5:15; 1Co 6:19-20; Mat 10:38; Mat 16:24; Mar 8:34; Mar 10:21; Luk 9:23. On no point does it become Christians more to examine themselves than on this. To “live to ourselves” is an evidence that we are strangers to piety. And if it be the great motive of our lives to live at ease Amo 6:1 - to gratify the flesh, to gain property, or to be distinguished in places of fashion and amusement - it is evidence that we know nothing of the power of that gospel which teaches us “to deny ourselves, and take up our cross daily.

No man - No “one,” the same Greek word οὐδείς oudeis which is used in the former part of the verse. The word is used only in reference to “Christians” here, and makes no affirmation about other people.

Dieth to himself - See Rom 14:8. This expression is used to denote the “universality” or the “totality” with which Christians belong to God. Every thing is done and suffered with reference to his will. In our conduct, in our property, in our trials, in our death, we are “his;” to be disposed of as he shall please. In the grave, and in the future world, we shall be equally his. As this is the great principle on which “all” Christians live and act, we should be kind and tender toward them, though in some respects they differ from us.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Here he proves what he had before asserted, that Christians have regard to God and his glory in their particular actions; and that from their general end and design, which is to devote themselves, and their whole life, and death, to God. He tells them first, in the negative, that

none of us, i.e. that none of us Christians and believers, do live or die to ourselves; we are not our own lords, nor at our own disposal: and then, in the affirmative, he shows, that we live or die to the Lord; we spend our lives in his service, and part with them at his appointment. His glory is the white, at which we aim, living or dying: he is the centre, in which all the lines in the whole circumference of our lives do meet, 2Co 5:9; Phi 1:21.

Whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s: this is an inference from what he had said before: q.d. At all times, and in all estates, whether of health or sickness, abundance or poverty, life or death, we are the Lord’s property, and at his disposal; he hath an absolute dominion over us, living or dying; in this world, or in the next.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Vers. 7, 8. For none of us liveth to himself, and none dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord"s. The mention of dying as well as living unto the Lord, though it does not seem needed by the context, makes complete the view of the entire devotion of redeemed Christians to him; and introduces the thought, which follows, of their union with him in his own death as well as in his life.

Life a trust.

Our life is not a possession to do as we like with. Yet many act as if it were; as if they were at liberty to be idle or to work, to employ their time and their powers in one way or in another, without giving account to any. Christians are summoned to take a different and a nobler view of this earthly existence.

I WHAT IS ENTRUSTED BY THE CREATOR.

1. Life itself; the successive years and stages of which it is composed.

2. Its advantages; both the capacities and endowments which are natural, and the education and associations which Providence has secured to us.

3. Its opportunities; both of acquiring good and of doing good. It is to be remembered that, strictly speaking, it is not for these, but for the use we make of them, that we are responsible. We are to bear in mind that, though we live, we do not live unto ourselves.

II HOW THE TRUST SHOULD BE DISCHARGED.

1. The motive and law of this discharge and fulfilment of trust we are to find in Christ. Our life will be lived aright, if its principle be grateful love to him who loved us; if his Spirit and example be our inspiration, if his glory and approval be our aim and hope.

2. The range within which this trust should be fulfilled is a wide one, including our fellow-men, for whom Christ died. In the household, in professional and business life, in the Church, in the nation, the Christian finds a sphere for consistent and unselfish service. The lessons of the parable of the talents may be appropriately studied in this connection.

III THAT THE TRUST INVOLVES RETRIBUTION. Christ is a Judge as well as a Lord.

Our life must be tested by his scrutinizing, searching eye, his just and faithful judgment. Fidelity will be rewarded, unfaithfulness will be condemned, by him. For the faithful, the unselfish, the benevolent, the serviceable, there is secured the blessed prospect of sharing "the joy of their Lord.

Individual responsibility.

Men are prone to pass judgment one upon another. It is a tendency against which we have all occasion to watch. For our habit is to be lenient to ourselves and severe towards others. A corrective to this tendency is to be found in the great fact that all are accountable to God. Remembering this, we shall not, except where the authoritative society, the ordinance of Heaven, requires it, be willing to pass sentence upon our fellow-men.

I THE FACT OF JUDGMENT. It is a fact to which conscience, and the constitution of human nature and human society, undeviatingly testify. Men sometimes strive to forget it, but seldom venture to deny it.

1. Judgment involves a Divine Judge. God will judge the world by Jesus Christ, a Judge qualified, both by his Divine knowledge and his human sympathy, for fulfilling this awful office.

2. Judgment involves an accountable moral nature on the part of those who are subjected to it. Man is so fashioned that it is just that he should be judged, He has knowledge of right and wrong, power of independent action arising from his voluntary nature, and the capacity to appreciate inducements to righteousness.

3. Judgment, always a fact, will in the future be explicit, pronounced, and manifested. Doubtless the Judge observes, approves, and censures every day; but there will be a period in which this shall be apparent. "The day will declare it!

II THE UNIVERSALITY OF JUDGMENT. Wherever is a moral nature, amenable to law, there responsibility exists, and there the judicial exercise of Divine authority shall take place. Babes, idiots, madmen, are not subject to moral accountability; but all beside according to light and privilege must appear for retribution before the bar of God. None is so high in this world as to be superior to justice; none is so low as to escape it. The omniscience of Deity cannot be deceived; the justice of Deity cannot be evaded.

III THE INDIVIDUALITY OF JUDGMENT.

1. Each shall stand alone at the bar; every one shall give account of himself. In this sense, "every man shall bear his own burden." For his own character, and for his own acts, shall each separate person be held responsible.

2. None shall escape responsibility by casting blame upon Providence, by pleading that he was not favourably circumstanced, that he was not one of "the elect.

3. Nor can any evade judgment by throwing the blame of his sin upon society. The influence of others makes human life a discipline, but it does not reduce it to irresponsible mechanism.

4. Nor can any escape by casting censure upon the Church. Whether or not professing Christians have done their duty by one another, the fact of individual responsibility remains unaffected.

APPLICATION.

1. TO all hearers of the gospel this fact is a reason for accepting the good tidings of reconciliation.

2. To all Christians it supplies a motive to watchfulness and diligence.

The influence of our lives upon others.

"None of us liveth to himself." The apostle, as we have seen, was here enforcing certain Christian duties, and he strengthened his exhortation by reminding his readers that they were not their own, but Christ"s. But the words are capable of a wider application.

I THE INFLUENCE WHICH ONE MAN MAY EXERCISE FOR GOOD. Many who would like to do good are sometimes disposed to say, "What use can I be in the world? What influence can my life have upon others? What good can I do to others? I am too young. I am too humble. I have no intellectual gifts. I have no opportunities such as some people have of exercising influence upon others." This is to underestimate the influence of the individual life. Whether we are conscious of it or not, the life of each of us, whether we are rich or poor, learned or unlearned, young or old, is exercising some influence upon others. It is not necessary that we should know another in order to exercise an influence upon him. Thousands of men are influenced by persons whom they never saw. The Reformation began at Cambridge University very early in the sixteenth century by Bilney, a solitary student, reading a Greek Testament with Latin translation and notes, which Erasmus had published. Bilney had never seen Erasmus, but the quiet work of Erasmus was the means of bringing Bilney to the knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus. Bilney, again, influenced Latimer, who was one of the fathers of the English Reformation, and who suffered martyrdom for the truth. Thus the Reformation in England may be largely traced to the quiet work of Erasmus as he sat at his desk, and used his vast learning and intellect to make the Word of God more familiar to the people of his time. A young American student, more than seventy years ago, happened to read a printed sermon which had fallen into his hands. The sermon was entitled "The Star in the East," by Dr. Claudius Buchanan, and described the progress of the gospel in India, and the evidence there afforded of its Divine power. That sermon, by a man whom he had never seen, fell into the young student"s soul like a spark into tinder, and in six months Adoniram Judson resolved to become a missionary to the heathen. That little printed sermon, preached in England, perhaps, with no apparent fruit, became, through God"s blessing, the beginning of the great work of American foreign missions. You may not be an Erasmus or a Claudius Buchanan. But God may have as great a work for you to do as he had for them. What an influence for good Christian parents may exercise upon their children, with far-reaching results to the world! The faithful sabbath-school teacher may leaven with gospel truth young minds that may yet control the destinies of a nation. Young women, by the power of their own Christian character, may change for the better the muddy current of many a godless life. The great matter is for every one of us to live near to God, to cultivate a Christ-like character, and then our life is sure to be a blessing. You must walk with God if you would have weight with men. Personal holiness is the key to personal influence for good.

II THE INFLUENCE WHICH ONE MAN MAY EXERCISE FOR EVIL, The wise man says, "One sinner destroyeth much good." Everyday experience will supply many illustrations of this truth. One bad man, one bad woman, will be a centre of corruption to the whole circle in which they move. One bad boy often corrupts a whole school. How terrible is the power of evil to propagate itself! How terrible is the guilt of those who have become the corrupters of others! The evil that we do has consequences far beyond the injury that we may do to ourselves. Unto a loving mother oft We all have sent, without a doubt, Full many a hard and careless word, That now we never can rub out; For cruel words cut deeper far Than diamond on the window-pane; And, oft recalled in after-years, They wound her o"er and o"er Again."so, in our daily walk and life, We write and do and say the thing We never can undo nor stay With any future sorrowing. We carve ourselves on beating hearts! Ah! then, how wise to pause and doubt, To blend with love and thought our words, Because we cannot rub them out!

The great poet of Scotland, Robert Burns, on his dying bed wished that he could have recalled some of the foolish things that he had written. But it was too late. Better far to leave the wrong undone than afterwards to regret the doing of it. "None of us liveth to himself," should be constantly before our minds as a restraining memory to keep us from evil, and an inspiring memory that will cheer us on to make the world better than we have found it. C.H.I

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

None of us - Christians, in the things we do. Liveth to himself - Is at his own disposal; doeth his own will.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

Living unto the Lord:

v. 7. For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.

v. 8. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.

v. 9. For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived that He might be Lord both of the dead and living.

v. 10. But why dost thou judge thy brother? Or why dost thou set at naught thy brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ.

v. 11. For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall confess to God.

v. 12. So, then, every one of us shall give account of himself to God.

The apostle here makes the application of the thought suggested in the first verses of the chapter, basing it upon a larger truth of which it is a part. The mind of the Christian, whether he partakes of certain foods or not, whether he observes certain days or not, is always directed to the Lord, because the whole life of the Christian, as well as his death, is devoted and consecrated to the Lord. Since his soul and body, his thoughts and acts, are dedicated to the Lord, therefore the believer will naturally think of His honor first in all things. For none of us lives unto himself, and none dies unto himself; if, then, we live, to the Lord we live, and if we die, to the Lord we die, vv. 7-8. No Christian considers himself his own master, to do with his gifts, abilities, and time what he pleases, according to his own will or for his own ends. In the service and for the honor of the Lord the whole life of the Christians is spent. And when they die, they willingly follow the call of the Lord; they cheerfully entrust their souls to the hands of their heavenly Father and their Savior Jesus Christ; they are glad to leave this world and come to Him, commending everything to His gracious will. And this behavior on our part with reference to the Lord is based upon the fact that we are the Lord’s, His precious possession, whether we are still alive in this world, or whether we are leaving this world to be forever with Him. We are Christ’s, because He has paid the ransom for our redemption. And therefore throughout life and beyond the grave we are His own, in all eternity. "In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me!" For this we have the guarantee of His death and resurrection: For to this end Christ died and returned to life, in order to be the Lord both over the dead and over the living, v. 9. It was the definite intention of the Lord, and this intention has been fully realized, that He might become our Lord in life and death, and we His own. Through His death Christ entered into life and thus attained to the glorious station which is the crown of His redemptive work; He has earned the right to be our Lord. As the living, exalted Christ He has, through His Word and Spirit, claimed us as His own in faith, not only in life, but beyond death, when we shall live and reign with Him in all eternity. But if we serve the Lord and belong to the Lord whether we are alive or whether we are dead, then surely the smaller contrast between eating and not eating cannot come into consideration. It should rather be an easy matter for Christians, in their fraternal relations, to overlook such unimportant matters in true charity.

And so the apostle returns to his first warning: But thou, utterly insignificant beside the Lord, why dost thou judge and condemn thy brother? In view of our common responsibility to Him and the fact that we are all one in Him, how dare we judge each other? Or thou also, the weaker, why despisest thou thy brother? It is altogether inconsistent with the brotherhood of the believers to let a carping and criticizing attitude mar the relationship. It is a practice not only out of harmony with the spirit of Christ that lives in the believers, but also very dangerous: For we must all stand before the judgment-seat of God. How will anyone dare to anticipate the prerogative which belongs to Christ and God only, namely, to pass sentence upon a brother? Through Christ God will judge the world; the judgment-seat of Christ is that of God, 2Co 5:10; Joh 5:22. Therefore we must refrain from interfering with the work which is peculiarly His, especially since we shall be equal before His throne of judgment, as the prophet writes, Isa 45:23: As I live, says the Lord, to Me shall every knee be bent, and every tongue shall confess to God, shall recognize His authority as God, the supreme Ruler and Judge. Note that, according to the teaching of St. Paul, Jesus Christ is God. From this it follows for the Christians: Therefore now every one of us must give an account of himself to God, v. 12. Every one, without exception, every one for his own person, will be called upon to answer for his works; therefore we should await His decision and not presume to act the part of judges over our brethren. He that always keeps this fact before his eyes will very easily conquer the desire to carp and criticize.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Here our apostle proves what he had before asserted, that Christians in their particular actions have a special regard to the Lord and his honour, because they devote themselves, living and dying, to the service of him, and his glory: None of us, Christians, lives unto himself, but we spend our lives in his service; neither do we die unto ourselves, nor when we please, but when he appoints: therefore living or dying we are his.

From the words, absolutely considered, we may learn, That the best evidence we can have that we are Christ’s servants, is this, when we make our aim and scope, our design and care, to live and to die unto Christ our Lord, and not unto ourselves.

Question "But when may we be said to live unto the Lord, and to die unto the Lord?"

Answer When we do not frame our lives after our own wills, but according to the word and will of God, making that the rule and ground of all our actions; when the great end why we desire life, is to do service for Christ on earth, and to be fitted by him for the fruition of him in heaven.

Finally, then we live and die unto the Lord, when we are willing to be at the disposal of God, both for life and death; and this as to time, manner, and means; yea, all circumstances whatsoever, both of life and death. When a man is willing to lay down his life for the Lord, or at the call of the Lord, it is a certain evidence that he liveth and dieth to the Lord.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

7. “For no one of us liveth to himself and no one of us dieth to himself; if indeed we may live, let us live to the Lord, and if we may die we die to the Lord.

William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For none of us liveth to himself, and none dieth to himself .

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

7. For none of us liveth to himself. No Christian lives to please himself, but with the conscious aim of pleasing the Lord.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

For none of us lives for himself

Here "lives for himself" means to live only to please oneself. AT: "None of us should live merely to please ourselves" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

none dies for himself

This means one's death affects other people. AT: "none of us should think that when we die, it affects only us" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

us ... we

Paul is including his readers. (See: Inclusive "We")

translationWords

life

die

lord

Christ

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

7. οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἡμῶν κ.τ.λ. None of us Christians. As Christians we all recognise our subordination, in living and in dying, to the one Lord. It must be assumed then that the particular rules a man makes for himself are made with that reference, and must be treated with respect by others accordingly.

ἑαυτῷ, for his own ends, with regard to himself (not by himself); as contrasted with the Lord’s ends: the assertion of course involves the supposition that the Christian is living up to his calling.

ἀποθνήσκει. The service of the Lord is not exhausted by the life of the servant; it is regarded and furthered in his death also. The decision of time and manner of death, just as the regulation of the details of life, therefore lies with the Lord not with the servant; cf. Php 1:21 f.; cf. Lid.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

7.] This verse illustrates the κυρίῳ of the former, and at the same time sets in a still plainer light than before, that both parties, the eater and the abstainer, are servants of another, even Christ.

ἑαυτῷ and κυρίῳ are datives commodi: ζῇν and ἀποθνήσκειν represent the whole sum of our course on earth.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

7-12. St. Paul proceeds to develop more fully, and as a general rule of life, the thought suggested in ver. 6. To God we are responsible whether we live or die; before His judgement-seat we shall appear; therefore we must live as men who are to give account of our lives to Him and not to one another.

7. οὐδεῖς γὰρ … ἀποθνήσκει. In life and in death we are not isolated, or solitary, or responsible only to ourselves. It is not by our own act we were created, nor is our death a matter that concerns us alone.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

To himself. But unto Christ. See ver. 8. Hence the meaning "a Christian should live for others," so often drawn from these words, is not the teaching of the passage.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Vv. 7, 8. “For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For, whether we live, we live unto the Lord; whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.”

In everything that concerns the active use of life (such as the enjoyment of a kind of food), as well as in everything connected with the wasting of it, of which death is the termination (such as abstinence), the Christian depends not on his own will, but on the Lord’s. Paul does not mean to say thereby how we ought to act. For in that case the following verse would require to be connected with this one by therefore, and not by for. It is a fact which he expresses; he supposes it realized in the life of his readers. The truth of this supposition follows from the meaning of the word ἡμῶν, us, us believers. Faith, if it is real, implies this consequence. Once we are believers, the current of life with all it embraces, and the current of death with all that accelerates it, tend no longer self-ward, as in our natural existence. Consequently we cannot be called by men to give account of our conduct, though it may differ from theirs.

Frédéric Louis Godet — Commentaries on Luke, John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1870s–1890s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.