The Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. Paul to the Colossians and Philemon. Alexander Maclaren
is enough. The one all-important question for us is—does our Christianity work? It is knowledge of His will, which becomes an ever active force in our lives! Any other kind of religious knowledge is windy food; as Paul says, it “puffeth up;” the knowledge which feeds the soul with wholesome nourishment is the knowledge of His will.
The converse error to that of unpractical knowledge, that of an unintelligent practice, is quite as bad. There is always a class of people, and they are unusually numerous to-day, who profess to attach no importance to Christian doctrines, but to put all the stress on Christian morals. They swear by the “Sermon on the Mount,” and are blind to the deep doctrinal basis laid in that “sermon” itself, on which its lofty moral teaching is built. What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. Why pit the parent against the child? why wrench the blossom from its stem? Knowledge is sound when it moulds conduct. Action is good when it is based on knowledge. The knowledge of God is wholesome when it shapes the life. Morality has a basis which makes it vigorous and permanent when it rests upon the knowledge of His will.
Again: Progress in knowledge is the law of the Christian life. There should be a continual advancement in the apprehension of God’s will, from that first glimpse which saves, to the mature knowledge which Paul here desires for his friends. The progress does not consist in leaving behind old truths, but in a profounder conception of what is contained in these truths. How differently a Fijian just saved, and a Paul on earth, or a Paul in heaven, look at that verse, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son”! The truths which are dim to the one, like stars seen through a mist, blaze to the other like the same stars to an eye that has travelled millions of leagues nearer them, and sees them to be suns. The law of the Christian life is continuous increase in the knowledge of the depths that lie in the old truths, and of their far-reaching applications. We are to grow in knowledge of the Christ by coming ever nearer to Him, and learning more of the infinite meaning of our earliest lesson that He is the Son of God who has died for us. The constellations that burn in our nightly sky looked down on Chaldean astronomers, but though these are the same, how much more is known about them at Greenwich than was dreamed at Babylon!
II. Consider the River or Stem of Christian conduct.
The purpose and outcome of this full knowledge of the will of God in Christ is to “walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing.” By “walk” is of course meant the whole active life; so that the principle is brought out here very distinctly, that the last result of knowledge of the Divine will is an outward life regulated by that will. And the sort of life which such knowledge leads to, is designated in most general terms as “worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing,” in which we have set forth two aspects of the true Christian life.
“Worthily of the Lord!” The “Lord” here, as generally, is Christ, and “worthily” seems to mean, in a manner corresponding to what Christ is to us, and has done for us. We find other forms of the same thought in such expressions as “worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called” (Eph. iv. 1), “worthily of saints” (Rom. xvi. 2), “worthy of the gospel” (Phil. i. 27), “worthily of God” (1 Thess. ii. 12), in all of which there is the idea of a standard to which the practical life is to be conformed. Thus the Apostle condenses into one word all the manifold relations in which we stand to Christ, and all the multifarious arguments for a holy life which they yield.
These are mainly two. The Christian should “walk” in a manner corresponding to what Christ has done for him. “Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people, and unwise?” was the mournful wondering question of the dying Moses to his people, as he summed up the history of unbroken tenderness and love on the one side, and of disloyalty almost as uninterrupted on the other. How much more pathetically and emphatically might the question be asked of us! We say that we are not our own, but bought with a price. Then how do we repay that costly purchase? Do we not requite His blood and tears, His unquenchable, unalterable love, with a little tepid love which grudges sacrifices and has scarcely power enough to influence conduct at all, with a little trembling faith which but poorly corresponds to His firm promises, with a little reluctant obedience? The richest treasure of heaven has been freely lavished for us, and we return a sparing expenditure of our hearts and ourselves, repaying fine gold with tarnished copper, and the flood of love from the heart of Christ with a few niggard drops grudgingly squeezed from ours. Nothing short of complete self-surrender, perfect obedience, and unwavering unfaltering love can characterize the walk that corresponds with our profound obligations to Him. Surely there can be no stronger cord with which to bind us as sacrifices to the horns of the altar than the cords of love. This is the unique glory and power of Christian ethics, that it brings in this tender personal element to transmute the coldness of duty into the warmth of gratitude, so throwing rosy light over the snowy summits of abstract virtue. Repugnant duties become tokens of love, pleasant as every sacrifice made at its bidding ever is. The true Christian spirit says: Thou hast given Thyself wholly for me: help me to yield myself to Thee. Thou hast loved me perfectly: help me to love Thee with all my heart.
The other side of this conception of a worthy walk is, that the Christian should act in a manner corresponding to Christ’s character and conduct. We profess to be His by sacredest ties: then we should set our watches by that dial, being conformed to His likeness, and in all our daily life trying to do as He has done, or as we believe He would do if He were in our place. Nothing less than the effort to tread in His footsteps is a walk worthy of the Lord. All unlikeness to His pattern is a dishonour to Him and to ourselves. It is neither worthy of the Lord, nor of the vocation wherewith we are called, nor of the name of saints. Only when these two things are brought about in my experience—when the glow of His love melts my heart and makes it flow down in answering affection, and when the beauty of His perfect life stands ever before me, and though it be high above me, is not a despair, but a stimulus and a hope—only then do I “walk worthy of the Lord.”
Another thought as to the nature of the life in which the knowledge of the Divine will should issue, is expressed in the other clause—“unto all pleasing,” which sets forth the great aim as being to please Christ in everything. That is a strange purpose to propose to men, as the supreme end to be ever kept in view, to satisfy Jesus Christ by their conduct. To make the good opinion of men our aim is to be slaves; but to please this Man ennobles us, and exalts life. Who or what is He, whose judgment of us is thus all-important, whose approbation is praise indeed, and to win whose smile is a worthy object for which to use life, or even to lose it? We should ask ourselves, Do we make it our ever present object to satisfy Jesus Christ? We are not to mind about other people’s approbation. We can do without that. We are not to hunt after the good word of our fellows. Every life into which that craving for man’s praise and good opinion enters is tarnished by it. It is a canker, a creeping leprosy, which eats sincerity and nobleness and strength out of a man. Let us not care to trim our sails to catch the shifting winds of this or that man’s favour and eulogium, but look higher and say, “With me it is a very small matter to be judged of man’s judgment.” “I appeal unto Cæsar.” He, the true Commander and Emperor, holds our fate in His hands; we have to please Him and Him only. There is no thought which will so reduce the importance of the babble around us, and teach us such brave and wholesome contempt for popular applause, and all the strife of tongues, as the constant habit of trying to act as ever in our great Taskmaster’s eye. What does it matter who praise, if He frowns? or who blame, if His face lights with a smile? No thought will so spur us to diligence, and make all life solemn and grand as the thought that “we labour, that whether present or absent, we may be well pleasing to Him.” Nothing will so string the muscles for the fight, and free us from being entangled with the things of this life, as the ambition to “please Him who has called us to be soldiers.”
Men have willingly flung away their lives for a couple of lines of praise in a despatch, or for a smile from some great commander. Let us try to live and die so as to get “honourable mention” from our captain. Praise from His lips is praise indeed. We shall not know how much it is worth, till the smile lights His face, and the love comes into His eyes, as He looks at us, and says, “Well done! good and faithful servant.”
III. We have finally the fourfold streams or branches into which this general conception of Christian character parts itself.
There