About the most difficult thing in the Christian life is to keep our hearts serious. The first things to be lost when we decline in grace are a wise heart and a grave spirit. It is not hard to see why this should be so. Our proud nature loves to assert itself whenever it can. As soon as grace weakens in the soul, lightness, pride and self-importance begin to reappear. The first signs that we are backsliding are to be seen in a loss of the fear of God and a decline in seriousness.

The believer is at his best when he has a 'broken spirit' and a 'contrite heart' (Ps. 51:17). Of such a spirit it is here said that these are 'the sacrifices of God'. This is the spirit that God approves of and delights in. He will not 'despise' this attitude of soul because it is the proper disposition for any sinner saved by grace. So long as our worship and service are carried out with a contrite and broken heart they are acceptable to God. As soon as our heart ceases to be contrite our service and our worship become routine. It is better to have our heart in our prayers, even when we are stuck for words, than to have fine words without heart. What God looks at is the state of our heart. This is the acceptable sacrifice.

Another way of stating the matter is to say that we have, as Christians, the life-long duty of stirring ourselves up to repentance. Repentance, like faith, is not a grace that we exercise once at the start of our Christian life and then discard. Repentance is to be mixed, like faith, with all that we do in the Name of God as long as we live. We are born for nothing but repentance, as one writer once put it.

Repentance is one of the ruling principles which must govern the Christian as long as he lives. He is to disallow and disapprove of his actions, words and thoughts whenever he detects in them a departure from the standard given him in the Bible. One of the great secrets of progress in the life of grace is this very disposition of self-judgment. The believer has the constant duty of watching over his own spirit and expressing disapproval of his performances when he knows they are defective. Paul tells us that he acted in this way in his own case: 'That which I do I allow not' (Rom. 7:15).We are to take seriously the task of monitoring the stirrings of our own 'concupiscence' or inward lust.

The Christian has many experiences of blessing as he progresses in the life of grace but no experience in this life will carry him to a level at which he no longer needs to watch diligently over his own heart. Let him not dream of attaining to some life-on-a-higher-plane' at which he will cease to need to judge himself or pass sentence on his own rising corruptions. It is tempting to wish for some sudden 'blessing' which carries us beyond the common level by making us more or less immune to the strength of indwelling sin. No biblical saint ever attained to such a level in this life.

The need for constant self-watch arises from the very nature of Christian sanctification itself. At our justification and regeneration we pass at once and for ever from one condition or state to another. Once we are regenerate we pass from a state of sin to a state of grace. We never re-enter the graceless state in which we were before. We pass, in our regeneration, 'from darkness to light' in a single moment. We become, at a stroke, what we were not before, 'light in the Lord' (Eph. 5:8).

Similarly, in our justification we pass at once from a state of condemnation to one in which we are pronounced 'not guilty'. The justified man never again enters the sphere of condemnation. He is pardoned for Christ's sake once and for all.

However, sanctification is not of the same nature. Whereas every believer is purified by faith at his conversion and indwelt by the Spirit of God, he is still, so long as he lives in this life, also indwelt by sin in every faculty of his soul.

It might have pleased God to have sanctified us at once and perfectly, just as he justifies us at once and perfectly. But God has chosen not to do so. Justification and sanctification differ in their very nature not least in this respect that, whereas justification is always perfect and complete in the Christian in this life, sanctification always remains incomplete till we enter a state of death.

Sanctification is unlike justification in that we are obliged to cooperate energetically in it. It is true that we cooperate in justification in that the faith by which we are justified is ours. But it is ours as a fruit of the New Birth in which we do not cooperate. Hence Paul states that even faith itself is 'not of yourselves, it is the gift of God' (Eph. 2:8). In the New Birth we do not cooperate in any sense. In justification we cooperate in our first act of trusting in Christ for salvation. In sanctification we cooperate fully energetically and all our life. Sanctification is all the work of God and all the work of the Christian. So the Apostle exhorts us: 'Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh, in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure' (Phil. 2:12-13). The great error of unregenerate professing Christians is to strive after sanctification by self-denial (Lent, etc.). No man can begin to grow in holiness till he is born again and so united to Christ. Once, however, we are reborn we can and must labour ceaselessly to become more advanced in the knowledge of God and in holiness of life.

There are doubtless most wise and good reasons why God has seen fit to save us in this way. By leaving residual sin and depravity in the believer in this life, God has left room for him to exercise the energies of his soul in striving after perfection. Our experience of the strength and persistence of our own indwelling sins is a most powerful influence to convince us that we could never have saved ourselves by our own power or wisdom. The true Christian is a man who has been raised from the dead (John 5:25). In the experience of watching over our desperately wicked heart we learn a lesson of the utmost importance to our spiritual life: 'Salvation is of the Lord' (John 2:9).

The more carefully the Christian watches over his own heart and strives to keep it serious, the more he appreciates the riches of God's grace. If sin were a little sickness which could be easily healed, we might entertain low views of God's grace in the gospel. But if sin is devilish, hellish and infernal, then we have every reason to adore God for his infinite grace in delivering us from its curse and power by Christ.

The danger to which we are exposed is that we may sink into a careless complacency, becoming formal in our worship and easy-going in our resistance to inward sin. There are many pressures upon the believer in these days to do just this. For one thing, we live in a 'post-modern' society where moral judgments of any kind are frowned on. The thought of suppressing inward urges and desires is regarded generally in society today as unhealthy and even harmful.

Then, too, we live in a time when other aspects of the Christian life have stronger appeal: 'outreach', 'the gifts', 'experiences' – However, the high casualty rate in the churches should be a sufficient reminder to us that no Christian dare relax his self-watch for long in this life.

There will be no vibrant, victorious Christian witness in these days unless its professing followers live convincing lives themselves. The world is not likely to be impressed with our choice labels of 'Reformed', 'Puritan', 'Calvinistic', etc., unless it sees that those who cherish these terms are conspicuously better than the rest of society: our own lives better, our homes better, our marriages better, our integrity better.

We have over the last decades had an abundance of showy, loud-shouting evangelicalism which has gloried in its own extrovert attitudes and made a great deal of international speakers and the machinery of evangelism. But much of it has been found wanting at a basic, elementary level. It has produced too few serious saints.

Something fundamental has been left out of a good deal of Christian living over recent years. Prophecies and tongues we have had in plenty. Of campaigns and rallies we have had no shortage. Of novel worship and progressive methods we have had enough to last a life-time. But it may be doubted whether all these things, taken singly or together, have really advanced the credit of the gospel in our society. The defect surely has been that these other things have not sufficiently promoted the main thing, which is saintliness of life. The power of the gospel is demonstrated by only one thing: men and women who lead transformed lives.

What, after all, does the gospel amount to if it does not transform our lives and make us better persons? The excellence of true religion is that it makes its adherents so different from the world that they look like persons from another planet. The world expects Christians to be better than they are themselves. The world expects the Christian to be different. The church makes progress, not when it attempts to be like the world, but when it is so inspired with the glory of Christ that it is on fire to be more like him.

The problem is that becoming 'more like him' is hard work – much harder than waving our arms about in public worship, or speaking in a 'tongue', or else rushing off to the next 'Campaign'. The difficult things are always the basic things. It is always easier to do what is showy and sensational. It takes far greater effort to discipline our unruly minds to pray and read the Bible for an hour than to do half a dozen ceremonies of an outward kind. But the things which are most profitable are, with few exceptions, the things that improve our heart, inform our mind and shape our spiritual character.

Invariably, when we take to heart the great life-long task of becoming more like Christ, we become more serious-minded about life as a whole. To become serious in our attitude to life is to feel more deeply the profound sadness of this world. It is to see how lost men are without a Shepherd. It is to come face to face with the tragic spectacle of a world without God, a world under wrath, a world hastening towards an unquenchable fire. Such a view of the plight of mankind will never be ours till we strive to get 'the mind of Christ' (1 Cor. 2:16) and to see life, as it were, 'through his eyes'. No wonder, when mankind is daily pouring into the bottomless pit, that our Saviour sorrowed and wept over our poor, lost world!

This serious view of life is the only one that can truly claim to be the Christian view. It is far removed from the light-hearted view of life to be seen all around us today. It was the view of Christ and it was the view of all the great preachers throughout the ages. Every real preacher must have the painful experience of Paul at Athens, when, as we are told, 'his spirit was stirred in him' (Acts 17:16). Preaching takes on a new dimension when it comes from the lips of one who sees the human plight through the eyes of a prophet. Reformers, Covenanters and Puritans had it in their day. Methodists and others had it after them. Is this serious view of life really ours today?

If it is not, then we face the great issue of how to get this serious view of life. In answer, we must say that it is to be found in close connexion with attention to heart-religion. As our hearts grow in tenderness, compassion and love to Christ, so they grow in seriousness also. There is no other cure for Laodicean Christianity than to have our heart and its affections purified.

To speak of having in our churches 'great preachers' or 'powerful leaders' who are not at the same time deeply sanctified and spiritual men is to use words without meaning. It is to reduce the gospel and the church to the level of the world and to the level of the cults. The essence of a preacher is that he is first of all a true, and hopefully also, a great man of God. His preaching and his leadership must flow out from the fulness of his communion with God in secret. They are not the results of a studied attempt to impress the audience but the inevitable consequence of their being men who live near to God, and upon God.

If ever our society is to be affected powerfully by the gospel it will be when the preachers and their people are in downright and real earnest for the life of godliness. That can never be unless we strive by grace to have our hearts thoroughly affected and mastered by spiritual truth.

There have of late years been too many religious leaders who have thrived in reputation and influence by a kind of trick. Not being deeply spiritual or serious in themselves, they have sought to influence men by the force of their personality, or by the weight of their reputation, or by a show of learning. Genuine New Testament men are first and foremost men of God 'vigilant, sober, of good behaviour', 'sober, just, holy, temperate, holding fast the faithful word' (1 Tim. 3:2; Titus 1:8-9). These are solid qualities of a soul steeped in sound doctrine, and dwelling much in the secret place.