MEN have lusts, passions, ambition, avarice. Alas! though restrained by Christianity, so that society is altered, the heart of man is still influenced by all these evil principles. Now all this must dim the spiritual perception, and render it more or less incapable of rightly judging of God and a revelation. How get the thought of God which is to set it right? Christianity has no need to be ashamed of its axiom, “Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God.” How are the impure to be capable of judging? The skeptic has no revelation to act on them. Is the soul, as having in fact corrupt lusts (that is, corrupt desires, perhaps) capable of judging? If not, this large class is incompetent to form any estimate of the scriptures. These lusts will not correct them: what is to be done for them? They may sink, on the skeptical plan, to the level to which their lusts may carry them. In whatever aspect we view man, all is uncertainty if man's mind be the measure of truth.
But you will say, This is undermining; it is the Pyrrhonism of a Pilate. No; the Christian believes God has spoken and has been active in love toward man; and he bows. He is not a judge but a receiver of truth. As a new born babe He desires the sincere milk of the word that he may grow thereby, having tasted that the Lord is gracious. He is not on the same ground on which he is who considers man's mind to be the measure of truth. He has said, “Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth “: “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do"? He has bowed to what he believes to be absolutely certain, and to be the truth—absolutely such. He may have a great deal yet to learn of it; but he believes it is there revealed by God. “He who hath received His testimony has set to his seal that God is true; for He Whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God.” Faith then has certainty, because it bows to Him Who cannot lie, and receives His word as the truth itself.
Here is the real question. The skeptic takes his own thoughts, and excludes wholly God's making Himself known; the believer brings Him in, and thus changes everything. There is not a greater fallacy, a more impudent presumption of man's self-sufficiency, than that it is the capacity of the organ (that is, of the soul) in itself, which is the measure and limit of its knowledge; even if we embrace in the word “capacity” all knowledge acquirable by its own powers, and all affections acted on by objects known within these limits. It can be acted on by that which it has no intrinsic capacity to acquire; as light enters into the eye, and gives a capacity of seeing by action on it; as medicine or even food on the body. A susceptibility of being acted on, so as to have effects and even powers produced, is not a capacity in oneself to measure or acquire.
The entering in of the word giveth light, and understanding to the simple. Now this is the operation of a revelation where it is really received. No doubt it is adapted to man in every sense—to his conscience, to his actual state, to his heart; but it is nothing acquirable by man as he is. God is active in communicating to him what operates on his soul, but which is true whether it operates or not; and which has no place in it, nor ever will have, nor its effects, unless it be positively communicated. Evidently a revelation has this for its proper character, though it may enforce known responsibilities by sanctions known only by that which is revealed, or by the Revealer Whose perfections and claims are made known. Has man no need of such communications? Has God nothing to communicate, which may be a blessing to man, which morally and spiritually elevate him? Is He incapable of doing it?
This leads to another very important point. Morality, properly speaking, is relative; that is, it flows from relationships in which we stand to others, and in which we owe such and such things of them in virtue of the claim upon us which their position gives them. Not but intrinsic purity of heart is to be sought, and the subjugation of passions in their workings within us: no Christian could question it for a moment. It is peace in itself. We ought to be pure: it is a good in itself, and it is the practical condition of communion with God. “Be ye holy; for I am holy.” This claim of purity distinguishes Christianity as revealing God. No other religion knew it; for none associated man with a God known to be light, and Who called us to walk in the light as He is in the light. Love also in exercise, where it is not relatively due, is the proper characteristic of the Christian. And these two distinguishing characteristics flow from the blessed and glorious truth that the Christian partakes of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:44Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. (2 Peter 1:4)), and hence is called in practice to imitate God (Eph. 5:11Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; (Ephesians 5:1)). “That eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us” in Christ (as John teaches us, so that He should be an absolute practical example to us) is also “true in Him and in us” whose life He is, “because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth.”
This is the Christian life, and not to be called morality, though really what is the spring of morality and accomplishes it, because this display of life in us is not properly obligation, though that life may in this display fulfill obligations. For morality is, properly speaking, the maintenance of obligation. In its nature and by the force of the term “Obligation,” morality is relative. But our partaking of the divine nature enables us to fulfill moral obligation. “Love worketh no ill to the neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” Here this principle of the divine nature communicated to us is said to accomplish what would he a moral obligation enforced by the law. But love goes farther also, because there is positive active energy in it, where no relative obligation exists. On the other hand he who has this nature clearly has to live in it, and so to please God, which itself is the highest obligation. Hence “he that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” So the Lord united both, even to the giving of His life. “But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father hath given me commandment, so I do.” The precepts of the gospel are the guidance of this nature, according to the perfection and perfect wisdom of Him Who is its source; they are needed by us in the obscurity of our feeble nature and distracting passions; and they give (as it ought to be, as it was in Christ) to the movements of the divine nature in us the additional character of obedience.
It remains then true that what is called generally and properly moral obligation is necessarily and in its nature a relative thing. Hence the measure of it is the claim of the being in relation to whom one stands in virtue of that relationship. In this sense it is that morality is “eternal,” though the expression be very incorrect. If we consider as morality our own state (to which the word scarce properly applies), the love and holiness which become a man are the communication of the nature of God Himself, and are eternal in their source and character. And morality, properly so called, drawing its source from the claims attached to certain beings with whom one is in relationship, is as unchangeable as the relationship itself. For “eternal” in this case has only the meaning of absolute and unchangeable when the relationship exists. That is, the relationship being known, the duty attaches to it essentially.
But this shows the importance of a revelation. As to our likeness to the divine nature, it is absolutely necessary; for God is unknown in His real perfection without it. As to moral obligation, properly so called, it has equal importance in this way, that the revelation which God makes of Himself creates an obligation commensurate with that revelation. If the Son of God has died for me, if He is my Savior and my Lord, it is clear that He has a claim upon me according to what He is as so revealed, and what He has done. That is, a revelation creates a part of morality; just as a woman's marriage does by her entering on a new relationship with her husband; with this difference that the obligation of marriage is known in itself, whereas what is newly revealed then first begins even to be known as an obligation. The obligation takes its origin from it.
The mere capacity of nature to enjoy or stand in certain relationships does not constitute a base of morality; the relationship itself must exist. An orphan may have a nature susceptible of all the feelings and obligations of a child toward a parent; but the moral tie does not exist, because the claim of the parent cannot be there.
Next, holiness in its nature, and love as we speak of it here, suppose sin. Innocence is not holiness, but ignorance of evil. God is holy, for He knows good and evil; He is perfectly good, and evil is utterly abhorrent to Him. We have since the fall the knowledge of good and evil. Hence naturally our conscience is bad. But if holy and as far as holy, we abhor the evil we know, and know as such when present in the measure of our holiness.
Love too, as we know it in God, is exercised in respect of evil; for evil exists and exists in us, and He loves us in that state. Now the understanding of perfect holiness by a sinful nature is as to its own capacity impossible. Conscience may so far understand it as to see its opposition to sin, and angrily or in terror dread the consequences; but an unholy nature does not comprehend or know a holy one in its separation from evil, as to affections, will, delight; for it has contrary ones. So indeed with love: “he that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”
To say that man is not a sinner is mere folly and insensibility to good and evil, the strongest possible proof of ignorance of God and hardness of conscience. “Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself; but I will reprove thee, and set before thee the things that thou hast done.” To say that he is a sinner is to confess his incapacity of knowing God, or judging of Him, or the revelation He gives of Himself. unless sin (that is, an opposite moral nature in thought and desire, in insubjection too of will) be the capacity to know Him.
But if we consider morality (properly speaking) as grounded on relationship, it is clearly and easily evident that man cannot and ought not to suppose in his own mind the only thing which God can be to his comfort. For that for which man is responsible to God, he has failed in. He has failed in the relationship to God and man, in which he stood as a responsible creature, and that by his own proper perverseness, to speak of naught else. He needs mercy, forgiveness, a God of goodness, Who cannot hold the guilty for innocent, and yet forgives iniquity. But if a person has sinned against One to Whom he owes so much, his taking it for granted that he is to be forgiven, as a matter of course, is hardness and impudence of heart. If my child had been very naughty and offensive to me (and it is nothing compared to sin against God), and he were to say, “Of course my father will forgive: forgiveness is a proper thing that suits his character, and becoming conduct, would not his state be really worse than his offense? Conscience—right feeling—thinks of what we have merited from those good and gracious, when we have offended, and judges itself, though it may be attracted by grace. The heart which coolly expects it, because it suits His character we have offended, is in a state which unfits for receiving it. If God reveals grace, it does indeed suit Him; and I bow in thankful adoration when He has shown Himself gracious (this is revelation); to expect is to be insensible and unfit for it.
And here is Christianity, declaring a love of God which for vile and polluted sinners gave His only begotten Son, One with Himself, the object of His infinite delight before the world was. It declares that the Son in the exercise of that same love, came, giving Himself for them, to suffer for their sins and bring themselves to God, then known to be perfect love to them, and with a conscience which knows He imputes no sin to them (yet giving a far deeper sense of His holiness), because His character had been perfectly glorified about sin in Christ's cross.