That good thing which was committed unto thee.
The sacred trust
I. The charge,--the truth, the Word of God, which--
1. Unfolds the true God.
2. Proclaims life and salvation through the Redeemer.
3. Brings life and immortality to light.
II. The duty. We should have--
1. A correct knowledge of the Word.
2. A devoted attachment to it.
3. A desire to preserve it in its integrity.
4. A willingness to communicate it freely to others.
5. An abiding sense of its responsibility.
III. The assistance.
1. Our necessities are connected with the Holy Spirit’s ability.
2. Rejoice in His readiness to help. (A. Reed, D. D.)
Good things
Here are those reprehended who never had any care to possess these worthy things. Nothing in man, or out of him, that is of greater worth, and nothing less regarded. We do count that person blessed that hath his house hung with rich arras, his chests full of gold, and his barns stuffed with corn; and yet we never have esteem of these excellent and rare things. Truly, the least degree of faith is more worth than all the gold of Ophir; a remnant of true love than all the gay garments in the world. Hope of heaven will more rejoice the heart of David than his sceptre and kingdom. But men do not think so, neither will they have it so; yet the day of death, like an equal balance, shall declare it to be so. Are they worthy things? Then put them to the best uses, and abuse them not. And, in the last place, seeing these be worthy things, let us all labour to possess them, for of how much more value a thing is, by so much the more we should strive to obtain it. (J. Barlow, D. D.)
Grace once gotten is to be preserved
Because, if grace grow weak, the pattern will not be practised. When all the parts of the natural body be in a consumption, can we walk and work in the duties of our particular callings? And if the new man wax pale, and pine away, the paths of God’s commands will not be run or trodden. For, as all natural actions proceed from the body’s strength, and the purest spirit, so do all spiritual from the vigour of grace and the new man. When men have got some competency of wealth, they lie long in bed, and will not up to work, and so their riches waste. In like manner it falleth out with God’s children; for when they have attained to some competency of gifts, they are highly conceited, grow idle, neglect the means, and so are over taken with spiritual poverty, than the which what greater loss? We must then learn here, not only to get grace, but to keep it. We will mourn if we lose our money, grieve if we be deprived of our corn, natural strength and earthly commodities. And shall the loss of grace never pinch us, pierce us? Shall Jonah be so dejected for his gourd, and we never be moved when grace is withered, ready to perish? Shall the earthworm sigh at the loss of goods, and we never shrink at the shipwreck of heavenly gilts? No greater damage than this, none less regarded, more insensible. Let our plants begin to pine, our hair wax grey or fall, it will make some impression. But grace may decay, the spirit faint, and few be wounded in heart. Yet to such a time shall come of great mourning. Then get grace, keep grace; so shall corruption be expelled, extenuated, and the pattern of sound words observed, practised. (J. Barlow, D. D.)
The Holy Spirit dwells in man
But He is infinite, therefore in all persons. True, yet He is in the faithful in a peculiar and special manner, both by His working and presence. Secondly, He is incomprehensible, notwithstanding, as we may say the sun is in the house, though a part of the beams be but there; so the Spirit is said to be in man, although He be not wholly included in him. We account it a fearful thing to pull down or batter a prince’s palace, it is death to wash or clip the king’s coin, and shall we not tremble to wrong and injure this building, for such cannot escape the damnation of hell. This is for the comfort of the faithful. For what greater honour than this, to have the high God to dwell in our hearts? Should our sovereign but come into a poor man’s cottage, he would rejoice, and good reason, for that all his life long. And shall the King of Glory dwell with the sons of men make His chamber of presence in their hearts, and they want hearts to solace themselves in the remembrance of that? And here let man learn a lesson and wonder. Is it the spirit of God in Paul and others, where the spirit of all uncleanness not long before ruled? Admire His humility that would descend so low as to dwell in so mean a habitation. He that dwells in that light that none can attain unto, now dwelleth where was a palpable darkness. Thirdly, where He takes up His lodging there is holiness. This fire purifieth the heart, cleanseth the inward man, though never so full of filthiness in former time (1 Corinthians 6:11; Ephesians 5:18). Thou wilt say, Sir, by what way may I come to this thing? Why, thou must get a new heart, for He will never lodge in the old, for that’s naught. (J. Barlow, D. D.)
The indwelling of the Holy Spirit
I. The author of life.
1. Before Be dwells in us He quickens us (Ephesians 2:1; John 3:5-6; John 6:63).
2. Believers are temples of the Holy Ghost (1 Corinthians 3:16; 1 Corinthians 6:19; 2 Corinthians 6:16).
3. True of all believers (Romans 8:9).
4. Christ’s promise respecting it (John 14:16-17).
II. The source of unity.
1. His indwelling makes that unity a fact (Ephesians 4:4; 1 Corinthians 6:17; 1 Corinthians 12:13-20).
2. That fact to be recognised and cherished (Ephesians 4:3).
3. One building inhabited by one Spirit (Ephesians 2:22.)
III. The pledge of glory.
1. The salvation bestowed and the salvation yet to be revealed. Grace and glory (2 Timothy 1:9; 1 Peter 1:5; Psalms 84:2).
2. The indwelling Spirit the earnest of our inheritance (2Co 1:22; 2 Corinthians 5:5; Ephesians 1:14).
3. Recognise His presence.
4. Honour and obey Him (Ephesians 4:30). (E. H. Hopkins.)
Real Christianity
The providence of God requires all Christians and all Churches to show what Christianity really is. Christianity is a larger and better thing than Christendom yet knows. Still the Holy Spirit dwells in the apostolic succession of the whole true Church of Christ, showing it what the things of Christ are, and helping it realise them in Christianity. How, then, are we to understand what the Christianity is, which we are still called to make real on earth?
I. The Christianity which the world needs probably transcends any single definition of it which we shall be likely to give. Philosophers have tried many times to define the simple word “life,” and at best they have had only clumsy success with their definitions of what every one knows by his own healthy pulse-beatings. The definition is not made easier when we prefix the adjective Christian to the word “life.” If we labour to define in words so large and divine a reality as Christianity, we shall be sure to narrow it in our verbal enclosures, and we can hardly fail to leave whole realms of Christianity out when we have finished our fences of system and denomination.
II. Christianity is a larger thing than any one particular aspect or exemplification of it which men may be tempted to put in the place of it. Christianity, as a whole, is greater than the parts of it which men have hastily seized upon, and contended for as the faith of the saints. Christianity is that good thing which all the Churches hold in common, and it is greater than all. The Christianity of Christ is that good thing committed unto us, which is large enough to comprehend all the ideals of Christian prophets, and prayers of devout hearts, as well as the works of faith which have been done on earth. It would be easy to illustrate from current life and literature the natural tendency of the human heart to substitute some favourite part of Christianity for the divine whole of it. And the unfortunate contentions and hindrances to the gospel which follow from this mistake are all around us. Thus one class of persons are called to benevolent works by the Divine charity of Christ, but in their zeal for man they may not realise sufficiently that the charity of God is the benevolence of universal law, and the Christ is the Life because He is also the Truth. Others, on the contrary, impressed by the order and grandeur of the truths of revelation, repeatedly fall into merely doctrinal definitions of Christianity; and, even while defending from supposed error the faith once delivered to the saints, they narrow that faith into a theological conception of Christianity which may have indeed much of the truth, but little of the Spirit of Christ.
III. Christianity is that good thing which we have received from Christ. In other words, Christianity is not a spirit merely, or idea, or influence, which we still call by the name of Christ, but which we may receive and even enhance without further reference to the historic Christ. Christianity is more than a spirit of the times, more than a memory of a life for men, more than a distillation in modern literature of the Sermon on the Mount, more than a fragrance of the purest of lives pervading history and grateful still to our refined moral sense. Jesus once said before the chief among the people, “I receive not honour from men”; and the patronage of culture cannot make for our wants and sins a Christ from the Father. Christianity is the direct continuation of the life and the work of Jesus of Nazareth in the world. Hence, it would be a vain expectation to imagine that the world can long retain the influence of Christ, the healing aroma of Christianity, and let the Jesus of the Gospels fade into a myth. Christianity, uprooted from its source in Divine facts of redemption, would be but as a cut flower, still pervading for a while our life with its charity, but another day even its perfume would have vanished. The Christianity of Christ is a living love.
IV. Christianity is a changed relationship of human souls to God through Christ. Go back to the beginning of Christianity to find out what it is. It began to exist on earth first upon the afternoon of a certain day when the last of the Hebrew prophets, looking upon Jesus as He walked, said, “Behold the Lamb of God.” And two of his disciples beard him speak, and they followed Jesus. These men are now like new men in another world; in Christ’s presence all Divine things seem possible to them; they are changed from the centre and core of their being; they are verily born again, for they live henceforth lives as different from their former lives before they came to Christ as though they had actually died out of this world, and come back to it again with the memory in their hearts of a better world. After a few years in Jesus’ companionship, after all that they had witnessed of His death and resurrection, they are themselves as men belonging to another world, citizens of a better country, sojourning for a brief season here. “Old things are passed away,” says the last-born of the apostles; “Behold, all things are become new.” This, then, is Christianity--Peter, and John, and other men, living with Christ in a new relationship to God. It is a happy, hopeful, all-transfiguring relationship of human souls to God. Christ giving His Spirit to the disciples, disciples witnessing of the Christ--this, this is Christianity. What, then, is Christianity? It is, we say, the doctrine of Christ. What is the doctrine of Christ? Men sound in the faith; men made whole, men living according to Christ. The doctrine of Christ is not a word, or a system of words. It is not a book, or a collection of writings. He wrote His doctrine in the book of human life. He made men His Scriptures. His doctrine was the teaching of the living Spirit. The doctrine of Christ--lo! Peter, the tempestuous man, strong one moment and weak another, become now a man of steady hope, confessor, and martyr--he is the doctrine of Christ! The son of thunder become the apostle of love--he is the doctrine of Christ! The persecutor becomes one who dies daily for the salvation of the Gentiles--he is the doctrine of Christ!
V. Christianity is the company of disciples in new relationship with one another, and towards all men, through Christ. The new redeemed society is Christianity. A man cannot be a Christian, at least not a whole Christian, by himself alone. To seek to live a Christian life by one’s self, in the secrecy of one’s own heart, is an endeavour foreign to the original genius of Christianity. Christianity, when it is finished, will be the best society gathered from all the ages, the perfect society of the kingdom of heaven. How can a man expect to fit himself for that blessed society by neglecting here and new to enter into the fellowship of believers who seek to prepare themselves for that final society of the Lord by meeting and breaking bread together at His table? To be a Christian, therefore, is to be actually a follower of Christ with His disciples. And to make real and not merely nominal work of it We shall need often with deliberate resolution to give ourselves up to our own faiths, to throw ourselves manfully upon their current, and to let them catch us up and bear us whither they will. (N. Smyth, D. D.)
A sufficient endowment
“The influence of Mr. Moody is wonderful,” said a lady to her minister; “he is not intellectual, nor eloquent, nor learned, and his appearance is not prepossessing.” “Ah!” replied the minister, “but he has the Spirit of God in him.” “Yes,” she responded, “and that is all.” “All!” exclaimed the minister; “is not that everything?”
An essential provision of Christianity
Is not this power of God, through the Holy Ghost, an essential provision of Christianity? Could the Word of God be “a living Word” without it? We can no more conceive of Christianity as destitute of this Divine influence than as destitute of Christ. We look upon the face of nature and perceive that all its external forms are based upon one common principle of life; and were this withdrawn all things must die. So in like manner, looking upon external Christianity--its doctrines, its Sabbaths, its worship, its points of holiness, joy, and moral excellence, produced in perfect uniformity in all ages and amongst all classes--we perceive that there must exist beneath the surface some uniform power; and what can this be but the power of God through His Holy Spirit? And this belongs to the system, is inherent, permanent, certain. By the impulses of this power the “Word of God” effects its glorious triumphs; and, when it is withdrawn, Christianity sinks into the condition of an empty form. (J. Dixon, D. D.)