The testimony of the Spirit of God at certain times has been to some particular truths to meet the special need of the day. In our day it is a testimony to practical devotedness, and entire separation from the evil that is in the world. It has been through God’s laying these two truths home on the conscience that anything like revival has been accomplished in these last days. Notice the lever the Apostle uses in Romans 12 to move the saints. Had he not a heart for the sheep? Assuredly he had. But there was another he had a heart for, and that was the Lord Jesus Christ. He begins, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God.” Observe the claim which this emphatic love is led to use. This is the motive by which he appeals to them. Mercies went up to the God of heaven, and down to the mind of the poor, feeble Christian. Without a sense of His mercies there cannot be devotedness to God and separation from evil. Holiness will not do it. If my heart is still in this world, it is because I have not learned what mercy is. What do you think God ought to do towards you? Have you any claim upon Him, but that He should hate you? Are you just clay in the hands of the Potter — clay that no other potter could make anything with? Are you in His hand, for Him to mould you as He wills — guilty and loathsome as you are in contrast with Christ? Christ is light, and you are darkness. God could do nothing with you but pick you up in mercy.
God’s Mercy
Observe what this mercy really is. It is not merely providential mercy as men talk, but mercies that are summed up in all the preceding chapters of the epistle. The summing up does not close at Romans 8, but after showing the dispensations in Romans 9-11, he breaks out, “I beseech you . . . by the mercies of God.” What there is for man must be all on the ground of mercy. God does not want a service from us in heaven, but He does upon the earth, and He will have one. We must get into God’s thoughts about things, and we see that God never brings anyone into such a position but he who needs mercy.
“That ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Rom. 12:22And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. (Romans 12:2)). The thought is that we are to prove what the risen Christ is in one who still has the conscience of sin in his members. We are told to “cease to do evil.” Perhaps you say, I find evil within me, and I cannot get away from it. But you are told to cease to do evil, not cease from evil. Satan may put many thoughts into my mind, but I am not to give heed to them. No, I have done with them. John Bunyan vexed his soul for many a long year with what was afterwards his very joy. Afterwards he found it was because Christ was his that Satan had vexed him, and when he could take things boldly for Christ, things went more easily with him.
God’s Purpose for Us
Why is the Christian left here at all? If a man makes a clock, it is for a purpose. It has hands to show the time, and they are like the living members of Christ here. As the clock is made to show the time, so God’s people were intended to show forth His praises. A clock is never kept in order if it is not kept going, and you will never find a body in health if it is not in action. In spiritual things, you will never find a Christian in a healthy state who does not keep his body a living sacrifice for God. A Christian ought to be full of joy and of the Holy Spirit.
Our Conduct and the Heart
The second exhortation of the Apostle is to nonconformity to the world, and this is a point which tests us all very closely. It is a most difficult thing to get the true test as to what worldliness is. There is one thing certain — you will never get it if you keep to the outside features of conduct, for worldliness may nicely be fed in the heart while we have all the appearance of denying it. What does Cain do when God sets His mark upon him? He goes and settles himself down nicely without God. It was self and not God he thought of. He had not the single eye; his thoughts all clustered around self, and not around the God who had spared him. If a man is grasping after something for self, he is not satisfied with God. He wants something else — something by which he may exalt himself a little in the world. It is the “lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:1616And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise. (John 2:16)). All these deny that God made us for Himself. The moment Adam and Eve catered to themselves, all the mischief was done. With Christ, Satan tried these three things, but could not get in, because Christ had no mind to cater to Himself. The world can creep in between the leaves of the thoughts of one’s mind and do more mischief than the bookworm in a library. Just as the worm does the harm in secret, so does the world in the heart. Self is most difficult to detect.
That form of worldliness which connects itself with feebleness of conscience is most deceitful. The body, soul and spirit must be for Christ. A man may say, “I am not at liberty to eat meat.” Well, he must not eat it against his conscience, and yet after a while he may find it was just the world in his conscience that hindered his doing it. It might be his own great religiousness, and more light will show him this. How can you decide between conscience and feeling? In answer to this question, I would ask another: Do you really mean to say to God, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, “Thou requirest this of me, and I give it thee”? Take care you do not mistake feeling for conscience. If you walk like the world, you are no witness for Christ, and you have to pick your way out of Sodom as quickly as you can. Does the world come in where God should be? If I am seeking something apart from God, it is the world, lust, and so on. The only power to sustain this pilgrim course is the recognition and dependence on His mercy. If you leave it behind you for a moment, you break down immediately. Nothing dissolves the ties to the world first or last but that which separated us at first.
G. V. Wigram, adapted