Titus 1:15, 16 To the pure all things are pure: but to them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure… Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure, etc. We notice, at the outset, two facts suggested by the passage. 1. That there is an essential difference in the moral characters of men. There are some "pure" and some "defiled," some holy and some unholy. What is the underlying inspiring principle that makes this difference? The predominant disposition. Perhaps there is no moral being in the universe who is not under the masterhood of some one sentiment or passion, to which can be traced, as to a mainspring, all the motions of his being. This controlling tendency is the moral monarch of souls, or, in Scripture language, is the moral "heart of the man." This supreme disposition exists in all men in two distinct and opposite forms, either in sympathy with the true, the right, and the spiritual, or in sympathy with the false, the wrong, and the material. That soul alone is pure whose governing sympathy is God and the true. Supreme love for the supremely good is the true life of the soul, and the fountain of all its virtues. He whose controlling sympathies run not thus, is impure and corrupt. 2. Pleat the outward world is to men according to this difference. The whole external universe is to a man according to the moral state of his soul. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he" - so is he in relation to himself, to all without, and to God. This being so, the text teaches the supreme importance of moral character. Let us look at - I. THE MORALLY PURE IN RELATION TO ALL THINGS. "Unto the pure all things are pure." This is true in relation to three things. 1. In relation to appearance. The proverb goes that the greatest rogues are ever the most suspicious. A thoroughly selfish, ungodly soul will see but little good even in the best men. It is a law that man judges his fellow by himself, and the more corrupt a man is, the more severe his judgment on others. A good man is neither given to suspicion nor censoriousness; he sees some good in all men. 2. In relation to influence. The influence of all outward things upon men is dependent on their moral character. Our Lord says, "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man, but that which cometh out of the mouth defileth a man." The moral character is an all-transformative power in the center of man's being. It turns the unclean into the clean, and the reverse. A good man, like the bee, can extract honey from the bitterest plant; or, like the AEolian harp, can turn the shrieking wind into music. 3. In relation to appropriation. As the body lives by appropriating the outward, so does the soul; and as the effects of the appropriation, whether universal or otherwise, depend on the condition of the body's health, as the appropriation of a diseased body only increases the physical ailment; so with the soul. A corrupt soul appropriates, even from the most strengthening and refreshing means of spiritual improvement, that which weakens and destroys. Pharaoh and his host got moral mischief out of the ministry of Moses; and the men of Capernaum were pressed into a deeper and darker hell through the elevating and enlightening ministry of Jesus of-Nazareth. Mark, then, the supreme importance of moral character. II. THE MORALLY DEFILED IN RELATION TO ALL THINGS. "Unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled." Here is the converse. Mark, in passing, three things. 1. The sphere of the defilement. "The mind and conscience." "The mind," says a modern expositor, "is the willing as well as the thinking part of man, as it has been well defined the human spirit (pneuma) in one of its aspects, not simply quatenus cogitat, et intelligit, but also quatenus vult. Defilement of this mind (nous) means that the thoughts, wishes, purposes, activities, are all stained and debased. The second of these, the conscience (suneidesis), is the moral consciousness within, and that which is ever bringing up the memory of the past, with its omissions and commissions, its errors, its cruel, heartless unkindness, its selfish disregard of others. When this is defiled, then this last safeguard of the soul is broken down. The man and woman of the defiled conscience is self-satisfied, hard, impenitent to the last. Every part and faculty of the soul is stained with sin. The body may be cleansed by ceremonial ablutions, and the external manners and speech kept pure by culture and civilization, but the soul be black; the outside of the "cup and of the platter clean," but inside full of corruption. 2. The cause of the defilement. "They profess that they know God, but in works they deny him." There is nothing, perhaps, so morally defiling to the soul as religious hypocrisy. The man who with the lip professes to know God, and who in the life denies him, gets deeper stains upon his soul than the agnostic who professes that he knows nothing about him. What millions in our churches every Sunday publicly, at each service, avow with their lip their belief in God, but in their week-day life "he is not in all their thoughts"! Thus souls get deeply dyed in corruption in Christian churches. 3. The hideousness of the defilement. "Being abominable and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate." However fair their conduct in the religious observances, they are "abominable" within, hideous to the eye of God. However rigorous in their observances and religious ordinances, they are "disobedient" in heart, they outrage moral laws; however useful they regard themselves and appear to others, they are "reprobate," they are rejected and worthless. These "defiled" in soul defile everything without; all outward things in their appearance, influences, and appropriation are to them corrupt. CONCLUSION. Mark: 1. The natural sovereignty of the human son. We are not necessarily the creatures of the outward; we have within the power to bend circumstances to our will, to get good out of evil, to turn outward dissonance into music, deformity into beauty, poison into nourishment. Let us adore our Maker for this wonderful endowment - an endowment which guards us from the coercion of outward forces, secures to us an inward freedom of action, and enables us to put all outward things in subjection to our own spiritual selves. 2. The dependency of the soul's destiny on itself. A man's destiny depends upon his moral character, and his character depends upon himself. As food, however nutritious, cannot administer strength to a man's body without the digestive and appropriative power, so no external influences, however good and useful in themselves, can raise a man's soul without the right action of its faculties. Man cannot be made good. His body may be borne to the summit of a lofty mountain without the use of his limbs, but if his soul is to ascend "the holy hill of the Lord," he must climb it every inch himself. Fortune or patronage may raise him to some eminent social position, but he cannot reach a single stage of moral dignity - the true dignity of man - apart from his own earnest endeavors. The transformative power of the soul is to external circumstances what the builder is to the materials out of which he rears his edifice. The choicest materials may be brought together - gold, marble, and cedar - but unless the builder use them with artistic skill they will never take the form of a beautiful structure. So the providence of God may gather around man all the facilities and elements for the raising of a noble character, but unless he use them with his own spiritual hand, he will never produce such a structure. 3. The grand end of true teaching. What is that? The supreme importance of every man obtaining a true moral character. "Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again." In moral goodness of soul alone, can we not only find our heaven, but find our way safely and happily through this life. We live in a world of evil. We cannot escape its sinful influence by endeavoring, like the anchorite, to avoid its touch. Whilst no man should put himself in the way of temptation, no man should be afraid to confront evil, to go into its most malarial regions if duty call. In truth, if man's well-being depended upon escaping outward evil, it could never be realized, because to live in the world he is bound to live in its midst, and evil must stream into him every day. How, then, is he to reach a blessed destiny? Not merely by endeavoring to frame his life according to the outward rules of morality and religion, but by a right use of his own spiritual powers. There is a power in the body, when in a healthy state, to appropriate whatever goes into it from external nature that is wholesome and necessary, and to expel that which is noxious and superfluous. The soul has a power analogous to this; a power to appropriate the wholesome and to expel the injurious. This power we call the transformative. Let us use it rightly - use it as Noah used it, who, amidst the blasphemy and ridicule of a corrupt generation, walked with God, and fulfilled a noble destiny; as Paul used it at skeptical Athens, in dissolute Corinth, and in pagan Rome, who from experience left the world this testimony: "All things work together for good to them that love God." - D.T. Parallel Verses KJV: Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled. |
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