Mark 15:22-23

THE MORTIFICATION OF BODILY DESIRES

‘And they bring Him unto the place Golgotha.… And they gave Him to drink wine mingled with myrrh: but He received it not.’

Mark 15:22

The first great law of Christian life as revealed in the Passion is obedience; the second finds expression in this incident. It is that great law of the mortification and of the disciplining of our bodily passions and desires, which is only possible through abstinence. Obedience is not within our powers, except it be through our yielding ourselves submissively to this great law of mortification, for we can only walk with quick footsteps along the path of holy obedience as we acquire Christian liberty through self-discipline and self-control.

I. The Christian life is essentially a mortified life. Why? Because mortification is the condition under which we can alone yield obedience to the will of God. In a measure this is true, even of man in his sinless condition during the time that he was in a state of probation in this world. Nothing could have been of any avail in the fierceness of man’s temptation but the self-control which, alas! was lacking in that crucial hour; and so with ourselves, we can only be safe as long as our passions and desires are held within the limits of a wise restraint, only safe as long as we have that power of self-mastery, which can keep the gratification of passion within the limits of revealed law.

II. But if mortification of desire is an essential feature of man’s life as man, it is an essential feature because man is sin-stricken.—We have inherited, alas! a turbulence of passions. When Adam sinned that great sin, the controlling power of the indwelling Spirit was withdrawn from him; and immediately the glory of the Divine presence was withdrawn. St. Paul, in the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, describes what the carnal state is. He who is in it has known what converting grace is. The mind, and heart, and will are turned towards God; but, alas! when he tries to respond to the conviction, and the aspiration, and the resolve of the heart acted upon by the Spirit of God, he finds himself so hindered by the flesh within him, stirred into activity by the temptation without him, that ‘the good that he would he does not, and the evil which he would not, that he does.’ The position is not one of death, but it is at least a position of awful peril; and the question is, Which of the two natures will triumph? Will the lower nature triumph, until he becomes captive to sin? or will the higher nature triumph, until he becomes spiritual? The answer to this perplexing question depends on the answer to another question: Will the man live a mortified life? Will he obey the leading of the Spirit? Or will he give himself up to a life of luxury? Will he be a slave to his passions, or will he beat these passions into subjection until he leads about his lower nature as the slave of his higher self? No mere desires will win this great victory. No penitent confessions of themselves will avail to secure it, no diligent attention to means of grace in the closet and in the sanctuary will of necessity save you from peril and lead you into the life of obedience. All these are helps, I grant. High desire, generous repentance, continual seeking of the grace of God, all are necessary; but in vain the desire, in vain the penance, in vain the diligent using of means of grace, unless all these be crowned by mortification, by grappling with the lower nature, by imitation of the mortified life and death of Jesus Christ.

III. Lack of mortification is a too common feature of Christian life to-day.

(a) In the world. Of necessity we live in the world more or less under the conditions in which human life is lived around. We cannot, if we would, isolate ourselves from its influences. We are living in an age which is characterised by this self-indulgence more than by anything else, by the unlimited gratification of every craving and every desire. And we in the world, breathing its atmosphere and acted on by its spirit, are hindered in our inner spiritual character by the luxurious atmosphere in which we live.

(b) In the spiritual life. In another way we see in the spiritual life of to-day a sad result of the lack of mortification. The religion of to-day is so emotional. In the Christianity of to-day there seems to me to be an over-emotional sensitiveness, wedded to intense weakness of will. You stand in the pulpit before crowded congregations. As you speak, the emotions are quickened, hearts are softened. In one the tear trickles down the cheek: you hope it is the tear of real contrition; in another joy shines in the upturned face: you wish it were the joy of pardon realised. But it is nothing of the kind. All this emotion is simply psychical; and we have the strange phenomenon before us at the present time of men and women crowding God’s church and crowding God’s altars, and going out into the world and talking as the world talks, and sinning as the world sins. The vast distance that there is in many a character between religious emotionalism and moral state, is a scandal and a weakness to the Church. God is calling us at the present time with clear voice to recognise this truth, and to correspond with it.

Rev. Canon Body.

Illustration

‘Crucifixion, as we know, of all forms of death was the most painful, and the thought of it appealed with the strongest force to the pitying mind of the women in Jerusalem; and so of their charity they were wont to provide a stupefying draught to those who were about to endure that great pain, and by permission of the Roman authorities this cup of pity was lifted to the lips of those condemned to die by crucifixion before they were finally nailed to the cross. In accordance with this charitable practice, when Jesus Christ is about to be fastened to the wood of the Tree of Life, some one comes near to Him, and offers Him that draught, the purpose of which is to alleviate His pain. But He was not willing to drink of that cup which would give Him relief; we are expressly told “He received it not”; He put away from Him that which would soften the keenness of the pain that He was enduring. Not that He did not shrink back from the pain, as well as from the shame, of the Cross. We know that He did shrink from it with all the shrinking of a highly strung and sensitive nature; but though He felt that pain and that shame, and shrank from it in anticipation with intensest shrinking, yet His will so triumphed over the shrinking of His flesh and of His soul that He refused to drink of that which would mitigate the greatness of His suffering. So He teaches us through all time this great truth, that if we would walk along the path of obedience and tread in His sacred footsteps, we must be content not to encumber ourselves with all that makes life luxurious and pleasing.’