KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICE
‘Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.’
This was our Lord’s answer to the Jewish lawyer’s question, ‘What shall I do to inherit eternal life?’
I. Put knowledge into practice.—Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbour as thyself, and you will have the full and complete answer to your question. This man had to learn what every one of us has to learn—namely, that learning and working must go together, hand in hand, in religion; that knowledge and practice must not be separated. This man had the one—he had the knowledge, but he had not got the other; and if he would gain that which he sought he must link the two together. There is an old saying that knowledge is power. Well, so it is if you put it into practice; but without putting it into practice it is very much like a steam-engine without a fire in the furnace.
II. What is the use of education?—Certainly to develop the powers of the mind—certainly that. But its first and chief object is to enable a man to do the duties of life which lie before him in the spirit of the Master. The separation of knowledge and practice is simply disastrous. Christianity is a practical matter, and unless we use the strength given to us by that God to Whom we pray we miss the point altogether. There are very many things in the revelation of God in the Bible that we cannot understand; but what if we fail to put into practice those which we do know? Knowledge without practice in religious matters is useless and disastrous, as faith without works is dead.
III. Faith is like a little child that must needs take the smallest and the shortest steps first.—We must not despise the day of small belief; but, as we follow the law of Christ, ‘This do, and thou shalt live,’ even in the simple and apparently insignificant details of Christian duty, leaning the while on the supporting hand of God, we shall find by degrees the strength we need to put our knowledge into practice.
IV. Our Lord’s life was pre-eminently a life of deeds.—For the most part they were like the acts of the Samaritan in the parable. They were mostly concerned with the feeding of the hungry and the healing of the sick, so that His commission to the lawyer, ‘This do, and thou shalt live,’ was literally the law of His own life—a law that fits the smallest as well as the largest matters, be they what they may.
—Rev. T. H. S. Polehampton.
Illustration
‘I think that the Lord, as soon as the scribe had given his reply, looked him straight in the face; and to understand the thing you must not merely hear what Christ says, you must think how He said it, the intonation of voice, and the look: “Thou hast answered right.” That is the way to life eternal, loving God with all thy heart and soul, and mind, and strength, and thy neighbour as thyself. This do, and thou shalt live. The look meant, “Dare you pretend that you do that”; and the man felt it, and therefore, we read, was eager to justify himself. Christ had put him in the wrong, not by what he says, but by that look and intonation.’