Romans 8:15

Romans 8:15

The Thought of God the Stay of the Soul.

I. The thought of God is the happiness of man; for though there is much besides to serve as subject of knowledge, or motive for action, or means of excitement, yet the affections require a something more vast and more enduring than anything created. He alone is sufficient for the heart who made it. We do not give our hearts to things irrational, because these have no permanence in them. We do not place our affections in sun, moon, and stars, or this rich and fair earth, because all things material come to nought and vanish like day and night. Man too, though he has an intelligence within him, yet in his best estate he is altogether vanity. If our happiness consists in our affections being employed and recompensed, "man that is born of a woman" cannot be our happiness, for how can he stay another who continueth not in one stay himself?

II. But there is another reason why God alone is the happiness of our souls; the contemplation of Him, and nothing but it, is able fully to open and relieve the mind, to unlock, occupy, and fix our affections. Created things cannot open us, or elicit the ten thousand mental senses which belong to us and through which we really live. None but the presence of our Maker can enter us, for to none besides can the heart in all its thoughts and feelings be unlocked and subjected. It is the feeling of simple and absolute confidence and communion which soothes and satisfies those to whom it is vouchsafed.

III. This sense of God's presence is the ground of the peace of a good conscience, and of the peace of repentance also. True repentance cannot be without the thought of God; it has the thought of God, for it seeks Him; and it seeks Him, because it is quickened with love, and even sorrow must have a sweetness if love be in it.

J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. v., p. 313.

I. Adoption is that act whereby we are received into the family of God. We are none of us in God's family by nature. It is not a matter, properly speaking, of birth; but we are brought into it from without; literally we are adopted. Christ is the one Son of God. Into the Son God elects and engrafts members. He elects them everywhere, and He engrafts them just as He pleases; but they are all chosen from without and brought in. As soon as the union takes places between a soul and Christ God sees that soul in the relationship in which He sees Christ. He gives it a partnership in the same privileges He treats it as if it were His own child He gives it a place and name better than of sons and daughters. In fact, He has adopted it.

II. But this adoption, if it stood alone, would be no blessing. We cannot sufficiently admire the wisdom of the provision, and thank God for the manifestation of His grace, that wherever He gives adoption He follows it by the "Spirit of Adoption." The Spirit seals the union by making the affinity between the Creator and the creature close, happy, and eternal. The Spirit of Adoption cries "Father." A child does not ask a father as a stranger asks him. He does not want wages for his work, but he receives rewards. He does not want them; he works for another motive, and yet he does not know that he has another motive, for he never stops even to ask what his motive is. That "Spirit" has a present possession in the whole universe. All creation is his Father's house, and he can say, "Everything in it everything that is great and everything that is little, everything that is happy and everything that is unhappy, every cloud and every sun-ray all is Mine, even to death itself.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,4th series, p. 130.

References: Romans 8:15. C. Kingsley, National Sermons,p. 216; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xi., p. 276; D. Moore, Penny Pulpit,No. 3217; M. Rainsford, No Condemnation,p. 80.