“Then Job answered the Lord and said, Behold, I am vile.”-Job 40:3-4.
Surely, if any man had a right to say, I am not vile, it was Job; for,
according to the testimony of God himself, he was “a perfect and an upright
man, one that feared God and eschewed evil.” Yet we find even this eminent
saint, when by his nearness to God he had received light enough to discover
his own condition, exclaiming, “Behold I am vile.” We are sure that what Job
was forced to say, we may each of us assent unto, whether we be God’s
children or not; and if we be partakers of divine grace, it becomes a subject
of great consideration for us, since even we, although we be regenerated,
must exclaim, each one for himself, “Behold, I am vile.”
It is a doctrine, as I believe, taught us in Holy Writ, that when a man is
saved by divine grace, he is not wholly cleansed from the corruption of his
heart. When we believe in Jesus Christ all our sins are pardoned; yet the
power of sin, albeit that it is weakened and kept under by the dominion of
the new-born nature which God doth infuse into our souls, doth not cease, but
still tarrieth in us, and will do so to our dying day. It is a doctrine held
by all the orthodox, that there dwelleth still in the regenerate, the lusts
of the flesh, and that there doth still remain in the hearts of those who are
converted by God’s mercy, the evil of carnal nature. I have found it very
difficult to distinguish, in experimental matters, concerning sin. It is
usual with many writers, especially with hymn writers, to confound the two
natures of a Christian. Now, I hold that there is in every Christian two
natures, as distinct as were the two natures of the God-Man Christ Jesus.
There is one nature which cannot sin, because it is born of God-a spiritual
nature, coming directly from heaven, as pure and as perfect as God himself,
who is the author of it; and there is also in man that ancient nature which,
by the fall of Adam, hath become altogether vile, corrupt, sinful, and
devilish. There remains in the heart of the Christian a nature which cannot
do that which is right, any more than it could before regeneration, and which
is as evil as it was before the new birth-as sinful, as altogether hostile to
God’s laws, as ever it was-a nature which, as I said before, is curbed and
kept under by the new nature in a great measure, but which is not removed and
never will be until this tabernacle of our flesh is broken down, and we soar
into that land into which there shall never enter anything that defileth.
It will be my business this morning, to say something of that evil nature
which still abides in the righteous. That is does remain, I shall first
attempt to prove; and the other points I will suggest to you as we proceed.
I. The FACT, the great and terrible fact, that EVEN THE RIGHTEOUS HAVE IN
THEM EVIL NATURES. Job said, “Behold, I am vile.” He did not always know it.
All through the long controversy he had declared himself to be just and
upright: he had said, “My righteousness I will hold fast, and I will not let
it go;” and notwithstanding he did scrape his body with a potsherd, and his
friends did vex his mind with the most bitter revilings, yet he still held
fast his integrity, and would not confess his sin; but when God came to plead
with him, he had no sooner listened to the voice of God in the whirlwind, and
heard the question, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” than at
once he put his finger on his lips, and would not answer God, but simply
said, “Behold, I am vile.” Possibly some may say, that Job was an exception
to the rule; and they will tell us, that other saints had not in them such a
reason for humiliation; but we remind them of David, and we bid them read the
51st penitential Psalm, where we find him declaring that he was shapen in
iniquity, and in sin did his mother conceive him; confessing, that he had sin
within him. In many other places in the Psalms, David doth continually
acknowledge and confess, that he is not perfectly rid of sin; that still the
evil viper doth twist itself around his heart. Turn also, if you please, to
Isaiah. There you have him, in one of his visions, saying that he was a man
of unclean lips, and that he dwelt among a people of unclean lips. But more
especially, under the gospel dispensation, you find Paul, in that memorable
chapter we have been reading, declaring, that he found in “his members a law
warring against the law of his mind, and bringing him into captivity to the
law of sin.” Yea, we hear that remarkable exclamation of struggling desire
and intense agony, “O, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the
body of this death?” Do you expect to find yourselves better saints than Job?
do you imagine that the confession which befitted the mouth of David is too
mean for you? are ye so proud, that ye will not exclaim with Isaiah, “I also
am a man of unclean lips?” Or rather, have ye progressed so far in pride,
that ye dare to exalt yourselves above the laborious Apostle Paul, and to
hope that in you, that is, in your flesh, there dwelleth any good thing? If
ye do think yourselves to be perfectly pure from sin, hear ye the word of
God: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is
not in us. If we say we have no sin, we make God a liar.”
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
