1 "W. H. M. H. Aitken, The School of Grace, 26. I THESS.-HEB. 17
258 SAVING AND INSTRUCTING GRACE
love ; Christ and His life ; Christ and His death ; Christ and His Spirit ; in these are new hopes, motives, powers, which avail to do the thing that no man can do. An infant's finger cannot reverse the motion of some great engine. But the hand that made it can touch some little tap or lever, and the mighty masses of polished iron begin to move the other way. And so God, and God only, can make it possible for us to deny ourselves ungodK- ness and worldly lusts, and to " live soberly, righteously, godly, in this present world." He, that Jesus who comes to us to mould our hearts into hitherto unfelt love, by reason of His own great love, and who gives to us His own Spirit to be the life of our lives, gives us by these gifts new motives, new powers, new tastes, new affections. He puts the reins into our hands, and enables us to control and master our unruly tempers and inclina- tions. If you want to clear out a tube of any sort, the way to do it is to insert some solid substance, and push, and that drives out the clogging matter. Christ's love coming into the heart expels the evil, just as the sap rising in the trees pushes off the old leaves that have hung there withered all winter. As Luther used to say, " You cannot clean out the stable with barrows and shovels. Turn the Elbe into it." Let that great flood of life pour into our hearts, and it will not be hard to *' live soberly." ^
3. The first lesson taught by grace is a negative lesson. Before teaching us what to do, she teaches us what we are to have done with ; before introducing us into the positive blessed- ness of the new life, she first of all separates our connexion with the old. This negation of the old must always come before the possession of the new; and unless our experience follows this order, we shall find that what we mistake for the new is not God's new at all, but simply Satan's travesty of God's new creation. Ungodliness must be denied before we can walk with God, and worldly lusts must be denied before we can live as citizens of the New Jerusalem.
When our Lord came up to Jerusalem that by His death He might rend the veil of the Temple in twain, and open up for us a way into the holiest of all. His first care was to cleanse the outer courts of that Temple from the presence of the traders and the money-changers who defiled it. In this He signified that the first object of the manifestation of His saving grace is to cleanse those whom He would consecrate as temples of the Holy Ghost
' A. Maclaren.
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from the ungodliness and worldly lusts by which they are defiled, that, having cleansed them thus, He may lead them on to the practice of those positive duties of the Christian life to which He has called them, so that they shall bear His image and reflect His glory as holy temples of the Lord.
^ Let us not fail to observe that the Apostle here speaks of our " denying ungodliness." He does not speak of our combating ungodliness, or of our gradually progressing from a state of ungodliness into a state of godliness. There is no description here of any such process, although I am persuaded that such a process is very generally believed in by large numbers of professing Christians.^
(1) Ungodliness. — This sounds a very strong word, and at first most people are disposed to affirm that they cannot be charged with this, whatever else they may be guilty of. But we must endeavour to find out what ungodliness is. This is certainly important, because unless we understand what it is, it is im- possible to deny it. Now ungodliness is the cardinal and root-sin of the world. It was the first sin committed in the history of the world, and it was the parent of all other sins ; and it is usually the first sin in the life of each individual, and equally the parent of all the sins that follow. Ungodliness, in one form or another, has been at the root of them all, and the deadly growth from this evil root has cast its baleful shadow over universal history. As our eye wanders down through the annals of mankind, we find therein a long, weary, tragic record of ungodliness and its fruits. The false step taken by Adam, and by him no doubt deeply lamented, becomes a law of life to his son — that first murderer, Cain. Of him we read that after his judgment and condemnation he went forth from the presence of God. It is now an object with the man to escape from all thought of God, and to lose all sense of His presence. His course lies in the land of wandering ; for is he not already " a wandering star " ? And there he seeks to find substitutes for the God whom he has forsaken, in the material objects of a transient world, and the thronging interests of domestic and political life. God is now in none of his thoughts.