The Christian in Complete Honour by William Grinnell. Ephesians chapter 6 verse 14b. Having your loins. Chapter 6. Of the second kind of truth, truth of heart, or sincerity, with the kinds of it, and in particular, of moral uprightness, together with its deficiency, and a double caution after this, the one to the saints, the other to the morally upright person. We come now to the second kind of truth commended to the Christian under the notion of the soldier's girdle, and that is truth of heart, where it would be known, first, what I mean by truth of heart. Secondly, why compare it to a girdle? For the first, by truth of heart, I understand sincerity. So taken in scripture, Hebrews 10, 22, let us draw near with the true heart, that is, with a sincere heart. We have them often conjoined, and one explaining the other. Joshua 24, verse 14. Fear the Lord, and serve Him in sincerity and truth. 1 Corinthians 5, 8. We read of the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Hypocrisy is a lie, with a fair cover over it. An insincere heart is a false heart. The inward frame and motion of the heart comports not with the profession and behavior of the outward man, like a clock. whose wheels within go not as the hand points without. Secondly, sincerity or truth of heart may fitly be compared to a girdle in regard of the two-fold use and end for which a girdle, especially the soldier's belt, is worn. First, a girdle is used as an ornament put on uppermost to cover the joints of the armor, which would, if seen, could cause some uncomeliness. Here, at the loins I mean, those pieces of armor for the defense of the lower parts of the body are fastened to the upper. No, because they cannot be so closely knit and clasped, but there will be some little gaping between piece and piece, therefore they used to put over those parts a broad girdle. which covered all the uncomeliness. Now, sincerity does the same for the Christian what the girdle does for the soldier. The soldier's graces are not so close, nor his life so exact, but in the best there are found infirmities and defects, which are as so many gapings and clefts in the armor, but sincerity covers all, that he is neither put to shame for them, nor exposed to danger by them. Secondly, the girdle was used for strength. By this the loins are studded and united, and the soldier made stronger to fight or march. As a garment, the closer it sits, the warmer it is. So the belt, the closer it is girthed, the more strength the loins feel. Hence God, threatening to enfeeble and weaken a person or people, saith, their loins shall be loosened. Isaiah chapter 14, verse 1. I will loose the loins of kings. And Job chapter 12 verse 21, He wickedneth the strength of the mighty, he looseth the girdle of the strong. Now sincerity may well be compared in this respect to the soldier's girdle. It is a grace that doth gird the soul with strength and makes it mighty to do or suffer. Indeed it is the very strength of every grace, so much hypocrisy as is found, cleaving to our graces so much weakness, It is sincere faith that is the strong faith, sincere love that is the mighty love. Hypocrisy is to grace as the worm is to the oak, the rust to the iron. It weakens them because it corrupts them. The metaphor thus opened affords these two doctrinal conclusions, in handling of which I shall compass what I have to say further of this piece of armor. Doctrine one, that sincerity or truth of heart in our ways covers all the Christians' uncomeliness. Doctrine 2, the truth of heart or sincerity, is of excellent use to strengthen the Christian in his whole course. Doctrine 1, to begin with the first, sincerity, covers all our uncomeliness. In handling of this point, this is our method. First, to inquire which is the truth and sincerity that doth this. Secondly, we shall inquire what uncomelinesses they are that sincerity covers. Third, how sincerity covers them. Fourthly, why sincerity doth this, or some account given for all this. First, of the first, let us inquire which is that truth in sincerity that covers all uncomelinesses and deficiencies in the Christian. Here we must distinguish of a twofold sincerity, one moral, another evangelical. First, there is a moral truth and uprightness which we may call a field flower, because it may be found growing in the wild and waste of nature. It cannot be denied, but one that hath not a dram of satisfying saving grace may show some kind of uprightness and truth in his actions. God himself comes in as a witness for Amulek. that what he did in taking Sarah was in the uprightness of his heart. Genesis 20 verse 6. I know, saith God, that thou didst this in the integrity of thy heart. That is, thou didst mean honestly as to this particular business, and didst not intend any wrong to Abraham, whose wife she is, unknown to thee. Joab, though a bloody man, yet dealt very uprightly and squarely with David. concerning the rendition of Rabbah, R-A-B-B-A-H, when he had a fair advantage of stealing away the honor from his prince to himself. Many such instances may be given of men that have been great strangers to a work of grace on their hearts. But this is not the uprightness that we mean in the point laid down. It doth indeed render a person very lovely and amiable before men to be thus upright and honest in his dealings. But methinks I hear the Lord saying concerning such, as once he did to Samuel of Eliab. First Samuel chapter 16 verse 7. Look not on their countenance, so as to think these are they which he accepts. No, he hath refused them. For the Lord seeth not as man seeth. God's eye looks deeper than man's. They are two great defects in this uprightness which God rejects it for. First, it grows not from a good root, a renewed heart. This is a hair on the moral man's pin which blurs and blots his copy when he writes fairest. It is like the leprosy of Naaman, that same, but he was a leper. took away the honor of his greatness at court and proudness in the field, so here it stains the fairest actions of a mere moral man. But he is a Christless, graceless person. The uprightness of such does others more good in this world than themselves in another. They are, by this moral honesty, profitable to those that have civil commerce with them. but it doth not render themselves acceptable to God. Indeed, had not God left some authority of conscience to awe and keep them, they have no grace within some boundaries of honesty. This world would have been no more habitable for the saints than the forest of wild beasts is now for man. And such is the uprightness of men, void of sanctifying grace. that they are rather rid by an overpowering light of conscience that scares them, and sweetly laid by any inward principle inclining them to take complacency in that which is good. Hamelik himself, for whom, as we heard, God so apologized, yet it let to know that his honesty in that matter came rather from God's restraint upon him than any real goodness in him." Genesis chapter 20. I also withheld thee from sitting against me, therefore suffered I thee not to touch her. Secondly, this moral uprightness falls short of the chief and indispensably necessary to make a person upright indeed. This is the glory of God." 1 Corinthians 10.31. Whatever we do, do all to the glory of God. The archer may lose his game by shooting short as well as shooting wide. The gross hypocrite shoots wide. The uprightest moralist shoots short. He may and oft does take his aim right as to the particular and immediate end of his action. but ever fails in regard of the ultimate end. Thus, a servant may be faithful to his master, scorn to wrong him of a farling, yea, cordially seek his master's prophet, and yet God never looked at or thought of in all this, and so all worth nothing, because God is left out of the story, who is principally to be regarded." Ephesians chapter 6 verse 7 servants are commanded to do their service as to God, not to man. That is, not only, but chiefly to man. It is true the master is not to be looked at in the servant's duty, but in his duty only as it leads to the glory of God. He must not, when he hath desire to please his earthly master, sit down as at his journey's end, but pass on as the eye doth through the air and clouds to the sun, where it is terminated. So he to God is the chief, and why he is dutiful and faithful to man. Now, no principle can lead this soul so high as to aim at God, but that which comes from God. See both these excellently couched together. Philippians 1.10-11 that ye may be sincere, being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. Where you may observe, first, that the sincerity of the first stamp is that which brings forth fruits of righteousness to the praise of God, that is, where the glory of God is the end of all our actions. Secondly, that such fruit cannot be borne but by Christ. The soul must be planted into Christ before It can be thus sincere to bear fruits of righteousness to the praise of God. Hence, these fruits of righteousness are said to be by Jesus Christ. What men do by themselves, they do for themselves. They eat their own fruit to devour the praise of what they do. The Christian, only that doth all by Christ, doth all for Christ, he hath his sap from Christ, into whom he is grafted. that makes him fruitful, and therefore he reserves all the fruit he bears for him. Thus, we see how this moral uprightness is itself fundamentally defective, and therefore cannot be that girdle which hides and covers all other defects. Yet, before I pass on to the other, I would leave a twofold caution for improvement of what I have been said concerning this uprightness. The one is this to the sincere Christian. The other is to such as have no more than a moral uprightness. Custom 1. To the sincere Christian, may there be found a kind of uprightness among men that are carnal and destitute of God's sanctifying grace. Oh, then look you to it, in whose heart dwell the spirit of grace, that you be not put to shame by those that are graceless, which you must needs be when you are taken tardy in those things that they cannot be charged for. Many among them there are that scorn to lie. Shall a saint be taken in an untruth? Their moral principles bind them over to the peace and will not suffer them to wrong their neighbor? And can cheating, outreaching, oppression follow a saint's hand? Except your righteousness exceeds their best, you are not Christians. And can you let them exceed you? in those things which, when they are done, leave them short of Christ in heaven. It is time for the scholar to throw off his gown and disclaim the name of an academic when every schoolboy is able to dunce and pose him, and for him also to lay aside his profession and let the world know what he is, yea, what he never was, that can let a mere civil man with his weak brow only backed with moral principles outshoot him that pretends to Christ in his grace. I confess it sometimes so falls out that a saint under a temptation may be outstripped by one that is carnal in a particular case, as a lackey that is excellent footman may, from some prick or present lameness in his foot, be left behind by one that at another time should not be able to come near him. We have too many sorrowful examples of moral men outstripping even the saint. At a time when under a temptation, a noble passage we meet with concerning Amalek's speech to Sarah after her dissembling and equivocating speech that Abraham was her brother, Genesis 20, 16. And then to Sarah he said, that is, Amalek said to her, Behold, I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver. Behold, he is to thee a covering of the eyes unto all that are with thee, and with all other. Now mark the words which follow. Thus she was reproved. How? Where lies the reproof? Here are none but good works and money to boot also. He promises protection to her and Abraham. None should wrong him in wronging her. and tells her what he had freely given Abraham. Well, for all this we shall find a sharp reproof, though lapping up in these sweet words and silvered over with his thousand pieces. First, she was reproved by the uprightness of Amalek in that business wherein she had sinfully disassembled, that he who was a stranger to the true God in his worship should be so square and honest as to deliver her up untouched, when once he knew her to be another man's wife. And not only so, but instead of falling into a passion of anger and taking up thoughts of revenge against them for putting this cheat upon him, which, having them under his power, had not been strange for a prince to have done, for him to forget all this and rather show such kindness and high bounty to them, this must need send a sharper proof home to Sarah's heart, especially considering that he, a heathen, did all this and she, One called to the knowledge of God and covenant with God, and the wife of a prophet was so poor-spirited as to fear of a danger that only her husband, which only her husband in that without any great grounds surmised to complete two sins in one clap, dissembled and also the hazard of the loss of a chastity. the least of which was worse than the thing they were so afraid of. These things, I say, lay together, amounted to such a reproof, as no doubt made her and Abraham, too, heartily ashamed before God and man. Again, Amalek in calling Abraham her brother, not her husband, did give her a sharp rebuke, putting her in mind how that the word he had been deceived by them. Thus godly Sarah was reproved by a profane king, O Christians, take heed of putting words into the mouths of wicked men to reprove you withal. They cannot reprove you, but they reproach God. Christ is put to shame with you and by you for the good namesake of Christ, which cannot but be dearer to you, if saints, than your lives. Look to your walking, especially your civil converse with the men of the world. They know not what you do in your closet. Carry not what you are in the congregation. They judge you by what you are when you have to do with them. As they find you in your shop, bargains, promises, and such like, so they think of you in your profession. Labor therefore this uprightness to men. By this you may win some and judge others. that avects the wicked world with strict walking as Lot did the Sodomites, then set them on work to mock and reproach thee in thy profession by any scandal as David did by his sad fall. They that will not follow the light of thy holiness will soon spy the thief in the candle and point at it." Caution 2. The second word of caution is to those that are morally upright and know more. Take heed, this uprightness proves not a snare to thee, and keeps thee from getting evangelical uprightness. I am sure it was so to the young man in the gospel. In all likelihood he might have been better, had he not been so good. His honesty and moral uprightness was his undoing, or rather his conceit of them to cast himself in them. Better he had been a publican driven to Christ in the sense of his sin, than a Pharisee kept from him with an opinion of his integrity. These, these are the weeds with which many thinking to save themselves by, keeping themselves under water to their perdition. There is more hope of a fool, Solomon tells us, than of a wise one in his own conceit, and of the greatest sinner than of one conceited of his righteousness. If once the disease take the brain, the cure must needs be the more difficult, no offending Christ to one in the frenzy. Art thou one kept from these unrighteous ways wherein others walk? May be thou art honest and upright in thy course, and scornest to be found false in any of thy dealings. Bless God for it, but take heed of blessing thyself in it. There is the danger. This is one way of being righteous over much, a dangerous pit of which Solomon warns all that travel on heaven's road." Ecclesiastics 7.16. There is undoing in this overdoing as well as in any underdoing. For so it follows in the same verse, Why shouldst thou destroy thyself? Thou art not, proud man, so fair for heaven as thou flatterest thyself. A man upon the top of one hill may seem very nigh to the top of another, and yet can never come there, except he comes down from that where he is. The amount of thy civil righteousness and moral uprightness on which thou standest so confidently seems, perhaps, level to thy proud eye to God's holy hill in heaven, yea, so nigh that thou thinkest to step over from one to the other with ease. But let me tell thee, it is too great a stride for thee to take. Thy safer way and nearer were to come down from thy mountain of self-confidence, where Satan hath set thee on a design to break thy neck and to go the ordinary road, in which all that ever got heaven went, and that is by laboring to get an interest in Christ and His righteousness, which is provided on purpose for the creature to wrap up his naked soul in, and to place his faith on, and thus thy righteousness, which before was but of the same form with the heathen's moral honesty, may commence, or rather be baptized, Christian, and become evangelical grace. But let me tell thee this before I dismiss thee. that thou canst not lay hold of Christ's righteousness, till thou hast let fall the lie, thy own righteousness, which hitherto thou hast held so fast in thy right hand. When Christ called the blind man to Him, Mark 10, 50, it is said, He, casting away his garment, rose and came to Jesus. So thou do thou so, and then come and welcome. End of chapter 6, having been read by Peter John Percys. None of my audio is a copywriter. Please feel free to make as many copies as you desire to the power of God.