《The Biblical Illustrator – Romans (Ch. 6b~8a)》

3. The violence man offers to those laws which God doth most strictly enjoin, and which He doth most delight in the performance of. The more spiritual the law, the more averse the heart (Romans 7:8; Rom_7:14). Men will grant God the lip and the ear, but deny Him that which He most calls for, viz., the heart.

4. Hatred to conscience, when it puts a man in mind of God’s law. This is evidenced by our stifling it when it dictates any practical conclusions from the law. Now, since men hate their own consciences it is clear that they hate God Himself, because conscience is God’s officer in them.

5. Setting up another law in him in opposition to the law of God (Romans 7:23). This men do when they plead for sins as venial, and below God to notice.

6. In being at greater pains and charge to break God’s law than is necessary to keep it. How will men rack their heads to study mischief, wear out their time and strength in contrivances to satisfy some base lust, which leaves behind it but a momentary pleasure, attended at length with inconceivable horror, and cast off that yoke which is easy and that burden which is light, in the keeping whereof there is great reward.

7. In doing that which is just and righteous upon any other consideration rather than of obedience to God’s will, i.e., when men will obey Him only so far as may comport with their own ends.

8. In being more observant of the laws of men. The fear of man is a more powerful curb to retain men in their duty than the fear of God. What a contempt of God is this; it is to tell God I will break the Sabbath, swear, revile, revel, were it not for the curb of national laws, for all Thy precepts to the contrary.

9. In man’s unwillingness to have God’s laws observed by any. Man would not have God have a loyal subject in the world. What is the reason else of the persecution of those who would be the strictest observers of God’s injunctions?

10. In the pleasure we take to see His laws broken by others (Romans 1:32).

II. In setting up other sovereigns in the stead of God. If we did dethrone God to set up an angel, or some virtuous man, it would be a lighter affront; but to place the basest and filthiest thing in His throne is intolerable.

1. Idols.

2. Self. This is properly the old Adam, the true offspring of the first corrupted man. This is the greatest anti-christ, the great anti-god in us, which sits in the heart, the temple of God, and would be adored as God; would be the chiefest as the highest end (2 Timothy 3:2). Sin and self are all one; what is called a living in sin in one place (Romans 6:2) to self in another (2 Corinthians 5:15).

3. The world. When we place this in our heart, God’s proper seat and chair, we deprive God of His propriety, and do Him the greatest wrong (Colossians 3:5). The poor Indians made a very natural and rational consequence, that gold was the Spaniards’ god, because they hunted so greedily after it.

4. Sensual pleasures (2 Timothy 3:4). A glutton’s belly is said to be his god, because his projects and affections are devoted to the satisfaction of that, and he lays in not for the service of God.

5. Satan. Every sin is an election of the devil to be our lord. As the Spirit dwells in a godly man to guide him, so doth the devil in a natural man, to direct him to evil (Ephesians 2:2-3). What a monstrous baseness is this, to advance an impure spirit in the place of infinite purity; to effect that destroyer above our preserver and benefactor.

III. In usurping God’s prerogative and exacting those observances which belong to God.

1. In challenging titles and acts of worship due only to God.

2. In lording over the consciences and reasons of others. Whence else springs the restless desire in some men, to model all consciences according to their own wills and their anger.

3. In prescribing rules of worship which ought only to be appointed by God.

4. In subjecting the truth of God to the trial of reason.

5. In judging future events, as if we had been of God’s privy council when He first undertook any great action in the world.

6. In censuring others’ state (Luke 12:14). (S. Charnock, B. D.)

Man’s enmity against the attributes of God

Against--

I. The holiness of God.

1. In sinning under a pretence of religion. Many resolve upon some ways of wickedness, and then rake the Scripture to find out at least excuses for, if not a justification of their crimes. Many that have wrung estates from the tears of widows and heart blood of orphans, think to wipe off all their oppression by some charitable legacies at their death. It is abominable when men sin for God’s glory.

2. In charging sin upon God.

3. In prescribing rules of worship, which ought only to be appointed by God (Genesis 3:12; Gen_4:9; 2 Samuel 11:35). If we find a way to lay our sins at God’s door, we think then to escape His justice. But it is a foolish consideration; for if we can fancy an unholy God, we have no reason to think Him a righteous God.

3. In hating the image of God’s holiness in others. He that hates the picture of a prince hates the prince also. He that hates the stream hates the fountain; he that hates the beams hates the sun.

4. In having debasing notions of the holy nature of God. God made man according to His own image, and we make God according to ours. It is a question which idolatry is the greatest, to worship an image of wood or stone, or to entertain monstrous imaginations of God. It provokes a man when we liken him to a dog or a toad.

5. In our unworthy and perfunctory addresses to God. God is so holy, that were our services as refined and pure as those of the angels, yet we could not serve Him suitably to His holy nature (Joshua 24:19); therefore we deny this holiness when we come before Him without due preparation.

6. In defacing the image of God in our own souls (Ephesians 4:24).

II. The wisdom of God.

1. In slighting the laws of God. Since God hath no defect in His understanding, His will must be the best and wisest; therefore they that make alteration in His precepts practically charge Him with folly.

2. In defacing the wise workmanship of God. The soul, the image of God, is ruined and broken by sin. If a man had a curious clock which had cost him many years’ pain and the strength of his skill to frame, for a man to break it would argue a contempt of the workman’s skill.

3. Censuring His ways (Isaiah 45:9; Job 40:2). A reproof argues a superiority in authority, knowledge, or goodness.

4. Prescribing rules and methods to God (Jonah 4:1; Luke 2:48).

III. The sufficiency of God.

1. In secret thoughts of meriting by any religious act. As though God could be indebted to us, and obliged by us. In our prosperity we are apt to have secret thoughts that our enjoyments were the debts God owed us, rather than gifts freely bestowed upon us. Hence it is that men are more unwilling to part with their righteousness than with their sins, and are apt to challenge salvation as a due, rather than beg it as an act of grace.

2. Trying all ways of helping ourselves before we come to God. Having hopes to find that in creatures which is only to be found in an all-sufficient God.

3. In our apostasies from God. When, after fair pretences and devout applications, we grow cold and thrust Him from us, it implies that God hath not that fulness in Him which we expected.

4. In joining something with God to make up our happiness. Though men are willing to have the enjoyment of God, yet they are not content with Him alone, but would have something else to eke Him out; as though God had not in Himself a sufficient blessedness for His creatures, without the additions of anything else. The young man in the gospel went away sorrowful because he could not enjoy God and the world both together (Matthew 19:21-22). If we would light up candles in a clear day, what do we imply but that the sun has not light enough in itself to make it day l

IV. The omniscience of God.

1. When we commit sin upon the ground of secrecy.

2. When men give liberty to inward sins. God “trieth the heart, and searcheth the reins.” Manasseh is blamed for setting up strange altars in the house of God; much more may we for setting up strange imaginations in the heart, which should belong to God. Hypocrisy is a plain denial of His omnisciency. Are we not more slight in the performance of private devotions before God than we are in our attendances in public in the sight of men.

3. When men give way to diversions in a duty. It wrongs the majesty of God’s presence that when He speaks to us we will not give Him so much respect as to regard Him; and when we speak to Him we do not regard ourselves. What a vain thing is it to be speaking to a scullion when the king is in presence t Every careless diversion to a vain object is a denial of God’s presence in the place.

V. The mercy of God.

1. In the severe and jealous thoughts men have of God. Men are apt to charge God with tyranny, whereby they strip Him of the riches of His glorious mercy. The worship of many men is founded upon this conceit, whereby they are frighted into some actions of adoration, not sweetly drawn. We hate what we fear.

2. Slighting His mercy and robbing Him of the end of it. The wilful breaking of the prince’s laws, upon the observance whereof great rewards are promised, is not only a despising his sovereignty, but a slighting his goodness. Often this enmity rises higher; and whereas men should fear him, they rather presume to sin (Romans 2:4; Ecclesiastes 8:11).

VI. The justice of God.

1. In not fearing it, but running under the lash of it.

2. In sinning under the strokes of justice. Men will roar under the stroke, but not submit to the striker.

3. In hoping easily to evade it (Psalms 50:21; Psalms 10:11). (S. Charnock, B. D.)

Hatred to God manifested

“After all, I do not hate God. No, sir; you will not make me believe that. I am a sinner, I know, and do many wicked things; but, after all, I have a good heart--I don’t hate God.” Such was the language of a prosperous worldling. He was sincere, but sadly deceived. A few months afterwards that God who had given him so many good things crossed his path in an unexpected manner. A fearful freshet swept down the valley and threatened destruction to this man’s large flour mill. A crowd was watching it, in momentary expectation of seeing it fall; while the owner, standing in the midst of them, was cursing God to His face, and pouring out the most horrid oaths. He no longer doubted that he hated God. But nothing in that hour of trial came out of his mouth which was not previously in his heart.

A traitor suspected and convicted

I. To discover this enmity. The carnally-minded man is enmity against God--

1. As a servant.

2. As a subject.

II. Deplore this enmity.

1. What an injustice it is!

2. What an infamy it is!

3. What an injury is this to yourself!

III. Seek deliverance prom it.

1. It can never be done but by the Holy Ghost.

2. It can only be done by deliverance from the great guilt of not having loved God. Nothing but the love of Jesus can soften your heart and do away with its enmity. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Verse 8

Romans 8:8

So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.

Pleasing God

Men’s happiness is to please them upon whom they depend, and upon whose favour their wellbeing hangs. It is the servant’s happiness to please his master, the courtier’s to please his prince. Now certainly all creatures depend upon the Creator, “for in Him we live, and move, and have our being.” Then of all things it concerns us most how to please Him, and if we do so we shall assuredly be happy, and it will not matter whom else we displease (Psalms 31:19; Psa_36:7). But, on the other hand, how incomparable is the misery of them who cannot please God, even though they did both please themselves and all others for the present! Now, if you ask who they are that are such, the words speak it: “They that are in the flesh,” not they in whom there is flesh, for there are remnants of that in the most spiritual man in this life. The ground of this is chiefly two fold.

I. Because they are not in Jesus Christ in whom his soul is well pleased (Matthew 3:17; Mat_17:5). Whoever are not in Jesus Christ certainly cannot please God, do what they can, because God hath made Christ the centre, in which He would have the good pleasure of sinners meeting with His good pleasure; and therefore “without faith it is impossible to please God,” not so much for the excellency of the act itself as for the well-pleasing object of it, Christ. God’s love is well pleased with the excellency of His person, and His justice with the sufficiency and worthiness of His ransom, and without this compass there is neither satisfaction to the one nor to the other. Therefore, if you would please God, be pleased with Christ, and you cannot do Him a greater pleasure than believe in Him (John 5:23).

II. Such as are in the flesh cannot frame their spirits, affections, and ways to God’s good pleasure, for their very mind is enmity to God, and cannot be subject to His law (Jeremiah 2:34).

1. It is not the business you have undertaken to please God, but to please yourselves, or to please men. The very beginning of pleasing God is when a soul falls in displeasure at itself and abhorrence of himself (Isaiah 66:2; Psalms 51:17). God never begins to be pleasant to a soul till it begins to fall out of love with itself. Therefore you may conclude this of yourselves, that with many of you God is not well pleased, though you have all Church privileges (1 Corinthians 10:2-5), not only because these works of the flesh that are directly opposite to His own known will, such as fornication, murmuring, etc., abound among you, but even those of you that may be free from gross opposition to His holy will, your nature hath the seed of all that enmity, and you act enmity in a more covered way. Certainly, though now you please yourselves, yet the clay shall come that you shall be contrary to yourselves, and all to you (1 Thessalonians 2:15), and there are some earnests of it in this life. Many wicked persons are set contrary to themselves, and all to them; they are like Esau, their hand against all, and all hands against them; yea, their own consciences continually vexing them; this is a fruit of that enmity between man and God, and if you find it now, you shall find it hereafter.

2. But as for you that are in Jesus Christ, who, being displeased with yourselves, have fled into the well-beloved, in whom the Father is well pleased, to escape God’s displeasure, I say unto such, your persons God is well pleased with in Christ, and this shall make way and place for acceptance to your weak and imperfect performances. But I would charge that upon you, that as you by believing are well pleased with Christ, so you would henceforth study to walk worthy of your Lord into all well pleasing (Colossians 1:10). If you love Him, you cannot but fashion yourselves so as He may be pleased. (Hugh Binning.)

Pleasing God

I. The impossibility of a carnal mind pleasing God. This springs from the necessity of the case.

1. As dwelling in a nature, every faculty of which is in hostility to His government and being, it is impossible that it can please Him.

2. There being no personal acceptance of those who are in the flesh, whatever they do cannot be accepted of God. First the person, and then the gift, is God’s order (cf. Queen Esther’s interview with Ahasuerus and Jacob’s meeting with Esau)
. How can you do that which is well pleasing to a holy God while your person is to Him an object of just abhorrence?

3. The absence of faith in the unregenerate must render all the religious doings of the sinner displeasing. “For without faith it is impossible to please Him.” How can he please God whose whole existence is a direct denial of God? “He that believeth not hath made God a liar!” Your unbelief is a practical denial of His existence. And, in your non-subjection to His law, you exclude Him from the government of His own world.

4. And what is the entire absence of love to God but another confirmation of the same truth? the great constraining motive of the sacrifice with which God is pleased is love, and “love is the fulfilling of the law.”

II. The character of those with whom God is pleased. They are--

1. A spiritual people, and God, who is a Spirit, must delight in that which harmonises with His own nature.

2. They are an accepted people, and therefore their persons are pleasing to Him. The delight of the Father in Christ reveals the secret of His delight in us. “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

3. But it is a universal pleasing of God which the Scriptures prescribe and enforce (Colossians 1:10; 1 Thessalonians 2:2; 1 John 3:22).

4. But what are some of the footprints of this walk?

They that are in the flesh cannot please God

The designation of the persons that is in these words--“They that are in the flesh.” The discovery of their condition in these cannot please God. We begin with the first. The designation of the persons, those that are in the flesh. Now to be in the flesh, according to the language of Scripture, is taken two manner of ways, either in a good or in an indifferent sense, or a bad and unwarrantable sense. First, to be so in a good or in an indifferent sense, and so to be in the flesh is no more than to partake of human nature. Thus, “The life which I now live in the flesh” (Galatians 2:20). But, secondly, there is also being in the flesh in a bad and corrupt sense, by taking flesh metonymically for sin, as it is oftentimes taken in Scripture. The second is the predicate, in the discovery of the condition belonging to such persons, and that is, that they cannot please God, viz., whilst they so remain and continue. This may be taken by us two ways, either as denoting the state or the life, the condition or the conversation. First, take it in the first sense, “They that are in the flesh cannot please God”--that is, such persons as are yet remaining in a state of nature and unregeneracy; these are loathsome and displeasing to God. Now it remains that we should show what is here declared of such persons, that they cannot please God. First, take it for their persons. They are unpleasing to Him in reference to them (Psalms 54:5; Psa_7:11; Habakkuk 1:13). There is no leprous or contagious person that is more displeasing in the eyes of man than a carnal and unregenerate person is displeasing to the eyes of God. The ground of this unpleasingness may be thus far accounted to us: first, because they are out of Christ, who is the primarily Beloved (Ephesians 1:6; Matthew 3:17). In Him as the termination of His well pleasing, and in Him also as the conveyance; in Him for Himself, and in all others for His sake. All men are so far well pleasing to God as they are in Christ. Now carnal persons are not incorporated into Christ, therefore they cannot be well pleasing to God in such a condition. They are in themselves and in their own nature unlovely. Secondly, unregenerate persons cannot please God, because they want faith. Thirdly, they are altogether unlike God, and so cannot be pleasing to Him in that respect likewise. We know that liking is founded in likeness, and complacency in correspondency. Fourthly, we need go no further for the proof of this point than the text itself, if we look upon it in the coherence of it, and how these carnal persons are therein described as are after the flesh, as do mind the things of the flesh, are in a state of death, in a state of enmity, in a state of impotency, and inability of subjection to the law of God. How is it then possible that such as these should be pleasing to God? The second is in reference to their actions. They cannot please Him so neither. The actions of carnal men are unpleasing to God considered in themselves, because they proceed not from a right principle in them, nor are directed to a right end by them. Sweetness of nature, and ingenuity, and moral accomplishments are very commendable in themselves, and do make men acceptable in their converse one with another, but yet they are not sufficient alone to make men acceptable in the eyes of God. Men are sensible sometimes of their actual sins, and have cause so to be--of their murders, and adulteries, and drunkenness, and thefts, and such courses as these, which now and then do a little astonish them and work some kind of horror in them. But what may they then think of the sin of their nature, which is the occasion of all these to them? For a man to be of a sickly constitution is more than to have a particular distemper or fit of sickness upon him. For this purpose, and to aggravate this so much the more unto us, consider these things further. First, that this corrupt nature, where it remains unchanged in any person, it does expose him to all kind of sin, considered at large, of what nature or kind soever. There is no sin which a man is secure of who is still remaining in his unregenerate condition, but he is not only capable of it, but inclinable to it. Secondly, where men are yet in the flesh and unchanged in their nature, they are exposed to the return of sin again, after some temporary forbearance of it and abstinence from it. There is nothing which is a principle of mortification but only sanctifying and saving grace. Thirdly, this state of nature does make men to commit sin with more delight and eagerness of prosecution. Those that are in their natural condition, they are in a sad and miserable condition. And they are so especially upon this account which is here expressed in the text, because they cannot please God, which carries a great deal more in it than we are presently sensible of, or do easily apprehend. They do not or cannot please God; their case is very terrible and dangerous. Thus it is, and will appear to be so according to sundry explications. First, as it is an obstruction to prayer and the receiving of that. “We know that God hears not sinners,” said the blind man in the gospel (John 9:31), and “he that regards iniquity in his heart, the Lord will not hear his prayer” (Psalms 66:18). Secondly, it deprives men of blessings and the comfortable influences of God’s providence. God will curse his very blessings and turn his comforts into the greatest crosses unto him; as we see it was with the Israelites, when God was offended and displeased with them: He gave them quails and manna in wrath. Thirdly, it exposes to temptations and the assaults of the spiritual enemy. “Whoso pleaseth God shall be kept from many snares,” But he that does not so, he shall be given up to them. Lastly, it excludes from heaven and eternal happiness and salvation at last. (Thomas Horton, D. D.)