THE TOTAL ABSTINENCE OF THE GOSPEL.
At the opening of the previous chapter we recollected in passing, among the facts of the Spiritual Life, the spotless purity of the rule and standard of its exercise. Some reflections on this may fitly follow at once on what we have seen of the way of reception of its power, and the self-discipline that must surround such reception. Our view shall be very simple and practical. Behind it all, above it all, shall be remembered that word of the Apostle, “even as He is pure.” But we will look for application at some of the plainest and homeliest regions of Christian practice.
The connexion of the third chapter of the Ephesians with the fourth is in itself a deep and precious spiritual lesson. Up to the end of the third chapter the Apostle has been led from height to height, from strength to strength, of the heavenly truth. The way of the salvation of the saints, in that plan of God which stretches from eternity to eternity, has been his theme. The Father’s choice, the blood of the Son, the work of the regenerating and enlightening Holy Spirit; union with Christ; the indwelling of Christ by the Spirit in the heart; knowledge of the love which passes knowledge; a filling with the fulness of God; contact with a power able to do more than prayer or thought attains; such have been the topics. Now, in the fourth chapter, begins the application of these wonderful principles and resources; and what is it to be? Out of such a rock what mighty flood of overwhelming energy and action is to rush? We look, and lo there is no rush, no commotion; in some respects there is little action. The stream is deep, but still and quiet; as, indeed, it well may be, for its element is life eternal, and eternity is calm. The most immediate, and important, and characteristic result of the full truth and power of the Gospel, of the revealed glories of the believer’s part and life in Christ, is, according to St. Paul, lowliness, meekness, longsuffering, forbearance in love; a cessation of bitterness, and wrath, and clamour, and unkind words. Sacred paradox of the Gospel! The Gospel is a motive power strong beyond all others; but it works in the quiet of the soul, in that living quiet caused and secured by the believer’s discovery of the wonder of his pardon, and of his safety, and of his privilege; of his union with his Lord, of his Lord’s work finished for him, and his Lord’s presence abiding in him. Thus the Christian’s life is primarily a life of blessed submission, abstinence, and cessation, as the basis of all its action in and for the Lord. Its essential spirit is the very opposite to all ideas of self-assertion, noise and bluster about itself, heraldry of its gifts and graces, comparison of one’s own discoveries, attainments, powers and triumphs, with those of others, to their disadvantage. He in whose heart Christ dwelleth, and into whom the fulness of God floweth, must be known, amongst other marks, by “esteeming others better than himself,” unaffectedly and cordially. In him self has been dethroned as towards God, by sovereign grace; it must be dethroned by the same power as towards men. And this must come out in the practical form of a meek and quiet spirit, pervading all his life.
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