This He will do, blessed be His name. He never fails a trusting soul.
All we have to do is to cleave to Him with purpose of heart, and He will make the way plain before us. It may seem difficult at first. The path may appear narrow, rough, lonely; but our simple business is to stand for G.o.d, and not to continue for one hour in connection with anything contrary to His revealed will. A tender conscience, a single eye, a devoted heart, will settle many a question, solve many a difficulty, remove many a barrier. Indeed, the very instincts of the divine nature, if only they be allowed to act, will guide in many a perplexity. "The light of the body is the eye; therefore, when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light." When the purpose of the heart is true to Christ, true to His name and cause, true to the service of G.o.d, the Holy Spirit opens up the precious treasures of divine revelation to the soul, and pours a flood of living light upon the understanding, so that we see the path of service as clear as a sunbeam before us, and we have only got to tread it with a firm step.
But we must never, for one moment, lose sight of the grand fact that we are converted to the service of G.o.d. The outcome of the life which we possess must ever take the form of service to the living and true G.o.d. In our unconverted days we worshiped idols, and served divers l.u.s.ts and pleasures; now, on the contrary, we worship G.o.d in the Spirit, and we are called to serve Him with all our ransomed powers.
We have turned to G.o.d, to find in Him our perfect rest and satisfaction. There is not a single thing in the entire range of a creature"s necessities, for time and eternity, that we cannot find in our own most gracious G.o.d and Father. He has treasured up in Christ, the Son of His love, all that can satisfy the desires of the new life in us. It is our privilege to have Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith, and to be so rooted and grounded in love as to be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ, which pa.s.seth knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fulness of G.o.d.
Thus filled, satisfied and strengthened, we are called to dedicate ourselves, spirit, soul and body, to the service of Christ; to be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. We should have nothing else to do in this world. Whatever cannot be done as service to Christ ought not to be done at all. This simplifies the matter amazingly. It is our sweet privilege to do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, and to the glory of G.o.d. We sometimes hear people speak of "a secular calling," as contrasted with what is "sacred." We question the correctness of such a distinction. Paul made tents and planted churches, but in both he served the Lord Christ. All that a Christian does ought to be sacred, because it is done as service to G.o.d. If this were borne in mind, it would enable us to connect the very simplest duties of daily life with the Lord Himself, and to bring Him into them in such a way as to impart a holy dignity and interest to all that we have to do, from morning till night. In this way, instead of finding the duties of our calling a hindrance to our communion with G.o.d, we should actually make them an occasion of waiting on Him for wisdom and grace to discharge them aright, so that His holy name might be glorified in the most minute details of practical life.
The fact is that the service of G.o.d is a much simpler matter than some of us imagine. It does not consist in doing some wonderful things beyond the bounds of our divinely appointed sphere of action. Take the case of a domestic servant. How can she serve the living and true G.o.d?
She cannot go about visiting and talking. Her sphere of action lies in the shade and retirement of her master"s house. Were she to run about from house to house, she would be actually neglecting her proper work, her divinely appointed business. Harken to the following sound and wholesome words: "Exhort servants to be obedient unto their own masters, and to please them well in all things; not answering again: not purloining, but showing all good fidelity; that they may adorn the doctrine of G.o.d our Saviour in all things" (t.i.tus ii. 9, 10).
Here we see that the servant, by obedience, humility and honesty can adorn the doctrine of G.o.d just as effectually, according to her measure, as an evangelist ranging the world over in the discharge of his high and holy commission.
Again, we read, "Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; not with eye-service as men-pleasers, but as _the servants of Christ_, doing the will of G.o.d from the heart; with good-will doing _service_, as to the Lord, and not to men; knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free" (Eph. vi.).
How lovely is all this! What a fine field of service is opened up for us here! How beautiful this "fear and trembling!" Where do we see it nowadays? Where is the holy subjection to authority? Where the singleness of eye? Where the willing-hearted service? Alas! we see headiness and high-mindedness, self-will, self-pleasing, and self-interest. How must all these things dishonor the Lord, and grieve His Holy Spirit! How needful that our souls should be roused to a sense of what becomes us as those who are called to serve the living and true G.o.d! Is it not a signal mercy to every true Christian to know that he can serve and glorify G.o.d in the most commonplace domestic duties? If it were not so, what would become of ninety-nine out of every hundred Christians?
We have taken up the case of an ordinary domestic servant in order to ill.u.s.trate that special line of practical truth now under our consideration. Is it not most blessed for us to know that our G.o.d graciously condescends to connect His name and His glory with the very humblest duties that can devolve upon us in our ordinary domestic life? It is this which imparts dignity, interest and freshness to every little act, from morning till night. "Whatsoever ye do, do it _heartily_, as unto the Lord, and not unto men." Here lies the precious secret of the whole matter. It is not working for wages, but serving the Lord Christ, and looking to Him to receive the reward of the inheritance.
Oh that all this were more fully realized and ill.u.s.trated amongst us!
What moral elevation it would give to the entire Christian life! What a triumphant answer it would furnish to the infidel! What a withering rebuke to all his sneers and cavils! Better by far than ten thousand learned arguments. There is no argument so forcible as an earnest, devoted, holy, happy, self-sacrificing Christian life, and this life can be displayed by one whose sphere of action is bounded by the four walls of a kitchen.[2]
[2] It is remarkable that both in Eph. vi. and Col. iii. the address to servants is far more elaborate than to any of the other cla.s.ses. In t.i.tus ii. servants are specially singled out. There is no address to husbands, none to masters, none to children. We do not attempt to account for this, but we cannot help noticing it as a very interesting fact; and most a.s.suredly it teaches us what a very important place is a.s.signed in Christianity to one who, in those early days of the Church"s history, occupied the place of a slave. The Holy Ghost took special pains to instruct such an one as to how he was to carry himself in his most trying sphere of work. The poor slave might think himself shut out from the service of G.o.d. So far from this, he is sweetly taught that by simply doing his duty as in the sight of G.o.d he could adorn the doctrine of G.o.d his Saviour, and bring glory to the name of Jesus. Nothing can exceed the grace that shines in this.
And not only does the practical life of a true Christian afford the very best possible answer to the skeptic and the infidel, but it also meets in a most satisfactory manner the objections of those who talk about works, and insist upon putting Christians under the law, in order to teach them how to live. When people challenge us as to our not preaching up works, we simply ask them, "For what should we preach works?" The unconverted man cannot do any works, save "wicked works,"
or "dead works." "They that are in the flesh"--unconverted people--"cannot please G.o.d." Of what possible use can it be to preach works to such? It can only cast dust in their eyes, blind their minds, deceive their hearts, and send them down to h.e.l.l with a lie in their right hand.
_There must be genuine conversion to G.o.d._ This is a divine work from first to last. And what has the converted man got to do? He certainly has not to work for life, because he has it, even life eternal, as G.o.d"s free gift, through Jesus Christ our Lord. He has not to work for salvation, because he is saved already--"saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation." What, then, is he called to do? "To serve the living and true G.o.d." How? When? Where? In everything; at all times, and in all places. The converted man has nothing else to do but to serve G.o.d. If he does anything else, he is positively untrue, unfaithful to that blessed Lord and Master who, ere ever He called him to serve, endowed him with the life, and the grace, and the power, whereby alone the service can be rendered.
Yes, reader, the Christian is called to serve. Let us never forget this. He is privileged to "present his body as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to G.o.d, which is his reasonable (his intelligent) service." This settles the whole question. It removes all difficulties; it silences all objections; it puts everything in its right place. It is not a question of what I am doing, but how I do it--not where I am, but how I conduct myself. Christianity as displayed in the New Testament is the outcome of the life of Christ in the believer; it is Christ reproduced in the Christian"s daily life, by the power of the Holy Ghost. Everything the Christian touches, everything he does, everything he says, his whole practical life, from Lord"s-day morning till Sat.u.r.day night, should bear the impress and breathe the spirit of that great practical clause on which we have been dwelling--"serving the living and true G.o.d." May it be so more and more! May all the Lord"s beloved people, everywhere, be really stirred up to seek more earnest, out-and-out, whole-hearted devotedness to Christ and His precious service!
PART VIII
The last words of our chapter--1 Thess. i.--now claim our attention.
They furnish a very striking and forcible proof of the clearness, fulness, depth and comprehensiveness of the apostle"s testimony at Thessalonica, and also of the brightness and reality of the work in the young converts in that place. It was not only that they turned from idols to G.o.d, to serve the living and true G.o.d. This, through grace, they did; and that, too, with uncommon power, freshness, and fervor.
But there was something more; and we may a.s.sert, with all possible confidence, that there would have been a grand defect in the conversion and in the Christianity of those beloved disciples if that had been lacking. _They were converted "to wait for the Son of G.o.d from the heavens."_
Let the reader give to this very weighty fact his most devout attention. The bright and blessed hope of the Lord"s coming formed an integral part of the gospel which Paul preached, and of the Christianity of those who were converted by his ministry. That blessed servant preached a full gospel. He not only declared that the Son of G.o.d had come into the world to accomplish the great work of redemption, and lay the everlasting foundation of the divine glory and counsels, but that He had gone back to the heavens, and taken His seat as the victorious, exalted and glorified Man, at the right hand of the throne of G.o.d; and that He is coming again; first, to receive His people to Himself, and conduct them into the very innermost circle of His Father"s house--the place prepared for them: and then to come forth _with_ them, to execute judgment upon His enemies--gather out of His kingdom all that offend, and all that do iniquity, and set up His glorious dominion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.
All this was included in the precious gospel which Paul preached, and which the Thessalonian converts received. We find an indirect but very interesting intimation of this in a pa.s.sage in Acts xvii., where the inspired writer records what the infidel Jews thought and said about the apostle"s preaching. "But the Jews which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city on an uproar, and a.s.saulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people. And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, _These that have turned the world upside down_ are come hither also; whom Jason hath received; and these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, _saying that there is another king, Jesus_."
Such were the ideas which these poor, ignorant, prejudiced unbelievers gathered from the preaching of the Lord"s beloved servants; and we can see in them the elements of great and solemn truths--the complete upturning of the present system of things, and the establishment of the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. "I will overturn, overturn, overturn it; and it shall be no more, until He come whose right it is; and I will give it Him" (Ezek. xxi. 27).
But not only did the Lord"s coming and kingdom occupy a prominent place in the _preaching_ of the apostle, it also shines brilliantly forth in all his _teaching_. Not only were the Thessalonians converted to this blessed hope, they were built up, established and led on in it. They were taught to live in the brightness of it every hour of the day. It was not a dry, barren dogma, to be received and held as part of a powerless, worthless creed; it was a living reality, a mighty moral power in the soul--a precious, purifying, sanctifying, elevating hope, detaching the heart completely from present things, and causing it to look out, moment by moment--yes, reader, we repeat it with emphasis, moment by moment--for the return of our beloved Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who loved us, and gave Himself for us.
It is interesting to notice that in the two epistles to the Thessalonians there is far more allusion to the Lord"s coming than in all the other epistles put together. This is all the more remarkable inasmuch as they were the very earliest of Paul"s epistles, and they were written to an a.s.sembly very young in the faith.
If the reader will just glance rapidly through these two most precious writings, he will find the hope of the Lord"s return introduced in every one of the eight chapters, and in connection with all sorts of subjects. For example, in chap. i. we have it presented as the grand object to be ever kept before the Christian"s heart, let his position or his relationship be what it may--the brilliant light shining at the end of his long pilgrimage through this dark and toilsome world. "Ye turned to G.o.d from idols, to serve the living and true G.o.d; and to wait for"--what? The time of their death? No such thing, no allusion to such a thing. Death, for the believer, is abolished, and is never presented as the object of his hope. For what, then, were the Thessalonian disciples taught to wait? "For G.o.d"s Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead."
And then mark the beauteous addition! "Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come." This is the Person for whom we are waiting; our precious Saviour; our great Deliverer; the One who undertook our desperate case; who took, on our behalf, the cup of wrath from the hand of infinite Justice and exhausted it forever; who cleared the prospect of every cloud, so that we can gaze upward into heaven, and onward into eternity, and see nothing but the brightness and blessedness of His own love and glory, as our happy home throughout the everlasting ages.
Oh, beloved Christian reader, how blessed to be looking out, morning, noon, eventide, and midnight, for the coming of our gracious Deliverer! What a holy reality to be ever waiting for the return of our own loving and beloved Saviour and Lord! How separating and elevating, as we rise each morning to start on our daily course of duty--whatever that duty may be, whether the scrubbing of a floor or the preaching of the gospel--to cherish the bright and blessed hope that, ere the shades of evening gather round us, we may be summoned to ascend in the folds of the cloud of glory to meet our coming Lord!
Is this the dream of a wild fanatic or a visionary enthusiast? Nay, it is an imperishable truth, resting on the very same foundation that sustains the entire fabric of our most glorious Christianity. Is it true that the Son of G.o.d has trod this earth of ours in the person of Jesus of Nazareth? Is it true that He lived and labored here, amid the sins and sorrows of poor, fallen humanity? Is it true that He sighed, and wept, and groaned, under the sense of the widespread desolation which sin had wrought in this world? Is it true that He went to the cross, and there offered Himself without spot to G.o.d, in order to vindicate the Divine Majesty; to answer all the claims of the throne of G.o.d; to destroy all the works of the devil; to make a public show of all the powers of h.e.l.l; to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself; to bear the sins of all those who, from the beginning to the end of time, should, through grace, believe in His name? Is it true that He lay for three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, and on the first day of the week rose triumphant from the grave, as the Head of the new creation, and ascended into the heavens, after He had been seen by at least five hundred witnesses? Is it true that fifty days after His resurrection He sent down the Holy Ghost, in order to fill and fit His apostles to be His witnesses to the ends of the earth? Is it true that from the day of Pentecost to this very hour He has been acting on His people"s behalf as an Advocate with the Father, a great High Priest with G.o.d; interceding for us in all our failures, sins and shortcomings, and sympathizing with us in all our infirmities and in all our sorrows; and presenting continually our sacrifices of prayer and praise, in all the fragrance of His own glorious Person?
Are all these things true? Yes, thank G.o.d, they are all divinely true, all set forth in the pages of the New Testament, with most marvelous fulness, clearness, depth, and power; all rest on the solid foundation of Holy Scripture--a foundation which not all the powers of earth and h.e.l.l, men and devils, can ever touch.
Well, then, the blessed hope of the Lord"s coming rests on precisely the same authority. It is not more true that our Lord Jesus Christ lay as a babe in the manger of Bethlehem, that He grew up to man"s estate, that He went about doing good, that He was nailed to the cross and laid in the tomb, that He is now seated on the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, than that He will come again to receive His people to Himself. He may come to-night. No one can tell when He will come, but at any moment He may come. The only thing that detains Him is His long-suffering, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. For eighteen long centuries has He waited in lingering love, mercy, and compa.s.sion; and during all that time salvation has been ready to be revealed, and G.o.d has been ready to judge; but He has waited, and He still waits, in long-suffering grace and patience.
But He will come, and we should ever live in the hope of His coming.
Thus the apostle taught his beloved Thessalonians to live. Thus he lived himself. The blessed hope was intimately bound up with all the habits and feelings of his daily life. Was it a question of reaping the fruit of his labors? Hear what he says: "For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye, in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, _at His coming_?" He would see them all then and there. No enemy will be allowed to hinder that meeting. "We would have come unto you, even I Paul, once and again, but Satan hindered us."
Very wonderful! Very mysterious! Yet so it was. Satan hindered an angel of G.o.d in the discharge of his business in the days of Daniel; and he hindered an apostle of Christ in the accomplishment of his loving desire to see his brethren at Thessalonica. But, thanks be to G.o.d, he will not be able to hinder the joyful meeting of Christ and His saints for which we wait. What a moment that will be! What precious reunions! What sweet recognitions! What affectionate greetings of dear old friends! But, far above all, Himself! His smile!
His welcome! His soul-stirring "Well done!"
What a precious, soul-sustaining hope! Need we wonder at the prominent place it occupied in the thoughts and the teachings of the blessed apostle? He recurs to it on all occasions, and in connection with every subject. Is it a question of progress in the divine life and practical G.o.dliness? Thus he puts it: "And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all, even as we do toward you; to the end He may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before G.o.d, even our Father, _at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints_."
Let the reader specially mark the last clause of this touching and beautiful quotation. "_With all His saints._" What admirable wisdom shines here! The apostle was about to touch directly upon an error into which the Thessalonian believers had fallen in reference to their departed friends. They feared that those who had fallen asleep would not partic.i.p.ate in the joy of the Lord"s coming. This error is completely demolished by that brief sentence, "with _all_ His saints."
Not one will be absent from that joyous meeting, that festive scene.
Blessed a.s.surance! Triumphant answer to all who would have us believe that none will share the joy of our Lord"s coming save those who see this, that, and the other! "With _all_ his saints," spite of their ignorance and their errors, their wanderings and their stumblings, their shortcomings and their failures. Our blessed Saviour, the everlasting Lover of our souls, will not shut any of us out at that blissful moment.
Is all this matchless grace to make us careless? G.o.d forbid! Nay, it is the abiding sense of it which alone can keep us alive to our holy responsibility to judge everything in us and in our ways which is contrary to the mind of Christ. And not only so, but the hope of our Lord"s return, if it be kept bright and fresh in the heart, _must_ purify, sanctify and elevate our entire character and course as nothing else can. "Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure." It is morally impossible for any one to _live_ in the hope of seeing his Lord at any moment and yet have his heart set upon worldly things--upon money-making, self-indulgence, pleasure, vanity, folly. Let us not deceive ourselves. If we are daily looking out for the Son of G.o.d from heaven, we must sit loose to the things of time and sense. We may hold the doctrine of the Lord"s coming as a mere dogma in the intellect; we may have the entire range of prophetic truth mapped out before our mind"s eye, without its producing the smallest effect upon the heart, the character, or the practical life. But it is another thing altogether to have the whole moral being, the entire practical career, governed by the bright and blessed hope of seeing the One who loveth us and hath washed us from our sins in His own most precious blood.
Would there were more of this amongst us! It is to be feared that many of us have lost the freshness and power of our true and proper hope.
The truth of the Lord"s coming has become so familiar as a mere doctrine that we can flippantly speak of it, and discuss various points in connection with it, and argue with people about it, and all the while our ways, our deportment, our spirit and temper give the lie to what we profess to hold.
But we shall not pursue this sad and humbling side of the subject. May the Lord look upon us, and graciously heal, restore and lift up our souls! May He revive in the hearts of all His beloved people the proper Christian hope--the hope of seeing the bright and Morning Star.
May the utterance of the whole heart and the utterance of the whole life be, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus!"
Here we must close this paper. We had hoped to run through the two epistles to the Thessalonians in company with our readers, in order to prove and ill.u.s.trate the statement that the hope of the Lord"s return was bound up in the heart of the apostle, with all the scenes, circ.u.mstances and a.s.sociations of Christian life. But we must allow the reader to do this for himself. Sufficient, we trust, has been said to show that true conversion, according to apostolic teaching, cannot stop short of the blessed hope of the Lord"s coming. A truly converted person is one who has turned from idols--has broken with the world--broken with his former self--turned to G.o.d, to find in Him all he can possibly want for time and eternity, to serve Him, and Him only--and, finally, "to wait for the Son of G.o.d from heaven." Such we conceive to be the true and proper answer to the question, "What is conversion?"
Reader, art _thou_ converted? If not, what then? If thou art, does thy life declare it?
SIMON PETER:
HIS LIFE AND ITS LESSONS
PART I.