IV. Evidenced in investing the soul with the new life Divinely created and constantly receiving progressive renewal by the Spirit (vers. 23, 24).—It is a continual rejuvenation the apostle describes; the verb is present in tense, and the newness implied is that of recency and youth, newness in point of age. But the new man to be put on is of a new kind and order. It is put on when the Christian way of life is adopted, when we enter personally into the new humanity founded in Christ. Thus two distinct conceptions of the life of faith are placed before our minds. It consists, on the one hand, of a quickening constantly renewed in the springs of our individual thought and will; and it is at the same time the assumption of another nature, the investiture of the soul with the Divine character and form of its being. The inward reception of Christ’s Spirit is attended by the outward assumption of His character as our calling amongst men. The man of the coming times will not be atheistic or agnostic; he will be devout; not practising the world’s ethics with the Christian’s creed; he will be upright and generous, manly and God-like (Findlay).
Lessons.—1. Religion is a complete renewal of the soul. 2. The soul is renewed by the instrumentality of the truth. 3. The renewal of the soul is the renewal of the outward life.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES.
Vers. 17–19. The Gentile Life—a Warning.
I. The Gentiles walked in the vanity of their minds.—The false deities the Gentiles worshipped are called vanities. The prevalence of idolatry is a melancholy proof of the depravity of human nature. Atheism and idolatry proceed not from the want of sufficient evidence that there is one eternal, all-perfect Being, but from that corruption of heart which blinds the understanding and perverts the judgment.
II. The heathens were darkened in their understanding.—Not in respect of natural things, for in useful arts and liberal sciences many of them greatly excelled; but in respect of moral truth and obligation. Their darkness was owing, not solely to the want of revelation, but to the want of an honest and good heart. Religion consists not merely in a knowledge of and assent to Divine truths, but in such conformity of heart to their nature and design, and in such a view of their reality and importance as will bring the whole man under their government.
III. They were alienated from the life of God.—They walked according to the course of the world, not according to the will of God. Their alienation was through ignorance. Particular wrong actions may be excused on the ground of unavoidable ignorance. This ignorance had its foundation in the obstinacy and perverseness of the mind. Such a kind of ignorance, being in itself criminal, will not excuse the sins which follow from it.
IV. They were become past feeling.—This is elsewhere expressed by a conscience seared with a hot iron. By a course of iniquity the sinner acquires strong habits of vice. As vicious habits gain strength, fear, shame, and remorse abate. Repeated violations of conscience blunt its sensibility and break its power.
V. They gave themselves over to lasciviousness.—If we break over the restraints the Gospel lays upon is, and mock the terrors it holds up to our view, we not only discover a great vitiosity of mind, but run to greater lengths in the practice of iniquity. As water, when it has broken through its mounds, rushes on with more impetuous force than the natural stream, so the corruptions of the human heart, when they have borne down the restraints of religion, press forward with more violent rapidity, and make more awful devastation in the soul than where these restraints had never been known.
Reflections.—1. How extremely dangerous it is to continue in sin under the Gospel. 2. You have need to guard against the beginnings of sin. 3. Christians must be watchful lest they be led away by the influence of corrupt example. 4. Religion lies much in the temper of the mind.—Lathrop.