The reader now enters upon the general walk of Christian men, as suitable to, and connected with, the doctrine of our epistle. Indeed there was already an exhortation in the beginning of chapter 5 to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called. But the apostle here descends to particulars. And, first of all, there is a solemn injunction to the saints that they should not henceforth walk, as other Gentiles walked, in the vanity of their mind. The Spirit of God guards us against what we perhaps might think needless—the walk of those who surround us—the walk that was our own before we were brought to Christ. And yet, the moment that we reflect, the wisdom of such an exhortation is apparent; for Christians are ordinarily liable to be much influenced by the tone of thought and feeling current in the world outside. The ruling passion that carries the world on for the time being, is always apt to be a snare to those at least who shrink from the cross day by day, and so much the more because they do not suspect themselves. Whatever be that which occupies its energies, especially if philanthropy, moral progress, or religion be the form that it takes, there is always a liability to be thrown off our guard. Besides, and this is the immediate point here, old habit is strong; so that the apostle does not hesitate to warn these saints who stood out, not only in the fresh joy of faith, but also in outward position, very separate from the world, and, the lines were at that time strongly defined; and yet, in this opening word of exhortation, the Holy Spirit very solemnly guards the saints against being drawn into the ways and practices of the Gentiles. There is often a danger of this with Christians, because they do not like to be singular. There may be peculiar people among the children of God. But the apostle does not speak of eccentric individuals, to whom it would be no difficulty, but a pleasure, to differ from everybody else. They affect originality in word and deed, and in their strain after it are only odd. But he is guarding against the common moral danger, when faith has lost somewhat of its simplicity and freshness.
On the other hand the apostle has shown elsewhere—and we should always endeavor to remember it—that it is a wise and important thing to meet souls in grace as far as possible, not to impose upon others what they have not strength to bear. In writing to the Corinthians, the apostle had insisted on this, as his ministry exemplified it. He had become a Jew to the Jews that he might gain the Jews. He was made all things to all men that he might by all means save some. There was no kind of pressing points. There was the hearty desire for the good of souls; for we may have this without the pressure of our own particular thoughts and feelings, however right they may be. It is the elasticity of the Christian if established in grace. We rarely can pull the cord too tightly in dealing with our own souls, or be too stringent in our vigilance and prayer against slipping here and there. But it is a totally different thing in having to do with others. We have to bear their infirmities, if, in truth, we are strong; it is for their good that the Lord lays them upon our hearts. We find that, even with His own disciples, He did not go beyond what they were able at that time to bear. But the very desire to meet souls, and not to raise questions that would gender strife, would expose a gracious Christian to be taking the color of those outside himself, and giving up his own principles.
There is no doubt, then, of the forbearance in which we are called to walk with one another; nevertheless, we need to beware of turning grace into levity or licentiousness. “This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their minds, having their understanding darkened; being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.” Here he begins with the inner thing. You will find that our tendency is to occupy ourselves and others with something outward. But the apostle goes to the root of the evil walk of the Gentiles. Their minds were vain and empty, as all must be, who have not God distinctly and positively, and intelligently before them in any matter, whatever it may be. As to these Gentiles in nothing had they God before them; they were “without God in the world.” Consequently, there was nothing but the empty vaporing mind and mouth of man, imagining one thing and expressing another. What was the effect? The understanding was darkened. “They were alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that was in them, because of the blindness of their heart.” These are various descriptions, not of the outward walk, but of the root of all the evil fruit they bore. God was not in all their thoughts. They were “alienated from the life of God.” How indeed could it be otherwise? The life of God is only found in His Son and Him; and, consequently, it they had not. Far from having relish, or a just sense of need, they were alienated from good; and this on account of the blindness or hardness of their hearts. So far is the evident tracing of what the evil walk of these Gentiles sprang from; the sum and substance is that it arose from their ignorance. And their ignorance was because their hearts were hardened and blinded. What a solemn and practical truth for every soul of man, converted or not! Our conduct flows from our judgment, and our judgment from our affections. Thus, the state of our heart becomes so important in practice. We find here that all the outward man finds its source in the inner man, and the inner man is formed by that which governs the heart.
Hence the all-importance of having Christ for the heart's object—yea, exclusive object. For nothing is more common than to have divided affections. Indeed, it is the great thing against which we all have to watch. Had we an eye more single, and a heart more thoroughly and self-judgingly devoted to Christ, what would be the consequence? The heart always gives direction, color, and energy to the judgment. There never would be a waver individually, and there would be nothing but peaceful walking together in the light of God, without slip or stumble of any kind. And this is the theory of a Christian. (Compare Philippians 1 and Colossians 1.) Practically there are difficulties. Who of us has not had to confess grievous failure and sin? Who has not had to say, I do not know what the mind of God is as to this or that? In a word, the understanding has been too often darkened, and the walk unlike Him whose we are. Of course they differ from what we have described here. But is it not a solemn thing that the Christian has to watch against the very same evil which denies and outrages the character and will of God, in souls that know Him not? And yet this is what we all have to feel and confess as to ourselves. How often we have been without divine light! This ought never to be in a saint. It never was so with Christ. He was the light; so that it would utterly fall short of His glory to say that He was always not only walking in the light, but according to the light. Consequently He never knew what it was to have a shade of doubt. If He waited, it was never doubt, but further knowledge of His Father's will, as in John 11 It may be our path to wait; and it is well to do so, when we have no such assurance. The development that follows is a description of the awful depravity of the Gentiles; as he says in the next verse, “Who, being past feeling, have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” No doubt it is the lowest moral degradation of which the life of man is capable. But the wholesome thing for us to see, and to apply for our own souls' help, and guidance and guard too, is that all the excesses of this outward evil were the result of the heart being darkened, and this because it was without God. There was nothing but what Satan drew from a man's own mind, and the consequence was the falsifying of his judgments and feelings. Hence men became a prey to every kind of evil. They had given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
But now comes the Christian in contrast. He says, (although we are in danger of all this, and the very sense of our danger is what God uses to keep us from falling into the danger) “Ye have not so learned Christ.” As all the practical evil of the Gentiles arose from their ignorance of God, the heart, the mind, the walk, all wrong, and increasingly evil; so now God's deliverance from all evil, root, branch, and fruit, is Christ. And what a blessed, simple, holy, God-glorifying deliverance it is! It is not that He enters into anything of the various processes He may use in leading to this result. Besides, Christ is the way, as well as the truth. The one grand means that applies to every case, and that gives the surest deliverance, is Christ Himself. “Ye have not so learned Christ.” He purposely makes Him to be the person who has to do directly with the soul. It is a remarkable way of connecting us with our Lord, though common in John, “My sheep hear my voice.” But here, where the union of the members with the Head and not life only, is the point insisted upon, we approach closely to the teaching of the elder; it is as if we listened to Christ ourselves. “If so be that ye have heard Him” —not about Him; they were taught by Him “as the truth is in Jesus.” Is there not great emphasis in this expression? It is not as the truth is in Christ. We all know that Jesus is Christ, and Christ is Jesus. But God never uses one word in vain. And I think that the difference is the greater because both are used. He first of all puts the word Christ— “Ye have not so learned Christ,” because there he brings the whole mass of my privilege before the soul. Christ is the special name, when I look at Him as the risen, exalted Man. In Him I have got my blessing. The word conveys to my mind the thought of One in whom all is concentrated as dead and crucified in heaven. Jesus is the personal name that He bears upon earth. The Spirit had been revealing, in previous chapters, the great name brought before us in Christ. But when he is about to speak of the practical knowledge which would apply to the duties of their walk here below he says, “If so be ye have heard Him and been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus.” There, I apprehend, he is more speaking of Him as that person who, in the eyes of men, as well as before God, was the blessed example of all light and purity in His ways here below. Thus, I conceive, any spiritual mind will at once appreciate what a blessed way it is of bringing it before our souls. He brings us to the living presentation of all that we have in Him; but we see it in the ways of that blessed Man, Jesus, here below. By the “truth that is in Jesus,” does he not mean the truth that we see and hear and know carried out in every word He said, in all His ways and obedience, and service, in every kind of suffering that He passed through on the earth; in His patience, in His earnestness, in His zeal for the glory of God, His tender care for those that belonged to God, and in His compassion for perishing sinners? And yet, look where you will, behold His intolerance of that which is contrary to God. All these, and infinitely more, we find in Jesus, and no where else in perfection.
It is only in the person of Jesus that you get all truth fully out. I may learn truth through the Holy Spirit, and He is the only power of my knowing the truth, and is therefore, I suppose, called “truth” in 1 John 5:66This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth. (1 John 5:6). Neither God, as such, nor the Father is ever called the truth; nor could it be. When you speak of the truth, you do not mean merely either the divine nature in its perfectness nor His person, “from whom cometh down every good gift.” But why is it that Jesus should be emphatically the truth? Jesus is the One who objectively has presented to me that which shows me the bearing and relationship of everything to God as well as to man. If I want to test any one thing, I never can arrive at its full character till I view it in connection with the person of Christ. The Holy Spirit is the truth subjectively, because no man can behold Jesus, to find the truth in Jesus, without Himself. The Holy Spirit is the revealer of Jesus; our own mind cannot see Him. Even the new man cannot of itself understand Jesus, or enter into the things of God. And you will observe how strikingly this was shown when the disciples themselves, already born of God, had to wait till the Lord opened their understandings to understand the Scriptures, and after that for power to act on them. After they were converted, they needed the power of the Spirit to enable them to apprehend the Scriptures. After that again they must wait for power to testify the truth from the Scriptures to others. They needed to have the power of the Spirit, distinct from the new nature, for the purpose of entering into the things of God. Mere human nature never understands the things of God, the new man does. But in order to do it, it must be led of the Spirit. The new man is characterized by dependence. The Holy Spirit acts in His own power. So that we do not merely need dependence upon God, but power from God in order to enter into the truth. I am not now speaking of being converted merely, but of the practical entering into the mind of Christ, and the ways of God as brought out in the ways of Jesus. Let me illustrate the value of the truth as it is in Jesus. Take any truth you like, as, for example, man. Where shall I learn the truth about man? Shall I look for it in Adam? a man that listened to his wife after she had listened to the devil? a man who, when God came down, ran away from Him, and even dared to insult God by laying the blame upon Him? Shall I look at his sons? at Cain, his firstborn, or at Abel whom Cain slew? What was so beautiful in Abel was what was of God, not what was of himself. If you pursue the history of man as such, you only find evil and pride and presumption increasing upon him, till you give up the whole tale in shame and disgust. And so it would all end, but for the Second Adam. I find here in every step that He took, in every word that He said, in everything that flowed from His heart and was reflected in His ways, One that never did His own will. Now I learn the beauty and the wonder of a man subject to God upon the earth—the only One who ever walked in perfect, moral dignity, though He was despised of all, and most of all hated by the religious leaders of the world of that day. But how did not God delight in Him? Here, then, the humbling truth is told. Man has shown himself thoroughly out. Jesus, the cross, tells the tale.
But supposing another instance: if I look up and think of God, where shall I, of a surety, find Him? In creation? It is all ruined; besides, to read Him only in the book of nature, is but to have glimpses of power and beneficence. But in the midst of all these large and shining characters of divine majesty, and wisdom, and goodness, scattered up and down through everything that He has made upon the earth, I should also have to face other characteristics of weakness, decay, suffering, death. The question arises, whence do these come? They are as crooked as the others were straight; the latter as full of misery as the former wore the impress of wisdom and power. The result of all is that for the mere reasoner in the vanity of man's mind, the understanding gets darkened; and all that can thus be learned even from the consideration of that which comes from the hand of God, completely fails to give the knowledge of Himself. I see the effects of another hand there as well as His own—the hand of a destroyer and liar; and instead of rising up from nature to nature's God, as poets vainly sing, you are apt to sink from nature to the devil that has ruined it all; you fall into the snares of the enemy by the effort to find out God in your own strength. I want some other way wherein to learn what God is. To gather an evidence of His being is one thing; to know Him is another. I can delight in anything that He has made, but what are His thoughts, feelings and ways, especially to a sinner?
If you talk about providence, Is there not an Abel suffering, and a Cain prosperous? Great deeds were done in the family of the proud murderer; while those who had whatever there was of the light of God, were disliked and scorned by the world; often weak in their own eyes too, but suffering and cast out wherever there was faith, by those who had it not. This is an impenetrable enigma to man. How can he, in the face of such facts, discern the superintending power of a God as conscience tells there is? Constant difficulties arise; and the reason is very plain—it is not in circumstances around, any more than in my own mind, that I can get the truth. Not that there are not traces and indications in providence as in creation; but I want the truth and cannot find it in either.
Then I may come down to the law. Does it give me the truth? In no way. It is not that the law was not good and holy, but it is never called, nor in itself could it be, the truth. Its design was more for making the discovery of man than of God. Its operation was that man might thereby learn what he is himself. It runs like a plowshare, when directed by the Spirit, into the heart, and lays bare many furrows, and discovers what man never knew was there before. But none of these things show what God is to man in grace. Not even the law can give the truth as to this. I cannot at all learn by it what a Saviour God is, nor even fully what man is. At the best it shows what a man ought to be, as well as do; but this is not the truth. What I ought to be is not God's truth but my duty. It was the standard for man in the flesh; and hence it never was given till man was a sinful man. The law was given by Moses, and not to or by Adam. The commandment laid upon Adam is never called the law, though, of course, it was a law.
Further, you will never find truth, even in the Bible, if you sever it from Jesus. But the moment the same blessed One, who has shown me in His own life and death, what man is, has also shown me in the very same what God is, then all the clouds break and the difficulties vanish. Now I know God, beholding Him in Jesus. New thoughts of God dawn on the soul, and, submitting to Him, I am made perfectly happy; perhaps not all at once, but as surely as my soul has received Jesus, and learned what the true God is in Jesus, I have eternal life, and shall find unbroken peace; but in Him I receive all that I want, all that God intends for my soul, because the truth is in Jesus. Thus, then, as a believer, I know God; I know that which the heathen never did nor could reach. Their understanding was darkened. Having no knowledge of Jesus, they had no full or saving means of knowing God. But this is precisely what the gospel brings close to every poor, needy soul that hears it now. And what is it then that I learn of God, when I look at the truth as it is in Jesus? I learn first this—a God that comes down to me, a God that seeks my soul to do me good, a God that can follow me with love, selfish as I am, and pity my ignorance, and not this only, but One that can instruct me, and is willing to do it, spite of my wilfulness and stupidity; in short, a most gracious and faithful God. He makes Himself known in Jesus. I find One who, after using other means, spent Himself in love upon me, that I might know Him; One who undertook to bear the judgment of my sins. For Jesus came and took all sins upon Himself for every soul that believes upon Him. I learn now that even the hateful self which has so refused and slighted Him, for this He has suffered, and completely dealt with it. It has been judged in the cross of Christ; and if my soul believes that God is good enough to do all this for me, to suffer all this for me, to take and bear the whole consequence upon Himself in the person of His beloved Son; if I see this and bow to it, and receive it from God, what can shake or harass my soul more? My sins? Certainly if anything ought to trouble my soul, they most of all. But what is the cross for? What has God done there? What has He told me in the gospel? If it was God revealing Himself in His beloved Son, if it was Jesus the Son of God that was made sin there, why should I have a single doubt or anxiety upon that score? All depends upon this: Have I bowed to what God has wrought and given me in the cross of Christ? If I am despairing about sin, it is in effect making the cross of Christ of none effect, and the work of Christ a vain thing. He has perfectly done His task, and I am entitled so to rest upon it, as to know that my sins never can come up against me more. Ought I not to be a happy man, and to rest in the most perfect peace because of what Jesus has done and suffered? Here faith can repose. Christ's death has such value in the mind of God that He loves to give this peace in consequence. Such is the truth as it is in Jesus. What a wonderful depth and breadth of truth there is, if you look at it thus! What a poor thing my own experience is, compared with the truth as it is in Jesus! Spiritual power is much more proved by discerning Jesus in others, than by measuring or comparing what people are in themselves, which, indeed, is far from wise. But yet what a disappointing thing it is to see Him merely as He is reflected in others! I must look at the truth as it is in Jesus: in what He was here below, as One who has shown me all through His life and up to His death what God is and man too, Himself the model-man.
In the same person of Jesus I alone see the full truth about anything at all. And you will find the value of this not merely in the great lessons of what God or man is, but if you have to do with any particular trial or difficulty, what is the one test of anything right or wrong? The truth as it is in Jesus. It is the power of using Jesus to meet that difficulty, and of seeing how His name bears upon it. He has expressed His will about it—where I am to be quiet, where I am to act, how I am to walk, and how to bear. He has given me an example that I should follow in His steps. And the greatest power of being like Jesus, depends upon the measure of spirituality we have in applying His name. I am still assuming that there is honesty of purpose, and that we desire to walk before one another as we are walking in truth before God ourselves. It is in proportion as we turn to Jesus and use Him, and view things in Him: this is the rule and spring of real spiritual power. It is this which constitutes a man a father in Christ. It was not the amount of zeal or of overcoming the world, or any great knowledge of this thing or that, but it is found in knowing Him. “I have written unto you fathers, because you have known Him that is from the beginning.” Who is that? Jesus. The knowledge of Jesus, then, is the practical power, strength, and wisdom of the Christian, and that which shows advance in the things of God. This, then, was what they had to learn, more or less. But to know it deeply, and so as to apply it and bring it out, was what specially characterized the fathers. Everybody talks in his own tongue. The dullest soul can use intelligibly the words of his vernacular language. But there is an immense difference between the capacities of different persons wielding their own tongue. It is not every one who can speak according to what the subject calls for. A man who has a mastery of the language proves it by applying it appropriately to all variety of subjects. So all saints must have laid hold more or less of the truth in Jesus, but then the power to use it well, to use it rightly, to bring it out on fitting occasions and turn it to profit for ourselves and others—this is the true secret of our progress in the things of God, and what tends to the blessing of souls and the helping on of the cause of God; so that the importance of it cannot be over-estimated.
Then we have stated to us the practical object of this: “That ye put off concerning the former conversation, the old man which is corrupt, according to the deceitful lusts.” It is not a question of improvement. There is no bettering our old man. The heart may be purified by faith, but in itself it is “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Faith may work the new life, and the Spirit; but the flesh never can be changed or renewed. And here we find what is to be done with our old nature: “That ye put off.” The apostle is speaking to Christians. They have the old man, and need practically to put it off. I must beware, remembering that I have still this incurably evil thing; accustomed to indulge its bad ways before conversion, and still tending to drag one, if unwatchful, into evil.
But now begins the positive part. “And that ye put on the new man, which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness.” There is, first, the putting off the old man, the moral judgment of it, grounded on God's judgment in the cross of Christ definitively done with. Then comes the renewing of the mind, which we cannot have unless there is the judgment of the old. “And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; that ye put on the new man which, after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” They had the new man of course; but it is the putting on the new man practically, the outward manifestation of the new man that was already within them. It is well to bear in mind that this is righteousness and holiness of the truth. It is the truth that produces it again. That is the full meaning of the expression.
Righteousness and holiness differ in this respect. Righteousness is the true perception and, of course, the walking in our relative duties as men of God; holiness is rather the rejection in heart and way, according to God's nature, of what is contrary to Him. Holiness, therefore, is a far more absolute thing than righteousness, which takes up what we owe relatively to God and man. It is in contrast with the first man. Adam was good as a creature, but there was no perception of what God was, and what evil was according to God. He did not then know sin; there was no evil to know. If you had talked about lust to Adam in the Garden of Eden, he must, I believe, have avowed his ignorance of what it meant. Therefore if the law had been given to Adam, “Thou shalt not covet,” he would not have comprehended its meaning, having no experience of it till afterward. We have hearts which like what we have not got, but Adam had not He was just a sample of creature—goodness in a man. It was not after God, created in the righteousness and holiness of the truth. God made man upright; but uprightness is a different thing from being created in holiness. Upright he was created, and innocent; but the new man is much more, knows right well, through the Spirit's teaching, what evil is and what God is. Adam only learned what good and evil are when he fell, never before; that is, he became conscious of a good that he lost, and that he was not; and of an evil that he had fallen into, which God hated and must judge. So when a man is brought to the truth as it is in Jesus, he knew good and evil before with a bad conscience, but now he knows it with a good (that is, purged) conscience. There is nothing that could make a conscience so good as the sacrifice of Jesus. Supposing that any of us were able to live without iniquity to the end of our days, would this make our conscience good? Not in the least. There would be always a bad conscience, because of the consciousness of past, unremoved, unforgiven sin. No human process, no giving us a new nature, can get rid of the evil we have done. The sacrifice of Christ has done it perfectly. My evil is there judged according to God. The evil of the old man is dealt with and gone before God. Christ rises from the dead and gives me His life, which is the new man. Christ in resurrection is the very source of the new man in my soul. If this be so, we must put off the old man. It is to faith a thing done with. Jesus has shown me it as a judged thing in His cross, and I must judge it, and must not allow my old pride and vanity and folly. I have it still within me, but I must not allow it, else I shall grieve the Lord, and bring myself under His hand. We have each of us to watch earnestly against the former conversation; but then it might be that a person might be enticed by an evil never fallen into before, because he imagined it was impossible for him so to fall. There is nothing so exposes one to fall, as the notion one could not so turn aside. It has often been the ruin of a Christian Man, as far as God's glory is concerned.
Thus, the new man is spoken of so as to bring out its contrast with what man was even in his best estate. Yea, Adam, when he came from the hand of God, could not be described in the terms of blessing which are true of every believer now. There is no such thing as restoring to an Adamic condition. A soul when converted now has the place of the Second man; and as He, the Lord, cannot fall, so the Christian has a life that never can be touched. It is as impossible for a Christian to be lost, as for Christ to be removed from the right hand of God; because He is the life of the Christian. If you say that people can fall away from grace, nothing is more certain than that they may. But if you mean by this, that the life of the Christian can perish, you flatly contradict the Word of God. It is a question, then, of understanding the Scriptures.
Christ Himself is the life of the Christian: can He fall? Thus it is a virtual denial of Christ Himself, that there should be a doubt allowed about it. All these exhortations are based upon this; that they had learned Christ, and knew the truth as it is in Jesus. They were already in this relationship, and upon this ground all Christian exhortations come. Is it even or ever a reasonable thing to talk about fruit till the plant has thoroughly taken root? It would be no use to talk to a baby about the duties of a man. The man must be there, as such, before you can expect to see the discharge of the duties of a man. And so with the Christian, before you can rightly insist on the duties of a Christian. But, now that the truth as it is in Jesus is known, you must not allow the old man. He is speaking of practical fruit and walk, because of already being in Christ, and knowing the truth in Him. This ought always to be a great encouragement to a soul. Even if God is exhorting me to self-judgment, it always supposes my previous blessing as a possessor of life everlasting. It is on this ground that God, as it were, thus addresses us; Is it possible that when I have done so much for you, you can be so careless of My will? It is to touch the spring of grace in the soul, in order that we may go on with Him and do His will.
Now He presses upon them some of the results. “Wherefore, putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.” As they had learned the truth in Jesus, the shame of falsehood was the more manifest. What is the ground that we have here? We are too apt to take falsehood rather upon the human basis of honor. Many a man would not do it on moral grounds; or he would be too proud to tell a lie; and he that had a certain sense of the fear of God before his eyes, would not do it, because it was a practical denial of God. It is as good as saying that God does not hear. So that whether you look at a mere man in his natural pride, or at a godly man, like a Jew, there you have the ground on which each would act. But this is not enough for a Christian. It is of great importance for our souls, not only that we should walk well and righteously, but that the motive, character, and extent, should be according to God too. Not only is this exhortation necessary, but there is that coupled with it which we rarely think of in our intercourse one with another: we are here exhorted to speak truth every man with his neighbor, “for we are members one of another.” It is looking at Christians only. None but such are members evidently. He wants to connect with Christ the most common duty, which we are in danger of putting upon a lower basis, and the ground be takes is this—that it is as preposterous and uncomely for a Christian not to tell the plain simple truth to a brother Christian, as for a man to deceive himself. They are part of ourselves. “We are members one of another.” Do we realize this? If we did, what would be the effects? Assuredly, one would be perfect plainness in dealing with that which is wrong; another would be a real, hearty desire to set right those who are wrong. It is evident that we could not wish to injure ourselves. And if I regard another as a part of myself, I ought to act towards them accordingly. In the same way, also, we ought to feel what is contrary to God in another. And as one would greatly desire, if awakened to feel one's own sin, to go to God about it, and have our souls set right there, so it should be in having to do one with another. The deeper realizing of this truth would give a stronger desire for the well-being of our fellow Christians. And yet if it is to be in accordance with God's glory, it is not merely that we should judge what is wrong, but that we should seek to get what is right and according to God. We are apt, where persons have been, for instance, put away from fellowship, to think only of getting rid of the evil; but I do not find this where the membership one of another is felt and owned in the presence of God. Even where it comes to the extreme degree of so dealing with one whom we had believed to be a member of the body of Christ, the end of all discipline is to remove the evil, in order that that which is of Christ may shine forth.
“Be ye angry and sin not; let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” I take this to be a most important and holy intimation for our souls. There is a notion often that it is wrong for a Christian ever to feel displeased or angry. This and other Scriptures show it may be right. But we must take care what the source, as well as the character, of the anger is. If it is merely about something that affects self, and it therefore takes the form of vindictiveness, this is, of course, beyond a doubt, contrary to all that is of Christ. We find in Him, (Mark 3,) that He looked round about upon certain persons with anger, and showed clearly He had the strongest feeling of that which was contrary to God. It was not merely that He denounced the thing, but the people who were guilty of it. I find the same analogy in the epistles. We are told not only to cleave to that which is good, but to abhor that which is evil. Man's thought is that it is not for a Christian to judge and to be angry with what is wrong. The word of God tells us there are certain things we ought to judge and others we ought not. I am not to judge what is unseen; I am to judge positive, known evil. There we have plainly and clearly the line drawn by God. You will find that men say, if you speak strongly about the wrong of this thing or that, you are uncharitable. But not so; it is real charity to denounce it, not to let it pass. True love as to this consists in always having the feelings of God about what comes before us. That is the one question. What God has fellowship with, we can have fellowship with; and what God hates, we are not to love or allow. But we must take care that we are in the intelligence of God's mind. “Be ye angry and sin not.” There is the greatest possible danger of sinning if you are angry, and therefore is this added. The simple emotion of anger toward one who has sinned, may and ought to be a holy feeling, provided it rests there. And so it is if felt in God's presence.
But how am I to know that I am not sinning in my anger? “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” If there is irritation kept up in the spirit, impatience, dislike or scorn betrayed, who cannot see that it is not of God? When the sun goes down, it is a time either for your peaceful communion with God, or your indulgence of resentment away from Him. Therefore it is added, “Neither give place to the devil.” Where there is the nursing of wrath, the keeping up of grievances in the mind, Satan easily comes in, and is not easily dislodged.