If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?
Ver. 11. If ye then being evil] Even ye my disciples also; for by nature there is never a better of us. But as the historian said that there were many Marii in one Caesar, so there are many Cains and Judases in the best of us all. Homo est inversus decalogus, saith one: whole evil is in man, and whole man in evil; yea, in the devil, whose works (even in the best of his saints) Christ came to destroy, to dissolve the old frame, and to drive out the prince of darkness, who hath there intrenched himself. And although sin in the saints hath received its death's wound, yet there are still in the best continual stirrings and spruntings thereof (as in dying creatures it useth to be), which (without God's greater grace, and the counter motion of the Holy Spirit within them) would certainly produce most shameful evils. This put St Paul to that pitiful outcry, Romans 7:24, and made him exhort Timothy (though he were a young man rarely mortified) to exhort the younger women with all pureness, or chastity; intimating, that through the corruption of his nature, even while he was exhorting them to chastity, some unchaste motions might steal upon him unawares. a A tree may have withered branches by reason of some deadly blow given to the root, and yet there may remain some sap within, which will bud and blossom forth again. Or as of some wild fig tree, saith a Father, that grows in the walls of a goodly building, and hides the beauty of it, the boughs and branches may be cut or broken off, but the root, which is wrapped into the stones of the building, cannot be taken away till the wall be thrown down and the stones cast one from another. So sin that dwelleth in us hath its roots so inwrapped and intertwined in our natures, that it can never be utterly extirpated; but pride will bud,Ezekiel 7:10, and the fruits of the flesh will be manifest,Galatians 5:19, though we be daily lopping off the branches, and labouring also at the root. Sin is an inmate that will not leave, do what we can, till the house fall upon the head of it; a hereditary disease, and that which is bred in the bone, will never leave the flesh; a pestilent hydra, somewhat akin to those beasts in Daniel, that had "their dominion taken away, yet were their lives prolonged for a time and a season," Daniel 7:12 .
How much more will your Father which is in heaven give good things] Give the Holy Spirit, saith St Luke; Luk 11:13 for nihil bonum sine summo bone, saith St Austin; when God gives his Spirit, he gives all good things, and that which is more than all besides. For it is a spirit of judgment and of burning, of grace and of deprecation, of knowledge, and of the fear of the Lord, of strength and of might, enabling both to resist evil of sin, and to endure evil of sorrow,Isaiah 4:4; Isaiah 11:2; Zechariah 12:10. And for good things, temporal, to trample on them; spiritual, to reach after them. It is a free spirit, setting a man at liberty from the tyranny of sin and terror of wrath, 2 Corinthians 3:17; and oiling his joints, that he may be active and abundant in the Lord's work. This Holy Spirit is signified by those two golden pipes, Zechariah 4:12, through which the two olive branches, the ordinances, empty out of themselves the golden oils of all precious graces into the candlestick, the Church. And how great a favour it is to have the Holy Spirit our inhabitant, seeJoel 2:28,29, where, after God had promised the former and latter rain, floors full of wheat, and vats full of wine and oil, a confidence of all outward comforts and contentments; he adds this as more than all the rest, "I will also pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,"Joel 2:23; Joel 2:28. He will pour out, not drop down only sparingly and pinchingly, as some penny father, but pour out like a liberal householder, as it were, by pails or bucketfuls. And what? my Spirit, that noble Spirit, as David calleth it, that Comforter, Counsellor, conduct into the land of the living. And upon whom? upon all flesh: spirit upon flesh, so brave a thing upon so base a subject. b Next to the love of Christ indwelling in our nature, we may well wonder at the love of the Holy Ghost that will dwell in our defiled souls; that this Spirit of glory and of God, 1 Peter 4:14, will deign to rest upon us, as the cloud did upon the tabernacle. How glad was Lot of the angels, Micah of the Levite, Elisabeth of the mother of her Lord, Lydia of Paul, Zaccheus of Christ, Obededom of the ark! And shall not we be as joyful and thankful for the Holy Spirit, whereby we are sealed (as merchants set their seals upon their wares) until the day of redemption? Ephesians 4:30. If David for outward benefits brake out into, "What is man, that thou art mindful of him?"Psalms 8:4; and Job Job 7:17 for fatherly chastisements, "What is man, that thou shouldest magnify him?" &c., how should this best gift of his Holy Spirit affect and ravish us! since thereby all mercies are seasoned and all crosses sanctified; neither can any man say (experimentally and savingly), "that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost," 1 Corinthians 12:3 .
Give good things to them that ask him] sc. If they ask in faith, bring honest hearts, and lawful petitions, and can wait God's leisure. Let none say here, as the prophet in another case, "I have laboured in vain, and spent my strength for nought," Isaiah 49:4; I have prayed and sped not, the more I pray the worse it is with me. "The manner of our usage here in prison doth change" (saith Bishop Ridley in a letter to Bradford) "as sour ale doth in summer;" and yet who doubts but they prayed earn and earnestly, when they were in Bocardo, that college of Quondams, when those bishops were there prisoners? God is neither unmindful nor unfaithful, but waits the fittest time to show mercy, and will surely "avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them,"Luke 18:7. The seed must have a time to grow downward before it grows upward. And as that seed which is longest covered riseth the first, with most increase; so those prayers which seem lost, are laid up in heaven, and will prove the surest grain. The more we sow of them into God's bosom, the more fruit and comfort we shall reap and receive in our greatest need.
a εν παση αγνεια, 1Ti 5:2
b Psalms 51:12, Opponitur carni spiritus, i.e. res praestantissima rei plane fragili et caducae: quam tamen Dominus dignetur excellenti spiritus sui munere. Beza.