How to Cast Out Impure Affection

Love What Is Good

The object of the gospel is both to pacify the sinner’s conscience and to purify his heart; and it is of importance to observe that what mars the one of these objects mars the other also. The best way of casting out an impure affection is to admit a pure one, and, by the love of what is good, to expel the love of what is evil.

Thus it is that the freer the gospel, the more sanctifying is the gospel; and the more it is received as a doctrine of grace, the more will it be felt as a doctrine according to godliness. This is one of the secrets of the Christian life, that the more a man holds of God as a pensioner, the greater is the payment of service that he renders back again. On the tenure of “Do this and live,” a spirit of fearfulness is sure to enter; and the jealousies of a legal bargain chase away all confidence from the intercourse between God and man; and the creature, striving to be square and even with his Creator, is, in fact, pursuing all the while his own selfishness instead of God’s glory; and with all the conformities that he labors to accomplish, the soul of obedience is not there, the mind is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed under such an economy ever can be.

It is only when, as in the gospel, acceptance is bestowed as a present, without money and without price, that the security that man feels in God is placed beyond the reach of disturbance—or, that he can repose in him, as one friend reposes in another; or, that any liberal and generous understanding can be established betwixt them, the one party rejoicing over the other to do him good, the other finding that the truest gladness of his heart lies in the impulse of a gratitude by which it is awakened to the charms of a new moral existence.

Salvation by grace—salvation by free grace— salvation not of works, but according to the mercy of God—salvation on such a footing is not more indispensable to the deliverance of our persons from the hand of justice than it is to the deliverance of our hearts from the chill and the weight of ungodliness. Retain a single shred or fragment of legality with the gospel and we raise a topic of distrust between man and God. We take away from the power of the gospel to melt and to conciliate. For this purpose, the freer it is, the better it is.

That very peculiarity that so many dread as the germ of antinomianism is, in fact, the germ of a new spirit and a new inclination against it. Along with the light of a free gospel does there enter the love of the gospel, which, in proportion as we impair the freeness, we are sure to chase away. And never does the sinner find within himself so mighty a moral transformation as when, under the belief that he is saved by grace, he feels constrained thereby to offer his heart a devoted thing and to deny ungodliness. To do any work in the best manner, we should make use of the fittest tools for it.

The Expulsive Power of a New Affection

Thomas Chalmers

Thomas Chalmers exhorts readers to remove the tangles of sin through the expulsive power of a new and greater affection—desiring God.

And we trust that what has been said may serve in some degree for the practical guidance of those who would like to reach the great moral achievement of our text—but feel that the tendencies and desires of nature are too strong for them. We know of no other way by which to keep the love of the world out of our hearts than to keep in our hearts the love of God—and no other way by which to keep our hearts in the love of God than building ourselves up on our most holy faith. That denial of the world that is not possible to him that dissents from the gospel testimony is possible, even as all things are possible, to him that believeth. To try this without faith is to work without the right tool of the right instrument. But faith worketh by love, and the way of expelling from the heart the love that transgresseth the law is to admit into its receptacles the love that fulfilleth the law.

Live to the Lovelier World

Conceive a man to be standing on the margin of this green world; and that, when he looked toward it, he saw abundance smiling upon every field, and all the blessings that earth can afford scattered in profusion throughout every family, and the light of the sun sweetly resting upon all the pleasant habitations, and the joys of human companionship brightening many a happy circle of society—conceive this to be the general character of the scene upon one side of his contemplation; and that, on the other, beyond the verge of the godly planet on which he was situated, he could descry nothing but a dark and fathomless unknown.

Think you that he would bid a voluntary adieu to all the brightness and all the beauty that were before him upon earth, and commit himself to the frightful solitude away from it? Would he leave its peopled dwelling places and become a solitary wanderer through the fields of nonentity? If space offered him nothing but a wilderness, would he for it abandon the homebred scenes of life and of cheerfulness that lay so near and exerted such a power of urgency to detain him? Would not he cling to the regions of sense, and of life, and of society, and shrinking away from the desolation that was beyond it, would not he be glad to keep his firm footing on the territory of this world and to take shelter under the silver canopy that was stretched over it?

We know of no other way by which to keep the love of the world out of our hearts than to keep in our hearts the love of God.

But if, during the time of his contemplation, some happy island of the blest had floated by, and there had burst upon his senses the light of its surpassing glories and its sounds of sweeter melody—and he clearly saw that there a purer beauty rested upon every field and a more heartfelt joy spread itself among all the families; and he could discern there a peace and a piety and a benevolence that put a moral gladness into every bosom and united the whole society in one rejoicing sympathy with each other and with the beneficent Father of them all; and could he further see that pain and mortality were there unknown; and above all, that signals of welcome were hung out, and an avenue of communication was made for him—perceive you not that what was before the wilderness would become the land of invitation, and that now the world would be the wilderness?

What unpeopled space could not do can be done by space teeming with beatific scenes and beatific society. And let the existing tendencies of the heart be what they may to the scene that is near and visibly around us, still if another stood revealed to the prospect of man, either through the channel of faith or through the channel of his senses, then, without violence done to the constitution of his moral nature, may he die unto the present world and live to the lovelier world that stands in the distance away from it.

This article is adapted from The Expulsive Power of a New Affection by Thomas Chalmers.

Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847) was a Scottish preacher, theologian, and author who served as professor of theology at the University of St. Andrews and the University of Edinburgh. His many writings were primarily focused on the application of Christian ethics to the social issues of his day.

The Reason We Don't Feel the Weight of Our Sin

Dane Ortlund

April 12, 2020

Just as we can hardly fathom the divine ferocity awaiting those out of Christ, it is equally true that we can hardly fathom the divine tenderness already resting now on those in Christ.