9
9:14 Then - While he was at table. Marco 2:18; Luca 5:33.
9:15 The children of the bride chamber - The companions of the bridegroom. Mourn - Mourning and fasting usually go together.As if he had said, While I am with them, it is a festival time, a season of rejoicing, not mourning. But after I am gone, all my disciples likewise shall be in fastings often.
9:16 This is one reason, - It is not a proper time for them to fast. Another is, they are not ripe for it. New cloth - The words in the original properly signify cloth that hath not passed through the fuller's hands, and which is consequently much harsher than what has been washed and worn; and therefore yielding less than that, will tear away the edges to which it is sewed.
9:17 New - Fermenting wine will soon burst those bottles, the leather of which is almost worn out. The word properly means vessels made of goats' skins, wherein they formerly put wine, (and do in some countries to this day) to convey it from placeto place. Put new wine into new bottles - Give harsh doctrines to such as have strength to receive them.
5
5:17 There is a difference between grace and the gift.Grace is opposed to the offence; the gift, to death, being the gift of life.
5:18 Justification of life - Is that sentence of God, by which a sinner under sentence of death is adjudged to life.
5:19 As by the disobedience of one man many (that is, all men) were constituted sinners - Being then in the loins of their first parent, the common head and representative of them all. So by the obedience of one - By his obedience unto death; by his dying for us. Many - All that believe.Shall be constituted righteous - Justified, pardoned.
5:20 The law came in between - The offence and the free gift.That the offence might abound - That is, the consequence (not the design) of the law's coming in was, not the taking away of sin, but the increase of it. Yet where sin abounded, grace did much more abound - Not only in the remission of that sin which Adam brought on us, butof all our own; not only in remission of sins, but infusion of holiness; not only in deliverance from death, but admission to everlasting life, a far more noble and excellent life than that which we lost by Adam's fall.
5:21 That as sin had reigned - so grace also might reign - Which could not reign before the fall; before man had sinned. Through righteousness to eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord - Here is pointed out the source of all our blessings, the rich and free grace of God. The meritorious cause; not any works of righteousness of man, but the alone merits of our Lord Jesus Christ. The effect or end of all; not only pardon, but life; divine life, leading to glory.
6
6:1 The apostle here sets himself more fully to vindicate his doctrine from the consequence above suggested, Romani 3:7-8. He had then only in strong terms denied and renounced it: here he removes the very foundation thereof.
6:2 Dead to sin - Freed both from the guilt and from the power of it.