CRITICAL NOTES
Romans 13:13.—εὐσχήμων, beautiful and symmetrical. Banquets, drinking feasts. Noisy crowds of drunken men ran dancing and singing through the streets. Lascivious banquets.
Romans 13:14. Be clothed.—Exhibit Him both before men and God, both outwardly and inwardly. Put Him on, so that He only may be seen in you. Care of the flesh permitted, but not its lusts. Put on, invest yourselves with, Christ in the exercise of that union with Him which is already yours in possession. Chrysostom says it was a common phrase, “Such a one hath put on such a one”—that is, he is an imitation of him; so to put on the new man is to walk as new men, in newness of life and conversation.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 13:13-14
A graceful walk.—It would be a gain to the cause of holy living if Christians could be led to feel and to act as if the daylight were round about them, making bare all their actions, words, and thoughts. Men and women have too great a tendency to act as if they were children of the night. They have the vain fancy that they are shrouded by the darkness, but the mistake is seen when a beam of light falls upon their pathway, and tells them that there can be no such thing as darkness in God’s nature and in God’s moral government. There is night to the children of men, but there is no night to God, and there should be no night to the children of eternity. They should walk as children of the day. The clear day reveals blemishes which escape notice in the murky light. We are to think of ourselves as walking in the clear day, in the revealing sunlight. When the sun shines into the room it reveals dust dancing in the atmosphere; and so when the sun of divine requirements shines into the chambers of our souls it shows our own imperfections. Let us not be afraid of the light, but let us be afraid of that which the light makes known. Let us walk honestly, gracefully, handsomely, as in the day. What are the characteristics of a graceful Christian walk? How is a Christian to bear himself handsomely?
I. The man will walk handsomely who exercises the knowing faculty.—This is the proud prerogative of man—that he knows—and which sets him at the head of the lower creation. The perfect flower is well shaped in form, beautiful and attractive in colour, and sweet in fragrance; but it has not the power of rejoicing in its own beauty, and of inhaling its own fragrance. The landscape is charming, and yet it does not rejoice in its own attractiveness. The nightingale chants its lays in the lonely forest, floats its sweet liquid notes on the still surface of the midnight air, but is itself unconscious of the wealth of song. The horse shows its power as it draws the heavy load, as it fleets over the greensward, and bounds with wondrous agility over the high-raised fence. Though the horse is superior to other animals, it does not know its advantages. At times it may appear to catch a glimpse of its greatness, and to make a grasp at power; but it cannot link cause and effect, it cannot be said to know. Man rises in excellency above all other creatures in the fact that he is a knowing animal. He knows what he is—what he is in part; for his ignorance is still very great. The degree in which the knowing faculty is exercised by man is the degree in which he walks handsomely. The man does not walk gracefully who walks as in the night of ignorance. When the knowing faculty is oppressed by the mist and fog and cold of the night, then the man walks dishonourably; but when the faculty is developed by the daylight of goodness, then the man walks handsomely. Knowledge is good, but knowledge handled and controlled by evil must lead to impious results; so that for the man to walk handsomely it is needful that the knowing faculty be directed in the right channel of truth and of goodness. We must know ourselves, and we must know God in and through Jesus Christ; we must know how great and vast are our possessions, our privileges, our dignities, our glories, our honours, and our destiny. This is the first and last great step in knowledge—to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. This knowledge is life eternal. This knowledge gives eternal life, and requires eternal life for its completion. Eternal life is an ever-unfolding scene, and the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ is an ever-developing knowledge. Growth in this knowledge is growth without cessation; and the more we increase in this knowledge the more do we possess the power of walking handsomely. So that we must begin here, at the knowledge of the only true God and Jesus Christ, if we are rightly to obey the apostle’s exhortation. Let us walk gracefully, handsomely, as in the day.
II. The man will walk handsomely who keeps in view the nobility of his origin.—The question Whence is man? is variously answered, and is the cause of discussion in some quarters; but there is no occasion for misgiving on our part, for we believe that God is the father of men. They are God’s children, made in His image and likeness, and capable of rendering Him reasonable service. In this sense man has a noble origin. He is the highest of creatures, the link between earth and heaven. On one side of his nature he touches the lowest, and on the other side he reaches to heaven. He overtops the material universe, and stands amid the immensities of eternity. But the question with which we are now concerned is as to the origin of the spiritual man. On this question the New Testament alone can be our guide. The spiritual man boasts not his first but his second birth. He is born, not of corruptible seed, but of God; he need not glory in earthly ancestors, for he is united to Jesus Christ; he does not require to speak of royal blood, since by the new birth he is linked to Him who is the King of kings and Lord of lords. There is not always with noble descent the transmission of noble qualities. Sometimes as the race proceeds the quality of the stock degenerates; but in the spiritual descent there must be the transmission of noble qualities. The man is born again that he may be made a new creature in Christ Jesus; he is born from heaven, and receives heavenly qualities which he himself must develop. How gracefully the man should walk who is thus fashioned anew, who draws a new life from the very source of life, who is begotten again by the incorruptible word and power of God, who is lifted up amid the sublime hierarchy of God’s redeemed and chosen children! Art thou a King’s son? Then be noble in thy doings, right royal in thy actions.
III. The man will walk handsomely who constantly regards the large extent of his sphere.—The man is apt to get careless who feels that he has no sphere, and that there is nothing in his surroundings demanding the exercise of his powers. He has only one talent, and so he wraps it up in a napkin, and binds himself in cerecloths. The poet who had produced his great work, and felt that life was finished, passed his days in indolence, consoling himself with the thought and the expression, There is no motive. Paley’s great powers were lying waste and useless until the voice of a fellow-student called him to action and opened out to him the vast possibilities of his nature. But surely there is a sphere and there is a work for all. Man may rouse himself by the thought of the philosopher who said that man is the end of all things in a semicircle—that is, all things in the world are made for him, and he is made for God. Man is not an insignificant creature shut up in a shell, covered with which he crawls about in a little space. No doubt by the body man is confined; but by the spirit he strips himself of the burden of fleshly covering and travels through infinite spaces. He lives in the mighty past, in the ever-working present, and even in the unenacted future. This time world, changing, moving, passing away, is his sphere. Then the no-time world, the life unknown, unseen, immeasurable, and infinite, is also his sphere by anticipation and by expectation. The spiritual man acts not in a semicircle merely, but in a vast circle. He is the source of undying influences. The spiritual man touches on all sides wherever he moves. An atom of influence for good set in motion must affect other atoms, and the motion will continue through unknown regions. The mountains appear strong and immovable, but motion in the material world reaches to distances beyond our comprehension. And much more is this true with reference to motion in the moral world. The good man is the centre and source of vast outlying and fertilising regions of goodness. He is surely the good seed from which other good men spring. They in their turn are good seed giving birth to other noble spirits. The upper room at Jerusalem did not seem a large sphere; it had no architectural glory. Yet there met in that place twelve of the mightiest spirits of all time. There a force was being developed which was to subdue the material power of Rome, to confute the wisdom of Greece, to give laws and rules which should influence and control the mightiest forms of civilisation, and the greatest nations of all periods. A certain widow with only two mites had, to human seeming, no extensive sphere of usefulness. She had no costly offerings; and yet those mites have been of more value to the Church of Christ than the thousands of pounds she has since received. Here indeed we require to exercise the knowing faculty, and to take broad views, and to consider our sphere as much larger than might be supposed by shallow thinking. We rise in manhood; dormant faculties are called into action as we consider the vast possibilities of the meanest life. We shall no longer creep as if going a monotonous round of mean duties, but we shall walk with stalwart spirit and with hopeful mien, as men appointed to do great works which shall in one way or other be finally successful and triumphant.
IV. The man will walk handsomely who wisely considers the glory of his final destiny.—What a man may become will have an important bearing upon the way in which he treats himself and the way in which he is treated by his fellows. Wisely did that man conduct himself with respectful bearing in the presence of every schoolboy, for he viewed him in the light of a possibly great future. There he saw the ruling statesman, the thrilling orator, the conquering general, the stately bishop, or the world-renowned author. There is to the spiritual man a positive great future, not after the dreams of earth-bound souls, but according to the revelations and provisions of infinite love, wisdom, and power. The spiritual man is a king on earth. The kingdom over which he rules is his own inner nature, but his kingship is imperfect and oft contested. Sometimes he is ensnared and taken captive; but in God’s great future he shall be a king, and his kingship will not be contested, and he shall never be brought into bondage. The sceptre of royalty will never be wrested from his grasp. The golden crown will never be taken from his head; he shall reign for ever and for ever. In this world he is often as a king in exile, but in the other world he will be a king acknowledged. In this world he is a king in poverty, but in the other world he will be a king surrounded with untold wealth. In this world he is a king in sorrow, but in the other world he will be a king in unspeakable happiness. Here he is a king in a cottage, but there he will be a king in a house of many mansions—in a city whose walls are jasper, whose streets are gold, whose gates are pearl, whose fruits and flowers are perennial, whose society is angels, archangels, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs. What manner of person ought such a man to be who has before him such a glorious prospect? The wise heathen said he was greater and born to greater things than that his soul should be the slave of his body. Surely the wise Christian may say in far larger sense that he is greater and born to greater things than that the soul should be slave of the body. He will walk honestly, gracefully, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envy; but putting on the Lord Jesus Christ, and making provision for the enlargement and development of his nobler nature.
The life-long putting on of Christ.
I. What this is that is put on.—It is Christ Himself that we put on; not one thing merely, such as righteousness, but everything which makes us comely and acceptable to God. Christ Himself is here described as a robe. The figure is not of His giving us a robe, but of His being that robe. It is a whole Christ whom we put on; it is with a whole Christ that God deals in dealing with us.
II. How this putting on is done.—The link by which we become personally connected with Christ is our own believing. “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.” We put on Christ simply in believing. Our reception of the Father’s testimony to the work and person of Christ is the “putting on.” There is no other.
III. What is the effect?—There are two aspects or sides which are to be regarded in this:
1. God’s side;
2. The believer’s.
1. God’s side. God looks at us and sees us as if we were His own Son. He sees not our deformity and imperfection, but His beauty and perfection.
2. Our side.
(1) Our consciences are completely satisfied. Not only have we the blood to purge the guilt, but we have the perfection to cover all imperfection, so that we feel that God “sees no iniquity in Jacob, and no transgression in Israel.”
(2) Our bands are completely loosed. The certainty of possessing God’s favour in such surpassing measure gives the fullest liberty.
(3) Our joy overflows. Such love! such favour! such nearness! such dignity!
(4) Our motives to a holy life are increased. What manner of persons ought we to be who are so regarded by God, so beloved of Him!
(5) Our zeal is quickened. Loved with such a love, and treated in so divine a way, what is there that we are not willing to do for Him?—H. Bonar.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 13:13-14
Pilgrims of the dawn.—The pilgrims of the dawn tolerate nothing in themselves that the light of day would rebuke. Hence it is the counterpart of this that they make no provision for the flesh; whatever provision they take for their heavenly journey, the flesh has no share in it. The sin adhering to their natures, the old man not yet dead, is an enemy whose hunger they do not feed, to whose thirst they do not administer drink, whose dying solicitations they regard not, but leave him to perish by the way. But the supreme preparation, uniting all others in one, is the putting on of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Him alone the dignity and the purity of our nature meet; transformed into His character, we need nothing more to fit us for the holiest heavens. But nothing less will suffice His expectation at His coming. He will come to be glorified in His saints—already the likeness in ten thousand reproductions of Himself; and they shall in turn be glorified in Him. Hence the great business of the pilgrims is to occupy the precious moments of the morning in weaving into their nature the character of Christ as the apparel of the eternal day. And if in faith that worketh by love—the love that fulfilleth the law—they diligently co-operate with the Holy Spirit, it will be His blessed function to see to it that before the Bridegroom cometh His bride, and every individual soul that makes up her mystical person, shall be found clothed in His spiritual perfection as with a garment without seam, woven from the top throughout. Beyond this we cannot go. This is the close and the secret of the whole exhortation to the pilgrims of the dawn. They have come up out of the night at the sound of His awakening voice, and have left their Egyptian darkness for ever. They are wrestling with the dangers of the morning, rejoicing in its partial satisfactions. But supremely and above all they are intent upon the coming day; in their pathway there is no death, but they wait for the more abundant life; they are full of trembling, solemn expectation of all that the day will pour out of its unfathomable mysteries. But the end of all their expectation is the person of their Lord. And to prepare for Him by being like Himself is the sum of all their preparation.—Pope’s “Kingdom of Christ.”
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 13
Romans 13:14. The story of St. Augustine’s repentance.—Sometimes mothers’ and fathers’ eyes are sealed in death before the one whom they gave really gives himself to God. You have all heard of the great Augustine. There are few stories more interesting, few for which the Church has had greater cause to thank God, than the story of his repentance. His mother’s heart was nearly broken by his profligacy and folly. She, like Hannah, had consecrated him from birth. She had watched over him, taught him, prayed for him. But he gave no heed to her counsel. Her patience was sorely taxed. An old bishop one day found her almost in despair. “O woman, woman!” he said, “the child of so many prayers will be saved!” And so it was. When he was on a visit at Milan, God found him. One day, sitting with a friend, “there arose a mighty storm of grief, bringing a mighty shower of tears.” He left his friend, hastened to the garden, cried, “How long? how long? Why not now?” when lo! he seemed to hear a voice as of a child repeating, “Take up and read, take up and read.” And he rose from the ground, opened his Bible, and read the first verse which he found. It was, “Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh.” As he read darkness vanished. His mother’s prayers were answered.—Rev. J. Marshall Lang, D.D.