The Great Change - Part Two

Extract

The Great Change – Part Two
(Section Two, Section Three, Section Four)

Section Two
Continuing our review of the numerous passages wherein the Holy Spirit has described His work of regeneration, and wherein He has used such a great variety of figures and terms the better to enable us to form something more than a one-sided conception thereof, we turn next to Romans 5:5, where we read, “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.” By nature, no man has any love for God. To those Jews who contended so vehemently for the unity of God and abhorred all forms of idolatry, and who―in their mistaken zeal―sought to kill the Saviour because of “making himself equal with God,” He declared, “I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you” (John 5:18, 42). Not only loveless, the natural man is filled with “enmity against God” (Rom. 8:7). But when a miracle of grace is wrought within him by the Holy Spirit, his heart experiences a great change Godwards, so that the One he formerly dreaded and sought to banish from his thoughts is now the Object of his veneration and joy, the One upon whose glorious perfections he delights to meditate, and for whose honour and pleasure he now seeks to live.

That great change which is wrought within the regenerate does not consist in the annihilation of the evil principle, “the flesh,” but in freeing the mind from its dominion, and in the communication of a holy principle which conveys a new propensity and disposition to the soul: God is no longer hated, but loved. That freeing of the mind from the evil dominion of …