What is a vice?
Vice is the word people use for a settled bad habit — drinking, greed, temper, impurity — the fault a man keeps coming back to. The writers in this collection ask two harder questions about it: where does a vice come from, and can a person get free of it by simply giving it up?
The world's definition
Darby quoted a writer who tried to define vice without God, measuring it purely by how much happiness it produces:
J. N. DarbyVirtue is the careful choice of the course of action that brings the most intense and lasting happiness, and taking up a line of conduct that destroys happiness is vice… Virtue is selfishness acting with good judgment; vice is selfishness acting ignorantly and blindly. A man gets drunk either because he does not know that heavy drinking ruins his health, or because he knows so little about weighing things up that he supposes a small pleasure now is better than a great happiness later.
Darby's verdict on that page was blunt: read it if you want to see the destruction of every principle and every right feeling.
One root, many forms
Scripture does not grade faults the way we do. Commenting on the list of the works of the flesh in Galatians 5, one writer points out how strange the arrangement is:
W. W. FeredayWho but the Spirit of God would have given the unholy list like this? Who but He would have placed wrath, quarrelling and the rest in the same class as such notoriously vile offences as sexual sin, murder and drunkenness? Man would have sorted them, arranging them in the order in which they looked serious to him… But the Holy Spirit does not. He traces them all to the one root… The spring being impure, everything that flows from it is offensive to God.
The slavery underneath
The man with a vice usually thinks of himself as free — he is doing what he likes. Jesus says the opposite:
J. G. BellettWhat a divine thought that is in John 8 — "Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin." Instead of being a man of pleasure and independent, the Lord says that the man who gratifies his lust is a slave, a captive; he serves sin.
And the chain is not only round the man's wrists; it falls on his back:
Numerical Bible NotesOut of men's vices are hatched the crowds that prey on them… Man's pleasant vices are the whips that scourge him.
The vices nobody calls vices
If vice meant only the coarse and public sins, most respectable people would be safe. Writing on Psalm 1, one commentator describes the crowd who are clear of those sins and still leave God out entirely:
The Bible TreasuryIt takes in all the sayings of the decent, reputable, but ungodly part of society; people free from gross vices, but with whom self is the mainspring — the main object. Even with their freedom from gross vices, this is the case. They would not, for the sake of their own reputation, go into a low tavern; but neither would they, for the same reason, attend a small prayer meeting.
Breaking a habit is not the cure
A man can drop a vice and still be exactly what he was. Commentators are careful here: they do not deny that reform is real or that it improves a life, but they deny that it reaches the nature underneath.
C KnappA man may escape the pollutions of the world by reformation. New birth alone can turn us from the world itself. Conversion turns us into sheep. The nature of a sheep is clean; that of a pig is unclean… So you may reform and make religious the sinner by applying the word of God from the outside. But if he is not "born again," he will return, in nearly every case, to his old habits.
Virtue: courage, not niceness
The opposite of vice in the New Testament is not a mild, harmless character. The word translated "virtue" carries the sense of energy:
Hamilton SmithSecondly, with our faith we shall need virtue, or spiritual courage and energy (as the word implies). By this moral energy we shall be able to refuse the working of the flesh within, and to resist the devil without. To live a practical life of godliness in a world like this will demand spiritual energy to deny ourselves, refuse the world, and resist Satan.
Summary
- Root. The Spirit lists temper and quarrelling beside drunkenness and murder, tracing every one of them back to the same impure spring — so no vice is a stand-alone fault.
- Chain. The man who gratifies his desire is not free but a slave; each indulgence is another link.
- Lash. What a man treats as his pleasure turns into the whip that scourges him.
- Respectability. Being clear of the gross vices proves nothing while self remains the mainspring.
- Cure. Reform paints the outside and the old habits return; only new birth changes the nature, and the courage God calls "virtue" then refuses the flesh within and the devil without.