SERMON XV. THE LIFE OF GOD
Ephesians iv. 17, 18. That ye walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.
You heard these words read in the Epistle for to-day. I cannot expect that you all understood them. It is no shame to you that you did not. Some of them are long and hard Latin words. Some of them, though they are plain English enough, are hard to understand because they have to do with deep matters, which can only be understood by the help of God’s Spirit. And even with the help of God’s Spirit we cannot any of us expect to understand all which they mean: we cannot expect to be as wise as St. Paul; for we must be as good as St. Paul before we can be as wise about goodness as he was. I do not pretend to understand all the text myself: no, not half, nor a tenth part of what it very likely means. But I do seem to myself to understand a little about it, by the help and blessing of God; and what little of it I do understand, I will try to make you understand also.
For the words in the text belong to you as much as to me, or to St. Paul himself. What is true for one man, is true for every man. What is right for one man, is right for every man. What God promises for one man, He promises to every man. Man or woman, black or white, rich or poor, scholar or unlearned, there is no respect of persons with Him. ‘In Christ Jesus,’ says St. Paul, ‘there is neither male nor female, slave nor freeman, Jew who fancies that God’s promises belong to him alone, or Gentile who knows nothing about them, clever learned Greek, or stupid ignorant Barbarian.’
It is enough for God that we are all men and women bearing the flesh, and blood, and human nature which His Son Jesus Christ wore on earth. If we are baptized, we belong to Him: if we are not baptized, we ought to be; for we belong to Him just as much. Every man may be baptized; every man may be regenerate; God calls all to His grace and adoption and holy baptism, which is the sign and seal of His adoption; and therefore, what is right for the regenerate baptized man, is right for the unregenerate unbaptized man; for the Christian and for the heathen there is but one way, one duty, one life for both, and that is the life of God, of which St. Paul speaks in the text.
Now of this life of God I will speak hereafter; but I mention it now, because it is the thing to which I wish to bring your thoughts before the end of the sermon.
But first, let us see what St. Paul means, when he talks about the Gentiles in his day. For that also has to do with us. I said that every man, Christian or heathen, has the same duty, and is bound to do the same right; every man, Christian or heathen, if he sins, breaks his duty in the same way, and does the same wrong. There is but one righteousness, the life of God; there is but one sin, and that is being alienated from the life of God. One man may commit different sorts of sins from another; one may lie, another may steal: one may be proud, another may be covetous: but all these different sins come from the same root of sin; they are all flowers of the same plant. And St. Paul tells us what that one root of sin, what that same Devil’s plant, is, which produces all sin in Christian or Heathen, in Churchman or Dissenter, in man or woman—the one disease, from which has come all the sin which ever was done by man, woman, or child since the world was made.
Now, what is this one disease, to which every man, you and I, are all liable? Why it is that we are every one of us worse than we ought to be, worse than we know how to be, and, strangest of all, worse than we wish and like to be.
Just as far as we are like the heathen of old, we shall be worse than we know how to be. For we are all ready enough to turn heathens again, at any moment, my friends; and the best Christian in this church knows best that what I say is true; that he is beset by the very same temptations which ruined the old heathens, and that if he gave way to them a moment they would ruin him likewise. For what does St. Paul say was the matter with the old heathens?
First he says, ‘Their understanding was darkened.’ But what part of it? What was it that they had got dark about and could not understand? For in some matters they were as clever as we, and cleverer. What part of their understanding was it which was darkened? St. Paul tells us in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. It was their hearts—their reason, as we should say. It was about God, and the life of God, that they were dark. They had not been always dark about God, but they were darkened; they grew more and more dark about Him, generation after generation; they gave themselves up more and more to their corrupt and fallen nature, and so the children grew worse than their fathers, and their children again worse than them, till they had lost all notion of what God was like. For from the very first all heathens have had some notion of what God is like, and have had a notion also, which none but God could have given them, that men ought to be like God. God taught, or if I may so speak, tried to teach, the heathen, from the very first. If God had not taught them, they would not have been to blame for knowing nothing of God. For as Job says, ‘Can man by searching find out God?’ Surely not; God must teach us about Himself. Never forget that man cannot find God; God must show Himself to man of His own free grace and will. God must reveal and unveil Himself to us, or we shall never even fancy that there is a God. And God did so to the heathen. Even before the Flood, God’s Spirit strove with man; and after the Flood we read how the Lord, Jesus Christ the Son of God, revealed Himself in many different ways to heathens. To Pharaoh, king of Egypt, in Abraham’s times; and again to Abimelech, king of Gerar; and again to Pharaoh and his servants, in Joseph’s time; and to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and to Cyrus, king of Persia; and no doubt to thousands more. Indeed, no man, heathen or Christian, ever thought a single true thought, or felt a single right feeling, about God or man, or man’s duty to God and his neighbour, unless God revealed it to him (whether or not He also revealed Himself to the man and showed him who it was who was putting the right thought into his mind): for every right thought and feeling about God, and goodness, and duty, are the very voice of God Himself, the word of God whereof St. John speaks, and Moses and the prophets speak, speaking to the heart of sinful man, to enlighten and to teach him. And therefore, St. Paul says, the sinful heathen were without excuse, because, he says, ‘that which may be known of God is manifest, that is plain, among them, for God hath showed it to them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things which are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.’ ‘But these heathens,’ he says, ‘did not like to retain God in their knowledge; and when they knew God, did not glorify Him as God, and changed the glory of the Incorruptible God into the likeness of corruptible man, and beasts and creeping things.’ And so they were alienated from the life of God; that is, they became strangers to God’s life; they forgot what God’s life and character was like: or if they even did awake a moment, and recollect dimly what God was like, they hated that thought. They hated to think that God was what He was, and shut their eyes, and stopped their ears as fast as possible.
And what happened to them in the meantime? What was the fruit of their wilfully forgetting what God’s life was? St. Paul tells us that they fell into the most horrible sins—sins too dreadful and shameful to be spoken of; and that their common life, even when they did not run into such fearful evils, was profligate, fierce, and miserable. And yet St. Paul tells us all the while they knew the judgment of God, that those who do such things are worthy of death.
Now we know that St. Paul speaks truth, from the writings of heathens; for God raised up from time to time, even among the heathen Greeks and Romans, witnesses for Himself, to testify of Him and of His life, and to testify against the sins of the world, such men as Socrates and Plato among the Greeks, whose writings St. Paul knew thoroughly, and whom, I have no doubt, he had in his mind when he wrote his first chapter of Romans, and told the heathen that they were without excuse. And among the Romans, also, He raised up, in the same way, witnesses for Himself, such as Juvenal and Persius, and others, whom scholars know well. And to these men, heathens though they were, God certainly did teach a great deal about Himself, and gave them courage to rebuke the sins of kings and rich men, even at the danger of their lives; and to some of them he gave courage even to suffer martyrdom for the message which God had given them, and which their neighbours hated to hear. And this was the message which God sent by them to the heathen: that God was good and righteous, and that therefore His everlasting wrath must be awaiting sinners. They rebuked their heathen neighbours for those very same horrible crimes which St. Paul mentions; and then they said, as St. Paul does, ‘How you make your own sins worse by blasphemies against God! You sin yourselves, and then, to excuse yourselves, you invent fables and lies about God, and pretend that God is as wicked as you are, in order to drug your own consciences, by making God the pattern of your own wickedness.’
These men saw that man ought to be like God; and they saw that God was righteous and good; and they saw, therefore, that unrighteousness and sin must end in ruin and everlasting misery. So much God had taught them, but not much more; but to St. Paul he had taught more. Those wise and righteous heathen could show their sinful neighbours that sin was death, and that God was righteous. But they could not tell them how to rise out of the death of sin, into God’s life of righteousness. They could preach the terrors of the Law, but they did not know the good news of the Gospel, and therefore they did not succeed; they did not convert their neighbours to God. Then came St. Paul and preached to the very same people, and he did convert them to God; for he had good news for them, of things which prophets and kings had desired to see, and had not seen them, and to hear, and had not heard them.
For God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke to the fathers by the prophets, at last spoke to all men by a Son, His only-begotten Son, the exact likeness of His Father, the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person. He sent Him to be a man: very man of the substance of His mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the same time that He was Very God, of the substance of His Father, begotten before all worlds.
And so God, and the life of God, was manifested in the flesh and reasonable soul of a man; and from that time there is no doubt what the life of God is; for the life of God is the life of Jesus Christ. There is no doubt now what God is like, for God is like Jesus Christ. No one can now say, ‘I cannot see God, how then can you expect me to be like God?’ for He who has seen Jesus Christ, as His character stands in the Gospels, has seen God the Father. No one can say now, ‘How can a man be like God, and live a life like God’s life?’ for if any one of you say that, I can answer him: ‘A man can be like God; you can be like God; for there was once a man on earth, Jesus, the son of the Blessed Virgin, who was perfectly like God.’ And if you answer, ‘But He was like God, because He was God,’ I can say, ‘And that is the very reason why you can be like God also.’ If Jesus Christ had been only a man, you could no more become like Him than you can become clever because another man is clever, or strong because another man is strong: but because He was God The Son of God, He can give you, to make you like God, the same Holy Spirit which made Him like God; for that Holy Spirit proceeds from Him, the Son, as well as from the Father, and the Father has committed all power to the Son; and therefore that same Man Christ Jesus has power to change your heart, and renew it, and shape it to be like Him, and like His Father, by the power of His Spirit, that you may be like God as He was like God, and live the life of God which He lived; so that the Lord Jesus Christ, because He was a man like God, showed that all men can become like God; and because He was God, Very God of Very God, He is able to make all who come to Him men like Himself, men like God, and raise them up body and soul to the everlasting life of God, that He may be the firstborn among many brethren.
Now what is this everlasting life of God, which the Lord Jesus Christ lived perfectly, and which He can and will make every one of us live, in proportion as we give up our hearts and wills to Him, and ask Him to take charge of us, and shape us, and teach us? When we read that blessed story of Him who was born in a stable, and laid in a manger, who went about doing good, because God was with Him, who condescended of His own freewill to be mocked, and scourged, and spit upon, and crucified, that He might take away the sins of the whole world, who prayed for His murderers, and blest those who cursed Him—what sort of life does this life of God, which He lived, seem to us? Is it not a life of love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, patience, meekness? Surely it is; then that is the likeness of God. God is love. And the Lord Jesus’ life was a life of love—utter, perfect, untiring love. He did His Father’s will perfectly, because He loved men perfectly, and to the death. He died for those who hated Him, and so He showed forth to man the name and glory of God; for God is love. The name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is love; for love is justice and righteousness, as it is written, ‘Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.’ And God is perfect love, because He is perfect righteousness; and perfect righteousness, because He is perfect love; for His love and His justice are not two different things, two different parts of God, as some say, who fancy that God’s justice had to be satisfied in one way, and His love in another, and talk of God as if His justice fought against His love, and desired the death of a sinner, and then His love fought against His justice, and desired to save a sinner. No wonder that those who hold such doctrines go further still, and talk as if God the Father desired to destroy mankind, and would have done it if God the Son had not interposed, and suffered Himself instead; till they can fancy that they are Christians, and know God, while they use the hideous words of a certain hymn, which speaks of
‘The streaming drops of Jesu’s blood
Which calmed
the Father’s frowning face.’
May God deliver and preserve us and our children from all such blasphemous fables, which, like the fables of the old heathen, change the glory of the Incorruptible God into the likeness of a corruptible man, which deny the true faith, that God has neither parts nor passions, by talking of His love and His justice as two different things; which confound His persons by saying that the Son alone does what the Father and the Holy Spirit do also, while they divide His substance by making the will of the Son different from the will of the Father, and deny that such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost, all three one perfect Love, and one perfect Justice, because they are all three one God, and God is love, and love is righteousness.
Believe me, my friends, this is no mere question of words, which only has to do with scholars in their libraries; it is a question, the question of life and death for you, and me, and every living soul in this church,—Do we know what the life of God is? are we living it? or are we alienated from it, careless about it, disliking it?
For, as I said at the beginning of my sermon, we are all ready enough to turn heathens again; and if we grow to forget or dislike the life of God, we shall be heathen at heart. We may talk about Him with our lips, we may quarrel and curse each other about religious differences; but let us make as great a profession as we may, if we do not love the life of God we shall be heathen at heart, and we shall, sooner or later, fall into sin. The heathens fell into sin just in proportion as their hearts were turned away from the life of God, and so shall we. And how shall we know whether our hearts are turned away, or whether they are right with God? Thus: What are the fruits of God’s Spirit? what sort of life does the Spirit of God make man live? For the Spirit of God is God, and therefore the life of God is the life which God’s Spirit makes men live; and what is that? a life of love and righteousness.
The old heathens did not like such a life, therefore they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. They knew that man ought to be like God: and St. Paul says, they ought to have known what God was like; that He was Love; for St. Paul told them He left not Himself without witness, in that He sent them rain and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness. That was, in St. Paul’s eyes, God’s plainest witness of Himself—the sign that God was Love, making His sun shine on the just and on the unjust, and good to the unthankful and the evil—in one word, perfect, because He is perfect Love. But they preferred to be selfish, covetous, envious, revengeful, delighting to indulge themselves in filthy pleasures, to oppress and defraud each other. Do you?
For you can, I can, every baptized man can take his choice between the selfish life of the heathens and the loving life of God: we may either keep to the old pattern of man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; or we may put on the new pattern of man, which is after God’s likeness, and founded upon righteousness and truthful holiness.
Every baptized man may choose. For he is not only bound to live the life of God: every man, as the old heathen philosophers knew, is bound to live it: but more. The baptized man can live it: that is the good news of his baptism. You can live the life of God, for you know what the life of God is—it is the life of Jesus Christ. You can live the life of God, for the Spirit of God is with you, to cleanse your soul and life, day by day, till they are like the soul and life of Christ.
Then you will be, as the apostle says, ‘a partaker of a divine nature.’ Then—and it is an awful thing to say—a thing past hope, past belief, but I must say it—for it is in the Bible, it is the word of the Blessed Lord Himself, and of His beloved apostle, St. John: ‘If a man love Me, he will keep my commandments, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him.’ ‘And this is His commandment,’ says St. John, ‘That we should love one another.’ ‘God is Love, and he who dwelleth in Love dwelleth in God, and God in him.’
God is Love. As I told you just now, the heathens of old might have known that, if they had chosen to open their eyes and see. But they would not see. They were dark, cruel, and unloving, and therefore they fancied that God was dark, cruel, and unloving also. They did not love Love, and therefore they did not love God, for God is Love. And therefore they did not love loving: they did not enjoy loving; and so they lost the Spirit of God, which is the Spirit of Love. And therefore they did not love each other, but lived in hatred and suspicion, and selfishness, and darkness. They were but heathen. But if even they ought to have known that God was Love, how much more we? For we know of a deed of God’s love, such as those poor heathen never dreamed of. God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son to die for it. Then God showed what His eternal life was—a life of love: then God showed what our eternal life is—to know Him who is Love, and Jesus Christ, whom He sent to show forth His love: then God showed that it is the duty and in the power of every man to live the life of God, the life of Love; for He sent forth into the world His Spirit, the Spirit of Love, to fill with love the heart of every man and woman who sees that Love is the image of God, and longs to be loving, and therefore longs to be like God; as it is written, ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled:’ for righteousness is keeping Christ’s commandment, and Christ’s commandment is, that we love one another. And to those who long to do that, God’s Spirit will come to fill them with love; and where the Spirit of God is, there is also the Father, and there is also the Son; for God’s substance cannot be divided, as the Athanasian creed tells us (and blessed and cheering words they are); and he who hath the Holy Spirit of Love with him hath both the Father and the Son; as it is written: ‘If a man love Me, my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.’
And then, if we have God abiding with us, and filling us with His Eternal Life, what more do we need for life, or death, or eternity, or eternities of eternities? For we shall live in and with and by God, who can never die or change, an everlasting life of love, whereof St. Paul says, that though prophecies shall fail, and tongues shall cease, and knowledge shall vanish away, because all that we know now is but in part, and all that we see now is through a glass darkly, yet Love shall never fail, but abide for ever and ever.
SERMON XVI. GOD’S OFFSPRING
Galatians iv. 7. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
I say, writes St. Paul, in the epistle which you heard read just now, ‘that the heir, as long as he is a child, differs nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; but is under tutors and governors, until the time appointed by his father. Even so,’ he says, we, ‘when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: but when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth His Son made of a woman, made under a law, to redeem them that were under a law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.’
When we were children. He is not speaking of the Jews only; for these Galatians to whom he was writing were not Jews at all, any more than we are. He was speaking to men simply as men. He was speaking to the Galatians as we have a right to speak to all men.
Nor does he mean merely when we were children in age. The Greek word which he uses, means infants, people not come to years of discretion. Indeed, the word which he uses means very often a simpleton, an ignorant or foolish person; one who does not know who and what he is, what is his duty, or how to do it.
Now this, he says, was the state of men before Christ came; this is the state of all men by nature still; the state of all poor heathens, whether in England or in foreign countries.
They are children—that is, ignorant and unable to take care of themselves; because they do not know what they are. St. Paul tells us what they are. That they are all God’s offspring, though they know it not. He likens them to young children, who, though they are their father’s heirs, have no more liberty than slaves have; but are kept under tutors and masters, till they have arrived at years of discretion, and are fit to take their places as their father’s sons, and to go out into the world, and have the management of their own affairs, and a share in their father’s property, which they may use for themselves, instead of being merely fed and clothed by, and kept in subjection to him, whether they will or not. This is what he means by receiving the adoption of sons. He does not mean that we are not God’s children till we find out that we are God’s children. That is what some people say; but that is the very exact contrary to what St. Paul used to say. He told the heathen Athenians that they were God’s children. He put them in mind that one of their own heathen poets had told them so, and had said, ‘We are also God’s offspring.’ And so in this chapter he says, You were God’s children all along, though you did not know it. You were God’s heirs all along, although you differed nothing from slaves; for as long as you were in your heathen ignorance and foolishness, God had to treat you as His slaves, not as His children; and so you were in bondage under the elements of the world, till the fulness of time was come.
And, then, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under a law, to redeem those who were under a law—that is, all mankind. The Jews were keeping, or pretending to keep, Moses’ law, and trying to please God by that. The heathens were keeping all manner of old superstitious laws and customs about religion which their forefathers had handed down to them. But heathens, and indeed Jews too, at that time, all agreed in one thing. These laws and customs of theirs about religion all went upon the notion of their being God’s slaves, and not his children. They thought that God did not love them; that they must buy His favours. They thought religion meant a plan for making God love them.
Then appeared the love of God in Jesus Christ. As at this very Christmas time, the Son of God, Jesus Christ the Lord, in whose likeness man was made at the beginning, was born into the world, to redeem us and all mankind. He told them of their Heavenly Father; He preached to them the good news of the kingdom of God; that God had not forgotten them, did not hate them, would freely forgive them all that was past; and why? Because He was their Father, and loved them, and loved them so that He spared not His only begotten Son, but freely gave Him for them. And now God looks at us human beings, not as we are in ourselves, sinful and corrupt, but he looks at us in the light of Jesus Christ, who has taken our nature upon Him, and redeemed it, and raised it up again, so that God can look on it now without disgust, and henceforth no one need be ashamed of being a man; for to be a man is to be in the likeness of God. Man was created in the image and likeness of God, and who is the image and likeness of God but Jesus Christ? Therefore man was created at first in Jesus Christ, and now, as St. Paul says, he is created anew in Jesus Christ; and now to be a man is to partake of the same flesh and blood which the Lord Jesus Christ wore for us, when He was made very man of the substance of his mother, and that without spot of sin, to show that man need not be sinful, that man was meant by God to be holy and pure from sin, and that by the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ we, every one of us, can become pure from sin. This is the blessedness of Christmas-day. That one man, at least, has been born into the world spotless and free from sin, that He might be the firstborn of many brethren. This is the good news of Christmas-day. That now, in Christ’s light, and for Christ’s sake, our Father looks on us as His sons, and not His slaves.
Therefore is every child who comes into the world baptized freely into the name of God. Baptism is a sign and warrant that God loves that child; that God looks on it as His child, not for itself or its own sake, but because it belongs to Jesus Christ, who, by becoming a man, redeemed all mankind, and made them His property and His brothers. Therefore every child, when it is brought to be baptized, promises, by its godfathers and godmothers, repentance and faith, when it comes to years of understanding. It is not God’s slave, as the beasts are. It is God’s child. But God does not wish it to remain merely His child, under tutors and governors, forced to do what is right outwardly, and whether it likes or not. God wishes each of us to become His son, His grown-up and reasonable son. To know who we are;—to work in His kingdom for Him;—to guide and manage our own wills, and hearts, and lives in obedience to Him;—to claim and take our share as men of God of the inheritance which He has given us. And that we can only do by faith in Jesus Christ. We must trust in Him, our Lord, our King, our Saviour, our Pattern. We must confess that we are nothing in ourselves, that we owe all to Him. We must follow in his footsteps, giving up our wills to God’s will, doing not our own works, but the good works which God has prepared for us to walk in; and then we shall be truly confirmed; not mere children of God, under tutors, governors, schoolmasters and lawgivers, but free, reasonable, willing, hearty Christians, perfect men of God, the sons of God without rebuke.
Oh, my friends, will you claim your share in the Spirit of God, whom the Lord bought for us with His precious blood, that Spirit who was given you at your baptism, which may be daily renewed in you, if you pray for it; who will strengthen and lift you up to lead lives worthy of your high calling? Or will you, like Esau of old, despise your birthright, and neglect to pray that God’s Spirit may be renewed in you, and so lose more and more day by day the thought that God is your Father, and the love of holy and godlike things? Alas! take care that, like Esau, you hereafter find no room for repentance, though you seek it carefully with tears! It is a fearful thing to despise the mercies of the living God; and when you are called to be His sons, to fall back under the terrors of His law, in slavish fears and a guilty conscience, and remorse which cannot repent.
And do not give way to false humility, says St. Paul. Do not say, ‘This is too high an honour for us to claim.’ Do not say, ‘It seems too conceited and assuming for us miserable sinners to call ourselves sons of God. We shall please God better, and show ourselves more reverent to Him, by calling ourselves His slaves, and crouching and trembling before Him, as if we expected Him to strike us dead, and making all sorts of painful and tiresome religious observances, and vain repetitions of prayers, to win His favour;’ or by saying, ‘We dare not call ourselves God’s children yet; we are not spiritual enough; but when we have gone through all the necessary changes of heart, and frames, and feeling, and have been convinced of sin, and converted, and received the earnest, God’s Spirit, by which we cry, Abba, Father! then we shall have a right to call ourselves God’s children.’
Not so, says St. Paul, all through this very Epistle to the Galatians. That is not being reverent to God. It is insulting Him. For it is despising the honour which He has given you, and trying to get another honour of your own invention, by observances, and frames, and feelings of your own. Do not say, ‘When we have received the earnest of God’s Spirit, by which we can cry, Abba, Father! then we shall become God’s children;’ for it is just because you are God’s children already—just because you have been God’s children all along, that God has taught you to call Him Father. The Lord Jesus Christ told men that God was their Father. Not merely to the Apostles, but to poor, ignorant, sinful wretches, publicans and harlots, He spoke of their Father in heaven, who, because He is a perfect Father, sends His sun to shine on the evil and the good, and His rain to fall on the just and on the unjust. The Lord Jesus Christ taught men—all men, not merely saints and Apostles, but all men, when they prayed—to begin, ‘Our Father.’ He told them that that was the manner in which they were to pray, and therefore no other way of praying can we expect God to hear. No slavish, terrified, superstitious coaxing and flattering will help you with God. He has told you to call Him your Father; and if you speak to Him in any other way, you insult Him, and trample under foot the riches of His grace.
This is the good news which the Bible preaches. This is the witness of God’s Spirit, proclaiming that we are the sons of God; and, says St. Paul in another place, ‘our spirit witnesses’ to that glorious news as well. We feel, we know—why, we cannot tell, but we feel and know that we are the sons of God. When we are most calm, most humble, most free from ill-temper and self-conceit, most busy about our rightful work, then the feeling comes over us—I have a Father in heaven. And that feeling gives us a strength, a peace, a sure trust and hope, which no other thought can give. Yes, we are ready to say, I may be miserable and unfortunate, but the Great God of heaven and earth is my Father; and what can happen to me? I may be borne down with the remembrance of my great sins; I may find it almost too hard to fight against all my bad habits; but the Great God who made heaven and earth is my Father, and I am His son. He will forgive me for the past; He will help me to conquer for the future. If I do but remember that I am God’s son, and claim my Father’s promises, neither the world, nor the devil, nor my own sinful flesh, can ever prevail against me.
This thought, and the peace which it brings, St. Paul tells us is none of our own; we did not put it into our own hearts; from God it comes, that blessed thought, that He is our Father. We could never have found it out for ourselves. It is the Spirit of the Son of God, the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, which gives us courage to say, ‘Our Father which art in heaven,’ which makes us feel that those words are true, and must be true, and are worth all other words in the world put together—that God is our Father, and we his sons. Oh, my friends, believe earnestly this blessed news! the news of Christmas-day, that you are not God’s slaves, but his sons, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ;—joint-heirs with Christ! In what? Who can tell? But what an inheritance of glory and bliss that must be, which the Lord Jesus Christ Himself is to inherit with us—an inheritance such as eye hath not seen, and incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, preserved in heaven for us; an inheritance of all that is wise, loving, noble, holy, peaceful—all that can make us happy, all that can make us like God Himself. Oh, what can we expect, if we neglect so great salvation? What can we expect, if when the Great God of heaven and earth tells us that we are His children, we turn away and fall down, become like the brutes, and the savages, or worse, like the evil spirits who rebel against God, instead of growing up to become the sons of God, perfect even as our Father in heaven is perfect? May He keep us all from that great sin! May He awaken each and every one of you to know the glory and honour which Jesus Christ brought for you when He was born at Bethlehem—the glory and honour which was proclaimed to belong to you when you were christened at that font! May He awaken you to know that you are the sons of God, and to look up to Him with loving, trustful, obedient souls, saying from your hearts, morning and night ‘Our Father which art in heaven,’ and feeling that those words give you daily strength to conquer your sins, and feel assurance of hope that your Heavenly Father will help and prosper you, His family, every time you struggle to obey His commandments, and follow the example of His perfect and spotless Son, Jesus Christ the Lord!
SERMON XVII. DEATH IN LIFE
Romans viii. 12, 13. Brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
Does it seem strange to you that St. Paul should warn you, that you are not debtors to your own flesh? It is not strange, when you come to understand him; certainly not unnecessary: for as in his time, so now, most people do live as if they were debtors to their own flesh, as if their great duty, their one duty in life, was to please their own bodies, and brains, and tempers, and fancies, and feelings. Poor people have not much time to indulge their brains; and no time at all, happily for them, to indulge their fancies and feelings, as rich people do when they grow idle, and dainty, and luxurious. But still, too many of them live as if they were debtors to their own flesh; as if their own bodies and their own tempers were the masters of them, and ought to be their masters. Young men, for instance, how often they do things in secret of which it is a shame even to speak, just because it is pleasant. Young women, how often do they sell themselves and their own modesty, just for the pleasure of being flattered and courted, and of getting a few fine clothes. How often do men, just for the pleasure of drink, besot their souls and bodies, madden their tempers, neglect their families, make themselves every Saturday night, and often half the week, too, lower than the beasts which perish. And then, when a clergyman complains of them, they think him unreasonable; and by so thinking, show that he is right, and St. Paul right: for if I say to you, My dear young people (and I do say it), if you give way to filthy living and filthy talking, and to drunkenness, and to vanity about fine clothes, you will surely die—do you not say in your hearts, ‘How unreasonable: how hard on us! If we can enjoy ourselves a little, why should we not? It is our right, and do it we will; and if it is wrong, it ought not to be wrong.’ Why, what is that but saying, that you ought to do just what your body likes: that you are debtors to your flesh; and that your flesh, and not God’s law, is your master. So again, when people grow older, perhaps they are more prudent about bad living, and more careful of their money: but still they live after the flesh. One man sets his heart on making money, and cares for nothing but that; breaks God’s law for that, as if that was the thing to which he was a debtor, bound by some law which he could not avoid to scrape and scrape money together for ever. Another (and how often we see that) is a slave to his own pride and temper, which are just as much bred in his flesh: if he has been injured by any one, if he has taken a dislike against any one, he cannot forget and forgive: the man may be upright and kindly on many other points; prudent, too, and sober, and thoroughly master of himself on most matters; and yet you will find that when he gets on that one point, he is not master of himself; for his flesh is master of him: he may be a strong-minded, shrewd man upon most matters but just that one point: some old quarrel, or grudge, or suspicion, is, as we say, his weak point: and if you touch on that, the man’s eye will kindle, and his face redden, and his lip tremble, and he will show that he is not master of himself: but that he is over-mastered by his fleshly passion, by the suspiciousness, or revengefulness, or touchiness, which every dumb animal has as well as he, which is not part of his man’s nature, not part of God’s image in him, but which is like the beasts which perish.
Now, my friends, suppose I said to you, ‘If you give way to such tempers; if you give way to pride, suspicion, sullen spite, settled dislike of any human being, you will surely die;’ should you not, some of you, be inclined to think me very unreasonable, and to say in your hearts, ‘Have I not a right to be angry? Have I not a right to give a man as good as he brings?’ so confessing that I am right, after all, and that some of you think that you are debtors to your flesh, and its tempers, and do not see that you are meant to be masters, and not slaves, of your tempers and feelings.
Again. Among poor women, as well as among rich ones, as they grow older, how much gossiping, tale-bearing, slandering, there is, and that too among people who call themselves religious. Yes, I say slandering; I put that in too; for I am certain that where the first two grow, the third is not far off. If gossiping is the root, tale-bearing and harsh judgment is the stem, and plain lying and slandering, and bearing false witness against one’s neighbour, is the fruit.
Now I say, because St. Paul says it, ‘that those who do such things shall surely die.’ And do not some of you think me unreasonable in that, and say in your heart, ‘What! are we to be tongue-tied? Shall we not speak our minds?’ Be it so, my good women, only remember this: that as long as you say that, you confess that you are not masters of your tongues, but your tongues are masters of you, and that you freely confess you owe service to your tongue, and not to God. Do not therefore complain of me for saying the very same thing, namely, that you think you are debtors to your flesh—to the tongues in your mouths, and must needs do what those same little unruly members choose, of which St James has said, ‘The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity, and it sets on fire the whole course of nature, and is set on fire of hell.’ And again: ‘If any person among you seem to be religious, and bridles not his tongue, but deceives himself, that person’s religion is vain.’
Again:—and, my good women, you must not think me hard on you, for you know in your hearts that I am not hard on you; but I must speak a word on a sin which I am afraid is growing in this parish, and in too many parishes in England; and that is deceiving kind and charitable persons, in order to get more help from them. God knows the temptation must be sore to poor people at times. And yet you will surely find in the long run, that ‘honesty is the best policy.’ Deceit is always a losing game. A lie is sure to be found out; as the Lord Jesus Himself says, ‘There is nothing hid which shall not be made manifest;’ and what we do in secret, is sure, unless we repent and amend it, to be proclaimed on the housetop: and many a poor soul, in her haste and greediness to get much, ends by getting nothing at all. And if it were not so;—if you were able to deceive any human being out of the riches of the world: yet know, that a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things which he possesses. And know that if you will not believe that,—if you will fancy that your business is to get all you can for your mortal bodies, by fair means or foul,—if you will fancy that you are thus debtors to your own flesh, you will surely die: but if you, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live.
And by this time some of you are asking, ‘Live? Die? What does all this mean? When we die we shall die, good or bad; and in the meantime we shall live till we die. And you do not mean to tell us that we shall shorten our lives by our own tempers, or our tale-bearing, though we might, perhaps, by drunkenness?’
My friends, if such a question rises in your mind, be sure that it, too, is a hint that you think yourself a debtor to the flesh—to live according to the flesh. For tell me, tell yourselves fairly, is your flesh, your body, the part of yourself which you can see and handle, You?—You know that it is not. When a neighbour’s body dies, you say, perhaps, ‘He is dead,’ but you say it carelessly; and when one whom you know well, and love, dies,—when a parent, a wife, a child, dies, you feel very differently about them, even if you do not speak differently. You feel and know that he, the person whom you loved and understood, and felt with, and felt for, here on earth, is not dead at all; you feel (and in proportion as the friend you have lost was loving, and good, and full of feeling for you, you feel it all the more strongly) that your friend, or your child, or the wife of your bosom, is alive still—where you know not, but you feel they are alive; that they are very near you;—that they are thinking of you, watching you, caring for you,—perhaps grieving over you when you go wrong—perhaps rejoicing over you when you go right,—perhaps helping you, though you cannot see them, in some wonderful way. You know that only their mortal flesh is dead. That their mortal flesh was all you put into the grave; but that they themselves, their souls and spirits, which were their very and real selves, are alive for evermore; and you trust and hope to meet them when you die;—ay, to meet them body and soul too, at the last day, the very same persons whom you knew here on earth, though the flesh which they wore here in this life has crumbled into dust years and ages before.
Is not this true? Is not this a blessed life-giving thought—I had almost said the most blessed and life-giving thought man can have—that those whom we have loved and lost are not dead, but only gone before; that they live still to God and with God; that only their flesh has perished, and they themselves are alive for evermore?
Now believe me, my friends, as surely as a man’s flesh can die and be buried, while he himself, his soul, lives for ever, just so a man’s self, his soul, can die, while his flesh lives on upon earth. You do not think so, but the Bible thinks so. The Bible talks of men being dead in trespasses and sins, while their flesh and body is alive and walking this earth. It talks, too, of a worse state, of men twice dead; of men, who, after God has brought their souls to life, let those souls of theirs die down again within them, and rot away, as far as we can see, hopelessly and for ever. And what is it which kills a man’s soul within him on this side the grave, and makes him dead while he has a name to live? Sin, evil-doing, the disease of the soul, the death of the soul, yea, the death of the man himself. And what is sin but living according to the flesh, and not according to the spirit? What is sin but living as the dumb animals do, as if we were debtors to our own flesh, to fulfil its lusts, and to please our own appetites, fancies, and tempers, instead of remembering that we are debtors to God, who made us, and blesses us all day long;—debtors to our Lord Jesus Christ, who bought us with His own blood, that we might please Him and obey Him;—debtors to God’s Holy Spirit, who puts into our minds good desires;—debtors to our baptism vows, in which we were consecrated to God, that He, and not this flesh of ours, might be our Master for ever?
This is sin; to give way to those selfish and evil tempers, against which I warned you in the beginning of my sermon, and which, if any man indulges in them, will surely and steadily, bit by bit, kill that man’s soul within him, and leave the man dead in trespasses and sins, while his body walks this earth.
My friends, do not fancy these are merely farfetched words out of a book, made to sound difficult and terrible in order to frighten you. God forbid! When Scripture says this, it speaks a plain and simple truth, and one which I know to be a truth from experience. I speak that which I know, and testify that which I have seen. I have seen (and what sadder or more fearful sight?) dead men and dying walk this earth in flesh and blood; men busy enough, shrewd enough upon some points, priding themselves, perhaps, upon their cleverness and knowledge of the world, of whom all one could say was, The man is dead; the man is lost, unless God brings him to life again by His quickening Spirit: for goodness is dead in him; the powers of his soul are dead in him; the hope of being a better man is dead in him; all that God wishes to see him be and do, is dead; God’s likeness and glory in him is dead: he thinks himself wise, and he is a fool in God’s sight; for he sees not God’s law, which is the only wisdom: he thinks himself strong, but he is utterly weak and helpless; for he is the slave of his own tempers, the slave of his own foul lust, the slave of his own pride and vanity, the slave of his own covetousness. Oh, my friends, people are apt to be afraid of what they call seeing a ghost—that is, a spirit without a body: they fancy that it would be a very shocking thing to meet one; but as for me, I know a far more dreadful sight; and that is, a careless and a hardened sinner—a body without a spirit. Which is uglier and ghastlier—a spirit without a body, or a body without a spirit? And yet such one meets, I dare not think how often.
What sadder sight, if you recollect that men need not be thus; that God hates seeing them thus; that they become thus, and die down in sin, in spite of God, with all heaven above, and God the Lord thereof, crying to them, Why wilt thou die? What sadder sight? How many have I seen, living, to all intents and purposes, as if they had no souls; as if there were no God, no Law of God, no Right, no Wrong; caring for nothing, perhaps, but drink and bad women; or caring for nothing but scraping together a little more money than their neighbours; or caring for nothing but dress, and vanity, and gossiping, and tale-bearing; and yet, when one came to know them, one saw that that was not what God intended them to be; that He had given them hearts which they had hardened, good feelings which they had crushed, sound brains which they had left idle, till one was ready to weep over them, as over something beautiful and noble ruined and lost; and looked on them as one would on a grand tree struck by lightning, decayed and dead, useless, and only fit to be burned, with just enough of its proper shape to show what a tree it ought to have been. And so it is with men and women: hardly a day passes but one sees some one of whom one says, with a sigh, ‘What a worthy, loveable, useful person, that might have been! what a blessing to himself and all around him! and now, by following his fallen nature, and indulging it, he is neither worthy, nor loveable, nor useful; neither a blessing to himself nor to any human being: he might have been good for so much, and now he is good for nothing; for the spirit, the immortal soul which God gave him, is dead within him.’
My friends, I would not say this, unless I could say more. I would not say sad words, if I could not follow them up by joyful and hopeful ones. It is written, ‘If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die;’ but it is written also, ‘If ye, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.’ It is promised—promised, my friends, ‘Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.’
Through the Spirit, through God’s Spirit, every soul here can live, now and for ever. Through God’s Spirit, Christ not only can, but will, give you light. And that Spirit is near you, with you. Your baptism is the blessed sign, the everlasting pledge, that God’s Spirit is with you. Oh, believe that, and take heart. I will not say, you do not know how much good there is in you; for in us dwells no good thing, and every good thought and feeling comes only from the Spirit of God: but I will say boldly to every one of you, you do not know how much good there may be in you, if you will listen to those good thoughts of God’s Spirit; you do not know how wise, how right, how strong, how happy, how useful, you may become; you do not know what a blessing each of you may become to yourselves, and to all around you. Only make up your mind to live by God’s law; only make up your mind, in all things, small and great, to go God’s way, and not your own. Only make up your mind to listen, not to your own flesh, temper, and brain, which say this and that is pleasant, but to listen to God’s Spirit, which says this is right, and that is wrong: this is your duty, do it. Search out your own besetting sins; and if you cannot find them out for yourself, ask God to show you them; ask Him to give you truth in the inward parts, and make you to understand wisdom in the secret places of your heart. Pray God’s Spirit to quicken your soul, and bring it to life, that it may see and love what is good, and see and hate what is wrong; and instead of being most hard on your neighbour’s sin, to which you are not tempted, be most hard on your own sin, on the sin to which you are most tempted, whatsoever that may be. You have your besetting sin, doubt it not; every one has. I know that I have. I know that I have inclinations, tempers, longings, to which if I gave way, my soul would rot and die within me, and make me a curse to myself, and you, and every one I came near; and all I can do is to pray God’s Spirit to help me to fight those besetting sins of mine, and crush them, and stamp them down, whenever they rise and try to master me, and make me live after the flesh. It is a hard fight; and may God forgive me, for I fight it ill enough: but it is my only hope for my soul’s life, my only hope of remaining a man worth being called a man, or doing my duty at all by myself and you, and all mankind. And it is your only hope, too. Pray for God’s Spirit, God’s strength, God’s life, to give your souls life, day by day, that you may fight against your sins, whatsoever they are, lest they kill your souls, long before disease and old age kill your bodies. Make up your minds to it. Make up your minds to mortify the deeds of the body; to say to your own bodies, tempers, longings, fancies, ‘I will not go your way: you shall go God’s way. I am not your debtor; I owe you nothing; I am God’s debtor, and owe Him everything, and I will pay Him honestly with the service of my body, soul, and spirit. I will do my duty, and you, my flesh, must and shall do it also, whether it is pleasant at first, or not:’ and be sure it will be pleasant at last, if not at first. Keep God always before your eyes. Ask yourself in every action, ‘What is right, what is my duty, what would God have me do?’ And so far from finding it unpleasant, you will find that you are saving yourself a thousand troubles, and sorrows, and petty anxieties which now torment you; you will find that in God’s presence is life, the only life worth having, and that at His right hand are pleasures for evermore. Oh, be sure, my friends, that in real happiness you will not lose, but gain without end. If to have a clear conscience, and a quiet mind; if to be free from anxiety and discontent, free from fear and shame; if to be loved, respected, looked up to, by all whose good word is worth having, and to know that God approves of you, that all day long God is with you, and you with God, that His loving and mighty arms are under you, that He has promised to keep you in all your ways, to prosper all you do, and reward you for ever,—if this be not happiness, my friends, what is?