It is plain that man’s salvation is the subject of the text.  But is man lost?  And if lost, in what sense is he lost?  We read in Matt. 18:11, “For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.”  It is man’s life that is lost—­natural or bodily life, and supernatural or spiritual life.  But is man’s bodily life lost?  It is, “for death hath passed upon all men.”  The sentence of bodily death:  “It is appointed unto man once to die.”  “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”  If any supposes the death of the body to be a small thing, let such a one go to a well-filled graveyard and pass one hour in serious meditation in this silent city of the dead.  Let him think of the tears that have fallen there, of the sighs of anguish that have reluctantly escaped from broken hearts.  Let him think of the innocent beauty and loveliness that lie buried there, of the hopes and the joys that have been driven from the heart by the hand of the destroyer; and then let him ask himself if “the wages of sin” is a thing of small account.  Let his mind run a little further, and he can but see that the graveyard’s solemn tale to the end of the world must be yearly told.  Death here writes his name anew every passing season in the fresh mounds raised above the dead.  And not only so, but the voice of reason whispers into the ear of every passer-by the solemn word, “This place is waiting for you.”

Now, an apostle says:  “It doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.”  And another apostle, as if commenting on this passage says:  “He shall change our vile bodies that they may be fashioned like unto his glorious body.”  I now ask, Does not this show that the salvation in the text is truly a great salvation?  But I have as yet but touched the hem of the garment.  And, indeed, in our low and contracted state of mental power here we are barely able with our highest and broadest reaches of thought to lay hold of more than the hem of salvation’s garment.  “Heaven is his throne, and the earth is the footstool of his feet.”  What the footstool is to the throne, nay to him that sits upon it, such are our highest and purest conceptions to the salvation which the Lord has provided.  “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to know what God hath provided for them that love him.”

I stated that man’s life is lost.  I have said something about the bodily life that is lost by sin.  I now turn to say something about the spiritual life that is lost by sin.  Paul says, and I am sure he means what he says:  “To be carnally minded is death.”  Now, what is it to be carnally minded?  Or, in other words, what is the carnal mind?  Paul answers in a general way, that it is ENMITY against God.  Such a degree of enmity that all who are carnally minded cannot and do not love God, nor take pleasure in his service.  Life is love; and love is life.  The spiritual life that is lost by sin is what Jesus came to redeem and save, and this life is man’s love.  Man’s LOVE is perverted.  It is turned away from the Lord God and the neighbor, and directed to self and the world.  And when a man loves himself more than God, and the world with its sinful lusts and pleasures more than he does his neighbor, he is carnally minded.