Two things are necessarily to be acknowledged to encourage endeavours after piety.
1. To be assured that God will not be wanting to afford the assistance of His grace and Spirit.
2. That by this assistance we are enabled to do our duty. There are two things which no wise man doth submit to his care or thought, namely, necessaries and impossibles. For things necessary, he needs not to charge himself with them, for they will be done of course; and for things impossible, it is a vain thing for him to undertake. We are not to consider ourselves to be in a state of impossibility, therefore we must suppose that God is with us by His grace and assistance; and while God is with us that we are able to do those things that He requires of us--to wash and make us clean, etc., which words are to be considered according to their form and according to their matter.
1. According to their form, they are an exhortation, and so it is not in vain that we are exhorted to duty.
2. In respect of their matter, they afford these two observations--
(1) That sin is in itself a thing of defilement and pollution.
(2) That religion is a motion of restoration.
Ill habits do strangely bias our faculties; but though they do this, yet they do not absolutely determine our faculties or sink them, for these faculties are of the essence of the soul. It is with much difficulty they are overcome Jer_13:23); but the faculty is free notwithstanding any habit acquired; otherwise it were impossible ever to recover any habitual sinner.
I. GOD DOTH PRIMARILY DESIRE THE GOOD OF ALL HIS CREATURES (1Ti_2:4; Isa_5:4).
II. GOD DOTH NOT DESIRE MAN’S SALVATION WITHOUT HIS RETURN. For it is impossible that any man should be happy in a way of obstinacy and rebellion against God,
III. GOD DOTH NOT DESIRE MAN’S RETURN WITHOUT HIS OWN CONSENT. For if He should desire this, He should desire that which cannot be: for being intelligent and voluntary agents, we cannot truly be said to do that which we do against our minds. For to a human act two things are necessary; that there be the judgment of reason in the understanding, and the choice of the will If the mind do not consent, it is not a free act; and if not done freely, and of choice, it cannot be an act of virtue; and if not an act of virtue, it cannot be of any moral consideration. It is no less an act of the will, though a man be at the first attempt unwilling and averse; yea, though he suffer great difficulty to bring himself to it. For this man hath brought himself to it by reason, consideration, and argument, and so his consent is the better grounded. Application--
1. We ought to be thankful to God, and to acknowledge Him for the gracious assistance that He doth afford unto us.
2. We ought to make use of and employ this Divine assistance, which is in the apostle’s language, not to receive the grace of God in vain (2Co_6:1). (B. Whichcote D. D.)
Moral ablution
I. THAT SIN CAN BE SEPARATED FROM MAN’S NATURE. Sin is no more a part of human nature than a stain is of a garment.
1. Human nature has existed without ever having been touched by sin. Christ through all His life could say, “The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me.”
2. Human nature does exist after having been cleansed from sin. It does so in heaven.
II. THAT SIN SHOULD BE SEPARATED FROM MAN’S NATURE. There are three obvious reasons for this command--
1. Because your pollution conceals the moral image of Himself which your Maker has impressed upon your nature. Sin is such a besmearment of the moral mirror of man’s being, that scarcely a Divine ray is seen reflected.
2. Because your pollution enfeebles your moral health. Physical pollution is inimical to physical health. Sin renders a man powerless for good.
3. Because your pollution injures society. (Homilist.)
Practical regeneration
The call is made to the class that are usually given up. Two questions come up in connection with this subject.
1. When a man is wrong in his life, is wicked on account of the strength of constitutional peculiarities, and is organised with such passion, such will, such temper, such pride and avarice, that that organisation compels as well as controls him, is it possible for him to change that organisation and its fruits?
2. Whatever may have been the proportions in which a man’s faculties are given to him, if he has been cast in the midst of temptations, is it in his power, if he be an average man, to break away, to assert his own sovereignty, and recover himself? Can a man control, first, himself inwardly, and second, himself outwardly? Did not Peter wrestle success fully with his constitutional organisation? There is an example which is still more remarkable in some respects. The account which Paul gives of himself is most striking. Here we have a precisionist, a narrow and intense bigot, a man whose conscience was logical, and who therefore followed his conscience without scruple and without the restraint of any meliorating principle. Not only was he man of the most malign feeling in the service of religion, but he was a man of the utmost firmness of purpose. Nothing could stop him on sea or on land. He was a man of the most sensitive pride. Now, turn to the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, and see what the fruit of Paul’s change was. It may be said to be a record of his experience. Then, as to the other question, Can men control their circumstances? If a man can overrule a constitutional peculiarity, how much easier can he control that which is not of himself, but is exterior to himself! The experiences of the Gospel for thousands of years show that men can be reclaimed from all forms of vice. Men can break through and rescue themselves from the power of wickedness when it takes on an external and social form. That is the voice of the Old Testament. Is it a false proclamation, based upon a false view of life and possibility? Preeminently it is the voice of the New Testament. The invisible things of God are more and mightier than the visible. If a man treats himself simply as a physical organisation, and believes in nothing but what he can see and handle, it may seem to him as though this world were simply a gigantic crushing machine, irresistible in its impulses, and as though the best way for him were to submit himself to it, and let it take him whither it will; but we are taught, and we believe that the whole heaven is full of powers which are mightier than any which are seen. (H. W. Beecher.)
Renewing forces are silent and gentle
Nature itself gives us an illustration of it. When the spring draws the sap out of the ground into the trees the actual force which is exerted is greater than that of all human machines put together. Never was there an engine built that could for one mingle moment compare with the development of actual physical power in an oak tree standing in a field, acre broad, every spring. Yet you see nothing and hear nothing. But it has been measured and estimated. There is in the silent influence of the seasons more power than in all the storms that ever swept over the earth since creation. The invisible forces of nature are mightier than the visible. Look into a household. The bustling husband who drives the children here and there, and will have order, has nothing but disorder; while the mother sits still, and loves, rules over every child in the family, and secures perfect obedience. The silence of love is mightier than all the physical or moral force of boisterous strength. Now, this truth, which we discern even in the lowest forms of matter, and which grows more and more striking as you ascend along the line of human society, meets the great declaration of the Divine Word, that God has given the Holy Spirit, and that this invisible and silent force in the universe is such that more are they that are for a man who wants to turn than are they that are against him. The whole heaven is God’s apparatus for helping men to unharness their faults, to lay aside their habits, to change mightily their whole internal economy, yea, to so revolutionise themselves that, whereas before the animal, the physical, was in the ascendency, now the angel, the spiritual, is. Is there, then, such an influence existing in every community? Yes, in every community. (H. W. Beecher.)
In regeneration man must cooperate with God’s Spirit
If men would have the help of the sun they must not sulk in caves; if men would set the sun to bringing forth vines and corn and other grains they must employ it according to the sun’s laws and methods. If they do this they shall have the benefit of its might. All the power that is in nature is mine if I but study natural law and obey it. Now, the invisible influences in the Divine nature, we are taught very abundantly in the Word of God, are to be sought as men seek the seasons. If the power that is in God is to come to the help of a man there should be at least as much seeking as men give to the laws of nature when they seek them. How do men attempt to renovate their spiritual nature? With what dalliance, what carelessness, what facile discouragement, what intermissions, what associations that neutralise or blur that which is bright in us do men seek to bring the Divine influence to bear upon their constitutional peculiarities! Are you proud? You know how to extract the roots of the mightiest tree that ever grew; you know how to attack it and draw it forth; and yet the influences by which a man may extract by the roots all the evil influences within him are a hundred times greater, if men had some conception of the necessity. A man can overmaster his pride. Paul did it. Can a man change his basilar passions so that they shall be held in abeyance? Certainly he can. Something can be done for every man by physiological methods. A man of violent temper, easily excited, an excessively meat-eating man, or a man addicted to the use of stimulating drinks, can hardly expect to overcome the animal in himself while he is gorging him, and is building fires under the very caldrons which he would cool off. If a man choose to go through the necessary practice, he certainly can change; but if a man say to himself, “I do not believe in religion; I will change by and by; it is not convenient now; I do not under stand this great change, and I do not like to go into anything which my reason does not comprehend,” I say to him, Do you insist, when you are sick, and you send for your physician, upon entering into an argument with him? Do you say to him, “What is the matter with me?” and when he prescribes for you do you say, “Sit down and tell me the whole history of this medicine, who invented it, what its use is, who has employed it, and what right the man had to compose it or mix it”? You do not act so. A man under such circumstances instantly makes a practical matter of it, and takes certain practical steps. On the other side, no man can tear himself away from surrounding temptations and evil influences without an adaptation of his life and will to the peculiar work which is required. Shall a man attempt to change himself from evil to good, and do it easily and thoughtlessly and carelessly? Such a change never comes by accident nor by a little striving. Here is the simple fact of this whole subject: both philosophy and example teach that in our strife for virtue the passions and appetites, the infelicities of our organisation, can be overmastered; that we can take ourselves out of our constitutional faults, and that if we have fallen under temptations, it is possible for us to break the net and escape from them. When Jesus came, one of the most matchless and eloquent of all His utterances was that He had come to open the prison doors, to break the shackles, to give the prisoners liberty, and to let those that were bound go free. (H. W. Beecher.)
