The Spurgeon Series 1859 & 1860. Charles H. Spurgeon
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 in the same house; suppose two such desperate enemies, cribbed, cabined, and confined within this narrow house, man; suppose the two were compelled to live together, can you imagine to what a desperate pitch of fury these two would have with one another. The evil thing says, “I will turn you out, you intruder; I cannot be peaceful as I wish, I cannot riot as I wish, I cannot indulge just as I wish; out with you, I will never be content until I kill you.” “No,” says the new born nature, “I will kill you, and drive you out. I will not allow any stick or stone of you to remain. I have sworn war to the death with you; I have taken out the sword and cast away the scabbard, and will never rest until I can sing of a complete victory over you, and totally eject you from this house of mine.” They are always at enmity wherever they are; they were never friends, and never can be. The evil must hate the good, and the good must hate the evil.
11. And note although we might compare the enmity to the wolf and lamb, yet the new born nature is not the lamb in all respects. It may be in its innocence and meekness, but it is not in its strength; for the new born nature has all the omnipotence of God about it, while the old nature has all the strength of the evil one in it, which is a strength not easily to be exaggerated, but which we very frequently underestimate. These two things are always desperately at enmity with one another. And even when they are both quiet, they hate each other none the less. When my evil nature does not rise, still it hates the newborn nature, and when the new born nature is inactive, it has nevertheless a thorough abhorrence of all iniquity. The one cannot endure the other; it must endeavour to throw it out. Nor do these at any time allow an opportunity to pass from being revenged upon one another. There are times when the old nature is very active, and then how it plies all the weapons of its deadly armoury against the Christian. You will find yourselves at one time suddenly attacked with anger, and when you guard yourself against the hot temptation, suddenly you will find pride rising, and you will begin to say in yourself; “Am I not a good man to have kept my temper down?” And the moment you thrust down your pride there will come another temptation, and lust will look out of the window of your eyes, and you desire a thing upon which you ought not to look, and before you can shut your eyes upon the vanity, sloth in its deadly lethargy surrounds you, and you surrender to its influence and cease to labour for God. And then when you bestir yourselves once more, you find that in the very attempt to rouse yourself you have awakened your pride. Evil haunts you no matter where you may go, or stands up no matter what posture you choose. On the other hand the new nature will never lose an opportunity of putting down the old. As for the means of grace, the newborn nature will never rest satisfied unless it enjoys them. As for prayer, it will seek by prayer to wrestle with the enemy. It will employ faith, and hope, and love, the threatenings, the promises, providence, grace, and everything else to cast out the evil. “Well,” one says, “I do not find it so.” Then I am afraid for you. If you do not hate sin so much that you do everything to drive it out, I am afraid you are not a living child of God. Antinomians like to hear you preach about the evil of the heart, but here is the fault with them, they do not like to be told that unless they hate that evil, unless they seek to drive it out, and unless it is the constant disposition of their new born nature to root it up, they are yet in their sins. Men who only believe their depravity, but do not hate it, are no further than the devil on the road to heaven. It is not my being corrupt that proves me to be a Christian, nor knowing I am corrupt, but that I hate my corruption. It is my agonizing death struggle with my corruptions that proves me to be a living child of God. These two natures will never cease to struggle as long as we are in this world. The old nature will never give up; it will never cry truce, it will never ask for