Sins, especially the grosser vices, are “works of darkness.” They delight in concealment, they are not fit to be seen, they flourish in the darkness of the unrenewed heart, they are most fully maintained in the ignorance of a soul that is without the knowledge of the ever-blessed God. They are also works of darkness, because those who follow them have a sad life of it, after all; they are not only dark as to knowledge, but they are dark as to comfort as well. There is no true light, no real joy, in sin: “The wages of sin is death.” And they are works of darkness, too, because they tend to further darkness; the man who pursues them goes from blackness to a deeper blackness, and in the end his portion will be darkness unbroken by a ray of hope, “the blackness of darkness for ever.”

You know that darkness stands for the powers of evil, as light is the fit emblem of the holiness of God, and of his infinite goodness and purifying grace. Well, now, whether we who are the children of light are busy or not, it is quite certain that children of darkness work. They are always working; there is no cessation in their activity. Master Latimer used to say that the most diligent bishop in England was the devil, for whoever did not visit his diocese the devil was always visiting his people. His plough never rusts in the furrow, his sword never rests in its scabbard. The powers of darkness cannot be blamed for their slothfulness; is there ever a moment in which they are not busy and active? Lukewarmness never steals over the powers of darkness. The work of the night goes on horribly, there is no pause to it; therefore, let us who are of the day work, too. God help us to counteract the working of the silent, hidden leaven of sin by our own struggling to produce in the world a better tone of thought and feeling, and by spreading the knowledge of God’s grace, and everything which will increase reverence to God and love to men!

The text speaks of the works of darkness, and it calls them, “unfruitful.” So they are; for sin is sterile. It produces its like, and multiplies itself; but as for any fruit that is good, any fruit that can elevate and benefit men, any fruit which God can accept, and which you and I ought to desire, sin is barren as the desert sand. Nothing good can come of it. Every now and then, we hear it said, “Well, you know, on this occasion, we must set aside the higher laws of equity, because just now it is imperatively necessary that such and such a policy should be pursued.” But it is never right either for an individual or for a nation to do wrong; and the most fruitful policy for men and for nations is to do that which will bear the light. The works of the light are fruitful works, rich and sweet, and fit to be gathered, pleasant to God and profitable to men; but the works of darkness are fruitless, they come to nothing, they produce no good result. They are like the apples of Sodom, which may appear fair to the eye, but he that plucks them shall find that he has nothing but ashes in his hand. O you who are performing works of darkness, know that no good fruit will come of all your work! You can have nothing that is worth having as the result of all your toil.

My text, which I have just introduced to you by these few remarks, demands our attention as a great practical lesson to Christians: “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” Those works of darkness which are horrible and unmentionable, you cannot have fellowship with them. They produce an evil very potent to all mankind; of course, you will avoid them, pass not by them, and flee from them; but you must also keep clear of those works of darkness which apparently seem to be colourless, and to produce no particularly evil effect. You, as a Christian man, have to live a solemn, earnest, serious life. To you,-

“Life is real, life is earnest;”

and if there are works of darkness which do not seem to be as bad as others, but are simply frivolous, foolish, and time-wasting, have no fellowship with them. These unfruitful works of darkness are to be avoided by you as much as those which are most defiling. Hear this, ye Christian men, and God help you to obey the command!

In coming to the consideration of our text, let us enquire, first, What is forbidden? Fellowship with “the unfruitful works of darkness.” Secondly, let us ask, What is commanded? “Reprove them;” and thirdly, let us consider, Why are we thus to act?

First, then, what is forbidden? “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.” We can have fellowship with them in a great number of ways.

Notice that the text does not say, “Have no fellowship with wicked men; have no dealings with men who are not converted;” for then we must needs go out of the world. Many of us are obliged to earn our daily bread in the midst of men whom we certainly would not choose for our companions. Many of you, I know, are forced every day to hear language which is disgusting to you; and you are brought into contact with modes of procedure which sadden your gracious spirits. Our Saviour does not pray that you should be taken out of the world, but that you should be preserved from the evil of it. If you are what you profess to be, you are the salt of the earth; and salt is not meant to be kept in a box, but to be well rubbed into the meat to keep it from putrefaction. We are not to shut ourselves up as select companies of men seeking only our own edification and enjoyment, but it is intended that we should mingle with the ungodly so far as our duties demand. We are forced to do so; it is the Lord’s intent that we should, so that we may act as salt among them. God grant that the salt may never lose its savour, and that the unsavoury world may never destroy the pungency of the piety of God’s people! With evil men, then, we must have some kind of fellowship, but with their works we are to have no fellowship. In order to avoid this evil, let us see what is here forbidden: “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.”

And first, dear friends, we have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness by personally committing the sins so described. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked.” After all, a man must be judged by his life. If you do that which is holy and righteous and gracious, you have fellowship with the holy and the righteous and the gracious; but if you do that which is unclean and dishonest, you have fellowship with the unclean and the dishonest. The Lord will, at the last, put us among those whom we are most like; in that day when he shall separate the people gathered before him as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats, the sheep will be put with the sheep, and the goats with the goats. If you have lived like the wicked, you will die like the wicked, and be damned like the wicked. It is only those who live the life of the righteous who can hope that they shall die the death of the righteous. I, who preach to you with all my heart the doctrine of the grace of God, do, nevertheless, just as boldly remind you that the grace of God brings forth fruit in the life; and where it is really in the heart, there will be in the life that which betokens its presence. If you and I are drunkards, if we can do a dishonest action, if we are guilty of falsehood, if we are covetous (I need not go over the list of all those evil things), then we belong to the class of men who delight in such practices, and with them we must go for ever. We are having fellowship with them by doing as they do, and we shall have an awful fellowship with them at the last by suffering as they shall suffer. God make us holy, then! The very name of Jesus signifies that he will save his people from their sins, and he saves them from their sins by their ceasing to commit those sins that others do. His own word is, “Be ye holy, for I am holy.” “Be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord.” Nothing more dishonours him than to have a following of unclean men-men who refuse to be washed, and resolve not to quit their old sins. Great sinners, ay, the biggest sinners out of hell, are welcome to come to Christ in order to be cleansed from their sin, and set free from it. He keeps a hospital wherein he receives the most sick of all the sick, but it is that he may heal them; and if men do not wish to be healed, but count the marks of their disease to be beauty-spots, if they love their sins, and hug them to their bosoms, then thus saith the Lord to them, “Ye shall die in your sins.” God save all his professing people from this form of fellowship with the works of darkness!

Next, we can have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness by teaching wrong-doing, either by plain word or by just inference. Any man whose teaching tends towards unholiness, who directly or indirectly, either by overt phrase or by natural inference, leads another man into sin, is particeps criminis, a partaker of the crime. If you teach your children what they ought never to learn, if you teach your fellow-workmen what they had better never know, and if they improve upon your lessons, and go much farther than you ever meant that they should, if they proceed from folly to crime, you are a partaker of their sins, you have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness. And, believe me, there is nothing more awful than for any minister of Christ to have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness by keeping back any part of the truth, by withholding any of the precepts of God’s Word, or by denying the terrible and eternal consequences of sin. There is nothing more dreadful than the end of such a man must be; I think that I would sooner die, and be judged of God as a murderer of men’s bodies, than have to go before the judgment seat charged with being the murderer of their souls, through having kept back helpful truth, or insinuated destructive and erroneous doctrines. Yes, we can easily have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness in that way.

Further, there are some who will have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness by constraining, commanding, or tempting others to sin. How much harm is often done in this respect by want of thought! What you do by another, you do yourself. If you command another to do for you what you know to be wrong,-I will not say that the other is right in the compliance,-but I will say that you are wrong in having given the command. Let fathers, let masters, let mistresses, see to it that they never command others to do what God has not commanded them to do.

Sometimes, it is not actually a command that you give, but you put the person into such a position of temptation and trial, that the probabilities are that that person will do wrong; and if it be so, in the sight of God, you will have to share the guilt of that wrong. When a master pays his servant less wages than he ought to have,-if that servant commits a theft, I condemn the theft, but I cannot clear the master who put the man into a position in which he must have been sorely tempted to take something more to make up that of which he had been defrauded. I do not excuse the theft by him who committed it; but still I cannot screen the one who put the other where, in all probability, he would be driven to commit a dishonest act. If I place a man in a position where it is most probable, seeing that human nature is what it is, that he will commit a sin, if I have wantonly put him there, or put him there for my own profit and gain, I shall be a partaker of the sin if he falls. If you are a nurse girl, and you take those little children, and set them on the edge of the cliff, letting them go to the very brink of it, and they fall over, you cannot clear yourself of blame in the matter. It may be that you told the children not to go too close to the edge; but then you put them where you might be morally certain that, as children, they would go there, and you are responsible for all that happens to them. So, if I set another in a place where I might be able to stand myself, but might be pretty sure that he could not, I shall be a partaker of his sin. “Well, I drink my glass of wine,” says one. Yes, and apparently it does you no harm whatever; you have never been excited by it, and you feel grateful for it; but there is another man who could not do as you have done without becoming a drunkard, and by your example he is made a drunkard, and helped to remain so. The practice may be safe enough for you; but if it is ruinous to him, take heed lest you be a partaker of his unfruitful works of darkness. It will require great care, and some self-denial, so to act towards others that we can say when we go to bed at night, “If any man has done a wrong thing to-day, it is not because I have set him the example.” Oh, that we might all repent of other people’s sins! Did you ever repent of them? “I have had enough to do to repent of my own sins,” says one. But these sins of which I am speaking are your own, as well as other people’s; if you have led others into the way of committing the sin, or have put any pressure upon them to lead them to commit sin, you are having fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.

Sometimes, men get to be partakers of others’ sins by provoking them. When fathers provoke their children to anger, who has the chief blame of that sin? Surely the father has. And when, sometimes, persons purposely play upon the infirmities of others to provoke them, are they not more to blame than the offenders? I am sure that it is so. I have known some try to draw others out when they have known their propensity to go beyond the truth; they have, for mirth’s sake, led them on, and tempted them to lie. Who is the greater sinner of the two in such a case as that? I am no casuist, and shall not attempt to weigh actions; but I am able to say this most assuredly, that, if you provoke another to anger, that anger is in part your sin; if you wantonly incite another to sin by daring him to do it, or by any other method of tempting him to do wrong, you yourself shall share the accusation at the last great day.

Further, friends, we can be partakers of the unfruitful works of darkness by counselling them. There are some men who will not do the wrong things themselves, but they will give evil advice to others, and so lead them into iniquity. We have known persons act the part of the cat with the monkey; they have used some other hand to draw the chestnuts from the fire. They were not themselves burned, but then they really did the deed by their agents. Theirs was the advice, theirs the wit, theirs the shrewd hard-headedness by which the evil was done; and though they did not appear in the transaction, yet God saw them, and he will reckon with them in the day of account.

I feel very jealous of myself when I have to give advice; and that experience often falls to my lot. A person will plead, “Well, if I do right in such a case as this, I shall remain in poverty, or I shall lose my situation. If I follow out my conscientious convictions to the full, who is to provide for me?” And, you know, the temptation is to feel, “Well, now, really we must not be too severe in our judgment upon this poor soul; can we not agree with the evident wish of the person asking the advice, moderate the law of God, or in some way make a loophole, and say, ‘Well, it will not be right; but still, you see, under the circumstances, --.’ ” Now, I never dare do that, because, if wrong be done, and I have counselled it, I shall be a partaker in the wrong. You who are called to give advice to others,-as many of you may be by reason of your age and experience,-always give straight advice; never let any man learn policy from you. Of all things in this world, that which often commends itself to certain “prudent” men, but which, nevertheless, never ought to commend itself to Christian men, is the idea of doing a little evil in order to obtain a great good; in fact, believing ourselves to be wiser than the commands of God, and imagining that strict truth and probity and integrity would, after all, not be the best thing for men, even though God has so ordained. Do let us so guide others that we shall have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.

But we may have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness by consenting to them, and conniving at them. For instance, you live in a house where there is a great deal of evil going on, and you yourself keep clear of it. So far so good; but you never protest against it, you have been altogether silent about it. “Mum,” has been the word with you; and, sometimes, when they come home from a place of ill resort, and they tell you about the “fun” they have had, you laugh with the rest, or if you do not laugh, at any rate you have not decidedly expressed your disapproval. You do disapprove of the evil; in secret, you even pray against it; but nobody knows that it is so, the wrongdoers especially are not aware that it is so; in fact, they fancy that, as they treat leniently your pursuit of religion, though they think it cant, so you treat leniently their pursuit of sin, though in your heart of hearts you believe that pursuit to be evil. Our Lord commands us to clear ourselves of all conniving at sin,-not with harshness, not with denunciation, and in an unkind spirit,-but with a mild, gentle, but still powerful, honest rebuke. We must say, especially if we are parents, or masters, or persons having much influence with others, “Oh, do not this abominable thing! I cannot have any share in this evil, even by silently tolerating it. How I wish that you would give it up! I entreat you, come out of this Sodom; escape for your lives!” A few more loving home testimonies for God, and who can tell but that the husband may be converted, and the son may be led to the Saviour? But for want of this personal witness-bearing among Christians, I am afraid that the Church of God comes to be paralyzed, and much of her power and usefulness is taken from her. Do not let us connive or wink at sin in any case whatever.

Far be it from us also ever to have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness by commending or applauding sin, or seeming to agree with it. We must let all men know that, whatever they may do which has about it an ill savour, it has an ill savour to us, and we cannot endure it, but must ever protest against it, lest we be partakers of the sins of others. O dear friends, I believe that the great lack of the church just now is holiness! The great want of the church is nonconformity; I mean, nonconformity to the world. We must endeavour to bring back the strictness of the Puritan times, and somewhat more. Everybody is so liberal and takes such latitude, nowadays, that in some quarters it is impossible to tell which is the church and which is the world. I have even heard some ministers propose that there should be no church distinct from the congregation, but that everybody should be a church-member, without the slightest examination, or even a profession of conversion. It is supposed that people are now so generally good that we may take them indiscriminately, and that they will make a church quite good enough for the Lord Jesus Christ! Ah, me! that is not according to Christ’s mind, and that is not Christ’s teaching. God’s call to this age, as to all that went before, is, “Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.” Bear your protest, my brethren and my sisters, against everything that is unrighteous and unholy, everything that is not Godlike and Christlike, and let your lives be such that men shall not need to ask to whom you belong, whether to God or to the devil, but they shall see at once that you are the people of the ever-living and blessed God.

This, then, is what is forbidden: “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.”

The time flies so fast, that I can only very briefly answer the second question, What is commanded? “Reprove them.” Our life’s business in the world comprehends this among our other Christian duties, the reproving of the unfruitful works of darkness.

First, we are to rebuke sin. I find that the word which is here rendered “reprove” is that which is used concerning the Holy Spirit: “When he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.” We are, therefore, so to live as to let light in upon men’s consciences, that we may rebuke them for their sin.

But we are also to try to let the sinners themselves see the sinfulness of their sin, to let the light in upon the sin, and, by God’s grace, so to reprove them as to convict them of sin, to make them feel, from the testimony of God’s people, that sin is an evil and a bitter thing, and that their course of conduct is that evil thing. The light has come into the world on purpose that the darkness may know that it is darkness, and that God’s light may overcome and disperse it. We are not to quench our light, and mingle with others who are in the dark; but to unveil our lamps, and let the light that is in them so shine that the darkness shall thereby be reproved. I do not say, brothers and sisters, that we are to go through the world wearing surly faces, looking grim as death, perpetually promulgating the law, and saying, “Thou shalt not do this, and thou shalt not do that;” but, cheerful as we must be with the love of God in our hearts, we shall prove to men that the freest and the happiest life is a life of holiness, a life of consecration to God, and that, together with the faithful testimony of our lips, shall be a reproving of the sin that is in the world. The very existence of a true believer is the reproof of unbelief; the existence of an honest man is the reproof of knavery; the existence of a godly man is the best reproof of ungodliness; but when that existence is backed up by verbal testimony, and by a consistent example, then the command in the text is fulfilled, for we are reproving the unfruitful works of darkness.

Thirdly, let us ask, why are we to act thus? Why are we sent into the world, dear friends, to reprove sin, and not to follow in its track? The reasons are given in this very chapter.

First, because we are God’s dear children, and therefore we must be imitators of him. Thou, a child of God, and having fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness? Thou, a child of God, imitating the lost and fallen world? Thou, a child of God, submitting to the influences of the devil, and his filthy crew? Far be it from thee; ask thy Father to make thee holy as he is holy. To that end wast thou born and sent into the world; entreat thy Father to help thee to fulfil the very purpose of thy being.

Next, remember that we who are believers have an inheritance in the kingdom of God. We are heirs of God, joint-heirs with Jesus Christ. Well, then, shall we have fellowship with those who have no inheritance in this kingdom? Remember what we read just now: “For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.” And wilt thou, who hast a part in this inheritance, make common lot with such people? Oh, be it far from thee! Heir of glory, wilt thou be a companion of the heirs of wrath? Joint-heir with Christ, wilt thou sit on the drunkard’s bench, or trill an unclean song with the profane? Are their places of amusement fit for thee to frequent? Are their dens of iniquity haunts for thee? Up and away from the dwellings of these wicked men, lest thou be destroyed in their destruction!

A little further down in the chapter, in the seventh and eighth verses, we read: “Be not ye therefore partakers with them. For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord.” What! has a marvellous conversion happened to you? Have you been turned from darkness to light? Are you really new creatures in Christ Jesus, or is it all a lie? For, if indeed you have been twice-born, if you have had a resurrection from among the dead, if a second creation has been wrought in you, how can you go and live with these dead men, and mingle with these who know not the life of God? Unless your profession is nothing but a farce or a fraud, grace will so constrain you that you must come out, and refuse to have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.

The text describes these works as being unfruitful, and you read in the ninth verse, “The fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth.” Now, if you are to bear the fruits of the Spirit, what fellowship can you have with the unfruitful works of darkness? The two things are opposed to one another. You fruit-bearing trees, are you going to join in affinity with these cumber-grounds that soon must be cut down, and cast into the fire? What! will you interlace your vine branches with these fig trees that have leaves upon them, but no fruit, and upon which no fruit will ever grow, for they are under the curse of God? No, it must not be so. People of God, serve him, and come away from those who render him no service, but who rather seek to pull down his holy temple, and to destroy his name and influence from among the sons of men!

The apostle gives us one more reason why we should have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness: “for it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.” What! shall we have fellowship with things of which we are ashamed even to speak? Yet I have to say it, and to say it to my own sorrow and horror, I have known professors to have fellowship with things that I dare not even think of now. They have been found out at length; some of them were never found out till after they were dead. What a life to lead,-to sit with God’s people at the communion table, to talk even to others about the way of salvation, yet all the while living in the practice of secret sin! Why, surely, it were better to get into prison at once than to be always afraid of being apprehended; to go up and down the world making a profession of religion, and yet to be acting a lie all the while, and living in constant fear of being found out! Whatever sin we may fall into, God save us from hypocrisy, and make us honest and straightforward in all things! Shall we, then, go and have fellowship with things of which we should be ashamed even to speak? God forbid!

I am afraid that I am speaking many truths that you will regard as having nothing in them that is comfortable to you; but, brothers and sisters, can I help it? Can it be avoided? If we are to make full proof of our ministry, and preach all the truth to you, must we not take every passage of God’s Word, whether it be of rebuke or of comfort, in its due season? To myself, the effect of thinking over this subject is just this. I have cried, “Lord, have mercy upon me.” I have fled again to the cross of Christ. I have sought anew for an anointing of the Holy Spirit that I might not in anything have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness; and if my discourse has that effect upon you, it will do you great service. Oh, do ask the Lord to make our outward lives more thoroughly pure and true! Give me a little church of really gracious, devoted, upright, godly men, and I will be glad to minister to them, and I shall expect God to bless them. But give me a large church consisting of thousands,-if there are in it many whose lives, if they were known, would disgust a man of God, and whose lives, being known to the Spirit of God, are a grief to him, why, then the blessing must be withheld! We may preach our hearts out, and wear ourselves to death in all kinds of holy service; but, with an Achan in the camp, Israel cannot win the victory. I beseech you, therefore, search and look. One pair of eyes, two pairs of eyes, in the pastorate, and the eyes of the elders and deacons of the church, can never suffice to watch over such a company as this is. The Lord watch over you, and may you have a mutual oversight of one another; and above all, may each one exercise daily watchfulness over his own heart and life! Thus, beloved brethren and sisters in Christ, I leave the text with you, praying God to bless it: “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.”

Now, if any here are living in fellowship with those unfruitful works of darkness, I pray them to escape for their lives from them. May they fly to Christ, who alone can save them; and when they have once found healing through his wounds, and life through his death, then let them pray to be kept from all sin, that they may lead a holy and gracious life to the glory of him who has washed them in his own most precious blood. The Lord send a blessing, for his dear Son’s sake! Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

EPHESIANS 5

Verse 1. Be ye therefore followers of God, Or, imitators of God,-

1. As dear children;

Children are naturally imitators. They are usually inclined to imitate their father; this is, therefore, a most comely and appropriate precept: “Be ye therefore imitators of God, as dear children.”

2. And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savour.

What a path to walk in! “Walk in love.” What a well-paved way it is! “As Christ also hath loved us.” What a blessed Person for us to follow in that divinely royal road! It would have been hard for us to tread this way of love, if it had not been that his blessed feet marked out the track for us. We are to love as Christ also hath loved us; and the question which will often solve difficulties is this, “What would Jesus Christ do in my case?” What he would have done, that we may do: “Walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us.” And if we want to know how far that love may be carried, we need not be afraid of going too far in self-denial; we may even make a sacrifice of ourselves for love of God and men, for here is our model: “As Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour.”

3. But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not he once named among you, as becometh saints;

So far from ever falling under the power of these evils, do not even name them; count them sins unmentionable to holy ears. In what a position do we find “covetousness” placed, side by side with “fornication and all uncleanness!” In the Epistle to the Colossians, covetousness is called “idolatry”, as if the Holy Spirit thought so ill of this sin that he could never put it in worse company than it deserved to be in. Yet I fear it is a very common sin even amongst some who call themselves saints. God deliver us altogether from its sway, and help us to hate the very name of it!

4. Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks.

All sorts of evil, frivolous, fruitless talk should be condemned by the Christian. He should feel that he lives at a nobler rate, he lives to purpose, he lives to bear fruit; and that which has no fruit about it, and out of which no good can come, is not for him.

“But rather giving of thanks.” Oh, for more of this giving of thanks! It should perfume the labours of the day, it should sweeten the rest of the night, this giving of thanks. We are always receiving blessings; let us never cease to give God thanks for them. If we never leave off thanking until we are beyond the need of blessing, we shall go on praising the Lord as long as we live here, and continue to do so throughout eternity.

5. For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God,

What a sweeping sentence! This is indeed a sword with two edges. Many will flinch before it; and yet, though they flinch, they will not escape, for Paul speaks neither more nor less than the truth when he declares that “no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.”

6. Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.

These are the very things God hates. If, therefore, they are in you, God cannot look upon you with the love that he feels towards his children. “These things” he cannot endure, and “because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.”

7, 8. Be not ye therefore partakers with them. For ye were sometimes darkness,

Then, “these things” suited you.

8. But now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light;

Get clean away from these dark things; travel no more in the thick gloom of these abominations. God help you to walk in the light as he is in the light!

9, 10. (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;) proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.

We ought to pray that our whole life may be “acceptable unto the Lord.” We are ourselves “accepted in the Beloved;” and, that being the case, it should be our great desire that every thought and word and deed, ay, every breathing of our life, should be “acceptable unto the Lord.”

11, 12. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them, For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.

It was so with the old heathen world in which Paul lived; he could not write or speak of those abominable vices which defiled the age. But is London any better than Ephesus? Surely, old Corinth, which became a sink of sin, was not a worse Sodom than this great modern Babylon. There is great cause to say of the wicked even to this day, “It is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.”

13. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light;

Then drag them to the light! There will be a great howling when these dogs of darkness have the light let in upon them, but it has to be done.

13-15. For whatsoever doth make manifest is light. Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. See then that ye walk circumspectly,

Not carelessly, not thinking that it is of no importance how you live; but looking all round you, “walk circumspectly,” watching lest even in seeking one good thing you spoil another. Never present to God one duty stained with the blood of another duty. “See then that ye walk circumspectly,”-

15, 16. Not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time,

Buying up the hours; they are of such value that you cannot pay too high a price for them.

16-18. Because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit;

If you want excitement, seek this highest, holiest, happiest form of exhilaration, the divine exhilaration which the Holy Spirit alone can give you: “Be filled with the Spirit.”

19. Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord;

We should have thought that Paul would have said, “singing and making melody with your voice to the Lord;” but the apostle, guided by the Holy Ghost, overlooks the sound, which is the mere body of the praise, and looks to the heart, which is the living soul of the praise: “Making melody in your heart to the Lord,” for the Lord careth not merely for sounds, though they be the sweetest that ever came from the lip of man or angel; he looks at the heart. God is a Spirit, and he looks spiritually at our spiritual praises; therefore, let us make melody in our heart to the Lord.

20, 21. Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.

That principle of maintaining your rights, standing up for your dignity, and so on, is not according to the mind of the Spirit. It is his will that you should rather yield your rights, and, for the sake of peace, and the profit of your brethren, give up what you might naturally claim as properly belonging to you: “Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.”

22-30. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands, in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church; for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.

What a wonderful expression! To think that we, poor creatures that we are, should be thus joined to Christ by a marriage union, nay, by a vital union,-is indeed amazing. Oh, the depths of the love of Christ, that such an expression as this should be possible!

31, 32. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

There is the mystery, that he should leave his Father, and quit the home above, and become one flesh with his elect, going with them, and for their sakes, through poverty, and pain, and shame, and death. This is a marvel and a mystery indeed.

33. Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.

Thus the Spirit of God follows us to our homes, and teaches us how to live to the glory of God. May he help us so to do, for Christ’s sake! Amen.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-423, 649, 656.

UNDER ARREST

A Sermon

Intended for Reading on Lord’s-day, March 3rd, 1895,

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,

On Thursday Evening, March 3rd, 1887.

“But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards he revealed.”-Galatians 3:23.

This is a condensed history of the Jews before the gospel was fully preached to them. Before the clear and plain revelation of the way of salvation-that is to say, before Jesus Christ himself actually appeared among the sons of men-the Hebrew nation was put under the tutorship and governance of the Mosaic law. So far as salvation was to be obtained by it, that law was a total failure. It did not make the Jews a holy people; whenever they reached any point of excellence, they soon went back from it, for they were bent on backsliding. Whatever the influence of that blessed law might be supposed to be, the actual net result was very poor indeed; for, when Christ came to the chosen people, they were in a most miserable condition, and there was no hope for them at all apart from the promised Messiah. They were shut up to the alternative of receiving him, or else being put away as a nation for a long time of banishment and exile. This, indeed, they have actually endured through their rejection of the one and only Saviour.

I am not going to preach at this time about the Jews; but I want to show you that the history of every soul chosen of God is very like the history of the chosen nation. I have heard of masses of crystal which assume certain forms; but, if they are split up again and again, however small the particles may be, the same crystalline shape remains, the crystals are still of one form. So, if you take a nation as a mass, its spiritual history will be found in each individual; and often every experience of that individual will still bear the same shape and outline. I take this text, therefore, as being, I am sure, a picture of myself. Before faith came, I was “kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.” And my impression is, that this is the history of all the people of God, more or less. We are not all alike in every respect. We differ greatly in certain particulars; yet the main features of all the children of God will be found to be the same, and their Christian experience will resemble that of the other members of the Lord’s family. So I shall quit the text as a matter of history of the Jews, and use it as the life-story of many here present. Perhaps, while I am explaining the experience of the child of God, there may be some here, who are passing through the darker stages of that experience, who may gather hope from that fact, and say, “I see that my spot is the spot of the Lord’s children; possibly, my soul-trouble, being like theirs, may be producing in me the same result as it produced in them.” And thus, I trust, while I am speaking, some may be led into a clearer light, and may even come into the full light of God’s reconciled countenance.

There are three things that I am going to talk about as the Holy Spirit shall guide me. The first is, the unhappy period,-it was long ago with some of us, the unhappy period “before faith came.” Secondly, I shall describe the custody we were in at that time: “we were kept under the law, shut up.” That is where we were when the spirit of bondage was holding us in captivity “before faith came.” Then, thirdly, I shall have a little to say upon the revelation which set us free: “the faith which should afterwards be revealed.”

First, then, I have to say something about the unhappy period: “Before faith came.” As I said just now, this period was long ago with some of us, but it was not so far back with others of you, “before faith came.”

We recollect, some of us, when we had no idea of faith. We were in a measure religiously inclined, and in a certain way sincere and devout. As a matter of duty, we went to church, or we went to the meeting-house, and we felt easy in our mind because we had been there. As a matter of duty, we read our Bibles; and, sometimes, we felt a pleasure in getting through the chapter, perhaps we had all the more pleasure if the chapter was not a long one. We did not object to family prayer; it may be that we had been used to it from our childhood. The less we had of it, the better we liked it; still, we kept to it, although it was always only a matter of duty.

As to saving faith, we had not an intelligent idea of it. Our notion was that good people would get to heaven, and that we must do our best to make ourselves fit to be in that holy place. With a great many shortcomings and failures, no doubt, but in some mysterious way we fancied that all would get rectified, and we should be all right if we were only sincere. Many still seem to imagine that it does not matter what persons believe as long as they are sincere, nor what they do so long as they are conscientious in doing it. That was our notion; but as to any idea of there being a faith peculiar to God’s elect, a faith which saves the soul by linking us to the Saviour, if anyone had talked to us in that fashion, we should have said, “Yes, that is, no doubt, orthodox teaching; we have heard that Martin Luther taught that doctrine at the time of the Reformation; but what he meant by it, we have not the slightest conception!” We did not know, we had not formed any idea of that which, had we known it, would have been the chief joy of our minds and hearts; but in that unhappy period we had no idea of faith.

Some of us used to hear the gospel, some of us did not; but, whether we heard the gospel or not, “before faith came,” we did not know what it was. I have no doubt that I heard, hundreds of times, such texts as these,-“He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved;” “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth;” “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life;” yet I had no intelligent idea of what faith meant. When I first discovered what faith really was, and exercised it, for with me these two things came together, I believed as soon as ever I knew what believing meant, then I thought I had never before heard that truth preached. But, on looking back, I am persuaded that the light often shone on my eyes, but I was blind, and therefore I thought that the light had never come there. The light was shining all the while, but there was no power to receive it; the eyeball of the soul was not sensitive to the divine beams.

Peradventure, some of you did not hear the gospel, for it is by no means a difficult thing to attend a place of worship year after year, and yet not to hear the gospel. I am sorry that it should be so, but I know that it is so; there is a great deal of preaching that may be edifying to Christians, a great deal that is morally excellent, but the way of salvation by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ is often regarded by the preacher as a truth too elementary to be introduced to the notice of a congregation so intelligent and so experienced as the one he is privileged to address. This is a great mistake for any minister to make. The Lord’s command to Moses was, “With all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt;” and his injunction to all his servants now is, “With all thy teaching, preach the simple doctrine of faith in Christ crucified.” I delight to cry, with the apostle Paul, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and it is my constant joy to preach that simple doctrine of “Believe, and live,” “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” But whether people did hear the gospel or did not hear it, I know that it has often been the case that “before faith came” no idea of what faith is had penetrated the soul. Much was heard about it, but nothing was understood; much in some respects was understood about the doctrine, but faith itself was still unknown.

And, brethren beloved, as it is so that, before faith comes, we have no idea of it, and we do not understand it, so we have been puzzled to think of what it could be when we have seen it in others. We have heard of others, we have read of others, and the most of us have seen others who have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life; and we have wished that we could do the same. We have looked upon their experience as some extraordinary secret, some marvellous mystery, some special manifestation; but we have said to ourselves, “We can never reach that height on which those people stand.” So we have continued our chapel-going, our Bible-reading, and so forth, under the notion that faith was something quite impossible for us. We have thought of it as if it were some precious diamond that kings and queens might buy, but it was not for poor people like us. Though we have been told, over and over again, that-

“There is life for a look at the Crucified One,”

we have said, “Yes, ‘life for a look,’ ah, yes! no doubt that is true, but I cannot look;” and so we have still turned away from the one hope of salvation. Perhaps we have been still further pressed by some earnest spirit, and the truth has been made as plain as a pikestaff; yet still we could not think that the speaker really meant what he said, there must be some strange mystery at the back of it all. We asked ourselves,-“How do people obtain faith? Of course, it is simple enough to those who understand it; but as for us poor souls who do not comprehend it, how can we get to know what it means; and how can we obtain it for ourselves?” That was the puzzled condition in which we were “before faith came.” We were just in that kind of state, so that, even when we wished to believe, it seemed to us as if it was something altogether beyond our reach.

There was also a time with us, dear friends, when “before faith came” in its healing and comforting power, a measure of faith came to wound, and cut, and kill. We saw our sin, we felt our need of a Saviour, and we believed so far as this, that Christ was a Saviour, that he was the Saviour, and that he could save us; but our difficulty was like that of the woman in the crowd, who tried to touch the hem of Christ’s garment. How could we get into contact with him? What could we do to be saved? Oh, the many times that I have wished the preacher would tell me something to do that I might be saved! Gladly would I have done it, if it had been possible. If he had said, “Take off your shoes and stockings, and run to John o’Groats,” I would not even have gone home first, but would have started off that very night, that I might win salvation. How often have I thought that if they had said, “Bare your back to the scourge, and take fifty lashes!” I would have said, “Here I am! Come along with your whip, and beat as hard as you please, so long as I can but obtain peace and rest, and get rid of my sin.” Yet that simplest of all matters,-believing in Christ crucified, accepting his finished salvation, being nothing, and letting him be everything, doing nothing but trusting to what he has done,-I could not get a hold of it at all. I might truthfully say that I have known many who, after years of what I think was very sincere and earnest hearing, still remain just the same, apparently willing, but really unwilling to believe; wishing to know the way of salvation, and the road open right straight before them, yet not experimentally knowing the way of life, the only way by which a man can be eternally saved. I am speaking, at this time, I do not doubt, to many who are still in that fog, still bewildered, and knowing not which way to turn, albeit that from this platform there sounds forth that clarion note, and nothing else, “Look to Jesus, and live. Believe in him. Trust in him, and you shall be saved at once, yea, saved eternally, from the moment that you have done with self, and by faith have laid hold on Christ.”

Why is it that people do not believe? I suppose it is, partly, because they are so proud. You, my friend, have a proud notion in your head that there is, after all, something due from God to you. In truth, there is nothing due from God to you but that he should let you perish in your sin; that is all he owes you. You have so sinned against him that, if he should at this moment cast you into the lowest hell, it is all that you have any right to expect; and he will have you to know this, and make you feel it, before he will speak a word of blessing to your soul. You are too high and mighty to be saved as you are, and you must come down from that lofty position. This, then, is one reason why men do not “believe, and live,” because they are too proud to be saved by simple faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Besides, salvation by believing seems so strange, so singular, so contrary to the usual run of human opinion, and, in addition, it is so spiritual, that the natural man rebels against it. If it were but a carnal thing, something to be done with the hand, or performed with the foot, we could do that; but the spiritual action of believing, the action which honours God by taking salvation as the free gift of his grace and mercy, we cannot bend our backs, and stoop so low as that. The fact is, that it is hard because it is easy; it is difficult because there is no difficulty in it; and it seems obscure simply because it is so clear. There is nothing for thee to do, O lost sinner, but to yield thyself up to thy God, and accept his sovereign mercy, which he freely gives thee in the person of his dear Son! Still, though I have said all this so plainly, thou dost not believe me; thou dost not yet understand what I mean, unless thou hast been taught of the Spirit.

That, then, is how we were in the unhappy period “before faith came.”

Now I want to show you, in a few words, the custody we were in: “Before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up.” The word for “kept” means that we were arrested, and given in charge, or that we were taken under the care of a garrison. The ten commandments of God, like ten armed legionaries, took us into custody, and held us fast. “Before faith came, we were kept under the law.” How was that?

When the Spirit of God began to deal with us, we found that we were always within the sphere of law; we could not get out of it. We woke in the morning, there was the law right in front of us. All during the day, there was the law right before our eyes. If we went to sleep at night, there was the law; we were everywhere under the law. We said, with David, “Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?” When once we recognized God, and realized the fact that we were his creatures, there came into our startled conscience the remembrance of the universality of law. I recollect that experience, and how I thought of what was said of the old Roman empire that, under the rule of Cæsar, if a man once broke the law of Rome, he was in prison everywhere. The whole world was one vast prison to him, for he could not get out of the reach of the imperial power; and so did it come to be in my aroused conscience. Wherever I went, the law had a demand upon my thoughts, upon my words, upon my rising, upon my resting. What I did, and what I did not do, all came under the cognizance of the law; and then I found that this law so surrounded me that I was always running against it, I was always breaking it. I seemed as if I was a sinner, and nothing else but a sinner. If I opened my mouth, I spoke amiss. If I sat still, there was sin in my silence. I remember that, when the Spirit of God was thus dealing with me, I used to feel myself to be a sinner even when I was in the house of God. I thought that, when I sang, I was mocking the Lord with a solemn sound upon a false tongue; and if I prayed, I feared that I was sinning in my prayers, insulting him by uttering confessions which I did not feel, and asking for mercies with a faith that was not true at all, but only another form of unbelief. Oh, yes, some of us know what it is to be given into custody to the law! Perhaps some here are now in this condition without quite understanding it.

At that time, when I was in the custody of the law, I did not take any pleasure in sin! Alas, I did sin; but my sense of the law of God kept me back from a great many sins. I could not, as others did, plunge into profligacy, or indulge in any of the grosser vices, for that law had me well in hand. I sinned enough without acting like that. Oh, I used to tremble to put one foot before another, for fear I should do wrong! I felt that my old sins seemed to be so many, that it were well to die rather than commit any more. The law of God, when it gets a man into its charge, makes him feel just like that.

Then, I could not find any rest while under the custody of the law. If I wanted to sleep a while, or to be a little indifferent and careless, then some one or other of those ten commandments roughly aroused me, and looking on me with a frowning face, said, “You have broken me.” I thought that I would do some good works; but, somehow, the law always broke my good works in the making. I fancied that, if my tears flowed freely, I might make some recompense for my wrong-doing; but the law held up the looking-glass, and I soon saw my face all smeared and made more unhandsome by my tears. So that law shut me up in all directions, and would not let me rest anywhere when I was under its custody.

Then, also, the law seemed to blight all my hopes. I hoped this, and I hoped that; but then the law said, “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them,” and I knew I had not continued in all those things, so I saw myself accursed, turn which way I might. I had offended against the justice of God; I was impure and polluted; and I used to say, “If God does not send me to hell, he ought to do it.” I sat in judgment upon myself, and pronounced the sentence that I felt would be just. I could not have gone to heaven with my sin unpardoned, even if I had had the offer to do it, for I knew that it would not be right that I should do so, and I justified God in my own conscience while I condemned myself.

One thing I found concerning the law, that it would not even let me despair. If I thought I would give up all desire to do right, and just go and drown my conscience in sin, the law said, “No, you cannot do that; there is no rest for you in sinning. You know the law too well to be able to sin in the blindness of a seared conscience.” So the law worried and troubled me at all points; it shut me up as in an iron cage, and every way of escape was effectually blocked up.

I am talking now, not only of my own experience, but also of the experience of many another child of God. I will tell you one or two of the things that shut me up dreadfully; and one was, when I knew the spirituality of the law. If the law said, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” I said to myself, “Well, I have never committed adultery.” Then the law, as interpreted by Christ, said, “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” The law said, “Thou shalt not steal,” and I said, “Well, I never stole anything;” but then I found that even the desire to possess what was not my own was guilt. The spirituality of the law astounded me; what hope could I have of escaping from such a law as this which every way surrounded me with an atmosphere from which I could not possibly escape?

Then, as I have already reminded you, the law informed me that I was cursed unless I continued in all things that were written in the book of the law; so that, if I had not committed one sin, that made no difference if I had committed another sin, for I was under the curse. What if I had never blasphemed God with my tongue? Yet, if I had coveted, I had broken the law. He who breaks a chain might say, “I did not break that link, and the other link.” No, but if you break one link, you have broken the chain. Ah me, how I seemed shut up then!

Then I remembered that, even if I kept the law perfectly, and kept it for ten, twenty, or thirty years, without a fault, yet if, at the end of that time, I should then break it, I must suffer its dread penalty. Those words spoken by the Lord to the prophet Ezekiel came to my mind: “If he trust to his own righteousness, and commit iniquity, all his righteousnesses shall not be remembered; but for his iniquity that he hath committed, he shall die for it.” So I saw that I was, as the text says, “shut up.” I had hoped to escape this way, or that way, or some other way. Was I not “christened” when I was a child? Had I not been taken to a place of worship? Had I not been brought up to say my prayers regularly? Had I not been an honest, upright, moral youth? Was all this nothing? “Nothing,” said the law, as it drew its sword of fire. “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” So there was no rest for my spirit, nay, not even for a moment. What was I to do? I was in the custody of one that showed no mercy whatever, for Moses never said “Mercy.” The law has nothing to do with mercy. That comes from another mouth, and under another dispensation; but before I turn to that other point, I would like to say that, if any of you are passing through all that I have been describing, do not be at all discouraged. I rejoice that it is so with you, for this breaking down of the idols is the way to set up the true God in your heart. This cleaning out of your refuges of lies is a blessed work of God who loves you, though he seems now to be dealing out to you the blows of a cruel one. This is the way in which he is severing you from your deceptions, freeing you from your delusions, that he may bring you to the truth and to himself. That is my last point.

The revelation which set us free: “We were shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed,”

Now let me tell the story. It was on a day, never to be forgotten, when I first understood that salvation was in and through Another, that my salvation could not be of myself, but must be through One better and stronger than I. And I heard,-and oh, what music it was!-that the Son of God had taken upon himself our human nature, and had, by his life and death, wrought out a perfect salvation, finished from top to bottom, which he was ready to give to every soul that was willing to have it, and that salvation was all of grace from first to last, the free gift of God through his blessed Son, Jesus Christ. Oh, the melody of that doctrine! “But I have heard that lots of times,” says one. Have you ever heard it at all? “Why, I heard you say it just now!” Again I put the question,-Have you heard it? It has passed your ears, but have you ever heard it? Have you ever caught the meaning of it?

Then I had this vision,-not a vision to my eyes, but to my heart. I saw what a Saviour Christ was, divine as well as human. I saw what sufferings his were, what a righteousness his was. I saw the fulness of Christ, the glory of Christ, the love of Christ, the power of Christ to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by him.

Now I can never tell you how it was, but I no sooner saw whom I was to believe than I also understood what it was to believe, and I did believe in one moment. As much as if it had never been revealed to any mortal man, or written in this blessed Book, it was revealed to me by the Spirit of God that I, guilty wretch as I was, was there and then to fall at those dear feet that once were nailed to the cross, and to take Jesus Christ to be my Lord and Saviour, and that the moment I did so, I should be saved.

I did take him as my Saviour, and I am saved; and I come to tell you again to-night, the reason why I took him for my Saviour. To my own humiliation, I must confess that I did it because I could not help it; I was shut up to it. That law-work, of which I told you, had hammered me into such a condition that, if there had been fifty other saviours, I could not have thought of them, I was driven to this One. I wanted a Divine Saviour, I wanted One who was made a curse for me to expiate my guilt. I wanted One who had died, for I deserved to die. I wanted One who had risen again, who was able by his life to make me live. I wanted the exact Saviour that stood before me in the Word, revealed to my heart; and I could not help having him.

And, what is more, I cannot help having him still as my Saviour, I am shut up to it. I think I have told you of an American brother, who sat in one of the pews behind me, one Sunday night. When I went out, I said to him, “What! you here again?” He said, “Yes, it is twenty years since I sat in this pew; I wonder that you remember me.” I said, “Oh, yes; I do remember your face right well!” He said, “You are hitched in the old place still, I see.” “Yes,” I replied, “and if God spares you to come in twenty years’ time, and I have not gone to heaven meanwhile, you will find that I am hitched in the same old place then.” I have nothing to tell but Christ crucified, nothing to say to the sinner but, “Away, away, away from all other confidences to him whom God has set forth to be a propitiation for sin!” I want the law to shut you right up to this one course. If a man were to ask, “Why do you go out of the Tabernacle by the right-hand door?” it would be a very good answer if you had to say, “Because all the rest are bricked up.” That would be a valid reason, would it not? You had no choice in the matter; and that is the reason why we come to Christ, because we have tried, and proved, and known that other salvation there is none: for “there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” The law has shut us up to this one road, stopped up every other opening and gangway, and we are driven just to stand here, and say,-

“Thou, O Christ, art all I want;

More than all in thee I find.”

Now, if there is any one of you that has got into that cleft stick, I am right glad of it. This proves that you are God’s man, he has chosen you, he loves you, he has given his Son to save you; take the Lord Jesus Christ to be everything to you, and go on your way rejoicing. “Before faith came,” you were shut up, but you were shut up to faith in Christ; and now you have that faith, you are shut up no longer, you have received the liberty wherewith Christ makes his people free. Go home and enjoy it; and if you meet any other poor soul shut up as you were, tell how you came out to liberty. Do not be satisfied to go to-night to your bed without having told somebody of how the Lord Jesus came, dressed in garments dipped in blood, and with his pierced hands broke the bars of brass, and cut the doors of iron in sunder, and set your soul at liberty, and said, “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins.” God bless you, for his dear Son’s sake! Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

GALATIANS 3

Paul, writing to those changeable Galatians, who had so soon deserted the faith, says to them in this chapter:-

Verse 1. O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you.

Paul does not compliment them on being a very “thoughtful,” “educated,” “cultured” people; he does not care an atom about that matter, but because they had forsaken the simple truth of the gospel, he says, “O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you?” Those are hard words, Paul! Why did he not say, “Who has led you forward into more advanced views?” Not he; he calls it witchery, the work of the devil, and it is nothing better; and the wisdom of it is no better than the trickery of some old witch. If you take your eyes off Christ, it must be witchcraft that makes you do it. There is such glory, such beauty, such perfection, such wisdom, such divinity in Christ crucified that, if you turn from that sight to anything else, no matter how scientific and learned it may be, you are “foolish” indeed, and somebody has “bewitched you.”

2. This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?

They had gone off into legality; they were trying to be saved by ceremonies, and by works of their own. “Well,” asks Paul, “how did you receive the Spirit,-the Spirit by which miracles were wrought among you, the Spirit by which you spoke with unknown tongues, the Spirit which changed and renewed your hearts? If you did indeed receive him, did you receive him by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” There was only one reply to the question; the Spirit came to them as the result of faith.

3. Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?

If the very beginning of your religion was spiritual, a work of the Spirit received by faith, are you now going to be perfected by the flesh, by outward rites and ceremonies, or by efforts of your own?

4 Have ye suffered so many things in vain? if it be yet in vain.

You had to struggle and endure much contention within your own spirit to get upon the ground of faith at all; are you going to throw all that away? Is all the experience of your past life to go for nothing, and are you now going to begin on a lower and baser platform?

5. He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?

He knew that they must reply that it was faith, and not the works of the law, that gave those miraculous powers.

6. Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.

That is the old way, the way of faith. It is not here recorded that Abraham did anything, though he did much; but the one thing that was “accounted to him for righteousness” was this, that he “believed God.”

7. Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.

Not this nation or that, as Anglo-Israelites might say; but those that are of faith, these are the children of Abraham. Abraham is the father of the faithful, the believers, and believers are all the children of Abraham. Pace has nothing to do with this matter; an end has been put to all that. God is not the God of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles; and here is a new race whose distinction is not that they were born of blood, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but by the will of God; and this is the token by which they are known, they believe God, and it is accounted to them for righteousness, even as it was accounted to Abraham.

8. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed.

That is the gospel; and we are blessed by it, because we believe in Christ, and so become the children of believing Abraham.

9, 10. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse;

All the people in the world who think themselves good, all the mere moralists, all those who, however amiable they may be, however excellent and religious they may be, are trusting to be saved by good works, are all under the curse, as surely as the drunkard, or the liar, or the swearer, is under the curse.

10. For it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.

That is all that Moses can say to you, and all that the Old Testament can reveal to you. Apart from faith in Christ, all its rites and ceremonies, all its laws and precepts, if you are resting in them, can only land you under the curse, because you cannot continue in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. You have not so continued thus far, you will not so continue, and nothing but an absolutely perfect obedience to the law could save a man by the way of works; and as that obedience is not possible, we come under the curse if we come under the law.

11. But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith.

Here Paul quotes again from the Old Testament Scriptures: “The just shall live by faith.” Even the just man lives by faith; then, how can you who are not just expect to live in any other way?

12. And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them.

The very spirit of law is the spirit of works; and as life only comes by faith, it cannot come by the works of the law, for they are not of faith.

Now comes the gospel, clear and bright, like the sun rising out of a thick fog.

13. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:

Here is substitution; what else can the words mean? Christ hung on a tree for us, bearing our curse, in our room, and place, and stead.

14. That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

Christ was made a curse for us that the blessing might come upon us. He took our curse that we might take the blessing from his own dear hands, and might possess it evermore.

15. Brethren, I speak after the manner of men; Though it be but a man’s covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth, or addeth thereto.

A covenant is a covenant; whatever happens, it cannot be altered, it stands, though it was only made by men.

16. Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one. And to thy seed, which is Christ.

Quoting from the Old Testament, we may believe in the absolute plenary inspiration of that Sacred Book, because the apostle founds an argument upon the singular of a noun having been used rather than the plural.

17. And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect.

Is not that splendid argument? The covenant was made with Abraham that God would bless him and his seed. Well now, four hundred and thirty years after, the law was given on Sinai; but that could not affect a covenant made four hundred and thirty years before. The argument goes to prove that the covenant of grace is not affected by any law of rites and ceremonies; nay, not even by the moral law itself. The covenant made with Abraham and his seed must stand; the seed signifies those who believe, therefore, the covenant stands fast with Abraham and all other believers.

18. For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise.

All through the Book of Genesis, it is promise, promise, promise. Isaac was an heir of the promise, and Jacob was an heir of the promise. In fact, Isaac was born by promise, and Ishmael the elder brother did not inherit the blessing because he was born after the flesh. They who believe in Christ are heirs according to the promise. Now, a promise takes us out of the region of law.

19. Wherefore then serveth the law?

What is the use of it?

19, 20. It was added because of transgression, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one.

The law had its uses, blessed uses. The law should be used for its own purposes, and then it is admirable, it is divine. Take it out of its own proper use, make it a master instead of being a servant, and it is something like fire, which, in your grate, will comfort you, but if it masters you, it burns your house, and destroys you.

21, 22. Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law. But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.

It shuts you all up as in a dungeon, that by the one and only door of faith in Christ you might come out into a glorious liberty.

23, 24. But before, faith came we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster-

This is an unfortunate translation; it should be, “The law was our pedagogue.” That was a slave, who was employed by the father of a family, to take his boy to school, and bring him home again. He often also was permitted to whip the boy if he did not learn his lessons well. “The law was our pedagogue”-

24, 25. To bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.

We have outgrown him. God has given us power now to go to Christ’s school ourselves, joyfully and cheerfully. I remember, and I daresay you also do, when that pedagogue whipped us very sorely; I am glad that I am no longer under his power.

26, 27. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

You set forth that truth in your baptism; you then confessed that you were dead to sin, and declared that you were risen again in Christ to newness of life. Whatever you had to do with the law before, you were dead and buried to it, and to everything but Christ,

28, 29. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

That settles the question; if you belong to Christ, you are the children of Abraham. Come then, and, without the least hesitation, claim all the privileges that belong to Abraham’s seed. If you have come under the promise, enjoy its blessings, and do not go back to trusting in rites and ceremonies, or in works of your own performing, but live a life of joyous faith in Jesus Christ your Lord.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-867, 560, 533.