The Life of God.
I. Let us see what St. Paul means when he talks about the Gentiles in his day. For that also has to do with us. I said that every man, Christian or heathen, has the same duty, and is bound to do the same right; every man, Christian or heathen, if he sins, breaks his duty in the same way, and does the same wrong. There is but one righteousness: the life of God; there is but one sin, and that is being alienated from the life of God. The one disease to which every man is liable is that we are every one of us worse than we ought to be, worse than we know how to be, and, strangest of all, worse than we wish and like to be. Just as far as we are like the heathen of old, we shall be worse than we know how to be. For we are all ready enough to turn heathens again at any moment, my friends; and the best Christian in this church knows best that what I say is true: that he is beset by the very same temptations which ruined the old heathens, and that if he gave way to them a moment they would ruin him likewise. For what does St. Paul say was the matter with the old heathens?
II. "Their understanding was darkened." But what part of it? What was it that they had got dark about and could not understand? For in some matters they were as clever as we and cleverer. What part of their understanding was it which was darkened? St. Paul tells us in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. It was their hearts their reason, as we should say. It was about God and the life of God that they were dark. They had not been always dark about God, but they were darkened; they grew more and more dark about Him generation after generation; they gave themselves up more and more to their corrupt and fallen nature, and so the children grew worse than their fathers, and their children, again, worse than them, till they had lost all notion of what God was like.
III. The heathens of old might have known that, if they had chosen to open their eyes and see. But they would not see. They were dark, cruel, and unloving, and therefore they fancied that God was dark, cruel, and unloving also. They did not love love, and therefore they did not love God, for God is love. And therefore they did not love loving; they did not enjoy loving; and so they lost the Spirit of God, which is the Spirit of love. And therefore they did not love each other, but lived in hatred, and suspicion, and selfishness, and darkness. They were but heathen. But if even they ought to have known that God was love, how much more we! For we know of a deed of God's love, such as those poor heathen never dreamed of. God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son to die for it. Then God showed what our eternal life is: to know Him who is love and Jesus Christ, whom He sent to show forth His love; then God showed that it is the duty of, and in the power of, every man to live the life of God, the life of love.
C. Kingsley, Sermons for the Times,p. 198.