'And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in
righteousness and true holiness.'--Eph. iv. 24.
We had occasion to remark in a former sermon that Paul regards this and
the preceding clauses as the summing up of 'the truth in Jesus'; or, in
other words, he considers the radical transformation and renovation of
the whole moral nature as being the purpose of the revelation of God in
Christ. To this end they have 'heard Him.' To this end they have
'learned Him.' To this end they have been 'taught in Him,' receiving, by
union with Him, all the various processes of His patient discipline.
This is the inmost meaning of all the lessons in that great school in
which all Christians are scholars, and Christ is the teacher and the
theme, and union to Him the condition of entrance, and the manifold
workings of His providence and His grace the instruments of training,
and heaven the home when school time is over--that we should become new
men in Christ Jesus.
This great practical issue is set forth here under three aspects--one
negative, two positive. The negative process is single and simple--'put
off the old man.' The positive is double--a spiritual 'renewal' effected
in our spirits, in the deep centre of our personal being, by that
Divine Spirit who, dwelling in us, is 'the spirit of our minds'; and
then, consequent upon that inward renewal, a renovation of life and
character, which is described as being the 'putting on,' as if it were a
garment, of 'the new man,' created by a divine act, and consisting in
moral and spiritual likeness to God. It is not necessary to deal, except
incidentally, with the two former, but I desire to consider the last of
these--the putting on of the new man--a little more closely, and to try
to bring out the wealth and depth of the Apostle's words in this
wonderful text.
The ideas contained seem to me in brief to be these--the great purpose
of the Gospel is our moral renewal; that moral renewal is a creation
after God's image; that new creation has to be put on or appropriated by
us; the great means of appropriating it is contact with God's truth. Let
us consider these points in order.
I. The great purpose of the Gospel is our moral renewal; 'the new man
... created in righteousness and ... holiness.'
Now, of course, there are other ways of stating the end of the Gospel.
This is by no means an exhaustive setting forth of its purpose. We may
say that Christ has come in order that men may know God. We may say that
He comes in order that the Divine Love, which ever delights to
communicate, may bestow itself, and may conceive of the whole majestic
series of acts of self-revelation from the beginning as being--if I may
so say--for the gratification of that impulse to impart itself, which is
the characteristic of love in God and man. We may say that the purpose
of the whole is the deliverance of men from the burden and guilt of sin.
But whether we speak of the end of the Gospel as the glory of God, or
the blessedness of man, or as here, as being the moral perfection of
the individual or of the race, they are all but various phrases of the
one complete truth. The Gospel is the consequence and the manifestation
of the love of God, which delights to be known and possessed by loving
souls, and being known, changes them into its own likeness, which to
know is to be happy, which to resemble is to be pure.
The first thing that strikes me about this representation of our text is
the profound sense of human sinfulness which underlies it.
The language is utterly unmeaning--or at all events grossly
exaggerated--unless all have sinned, and the nature which belongs to men
universally, apart from the transforming power of Christ's Spirit, be
corrupt and evil. And that it is so is the constant view of Scripture.
The Bible notion of what men need in order to be pure and good is very
different from the superficial notions of worldly moralists and
philanthropists. We hear a great deal about 'culture,' as if all that
were needed were the training and strengthening of the nature, as if
what was mainly needed was the development of the understanding. We hear
about 'reformation' from some who look rather deeper than the
superficial apostles of culture. And how singularly the very word
proclaims the insufficiency of the remedy which it suggests!
'Re-formation' affects form and not substance. It puts the old materials
into a new shape. Exactly so--and much good may be expected from that!
They are the old materials still, and it matters comparatively little
how they are arranged. It is not re-formation, but re-novation, or, to
go deeper still, re-generation, that the world needs; not new forms, but
a new life; not the culture and development of what it has in itself,
but extirpation of the old by the infusion of something now and pure
that has no taint of corruption, nor any contact with evil. 'Verily, I
say unto you, ye must be born again.'
All slighter notions of the need and more superficial diagnoses of the
disease lead to a treatment with palliatives which never touch the true
seat of the mischief, The poison flowers may be plucked, but the roots
live on. It is useless to build dykes to keep out the wild waters.
Somewhere or other they will find a way through. The only real cure is
that which only the Creating hand can effect, who, by slow operation of
some inward agency, can raise the level of the low lands, and lift them
above the threatening waves. What is needed is a radical transformation,
going down to the very roots of the being; and that necessity is clearly
implied in the language of this text, which declares that a nature
possessing righteousness and holiness is 'a new man' to be 'put on' as
from without, not to be evolved as from within.
It is to be further noticed what the Apostle specifies as the elements,
or characteristics of this new nature--righteousness and holiness.
The proclamation of a new nature in Christ Jesus, great and precious
truth as it is, has often been connected with teaching which has been
mystical in the bad sense of that word, and has been made the stalking
horse of practical immorality. But here we have it distinctly defined in
what that new nature consists. There is no vague mystery about it, no
tampering with the idea of personality. The people who put on the new
man are the same people after as before. The newness consists in moral
and spiritual characteristics. And these are all summed up in the
two--righteousness and holiness. To which is added in the substantially
parallel passage in Colossians, 'Renewed in knowledge after the image of
Him that created Him,' where, I suppose, we must regard the 'knowledge'
as meaning that personal knowledge and acquaintance which has its
condition in love, and is the foundation of the more purely moral
qualities of which our text speaks.
Is there, then, any distinction between these two? I think there is very
obviously so. 'Righteousness' is, I suppose, to be understood here in
its narrower meaning of observance of what is right, the squaring of
conduct according to a solemn sovereign law of duty. Substantially it is
equivalent to the somewhat heathenish word 'morality,' and refers human
conduct and character to a law or standard. What, then, is 'holiness'?
It is the same general conduct and character, considered, however, under
another aspect, and in another relation. It involves the reference of
life and self to God, consecration to, and service of Him. It is not a
mere equivalent of purity, but distinctly carries the higher reference.
The obedience now is not to a law but to a Lord. The perfection now does
not consist in conformity to an ideal standard, but in likeness and
devotion to God. That which I ought to do is that which my Father in
heaven wills. Or, if the one word may roughly represent the more secular
word 'morality,' the other may roughly represent the less devout phrase,
'practical religion.'
These are 'new,' as actually realised in human nature. Paul thinks that
we shall not possess them except as a consequence of renovation. But
they are not 'new' in the sense that the contents of Christian morality
are different from the contents of the law written on men's hearts. The
Gospel proclaims and produces no fantastic ethics of its own. The
actions which it stamps in its mint are those which pass current in all
lands--not a provincial coinage, but recognised as true in ring, and of
full weight everywhere. Do not fancy that Christian righteousness is
different from ordinary 'goodness,' except as being broader and deeper,
more thorough-going, more imperative. Divergences there are, for our law
is more than a republication of the law written on men's hearts. Though
the one agrees with the other, yet the area which they cover is not the
same. The precepts of the one, like some rock-hewn inscriptions by
forgotten kings, are weathered and indistinct, often illegible, often
misread, often neglected. The other is written in living characters in a
perfect life. It includes all that the former attempts to enjoin, and
much more besides. It alters the perspective, so to speak, of heathen
morals, and brings into prominence graces overlooked or despised by
them. It breathes a deeper meaning and a tenderer beauty into the words
which express human conceptions of virtue, but it does take up these
into itself. And instead of setting up a 'righteousness' which is
peculiar to itself, and has nothing to do with the world's morality,
Christianity says, as Christ has taught us, 'Except your righteousness
_exceed_ the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall not
enter into the kingdom of God.' The same apostle who here declares that
actual righteousness and holiness are new things on the earth, allows
full force to whatsoever weight may be in the heathen notion of
'virtue,' and adopts the words and ideas which he found ready made to
his hands, in that notion--as fitly describing the Christian graces
which he enjoined. Grecian moralists supplied him with the names true,
honest, just, and pure. His 'righteousness' accepted these as included
within its scope. And we have to remember that we are not invested with
that new nature, unless we are living in the exercise of these common
and familiar graces which the consciences and hearts of all the world
recognise for 'lovely' and 'of good report,' hail as 'virtue,' and crown
with 'praise.'
So, then, let me pause here for a moment to urge you to take these
thoughts as a very sharp and salutary test. You call yourselves
Christian people. The purpose of your Christianity is your growth and
perfecting in simple purity, and devotion to, and dependence on, our
loving Father. Our religion is nothing unless it leads to these.
Otherwise it is like a plant that never seeds, but may bear some feeble
blossoms that drop shrunken to the ground before they mature. To very
many of us the old solemn remonstrance should come with awakening
force--'Ye did run well, what did hinder you?' You have apprehended
Christ as the revealer and bringer of the great mercy of God, and have
so been led in some measure to put your confidence in Him for your
salvation and deliverance. But have you apprehended Him as the mould
into which your life is to be poured, that life having been made fluent
and plastic by the warmth of His love? You have apprehended Him as your
refuge; have you apprehended Him as your inward sanctity? You have gone
to Him as the source of salvation from the guilt and penalties of sin;
have you gone to Him, and are you daily growing in the conscious
possession of Him, as the means of salvation from the corruption and
evil of sin? He comes to make us good. What has He made you? Anything
different from what you were twenty years ago? Then, if not, and in so
far as you are unchanged and unbettered, the Gospel is a failure for
you, and you are untrue to it. The great purpose of all the work of
Christ--His life, His sorrows, His passion, His resurrection, His glory,
His continuous operation by the Spirit and the word is to make new men
who shall be just and devout, righteous and holy.
II. A second principle contained in these words, is that this moral
Renewal is a Creation in the image of God.
The new man is 'created after the image of God'--that is, of course,
according to or in the likeness of God. There is evident reference here
to the account of man's creation in Genesis, and the idea is involved
that this new man is the restoration and completion of that earlier
likeness, which, in some sense, has faded out of the features and form
of our sinful souls. It is to be remembered, however, that there is an
image of God inseparable from human nature, and not effaceable by any
obscuring or disturbance caused by sin. Man's likeness to God consists
in his being a person, possessed of a will and self-consciousness, and
that mysterious gift of personality abides whatever perishes. But beyond
that natural image of God, as we may call it, there is something else
which fades wholly with the first breath of evil, like the reflexion of
the sky on some windless sea. The natural likeness remains, and without
it no comparison would be possible. We should not think of saying that a
stone or an eagle were unlike God. But while the personal being makes
comparison fitting, what makes the true contrast? In what respect is man
unlike God? In moral antagonism. What is the true likeness? Moral
harmony. What separates men from their Father in heaven? Is it that His
'years are throughout all generations,' and 'my days are as an
handbreadth'? Is it that His power is infinite, and mine all thwarted by
other might and over tending to weakness and extinction? Is it that His
wisdom, sunlike, waxes not nor wanes, and there is nothing hid from its
beams, while my knowledge, like the lesser light, shines by reflected
radiance, serves but to make the night visible, and is crescent and
decaying, changeful and wandering? No. All such distinctions based upon
what people call the sovereign attributes of God--the distinctions of
creator and created, infinite and finite, omnipotent and weak, eternal
and transient--make no real gulf between God and man. If we have only to
say, 'As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are' His 'ways higher
than' our 'ways,' that difference is not unlikeness, and establishes no
separation; for low and flat though the dull earth be, does not heaven
bend down round it, and send rain and sun, dew and blessing? But it is
because 'your ways are not _as_ my ways'--because there is actual
opposition, because the _directions_ are different--that there is
unlikeness. The image of God lies not only in that personality which the
'Father of Lies' too possesses, but in 'righteousness and holiness.'
But besides this reference to the original creation of man, there is
another reason for the representation of the new nature as being a work
of divine creative power. It is in order to give the most emphatic
expression possible to the truth that we do not make our righteousness
for ourselves, but receive it as from Him. The new man is not our work,
it is God's creation. As at the beginning, the first human life is
represented as not originated in the line of natural cause and effect,
but as a new and supernatural commencement, so in every Christian soul
the life which is derived from God, and will unfold itself in His
likeness, comes from His own breath inbreathed into the nostrils. It too
is out of the line of natural causes. It too is a direct gift from God.
It too is a true supernatural being--a real and new creation.
May I venture a step further? 'The new man' is spoken of here as if it
had existence ere we 'put it on.' I do not press that, as if it
necessarily involved the idea which I am going to suggest, for the
peculiar form of expression is probably only due to the exigencies of
the metaphor. Still it may not be altogether foreign to the whole scope
of the passage, if I remind you that the new man, the true likeness of
God, has, indeed, a real existence apart from our assumption of it. Of
course, the righteousness and holiness which make that new nature in me
have no being till they become mine. But we believe that the
righteousness and holiness which we make ours come from another, who
bestows them on us. 'The new man' is not a mere ideal, but has a
historical and a present existence. The ideal has lived and lives, is a
human person, even Jesus Christ the express image of the Father, who is
the beginning of the new creation, who of God is made unto us wisdom and
righteousness. That fair vision of a humanity detached from all
consequences of sin, renewed in perfect beauty, stainless and Godlike,
is no unsubstantial dream, but a simple fact. He ever liveth. His word
to us is, 'I counsel thee to buy of me--white raiment.' And a full
parallel to the words of our text, which bid us 'put on the new man,
created after God in righteousness and holiness,' is found in the other
words of the same Apostle--'Let us cast off the works of darkness, and
let us put on the armour of light. Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.'