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I. BELIEVERS, IN THE MIDST OF ALL THEIR COMPLAINTS, MAY YET FIND MANY EVIDENCES OF TRUE GRACE IN THEIR HEARTS.

1. There are few but generally have the evidences hinted at in my text — an hatred to sin, a love to holiness. Whenever a godly man sins, he always does the evil which he allows not; but when wicked men do evil, they do it with both hands earnestly. The wicked, too, love evil, but the Christian ever consents to the law that it is good.

2. Now this consent is the effect of likeness or similarity. A man must be changed into the very image of the law before he will consent to it that it is good. The soul must renounce all obedience to the old law of sin, and give up itself wholly to receive the impression of the law of God; and then, having the law written upon his heart, he will inwardly consent to it and outwardly obey it.

3. The image thus impressed abideth; and where that is, there must be ground of evidence that such an one belongs to God. For as in the old creation you are constrained to confess there must be some first cause; so, wherever we find the new creature, we ought to conclude that this is the work of God,

II. THESE EVIDENCES ARE NOT ALWAYS PLAIN AND LEGIBLE. Weakness of grace, strength of corruption, assaults of temptation, have a sad tendency to obscure the evidences even of the best of saints. So it was with Job (Job 23:8-11).

III. IT SOMETIMES REQUIRES THE EXERCISE OF GREAT WISDOM IN ORDER TO FIND OUT THOSE EVIDENCES WHICH MAY REMOVE ALL DOUBTS AND FEARS. This was so even with the apostle.

IV. IF A MAN, UNDER ALL HIS WEAKNESS AND COMPLAINTS, CAN FIND IN HIS HEART LOVE TO THE LAW OF GOD, HE MAY — NAY, HE OUGHT TO — LOOK UPON IT AS AN INDISPUTABLE EVIDENCE OF HIS BEING REGENERATE. This is the grand point the apostle would arrive at; with this conclusion he seems to rest satisfied.

(J. Stafford.)

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KJV: For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.

WEB: For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am fleshly, sold under sin.