The regenerate man is a new creature, because he has a new rule of duty.
Formerly his own inclination, his own will, provided there was no outward impediment which prevented, directed his actions. Who does not wish to gratify his own desires? Who would not do it if he could?
But here is a new creature. The first question the new born soul puts forth, is that of Saul, ‘Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?’ The will of another being, a being invisible to human eye, impalpable to human touch, whose literal voice no man hears, is now the rule of duty to the new creature. The law of God takes the place of man’s desires, wishes, and propensities. He who formerly took council of his own selfish heart, now yields to the revealed word; he who once sought to please himself, now seeks to obey his heavenly Master; he who followed his own headlong propensities, now holds them in check, while he consults the lively and life-giving oracles of truth. And these utter no uncertain, ambiguous responses, but plainly point out the path of duty, which, to the regenerate man, is the path of peace.
The unregenerate man, on becoming a true Christian, exhibits a marked novelty, a noticeable transformation of character, in the trait here specified. He puts aside his old rules of duty, whether they were his own will, or supposed advantage, or the maxims of the world; and, in place of them, adopts God’s law as the standard by which to estimate his character, mould his affections, and regulate his conduct. This is a great change, very great; greater far than most people imagine.—Reader, Do you know what it implies? Are you ready to adopt the will of God as your rule of duty? You must do it, or you can never be a new creature. Heaven and hell turn on this pivot. Let God’s will govern; and holiness, heaven, peace in life, triumph in death, and joys, which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, are yours. Follow your own will, in opposition to that of God, and you shut yourself out from Heaven, cut yourself off from all holy affections, and poison the fountains of life in your soul. You deprive yourself of all certain present peace, plant thorns in your dying pillow, and make the final Judge your eternal enemy, murder hope, and shut yourself up in the prison of despair.
What can be more proper than that a creature of yesterday and liable to err, should look up to his Creator, who is from eternity to eternity, and who cannot err, for instruction and guidance? Would it be proper that children scarcely out of the cradle, should follow their short-sighted and perverse whims, rather than the kind and wise commands of their experienced parents? Your child has lived three years. You have lived thirty. Surely it is proper that the child of three should be directed by the parent of thirty years. And is there no propriety that the creature of thirty should be directed by the all wise and eternal Creator? The simple statement of the subject carries home conviction to every mind with irresistible force.
Another distinctive trait of the new creature is, new views of man’s native character.
The moral, reputable, but impenitent man, may, by reading, by observation and reflection, become convinced that something is wrong about man—very wrong. He may see that unhesitating truth, and fearless honesty, and straight forward integrity are but seldom to be met with. He may know that pride, and vanity, and jealousy, and envy, and suspicion, and anger, weave a large portion of the web of human life. He may call falsehood contemptible, and intemperance beastly. He may acknowledge that laws are necessary to intimidate, that judges and courts are required to convict, and that prisons and penitentiaries are indispensable to confine the thief and the robber. All this presents to his mind a dark picture of human life and character. But then he contemplates another part of the picture, and finds some relief. He sees the kindlier sympathies of our nature discovering themselves in various forms. He sees conjugal, parental and filial affection warm and vigorous in many bosoms, and the sight is pleasing. But he does not see that the father and mother and child may all be supremely selfish, while exhibiting the generous natural affections. He does not see, at least he is not apt to see, that all these and similar principles of human conduct come under that description of which the Saviour said, ‘Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.’ There is no holiness in them. They do not spring from holiness; they do not produce holiness. Who thinks when he sees the red-breast bearing in its bill food for its young, that the bird is holy? Yet has it not affection for its young? Is not the sight pleasant? Others must have different feelings from mine, if it be not so. Often have I watched the efforts and parental solicitude of the warblers of the woods, and admired the wisdom of the God of nature, who feedeth the young ravens when they cry. Is the fond mother, rocking her sleeping infant, and smiling as it smiles, therefore holy? Is her love to her child necessarily connected with love to God, and with penitence for her sins? There are those that tell us that these natural and kindly affections, of which, (were we destitute,) we should be below the very brutes, are proof and exhibition of holiness! ‘Blind leaders of the blind!’
But here is a new creature. He sees, that the most amiable unrenewed men, in all their moral, accountable exercises, are sinful, only sinful, and sinful without any mixture of holiness. Once he did not believe this. It was a harsh and uncomfortable view of the human character and condition. Or if he did believe it, as a doctrine too plainly revealed to be doubted, still it was a bare intellectual assent to a repulsive dogma of revelation. But now it comes home to his bosom, as a truth of awful, personal import. ‘I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee; wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.
Truly, here is a great change. He who exalted now abases; he who excused now convicts; he who justified now condemns, himself. He who rose in opposition to God’s laws, now rejoices to submit to them. He who raised objections, sought out difficulties, and uttered complaints of injustice and partiality, now ascribes righteousness to his Maker, and takes shame to himself. He sees, realizes, and feels through his whole soul, that the only difficulty was in an impenitent, selfish, unhumbled, unholy heart, that, knowing its Lord’s will, would not do it. The truly regenerate man knows, by an evidence of consciousness and personal feeling equal to demonstration, that the natural heart is enmity to God. He has felt this enmity in his own heart, and he knows that, as in a glass face answereth to face, so does the heart of man to man.
The new creature has a new foundation for his hope of acceptance with God.