Communion with God.
I. We can require no proof that God and the wicked man cannot be said to have fellowship or communion, though God be about that wicked man's path and spieth out all his ways. There is no proposing of the same object or end, for God proposes His own glory, whereas the wicked man proposes the gratification of his own sinful propensities. To have fellowship, to have communion with God, what can this denote, if not that human nature has been wondrously purged from its corruption, refined into something of affinity to the ethereal, and endowed with affections which find their counterpart objects in the Divine Being alone? You see at once the contradiction between the assertions that a man is in fellowship with God and yet loves the present world is eager for its wealth, addicted to its pleasures, or ambitious for its honours. The phraseology of our text implies a state of concord or friendship a state, in fact, on man's part, of what we commonly understand by religion.
II. We cannot conceal from ourselves that there is a great deal of vague hope of heaven which takes little or no account of what must necessarily be the character of the inhabitants of heaven. It follows so naturally, with regard to earthly things, that we seek what we love, that there is very little difficulty, with regard to heavenly things, to draw from the fact of loving the inference that we must be in earnest as candidates for a kingdom of which we so readily recognise the worth and attractiveness. But we forget that in order to anything of happiness there must be a correspondence between the dispositions of the inhabitants of a world and the glories and enjoyments of that world. It is nothing that we have a relish for descriptions of heaven. The question is whether we have any conformity with the inhabitants of heaven.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 2215.
References: 2 Corinthians 6:14. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. i., p. 223; Preacher's Monthly,vol. ii., p. 246. 2 Corinthians 6:15. G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 260. 2 Corinthians 6:16. Homilist,2nd series, vol. i., p. 296; vol. iv., p. 588; J. Irons, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 85; F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxx., p. 8; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 126: Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. x., p. 142. 2 Corinthians 6:17. Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 255. 2 Corinthians 6:17; 2 Corinthians 6:18. W. Landels, Christian World Pulpit,vol. v., p. 4; Preacher's Monthly,vol. ix., p. 115.