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Positively:

{Sermons on Ephesians 5:15

The Doctrine Explained

Precisians are Described

Positively}


By a Precisian, I mean a sincere, circumspect Christian, one whose care and endeavor is to walk uprightly according to the truth of the Gospel. He withdraws himself from the fellowship, fashions, and lusts33 of the world and denies himself the sinful liberties of the world. He exercises himself to keep a good conscience toward God and people. This is the person against whom great hate, envy, and severe censures and slanders of ungodly people are mainly intended. However distorted or disguised, the enmity is not between unrepentant sinners34 and hypocrites,35 but between sinners and saints. It is between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman—not the pretended seed, but the true seed. Israelites indeed (John 1:47) are the people whom the Ishmaelites36 persecute. He who was born according to the flesh37 persecuted him who was—not pretended to be—born according to the Spirit (Galatians 4:28–29). Of this person, or of this sort of people, I will give you a more full description concerning two particulars:

33In this book, “lust” refers not only to illicit sexual desire, but also to any craving that is contrary to God’s Word or godly living. It may also refer to inordinate desire for, or devotion to, that which is good in moderation, for example for food.

34All humans sin. A saint, whether still on earth or in Heaven, is one whose sins are forgiven in Christ by His shed blood, and because he or she is accounted by God as righteous because Christ’s righteousness is credited to him or her. By the same work of God, all saints on earth have repented of their sins and detest those sins that remain in their lives and fight against them, struggling to put sin more and more to death. It is in this context that Alleine distinguishes, here and elsewhere, between the unrepentant, unsaved sinner and the saint who is righteous in Christ in the sight of God. This use of “sinner” is somewhat similar to its use during Christ’s earthly ministry: “sinners” (e.g., in Luke 7:37) were those who openly did not practice the Jewish religion.

35hypocrite: a transliteration of the ancient Greek for stage actor. Theologically, a hypocrite is one who is putting on an act, pretending to be someone or something he or she is not. While it is usually characteristic of hypocrites to not practice what they preach, this is not the essence of the meaning of the word.

36Ishmael was the son of Abraham and the bondwoman Hagar (Genesis 16), but Isaac was the son of Abraham and Sarah whom God had promised to them (Genesis 17:19), and who was an ancestor of Israel and of Jesus Christ. When Isaac was born, Ishmael mocked at him and Hagar and Ishmael were cast out of the family (Genesis 21:8–14). Succeeding history was filled with conflicts between their descendants. The Apostle Paul uses this as a picture of the slavery of trying to get to Heaven by one’s own works and of freedom in Christ (Galatians 4:21–31).

37In Scripture, “flesh” is often used as a symbol of the indwelling sin nature that is present in all of us from conception. There is absolutely no implication that the physical body is itself sinful or morally inferior to the soul; such dualism is false.

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