Unclothed and Clothed Upon

Eph. iv. 22, 24

That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is conaipt according to the deceitful lusts,... And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” — Ephes. iv. 22, 24.

‘JE saw in the last sermon, in considering the previous context, that the Apostle there sets forth Christ as being both the Lesson and the Teacher of the Christian man. In the words of our present text we have the sum and substance of the lesson which in Christ we receive. I have ventured to take these words, omitting some others which are difficult and important, because by bringinsf them into immediate connection with the thoug-hts in the preceding verses we get a clear view of the general trend of the Apostle’s thought.

The great lesson for Christian people, which tests the reality of their discipleship, is this double exhortation: “put off the old,... put on the new.” The sum and substance of all Christian duty and conduct may be set forth as being that we denude ourselves of ourselves, and invest ourselves with new selves. It is a paradox, but it is the meaning of the Christian life.

I. — AVe have here, first, the actual self which must be got rid of.

The picture which the Apostle draws is a very dark one. He does not mean it to be a complete statement of what human nature is, apart from Christ. But he does mean it to be a description of what exists in every man, however it may be restrained by better influences.

I need not remind you that his venturesome anatomy is only in accordance with ordinary usage, by which we are accustomed to speak of ‘■’ our better “and” our worse selves,” of ‘• our old “and “of our present selves “; and so on. The Apostle simply carries a familiar division a step further.

Now, note, that this old self has for its characteristic that it is governed and shaped by lust. That word, in apostolic and Scriptural meaning — and I suppose in English at the date of our translation — had not shrunk to the narrow and foul sense which it now carries. It is a singularly eloquent testimony to the tremendous power and widespread extent of these sensual appetites that they have monopolized a word which originally had a much wider meaning. Flt the Greek and the English alike mean, not merely animal appetites or passions connected with our physical organization, but they mean desires of all sorts: the goings out of the mind and will after anything apart from God, conceived of as good. Paul’s notion of “the lusts of the flesh” includes not only gluttony and drunkenness and uncleanness of other sorts, but also the most purely mental desires, such as ambition and love of fame, and all the other more refined forms, by wliicli men let themselves go out in longing after created things lower than God Himself This is what he means by lusts: strong desires set upon creatures.

And is it not true that, whilst there are other elements in all men, yet, speaking broadly and on the whole, men are governed by their desires far more than by their consciences or their judgments? Clearly enousfh, if we will think of it for a moment, these apj)etites, which are excited by external things conceived to be good, were never meant to be on the quarter-deck, and to have command of the ship. Clearly they bear upon their very fronts, like the Hindoos with their caste-mark on their foreheads, the tokens of their destination for service. They are meant to stimulate to action, but they are meant to take their orders from another part of our nature. And if a man is ruled by his desires, then he has failed to be what he should be.

And I maintain that, speaking broadly and generally, and not for a moment denying the fact that in men there are motions towards good, and strong recalcitrations of conscience and of judgment against the slavery to the worse part, still, on the whole, it remains true that, apart from Jesus Christ, desires fashion men. There has been rebellion in the little kingdom within, and the mob has got command, and the rulers are in prison.

Then the Apostle’s next thought is: these desires are liars. “Deceitful lusts” our translation represents him as saying, but that is scarcely the full rendering of his word. “Lusts of deceit” is the literal and the more forcible translation. But, substantially, the meaning is that the desires to which we submit tell us lies, and so they govern us.

And is not that true? What does it mean that men have got two names for almost all sorts of vices; one of which they apply to their own sins, one which they keep for other people’s? Why is licentiousness called “sowing wild oats”? Why is miserliness called “prudence “? Why is what in the one is “flat blasphemy” in the other but “a choleric word “? Why has every sin a pet name — a euphemism, as they say — but because~our desires are liars? When they would coax us into the toils they say, “Come, is it not a little one?” and when they have got us, they turn round and say, “It is too great a one for you ever to get rid of it.” They lie to us in describing the essential nature of the acts to which they tempt us.

And they lie to us in another way, by holding out to us a promise that will never be fulfilled. They are all “juggling fiends, that palter with us in a double sense.” Kemember the old story, out of Koman history, of the woman that was tempted to betray her country by the promise of receiving from the invaders “that which they wore on their left arms.” She meant the golden bracelets. They promised, and when the treason was consummated they crushed her below their shields.

So it is with every evil thing that appeals to our quickly stimulated desires. It promises satisfaction of the desire, and that promise may be kept, but the satisfied desire leaves the man unsatisfied. Children think that there is a pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow, and Avlien they get to it they find only wet vapour, with a deceitful glister of the sunshine on it for a moment.

And then, says the Apostle, these desires which lie make the man that obeys them steadily progressive in corruption. For the word which is rendered in my text “corrupt” fully means “being corrupted.” And it points to that solemn thought, that if once we take wishes or inclinations of the coarser or of the more refined kind for our guides, in the exact proportion in which we let them have the control they drive us into steadily increasing deterioration, and we get more and more scurfed over with foul leprosy. There is nothing more certain than that tragic necessity of a downward course with accelerated rapidity, if once we put our feet on the fatal slope. And so. dear brethren, all surface refinements are vain and futile, and lives that are yielded as some of ours are, if not unconditionally and exclusively, at least predominantly, to the sway of inclinations, are like some stagnant ponds with an iridescent scum on the top, which shows prismatic colours, but is the outcome of putrefaction. So, many a life, very fair in external appearance, is really in its depths rotting away by self-indulgence, corrupting with “lusts of deceit.”

Kow, I do not say that that is the whole of you. I do not say that that is all of any man; but I do say that is a part of every man. And so this exhortation comes in, reiteratino- the teachinof of all the morahsts that ever were; and if we separate it from its context it is as vain as all their morahties. “Put off the old man.” The image, of course, is taken from a oarment

Bid Hercules put oft’ the shirt of Nessus that is on him! It was killing him; and the old myth tells us that extrication from it was hopeless; and that there was no remedy but the funeral pyre, which would burn Hercules and his shirt together. How can I separate myself from myself? Are not my desires as much me as my conscience and my will? The problem is insoluble within human limits. And yet Paul, without seeming to think that he is requiring anything at all difficult, calmly says, “Put oft’ the old man. Denude yourself of yourself.” He has made an impossible requirement; until we go a step further, and hear what else he has to say.

II. — So that brings me to the next point in my text — the new self wdiich may be put on.

I have omitted the intervening clause, not because I consider it of little importance, but because I wish to bring together the main line of the Apostle’s thoughts. “We have here the new man set in direct antithesis to the old. The antitheses are still more complete if we adhere a little more closely to the original. Note how, in point of fact, he contrasts the actual self and the possible one in every point. The one is” the old,” the other is “the new.” The one is “tending to corruption,” the other is, by a Divine act of power, “created.” The one is “after lusts,” fashioned in their likeness; the other is “after God,” fashioned in His. The one obeys ‘lusts of deceit,” the other is “created in righteousness and holiness of truth.” As deceit is the characteristic of the one, so truth is the origin and source of the other. And thus the contrast is made out, and the Apostle

154 Uy CLOTHED AND CLOTHED UPOX.

suggests by these characteristics the motives for, and the possibiHty of, reahzing this magnificent ideal, and being renewed in ourselves by a new self, which has no affinity with corruption, but is a creation of God’s, which is made in His own likeness, which is fed by His Divine Spirit, which is moulded by the truth that will produce righteousness and holiness.

So, then, here are the thoughts which he thus packs together. First of all, a Divine creative act in Jesus Christ is ready to give to every one of us a real new self, and a new life straight from God. Brethren, that is the very central message of the Gospel that I have to bring. Jesus Christ is the life, and He will be your life and mine if we will let Him. What is the meaning of the Christian word “regeneration “? What is it to be born aq-ain, but to receive into our hearts a new source and fountain of being, which will not, indeed, make new persons of us, but which will give a new power for obedience, new tastes, a new direction to our desires, new enermes, new thouoiits. “Behold! If any man is in Christ Jesus he is a new creation. Old things are passed away. All things are become new.” Oh! would that I could get you to believe and to feel far more than you do that that is theimple truth, that it is no mere exaggeration, nor any lofty metaphorical way of saying something very much smaller than it sounds at first, but that really the very central idea of Christ’s gift is that it’’ is the 2’ift of a new nature. This Prometheus has come down from heaven with a spark in the reed of His weak humanity, and the reed being broken by His death upon the cross. His longing is being fulfilled, and the fire of a new life is kindled upon earth.

It is no use to say to any one, “Pat on the new man,” as if he were to make a new character for himself. But the injunction assumes an altogether different aspect when we bid him put on what has been created, and take for his own the new self which God is ready to give.

Then, further, our text declares that this possible new life will be fashioned after the Divine likeness. It is created “after God” instead of being moulded by the pressure of these earth-born and earth- desiring lusts. It is made like that Divine nature. The true likeness of man to God, which is lost in man’s sin, lies in his moral nature, his love of good, his hatred of evil. There is a likeness of God inseparable from humanity, which consists in a man’s being able to say, “I,” and consequently to turn to Him and say, “Thou “; the likeness which consists in personality, in spiritual being, in volition, and the like. But the quintessence of the likeness of man to God lies here, “Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity.” And this life of likeness — Sympathy with God in good, and sympathy with God in antipathy to evil — may be ours. It is quickened by the Divine Spirit; it is nourished and strengthened by the truth in Jesus Christ.

The problem does not look so insoluble now, does it? It is not such a heartless piece of irony to say to the poor, broken man, “Get up and walk! put off the old self,” when 3’ou can show him a Divine creation of a new self ditterin’ in its likeness to God; or, in another image, a robe of righteousness waiting for him if he will put it on. The actual self is corrupt; the possible self is pure and Gocl-created.

III. — So, lastly, note our double task — put off, put on.

Now, I suppose that in the very initial and most faltering steps by which any of us become Christians these two commandments begin to be fulfilled. Because, whensoever a man thoroughly hates and repents of his sin he has put off” the old man, and whensoever he opens his heart to the reception of Christ’s saving power and quickening love he has put on — though it be but in germ or in infancy — the better self. But then there must follow all through the life the repetition and increase of these two acts. We must daily, not only be thwarting our inclinations, for that is a poor affair, but be getting rid of the inclinations themselves, which is the only real conquest over them.

And we must be growing, by daily efforts, more and more into the likeness of Jesus Christ.

Now, notice that these commands, “put off’/’ “put on,” are realty but diverse aspects of the same thing. The surest way to put off’ the old is to put on the new. There have been great blunders about that. The great fault of the mystical writers in Christianity, which goes a long way to counterbalance their great excellences, is that so largely they preach self-suppression and self-denial as a preparation for the receiving of the better nature and the higher life. It is a mistake. The same blunder besets the salvationby-works people, and the same blunder besets a great many modern social reformers. “Get rid of the evil and then assimilate the good.” That is putting the cart before the horse. The withered leaves hang on the beech trees all through the winter, but they drop off when the new life begins to force its way up, and drives them from their precarious foothold. You cannot destroy the desires, but you can divert them. Make a new bed for the river and the old bed will soon be left dry. Which, being translated into plain English, is just this — the more we fill our hearts with Jesus Christ, the less room will there be for the “lusts of deceit.” The cup brimming with the new wine of the kingdom has no room for baser liquors; and the man whose desires and the whole current of whose being set towards Jesus Christ will not be the slave of lying lusts which lead to corruption.

Brethren! since this new life is to be found in Him, the truest way to secure it is to keep close to Him in whom it is found. Since it is nourished and sustained by the Divine Spirit, the truest way to possess it is to open our hearts to the entrance of that Spirit. Since it is nourished and fed by the truth which is in the word of the Gospel, the way to increase it is to be familiar in heart and mind with the motives and promises and commandments of that Gospel. “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh.”

So, dear friends, it is not hopeless to say to any one, “Put off the old self,” if we can say to him at the same time, “Take on the new, the creation of God.” The world, and our own weak hearts, may well ask in despair, “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? “and have to answer in sadness,” Not one “! It is hopeless. If we continue to be ourselves we have got bacteria enough in us to kill us, and we cannot but continue ourselves, unless we listen to Him, who said” Behold! I make all things new,” and will let Him ‘•’ create in us clean hearts, and renew right spirits within us.”