in himself by putting on good.  The true way to empty the heart of sin is to fill the heart with righteousness.  The lances of the light, according to the significant old Greek myth, slew pythons.  The armour is ‘righteousness on the right hand and on the left.’  Stick to plain, simple, homely duties, and you will find that they will defend your heart against many a temptation.  A flask that is full of rich wine may be plunged into the saltest ocean, and not a drop will find its way in.  Fill your heart with righteousness; your lives—­let them glisten in the light, and the light will be your armour.  God is light, wherefore God cannot be tempted with evil.  ’Walk in the light, as He is in the light’ ... and ’the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.’

But there is another side to that thought, for if you will look, at your leisure, to the closing words of the chapter, you will find the Apostle’s own exposition of what putting on the armour of light means.  ’Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ’—­that is his explanation of putting on ‘the armour of light.’  For ’once ye were darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord,’ and it is in the measure in which we are united to Him, by the faith which binds us to Him, and by the love which works obedience and conformity, that we wear the invulnerable armour of light.  Christ Himself is, and He supplies to all, the separate graces which Christian men can wear.  We may say that He is ‘the panoply of God,’ as Paul calls it in Ephesians, and when we wear Him, and only in the measure in which we do wear Him, in that measure are we clothed with it.  And so the last thing that I would point out here is that the obedience to these commands requires continual effort.

The Christians in Rome, to whom Paul was writing, were no novices in the Christian life.  Long ago many of them had been brought to Him.  But the oldest Christian amongst them needed the exhortation as much as the rawest recruit in the ranks.  Continual renewal day by day is what we need, and it will not be secured without a great deal of work.  Seeing that there is a ‘putting off’ to go along with the ‘putting on,’ the process is a very long one. ’’Tis a lifelong task till the lump be leavened.’  It is a lifelong task till we strip off all the rags of this old self; and ‘being clothed,’ are not ’found naked.’  It takes a lifetime to fathom Jesus; it takes a lifetime to appropriate Jesus, it takes a lifetime to be clothed with Jesus.  And the question comes to each of us, have we ’put off the old man with his deeds’?  Are we daily, as sure as we put on our clothes in the morning, putting on Christ the Lord?