I. This text admonishes us of +the manifold instruments and agencies
on whose concurrence and harmonious action the prosperity and the
perfection of the Christian Church depend.+--It likens the Church to
that most complicated, admirable machine, the human body, which only
produces its proper results, the preservation and comfort of human
life, by the healthful tone and right performance of its various
powers and functions. We live, and are at ease, in virtue of the
sound condition and regular operation of all the multitude of parts
and organs which compose our corporeal frame. Should the heart refuse
to circulate the blood, and to diffuse through all the various
channels of inter-communication with the members of the body its
life-sustaining pulses, death ensues in a moment.
II. +The same law of mutual dependence reigns in improved civilised
society.+--In man, social as well as individual, the body politic and
social must prosper, or its members suffer. The individual too cannot
suffer without inflicting, by so much, an injury on the community.
The ruler and the subject, the capitalist and the operative, the
merchant, the farmer, the scholar and the artisan, the manufacturer
and the sailor, perform functions alike indispensable to the great
result aimed at or desired by all communities. They are mutually
dependent, are indissolubly united in interest by ties not always
visible, but yet real and essential to the well-being of all parties.
III. I hasten to +apply my subject to the Church,+ where the text
finds illustration yet more pertinent and affecting. The Church is a
community, organised, with special ends to be accomplished, and
endowed with special capabilities and adaptations, yet having many
points of resemblance to human society in general. All the members
and all the officers of the Church are appointed and honoured of God
to be co-workers with Himself, co-agents with the Holy Ghost, in the
edification of the body of Christ. The pastor, not less in the study,
when he gathers things new and old from holy books and common, than
in the pulpit or in breaking the bread of the sacrament at the altar,
or in the sick-chamber--all the subordinate lay ministries devoted to
godly counsel, to faithful admonition, or to the management and
conversation of the material interests of the Church--the pious
mother nurturing up her children in God's love--the sufferer on a bed
of languishing, giving forth blessed examples of patience and
resignation and faith--the teacher of the Sabbath school--they who,
in the Spirit, lift up our joyous songs of praise in the
sanctuary--all who pray in the closet or in the congregation, are,
and should be deemed, essential parts of that good, great system
through whose wondrous, harmonious working God is pleased to renew
and sanctify souls and train them up to be heirs of glory. Who, in
this great co-partnership for honouring Christ, has any ground of
complaint?--the foot, that it is not the head? the eye, that it is
too feeble to do the functions of the brawny arm? the ears, that they
cannot do the office of locomotion? Every part is indispensable. None
can say which is most important in God's plan; and achievements,
ascribed hastily to the eloquence of the preacher, often stand
credited in the record kept above to the prayer of faith.--_Dr. Olin._
_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 17-24.
_A Thorough Moral Transformation_--
+I. Contrasted with a former life of sin.+--1. _A state of
self-induced mental darkness._ "Having the understanding
darkened, . . . because of the blindness of their heart" (ver. 18).
Infidelity is more a moral than a mental obliquity. The mind is
darkened because the heart is bad. Men do not see the truth because
they do not want to see it. The light that would lead to
righteousness and to God is persistently shut out.
2. _A state of moral insensibility that abandoned the soul to the
reckless commission of all kinds of sin._--"Who being past feeling
have given themselves over . . . to work all uncleanness with
greediness" (ver. 19). Sin is made difficult to the beginner. The
barriers set up by a tender conscience, the warnings of nature, the
teachings of providence, the light of revelation, the living examples
of the good, have all to be broken down. Early transgressions are
arrested by the remorse they occasion; but gradually the safeguards
are neglected and despised, until the habit is acquired of sinning
for the love of sin. A spirit of recklessness ensues, the reins are
relaxed and then thrown upon the neck of the passions, and the soul
is abandoned to the indulgence of all kinds of iniquity.
"We are not worst at once. The course of evil
Is of such slight source an infant's hand
Might close its breach with clay;
But let the stream get deeper, and we strive in vain
To stem the headlong torrent."
3. _A state that rendered all mental activities worthless._--"Walk
not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind" (ver. 17).
The art of right thinking was lost. For the man that will not think,
think clearly and justly, the calamities and the raptures of life,
the blessing and the curse, have no meaning. They evoke neither
gratitude nor fear. The beauties of nature, as they sparkle in the
stars, or shine in the flowers, or gleam in the coloured radiance of
the firmament, are unheeded. The voice of God that speaks in the
events of daily life has no lesson for him. The senses, which are
intended as the avenues of light and teaching to the soul, are dulled
by inaction, clogged by supine indifference, and polluted and damaged
by inveterate sin. When the reason is poisoned at its source, all its
deductions are aimless and worthless.
+II. Effected by the personal knowledge of the truth in
Christ.+--"But ye have not so learned Christ, . . . as the truth is
in Jesus" (vers. 20, 21). The Gospel has introduced to the world the
principles of a great moral change. It announces Christ as the light
of the world--a light that shines through all the realms of human
life. The diseased reason is restored to health, the intellectual
faculties have now a theme worthy of their noblest exercise, and are
made stronger and more reliable by being employed on such a theme,
and the moral nature is lifted into a purer region of thought and
experience. The world is to be transformed by the moral
transformation of the individual, and that transformation is effected
only by the truth and a personal faith in Christ.
+III. Involves the renunciation of the corrupting elements of the
former life.+--"That ye put off . . . the old man, which is corrupt"
(ver. 22). The inward change is evidenced by the outward life. The
old man dies, being conquered by the new. Corruption and decay marked
every feature of the old Gentile life. It was gangrened with vice. It
was a life of fleshly pleasure, and could end in only one way--in
disappointment and misery. The new moral order inaugurated by the
Gospel of Christ effected a revolution in human affairs, and the
corrupting elements of the old order must be weeded out and put away.
An excellent man in London kept an institution near the Seven Dials
at his own expense. He spent his nights in bringing the homeless boys
from the streets into it. When they came in he photographed them, and
then they were washed, clothed, and educated. When he sent one out,
having taught him a trade, he photographed him again. The change was
marvellous, and was a constant reminder of what had been done for
him. The change effected in us by the grace of God not only contrasts
with our former life, but should teach us to hate and put away its
corrupting sins.
+IV. Evidenced in investing the soul with the new life Divinely
created and constantly receiving progressive renewal by the Spirit+
(vers. 23, 24).--It is a continual rejuvenation the apostle
describes; the verb is present in tense, and the newness implied is
that of recency and youth, newness in point of age. But the new man
to be put on is of a new kind and order. It is put on when the
Christian way of life is adopted, when we enter personally into the
new humanity founded in Christ. Thus two distinct conceptions of the
life of faith are placed before our minds. It consists, on the one
hand, of a quickening constantly renewed in the springs of our
individual thought and will; and it is at the same time the
assumption of another nature, the investiture of the soul with the
Divine character and form of its being. The inward reception of
Christ's Spirit is attended by the outward assumption of His
character as our calling amongst men. The man of the coming times
will not be atheistic or agnostic; he will be devout; not practising
the world's ethics with the Christian's creed; he will be upright and
generous, manly and God-like (_Findlay_).
+Lessons.+--1. _Religion is a complete renewal of the soul._ 2. _The
soul is renewed by the instrumentality of the truth._ 3. _The renewal
of the soul is the renewal of the outward life._
_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._