Q. 19.-"Will you please explain Gal. 6:8? How can we sow to the Spirit and reap life everlasting, since everlasting life is the gift of God ?"

Ans.-You have the two thoughts brought together in the last verses of Rom. 6::"Ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life ; for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord." Here what is the end of a holy course is none the less the gift of God. It is only its being the latter indeed could secure its being the former, for who could demand it as "wages"? So it is "they that have done good" that come forth to the "resurrection of life" (Jno. 5:29). Scripture is full of such things. God has ordained for us the end, and thus there is no uncertainty about it; but in grace also He has ordained the way by which we should reach it.

But eternal life is not merely an end in the future; it is also a thing existing now in the believer,-"eternal life abiding in him" (i Jno. 3:15). We go into it as a condition by and by, but it is in us already as born of God.