The renovation here is only partial. Its very incompleteness is
prophetic. If there be this new life in us, it obviously has not
reached its fulness here, and it is obviously not manifested here for
all that even here it is.
It is like some exotic that does not show its true beauty in our
greenhouses. The life of a Christian on earth is a prophecy by both its
greatness and its smallness, by both its glory and its shame, by both
its brightness and its spots. It cannot be that there is always to be
this disproportion between aspiration and performance, between willing
and doing. Here the most perfect career is like a half-lighted street,
with long gaps between the lamps.
The surroundings here are uncongenial to the new creatures. 'Foxes have
holes'--all creatures are fitted for their environment; only man, and
eminently renewed man, wanders as a pilgrim, not in his home. The
present frame of things is for discipline. The schooling over, we burn
the rod. So we look for an external order in full correspondence with
the new nature.
And Christ throned 'makes all things new.' How far the old is renewed
we cannot tell, and we need not ask. Enough that there shall be a
universe in perfect harmony with the completely renewed nature, that we
shall find a home where all things will serve and help and gladden and
further us, where the outward will no more distract and clog the spirit.
Brethren, let that mighty love constrain you; and look to Christ to
renew you. Whatever your old self may have been, you may bury it deep
in His grave, and rise with Him to newness of life. Then you may walk
in this old world, new creatures in Christ Jesus, looking for the
blessed hope of entire renewal into the perfect likeness of Him, the
perfect man, in a perfect world, where all old sorrows and sins have
passed away and He has made all things new. Through eternity, new joys,
new knowledge, new progress, new likeness, new service will be
ours--and not one leaf shall ever wither in the amaranthine crown, nor
'the cup of blessing' ever become empty or flat and stale. Eternity
will be but a continual renewal and a progressive increase of ever
fresh and ever familiar treasures. The new and the old will be one.
Begin with trusting to Him to help you to change a deeper blackness
than that of the Ethiopian's skin, and to erase firier spots than stain
the tawny leopard's hide, and He will make you a new man, and set you
in His own time in a 'new heaven and earth, where dwelleth
righteousness.'