An Impure Appetite Seeks Impure Food
“As a dog returneth to his vomit; so a fool retuvneth to his folly.” — xxvl 11.
HE natural tastes may be keen and tender, while the
moral sense is blunt. Refinement may be dissociated
from holiness. Some who live in spiritual impurity
would shriek at the sight of material filth.
According to the usual method of the Scriptures, a known thing is employed here to teach an unknown. The taste which inheres in nature is used as an instrument to implant the corresponding spiritual sensibility: the revulsion of the senses from a loathsome object is used as a lever power to press into the soul a dislike of sin. The image suddenly thrown across our path in this text is reflected from one of the most disgusting sights that meet the passenger’s eye on the promiscuous paths of life. The suggestion, acting through memory on a vivid imagination, makes the flesh creep. But this is not an oversight: he who knows what is in man seeks a tender place, and of set purpose touches him there. This word wounds the quick flesh in order to awaken sensibility in the dead spirit. Through the lively perceptions of nature an arrow of conviction is aimed at a callous heart.
Although the original is inexpressibly revolting, the image is boldly and broadly sketched. No graceful drapery shrouds the unseemliest features of the object: the figure is exhibited in its length and breadth. The plainness is all needed: the lines are strongly drawn that the lesson may be clear and cutting. There must be a rude, hearty blow, for there is a hard searing to be penetrated. Those who go back to suck at sins which they once repudiated, may see in this terse proverb the picture of their pollution; only the Omniscient perfectly knows and loathes the vile original.
The apostle Peter, finding this reproof in the Bible, judged it a suitable instrument to be used in the coarser portions of his work. He was an earnest, outspoken man. His speech was more distinguished for strength than for polish. When called in the course of his ministry to deal with backsliders, he snatched this weapon from the old armoury of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah had preserved, and used it without a word of apology for its serrated and trenchant edge. The whole passage in Peter’s epistle is peculiarly interesting, as an example of the manner in which the writers of the New Testament sanction, adopt, embody, and expand, the inspired record of the older dispensation: “For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is Worse with them than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them. But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire” (2 Pet. ii. 20-22).
Some persons who had heard the gospel, abandoned their vicious courses, and been enrolled as members of the church, had after a while openly returned to their former sins. The apostle betrays no faltering in dealing with the case: he utters a certain sound. Although it was “the knowledge of the Lord” that induced them at first to reform their lives, they had never been in true faith united to the Saviour. The fear of the Judge had driven them for a time from their indulgences, but the love of the Redeemer had not conclusively won them to hope and holiness. They dreaded Christ’s judgment-seat, but were not created again into his image. They fled in fear from the material food of their corrupt appetites, but carried their corrupt appetites away alive in their breasts. When the terror passed the tastes revived, and, by a resistless instinct, devoured again the very abominations which they had cast out as evil.
Peter supplies a graphic description of the process by which old lusts regain their dominion, and he who seemed emancipated is again enslaved; the man who fled from the pollutions of the world is “entangled” therein again, and thereby overcome. The term indicates that one thing is plaited into another, as the strands of a rope, or the branches and roots of contiguous trees. Where suitable substances are so interwoven, whether by art or nature, they cannot be severed from each other without being torn in pieces and destroyed. When the affections of a corrupt heart are by frequent gratification allowed to push their roots deeply into the pollutions of the world, and the pollutions of the world are allowed to warp themselves round the affections of a corrupt heart, a- dreadful process of “plaiting” is accomplished under ground unseen; and the insnared victim at last refuses to renew the struggle, because he feels or fears that a violent separation would wrench out his life. A man’s life has been partially reformed, while his conscience remains unclean. He flees from the sins which he fears, and yet loves the sins from which he has fled. Under the impulse of this unsubdued desire he steals back, when an opportunity occurs, to the neutral ground between good and evil, and dallies with the old impurities across the boundary-line. To him all seems level and safe; but he is on the brink of ruin, and his steps will “slide in due time.” When thirst for the world’s pollutions revives, he saunters on the edge of the world’s territory, where by stretching over he can sip a little now and a little then of the abandoned sweets. Chafing under the self-imposed but unkindly restraint, he argues with himself that Christianity does not frown on harmless enjoyments. He intends to stand with his feet on the safe side, while with his hand he plucks a pleasure from the side which is not safe. The appetite and its gratification, both unchanged, grow into each other again. When the unrenewecl heart and the pollutions of the world are, after a temporary separation, brought together again, the two in their unholy wedlock became “one flesh.” The crash of a sudden judgment disturbs the long lethargic slumber: the Philistines be upon thee, Samson! The unconscious captive arises and shakes himself; but his locks are shorn and his strength is gone. Any green withe may bind and hold him now: his eyes will soon be out: he will grind darkling all his days in the prison for sport to his cruel foe.
Peter summons another witness of kindred character to corroborate the testimony of the more ancient proverb. The apostolic supplement, though the same in kind, is in degree less caustic than the original germ. The appended proverb, though less pungent as a reproof, reveals a touching feature in the nature of spiritual declension. The sow was washed: the filth was wiped from the creature’s skin, but the creature’s instincts remained unchanged. She is as clean and white as the lamb that feeds beside her on the grass; but whenever an opening appears in the fence, she bounds towards the mire and bathes her body in it. It is not necessary to watch the lamb, and fence it round lest it should go and do likewise. It has no inclination to do so; it has another nature. Man’s true need — God’s sufficient cure is, “Create in me a clean heartt and renew a new spirit within me.”