Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3198
“And were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.” Ephesians 2:3.
“The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ.” Romans 8:16,17.
[See Sermon #339, Volume 6—THE SONS OF GOD.]
THESE two texts will furnish me with two familiar but most important themes—what Christians were and what they are. There are great and vital differences between what they once were and what they now are—and these are implied or indicated by the two expressions, “the children of wrath” and, “the children of God.” There is so much instruction in each of our texts that we will proceed at once to consider them without any further introduction.
I. So, first, let us consider WHAT CHRISTIANS WERE.
The Apostle tells us that we “were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.” “By nature,” mark you, not merely by practice, but, “by nature the children of wrath” The expression is a Hebraism. When a person was doomed to die, he would be called by the Jews, “the child of death.” One who was very poor would be called by them, “the child of poverty.” So because we were, by nature, under the wrath of God, we are called “the children of wrath.”
When the Apostle says that we “were by nature the children of wrath,” he means that we were born so. David expressed what is true of us all when he said, “Behold, I was shapened in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Our first parent, Adam, sinned and fell as the representative of the whole human race. “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men.” If any object to this principle of representation, that does not affect its truth of it—and I would also remind them that by this very principle of representation, a way was left open for our restoration! The angels did not sin representatively—they sinned personally and individually—and, therefore, there is no hope of their restoration, but they are “reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” But men sinned representatively, and this is a happy circumstance for us, “for as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of One shall many be made righteous.” As we fell through one representative, it was consistent with the principles upon which God was governing mankind that He should allow us to rise by another Representative! At first, we fell not by our own fault, so now, by Grace, we rise not by our own merit. Death by sin came to us through Adam when we were born, so did life come to us through Christ Jesus. Thus our first text sets before us this terrible fact—as true as it is terrible, and as terrible as it is true—that we were by nature under the wrath of God from the very first. The whole race of mankind was regarded by God as descended from a disgraced traitor! We were all born children of wrath.
This expression also implies that there was within us a nature which God could not look upon except with wrath The way in which some cry up the excellence of human nature is all idle talk. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Our Lord Jesus Christ has told us that “out of the heart proceeds evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” Everything that is evil lurks within the heart of everyone that is born of a woman! Education may restrain it, imitation of a good example may have some power in holding the monster down, but the very best of us, apart from the Grace of God, placed under certain circumstances which would
cause the evil within us to be developed rather than restrained, would soon prove to a demonstration that our nature was evil, and only evil, and that continually! You may take a bag of gunpowder and play with it if you care to do so, for it is quite harmless as long as you keep the fire from it, but put just one spark of fire to it and then you will discover the force for evil that was latent in that innocent-looking powder! You may tame a tiger if you begin training it early enough. And you may treat it as if it was only a big cat—but let it once learn the taste of blood and you will soon see the true tiger nature flashing from its eyes and seeking to destroy all that come within reach of its cruel claws! In a similar fashion to that, sin was originally latent within everyone of us and whatever better qualities God may, by His Grace, have planted there, it is still true that we were, by nature, “the children of wrath, even as others.”
I need not say any more about the original sin of Adam, or about the sinfulness of our nature, for those of us who have been saved know that our practice was according to our nature. Who can deny that the fountain was defiled when he is compelled to confess that polluted streams flowed from it? Can you look back with complacency upon the days of your unregeneracy? I feel sure that you cannot think of the sins that you committed, then, without weeping over them, and especially sorrowing over that sin which so many forget—the sin of not believing on the Son of God, the sin of so long rejecting the Savior, the sin of not yielding to the gentle calls of His Grace, the sin of bolting and barring the door of your heart while He stood outside and cried, “Open to Me, My sister, My love, My dove, My undefiled: for My head is filled with dew and My locks with the drops of the night.” But we would not rise and let Him in! What a horrible sin it was not to see the loveliness of Christ and not to admire the infinitude of His love! Had we not been sinful by nature and by practice, too, our opposition or our indifference would have been melted concerning the coming of Jesus—and we would have at once opened our hearts to receive Him.