Romans 2:14

Romans 2:14

I. The great teachers who have seen in the natural man nothing but an enemy of God and an alien from Him have gathered the material of their systems from the pages of the New Testament. But the larger or wider view of the affinity between the human and the Divine natures, which is more in harmony with the instincts of our own hearts and with the later growths of time, may appeal with at least as much confidence to the same authority. There are indisputable truths underlying the doctrine of human corruption and depravity. But, on the other side, there is truth no less certain, which keeps growing in importance with the growth of human knowledge and aspiration. Our text shows that St. Paul did not overlook the evidences of a relationship between the human will and the Divine Will, as in his address at Athens, where he could not but have been moved by the associations of the spot in which so many seekers after truth had laboured. He recognises that God is not far from any one of us, that in Him we all live and move and have our being. Christian life, moreover, reaches its highest expression in consciousness of the relationship between the human spirit and the Divine. The law of Christ is the law of liberty; human nature enjoys true freedom in the ordered and regulated harmony of duty and affection, of reason and will. The soul may be so crippled as only to feel the wretchedness of perceiving the good which it cannot realise for itself, but the love of Christ restores it and brings it back to its true self. Corruption and sin obscure but do not destroy the higher affinities. The attraction of Christ's example the power of His life and death put an end to its estrangement. It ceases to be an alien from God, and stands again in the relation of a son.

II. We must surrender ourselves to God if we would have Him reveal Himself to us. The more that we submit ourselves in this spirit to the teaching of human life and of the human soul, the less shall we confine our sense of mystery and awe to the future and the unseen the more profoundly shall we feel that in walking on this firm earth we are treading on holy ground, and that the glory which fills the heavens shines also in the light of common day. The silent influence of this conviction has been felt by all schools of religious thought; each of them practically acknowledges that human nature, rightly interrogated, is the best interpreter of the revelation of God. Human nature reverently studied and rightly understood is the bridge that spans the interval between God and the world. In studying this we are studying the facts that are nearest to us. Here is something definite and tangible, something about which patient truth-lovers may at length agree. Those who fall back on the witness of human nature and look at religion in its human aspect are obeying the irresistible tendency of our own modern habits of thought; but they do not, therefore, surrender the truth or reality of revelation. They are only doing what others have done, who at first have feared entirely to lose sight of old familiar facts if they quitted the point of view which is being abandoned by the age in which they live, but have found that when they have shifted with the times they see the same truth, under a different aspect indeed, but no less clear than before.

W. W. Jackson, Oxford and Cambridge Journal,April 27th, 1882.

References: Romans 2:14. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvii., p. 178; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 68. Romans 2:14; Romans 2:15. R. W. Dale, The Evangelical Record,p. 41.Romans 2:15. J. B. Lightfoot, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxii., p. 102; Homiletic Magazine,vol. ix., p. 94; Archbishop Magee, Sermons at St. Saviour's, Bath,p. 147; F. W. Farrar, The Silence and Voices of God,p. 27.