Sermons for the Times

And, then, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under a law, to redeem those who were under a law—that is, all mankind.  The Jews were keeping, or pretending to keep, Moses’ law, and trying to please God by that.  The heathens were keeping all manner of old superstitious laws and customs about religion which their forefathers had handed down to them.  But heathens, and indeed Jews too, at that time, all agreed in one thing.  These laws and customs of theirs about religion all went upon the notion of their being God’s slaves, and not his children.  They thought that God did not love them; that they must buy His favours.  They thought religion meant a plan for making God love them.

Then appeared the love of God in Jesus Christ.  As at this very Christmas time, the Son of God, Jesus Christ the Lord, in whose likeness man was made at the beginning, was born into the world, to redeem us and all mankind.  He told them of their Heavenly Father; He preached to them the good news of the kingdom of God; that God had not forgotten them, did not hate them, would freely forgive them all that was past; and why?  Because He was their Father, and loved them, and loved them so that He spared not His only begotten Son, but freely gave Him for them.  And now God looks at us human beings, not as we are in ourselves, sinful and corrupt, but he looks at us in the light of Jesus Christ, who has taken our nature upon Him, and redeemed it, and raised it up again, so that God can look on it now without disgust, and henceforth no one need be ashamed of being a man; for to be a man is to be in the likeness of God.  Man was created in the image and likeness of God, and who is the image and likeness of God but Jesus Christ?  Therefore man was created at first in Jesus Christ, and now, as St. Paul says, he is created anew in Jesus Christ; and now to be a man is to partake of the same flesh and blood which the Lord Jesus Christ wore for us, when He was made very man of the substance of his mother, and that without spot of sin, to show that man need not be sinful, that man was meant by God to be holy and pure from sin, and that by the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ we, every one of us, can become pure from sin.  This is the blessedness of Christmas-day.  That one man, at least, has been born into the world spotless and free from sin, that He might be the firstborn of many brethren.  This is the good news of Christmas-day.  That now, in Christ’s light, and for Christ’s sake, our Father looks on us as His sons, and not His slaves.

Therefore is every child who comes into the world baptized freely into the name of God.  Baptism is a sign and warrant that God loves that child; that God looks on it as His child, not for itself or its own sake, but because it belongs to Jesus Christ, who, by becoming a man, redeemed all mankind, and made them His property and His brothers.  Therefore every child, when it is brought to be baptized, promises, by its godfathers and godmothers, repentance and faith, when it comes to years of understanding.  It is not God’s slave, as the beasts are.  It is God’s child.  But God does not wish it to remain merely His child, under tutors and governors, forced to do what is right outwardly, and whether it likes or not.  God wishes each of us to become His son, His grown-up and reasonable son.  To know who we are;—to work in His kingdom for Him;—to guide and manage our own wills, and hearts, and lives in obedience to Him;—to claim and take our share as men of God of the inheritance which He has given us.  And that we can only do by faith in Jesus Christ.  We must trust in Him, our Lord, our King, our Saviour, our Pattern.  We must confess that we are nothing in ourselves, that we owe all to Him.  We must follow in his footsteps, giving up our wills to God’s will, doing not our own works, but the good works which God has prepared for us to walk in; and then we shall be truly confirmed; not mere children of God, under tutors, governors, schoolmasters and lawgivers, but free, reasonable, willing, hearty Christians, perfect men of God, the sons of God without rebuke.

Oh, my friends, will you claim your share in the Spirit of God, whom the Lord bought for us with His precious blood, that Spirit who was given you at your baptism, which may be daily renewed in you, if you pray for it; who will strengthen and lift you up to lead lives worthy of your high calling?  Or will you, like Esau of old, despise your birthright, and neglect to pray that God’s Spirit may be renewed in you, and so lose more and more day by day the thought that God is your Father, and the love of holy and godlike things?  Alas! take care that, like Esau, you hereafter find no room for repentance, though you seek it carefully with tears!  It is a fearful thing to despise the mercies of the living God; and when you are called to be His sons, to fall back under the terrors of His law, in slavish fears and a guilty conscience, and remorse which cannot repent.

And do not give way to false humility, says St. Paul.  Do not say, ‘This is too high an honour for us to claim.’  Do not say, ‘It seems too conceited and assuming for us miserable sinners to call ourselves sons of God.  We shall please God better, and show ourselves more reverent to Him, by calling ourselves His slaves, and crouching and trembling before Him, as if we expected Him to strike us dead, and making all sorts of painful and tiresome religious observances, and vain repetitions of prayers, to win His favour;’ or by saying, ‘We dare not call ourselves God’s children yet; we are not spiritual enough; but when we have gone through all the necessary changes of heart, and frames, and feeling, and have been convinced of sin, and converted, and received the earnest, God’s Spirit, by which we cry, Abba, Father! then we shall have a right to call ourselves God’s children.’

Not so, says St. Paul, all through this very Epistle to the Galatians.  That is not being reverent to God.  It is insulting Him.  For it is despising the honour which He has given you, and trying to get another honour of your own invention, by observances, and frames, and feelings of your own.  Do not say, ‘When we have received the earnest of God’s Spirit, by which we can cry, Abba, Father! then we shall become God’s children;’ for it is just because you are God’s children already—just because you have been God’s children all along, that God has taught you to call Him Father.  The Lord Jesus Christ told men that God was their Father.  Not merely to the Apostles, but to poor, ignorant, sinful wretches, publicans and harlots, He spoke of their Father in heaven, who, because He is a perfect Father, sends His sun to shine on the evil and the good, and His rain to fall on the just and on the unjust.  The Lord Jesus Christ taught men—all men, not merely saints and Apostles, but all men, when they prayed—to begin, ‘Our Father.’  He told them that that was the manner in which they were to pray, and therefore no other way of praying can we expect God to hear.  No slavish, terrified, superstitious coaxing and flattering will help you with God.  He has told you to call Him your Father; and if you speak to Him in any other way, you insult Him, and trample under foot the riches of His grace.

This is the good news which the Bible preaches.  This is the witness of God’s Spirit, proclaiming that we are the sons of God; and, says St. Paul in another place, ‘our spirit witnesses’ to that glorious news as well.  We feel, we know—why, we cannot tell, but we feel and know that we are the sons of God.  When we are most calm, most humble, most free from ill-temper and self-conceit, most busy about our rightful work, then the feeling comes over us—I have a Father in heaven.  And that feeling gives us a strength, a peace, a sure trust and hope, which no other thought can give.  Yes, we are ready to say, I may be miserable and unfortunate, but the Great God of heaven and earth is my Father; and what can happen to me?  I may be borne down with the remembrance of my great sins; I may find it almost too hard to fight against all my bad habits; but the Great God who made heaven and earth is my Father, and I am His son.  He will forgive me for the past; He will help me to conquer for the future.  If I do but remember that I am God’s son, and claim my Father’s promises, neither the world, nor the devil, nor my own sinful flesh, can ever prevail against me.

This thought, and the peace which it brings, St. Paul tells us is none of our own; we did not put it into our own hearts; from God it comes, that blessed thought, that He is our Father.  We could never have found it out for ourselves.  It is the Spirit of the Son of God, the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, which gives us courage to say, ‘Our Father which art in heaven,’ which makes us feel that those words are true, and must be true, and are worth all other words in the world put together—that God is our Father, and we his sons.  Oh, my friends, believe earnestly this blessed news! the news of Christmas-day, that you are not God’s slaves, but his sons, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ;—joint-heirs with Christ!  In what?  Who can tell?  But what an inheritance of glory and bliss that must be, which the Lord Jesus Christ Himself is to inherit with us—an inheritance such as eye hath not seen, and incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, preserved in heaven for us; an inheritance of all that is wise, loving, noble, holy, peaceful—all that can make us happy, all that can make us like God Himself.  Oh, what can we expect, if we neglect so great salvation?  What can we expect, if when the Great God of heaven and earth tells us that we are His children, we turn away and fall down, become like the brutes, and the savages, or worse, like the evil spirits who rebel against God, instead of growing up to become the sons of God, perfect even as our Father in heaven is perfect?  May He keep us all from that great sin!  May He awaken each and every one of you to know the glory and honour which Jesus Christ brought for you when He was born at Bethlehem—the glory and honour which was proclaimed to belong to you when you were christened at that font!  May He awaken you to know that you are the sons of God, and to look up to Him with loving, trustful, obedient souls, saying from your hearts, morning and night ‘Our Father which art in heaven,’ and feeling that those words give you daily strength to conquer your sins, and feel assurance of hope that your Heavenly Father will help and prosper you, His family, every time you struggle to obey His commandments, and follow the example of His perfect and spotless Son, Jesus Christ the Lord!

SERMON XVII.  DEATH IN LIFE

Romans viii. 12, 13.  Brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh.  For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

Does it seem strange to you that St. Paul should warn you, that you are not debtors to your own flesh?  It is not strange, when you come to understand him; certainly not unnecessary: for as in his time, so now, most people do live as if they were debtors to their own flesh, as if their great duty, their one duty in life, was to please their own bodies, and brains, and tempers, and fancies, and feelings.  Poor people have not much time to indulge their brains; and no time at all, happily for them, to indulge their fancies and feelings, as rich people do when they grow idle, and dainty, and luxurious.  But still, too many of them live as if they were debtors to their own flesh; as if their own bodies and their own tempers were the masters of them, and ought to be their masters.  Young men, for instance, how often they do things in secret of which it is a shame even to speak, just because it is pleasant.  Young women, how often do they sell themselves and their own modesty, just for the pleasure of being flattered and courted, and of getting a few fine clothes.  How often do men, just for the pleasure of drink, besot their souls and bodies, madden their tempers, neglect their families, make themselves every Saturday night, and often half the week, too, lower than the beasts which perish.  And then, when a clergyman complains of them, they think him unreasonable; and by so thinking, show that he is right, and St. Paul right: for if I say to you, My dear young people (and I do say it), if you give way to filthy living and filthy talking, and to drunkenness, and to vanity about fine clothes, you will surely die—do you not say in your hearts, ‘How unreasonable: how hard on us!  If we can enjoy ourselves a little, why should we not?  It is our right, and do it we will; and if it is wrong, it ought not to be wrong.’  Why, what is that but saying, that you ought to do just what your body likes: that you are debtors to your flesh; and that your flesh, and not God’s law, is your master.  So again, when people grow older, perhaps they are more prudent about bad living, and more careful of their money: but still they live after the flesh.  One man sets his heart on making money, and cares for nothing but that; breaks God’s law for that, as if that was the thing to which he was a debtor, bound by some law which he could not avoid to scrape and scrape money together for ever.  Another (and how often we see that) is a slave to his own pride and temper, which are just as much bred in his flesh: if he has been injured by any one, if he has taken a dislike against any one, he cannot forget and forgive: the man may be upright and kindly on many other points; prudent, too, and sober, and thoroughly master of himself on most matters; and yet you will find that when he gets on that one point, he is not master of himself; for his flesh is master of him: he may be a strong-minded, shrewd man upon most matters but just that one point: some old quarrel, or grudge, or suspicion, is, as we say, his weak point: and if you touch on that, the man’s eye will kindle, and his face redden, and his lip tremble, and he will show that he is not master of himself: but that he is over-mastered by his fleshly passion, by the suspiciousness, or revengefulness, or touchiness, which every dumb animal has as well as he, which is not part of his man’s nature, not part of God’s image in him, but which is like the beasts which perish.

Now, my friends, suppose I said to you, ‘If you give way to such tempers; if you give way to pride, suspicion, sullen spite, settled dislike of any human being, you will surely die;’ should you not, some of you, be inclined to think me very unreasonable, and to say in your hearts, ‘Have I not a right to be angry?  Have I not a right to give a man as good as he brings?’ so confessing that I am right, after all, and that some of you think that you are debtors to your flesh, and its tempers, and do not see that you are meant to be masters, and not slaves, of your tempers and feelings.

Again.  Among poor women, as well as among rich ones, as they grow older, how much gossiping, tale-bearing, slandering, there is, and that too among people who call themselves religious.  Yes, I say slandering; I put that in too; for I am certain that where the first two grow, the third is not far off.  If gossiping is the root, tale-bearing and harsh judgment is the stem, and plain lying and slandering, and bearing false witness against one’s neighbour, is the fruit.

Now I say, because St. Paul says it, ‘that those who do such things shall surely die.’  And do not some of you think me unreasonable in that, and say in your heart, ‘What! are we to be tongue-tied?  Shall we not speak our minds?’  Be it so, my good women, only remember this: that as long as you say that, you confess that you are not masters of your tongues, but your tongues are masters of you, and that you freely confess you owe service to your tongue, and not to God.  Do not therefore complain of me for saying the very same thing, namely, that you think you are debtors to your flesh—to the tongues in your mouths, and must needs do what those same little unruly members choose, of which St James has said, ‘The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity, and it sets on fire the whole course of nature, and is set on fire of hell.’  And again: ‘If any person among you seem to be religious, and bridles not his tongue, but deceives himself, that person’s religion is vain.’

Again:—and, my good women, you must not think me hard on you, for you know in your hearts that I am not hard on you; but I must speak a word on a sin which I am afraid is growing in this parish, and in too many parishes in England; and that is deceiving kind and charitable persons, in order to get more help from them.  God knows the temptation must be sore to poor people at times.  And yet you will surely find in the long run, that ‘honesty is the best policy.’  Deceit is always a losing game.  A lie is sure to be found out; as the Lord Jesus Himself says, ‘There is nothing hid which shall not be made manifest;’ and what we do in secret, is sure, unless we repent and amend it, to be proclaimed on the housetop: and many a poor soul, in her haste and greediness to get much, ends by getting nothing at all.  And if it were not so;—if you were able to deceive any human being out of the riches of the world: yet know, that a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things which he possesses.  And know that if you will not believe that,—if you will fancy that your business is to get all you can for your mortal bodies, by fair means or foul,—if you will fancy that you are thus debtors to your own flesh, you will surely die: but if you, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live.

And by this time some of you are asking, ‘Live?  Die?  What does all this mean?  When we die we shall die, good or bad; and in the meantime we shall live till we die.  And you do not mean to tell us that we shall shorten our lives by our own tempers, or our tale-bearing, though we might, perhaps, by drunkenness?’

My friends, if such a question rises in your mind, be sure that it, too, is a hint that you think yourself a debtor to the flesh—to live according to the flesh.  For tell me, tell yourselves fairly, is your flesh, your body, the part of yourself which you can see and handle, You?—You know that it is not.  When a neighbour’s body dies, you say, perhaps, ‘He is dead,’ but you say it carelessly; and when one whom you know well, and love, dies,—when a parent, a wife, a child, dies, you feel very differently about them, even if you do not speak differently.  You feel and know that he, the person whom you loved and understood, and felt with, and felt for, here on earth, is not dead at all; you feel (and in proportion as the friend you have lost was loving, and good, and full of feeling for you, you feel it all the more strongly) that your friend, or your child, or the wife of your bosom, is alive still—where you know not, but you feel they are alive; that they are very near you;—that they are thinking of you, watching you, caring for you,—perhaps grieving over you when you go wrong—perhaps rejoicing over you when you go right,—perhaps helping you, though you cannot see them, in some wonderful way.  You know that only their mortal flesh is dead.  That their mortal flesh was all you put into the grave; but that they themselves, their souls and spirits, which were their very and real selves, are alive for evermore; and you trust and hope to meet them when you die;—ay, to meet them body and soul too, at the last day, the very same persons whom you knew here on earth, though the flesh which they wore here in this life has crumbled into dust years and ages before.

Is not this true?  Is not this a blessed life-giving thought—I had almost said the most blessed and life-giving thought man can have—that those whom we have loved and lost are not dead, but only gone before; that they live still to God and with God; that only their flesh has perished, and they themselves are alive for evermore?

Now believe me, my friends, as surely as a man’s flesh can die and be buried, while he himself, his soul, lives for ever, just so a man’s self, his soul, can die, while his flesh lives on upon earth.  You do not think so, but the Bible thinks so.  The Bible talks of men being dead in trespasses and sins, while their flesh and body is alive and walking this earth.  It talks, too, of a worse state, of men twice dead; of men, who, after God has brought their souls to life, let those souls of theirs die down again within them, and rot away, as far as we can see, hopelessly and for ever.  And what is it which kills a man’s soul within him on this side the grave, and makes him dead while he has a name to live?  Sin, evil-doing, the disease of the soul, the death of the soul, yea, the death of the man himself.  And what is sin but living according to the flesh, and not according to the spirit?  What is sin but living as the dumb animals do, as if we were debtors to our own flesh, to fulfil its lusts, and to please our own appetites, fancies, and tempers, instead of remembering that we are debtors to God, who made us, and blesses us all day long;—debtors to our Lord Jesus Christ, who bought us with His own blood, that we might please Him and obey Him;—debtors to God’s Holy Spirit, who puts into our minds good desires;—debtors to our baptism vows, in which we were consecrated to God, that He, and not this flesh of ours, might be our Master for ever?

This is sin; to give way to those selfish and evil tempers, against which I warned you in the beginning of my sermon, and which, if any man indulges in them, will surely and steadily, bit by bit, kill that man’s soul within him, and leave the man dead in trespasses and sins, while his body walks this earth.

My friends, do not fancy these are merely farfetched words out of a book, made to sound difficult and terrible in order to frighten you.  God forbid!  When Scripture says this, it speaks a plain and simple truth, and one which I know to be a truth from experience.  I speak that which I know, and testify that which I have seen.  I have seen (and what sadder or more fearful sight?) dead men and dying walk this earth in flesh and blood; men busy enough, shrewd enough upon some points, priding themselves, perhaps, upon their cleverness and knowledge of the world, of whom all one could say was, The man is dead; the man is lost, unless God brings him to life again by His quickening Spirit: for goodness is dead in him; the powers of his soul are dead in him; the hope of being a better man is dead in him; all that God wishes to see him be and do, is dead; God’s likeness and glory in him is dead: he thinks himself wise, and he is a fool in God’s sight; for he sees not God’s law, which is the only wisdom: he thinks himself strong, but he is utterly weak and helpless; for he is the slave of his own tempers, the slave of his own foul lust, the slave of his own pride and vanity, the slave of his own covetousness.  Oh, my friends, people are apt to be afraid of what they call seeing a ghost—that is, a spirit without a body: they fancy that it would be a very shocking thing to meet one; but as for me, I know a far more dreadful sight; and that is, a careless and a hardened sinner—a body without a spirit.  Which is uglier and ghastlier—a spirit without a body, or a body without a spirit?  And yet such one meets, I dare not think how often.

What sadder sight, if you recollect that men need not be thus; that God hates seeing them thus; that they become thus, and die down in sin, in spite of God, with all heaven above, and God the Lord thereof, crying to them, Why wilt thou die?  What sadder sight?  How many have I seen, living, to all intents and purposes, as if they had no souls; as if there were no God, no Law of God, no Right, no Wrong; caring for nothing, perhaps, but drink and bad women; or caring for nothing but scraping together a little more money than their neighbours; or caring for nothing but dress, and vanity, and gossiping, and tale-bearing; and yet, when one came to know them, one saw that that was not what God intended them to be; that He had given them hearts which they had hardened, good feelings which they had crushed, sound brains which they had left idle, till one was ready to weep over them, as over something beautiful and noble ruined and lost; and looked on them as one would on a grand tree struck by lightning, decayed and dead, useless, and only fit to be burned, with just enough of its proper shape to show what a tree it ought to have been.  And so it is with men and women: hardly a day passes but one sees some one of whom one says, with a sigh, ‘What a worthy, loveable, useful person, that might have been! what a blessing to himself and all around him! and now, by following his fallen nature, and indulging it, he is neither worthy, nor loveable, nor useful; neither a blessing to himself nor to any human being: he might have been good for so much, and now he is good for nothing; for the spirit, the immortal soul which God gave him, is dead within him.’