a new tenant

There is no safety except in “thorough” Christianity. To lay aside open sin is nothing unless grace reigns in our hearts. To cease to do evil is a small matter if we do not also learn to do good. The house must not only be swept and whitewashed, but also a new tenant must be introduced, or else the leprosy may yet appear again in the walls. The outward life must not only be decorated with the formal trappings of religion, but the power of vital religion must also be experienced in the inward man. The devil must not only be cast out, but the Holy Spirit must also take his place. Christ must dwell in our hearts by faith. We must not only be moralized but also spiritualized. We must not only be reformed but also born again.

Let us lay these things to heart. Many professing Christians, it may be feared, are deceiving themselves. They are not what they once were, and so they flatter themselves that they are what they ought to be. They are no longer heinous sinners, and so they dream that they are Christians. They do not see that they have only changed one kind of devil for another. They are governed by a decent, pharisaical devil instead of an audacious, riotous, unclean devil. But the tenant within is the devil still. And their last end will be worse than their first. From such an end may we be delivered!

—J.C. Ryle, ‘Expository Thoughts on Luke’