story--who will keep the
keepers?--who will heal the sick physicians? You will sometimes see a
wounded animal licking its wounds with its own tongue. How much more
hopeless still is our effort by our own power to stanch and heal the
gashes which sin has made! 'Put off the old man'--yes--and if it but
clung to the limbs like the hero's poisoned vest, it might be possible.
But it is not a case of throwing aside clothing, it is stripping oneself
of the very skin and flesh--and if there is nothing more to be said than
such vain commonplaces of impossible duty, then we must needs abandon
hope, and wear the rotting evil till we die.

But that is not all. 'What the law could not do, in that it was weak
through the flesh,' God sending His own Son did--He condemned sin in the
flesh. So we come to

III. The possibility of fulfilling the command.

The context tells us how this is possible. The law, the pattern, and the
power for complete victory over the old sinful self, are to be found,
'as the truth is--in Jesus.' Union with Christ gives us a real
possession of a new principle of life, derived from Him, and like His
own. That real, perfect, immortal life, which hath no kindred with evil,
and flings off pollution and decay from its pure surface, will wrestle
with and finally overcome the living death of obedience to the
deceitful lusts. Our weakness will be made rigorous by His inbreathed
power. Our gravitation to earth and sin will be overcome by the yearning
of that life to its source. An all-constraining motive will be found in
love to Him who has given Himself for us. A new hope will spring as to
what may be possible for us, when we see Jesus, and in Him recognise the
true Man, whose image we may bear. We shall die with Him to sin, when,
resting by faith on Him who has died for sin, we are made conformable to
His death, that we may walk in newness of life. Faith in Jesus gives us
a share in the working of that mighty power by which He makes all things
new. The renovation blots out the past, and changes the direction of the
future. The fountain in our hearts sends forth bitter waters that cannot
be healed. 'And the Lord showed him a tree,' even that Cross whereon
Christ was crucified for us, 'which, when he had cast into the waters,
the waters were made sweet.'

I remember a rough parable of Luther's, grafted on an older legend, on
this matter, which runs somewhat in this fashion: A man's heart is like
a foul stable. Whee