Isaiah 1:16 Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil;… Two things are necessarily to be acknowledged to encourage endeavours after piety. 1. To be assured that God will not be wanting to afford the assistance of His grace and Spirit. 2. That by this assistance we are enabled to do our duty. There are two things which no wise man doth submit to his care or thought, namely, necessaries and impossibles. For things necessary, he needs not to charge himself with them, for they will be done of course; and for things impossible, it is a vain thing for him to undertake. We are not to consider ourselves to be in a state of impossibility, therefore we must suppose that God is with us by His grace and assistance; and while God is with us that we are able to do those things that He requires of us — to wash and make us clean, etc., which words are to be considered according to their form and according to their matter. 1. According to their form, they are an exhortation, and so it is not in vain that we are exhorted to duty. 2. In respect of their matter, they afford these two observations — (1) That sin is in itself a thing of defilement and pollution. (2) That religion is a motion of restoration.Ill habits do strangely bias our faculties; but though they do this, yet they do not absolutely determine our faculties or sink them, for these faculties are of the essence of the soul. It is with much difficulty they are overcome (Jeremiah 13:23); but the faculty is free notwithstanding any habit acquired; otherwise it were impossible ever to recover any habitual sinner. I. GOD DOTH PRIMARILY DESIRE THE GOOD OF ALL HIS CREATURES (1 Timothy 2:4; Isaiah 5:4). II. GOD DOTH NOT DESIRE MAN'S SALVATION WITHOUT HIS RETURN. For it is impossible that any man should be happy in a way of obstinacy and rebellion against God, III. GOD DOTH NOT DESIRE MAN'S RETURN WITHOUT HIS OWN CONSENT. For if He should desire this, He should desire that which cannot be: for being intelligent and voluntary agents, we cannot truly be said to do that which we do against our minds. For to a human act two things are necessary; that there be the judgment of reason in the understanding, and the choice of the will If the mind do not consent, it is not a free act; and if not done freely, and of choice, it cannot be an act of virtue; and if not an act of virtue, it cannot be of any moral consideration. It is no less an act of the will, though a man be at the first attempt unwilling and averse; yea, though he suffer great difficulty to bring himself to it. For this man hath brought himself to it by reason, consideration, and argument, and so his consent is the better grounded. Application — 1. We ought to be thankful to God, and to acknowledge Him for the gracious assistance that He doth afford unto us. 2. We ought to make use of and employ this Divine assistance, which is in the apostle's language, not to receive the grace of God in vain (2 Corinthians 6:1). (B. Whichcote D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; |
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