of that Divine gift: 'Having escaped the corruption that is in the world
through lust.'

The only condition of receiving this Divine nature is the opening of the
heart by faith to Him, the Divine human Christ, who is the bond between
men and God, and gives it to us. But that condition being presupposed,
this important clause supplies the conduct which attends and attests the
possession of the Divine nature.

Notice, here is human nature without God, described as 'the corruption
that is in the world in lust.' It is like a fungus, foul-smelling,
slimy, poisonous; whose growth looks rather the working of decay than of
vitality. And, says my text, that is the kind of thing that human nature
is if God is _not_ in it. There is an 'either' and 'or' here. On the one
hand we must have a share in the Divine nature, or, on the other, we
have a share in the putrescence 'that is in the world through lust.'

Corruption is initial destruction, though of course other forms of life
may come from it; destruction is complete corruption. The word means
both. A man either escapes from lust and evil, or he is destroyed by
it.

And the root of this rotting fungus is 'in lust,' which word, of course,
is used in a much wider meaning than the fleshly sense in which we
employ it in modern times. It means 'desire' of all sorts. The root of
the world's corruption is my own and my brothers' unbridled and godless
desires.

So there are two states--a life plunged in putridity, or a heart touched
with the Divine nature. Which is it to be? It cannot be both. It must be
one or the other. Which?

A man that has got the life of God, in however feeble measure, in him,
will flee away from this corruption like Lot out of Sodom. And how will
he flee out of it? By subduing his own desires; not by changing
position, not by shirking duty, not by withdrawing himself into
unwholesome isolation from men and men's ways. The corruption is not
only 'in the world,' so that you could get rid of it by getting out of
the world, but it is 'in the world in lust,' so that you carry the
fountain of it within yourself. The only way to escape is by no outward
flight, but by casting out the unclean thing from our own souls.

Depend upon it, the measure in which a man has the love of God in him
can be very fairly estimated by the extent to which he is doing this.
There is a test for you Christian people. There have been plenty of men
and women in all ages of the Church, a