+I. There is but one righteousness, the life of God; there is but one
sin, and that is being alienated from the life of God.+--One man may
commit different sorts of sins from another--one may lie, another may
steal; one may be proud, another may be covetous; but all these
different sins come from the same root of sin, they are all flowers
off the same plant. And St. Paul tells us what that one root of sin,
what that same devil's plant, is, which produces all sin in Christian
brethren. It is that we are every one of us worse than we ought to
be, worse than we know how to be, and, strangest of all, worse that
we wish or like to be. Just as far as we are like the heathen of old,
we shall be worse than we know how to be. For we are all ready enough
to turn heathens again, at any moment. They were alienated from the
life of God--that is, they became strangers to God's life; they
forgot what God's life and character was like; or if they even did
awake a moment, and recollect dimly what God was like, they hated
that thought. They hated to think that God was what He was, and shut
their eyes and stopped their ears as fast as possible. And what
happened to them in the meantime? What was the fruit of their
wilfully forgetting what God's life was? St. Paul tells us that they
fell into the most horrible sins--sins too dreadful and shameful to
be spoken of; and that their common life, even when they did not run
into such fearful evils, was profligate, fierce, and miserable. And
yet St. Paul tells us all the while they knew the judgment of God,
that those who do such things are worthy of death.
+II. These men saw that man ought to be like God; they saw that God
was righteous and good; and they saw, therefore, that unrighteousness
and sin must end in ruin and everlasting misery.+--So much God had
taught them, but not much more; but to St. Paul He had taught more.
Those wise and righteous heathen could show their sinful neighbours
that sin was death, and that God was righteous; but they could not
tell them how to rise out of the death of sin into God's life of
righteousness. They could preach the terrors of the law, but they did
not know the good news of the Gospel, and therefore they did not
succeed; they did not convert their neighbours to God. Then came St.
Paul and preached to the very same people, and he did convert them to
God; for he had good news for them, of things which prophets and
kings had desired to see, and had not seen themselves, and to hear,
and had not heard them. And so God, and the life of God, was
manifested in the flesh and reasonable soul of a man; and from that
time there is no doubt what the life of God is, for the life of God
is the life of Christ. There is no doubt now what God is like, for
God is like Jesus Christ.
+III. Now what is the everlasting life of God, which the Lord Jesus
Christ lived perfectly,+ and which He can and will make every one of
us live, in proportion as we give up our hearts and wills to Him, and
ask Him to take charge of us and shape us and teach us? And God is
perfect love, because He is perfect righteousness; for His love and
His justice are not two different things, two different parts of God,
as some say, who fancy that God's justice had to be satisfied in one
way and His love in another, and talk of God as if His justice fought
against His love, and desired the death of a sinner, and then His
love fought against His justice, and desired to save a sinner. The
old heathen did not like such a life, therefore they did not like to
retain God in their knowledge. They knew that man ought to be like
God; and St. Paul says they ought to have known what God was
like--that He was love; for St. Paul told them He left not Himself
without witness, in that He sent rain and fruitful seasons, filling
their hearts with food and gladness. That was, in St. Paul's eyes,
God's plainest witness of Himself--the sign that God was love, making
His sun shine on the just and on the unjust, and good to the
unthankful and the evil--in one word, perfect, because He is perfect
love. But they preferred to be selfish, covetous, envious,
revengeful, delighting to indulge themselves in filthy pleasures, to
oppress and defraud each other.
+IV. God is love.+--As I told you just now, the heathen of old might
have known that, if they chose to open their eyes and see. But they
would not see. They were dark, cruel, and unloving, and therefore
they fancied that God was dark, cruel, and unloving also. They did
not love love, and therefore they did not love God, for God is love.
And therefore they did not love each other, but lived in hatred and
suspicion and selfishness and darkness. They were but heathen. But if
even they ought to have known that God was love, how much more we?
For we know of a deed of God's love, such as those poor heathen never
dreamed of. And then, if we have God abiding with us, and filling us
with His eternal life, what more do we need for life, or death, or
eternity, or eternities of eternities? For we shall live in and with
and by God, who can never die or change, an everlasting life of
love.--_C. Kingsley._
Ver. 19. _Past Feeling._--1. Though original sin has seized upon the
whole soul, yet the Lord has kept so much knowledge of Himself and of
right and wrong in the understanding of men as they may know when
they sin, and so much of conscience as to accuse or excuse according
to the nature of the fact, whereupon follows grief or joy in their
affections. Wicked men may arrive at such a height of sin as to have
no sense of sin, no grief, nor check, nor challenge from conscience
from it. 2. A watchful conscience doing its duty is the strongest
restraint from sin; and where that is not, all other restraints will
serve for little purpose. For a man to be given over to
lasciviousness without check or challenge argues a great height of
impiety. 3. As upon senseless stupidity of conscience there follows
an unsatiableness in sinning especially in the sin of uncleanness, so
when a man comes to this, he is then arrived at the greatest height
of sin unto which the heathens, destitute of the knowledge of God,
ever attained.--_Fergusson._