LECTURE
XLIX.
ROMANS 8:7,8
"Because the carnal mind is enmnity against God for it is not subject to the
law
of God, neither indeed, can be. So then they that are in the flesh
cannot please God."
BUT it might appear from the 7th verse, that the peace
spoken of in the last verse is peace with God - for the enmity which is here
ascribed to the opposite state of being carnally-minded, is enmity against God.
Where there is enmity between two parties, each is displeased with the other;
and the enmity of the carnal mind thus involves in it two distinct particulars.
First, it implies a feeling on the part of him who is its owner of
hostility against God, and this necessarily comes out of the very definition of
the carnal mind. It were a contradiction in terms, to say otherwise of the
carnal mind than that it was enmity against God - for how, if all its
preferences be toward the creature, can it be otherwise affected toward that
Creator, who looks with a jealous eye on all such preference, and fastens upon
it the guilt of idolatry - how, if its regards are wholly directed to sense and
time, can it be otherwise than in a state of disregard to Him who is a spirit
and invisible? If the law of God be a law of supreme love toward Himself, how
is it possible for that mind to be in subjection to such a law, whose
affections are wholly set on the things and the interests of passing world? It
not only is not subect to this law, but it cannot be so - else it were no
longer carnal. It would instantly be stripped of this epithet, and become a
different thing from what it was before, did it undergo a transference in its
likings from the things that are made to Him who is the Maker of them all.
It has all the certainty in it of an identical proposition, when it is
said of the carnal mind that it neither is nor can be subject to God’s
law. Ere it become subject, it must resign its present nature and be carnal no
longer. The epithet then will not apply to it; and though a mind before carnal
should now have gathered upon it the character of heaven, and become a devoted
and willing and most affectionate subject under the government of God - still
it holds true of the carnal mind that it is not so subject, neither indeed can
be. But it is not only logically true, that the carnal mind cannot be subject
to God’s law - the same thing is also true physically and experimentally.
There is no power in the mind by which it can change itself. It has a natural
sovereignty, we admit, which extends a certain way over the doings of the outer
man; but it has no such sovereignty over the desires of the inner man. It can,
for example, constrain the man in whom it resides to eat a sour apple rather
than a sweet. But it cannot constrain him to like a sour apple rather than a
sweet. There are many things which it finds to be practicable, which it does
not find to be palatable; and it has just as little power over the taste and
affections of the mind toward God, as it has over the bodily organ of taste, or
the law of its various relishes for the various food which is offered to it.
There are a thousand religious-looking things which can be done; but,
without such a renewal of the spirit as the spirit itself cannot achieve -
these things cannot be delighted in, cannot be rejoiced in. But if not rejoiced
in, they really are not religious, however religious they may look. And this is
the great moral helplessness, under which we labour. We can compel our feet to
the house of God, but we cannot compel our feelings to a sacred pleasure in its
exercises. We can take a voluntary part in the music of its psalms, but we
cannot force into our hearts the melody of praise. We can bid our hands away
from depredation and violence, but we cannot bid away the appetite of
covetousness from our bosoms. We can refrain ourselves from the infliction of
all outward hurt upon our neighbour; but tell me, if we can so muster and so
dispose of our affections at the word of command, as that we shall love him as
we do ourselves.
And, ascending from the second great commandment to
the first great commandment of the law, we can, it may be thought, keep the
Sabbaths of the Lord and acquit ourselves of many of the drudgeries of a carnal
obedience - while, instead of loving Him with all our heart and soul and
strength and mind, there exists against Him an antipathy, which we can no more
extirpate, than we can cause a sycamine tree to be plucked up by the roots at
the utterance of a voice - So that, in reference to the law which claims a
supremacy over the heart, and taketh cognizance of all its affections, we are
not and we cannot be subject to.
And here I am sensible, that, when I
charge you with a positive enmity against God - when I say that He is not
merely the object of indifference, but of hatred - when I affirm of the human
heart, not merely a light and heedless unconcern about Him, but also the
virulency of a strong hostile affection against Him - I might not, in all this
assertion, obtain the exact or the willing respondency of your own consciences.
You may be ready to answer, that, really we are not at all aware of any thing
half so foul or so enormous at work in our bosoms, as any ill-will towards God.
We may be abundantly regardless of Him and of His laws; but we feel not any
thing that approaches to a resentful emotion excited within us by His name. We
may not think of Him often; and perhaps are very well satisfied to do without
Him, if He would but let us alone. But, examine ourselves as we may, we can
detect no affirmative malignity in our affections towards Him; and for once we
have lighted upon a case, where the dogmata of a stern theology are really not
at one with the decisions of our own intimate and personal experience.
Now on this we have to observe, that the greatest enemy whom you have
in the world will excite no malevolent feeling in your heart, so long as you do
not think of him. All the time that he is absent from your remembrance, he has
no more power to stir up the painful and the bitter feeling of hostility within
you, than if he were blotted out from the map of existence. And so let it not
be wondered at, that you should not be ruffled out of your complacency by the
thought of God, when in fact, for days or hours together, the thought is
utterly away from you - that no acrimony about Him should ever disturb you,
during the whole of that period, when at play or pleasing yourselves with His
gifts, the Giver is wholly unminded - that, instead of carrying the tone or the
aspect of an enraged adversary toward God or any one else, you should simply
appear in the light of an easy comfortable good-humoured man, while, busied
with the enjoyments of life, you have no room in your regards for Him who gave
the life, and scattered these enjoyments over it. When one is in a deep and
dreamless slumber, his very resentments are hushed, along with all his other
sensibilities, into oblivion; and though in the latent dormitory within, there
should lie a fell and unextinguishable hatred against the deadliest of his
foes, yet even the presence of that foe would awaken no asperity; and, while
under the immediate eye of him whom with implacable revenge he could call forth
to the field of mutual extermination, might he lie in all the meekness of
infancy.
And so of you who are not awake unto God - who are sunk in
dullest apathy about Him and all His concerns - who, profoundly asleep and
forgetful, are really no judges of the recoil that would come upon your
spirits, did He but stand before you in all His characters of uncompromising
truth, and inflexible justice, and sacred jealousy, and awful unapproachable
holiness. By the thought of this Being you are not disturbed, because, steeped
in the lethargy of nature, it is a thought that does not come with a realizing
touch upon your perceptions. You may even hear His name, and this may stir up
some vague conception of an unseen Spirit; and you still may have no feeling of
that enmity which our text has charged upon you. But the conception of whom or
of what we would ask ! - Is it of the true God in His true attributes - or a
being of your own imagination? Is It of that God who is a Spirit, and claims of
you those spiritual services which are due unto the character that belongs to
Him? Is it of Him, the very view and aspect of whom would mar all your earthly
gratifications, or put them utterly to flight, because of His paramount demand
for the affections and pursuits of godliness? Oh how little do we know of
ourselves, or of the mysteries of our inner man, which may lie hid and dormant
for years - till some untried circumstances shall form the occasion that proves
us, and reveals to us all which is in our hearts.
And thus the
manifestation to our understandings of God, not as we fancy Him to be, but of
God as He actually is, would call forth of its hiding-place the unappeasable
enmity of nature against Him; and would make it plain to the conscience of the
carnal man, how little sufferance he hath for the God that would bereave him of
his present affections, and implant others in their room. The disrelish would
be just as strong, as are the disrelish and opposition between the life of
sense and the life of faith. Did God reveal Himself now to the unconverted
sinner, He would strike the same arrow into his heart, that will be felt by the
condemned sinner, who eyes on the day of reckoning the sacredness and the
majesty of that Being whom he has offended. You have heard Him by the hearing
of the ear, and yet remain unconvinced of nature’s enmity. Could you say
with Job that now mine eye seeth, then would you see cause with him, wherefore
you should abhor yourself, and repent in dust and in ashes.
Ver.
8, My remarks have been hitherto on the hostility that is in our hearts
towards God; but this verse leads us to consider the hostility that is in
God’s heart toward us. If we cannot please God we necessarily displease
Him; nor need we to marvel, why all they who are in the flesh are the objects
of His dissatisfaction. We maybe still in the flesh, yet do a thousand things,
as I said before, that, in the letter and in the exterior of them, bear a
visible conformity to God’s will, and yet cannot be pleasing to Him. They
may be done from the dread of His power - they may be done under the trembling
apprehension of a threatened penalty - they may be done to appease the
restlessness of an alarmed conscience - they may be done under the influence of
a religion that derives all its power over us from education or custom, or the
exactions of a required and established decency; and yet not be done with the
concurrence of the heart, not be done from a liking either to the task or to
the bidder of it, not from a delight in the commandment but from the slavish
fear of that master who issued it. And however multiplied the offerings may be,
which we laid on the altar of such a reluctant obedience as this, they will not
and cannot be pleasing to God. Would any father amongst you be satisfied with
such a style of compliance and submission from your own children? Would the
labour of their hands be counted enough, though the love of their hearts was
withheld from you? Would you think that you had all out of them which was
desirable, because you had as much of drudgery as was laid upon them - however
grievous you saw was the distaste which they felt for you and for all your
requirements? If it were quite palpable, that their inclinations were in a
state of revolt against you - would you think it ample compensation, that you
still could restrain their outward movements, and by the force or terror of
your authority, could compel from them the homage of all their services? Oh let
us know if you could sit down in complacency, because of such an obedience from
your own children! And if you but saw that in their hearts, they were only
pining and murmuring and feeling resentfully, because of the utter repugnance
which they felt to you and to your exactions, were it not the most wretched of
all atonements, that still the bidding was executed, and still the task was
performed by them?
And it is thus that I would like to reach the hearts
of the careless, with the alarm of a guilt and a danger, far greater than they
have ever been aware of. I should like them to understand, that they are indeed
the haters of God - that they hate Him for what He is, and hate Him for what He
requires at their hands; and though this hostile propensity of theirs lies hid
in deep insensibility, when, amidst the bustle and the engrossment and the
intense pursuits or gratifications of the world, there is nothing to call it
out into distinct exhibition - yet that a demonstration of the divine will or
the divine character is all which is needed, to bring up the latent virulence
that is lurking in the bosom, and to convict the now placid and amiable man
thathe is indeed an enemy to his Maker.
And in these circumstances, is his
Maker too an enemy to him. The frown of an offended Lawgiver resteth on every
one, who lives in habitual violation of His first and greatest commandment.
There is a day of reckoning that awaits him. There is a true and unerring
judgment which is in reserve for him. That enmity which now perhaps is a secret
to himself, will become manifest on the great occasion when the secrets of all
hearts shall be laid open; and the justice of God will then be vindicated, in
dealing with him as an enemy.
Such is the condition, and such are the
prospects of all who remain what Nature made them - who, still in the flesh,
have not been translated to that new moral existence into which all are ushered
who are born again; and who by simply being lovers of the creature more than of
the Creator, prove themselves to be still carnally- minded and to be the heirs
of death. And it is only by taking a deep view of the disease, that you can be
led adequately to estimate the remedy. There is a way of transition from the
carnal to the spiritual. There is a distinct and applicable call, that may be
addressed even to the farthest off in alienation; and which, if he will hear
and follow, shall transform him from one of the children of this world to one
of the children of light. The trumpet giveth not an uncertain sound, for it
declares the remission of sin through the blood of Jesus, and repentance
through the Spirit which is at His giving; and your faith in the one will
infallibly bring down upon you, all the aids and influences of the other. To
you who are afar off, is this salvation preached; and the grand connecting tie
by which it is secured and appropriated to your soul, is simply the credit that
you give to the word of this testimony.
Many feel not the disease; and
so all the proclamations of grace pass unheeded by. Many listen to them as they
would to a pleasant song; but the form of sound words is enough for them, and
the realities which these words express never find admittance into their
bosoms. But some there are whose ears and whose eyes are opened - who are made
to hear with effect, and to behold the wondrous things that are contained in
the word of God. With them the gospel is something more than a sound or an
imagination. To them it bears all the character of a great authentic
transaction between Heaven and Earth. And they see God as God in Christ waiting
to be gracious; and they no longer stand in dread of a justice that is now most
abundantly satisfied; and they can brave the contemplation of all the
attributes, wherewith mercy to themselves is now blended in fullest harmony;
and they rejoice to behold that the throne of Heaven is at once upheld in all
its august dignity, and yet that even the chief of sinners has a warrant to
approach it; and while they take to themselves the security that is guaranteed
by the atonement on the cross, they feel how that very atonement affords most
entire illustration of the sacredness of the Godhead. And thus, uniting peace
to their own souls with glory to God in the highest; they experience a love
which was before unfelt, which weans them from all their idolatrous affections,
and translates them from the state of the carnally to that of the
spiritually-minded.
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