Christ, a man like ourselves, yet God blessed for ever. For it is a
certain truth, that men cannot believe in God or trust in Him unless they
can think of Him as a man. This was the reason why the poor heathen made
themselves idols in the form of men, that they might have something like
themselves to worship; and those among them who would not worship idols
almost always ended in fancying that God was either a mere notion, or
else a mere part of this world, or else that He sat up in heaven neither
knowing nor caring what happened upon earth. But we, to whom God has
given the glorious news of His Gospel, have the very Person to worship
whom all the heathen were searching after and could not find,—one who is
“very God,” infinite in love, wisdom, and strength, and yet “very man,”
made in all points like ourselves, but without sin; so that we have not a
High Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities,
but one who is able to help those who are tempted, because He was tempted
Himself like us, and overcame by the strength of His own perfect will, of
His own perfect faith. By trusting in Him, and acknowledging Him in
every thought and action of our lives, we shall be safe, for it is
written, “The just shall live by faith.”
These things are true, and always were true. All that men ever did well,
or nobly, or lovingly, in this world, _was done by faith_—by faith in God
of some sort or other; even in the man who thinks least about religion,
it is so. Every time a man means to do, and really does, a just or
generous action, he does it because he believes, more or less clearly,
that there is a just and loving God above him, and that justice and love
are the right thing for a man—the law by which God intended him to walk:
so that this small, dim faith still shews itself in practice; and the
more faith a man has in God and in God’s laws, the more it will shew
itself in every action of his daily life; and the more this faith works
in his life and conduct, the better man he is;—the more he is like God’s
image, in which man was originally made;—and the more he is like Christ,
the new pattern of God’s image, whom all men must copy.
So that the sum of the matter is this, without Christ we can do nothing,
by trusting in Christ we can do every thing. See, then, how true the
verse before my text must be, that he whose soul is lifted up in him is
not upright; for if a man fancies that his body and soul are his own, to
do what he pleases with them, when all the time they are God’s gift;—if a
man fancies that he can take perfect care of himself, while all the time
it is God that is keeping him out of a thousand sins and dangers;—if a
man fancies that he can do right of himself, when all the time the little
good that he does is the work of God’s Spirit, which has not yet left
him;—if a man fancies, in short, that he can do without God, when all the
time it is in God that he lives, and moves, and has his being, how can
such a man be called upright? Upright! he is utterly wrong;—he is
believing a lie, and walking accordingly; and, therefore, instead of
keeping upright, he is going where all lies lead; into all kinds of low
and crooked ways, mistakes, absurdities, and at last to ruin of body and
soul. Nothing but truth can keep a man upright and straight, can keep a
man where God has put him, and where he ought to be; and the man whose
heart is puffed up by pride and self-conceit, who is looking at himself
and not at God, that man has begun upon a falsehood, and will soon get
out of tune with heaven and earth. For consider, my friends: suppose
some rich and mighty prince went out and collected a number of children,
and of sick and infirm people, and said to them, “You cannot work now,
but I will give you food, medicine, every thing that you require, and
then you must help me to work; and I, though you have no right to expect
it of me, will pay you for the little work you can do on the strength of
my food and medicine.”—Is it not plain that all those persons could only
live by faith in their prince, by trusting in him for food and medicine,
and by acknowledging that that food and medicine came from him, and
thanking him accordingly? If they wished to be true men, if they wished
him to continue his bounty, they would confess that all the health and
strength they had belonged to him of right, because his generosity had
given it to them. Just in this position we stand with Christ the Lord.
When the whole world lay in wickedness, He came and chose us, of His free
grace and mercy, to be one of His peculiar nations, to work for Him and
with Him; and from the time He came, all that we and our forefathers have
done well has been done by the strength and wisdom which Christ has given
us. Now suppose, again, that one of the persons of whom I spoke was
seized with a fit of pride—suppose he said to himself, “My health and
strength does not come from the food and medicine which the prince gave
me, it comes from the goodness of my own constitution; the wages which I
am paid are my just due, I am a free man, and may choose what master I
like.” Suppose any one of _your_ servants treated you so, would you not
be inclined to answer, “You are a faithless, ungrateful fellow; go your
ways, then, and see how little you can do without my bounty?” But the
blessed King in heaven, though He is provoked every day, is more
long-suffering than man. All He does is to withdraw His bounty for a
moment, to take this world’s blessings from a man, and let him find out
how impossible it is for him to keep himself out of affliction—to take
away His Holy Spirit for a moment from a man, and let him see how
straight he rushes astray, and every way but the right; and then, if the
man is humbled by his fall or his affliction, and comes back to his Lord,
confessing how weak he is and promising to trust in Christ and thank
Christ only for the future, _then_ our Lord will restore His blessings to
him, and there will be joy among the angels of God over one sinner that
repents. This was the way in which God treated Job when, in spite of all
his excellence, _his_ heart was lifted up. And then, when he saw his own
folly, and abhorred himself, and repented in dust and ashes, God restored
to him sevenfold what He had taken from him—honour, wisdom, riches, home,
and children. This is the way, too, in which God treated David. “In my
prosperity,” he tells us, “I said, I shall never be moved; thou, Lord, of
Thy goodness hast made my hill so strong”—forgetting that he must be kept
safe every moment of his life, as well as made safe once for all. “Thou
didst turn Thy face from me, and I was troubled. Then cried I unto Thee,
O Lord, and gat me to my Lord right humbly. And THEN,” he adds, “God
turned my heaviness into joy, and girded me with gladness,” (Psalm xxx.)
And again, he says, “_Before_ I was troubled I went wrong, but _now_ I
have kept Thy word,” (Psalm cxix.) And this is the way in which Christ
the Lord treated St. Peter and St. Paul, and treats, in His great mercy,
every Christian man when He sees him puffed up, to bring him to his
senses, and make him live by faith in God. If he takes the warning,
well; if he does not, he remains in a lie, and must go where all lies
lead. So perfectly does it hold throughout a man’s whole life, that he
whose soul is lifted up within him is not upright; but that the just must
live by faith.
Now there is one objection apt to rise in men’s minds when they hear such
words as these, which is, that they take such a “low view of human
nature;” it is so galling to our pride to be told that we can do nothing
for ourselves: but if we think of the matter more closely, and, above
all, if we try to put it into practice and live by faith, we shall find
that there is no real reason for thus objecting. This is not a doctrine
which ought to make us despise men; any doctrine that _does_, does not
come of _God_. Men are not contemptible creatures—they are glorious
creatures—they were created in the image of God; God has put such honour
upon them that He has given them dominion over the whole earth, and made
them partakers of His eternal reason; and His Spirit gives them
understanding to enable them to conquer this earth, and make the beasts,
ay, and the very winds and seas, and fire and steam, their obedient
servants; and human nature, too, when it is what God made it, and what it
ought to be, is not a contemptible thing: it was noble enough for the Son
of God to take it upon Himself—to become man, without sinning or defiling
Himself; and what was good enough for Him is surely good enough for us.
Wickedness consists in _unmanliness_, in being unlike a man, in becoming
like an evil spirit or a beast. Holiness consists in becoming a _true
man_, in becoming more and more like the likeness of Jesus Christ. And
when the Bible tells us that we can do nothing of ourselves, but can live
only by faith, the Bible puts the highest honour upon us which any
created thing can have. What are the things which cannot live by faith?
The trees and plants, the beasts and birds, which, though they live and
grow by God’s providence, yet do not know it, do not thank Him, cannot
ask Him for more strength and life as we can, are mere dead tools in
God’s hands, instead of living, reasonable beings as we are. It is only
reasonable beings, like men and angels, with immortal spirits in them,
who _can_ live by faith; and it is the greatest glory and honour to us, I
say again, that we _can_ do so—that the glorious, infinite God, Maker of
heaven and earth, should condescend to ask us to be loyal to Him, to love
Him, should encourage us to pray to Him boldly, and then should
condescend to hear our prayers—_we_, who in comparison of Him are smaller
than the gnats in the sunbeam in comparison of men! And then, when we
remember that He has sent His only Son into the world to take our nature
upon Him, and join us all together into one great and everlasting family,
the body of Christ the Lord, and that He has actually given us a share in
His own Almighty Holy Spirit that we may be able to love Him, and to
serve Him, and to be joined to Him, the Almighty Father, do we not see
that all this is infinitely more honourable to us than if we were each to
go on his own way here without God—without knowing anything of the
everlasting world of spirits to which we now belong? My friends, instead
of being ashamed of being able to do nothing for ourselves, we ought to
rejoice at having God for our Father and our Friend, to enable us to “do
all things through Him who strengthens us”—to do whatever is noble, and
loving, and worthy of true men. Instead, then, of dreaming conceitedly
that God will accept us for our own sakes, let us just be content to be
accepted for the sake of Jesus Christ our King. Instead of trying to
walk through this world without God’s help, let us ask God to help and
guide us in every action of our lives, and then go manfully forward,
doing with all our might whatsoever our hands or our hearts see right to
do, trusting to God to put us in the right path, and to fill our heads
with right thoughts and our hearts with right feeling; and so our faith
will shew itself in our works, and we shall be justified at the last day,
as all good men have ever been, by trusting to our Heavenly Father and to
the Lord Jesus Christ, and the guidance of His Holy Spirit.
SERMON VI.
THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH.
GALATIANS, v. 16.
“I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of
the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit
against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other.”
THE more we think seriously, my friends, the more we shall see what
wonderful and awful things words are, how they mean much more than we
fancy,—how we do not make words, but words are given to us by one higher
than ourselves. Wise men say that you can tell the character of any
nation by its language, by watching the words they use, the names they
give to things, for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks,
and by our words, our Lord tells us, we shall be justified and condemned.
It is God, and Christ, the Word of God, who gives words to men, who puts
it into the hearts of men to call certain things by certain names; and,
according to a nation’s godliness, and wisdom, and purity of heart, will
be its power of using words discreetly and reverently. That miracle of
the gift of tongues, of which we read in the New Testament, would have
been still most precious and full of meaning if it had had no other use
than this—to teach men from whom words come. When men found themselves
all of a sudden inspired to talk in foreign languages which they had
never learnt, to utter words of which they themselves did not know the
meaning, do you not see how it must have made them feel that all language
is God’s making and God’s giving? Do you not see how it must have made
them feel what awful, mysterious things words were, like those cloven
tongues of fire which fell on the apostles? The tongues of fire
signified the difficult foreign languages which they suddenly began to
speak as the Spirit gave them utterance. And where did the tongues of
fire come from? Not out of themselves, not out of the earth beneath, but
down from the heaven above, to signify that it is not from man, from
man’s flesh or brain, or the earthly part of him, that words are bred,
but that they come down from Christ the Word of God, and are breathed
into the minds of men by the Spirit of God. Why do I speak of all this?
To make you feel what awful, wonderful things words are; how, when you
want to understand the meaning of a word, you must set to work with
reverence and godly fear—not in self-conceit and prejudice, taking the
word to mean just what suits your own notions of things, but trying
humbly to find out what the word really does mean of itself, what God
meant it to mean when He put it into the hearts of wise men to use that
word and bring it into our English language. A man ought to read a
newspaper or a story-book in that spirit; how much more, when he takes up
the Bible! How reverently he ought to examine every word in the New
Testament—this very text, for instance. We ought to be sure that St.
Paul, just because he was an inspired apostle, used the very best
possible words to express what he meant on so important a matter; and
what _are_ the best words? The clearest and the simplest words are the
best words; else how is the Bible to be the poor man’s book? How, unless
the wayfaring man, though simple, shall not err therein? Therefore we
may be sure the words in Scripture are certain to be used in their
simplest, most natural, most everyday meaning, such as the simplest man
can understand. And, therefore, we may be sure, that these two words,
“flesh” and “spirit,” in my text, are used in their very simplest,
straightforward sense; and that St. Paul meant by them what working-men
mean by them in the affairs of daily life. No doubt St. Peter says that
there are many things in St. Paul’s writings difficult to be understood,
which those who are unlearned and unstable wrest to their own
destruction; and, most true it is, so they do daily. But what does
“wresting” a thing mean? It means twisting it, bending it, turning it
out of its original straightforward, natural meaning, into some new
crooked meaning of their own. This is the way we are all of us too apt,
I am afraid, to come to St. Paul’s Epistles. We find him difficult
because we won’t take him at his word, because we tear a text out of its
right place in the chapter—the place where St. Paul put it, and make it
stand by itself, instead of letting the rest of the chapter explain its
meaning. And then, again, people use the words in the text as unfairly
and unreasonably as they use the text itself, they won’t let the words
have their common-sense English meaning—they must stick a new meaning on
them of their own. ‘Oh,’ they say, ‘that text must not be taken
literally, that word has a spiritual signification here. Flesh does not
mean flesh, it means men’s corrupt nature;’ little thinking all the while
that perhaps they understand those words, spiritual, and corrupt, and
nature, just as ill as they do the rest of the text.
How much better, my friends, to let the Bible tell its own story; not to
be so exceeding wise above what is written, just to believe that St. Paul
knew better how to use words than we are likely to do,—just to believe
that when he says flesh he means flesh. Everybody agrees that when he
says spirit he means spirit, why, in the name of common sense, when he
says flesh should he not mean flesh? For my own part I believe that when
St. Paul talks of man’s flesh, he means by it man’s body, man’s heart and
brain, and all his bodily appetites and powers—what we call a man’s
constitution; in a word, the _animal_ part of man, just what a man has in
common with the beasts who perish.