We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity—like perfect charity—will not be attained by any merely human effort. You must ask for God’s help. Even when you have done so it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal ting is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 94.

Paul warns Timothy, that a minister may not be a young scholar, ‘lest being puffed up with pride he fall into the same condemnation as the devil” (1 Tim. 3:6), indicating that it is the special danger of ministers to have high opinions of themselves because of the high dignity of their service. To prevent this, God in his mercy has planned that all true ministers will by some means or other be humbled and emptied themselves. They will be driven to such fear and amazement at the sight of their own wickedness, that they will throw themselves down at Christ’s feet, and deny themselves wholly, acknowledging that anything they are, they are only in him, and rely and trust only on his grace and help.

William Perkins, The Art of Prophesying.

But  I do not think we can stop there either. We are now getting to the point at which different beliefs about the universe lead to different behavior. And it would seem, at first sight,  very sensible to stop before we got there, and just carry on with those parts of morality that all sensible people agree about. But can we? Remember that religion involves a series of statements about facts, which must be either true or false. If they are true, one set of conclusions will follow about the the right sailing of the human fleet: if they are false, quite a different set. For example, let us go back to the man who says that a thing cannot be wrong unless it hurts some other human being. He quite understands that he must not damage the other ships in the convoy, but he honestly thinks that what he does to his own ship is simply his own business. But does it not make a great deal of difference whether his ship is his own property or not? Does it not make a great difference whether I am, so to speak, the landlord of my own mind and body, or only a tenant, responsible to the real landlord? If somebody else made me, for his own purposes, then I shall have a lot of duties which I should not have if I simply belonged to myself.

Mere Christianity, 72f.

What is the good of telling the ships how to steer so as to avoid collisions if, in fact, they are such crazy old tubs that they cannot be steered at all? What is the good of drawing up, on paper, rules for social behaviour, if we know that, in fact, our greed, cowardice, ill temper, and self-conceit are going to prevent us from keeping them? I do not mean for a moment that we ought not think, and think hard, about improvements in our social and economic system. What I do mean is that all that thinking will be mere moonshine unless we realise that nothing but the courage and unselfishness of individuals is ever going to make any system work properly. It is easy enough to remove the particular kinds of graft or bullying that go on under the present system: but as long as men are twisters or bullies they will find some new way of carrying on the old game under the new system. You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society. That is why we must go on to think of the second thing: of morality inside the individual.

Mere Christianity, 72.

You may have noticed that modern people are nearly always thinking about the first thing [fair play and harmony between individuals] and forgetting the other two [internal correction and the purpose of human life]. When people say in the newspapers that we are striving for Christian moral standards, they usually mean that we are striving for kindness and fair play between nations, and classes, and individuals; that is, they are thinking only of the first thing. When a man says about something he wants to do, “It can’t be wrong because it doesn’t do anyone else any harm,” he is thinking only of the first thing. He is thinking it does not matter what the ship is like inside provided that he does not run into the next ship. And it is quite natural, when we start thinking about morality, to begin with the first thing, with social relations. For one thing, the results of bad morals in that sphere are so obvious and press on us every day: war and poverty and graft and lies and shoddy work. And also, as long as you stick to the first thing, there is very little disagreement about morality. Almost all people at all times have agreed (in theory) that human beings ought to be honest and kind and helpful to one another. But though it is natural to begin with all that, if our thinking about morality stops there, we might just as well not have thought at all. Unless we go on to the second thing—the tidying up inside each human being—we are only deceiving ourselves.

Mere Christianity, 71f.

Morality, then, seems to be concerned with three things. Firstly, with fair play and harmony between individuals. Secondly, with what might be called tidying up or harmonising the things inside each individual. Thirdly, with the general purpose of human life as a whole: what man was made for: what course the whole fleet ought to be on: what tune the conductor of the band wants it to play.

Mere Christianity, 71.

Question: In what do the godly reveal their holiness?

Answer:

1. in hating ‘the garment spotted by the flesh’ (Jude 23). The godly set themselves against evil, both in purpose and in practice. They are fearful of that which looks like sin (1 Thess. 5:22). The appearance of evil may prejudice a weak Christian. If it does not defile a man’s own conscience, it may offend his brother’s conscience; and to sin against him is to sin against Christ (1 Cor. 8:12). A godly man will not go as far as he may, lest he go further than he should.

Thomas Watson, The Godly Man’s Picture, (1666; rpt. BoT, 1992), 33.

Pastor Minnick has several times suggested prefacing a time of Bible study with the reading (and praying) of a stanza from Psalm 119. Reading these stanzas prior to study in the latter part of Exodus has proved remarkably helpful. This section of Exodus (and much of Leviticus and Numbers which follows) can seem as dry as the wilderness Israel was traversing if it is read superficially.

Yet consider some of the things the Psalmist says in the opening stanzas of this Psalm: “My soul is consumed with longing for your rules at all times” (119:20). “Your testimonies are my delight; they are my counselors” (119:24). “In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches” (119:14). “Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the LORD. Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart” (119:1-2). Surely when the Psalmist wrote of God’s rules and his law, the Pentateuch was at the forefront of his mind.

For the Psalmist, the law was not dry. It was like a stream of water that causes a tree to prosper with unwithered leaves and abundant fruit. The man who delights in the law so that he meditates on it day and night is a blessed man (Ps. 1:1-4).

How can the psalmist be so bold as to declare, “I will keep your statues” (Ps. 119:8)?

Note how he concludes the verse:  “do not utterly forsake me.”

“Heart-work is hard work, indeed. To shuffle over religious duties with a  loose and heedless spirit will cost no great pains, but to set yourself before the Lord, and tie up your loose and vain thoughts to a constant and serious attendance upon Him, will cost you something. To attain a facility and dexterity of language in prayer and put your meaning into apt and decent expressions is easy; but to get your heart broken for sin while you are confessing it and melted with free grace while you are blessing God for it, to be really ashamed and humbled through the apprehensions of God’s infinite holiness, and to keep your heart in this frame not only in, but after duty will surely cost you some groans and travailing pain of soul. To repress outward acts of sin and compose the external part of your life in a laudable and comely manner is no great matter. Even carnal persons, by the force of common principles, can do this. But to kill the root of corruption within, to set and keep up a holy government over your thoughts, to have all things lie straight and orderly in the heart, this is not easy.”

John Flavel, Keeping the Heart (SDG, 1998), 9f.