'That ye put off, concerning the former conversation, the old man,
which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts.'--Eph. iv. 22.
If a doctor knows that he can cure a disease he can afford to give full
weight to its gravest symptoms. If he knows he cannot he is sorely
tempted to say it is of slight importance, and, though it cannot be
cured, can be endured without much discomfort.
And so the Scripture teachings about man's real moral condition are
characterised by two peculiarities which, at first sight, seem somewhat
opposed, but are really harmonious and closely connected. There is no
book and no system in the whole world that takes such a dark view of
what you and I are; there is none animated with so bright and confident
a hope of what you and I may become. And, on the other hand, the common
run of thought amongst men minimises the fact of sin, but when you say,
'Well, be it big or little, can I get rid of it anyhow?' there is no
answer to give that is worth listening to. Christ alone can venture to
tell men what they are, because Christ alone can radically change their
whole nature and being. There are certain diseases of which a constant
symptom is unconsciousness that there is anything the matter. A
deep-seated wound does not hurt much. The question is not whether
Christian thoughts about a man's condition are gloomy or not, but
whether they are true. As to their being gloomy, it seems to me that the
people who complain of our doctrine of human nature, as giving a
melancholy view of men, do really take a far more melancholy one. We
believe in a fall, and we believe in a possible and actual restoration.
The man to whom evil is not an intrusive usurper can have no confidence
that it will ever be expelled. Which is the gloomy system--that which
paints in undisguised blackness the facts of life, and over against
their blackest darkness, the radiant light of a great hope shining
bright and glorious, or one that paints humanity in a uniform monotone
of indistinguishable grey involving the past, the present, and the
future--which, believing in no disease, hopes for no cure? My text,
taken in conjunction with the grand words which follow, about 'The new
man, which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness,'
brings before us some very solemn views (which the men that want them
most realise the least) with regard to what we are, what we ought to be
and cannot be, and what, by God's help, we may become. The old man is
'corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,' says Paul. _There_ are a set
of characteristics, then, of the universal sinful human self. Then there
comes a hopeless commandment--a mockery--if we are to stop with it, 'put
it off.' And then there dawns on us the blessed hope and possibility of
the fulfilment of the injunction, when we learn that 'the truth in
Jesus' is, that we put off the old man with his deeds. Such is a
general outline of the few thoughts I have to suggest to you.
I. I wish to fix, first of all, upon the very significant, though brief,
outline sketch of the facts of universal sinful human nature which the
Apostle gives here.
These are three, upon which I dilate for a moment or two. 'The old man'
is a Pauline expression, about which I need only say here that we may
take it as meaning that form of character and life which is common to us
all, apart from the great change operated through faith in Jesus Christ.
It is universal, it is sinful. There is a very remarkable contrast,
which you will notice, between the verse upon which I am now commenting
and the following one. The old man is set over against the new. One is
created, the other is corrupted, as the word might be properly rendered.
The one is created after God, the other is rotting to pieces under the
influence of its lusts. The one consists of righteousness and holiness,
which have their root in truth; the other is under the dominion of
passions and desires, which, in themselves evil, are the instruments of
and are characterised by deceit.
The first of the characteristics, then, of this sinful self, to which I
wish to point for a moment is, that every Christless life, whatsoever
the superficial differences in it, is really a life shaped according to
and under the influence of _passionate desires_. You see I venture to
alter one word of my text, and that for this simple reason; the word
'lusts' has, in modern English, assumed a very much narrower
signification than either that of the original has, or than itself had
in English when this translation was made. It is a very remarkable
testimony, by the by, to the weak point in the bulk of men--to the side
of their nature which is most exposed to assaults--that this word,
which originally meant strong desire of any kind, should, by the
observation of the desires that are strongest in the mass of people,
have come to be restricted and confined to the one specific meaning of
strong animal, fleshly, sensuous desires. It may point a lesson to some
of my congregation, and especially to the younger portion of the men in
it. Remember, my brother, that the part of your nature which is closest
to the material is likewise closest to the animal, and is least under
dominion (without a strong and constant effort) of the power which will
save the flesh from corruption, and make the material the vehicle of the
spiritual and divine. Many a young man comes into Manchester with the
atmosphere of a mother's prayers and a father's teaching round about
him; with holy thoughts and good resolutions beginning to sway his heart
and spirit; and flaunting profligacy and seducing tongues beside him in
the counting-house, in the warehouse, and at the shop counter, lead him
away into excesses that banish all these, and, after a year or two of
riot and sowing to the flesh, he 'of the flesh reaps corruption,' and
that very literally--in sunken eye, and trembling hand, and hacking
cough, and a grave opened for him before his time. Ah, my dear young
friends! 'they promise them liberty.' It is a fine thing to get out of
your father's house, and away from the restrictions of the society where
you are known, and loving eyes--or unloving ones--are watching you. It
is a fine thing to get into the freedom and irresponsibility of a big
city! 'They promise them liberty,' and 'they themselves become the bond
slaves of corruption.'
But, then, that is only the grossest and the lowest form of the truth
that is here. Paul's indictment against us is not anything so
exaggerated and extreme as that the animal nature predominates in all
who are not Christ's. That is not true, and is not what my text says.
But what it says is just this: that, given the immense varieties of
tastes and likings and desires which men have, the point and
characteristic feature of every godless life is that, be these what they
may, they become the dominant power in that life. Paul does not, of
course, deny that the sway and tyranny of such lusts and desires are
sometimes broken by remonstrances of conscience; sometimes suppressed by
considerations of prudence; sometimes by habit, by business, by
circumstances that force people into channels into which they would not
naturally let their lives run. He does not deny that often and often in
such a life there will be a dim desire for something better--that high
above the black and tumbling ocean of that life of corruption and
disorder, there lies a calm heaven with great stars of duty shining in
it. He does not deny that men are a law to themselves, as well as a
bundle of desires which they obey; but what he charges upon us, and what
I venture to bring as an indictment against you, and myself too, is
this: that apart from Christ it is not conscience that rules our lives;
that apart from Christ it is not sense of duty that is strongest; that
apart from Christ the real directing impulse to which the inward
proclivities, if not the outward activities, do yield in the main and on
the whole, is, as this text says, the things that we like, the
passionate desires of nature, the sensuous and godless heart.
And you say, 'Well, if it is so, what harm is it? Did not God make me
with these desires, and am not I meant to gratify them?' Yes, certainly.
The harm of it is, first of all, this, that it is an inversion of the
true order. The passionate desires about which I am speaking, be they
for money, be they for fame, or be they for any other of the gilded
baits of worldly joys--these passionate dislikes and likings, as well as
the purely animal ones--the longing for food, for drink, for any other
physical gratification--these were never meant to be men's guides. They
are meant to be impulses. They have motive power, but no directing
power. Do you start engines out of a railway station without drivers or
rails to run upon? It would be as reasonable as that course of life
which men pursue who say, 'Thus I wish; thus I command; let my desire
stand in the place of other argumentation and reason.' They take that
part of their nature that is meant to be under the guidance of reason
and conscience looking up to God, and put it in the supreme place, and
so, setting a beggar on horseback, ride where we know such equestrians
are said in the end to go! The desires are meant to be impelling powers.
It is absurdity and the destruction of true manhood to make them, as we
so often do, directing powers, and to put the reins into their hand.
They are the wind, not the helm; the steam, not the driver. Let us keep
things in their right places. Remember that the constitution of human
nature, as God has meant it, is this: down there, under hatches, under
control, the strong impulses; above them, the enlightened understanding;
above that, the conscience, which has a loftier region than that of
thought to move in, the moral region; and above that, the God, whose
face, shining down upon the apex of the nature thus constituted,
irradiates it with light which filters through all the darkness, down to
the very base of the being; and sanctifies the animal, and subdues the
impulses, and enlightens the understanding, and calms and quickens the
conscience, and makes ductile and pliable the will, and fills the heart
with fruition and tranquillity, and orders the life after the image of
Him that created it.
I cannot dwell any longer on this first point; but I hope that I have
said enough, not to show that the words are true--that is a very poor
thing to do, if that were all that I aimed at--but to bring them home to
some of our hearts and consciences. I pray God to impress the conviction
that, although there be in us all the voice of conscience, which all of
us more or less have tried at intervals to follow; yet in the main it
abides for ever true--and it is true, my dear brethren, about you--a
Christless life is a life under the dominion of tyrannous desires. Ask
yourself what I cannot ask for you, Is it I? My hand fumbles about the
hinges and handle of the door of the heart. You yourself must open it
and let conviction come in!
Still further, the words before us add another touch to this picture.
They not only represent the various passionate desires as being the real
guides of 'the old man' but they give this other characteristic--that
these desires are in their very nature the instruments of deceit and
lies.
The words of my text are, perhaps, rather enfeebled by the form of
rendering which our translators have here, as in many cases, thought
proper to adopt. If, instead of reading 'corrupt according to the
deceitful lusts,' we read 'corrupt according to the desires of deceit,'
we should have got not only the contrast between the old man and the new
man, 'created in righteousness and holiness of truth'--but we should
have had, perhaps, a clearer notion of the characteristic of these
lusts, which the Apostle meant to bring into prominence. These desires
are, as it were, the tools and instruments by which deceit betrays and
mocks men; the weapons used by illusions and lies to corrupt and mar the
soul. They are strong, and their nature is to pursue after their objects
without regard to any consequences beyond their own gratification; but,
strong as they are, they are like the blinded Samson, and will pull the
house down on themselves if they be not watched. Their strength is
excited on false pretences. They are stirred to grasp what is after all
a lie. They are 'desires of deceit.'
That just points to the truth of all such life being hollow and
profitless. If regard be had to the whole scope of our nature and
necessities, and to the true aim of life as deduced therefrom, nothing
is more certain than that no man will get the satisfaction that his
ruling passions promise him, by indulging them. It is very sure that the
way never to get what you need and desire is always to do what you like.
And that for very plain reasons. Because, for one thing, the object only
satisfies for a time. Yesterday's food appeased our hunger for the day,
but we wake hungry again. And the desires which are not so purely animal
have the same characteristic of being stilled for the moment, and of
waking more ravenous than ever. 'He that drinketh of this water shall
thirst again.' Because, further, the desire grows and the object of it
does not. The fierce longing increases, and, of course, the power of the
thing that we pursue to satisfy it decreases in the same proportion. It
is a fixed quantity; the appetite is indefinitely expansible. And so,
the longer I go on feeding my desire, the more I long for the food; and
the more I long for it, the less taste it has when I get it. It must be
more strongly spiced to titillate a jaded palate. And there soon comes
to be an end of the possibilities in that direction. A man scarcely
tastes his brandy, and has little pleasure in drinking it, but he cannot
do without it, and so he gulps it down in bigger and bigger draughts
till delirium tremens comes in to finish all. Because, for another
thing, after all, these desires are each but a fragment of one's whole
nature, and when one is satisfied another is baying to be fed. The grim
brute, like the watchdog of the old mythology, has three heads, and each
gaping for honey cakes. And if they were all gorged, there are other
longings in men's nature that will not let them rest, and for which all
the leeks and onions of Egypt are not food. So long as these are unmet,
you 'spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for
that which satisfieth not.'
So we may lay it down as a universal truth, that whoever takes it for
his law to do as he likes will not for long like what he does; or, as
George Herbert says,
'Shadows well mounted, dreams in a career,
Embroider'd lies, nothing between two dishes--
These are the pleasures here.'
Do any of you remember the mournful words with which one of our greatest
modern writers of fiction closes his saddest, truest book: 'Ah! _vanitas
vanitatum_! Which of us is happy in this world? which of us has his
desire? or, having it, is satisfied?' No wonder that with such a view of
human life as that the next and last sentence should be, 'Come,
children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for the play is played
out.' Yes! if there be nothing more to follow than the desires which
deceive, man's life, with all its bustle and emotion, is a subject for
cynical and yet sad regard, and all the men and women that toil and fret
are 'merely players.'
Then, again, one more point in this portraiture of 'the old man,' is
that these _deceiving desires corrupt_. The language of our text conveys
a delicate shade of meaning which is somewhat blurred in our version.
Properly, it speaks of 'the old man which is _growing_ corrupt,' rather
than 'which is corrupt,' and expresses the steady advance of that inward
process of decay and deterioration which is ever the fate of a life
subordinated to these desires. And this growing evil, or rather inward
eating corruption which disintegrates and destroys a soul, is contrasted
in the subsequent verse with the 'new man which is _created_ in
righteousness.' There is in the one the working of life, in the other
the working of death. The one is formed and fashioned by the loving
hands and quickening breath of God; the other is gradually and surely
rotting away by the eating leprosy of sin. For the former the end is
eternal life; for the latter, the second death.
And the truth that underlies that awful representation is the familiar
one to which I have already referred in another connection, that, by the
very laws of our nature, by the plain necessities of the case, all our
moral qualities, be they good or bad, tend to increase by exercise. In
whatever direction we move, the rate of progress tends to accelerate
itself. And this is preeminently the case when the motion is downwards.
Every day that a bad man lives he is a worse man. My friend! you are on
a sloping descent. Imperceptibly--because you will not look at the
landmarks--but really, and not so very slowly either; convictions are
dying out, impulses to good are becoming feeble, habits of neglect of
conscience are becoming fixed, special forms of sin--avarice, or pride,
or lust--are striking their claws deeper into your soul, and holding
their bleeding booty firmer. In all regions of life exercise strengthens
capacity. The wrestler, according to the old Greek parable, who began by
carrying a calf on his shoulders, got to carry an ox by and by.
It is a solemn thought this of the steady continuous aggravation of sin
in the individual character. Surely nothing can be small which goes to
make up that rapidly growing total. Beware of the little beginnings
which 'eat as doth a canker.' Beware of the slightest deflection from
the straight line of right. If there be two lines, one straight and the
other going off at the sharpest angle, you have only to produce both far
enough, and there will be room between them for all the space that
separates hell from heaven! Beware of lading your souls with the weight
of small single sins. We heap upon ourselves, by slow, steady accretion
through a lifetime, the weight that, though it is gathered by grains,
crushes the soul. There is nothing heavier than sand. You may lift it by
particles. It drifts in atoms, but heaped upon a man it will break his
bones, and blown over the land it buries pyramid and sphynx, the temples
of gods and the homes of men beneath its barren solid waves. The leprosy
gnaws the flesh off a man's bones, and joints and limbs drop off--he is
a living death. So with every soul that is under the dominion of these
lying desires--it is slowly rotting away piecemeal, 'waxing corrupt
according to the lusts of deceit.'
II. Note how, this being so, we have here the hopeless command to put
off the old man.
That command 'put it off' is the plain dictate of conscience and of
common sense. But it seems as hopeless as it is imperative. I suppose
everybody feels sometimes, more or less distinctly, that they ought to
make an effort and get rid of these beggarly usurpers that tyrannise
over will, and conscience, and life. Attempts enough are made to shake
off the yoke. We have all tried some time or other. Our days are full of
foiled resolutions, attempts that have broken down, unsuccessful
rebellions, ending like the struggles of some snared wild creature, in
wrapping the meshes tighter round us. How many times, since you were a
boy or a girl, have you said--'Now I am _determined_ that I will never
do that again. I have flung away opportunities. I have played the fool
and erred exceedingly--but I now turn over a new leaf!' Yes, and you
have turned it--and, if I might go on with the metaphor, the first gust
of passion or temptation has blown the leaf back again, and the old page
has been spread before you once more just as it used to be. The history
of individual souls and the tragedy of the world's history recurring in
every age, in which the noblest beginnings lead to disastrous ends, and
each new star of promise that rises on the horizon leads men into
quagmires and sets in blood, sufficiently show how futile the attempt in
our own strength to overcome and expel the evils that are rooted in our
nature.
Moralists may preach, 'Unless above himself he can erect himself, how
mean a thing is man'; but all the preaching in the world is of no avail.
The task is an impossibility. The stream cannot rise above its source,
nor be purified in its flow if bitter waters come from the fountain.
'Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?' There is no power in
human nature to cast off this clinging self. As in the awful vision of
the poet, the serpent is grown into the man. The will is feeble for
good, the conscience sits like a discrowned king issuing empty mandates,
while all his realm is up in rebellion and treats his proclamations as
so much waste paper. How can a man re-make himself? how cast off his own
nature? The means at his disposal themselves need to be cleansed, for
themselves are tainted. It is the old story--who will keep the
keepers?--who will heal the sick physicians? You will sometimes see a
wounded animal licking its wounds with its own tongue. How much more
hopeless still is our effort by our own power to stanch and heal the
gashes which sin has made! 'Put off the old man'--yes--and if it but
clung to the limbs like the hero's poisoned vest, it might be possible.
But it is not a case of throwing aside clothing, it is stripping oneself
of the very skin and flesh--and if there is nothing more to be said than
such vain commonplaces of impossible duty, then we must needs abandon
hope, and wear the rotting evil till we die.
But that is not all. 'What the law could not do, in that it was weak
through the flesh,' God sending His own Son did--He condemned sin in the
flesh. So we come to