the divine nature, a ray from the great “Father of Lights”; it is the Spirit of God dwelling in man. Thus, you see, the Christian becomes a double man — two men in one. Some have imagined that the old nature is turned out of the Christian: not so, for the Word of God and experience teach the contrary, the old nature is in the Christian unchanged, unaltered, just the same, as bad as it ever was; while the new nature in him is holy, pure and heavenly; and hence, as we shall have to notice in the next place — hence there arises a conflict between the two.
5. Now, I want you to notice what the apostle says about these two natures that are in the Christian, for I am about to contrast them. First, in our text the apostle calls the old nature “the body of this death.” Why does he call it “the body of this death?” Some suppose he means these dying bodies; but I do not think so. If it were not for sin, we should have no fault to find with our poor bodies. They are noble works of God, and are not in themselves the cause of sin. Adam in the garden of perfection, felt the body to be no encumbrance, nor if sin were absent should we have any fault to find with our flesh and blood. What, then, is it? I think the apostle calls the evil nature within him a body, first, in opposition to those who talk of the remnants of corruption in a Christian. I have heard people say that there are relics, remainders and remnants of sin in a believer. Such men do not know much about themselves yet. Oh! it is not a bone, or a rag which is left; it is the whole body of sin that is there — all of it, “from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot.” Grace does not maim this body and cut away its members; it leaves it intact, although blessed be God, it crucifies it, nailing it to the cross of Christ. And again, I think he calls it a body because it is something tangible. We all know that we have a body; it is a thing we can feel; we know it is there. The new nature is a spirit, subtle, and not easy to detect, I sometimes have to question myself as to whether it is there at all. But as for my old nature, that is a body, I can never find it difficult to recognise its existence, it is as apparent as flesh and bones. Just as I never doubt that I am in flesh and blood, so I never doubt that I have sin within me. It is a body — a thing which I can see and feel, and which, to my pain, is ever present with me.
6. Understand, then, that the old nature of the Christian is a body; it has in it a substance, or, as Calvin puts it, it is a mass of corruption. It is not simply a shred, a remnant — the piece of the old garment, but all of it is still there. True, it is crushed beneath the foot of grace; it is cast out of its throne; but it is there, there in all its entirely, and in all its sad tangibility, a body of death. But why does he call it a body of death? Simply to express what an awful thing this sin is that remains in the heart. It is a body of death. I must use an example, which is always appended to this text, and very properly so. It was the custom of ancient tyrants, when they wished to put men through the most fearful punishments, to tie a dead body to them, placing the two back to back; and there was the living man, with a dead body closely strapped to him, rotting, putrid, corrupting, and this he must drag with him wherever he went. Now, this is just what the Christian has to do. He has within him the new life; he has a living and undying principle, which the Holy Spirit has put within him, but he feels that every day he has to drag about with him this dead body, this body of death, a thing as loathsome, as hideous, as abominable to his new life, as a dead stinking carcass would be to a living man. Francis Quarles gives a picture at the beginning of one of his emblems, of a great skeleton in which a living man is encased. However quaint the illustration, it is more common than true. There is the old skeleton man, filthy, corrupt and abominable. He is a cage for the new principle which God has put in the heart. Consider a moment the striking language of our text, “The body of this death,” it is death incarnate, death concentrated, death dwelling in the very temple of life. Did you ever think what an awful thing death is? The thought is the most abhorrent to human nature. You say you do not fear death, and very properly; but the reason why you do not fear death is because you look to a glorious immortality. Death in itself is a most frightful thing. Now, inbred sin has about it all the unknown terror, all the destructive force, and all the stupendous gloom of death. A poet would be needed to depict the conflict of life with death — to describe a living soul condemned to walk through the black shades of confusion, and to bear incarnate death in its very heart. But such is the condition of the Christian. As a regenerate man he is a living, bright, immortal spirit; but he has to tread the shades of death. He has to do daily battle with all the tremendous powers of sin, which are as awful, as sublimely terrific, as even the power’s of death and hell.
7. Upon referring to the preceding chapter, we find the evil principle called “the old man.” There is much meaning in that word “old.” But let it suffice us to remark, that in age the new nature is not on an equal footing with the corrupt nature. There are some here who are sixty years old in their humanity, who can scarcely number two years in the life of grace. Now pause and meditate upon the warfare in the heart. It is the contest of an infant with a full grown man, the wrestling of a babe with a giant. Old Adam, like some ancient oak, has thrust his roots into the depths of manhood; can the divine infant uproot him and drive him from his place? This is the work, this is the labour. From its birth the new nature begins the struggle, and it cannot cease from it until the victory is perfectly achieved. Nevertheless, it is the moving of a mountain, the drying up of an ocean, the threshing of the hills, and who is sufficient for these things? The heaven born nature needs, and will receive, the abundant help of its Author, or it would yield in the struggle, subdued beneath the superior strength of its adversary and crushed beneath his enormous weight.
8. Again, observe, that the old nature of man, which remains in the Christian is evil, and it cannot ever be anything else but evil; for we are told in this chapter that “in me,” — that is, in my flesh — “there dwells no good thing.” The old Adamic nature cannot be improved; it cannot be made better; it is hopeless to attempt it. You may do what you please with it; you may educate it, you may instruct it, and thus you may give it more instruments for rebellion, but you cannot make the rebel into the friend, you cannot turn the darkness into light; it is an enemy to God, and an enemy to God it will always be. On the contrary, the new life which God has given to us cannot sin. That is the meaning of a passage in John, where it is said, “The child of God does not sin; he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” The old nature is evil, only evil, and that continually; the new nature is totally good; it knows nothing of sin, except to hate it. Its contact with sin brings it pain and misery, and it cries out, “Woe is me that I dwell in Meshech, that I tabernacle in the tents of Kedar.”
9. I have thus given you some little picture of the two natures. Let me again remind you that these two natures are essentially unchangeable. You cannot make the new nature which God has given you less divine; the old nature you cannot make less impure and earthly. Old Adam is a condemned thing. You may sweep the house, and the evil spirit may seem to go out of it, but he will come back again and bring with him seven other demons more wicked than himself. It is a leper’s house, and the leprosy is in every stone from the foundation to the roof; there is no part that is sound. It is a garment spotted by the flesh; you may wash, and wash, and wash, but you shall never wash it clean; it would be foolish to attempt it. While on the other hand the new nature can never be tainted — spotless, holy and pure, it dwells in our hearts; it rules and reigns there, expecting the day when it shall cast out its enemy, and without a rival it shall be monarch in the heart of man for ever.
10. II. I have thus described the two combatants; we shall now come in the next point to THEIR BATTLE. There was never a deadlier feud in all the world between nations than there is between the two principles, right and wrong. But right and wrong are often divided from one another by distance, and therefore they have a less intense hatred. Suppose for an instance: right holds for liberty, therefore right hates the evil of slavery. But we do not so intensely hate slavery as we should do if we saw it before our eyes: then would the blood boil, when we saw our black brother, beaten by the cowhide whip. Imagine a slaveholder standing here and beating his poor slave until the red blood gushed forth in a river; can you conceive your indignation? Now it is distance which makes you feel this less acutely. The right forgets the wrong, because it is far away. But suppose now that right and wrong lived
