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{Sermons on Ephesians 5:15
The Doctrine Explained
Precisians Are the Sort Who Are Upright in the Way
Their Uprightness with Respect to the Commandments
They Respect the Most Spiritual and Inward Parts}
With respect to the most spiritual and inward part of the commandments, any commandment contains things to flee and things to do, sins to be avoided and duties to be performed. Both are either outward or spiritual. There are certainly outward sins to be avoided, such as sins of the mouth, and sins of the eyes, ears, and hands. Likewise there are inward sins and spiritual wickedness, such as evil thoughts (Jeremiah 4:14), unclean lusts (Matthew 5:28), ungodly desires, an evil conscience, and the like. Now, sincere Christians have an eye to and hold a strict hand on this spiritual wickedness. They labor to have their consciences purged, their hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, and their ungodly desires and lusts put to death. “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24 ESV). Sincere Christians desire to be not drunkards, foul-mouthed, liars, revilers, or oppressors. They desire that they not have proud, stubborn, fretful, or impatient conduct and behavior. But also they desire that they not covet, not lust, and not have proud, impatient, fretful, envious, or quarrelsome hearts. They desire that no evil thought or vain thought would dwell within them.
As there are outward duties to be performed, such as praying, sermon hearing, works of mercy, and so on, so there are spiritual duties—purely spiritual—such as the internal acting of faith, love, hope, the fear of God, the soul’s choosing and cleaving to God, rejoicing and delighting in God, meditating on God, and so on. Exact Christians have a special respect to those spiritual duties. It is chiefly in the exercise of these that they live in holy fellowship, communion, and acquaintance with God. Moreover, in outward duties, their care is to perform them spiritually. They pray with the mouth and pray in the Spirit. They praise the Lord with their lips and offer up their hearts as a spiritual sacrifice. They hear with their ears and also with their understandings. They labor to bring their souls under the Word, to pour forth their souls in prayer, and to draw out their souls even in their charitable deeds. “If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday” (Isaiah 58:10).66 “I wept and humbled my soul with fasting” (Psalm 69:10). Oh brethren, if this is to walk exactly, then how much looseness does this reveal in us—looseness in our very duties. People not only drink like libertines,67 curse like libertines, and neglect duties like libertines, but perform duties like libertines. You are accustomed to pray privately, with your family, or in the congregation, but in an outward formal way and do not pour out your soul in prayer; you pray like a libertine. You who fast and do not humble your soul with fasting, you fast like a libertine. You who hear sermons, and do not bring you soul under the Word, you hear like a libertine. This is loose praying and loose sermon-hearing; it is loose from the rule that requires the exercising of the inward person as well as the outward.
66 This passage speaks of the need to do good works not only with the body, but with the heart and soul.
67libertine: one who is unrestrained by morality; in this book, unrestrained by the Word of God.
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