Following the R.V. we read "made me free," not "hath made me." The reference is obviously, as the Greek more clearly shows, to a single historical event, which some would take to be the Apostle"s baptism, but which is more properly supposed to be his conversion. His strong bold language here does not mean that he claims to be sinless. The emanc.i.p.ation is effected, although it is but begun. He holds that at that moment when Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus, and he yielded to Him as Lord, his deliverance was real, though not complete. He was conscious of a real change of position in reference to that law of sin and of death. Paul distinguishes between the true self and the acc.u.mulation of selfish and sensual habits which make up so much of ourselves. The deeper and purer self may be vitalised in will and heart, and set free even while the emanc.i.p.ation is not worked out in the life. The parable of the leaven applies in the individual renewal; and there is no fanaticism, and no harm, in Paul"s point of view, if only it be remembered that sins by which pa.s.sion and externals overbear my better self are mine in responsibility and in consequences. Thus guarded, we may be wholly right in thinking of all the evils which still cleave to the renewed Christian soul as not being part of it, but destined to drop away.
And this bold declaration is to be vindicated as a prophetic confidence in the supremacy and ultimate dominion of the new power which works even through much antagonism in an imperfect Christian.
Paul, too, calls "things that are not as though they were." If my spirit of life is the "Spirit of life in Christ," it will go on to perfection. It is Spirit, therefore it is informing and conquering the material; it is a divine Spirit, therefore it is omnipotent; it is the Spirit of life, leading in and imparting life like itself, which is kindred with it and is its source; it is the Spirit of life in Christ, therefore leading to life like His, bringing us to conformity with Him because the same causes produce the same effects; it is a life in Christ having a law and regular orderly course of development. So, just as if we have the germ we may hope for fruit, and can see the infantile oak in the tightly-shut acorn, or in the egg the creature which shall afterwards grow there, we have in this gift of the Spirit, the victory. If we have the cause, we have the effects implicitly folded in it; and we have but to wait further development.
The Christian life is to be one long effort, partial, and gradual, to unfold the freedom possessed. Paul knew full well that his emanc.i.p.ation was not perfect. It was, probably, after this triumphant expression of confidence that he wrote, "Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect." The first stage is the gift of power, the appropriation and development of that power is the work of a life; and it ought to pa.s.s through a well-marked series and cycle of growing changes. The way to develop it is by constant application to the source of all freedom, the life-giving Spirit, and by constant effort to conquer sins and temptations. There is no such thing in the Christian conflict as a painless development. We must mortify the deeds of the body if we are to live in the Spirit. The Christian progress has in it the nature of a crucifixion. It is to be effort, steadily directed for the sake of Christ, and in the joy of His Spirit, to destroy sin, and to win practical holiness. Homely moralities are the outcome and the test of all pretensions to spiritual communion.
We are, further, to perfect holiness in the fear of the Lord, by "waiting for the Redemption," which is not merely pa.s.sive waiting, but active expectation, as of one who stretches out a welcoming hand to an approaching friend. Nor must we forget that this accomplished deliverance is but partial whilst upon earth. "The body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness." But there may be indefinite approximation to complete deliverance. The metaphors in Scripture under which Christian progress is described, whether drawn from a conflict or a race, or from a building, or from the growth of a tree, all suggest the idea of constant advance against hindrances, which yet, constant though it is, does not reach the goal here. And this is our n.o.blest earthly condition--not to be pure, but to be tending towards it and conscious of impurity. Hence our tempers should be those of humility, strenuous effort, firm hope.
We are as slaves who have escaped, but are still in the wilderness, with the enemies" dogs baying at our feet; but we shall come to the land of freedom, on whose sacred soil sin and death can never tread.
CHRIST CONDEMNING SIN
"For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, G.o.d sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh."--ROMANS viii. 3.
In the first verse of this chapter we read that "There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." The reason of that is, that they are set free from the terrible sequence of cause and effect which const.i.tutes "the law of sin and death"; and the reason why they are freed from that awful sequence by the power of Christ is, because He has "condemned sin in the flesh." The occurrence of the two words "condemnation" (ver. 1) and "condemned" (ver. 3) should be noted. Sin is personified as dwelling in the flesh, which expression here means, not merely the body, but unregenerate human nature. He has made his fortress there, and rules over it all. The strong man keeps his house and his goods are in peace. He laughs to scorn the attempts of laws and moralities of all sorts to cast him out. His dominion is death to the human nature over which he tyrannises. Condemnation is inevitable to the men over whom he rules.
They or he must perish. If he escape they die. If he could be slain they might live. Christ comes, condemns the tyrant, and casts him out. So, he being condemned, we are acquitted; and he being slain there is no death for us. Let us try to elucidate a little further this great metaphor by just pondering the two points prominent in it--Sin tyrannising over human nature and resisting all attempts to overcome it, and Christ"s condemnation and casting out of the tyrant.
I. Sin tyrannising over human nature, and resisting all attempts to overcome it.
Paul is generalising his own experience when he speaks of the condemnation of an intrusive alien force that holds unregenerate human nature in bondage. He is writing a page of his own autobiography, and he is sure that all the rest of us have like pages in ours. Heart answereth unto heart as in a mirror. If each man is a unity, the poison must run through all his veins and affect his whole nature. Will, understanding, heart, must all be affected and each in its own way by the intruder; and if men are a collective whole, each man"s experience is repeated in his brother"s.
The Apostle is equally transcribing his own experience when in the text he sadly admits the futility of all efforts to shake the dominion of sin. He has found in his own case that even the loftiest revelation in the Mosaic law utterly fails in the attempt to condemn sin. This is true not only in regard to the Mosaic law but in regard to the law of conscience, and to moral teachings of any kind. It is obvious that all such laws do condemn sin in the sense that they solemnly declare G.o.d"s judgment about it, and His sentence on it; but in the sense of real condemnation, or casting out, and depriving sin of its power, they all are impotent. The law may deter from overt acts or lead to isolated acts of obedience; it may stir up antagonism to sin"s tyranny, but after that it has no more that it can do. It cannot give the purity which it proclaims to be necessary, nor create the obedience which it enjoins. Its thunders roll terrors, and no fruitful rain follows them to soften the barren soil. There always remains an unbridged gulf between the man and the law.
And this is what Paul points to in saying that it "was weak through the flesh." It is good in itself, but it has to work through the sinful nature. The only powers to which it can appeal are those which are already in rebellion. A discrowned king whose only forces to conquer his rebellious subjects are the rebels themselves, is not likely to regain his crown. Because law brings no new element into our humanity, its appeal to our humanity has little more effect than that of the wind whistling through an archway. It appeals to conscience and reason by a plain declaration of what is right; to will and understanding by an exhibition of authority; to fears and prudence by plainly setting forth consequences. But what is to be done with men who know what is right but have no wish to do it, who believe that they ought but will not, who know the consequences but "choose rather the pleasures of sin for a season," and shuffle the future out of their minds altogether? This is the essential weakness of all law. The tyrant is not afraid so long as there is no one threatening his reign, but the unarmed herald of a discrowned king.
His citadel will not surrender to the blast of the trumpet blown from Sinai.
II. Christ"s condemnation and casting out of the tyrant.
The Apostle points to a triple condemnation.
"In the likeness of sinful flesh," Jesus condemns sin by His own perfect life. That phrase, "the likeness of the flesh of sin,"
implies the real humanity of Jesus, and His perfect sinlessness; and suggests the first way in which He condemns sin in the flesh. In His life He repeats the law in a higher fashion. What the one spoke in words the other realised in "loveliness of perfect deeds"; and all men own that example is the mightiest preacher of righteousness, and that active goodness draws to itself reverence and sways men to imitate. But that life lived in human nature gives a new hope of the possibilities of that nature even in us. The dream of perfect beauty "in the flesh" has been realised. What the Man Christ Jesus was, He was that we may become. In the very flesh in which the tyrant rules, Jesus shows the possibility and the loveliness of a holy life.
But this, much as it is, is not all. There is another way in which Christ condemns sin in the flesh, and that is by His perfect sacrifice. To this also Paul points in the phrase, "the flesh of sin." The example of which we have been speaking is much, but it is weak for the very same reason for which law is weak--that it operates only through our nature as it is; and that is not enough. Sin"s hold on man is twofold--one that it has perverted his relation to G.o.d, and another that it has corrupted his nature. Hence there is in him a sense of separation from G.o.d and a sense of guilt. Both of these not only lead to misery, but positively tend to strengthen the dominion of sin. The leader of the mutineers keeps them true to him by reminding them that the mutiny laws decree death without mercy. Guilt felt may drive to desperation and hopeless continuance in wrong. The cry, "I am so bad that it is useless to try to be better," is often heard. Guilt stifled leads to hardening of heart, and sometimes to desire and riot. Guilt slurred over by some easy process of absolution may lead to further sin. Similarly separation from G.o.d is the root of all evil, and thoughts of Him as hard and an enemy, always lead to sin. So if the power of sin in the past must be cancelled, the sense of guilt must be removed, and the wall of part.i.tion between man and G.o.d thrown down. What can law answer to such a demand? It is silent; it can only say, "What is written is written." It has no word to speak that promises "the blotting out of the handwriting that is against us"; and through its silence one can hear the mocking laugh of the tyrant that keeps his castle.
But Christ has come "for sin"; that is to say His Incarnation and Death had relation to, and had it for their object to remove, human sin. He comes to blot out the evil, to bring G.o.d"s pardon. The recognition of His sacrifice supplies the adequate motive to copy His example, and they who see in His death G.o.d"s sacrifice for man"s sin, cannot but yield themselves to Him, and find in obedience a delight.
Love kindled at His love makes likeness and trans.m.u.tes the outward law into an inward "spirit of life in Christ Jesus."
Still another way by which G.o.d "condemns sin in the flesh" is pointed to by the remaining phrase of our text, "sending His own Son." In the beginning of this epistle Jesus is spoken of as "being declared to be the Son of G.o.d with power according to the Spirit of holiness"; and we must connect that saying with our text, and so think of Christ"s bestowal of His perfect gift to humanity of the Spirit which sanctifies as being part of His condemnation of sin in the flesh.
Into the very region where the tyrant rules, the Son of G.o.d communicates a new nature which const.i.tutes a real new power. The Spirit operates on all our faculties, and redeems them from the bondage of corruption. All the springs in the land are poisoned; but a new one, limpid and pure, is opened. By the entrance of the Spirit of holiness into a human spirit, the usurper is driven from the central fortress: and though he may linger in the outworks and keep up a guerilla warfare, that is all that he can do. We never truly apprehend Christ"s gift to man until we recognise that He not merely "died for our sins," but lives to impart the principle of holiness in the gift of His Spirit. The dominion of that imparted Spirit is gradual and progressive. The Canaanite may still be in the land, but a growing power, working in and through us, is warring against all in us that still owns allegiance to that alien power, and there can be no end to the victorious struggle until the whole body, soul, and spirit, be wholly under the influence of the Spirit that dwelleth in us, and nothing shall hurt or destroy in what shall then be all G.o.d"s holy mountain.
Such is, in the most general terms, the statement of what Christ does "for us"; and the question comes to be the all-important one for each, Do I let Him do it for me? Remember the alternative. There must either be condemnation for us, or for the sin that dwelleth in us.
There is no condemnation for them who are in Christ Jesus, because there is condemnation for the sin that dwells in them. It must he slain, or it will slay us. It must be cast out, or it will cast us out from G.o.d. It must be separated from us, or it will separate us from Him. We need not be condemned, but if it be not condemned, then we shall be.
THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT
"The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of G.o.d."--ROMANS viii. 18.
The sin of the world is a false confidence, a careless, complacent taking for granted that a man is a Christian when he is not. The fault, and sorrow, and weakness of the Church is a false diffidence, an anxious fear whether a man be a Christian when he is. There are none so far away from false confidence as those who tremble lest they be cherishing it. There are none so inextricably caught in its toils as those who are all unconscious of _its_ existence and of _their_ danger. The two things, the false confidence and the false diffidence, are perhaps more akin to one another than they look at first sight. Their opposites, at all events--the true confidence, which is faith in Christ; and the true diffidence, which is utter distrust of myself--are identical. But there may sometimes be, and there often is, the combination of a real confidence and a false diffidence, the presence of faith, and the doubt whether it be present. Many Christians go through life with this as the prevailing temper of their minds--a doubt sometimes arising almost to agony, and sometimes dying down into pa.s.sive patient acceptance of the condition as inevitable--a doubt whether, after all, they be not, as they say, "deceiving themselves"; and in the perverse ingenuity with which that state of mind is constantly marked, they manage to distil for themselves a bitter vinegar of self-accusation out of grand words in the Bible, that were meant to afford them but the wine of gladness and of consolation.
Now this great text which I have ventured to take--not with the idea that I can exalt it or say anything worthy of it, but simply in the hope of clearing away some misapprehensions--is one that has often and often tortured the mind of Christians. They say of themselves, "I know nothing of any such evidence: I am not conscious of any Spirit bearing witness with my spirit." Instead of looking to other sources to answer the question whether they are Christians or not--and then, having answered it, thinking thus, "That text a.s.serts that _all_ Christians have this witness, therefore certainly I have it in some shape or other," they say to themselves, "I do not feel anything that corresponds with my idea of what such a grand, supernatural voice as the witness of G.o.d"s Spirit in my spirit must needs be; and therefore I doubt whether I am a Christian at all." I should be thankful if the attempt I make now to set before you what seems to me to be the true teaching of the pa.s.sage, should be, with G.o.d"s help, the means of lifting some little part of the burden from some hearts that are right, and that only long to know that they are, in order to be at rest.
"The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of G.o.d." The general course of thought which I wish to leave with you may be summed up thus: Our cry "Father" is the witness that we are sons. That cry is not simply ours, but it is the voice of G.o.d"s Spirit. The divine Witness in our spirits is subject to the ordinary influences which affect our spirits.
Let us take these three thoughts, and dwell on them for a little while.
I. Our cry "Father" is the witness that we are sons.
Mark the terms of the pa.s.sage: "The Spirit itself beareth witness _with_ our spirit--." It is not so much a revelation made to my spirit, considered as the recipient of the testimony, as a revelation made in or with my spirit considered as co-operating in the testimony. It is not that my spirit says one thing, bears witness that I am a child of G.o.d; and that the Spirit of G.o.d comes in by a distinguishable process, with a separate evidence, to say Amen to my persuasion; but it is that there is one testimony which has a conjoint origin--the origin from the Spirit of G.o.d as true source, and the origin from my own soul as recipient and co-operant in that testimony. From the teaching of this pa.s.sage, or from any of the language which Scripture uses with regard to the inner witness, it is not to be inferred that there will rise up in a Christian"s heart, from some origin consciously beyond the sphere of his own nature, a voice with which he has nothing to do; which at once, by its own character, by something peculiar and distinguishable about it, by something strange in its nature, or out of the ordinary course of human thinking, shall certify itself to be not his voice at all, but _G.o.d"s_ voice. That is not the direction in which you are to look for the witness of G.o.d"s Spirit. It is evidence borne, indeed, by the Spirit of G.o.d; but it is evidence borne not only to our spirit, but through it, with it. The testimony is one, the testimony of a man"s own emotion, and own conviction, and own desire, the cry, Abba, Father! So far, then, as the form of the evidence goes, you are not to look for it in anything ecstatic, arbitrary, parted off from your own experience by a broad line of demarcation; but you are to look into the experience which at first sight you would claim most exclusively for your own, and to try and find out whether _there_ there be not working with your soul, working through it, working beneath it, distinct from it but not distinguishable from it by anything but its consequences and its fruitfulness--a deeper voice than yours--a "still small voice,"--no whirlwind, nor fire, nor earthquake--but the voice of G.o.d speaking in secret, taking the voice and tones of your own heart and your own consciousness, and saying to you, "Thou art my child, inasmuch as, operated by My grace, and Mine inspiration alone, there rises, tremblingly but truly, in thine own soul the cry, Abba, Father."
So much, then, for the form of this evidence--my own conviction. Then with regard to the substance of it: conviction of what? The text itself does not tell us what is the evidence which the Spirit bears, and by reason of which we have a right to conclude that we are the children of G.o.d. The previous verse tells us. I have partially antic.i.p.ated what I have to say on that point, but it will bear a little further expansion. "Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father." "The Spirit itself," by this means of our cry, Abba, Father, "beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of G.o.d." The substance, then, of the conviction which is lodged in the human spirit by the testimony of the Spirit of G.o.d is not primarily directed to our relation or feelings to G.o.d, but to a far grander thing than that--to G.o.d"s feelings and relation to us.
Now I want you to think for one moment, before I pa.s.s on, how entirely different the whole aspect of this witness of the Spirit of which Christian men speak so much, and sometimes with so little understanding, becomes according as you regard it mistakenly as being the direct testimony to you that you are a child of G.o.d, or rightly as being the direct testimony to you that G.o.d is your Father. The two things seem to be the same, but they are not. In the one case, the false case, the mistaken interpretation, we are left to this, that a man has no deeper certainty of his condition, no better foundation for his hope, than what is to be drawn from the presence or absence of certain emotions within his own heart. In the other case, we are admitted into this "wide place," that all which is our own is second and not first, and that the true basis of all our confidence lies not in the thought of what we are and feel to G.o.d, but in the thought of what G.o.d is and feels to us. And instead, therefore, of being left to labour for ourselves, painfully to search amongst the dust and rubbish of our own hearts, we are taught to sweep away all that crumbled, rotten surface, and to go down to the living rock that lies beneath it; we are taught to say, in the words of the book of Isaiah, "Doubtless Thou art our Father--we are all an unclean thing; our iniquities, like the wind, have carried us away"; there is nothing stable in us; our own resolutions, they are swept away like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor, by the first gust of temptation; but what of that?--"in those is continuance, and we shall be saved!" Ah, brethren! expand this thought of the conviction that G.o.d is my Father, as being the basis of all my confidence that I am His child, into its widest and grandest form, and it leads us up to the blessed old conviction, I am nothing, my holiness is nothing, my resolutions are nothing, my faith is nothing, my energies are nothing; I stand stripped, and barren, and naked of everything, and I fling myself out of myself into the merciful arms of my Father in heaven! There is all the difference in the world between searching for evidence of my sonship, and seeking to get the conviction of G.o.d"s Fatherhood. The one is an endless, profitless, self-tormenting task; the other is the light and liberty, the glorious liberty, of the children of G.o.d.
And so the _substance_ of the Spirit"s evidence is the direct conviction based on the revelation of G.o.d"s infinite love and fatherhood in Christ the Son, that G.o.d is my Father; from which direct conviction I come to the conclusion, the inference, the second thought, Then I may trust that I am His son. But why? Because of anything in me? No: because of Him. The very emblem of fatherhood and sonship might teach us that _that_ depends upon the Father"s will and the Father"s heart. The Spirit"s testimony has for form my own conviction: and for substance my humble cry, "Oh Thou, my Father in heaven!" Brethren, is not that a far truer and n.o.bler kind of thing to preach than saying, Look into your own heart for strange, extraordinary, distinguishable signs which shall mark you out as G.o.d"s child--and which are proved to be His Spirit"s, because they are separated from the ordinary human consciousness? Is it not far more blessed for us, and more honouring to Him who works the sign, when we say, that it is to be found in no out-of-rule, miraculous evidence, but in the natural (which is in reality supernatural) working of His Spirit in the heart which is its recipient, breeding there the conviction that G.o.d is my Father? And oh, if I am speaking to any to whom that text, with all its light and glory, has seemed to lift them up into an atmosphere too rare and a height too lofty for their heavy wings and unused feet, if I am speaking to any Christian man to whom this word has been like the cherubim and flaming sword, bright and beautiful, but threatening and repellent when it speaks of a Spirit that bears witness with our spirit--I ask you simply to take the pa.s.sage for yourself, and carefully and patiently to examine it, and see if it be not true what I have been saying, that your trembling conviction--sister and akin as it is to your deepest distrust and sharpest sense of sin and unworthiness--that your trembling conviction of a love mightier than your own, everlasting and all-faithful, is indeed the selectest sign that G.o.d can give you that you _are_ His child. Oh, brethren and sisters! be confident; for it is not false confidence: be confident if up from the depths of that dark well of your own sinful heart there rises sometimes, through all the bitter waters, unpolluted and separate, a sweet conviction, forcing itself upward, that G.o.d hath love in His heart, and that G.o.d is _my_ Father. Be confident; "the Spirit itself beareth witness with your spirit."
II. And now, secondly, That cry is not simply ours, but it is the voice of G.o.d"s Spirit.
Our own convictions are ours because they are G.o.d"s. Our own souls possess these emotions of love and tender desire going out to G.o.d--our own spirits possess them; but our own spirits did not originate them. They are ours by property; they are His by source.
The spirit of a Christian man has no good thought in it, no true thought, no perception of the grace of G.o.d"s Gospel, no holy desire, no pure resolution, which is not stamped with the sign of a higher origin, and is not the witness of G.o.d"s Spirit in his spirit. The pa.s.sage before us tells us that the sense of Fatherhood which is in the Christian"s heart, and becomes his cry, comes from G.o.d"s Spirit.
This pa.s.sage, and that in the Epistle to the Galatians which is almost parallel, put this truth very forcibly, when taken in connection. "Ye have received," says the text before us, "the Spirit of adoption, whereby _we_ cry, Abba, Father." The variation in the Epistle to the Galatians is this: "Because ye are sons, G.o.d hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, _crying_ (the Spirit crying), Abba, Father." So in the one text, the cry is regarded as the voice of the believing heart; and in the other the same cry is regarded as the voice of G.o.d"s Spirit. And these two things are both true; the one would want its foundation if it were not for the other; the cry of the Spirit is nothing for me unless it be appropriated by me. I do not need to plunge here into metaphysical speculation of any sort, but simply to dwell upon the plain practical teaching of the Bible--a teaching verified, I believe, by every Christian"s experience, if he will search into it--that everything in him which makes the Christian life, is not his, but is G.o.d"s by origin, and his only by gift and inspiration. And the whole doctrine of my text is built on this one thought--without the Spirit of G.o.d in your heart, you never can recognise G.o.d as your Father. That in us which runs, with love, and childlike faith, and reverence, to the place "where His honour dwelleth," that in us which says "Father," is kindred with G.o.d, and is not the simple, unhelped, unsanctified human nature.
There is no ascent of human desires above their source. And wherever in a heart there springs up heavenward a thought, a wish, a prayer, a trembling confidence, it is because that came down first from heaven, and rises to seek its level again. All that is divine in man comes from G.o.d. All that tends towards G.o.d in man is G.o.d"s voice in the human heart; and were it not for the possession and operation, the sanctifying and quickening, of a living divine Spirit granted to us, our souls would for ever cleave to the dust and dwell upon earth, nor ever rise to G.o.d and live in the light of His presence. Every Christian, then, may be sure of this, that howsoever feeble may be the thought and conviction in his heart of G.o.d"s Fatherhood, _he_ did not work it, he received it only, cherished it, thought of it, watched over it, was careful not to quench it; but in origin it was G.o.d"s, and it is now and ever the voice of the Divine Spirit in the child"s heart.
But, my friends, if this principle be true, it does not apply only to this one single att.i.tude of the believing soul when it cries, Abba, Father; it must be widened out to comprehend the whole of a Christian"s life, outward and inward, which is not sinful and darkened with actual transgression. To all the rest of his being, to everything in heart and life which is right and pure, the same truth applies. "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit" in every perception of G.o.d"s word which is granted, in every revelation of His counsel which dawns upon our darkness, in every aspiration after Him which lifts us above the smoke and dust of this dim spot, in every holy resolution, in every thrill and throb of love and desire. Each of these is mine--inasmuch as in my heart it is experienced and transacted; it is mine, inasmuch as I am not a mere dead piece of matter, the pa.s.sive recipient of a magical and supernatural grace; but it is G.o.d"s; and therefore, and therefore only, has it come to be mine!
And if it be objected, that this opens a wide door to all manner of delusion, and that there is no more dangerous thing than for a man to confound his own thoughts with the operations of G.o.d"s Spirit, let me just give you (following the context before us) the one guarantee and test which the Apostle lays down. He says, "There is a witness from G.o.d in your spirits." You may say, That witness, if it come in the form of these convictions in my own heart, I may mistake and falsely read. Well, then, here is an outward guarantee. "As many as are led by the Spirit of G.o.d, they are the sons of G.o.d"; and so, on the regions both of heart and of life the consecrating thought,--G.o.d"s work, and G.o.d"s Spirit"s work--is stamped. The heart with its love, the head with its understanding, the conscience with its quick response to the law of duty, the will with its resolutions,--these are all, as sanctified by Him, the witness of His Spirit; and the life with its strenuous obedience, with its struggles against sin and temptation, with its patient persistence in the quiet path of ordinary duty, as well as with the times when it rises into heroic stature of resignation or allegiance, the martyrdom of death and the martyrdom of life, this too is all (in so far as it is pure and right) the work of that same Spirit. The test of the inward conviction is the outward life; and they that have the witness of the Spirit within them have the light of their life lit by the Spirit of G.o.d, whereby they may read the handwriting on the heart, and be sure that it is G.o.d"s and not their own.
III. And now, lastly, this divine Witness in our spirits is subject to the ordinary influences which affect our spirits.
The notion often prevails that if there be in the heart this divine witness of G.o.d"s Spirit, it must needs be perfect, clearly indicating its origin by an exemption from all that besets ordinary human feelings, that it must be a strong, uniform, never flickering, never darkening, and perpetual light, a kind of vestal fire burning always on the altar of the heart! The pa.s.sage before us, and all others that speak about the matter, give us the directly opposite notion. The Divine Spirit, when it enters into the narrow room of the human spirit, condescends to submit itself, not wholly, but to such an extent as practically for our present purpose _is_ wholly to submit itself to the ordinary laws and conditions and contingencies which befall and regulate our own human nature. Christ came into the world divine: He was "found in fashion as a man," in form a servant; the humanity that He wore limited (if you like), regulated, modified, the manifestation of the divinity that dwelt in it. And not otherwise is the operation of G.o.d"s Holy Spirit when it comes to dwell in a human heart. There too, working through man, _it_ "is found in fashion as a man"; and though the origin of the conviction be of G.o.d, and though the voice in my heart be not only my voice, but G.o.d"s voice there, it will obey those same laws which make human thoughts and emotions vary, and fluctuate, flicker and flame up again, burn bright and burn low, according to a thousand circ.u.mstances. The witness of the Spirit, if it were yonder in heaven, would shine like a perpetual star; the witness of the Spirit, here in the heart on earth, burns like a flickering flame, never to be extinguished, but still not always bright, wanting to be trimmed, and needing to be guarded from rude blasts. Else, brother, what does an Apostle mean when he says to you and me, "Quench not the Spirit"? what does he mean when he says to us, "Grieve not the Spirit"? What does the whole teaching which enjoins on us, "Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning," and "What I say to you, I say to all, Watch!" mean, unless it means this, that G.o.d-given as (G.o.d be thanked!) that conviction of Fatherhood is, it is not given in such a way as that, irrespective of our carefulness, irrespective of our watching, it shall burn on--the same and unchangeable? The Spirit"s witness comes from G.o.d, therefore it is veracious, divine, omnipotent; but the Spirit"s witness from G.o.d is in man, therefore it may be wrongly read, it may be checked, it may for a time be kept down, and prevented from showing itself to be what it is.
And the practical conclusion that comes from all this, is just the simple advice to you all: Do not wonder, in the first place, if that evidence of which we speak, vary and change in its clearness and force in your own hearts. "The flesh l.u.s.teth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh." Do not think that it cannot be genuine, because it is changeful. There is a sun in the heavens, but there are heavenly lights too that wax and wane; they _are_ lights, they _are_ in the heavens though they change. You have no reason, Christian man, to be discouraged, cast down, still less despondent, because you find that the witness of the Spirit changes and varies in your heart. Do not despond because it does; watch it, and guard it, lest it do; live in the contemplation of the Person and the fact that calls it forth, that it may not. You will never "brighten your evidences" by polishing at them. To polish the mirror ever so a.s.siduously does not secure the image of the sun on its surface. The only way to do that is to carry the poor bit of gla.s.s out into the sunshine. It will shine then, never fear. It is weary work to labour at self-improvement with the hope of drawing from our own characters evidences that we are the sons of G.o.d. To have the heart filled with the light of Christ"s love to us is the only way to have the whole being full of light. If you would have clear and irrefragable, for a perpetual joy, a glory and a defence, the unwavering confidence, "I am Thy child," go to G.o.d"s throne, and lie down at the foot of it, and let the first thought be, "My Father in heaven," and _that_ will brighten, that will stablish, that will make omnipotent in your life the witness of the Spirit that you are the child of G.o.d.
SONS AND HEIRS
"If children, then heirs; heirs of G.o.d, and joint-heirs with Christ."--ROMANS viii. 17.
G.o.d Himself is His greatest gift. The loftiest blessing which we can receive is that we should be heirs, possessors of G.o.d. There is a sublime and wonderful mutual possession of which Scripture speaks much wherein the Lord is the inheritance of Israel, and Israel is the inheritance of the Lord. "The Lord hath taken you to be to Him a people of inheritance," says Moses; "Ye are a people for a possession," says Peter. And, on the other hand, "The Lord is the portion of my inheritance," says David; "Ye are heirs of G.o.d," echoes Paul. On earth and in heaven the heritage of the children of the Lord is G.o.d Himself, inasmuch as He is with them for their delight, in them to make them "partakers of the divine nature," and for them in all His attributes and actions.