I. First, then, the text tells us, no inheritance without sonship.

In general terms, spiritual blessings can only be given to those who are in a certain spiritual condition.  Always and necessarily the capacity or organ of reception precedes and determines the bestowment of blessings.  The light falls everywhere, but only the eye drinks it in.  The lower orders of creatures are shut out from all participation in the gifts which belong to the higher forms of life, simply because they are so made and organised as that these cannot find entrance into their nature.  They are, as it were, walled up all round; and the only door they have to communicate with the outer world is the door of sense.  Man has higher gifts simply because he has higher capacities.  All creatures are plunged in the same boundless ocean of divine beneficence and bestowment, and into each there flows just that, and no more, which each, by the make and constitution that God has given it, is capable of receiving.  In the man there are more windows and doors opened out than in the animal He is capable of receiving intellectual impulses, spiritual emotions; he can think, and feel, and desire, and will, and resolve:  and so he stands on a higher level than the beast below him.

Not otherwise is it in regard to God’s kingdom, ’which is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.’  The gift and blessing of salvation is primarily a spiritual gift, and only involves outward consequences secondarily and subordinately.  It mainly consists in the heart being at peace with God, in the whole soul being filled with divine affections, in the weight and bondage of transgression being taken away, and substituted by the impulse and the life of the new love.  Therefore, neither God can give, nor man can receive, that gift upon any other terms, than just this, that the heart and nature be fitted and adapted for it.  Spiritual blessings require a spiritual capacity for the reception of them; or, as my text says, you cannot have the inheritance unless you are sons.  If salvation consisted simply in a change of place; if it were merely that by some expedient or arrangement, an outward penalty, which was to fall or not to fall at the will of an arbitrary judge, were prevented from coming down, why then, it would be open to Him who held the power of letting the sword fall, to decide on what terms He might choose to suspend its infliction.  But inasmuch as God’s deliverance is not a deliverance from a mere arbitrary and outward punishment:  inasmuch as God’s salvation, though it be deliverance from the penalty as well as from the guilt of sin, is by no means chiefly a deliverance from outward consequences, but mainly a removal of the nature and disposition that makes these outward consequences certain,—­therefore a man cannot be saved, God’s love cannot save him, God’s justice will not save him, God’s power stands back from saving him, upon any other condition than this that his soul shall be adapted and prepared for the reception and enjoyment of the blessing of a spiritual salvation.