There is a state brethren, when we recognize God, but do not love God in Christ.  It is that state when we admire what is excellent, but are not able to perform it.  It is a state when the love of good comes to nothing, dying away in a mere desire.  That is the state of nature, when we are under the law, and not converted to the love of Christ.  And then there is another state, when God writes His law upon our hearts by love instead of fear.  The one state is this, “I cannot do the things that I would”—­the other state is this, “I will walk at liberty; for I seek Thy commandments.”

Just so far therefore, as a Christian is led by the Spirit, he is a conqueror.  A Christian in full possession of his privileges is a man whose very step ought to have in it all the elasticity of triumph, and whose very look ought to have in it all the brightness of victory.  And just so far as a Christian suffers sin to struggle in him and overcome his resolutions, just so far he is under the law.  And that is the key to the whole doctrine of the New Testament.  From first to last the great truth put forward is—­The law can neither save you nor sanctify you.  The gospel can do both; for it is rightly and emphatically called the perfect law of liberty.

We proceed to-day to a further illustration of this subject—­of Christian victory.  In the verses which I have read out, the Apostle has evidently the same subject in his mind:  slavery through the law:  victory through the gospel.  “The strength of sin,” he says, “is the law.”  God giveth us the victory through Christ.  And when we are familiar with St. Paul’s trains of thinking, we find this idea coming in perpetually.  It runs like a coloured thread through embroidery, appearing on the upper surface every now and then in a different shape—­a leaf, it may be, or a flower; but the same thread still, if you only trace it back with your finger.  And this was the golden recurring thread in the mind of Paul.  Restraint and law cannot check sin; they only gall it and make it struggle and rebel.  The love of God in Christ, that, and only that can give man the victory.

But in this passage the idea of victory is brought to bear upon the most terrible of all a Christian’s enemies.  It is faith here conquering in death.  And the apostle brings together all the believer’s antagonists—­the law’s power, sin, and death the chief antagonist of all; and then, as it were on a conqueror’s battle field, shouts over them the hymn of triumph—­“Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  We shall take up these two points to dwell upon.

    I. The awfulness which hangs round the dying hour. 
   II.  Faith conquering in death.