I. If by human nature you mean nature as seen in this man or that,
then +unquestionably nature is evil+--individual nature, personal
nature, is contrary to God's will. But if by human nature you mean
nature as God made it, as it has been once in one man of our species
and only one, and as by God's grace it shall be again; if you mean
nature as it is according to the idea of the Creator as shown in
Jesus Christ, as it is in the eyes of God imputed not as it is but as
it shall be,--then that nature is a noble thing, a thing Divine; for
the life of the Redeemer Himself, what was it but the one true
exhibition of our human nature?
+II. Paul says that by nature we fulfil the desires of the flesh and
of the mind.+--I pray you to observe that it is the second and not in
the first sense that he here speaks of nature. The desires of the
flesh mean the appetites; those of the mind mean the passions: to
fulfil the desires of the flesh is to live the life of the swine; to
fulfil those of the mind is to live the life of the devil. But this
is the partiality, not the entireness, of human nature. Where is the
conscience, where the Spirit with which we have communion with God?
To live to the flesh and to the mind is not to live to the nature
that God gave us. We can no more call that living to our nature than
we can say that a watch going by the mere force of the main-spring
without a regulator is fulfilling the nature of a watch. To fulfil
the desires of the flesh and of the mind is no more to fulfil the
nature which God has given us than the soil fulfils its nature when
it brings forth thorns and briars. St. Paul, in the epistle to the
Romans, draws a distinction between himself and his false nature: "It
is not I, but sin that dwelleth in me." Sin is the dominion of a
false nature; it is a usurped dominion.
III. The next thing that Paul tells us is +that by nature we are
children of wrath.+--In the state of nature we are in the way to bear
the wrath of God. Yet God is not wrath; He is infinite love. The
eternal severity of His nature does not feel our passions, He remains
for ever calm; yet such is our nature that we must think of Him as
wrath as well as love: to us love itself becomes wrath when we are in
a state of sin. God must hate sin and be forever sin's enemy. If we
sin He must be against us: in sinning we identify ourselves with
evil, therefore we must endure the consuming fire. So long as there
is evil, so long will there be penalty. Sin, live according to the
lusts of the flesh, and you will become the children of God's wrath;
live after the Spirit, the higher nature that is in you, and then the
law hath hold on you no longer.--_F. W. Robertson._
_The Worst of Evils._
+I. By nature all are the children of wrath.+--1. Because we want
that original righteousness in which we were created, and which is
required to the purity and perfection of our nature. 2. Because all
the parts and powers of our soul and body are depraved with original
corruption. Our understandings are so bad that they understand not
their own badness, our wills which are the queens of our souls become
the vassals of sin, our memories like jet good only to draw straws
and treasure up trifles of no moment, our consciences through errors
in our understandings sometimes accusing us when we are innocent,
sometimes acquitting us when we are guilty, our affections all
disaffected and out of order. 3. Some may expect that as the master
of the feast said to him that wanted the wedding garment, "Friend,
how camest thou in hither?" so I should demand of original sin, "Foe,
and worst of foes, how camest thou in hither, and by what invisible
leaks didst thou soak into our souls?" But I desire, if it be
possible, to present you this day a rose without prickles, to declare
plain and positive doctrine without thorny disputes or curious
speculations, lest, as Abraham's ram was caught in the thicket, so I
embroil you and myself in difficult controversies. Let us not busy
our brains so much to know how original sin came into us, as labour
in our heart to know how it should be got out of us. But the worst
is, most men are sick of the _rickets_ in the soul, their heads swell
to a vast proportion, puffed up with the emptiness of airy
speculations, whilst their legs and lower parts do waste and consume,
their practical parts decay, none more lazy to serve God in their
lives and conversations.
Transcriber's Note: Baptism is not a sacrament that confers
salvation. It is an ordinance that serves as a public
statement that salvation has already taken place. Parents
are to raise their children in the "nurture and admonition
of the Lord" (Eph. vi. 4).
+II. Ye parents to children,+ see how, though against your wills, ye
have propagated this wrath-deserving on your children unto your
children; you _are bound,_ both in honour and honesty, civility and
Christianity, _to pluck them out of this pit._ 1. This you may do by
embracing the speediest opportunity to fasten the sacrament of
baptism upon them. 2. Let them not want good prayers, which if
steeped in tears will grow the better, good precepts, good
precedents, and show thy child in thyself what he should follow, in
others what he should shun and avoid. 3. In the low countries, where
their houses lie buried in the ground, the laying of the foundation
is counted as much as the rest of the foundation; so half our badness
lies secret and unseen, consisting in original corruption, whereof
too few take notice. Witches, they say, say the Lord's Prayer
backward; but concupiscence, this witch in our soul, says all the
commandments backward, and makes us cross in our practice what God
commands in His precepts. Thus every day we sin, and sorrow after our
sin, and sin after our sorrow. The wind of God's Spirit bloweth us
one way, and the tide of our corruption hurrieth us another. These
things he that seeth not in himself is sottish, blind; he that seeth
and confesseth not is damnably proud; he that confesseth and
bewaileth not is desperately profane; he that bewaileth and fighteth
not against it is unprofitably pensive; but he that in some weak
manner doeth all these is a saint in reversion here, and shall be one
in possession hereafter.--_T. Fuller._
_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 4-9.
_Salvation an Act of Divine Grace._
+I. Springing from the benevolence of God+ (vers. 4, 7).--A good old
saint once said, "There is nothing that affects me more profoundly,
or more quickly melts my heart, than to reflect on the goodness of
God. It is so vast, so deep, so amazing, so unlike and beyond the
most perfect human disposition, that my soul is overwhelmed." The
apostle seems to have been similarly affected as he contemplated the
Divine beneficence, as the phrases he here employs indicate. He calls
it "the great love wherewith He loved us." God is "rich in mercy"--in
irrepressible, unmerited compassion (ver. 4). Language is too poor to
express all he sees and feels, and he takes refuge in the ambiguous
yet suggestive expression, "The exceeding riches of His grace in His
kindness toward us through Jesus Christ" (ver. 7)--hinting at the
sublime benignity of the Divine nature longing to express itself
through the noblest medium possible. By his rebellion and deliberate
sin man had forfeited all claim to the Divine favour, and his
restoration to that favour, impossible of attainment by any efforts
of his own, was an act of sheer Divine goodness. Its spontaneity
breaks in as a sweet surprise upon the sinning race. The most vicious
and abandoned are included in its gracious provisions, and all men
are taught that their salvation, if accomplished at all, must be as
an act of free and undeserved grace.
+II. Salvation has its life and fellowship in Christ+ (vers. 5,
6).--God has given us as unquestioned a resurrection from the death
of sin as the body of Christ had from the grave, and the same Divine
power achieved both the one and the other. The spiritual life of both
Jew and Gentile has its origin in Christ, and the axe is thus laid to
the very root of spiritual pride and all glorying in ourselves. We
are raised by His resurrection power to sit in heavenly places in
Christ Jesus. This we do already by our spiritual fellowship with
Him, and by anticipation we share the blessedness which we shall more
fully enjoy by our union with Him in the heavenly world. The
spiritual resurrection of the soul must precede and will be the
inviolable guarantee of the future glorious resurrection of the body.
As the great Head of the Church is already in the heavenlies, so
ultimately all the members that make up the body shall be gathered
there. We are already seated there _in_ Him as our Head, which is the
ground of our hope; and we shall be hereafter seated there _by_ Him,
as the conferring cause, when hope shall be swallowed up in fruition.
Our life and fellowship in Christ are susceptible of indefinite
expansion and enjoyment in the progressive evolutions of the future.
+III. Faith, the instrument of salvation, is the gift of Divine
grace+ (ver. 8).--The question whether faith or salvation is the gift
of God is decided by the majority of critics in favour of the former.
This agrees with the obvious argument of the apostle, that salvation
is so absolutely an act of Divine grace that the power to realise it
individually is also a free gift. Grace, without any respect to human
worthiness, confers the glorious gift. Faith, with an empty hand and
without any pretence to personal desert, receives the heavenly
blessing. Without the grace or power to believe, no man ever did or
can believe; but with that power the act of faith is a man's own. God
never believes for any man, no more than He repents for him. The
penitent, through this grace enabling him, believes for himself; nor
does he believe necessarily or impulsively when he has that power.
The power to believe may be present long before it is exercised, else
why the solemn warnings which we meet everywhere in the Word of God
and threatenings against those who do not believe? This is the true
state of the case: God gives the power, man uses the power thus
given, and brings glory to God. Without the power no man can believe;
with it any man may.
+IV. Salvation, being unmeritorious, excludes all human
boasting.+--"Not of works, lest any man should boast" (ver. 9).
Neither salvation nor the faith that brings it is the result of human
ingenuity and effort. The grand moral results brought about by saving
faith are so extraordinary, and so high above the plane of the
loftiest and most gigantic human endeavours, that if man could
produce them by his own unaided powers he would have cause indeed for
the most extravagant boasting, and he would be in danger of
generating a pride which in its uncontrollable excess would work for
his irretrievable ruin. The least shadow of a ground for pride is
however excluded. God protects both Himself and man by the freeness
and simplicity of the offer of salvation. It is the complaint of
intellectual pride that the reception of the Gospel is impossible
because it demands a humiliation and self-emptying that degrade and
shackle intellectual freedom. Such an objection is a libel on the
Gospel. It humbles in order to exalt; it binds its claims upon us to
lift us to a higher freedom. So completely is salvation a Divine act,
that the man who refuses to accept it on God's terms must perish.
There is no other way.
+V. The glory of Divine grace in salvation will be increasingly
demonstrated in the future.+--"That in the ages to come He might show
the exceeding riches of his grace" (ver. 7). The most valuable
function of history is not that which deals with the rise and fall of
empires, the brutal ravages of war, the biographies of kings,
statesmen, and philosophers, but that which treats upon the social
and moral condition of the people and the influence of religion in
the development of individual and national character. The true
history of the world is the history of God's dealings with it. The
ages of the past have been a revelation of God; the ages to come will
be an enlargement of that revelation, and its most conspicuous
feature will be an ever-new development of the riches of Divine grace
in the redemption of the human race. In all successive ages of the
world we are authorised to declare that sinners shall be saved only
as they repent of their sins and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
+Lessons.+--_Salvation_--1. _Is a revelation of what God does for
man._ 2. _Is absolutely necessary for each._ 3. _Should be earnestly
sought by all._
_GERM NOTES OF THE VERSES._