In allusion to the white garments with which the primitive converts having first laid aside their heathen vestments, were wont to be arrayed, St. Paul exhorts the Colossians to “put off the old man with his deeds, and to put on the new man.” Christians should no more dishonour God and disgrace religion by any of the vices and passions of their natural state, than a courtier should insult his prince by appearing before him in squalid and ragged attire. But this is not enough--this is negative merely. The Christian must also actually array himself in the white and becoming dress of his new character and relation; as a courtier would not only abstain from insulting his prince by wearing defiled and mean garments, but would also be studious to attire himself, when approaching his presence, with the suitable and ornamental dress which he knew was required. (Bishop D. Wilson.)
Which is being renewed.--Divine creation is not a mere mechanical work. It is wholly different from all work of ours. The builder builds a house, and when it is built he has done with it, and may never see it again; still the house stands. An artist paints his picture; it passes from the easel, it is hung in the gallery; he has done with it; he does not stand there day by day, with brush and palette, keeping the yellows brilliant, and the purples rich, and the browns mellow. A poet writes his verses, prints them, and he has done with them. The pathos, beauty, music remain; they touch the heart, charm the ear, kindle the imagination of millions in many ages and lands long after his own heart has ceased to throb, and the fire of his own genius is quenched. This is not the kind of relation between God and His creatures. He transcends the universe, but is immanent in it; it only exists as long as He sustains it. If He were to let it go it would pass into chaos--into nothing. Its enduring forces are the witnesses of His eternal power. The universe, this vast temple which God has made for Himself, would not stand if the Builder were to leave it; its foundations would shake, its walls be rent, it would sink in ruins. The glory of the mountain, lake, and river would not remain like the artist’s picture, if the Divine Artist were to leave it, every outline would lose its firmness and grace, every colour its softness or its strength, and the canvas would forget the beauty which had covered it. The revelation of thought which God has given in all created things would not remain if He, the great Teacher and Poet, ceased to live or ceased to speak; the great poem would perish, it remains only as long as living inspiration is in it. God creates, and, as we are accustomed to say, sustains. But the word is inadequate; it suggests too mechanical and external a relation between God and what He has made. His action might almost be described as a continuous creation. His power is within every created thing, active, persistent, or what He has created would cease to be. His thought is within every created thing, determining, maintaining its form, the characteristic mode of its existence. The sun rises over sea and land, and creates the day; but the sun renews the day from moment to moment, or the day would pass back into night. So were it not for the great power of God ever active, all things would cease to be. The new man was created by Him; day by day the new man is kept new by the fresh and continuous activity of the same power that brought it into being. Every moment, in a true sense, we are born again, just as the stream has the continuous birth from the mountain, and the light from the sun; every moment we are arising anew from the dead, every moment there passes into us afresh the energy of the creative power; we are being renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created us,And, therefore, as we begin to live in answer to our faith, so we continue to live in answer to our faith. We never stand apart and alone. Yesterday’s inspiration gives us no light to-day; the power of the Holy Ghost that was active in us yesterday is unavailing for to-day’s righteousness. And this new life is also a life of continuous prayer. What is the real meaning of indisposition to prayer? It means that the spirit of independence is mastering us, and for us independence means death. We are living only as God lives in us. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)
The Image of God restored to men
I. Man was created in the image of God. Righteous as God was righteous he saw God in his own nature; other intelligent creatures saw God in him; and God in His offspring saw Himself.
2. The image of God is now defaced. The substance remains, but its glorious attributes are gone. The form abides but the glorious features are not there.
3. To be right and blessed men must recover this image. Without likeness to God we are unable to appreciate His revelations, and incapable of filial intercourse.
4. By his own power or with the assistance of his fellows, no man can recover it. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh,” therefore he must be “born not of blood,” etc., “but of God.”
I. God has made provision for the renewal of his image in man.
1. This provision consists in--
(1) The atonement which justifies God’s interposition for man’s regeneration. If without a sacrifice God had restored man, the idea of misfortune, not guilt, would have been associated with man’s fallen state. But now sin appears exceeding sinful.
(2) The living Mediator is the way for man to God--as the source of life and light.
(3) The testimony of God’s Word informs men of the atonement and Mediator. How can they avail themselves of what they have not heard?
(4) The Holy Spirit so acts upon the heart as to produce sympathy with the testimony of the gospel; and under His influence men believe God’s Word and are born again.
2. There is provision:the recovery of God’s image is possible. The aged cannot become young, the diseased healthful, the mutilated whole; but man may be renewed. Nature illustrates this. Trees shed their leaves in autumn, and remain in winter as though dead. In the spring the sap rises and circulates, the branches extend, and the foliage returns. The plumage of the bird loses its vigour and gloss, but moulting recovers strength andrestores beauty. The human body is exhausted through the waste of its functional operations, and for its renewal we have provision in feed and sleep. And for the soul there is as real a provision. Let none despair. There is balm in Gilead, etc.
3. This provision is of God. He first thought of making it, not man; and He has carried out this design.
(1) The creative power of God is unlimited. “The things which are impossible with men,” etc.
(2) Power connected with malevolence is a fearful combination, but how changed the aspect of power when the hand and arm of love. What benevolence is here. “Behold what manner of love,” etc.
This proves--
(1) That God is faultless concerning the entrance of evil.
(2) That He has no complacency in the evil of men.
(3) That he has no pleasure in the death either of holiness or joy.
(4) That He delights in mercy.
4. There is but one provision. If men could have restored themselves or each other, God would not have made provision. As you cannot respire by the light, nor see by the air, but vice versa, so you cannot be regenerated by intellectual or social education.
II. Men are, through the Divine provision, actually regenerated into the image of God.
1. Its sphere.
(1) Not the body, although regeneration does effect salutary changes here. Where vice has reigned, regeneration arrests disease and restores health. Where passions have been dominant, the countenance is changed. It also affects temporal circumstances by improving habits.
(2) The soul is its true seat, and the change consists in the leading forth Godwards of all its powers, and the awakening of all its susceptibilities.
(a) A renewed man thinks, and his knowledge is of God and Christ.
(b) He feels, and his affections are led away from the unlawful and are fixed on the good.
(c) His conscience is rectified and made sensitive, and His will and actions are brought under its control.
(d) Over the world he is a conqueror.
(e) He is made like Christ, and through Christ like God.
2. Its nature.
(1) It is radical and general. It penetrates to the core of the soul, and spreads itself over the entire surface. The likeness of a statue to its subject is merely on the face of the marble; as you get below you reach the unlike.
(2) Its perfection is a work of time. A man is born again so soon as he believes in Christ; but into the likeness of God he grows up. Conclusion:Such changes are ejected, and cannot be questioned. Joh_1:13, Jam_1:13, and 1Pe_1:23 hold good to-day everywhere.
1. When the provision of God’s mercy for the regeneration of the race is unknown, no such change is observed to take place.
2. When regeneration does take place, the remedial dispensation of the gospel is acknowledged as the means. (S. Martin.)
Religious affections arise from spiritual enlightenment
In order to have the love of Divine things, in the exercise of which religion consists, the soul must be spiritually enlightened so as to apprehend them.
I. The Scriptures teach that gracious affections arise from spiritual understanding (1Jn_4:7; Php_1:9; Rom_10:2; Psa_93:3-4; Joh_6:45; Luk_11:52).
1. Affections which arise from external impressions on the imagination are not gracious.
2. The same is true of those which are awakened by texts of Scripture which come to the mind without carrying any instruction in them. When Christ makes the Scriptures a means of the heart burning with gracious affections, it is by opening tile Scriptures to men’s understandings (Luk_24:32).
3. Affections that have their ground in bodily sensation, freedom of speech in prayer, aptness of thought, and the like, are not derived from spiritual instruction. Hence the affection is not gracious, unless the light in the understanding, which is its origin, be spiritual. There is, therefore, a “spiritual, supernatural understanding of Divine things that is peculiar to the saints, and which those who are not saints know nothing of” (1Co_2:14; 1Jn_3:6).
II. This spiritual enlightenment consists in “a sense of the heart of the supreme beauty and sweetness of theholiness or moral perfection of Divine things, together with all that discerning and knowledge of the things of religion that depends upon and flows from such a sense.”
1. There is tans a difference between speculative knowledge and that which is experimental (Rom_2:20; 2Co_2:14).
2. He is led by the Spirit who is first instructed in his duty, and then powerfully inclined to comply with such Divine instruction.
III. some conclusions.
1. This spiritual sense will enable the soul to determine what actions are right and becoming to Christians more readily than the greatest abilities without it.
2. This sense will be distinguished from forms of enthusiasm and supposed discoveries of truth and communications other than those which the Scriptures have always contained.
3. Satan and evil spirits have power to tempt us through the imagination. We need to guard against vain imaginations.
4. We need to distinguish “between lively imaginations that spring from strong affections, and strong affections that arise from lively imaginations.” What is external and natural in its origin cannot be spiritual and gracious. (L. O. Thompson.)
