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{Sermons on Ephesians 5:15
Evidence for the Absolute Necessity of Precise Godliness
From Reasons Drawn from Scripture: Six Propositions
Inward Holiness Reigns in, and Has Preeminence in the Soul}
This inward habitual holiness, by its nature, reigns in and has preeminence in the heart. Although sin is there still, where there is true grace, sin is an underling and is brought into captivity. Sin has lost that power and investment it previously had in the soul, and the heart is now given up to God. The stream runs heavenward; the stream of the thoughts and emotions runs heavenward. God and the way of holiness has a greater share and a greater power in the heart than all the world. There is more love for God and stronger resolutions to follow God than can be balanced by the highest interests of the flesh. God and the world stand as two suitors for the heart, but God plunders the world away from the heart. Thus, while the heart previously followed the world with the neglect of God, now it will follow God with the neglect of the world. Before, the heart would possibly give heed to God and godliness as far as it could without harming its worldly assets, or so far as it could without harming its estate,130 honor, ease, or safety. But now it will pay heed to the world and its fleshly interests only so far as is consistent with godliness and a good conscience. This is sincerity and the clearest and most certain evidence of it. Can we imagine that we love God sincerely when we love the world better; when we love our ease, credibility, pleasures, or carnal friends better; when these can influence us more and command us further than God and eternal glory? “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me” (Matthew 10:37 NASB). “So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:33 NKJV).131 If there are any certain and unquestionable truths in the whole teachings of the Gospel, this is one of them: whoever has saving grace has more love of God and holiness than for all other things whatever. Although it is a matter of dispute whether common grace132 and saving grace differ in kind or in degree, this is without dispute: saving grace contains in it a higher love of God than of all other things.
130estate: worldly possessions (not merely what one leaves behind at death).
131This and similar passages have given rise to errors such as monastic vows of poverty and the idea that poverty, in itself, is a virtue. Rather, such forsaking consists in acknowledging, from the heart, that since God is the Almighty Creator, He, by right, owns all things, and that mere humans are merely stewards of their Master’s goods, including themselves and all that they are and possess. Jesus Christ must be Lord of the believer and of all “his” or “her” possessions; the implication for the believer is that he or she uses all according to Christ’s will, not his or her own will. Unbelievers sinfully and wrongly think that they themselves own things.
132common grace: that grace by which God restrains unbelievers from thinking, speaking, and doing as wickedly as their sinful hearts and the devil would otherwise cause them to do.
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